Jean Rene Souetre expelled from the US 18hrs after JFKA?!

[Steve Thomas]

50 minutes ago, Steve Thomas said:

Roger,

Another possibility is that it was Mertz claiming to be Roux.

The following phone calls, is there any indication if were they local or long distance? This person was requesting a follow-up meeting.

To me, that suggests someone local. Who was residing in Montreal at the time? Michel Victor Mertz.

Steve Thomas

SUMMARY OF PARIS TRIP - NOVEMBER 13-22, 1982 Fensterwald

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/S%20Disk/Souetre%20Jean%20with%20aka%27s/Item%2011.pdf

 

Appendix A Document# 1

is an article in the Cote-Basque Soir of Bayonne by Louis Assemat-Tessandier, a sometime journalist of dual French-Mexican citizenship, having been born of French parents in Mexico.

“He described the Frenchman [he met] as a "young officer from Algeria" who wandered back and forth between the three OAS centers in the Western Hemisphere, i.e., Montreal, Mexico City, and Rio.
The Frenchman, whose name Louis would not reveal in the article, was young, tall, sun-tanned, and handsome.

At the time of Louis Assemat-Tessandier’s article, Jean-Rene was 33 years old. (Would a 33 year-old person be described as “young”?

The Frenchman’s itinerary does not seem to match Souetre’s travels.

Steve Thomas

 

[Leslie Sharp]

7 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

I find it so interesting to read Waverly Root’s research, but I’m unable to find it on Google, though his long history as a food writer and historian is easy. Did Hank find his articles for WAPO and others? 
 

I've seen the article firsthand, and hopefully have it saved in a file.  Will go in search.

[Leslie Sharp]

7 hours ago, Roger Odisio said:

My arguments in this thread have been based on the assumption that Louis' article about the Dallas expulsion was true.  French authorities had looked into it, interviewed Louis, and found his story credible enough to inquire about it to the FBI.  They decided it was Souetre using Roux as an alias.  They didn't ask *whether* Souetre had been expelled; they asked the FBI for an explanation as to *why*, and where he was sent.  Of course, we don't know all the French knew, or thought they did, when they made the inquiry.

 

But suppose the story was a work of fiction, as Greg Parker has suggested on ROKC.

 

It wouldn't have taken any great imagination to create.  If the CIA had hired a foreign assassin, as the ZRRifle project suggested they preferred, they likely would have expelled him precisely as Louis described, and covered up any vestiges of his visit to Dallas.  They had the planes, pilots, and resources to do that.  Expulsion of foreign assassins, if hired, had to have been part of the plan as originally conceived.  Louis was probably smart enough to realize that and build his story from there. 

 

Louis didn't name the assassin in the article.  But when questioned by the police, he said his source was Michel Roux.  The French contacted Roux and he acknowledged being in Montreal at the time of the alleged interview and talking to Louis, but only over the phone, not in person. They had talked about the JFKA, he said, but he denied telling Louis any such story as had appeared in the article.  I have no reason to doubt Roux or his story of his travels thru the Dallas area beginning on Dec 19, to Canada, and back to France in late January,'64.  He was not expelled. There is nothing to connect him to the JFKA.

 

But the two stories, Louis' and Roux's, do not fit together. It's unlikely both could be true.  If both things had happened--an in-person meeting with Souetre saying he was Roux, followed by a bunch of calls from Souetre wanting another meeting, and one previous phone call from the real Roux, it's likely Louis would have known these were two different people.  Not naming his source in the article allowed Louis to obfuscate that problem for a while, but not after he named Roux as his source. This is one clue something was amiss.

There is still much we don't know.  Perhaps the MFF lawsuit can retrieve the French file on the Souetre expulsion that led to their inquiry.  The JFK Act provides for the release of records held by foreign governments.  Bud Fensterwald tried to get it 40 years ago.  The French denied him, citing privacy concerns as I recall.  Souetre died in 2001.  Maybe they will be more cooperative now.

 

To be clear, nothing in the foregoing, whether or not Louis made up the story, tells us anything about Souetre's whereabouts. If Louis concocted his expulsion story, it doesn't mean it didn't happen.  A logical part of any conspiracy using foreign components must include a plan to get rid of them before they are detected.  It's still worth pursuing whether Souetre was in Dallas and expelled after the murder. Or some other assassin.

A logical part of any conspiracy using foreign components must include a plan to get rid of them before they are detected. 

Wouldn't it be equally logical that if the foreign assassins were selected by their superiors — also foreign. a.k.a. Otto Skorzeny  — they would willingly participate knowing he would see to it they were extracted safely? Souetre's group was highly trained, carefully selected, and long considered valuable assets, as was the Willoughby team including Jack Canon and "Boots" Askins.

