FOIA | FBI | Otto Otepka

[Paul Brancato]

2 hours ago, Richard Booth said:

Hey Paul,

It's FBI. I pulled it from a FOIA request for William King Harvey that was submitted by voluminous FOIA requester Emma Best (who has uploaded millions of pages online from her thousands of requests).

You can find the Harvey file here. Some interesting reading in there:

https://archive.org/details/WilliamKingHarvey

There are a few ways to tell it's from FBI. Easiest is probably seeing at the top where it says "To: Belmont" -- that's Alan Belmont. If you've seen a lot of FBI files you can also tell it's FBI by the way "Memorandum" looks at the top.

Another way you can tell it's FBI is the tone, and by how brazenly and openly it just airs CIA dirty laundry. CIA would not be putting things like this on paper. Whereas at FBI, due to their institutional rivalry, they have no compunction writing about perceived CIA misadventures. At the time of that FBI memo was written, Hoover is still in charge and he hated William K. Harvey. If you review the Harvey FOIA above you'll find memo after memo with Hoover and his minions (Belmont, Tolson, any of the top Hoover boys) vociferously complaining about Harvey to CIA. Really petty stuff.

Anyhow, yes, it's FBI. Rather surprising to find so many details all in a single memo, especially given how highly classified those details were at the time this memo was written (summer of '63)

Hoover’s memo to George Bush of the CIA comes under the heading dirty laundry. Perhaps he was just making sure the CIA didn’t mess with him by letting them know that he knew what they were up to. 

[Gene Kelly]

I sense the hand of Angleton here ... a letter to Edward Epstein?   Smearing and incriminating Bobby Kennedy.   Otepka's biographer married to a former Abwehr spy.  Operation Paperclip, implications. Otto wasn't just a maligned whistleblower ... he was aligned with all of JFK's enemies.   The very people who had him assassinated. 

[Paul Brancato]

5 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

I sense the hand of Angleton here ... a letter to Edward Epstein?   Smearing and incriminating Bobby Kennedy.   Otepka's biographer married to a former Abwehr spy.  Operation Paperclip, implications. Otto wasn't just a maligned whistleblower ... he was aligned with all of JFK's enemies.   The very people who had him assassinated. 

Me too Gene. I wish Jim D or even Joan Mellen would post here and respond. Mellen has claimed things about RFK with authority, essentially explaining his post assassination actions as due to his sense of guilt. Perhaps Jim has published his views on Otepka on his website. 

[Paul Brancato]

I just read Jim D’s article, written by Linda Pease, about Otepka. It does not even mention RFK, but does mention Sheridan. I tried to find biographical info on Jay Sourwine, general counsel for the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, with little success. 

[Richard Booth]

2 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

I just read Jim D’s article, written by Linda Pease, about Otepka. It does not even mention RFK, but does mention Sheridan. I tried to find biographical info on Jay Sourwine, general counsel for the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, with little success. 

Sourwine is mentioned repeatedly in the Otepka FBI file. There are also a number of contemporary news reports in that FBI file. If the file were examined by someone who knows enough additional details it may assist in putting together what may have happened.

 

[Richard Booth]

12 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Hoover’s memo to George Bush of the CIA comes under the heading dirty laundry. Perhaps he was just making sure the CIA didn’t mess with him by letting them know that he knew what they were up to. 

I think that is real similar to the Roselli/Maheu memo I posted. It was almost a way of Hoover getting some stuff on paper that would show that he knows the score. 

[Richard Booth]

This is Lisa Pease's K&K piece on Otepka:

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/what-did-otto-otepka-know-about-oswald-and-the-cia

There are a couple of things in it that cause one to raise their eyebrow so to speak.

This is one of them, unrelated to Otepka, but it causes me to question Pease's judgement:

There was an effort underway to reinstate Alger Hiss to the State Department. Knowing what we know today, one might wish that effort had been successful.

"one might wish that effort had been successful" ?

It's pretty clear from Hede Massing's testimony that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy. Hiss and Massing both met once at a dinner party where they spoke about their mutual efforts to recruit Noel Fields...  

I can't see why anyone would think it appropriate that Hiss be reinstated at the State Department. Alas, maybe there are people who think he was innocent ... but I can't fathom that given the evidence against him regardless of how the authorities investigating him had conducted themselves. 

https://spartacus-educational.com/Hede_Massing.htm

[Gene Kelly]

Paul:

I struggle with what to make of Walter Sheridan.  He seemed loyal and close to all of the Kennedy's.  It would be difficult and painful to conclude that he betrayed them.   Many vilify Sheridan, especially his wiretapping of Otepka, the Hoffa/Partin prosecution, and finally Jim Garrison.  As David Talbot once put it, Garrison and Sheridan were both "motivated by a deep and genuine desire to crack the case, but were both doomed to clash, considering their polar-opposite personalities and agendas".  Much is made of Sheridan's 4 years with the FBI, and his 3-4 years with NSA (not a particularly long government career). 

I sense the hand of James Angleton in the Otepka story.  Classic misdirection and counterespionage (Angleton's specialty). All the RFK bashing and smearing seems over the top ... and frankly, not credible.  Its hard to ignore the fact that Otepka's biographer was married to a former Abwehr spy, with Operation Paperclip implications.  There is an interesting 2019 article in D-State Analytics by Bill Taylor, entitled “Who was Edward Pierpont Morgan? Was Charles W. Lyons a CIA Cut Out? Did Otepka run across a poopoo Rat Line?”  With Otepka's role and responsibilities, the author peculates that Otepka caught on to the process of rinsing poopoo’s into White Russians remains to be seen. It seems likely though, that the CIA did not need Otepka messing up their poopoo rat line.

Otepka appears to be more than just a maligned whistleblower ... he seems a creature of the far right.  Otepka aligns with many of the principals of the American Security Council, the group campaigning to oust Castro from Cuba, and escalate the war in Vietnam (and some of JFK's fiercest enemies and opponents).  The hand of Robert J. Morris in this is also ominous. Morris was chosen as president of the University of Dallas in 1960, but his outspokenness on anti-Communism and other issues created conflict within the school, and he left in 1962.  He formed the Defenders of American Liberties in the summer of 1962, intended to serves as a counterbalance to the American Civil Liberties Union, "but with emphasis on different positions" such as defending Edwin Walker ... Morris called Walker the "United States' first political prisoner", after Walker was denied bail and placed under psychiatric observation.  In The Manchurian Candidate (1959), author Richard Condon referred to Robert J. Morris and several of his close associates to expose what Morris and his associates were planning for the future of America.  Morris managed an unsuccessful City of New York mayoralty campaign for William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1965.  Morris was one of the prominent leaders of The American Security Council along with Charles Willoughby, James Angleton and Ray Cline. 

Gene

[Paul Brancato]

Gene - thanks for the link to D-state article. I’m never quite sure what to make of that website, but always find it interesting reading. When you ponder LHO’s relationships in the Dallas White Russian community what do you come up with? I have a wacky theory about DeMohrenschildt. Though he paraded his liberal tendencies, I suspect he was a member of the Skorzeny network, as were others in that Dallas community. 

[Paul Brancato]

16 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Gene - thanks for the link to D-state article. I’m never quite sure what to make of that website, but always find it interesting reading. When you ponder LHO’s relationships in the Dallas White Russian community what do you come up with? I have a wacky theory about DeMohrenschildt. Though he paraded his liberal tendencies, I suspect he was a member of the Skorzeny network, as were others in that Dallas community. 

Gene - I inserted this excerpt from a longer document which I linked in a thread I started a few years ago called “interesting interview with a Cuban exile”. One can search YouTube and find a segment of an interview which Skorzeny gave to a Canadian journalist in which he is asked if he ever worked for Castro, to which he responded something like ‘yes, and to the enemies of Castro’. After reading Major Ganis’ relatively poor book on Skorzeny (I say poor because Ganis seems a bit too taken with Otto, and because his conclusions are absurd) I began to wonder what was the real relationship of Skorzeny to the rat line segment of the CIA, and also to his military equals in the US. Even this excerpt seems too willing to link Skorzeny to Russia, almost like a deflection. It’s absolutely clear to me that Mossad, rather than executing Otto, used his services against Egypt in the early 1960’s. Whenever I bring up Skorzeny on this forum I’m met with little response. No one wants to ponder the deeper implications of Paperclip, the fact that, as the D-state article points out, it wasn’t just scientists that were scrubbed it was SS too. What makes this interview I quoted interesting to me is the source saying he understood through his connections that Skorzeny was supplying arms to Cuban exiles. What is that about? And he actually states Madrid and Belgium. Well, Otto lived in Madrid. But Belgium? This is why I think Skorzeny is connected to the QJWIN program. Arnold Silver, CIA station chief in Belgium, was, while still in Army Intelligence, Otto’s case officer in 1947, and he was in part responsible for how Hitler’s commando was released from Army custody. And Silver was William Harvey’s contact through which QJWIN was recruited for operations against Lumumba. So here is a Cuban exile drawing that weird connection, and then the interviewer inserting on his own the deflection towards Soviet operations. 