Edited April 16, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

I'm aware of who Willoughby is from mention on here but not yet to him in the book nor Canon or Askins.

But it makes me wonder if both the infiltration and exfiltration would have not needed assistance from the CIA in the USA.  Not just possibly 3 shooters, but three teams of two or three.  Plus, a coordinator, an assistant, or two.  All getting out of not just Dealy Plaza but then Dallas, Texas, the US.  Air America? 

[Roger Odisio]

19 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

SUMMARY OF PARIS TRIP - NOVEMBER 13-22, 1982 Fensterwald

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/S%20Disk/Souetre%20Jean%20with%20aka%27s/Item%2011.pdf

 

Appendix A Document# 1

is an article in the Cote-Basque Soir of Bayonne by Louis Assemat-Tessandier, a sometime journalist of dual French-Mexican citizenship, having been born of French parents in Mexico.

“He described the Frenchman [he met] as a "young officer from Algeria" who wandered back and forth between the three OAS centers in the Western Hemisphere, i.e., Montreal, Mexico City, and Rio.
The Frenchman, whose name Louis would not reveal in the article, was young, tall, sun-tanned, and handsome.

At the time of Louis Assemat-Tessandier’s article, Jean-Rene was 33 years old. (Would a 33 year-old person be described as “young”?

The Frenchman’s itinerary does not seem to match Souetre’s travels.

Steve Thomas

 

RO: We're dealing with probabilities here, Steve, as we must.  When I said Louis' story was probably a work of fiction, this is what I meant.

 

There was no in-person meeting with a drunken assassin, nor 8-10 anguished followup calls seeking another meeting.  Louis made that up to embellish his story.

 

Louis was interested in the JFKA. When hooked up by phone by the two women with Michel Roux, who had been in the area at the time, Louis asked him what he thought happened.  Roux said it couldn't have been done by Oswald alone, there must have been others involved.

 

That gave Louis the bare bones to construct his story. It took Louis almost a month to publish his article after the alleged apartment meeting (I don't know when his phone call with Roux happened, but it was about the same time as the alleged in person meeting.)

 

Louis didn't name his source in the article.  

 

Within 10 days after the article came out, the Bayonne police showed up to ask Louis some questions.  DeGaulle was scheduled to go to Mexico in two weeks and the authorities were worried that Louis' assassin might still be lurking in the area.

 

Who was the assassin Louis had talked to, they wanted to know.  Louis (a "sometime" journalist, according to Fensterwald, whatever that means) who wasn't burdened by a concern to protect his sources, told them it was Michel Roux.  Roux had returned to France about a month before. 

 

Aware of Souetre's aliases, the French took Louis' answer to be a confirmation of sorts that Louis had actually talked to Souetre saying he was Roux.  At some point they had confirmed that Roux was not expelled from the Dallas area, but had left of his own volition, so it was unlikely he could have been Louis's source for the expulsion. 

 

Five days after receiving the police report, the French dashed off an urgent inquiry to the FBI about Souetre.  They didn't ask *if* Souetre had been expelled.  They had already determined he was on the basis of Louis' story (and perhaps other things we don't know about). They asked *why* was he expelled and to where. 

 

The Americans stonewalled the French and the inquiry was closed a couple of days before DeGaulle's trip, 8 days after it began 

 

Upon reflection, maybe one reason the French had refused to let Fensterwald see their file on Souetre 20 years later was because they had realized they had been played by Louis. 

 

None of this tells us anything about Souetre's whereabouts. It's back to square one for that.

 

[Steve Thomas]

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

RO: We're dealing with probabilities here, Steve, as we must.  When I said Louis' story was probably a work of fiction, this is what I meant.

 

 

Upon reflection, maybe one reason the French had refused to let Fensterwald see their file on Souetre 20 years later was because they had realized they had been played by Louis.

 

 

Roger,

When in doubt, I try to follow the advice of Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS:

"What does your gut tell you?"

As far as the French authorities; it might be a case of protecting sources and methods, plus a case of bureaucratic intransigence. I once wrote to the French National Archives asking for a list of the people who had stood trial with Jean-Rene Souetre in December, 1961.

My request was refused on the grounds of National Security.

Figure that one out.

Steve Thomas

 

Edited April 17, 2023 by Steve Thomas

[David Butler]

4 hours ago, Steve Thomas said:

Roger,

When in doubt, I try to follow the advice of Leroy Jethro Gibbs on NCIS:

"What does your gut tell you?"

As far as the French authorities; it might be a case of protecting sources and methods, plus a case of bureaucratic intransigence. I once wrote to the French National Archives asking for a list of the people who had stood trial with Jean-Rene Souetre in December, 1961.