Edited April 5, 2021 by Paul Brancato

[Gene Kelly]

Paul

One last thought.  I had never been able to find much about Sheridan previously.  At the surface, he comes across as a nice Catholic guy, a Fordham graduate, and faithful Kennedy family loyalist.  However, there is also something not quite right about him (imho) and it came to me when I read a 1970 interview in the Kennedy Library (Walter Sheridan Oral History Interview—RFK#6, 6/12/1970 Administrative Information Interviewer: Roberta Greene, June 12, 1970).   Sheridan is being asked about the Garrison investigation, and he was quite sure that Garrison was "full of baloney" (based on input from William Gurvich): 

SHERIDAN: I just told him I was bringing Bill Gurvich [William H. Gurvich] up to see him and that Gurvich would tell him that Garrison was full of baloney.

GREENE: How did you get involved in this, by the way? Was it on his behalf? Had he asked you to look into the Garrison thing?

SHERIDAN: Oh, no, no. Garrison would have people think so, but he had nothing to do with it.  I just went down for NBC and got involved. Then once I got involved, I saw that Garrison had nothing, and I’m sure I told him that somewhere along the line when I was back here. Then I just told him when I got Gurvich who was on the inside and who knew what Garrison had. I just wanted—both from Gurvich’s standpoint and from Bob’s standpoint—I thought they should talk about it. And they did.

GREENE: Was he satisfied at the end of it?

SHERIDAN: I think he was. I think he believed Gurvich that Garrison had nothing. I don’t know what he himself really thought about the whole thing. I was always reluctant to talk to him about it. I think his basic feeling was that John Kennedy was dead and it didn’t really matter. But one thing he said that was interesting was sometime during the Garrison thing, and I think it was about this time when I was bringing Gurvich up, because of course Garrison kept getting into the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] involvement. One time he said to me, he said, “You know, at the time I asked Dulles [Allen W. Dulles] if he killed my brother, or if they had killed my brother and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me, and they hadn’t.” It wasn’t quite that blunt but it was pretty blunt. What he was saying was that he had looked into that possibility and was satisfied himself that they weren’t involved.

GREENE: In your own investigations down there, did you get any clear impression of what his motives were?

SHERIDAN: Oh, yeah. He wants to be pope or king or emperor—he’s nuts! I mean, that’s the thing, he’s nuts. He’s absolutely psycho, very bright, very smart.  He’s a liberal demagogue and just tremendously ambitious and very dangerous. He had absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. I don’t mean just a little bit. He has absolutely nothing—never did have—and that’s what we said and that’s why he charged me.  It’s a very corrupt state.

From 1965 to 1970, Sheridan was a "special correspondent" for NBC and his unit received a Peabody Award for a documentary on the 1967 Detroit riots ...  not sure he was working for RFK at that point, nor was he a 'journalist' by training.  For a guy who was an experienced and tenacious investigator, its difficult to imagine - in retrospect (and after how  insightful the Garrison probe turned out to be) - that Sheridan would so adamantly state that Garrison had "absolutely nothing".  He was, frankly, flat out wrong.  That just doesn't pass today's smell test.  And during this timeframe, Sheridan didn't exactly uncover anything that prevented Bobby from being killed (i.e. some friend).  If Sheridan was so "connected" and influential, what did he miss?  There is an excellent June-July EF Thread about Sheridan and Garrison, where Edward Haslam ("Dr. Mary's Monkey") makes the following comment:

"I would like to point out something that I have not seen discussed in the conversation about Walter Sheridan and Jim Garrison. Sheridan was supposedly working as an NBC reporter and had come to New Orleans to investigate Garrison and his JFK claim. The first point is that the local NBC affiliate was WDSU-TV owned by Edgar Stern who also owned WDSU radio. Well, WDSU was the TV station that sent out the camera to film Oswald passing out leaflets in front of the Trade Mart, and WDSU was the radio station that broadcasted the Oswald debate. Does that sound like an objective editorial environment to you? 

Gene

 

[Ron Bulman]

2 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

Paul

One last thought.  I had never been able to find much about Sheridan previously.  At the surface, he comes across as a nice Catholic guy, a Fordham graduate, and faithful Kennedy family loyalist.  However, there is also something not quite right about him (imho) and it came to me when I read a 1970 interview in the Kennedy Library (Walter Sheridan Oral History Interview—RFK#6, 6/12/1970 Administrative Information Interviewer: Roberta Greene, June 12, 1970).   Sheridan is being asked about the Garrison investigation, and he was quite sure that Garrison was "full of baloney" (based on input from William Gurvich): 

SHERIDAN: I just told him I was bringing Bill Gurvich [William H. Gurvich] up to see him and that Gurvich would tell him that Garrison was full of baloney.

GREENE: How did you get involved in this, by the way? Was it on his behalf? Had he asked you to look into the Garrison thing?

SHERIDAN: Oh, no, no. Garrison would have people think so, but he had nothing to do with it.  I just went down for NBC and got involved. Then once I got involved, I saw that Garrison had nothing, and I’m sure I told him that somewhere along the line when I was back here. Then I just told him when I got Gurvich who was on the inside and who knew what Garrison had. I just wanted—both from Gurvich’s standpoint and from Bob’s standpoint—I thought they should talk about it. And they did.

GREENE: Was he satisfied at the end of it?

SHERIDAN: I think he was. I think he believed Gurvich that Garrison had nothing. I don’t know what he himself really thought about the whole thing. I was always reluctant to talk to him about it. I think his basic feeling was that John Kennedy was dead and it didn’t really matter. But one thing he said that was interesting was sometime during the Garrison thing, and I think it was about this time when I was bringing Gurvich up, because of course Garrison kept getting into the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] involvement. One time he said to me, he said, “You know, at the time I asked Dulles [Allen W. Dulles] if he killed my brother, or if they had killed my brother and I asked him in a way that he couldn’t lie to me, and they hadn’t.” It wasn’t quite that blunt but it was pretty blunt. What he was saying was that he had looked into that possibility and was satisfied himself that they weren’t involved.

GREENE: In your own investigations down there, did you get any clear impression of what his motives were?

SHERIDAN: Oh, yeah. He wants to be pope or king or emperor—he’s nuts! I mean, that’s the thing, he’s nuts. He’s absolutely psycho, very bright, very smart.  He’s a liberal demagogue and just tremendously ambitious and very dangerous. He had absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. I don’t mean just a little bit. He has absolutely nothing—never did have—and that’s what we said and that’s why he charged me.  It’s a very corrupt state.

From 1965 to 1970, Sheridan was a "special correspondent" for NBC and his unit received a Peabody Award for a documentary on the 1967 Detroit riots ...  not sure he was working for RFK at that point, nor was he a 'journalist' by training.  For a guy who was an experienced and tenacious investigator, its difficult to imagine - in retrospect (and after how  insightful the Garrison probe turned out to be) - that Sheridan would so adamantly state that Garrison had "absolutely nothing".  He was, frankly, flat out wrong.  That just doesn't pass today's smell test.  And during this timeframe, Sheridan didn't exactly uncover anything that prevented Bobby from being killed (i.e. some friend).  If Sheridan was so "connected" and influential, what did he miss?  There is an excellent June-July EF Thread about Sheridan and Garrison, where Edward Haslam ("Dr. Mary's Monkey") makes the following comment:

"I would like to point out something that I have not seen discussed in the conversation about Walter Sheridan and Jim Garrison. Sheridan was supposedly working as an NBC reporter and had come to New Orleans to investigate Garrison and his JFK claim. The first point is that the local NBC affiliate was WDSU-TV owned by Edgar Stern who also owned WDSU radio. Well, WDSU was the TV station that sent out the camera to film Oswald passing out leaflets in front of the Trade Mart, and WDSU was the radio station that broadcasted the Oswald debate. Does that sound like an objective editorial environment to you? 

Gene

 

"He wants to be pope or king or emperor-he's nuts! … absolutely psycho … liberal demagogue and just tremendously ambitious and very dangerous."

Sheridan was a mockingbird, jmo.  

[Gene Kelly]

It sure seems that way.  But the troubling part is that he also pulled the wool over RFK's eyes.  He is portrayed as the faithful family loyalist ... but he betrayed the Kennedys.  

In a 1981 article entitled "Introducing NBC's dirty-tricks chief of " by Richard McGraw, In February 1967 Walter Sheridan went to work for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC-TV) as an investigative reporter for their "White Paper" documentary series. His assignment was to discredit Garrison, who was probing the role of Permindex and its board member businessman Clay Shaw, in the assassination . On July 7, 1967, Walter Sheridan was charged with four counts of bribery by Garrison's office in a case that involved flagrant attempts to tamper with Garrison's witnesses.   I don't quite understand the job he took as a "journalist" with NBC:

I left Bobby and the senate job on Washington’s [George Washington] birthday in 1965, and I think we’ve been through that going to NBC [National Broadcasting Company] business. So in the year 1965 I was—the first year at NBC—I was kind of floundering around because I was new to them and they were new to me. They didn’t have a producer, so I traveled a bit, but I was here quite a bit. So when I was here, I used to go over there probably once a week, and I’d just drop in and maybe talk to Frank Mankiewicz.

Interviewer: Why don’t you begin by telling how often and on what kinds of occasions you usually saw Robert Kennedy between late ‘67 and the decision in 1968?

SHERIDAN: Well, I was working for NBC, and I would just stop in his office fairly infrequently, maybe once every two weeks or something like that. There was no pattern to it at all. I had discussions with Adam Walinsky and Peter Edelman [Peter B. Edelman] more so than with him, as to his personal or potential involvement. But the first time I really discussed it with him was sometime in late 1967, December, I think. He called me at home, which he would do occasionally, and in the course of the conversation, he asked me whether I thought he ought to run. 

I don't think he was as close to RFK as generally believed.  From 1965 to 1970, Sheridan was a NBC News special correspondent, producing documentaries on crime and gun control among other issues.  In 1994, the AARB tried unsuccessfully to obtain Sheridan's records:

In its effort to comply with the JFK Act, the John F. Kennedy Library reviewed its holdings for groups of records that could contain assassination records. Among others, it found the records of Walter Sheridan, an investigator who worked for Robert F. Kennedy and later for NBC. The library identified folders of materials, primarily notes, related to Sheridan's work as an investigative reporter for NBC covering the prosecution of Clay Shaw. In 1967, Sheridan produced an hour-long television special on the assassination.  In 1994, the library informed Sheridan that it was processing his records and sending them to the JFK Collection at NARA. Sheridan requested that the library return the identified assassination records to him, and the library honored his request. Sheridan, however, died in January 1995. NBC then claimed it owns the rights to the Sheridan papers. The dispute is now pending.

 

[Paul Brancato]

Gene  -   Do you know if this interview is the original source for RFK’s oft quoted statement that he asked Dulles in a way that Dulles couldn’t lie to him? Must be. Have to ask - is Sheridan asked about RFK’s death? 
amazing that Sheridan’s work for nbc is hidden. So why do people say he screwed with Garrison at RFK’s request when he had been working for nbc for two years by that point? 

[Gene Kelly]

Paul:

I don't know that it is (but its on the record). The Oral History interview was transcribed in June 1970.  Its difficult to find out much about Sheridan (interestingly, he has a son who resides in my town of Lansdale PA).  He wasn't a lawyer, although he attended Fordham University.  Served time in the Navy, then a few years with FBI and NSA, before he becomes RFK's lead for the "Get Hoffa"  project run out of the Justice Department. 

The Kennedy Library interviews aren't too informative or interesting ... his answers seem vague, and he hems/haws about his interactions with RFK (especially the Gurvich/Garrison aspect).  He's not too forthcoming about his role in RFK's presidential campaign.  Those 1970 interviews gave me the impression that he wasn't as close to RFK as is popularly reported. The 1981 LaRouche EIR website article asserts that he was an agent of PERMINDEX and a member of the FBI's Division 5 (not sure how much stock to put in those allegations). Here is what Garrison had to say about Sheridan in his October 1967 Playboy interview:

According to Perry Russo, Sheridan added that both NBC and the CIA were out to scuttle my case. I think it’s significant that the chief investigator for this ostensibly objective broadcast starts telling people the day he arrives in town that he is going to “destroy Garrison” — this at the same time he is unctuously assuring me that NBC wanted only the truth and he had an entirely open mind on my case.  Let me tell you something about Walter Sheridan’s background, and maybe you’ll understand his true role in all this. Sheridan was one of the bright, hard young investigators who entered the Justice Department under Bobby Kennedy. He was assigned to nail Jimmy Hoffa. Sheridan employed a wide variety of highly questionable tactics in the Justice Department’s relentless drive against Hoffa; he was recently subpoenaed to testify in connection with charges that he wire–tapped the offices of Hoffa’s associates and then played back incriminating tapes to them, warning that unless they testified for the Government, they would be destroyed along with Hoffa. A few years ago, Sheridan left the Justice Department — officially, at least — and went to work for NBC. No honest reporter out for a story would have so completely prejudged the situation and been willing to employ such tactics. I think it’s likely that in his zeal to destroy my case, he exceeded the authority granted him by NBC’s executives in New York. I get the impression that the majority of NBC executives probably thought Sheridan’s team came down here in an uncompromising search for the truth. When Sheridan overstepped himself and it became obvious that the broadcast was, to say the least, not objective, NBC realized it was in a touchy position. Cooler heads prevailed and I was allowed to present our case to the American people. For that, at least, I’m singularly grateful to Walter Sheridan.

Gene