My request was refused on the grounds of National Security.

Figure that one out.

Steve Thomas

 

As far as the French authorities; it might be a case of protecting sources and methods, plus a case of bureaucratic intransigence. I once wrote to the French National Archives asking for a list of the people who had stood trial with Jean-Rene Souetre in December, 1961.

 

I'm interested I this too as I would love too know what they know about Henri Slebodia or whatever his name was then when he was arrested about the same time with Souetre.... 

[Leslie Sharp]

In pursuit of who might have been in a position to order, conceal, and/or confuse details surrounding the detainment of two (alleged) French citizens in Dallas within hours of the assassination of Kennedy, I have identified the Southwest Region head of Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS), Texas native Harlon B. Carter, as the primary candidate. 

From Carter's November 22, 1991, New York Times obituary,

Young Mr. Carter went on to graduate from the University of Texas and Emory Law School. Following in the footsteps of his father, he joined the United States Border Patrol. He rose rapidly, and was chief of the entire patrol from 1950 to 1957. He was commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service's Southwestern region from 1961 to 1970, when he retired after 34 years with the Government.

Upon reading of Mr. Carter's history with US Border Patrol, it was logical to consider the possibility he knew, personally, fellow Texan and renowned marksman Charles "Boots" Askins, the psychopathic gunman named in the 1963 datebook maintained by Pierre Lafitte. 

Indeed, Boots Askins and Harlon Carter had known each other for more than a decade if not longer: 

The 1952 model was a heavy barrel OP frame, .38 Special, rollmarked on the barrel "Border Patrol". Just issued one year, about 500 made. However, the United States Immigration and Border Patrol (USIBP) also were issued New Services before WWII. Col. Askins was the head of the service for a time and he and Harlon Carter (later president of the NRA) were said to have personally sighted in the New Services before they were issued to agents.

Also, from a long running credible gun afficionado chatroom, Word was that until Harlon Carter white-washed him, [Askins] was also persona non grata with the NRA.

Harlon B. Carter is best known for having almost single-handedly increased membership in the National Rife Association three-fold during his tenure as president and board member.  He led the infamous "Revolt at Cincinnati" also called the "Cincinnati Coup" which irreparably altered the course of the NRA from that of a noble association of hunters, sportsmen, gun enthusiasts and skilled marksmen to one of the most powerful, and some argue dangerous, lobbies in our country today. 

The best primer to Harlon B. Carter is found here:

How the Modern NRA Was Born at the Border

Watch our release of documentary short The Rifleman, which examines how NRA head Harlon Carter fused gun rights, immigration enforcement, and white supremacy. Then read an interview with filmmaker Sierra Pettengill and historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.

In making The Rifleman, I was interested in using Carter’s life to tell the story of the NRA beyond the limited context of the current debate over gun control, and instead place it in the broader context of how gun ownership has, since early in the nation’s founding, been central to enforcing a white nationalist vision of the United States. This continues the work of the films I have been making for the last eight or so years, which all explore how white supremacy operates within the mainstream, whether it’s through the proliferation of Confederate monuments (Graven Image, 2017) or the rise of the Tea Party (Town Hall, 2013, codirected with Jamila Wignot).

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/how-the-modern-nra-was-born-at-the-border/ 

For our interests, it is Carter's history with expert marksman Charles Askins — named along with Texas native Canon (Col. Jack) known for having headed General Charles Willoughby's Z. Org during the Korean War — in the Lafitte datebook laying out the unfolding of Project Lancelot.

Hired Guns

Askins 

—Lafitte datebook, September 12, 1963

 

Canon-- S + V?

—Lafitte datebook, September 14 1963

 

 

Askins - Willoughby OK

—Lafitte datebook, October 2, 1963

 

Willoughby team – Canon (Z org) D.

—Lafitte datebook, November 21, 1963
 

Col. Charles “Boots” Askins, Jr.

Boots Askins was a storied gunman in Texas since the early 1930s, and had moved within far-right circles all his life. Author Jeffrey Caufield, in his study of the assassination of JFK, features a letter from Joseph Milteer (himself a racist and far right associate of Willoughby and Walker) to Charles Askins pertaining to a forthcoming meeting of one of the myriad clandestine organizations that the radical right was running during the ’60s, indicating very “hush-hush” stuff. 

            Born in October 1907, the son of a prominent hunter and writer, Askins Jr. followed in his father’s footprints and, according to legend, "left some marks deeper than his dad." Prior to enlisting in the US Army, Askins had served in the US Forest Service and Border Patrol in the American Southwest. 

            During WWII, he served as a battlefield recovery officer, making landings in North Africa, Italy, and D-day. Following the war, he was posted in Spain as an attaché to the American embassy, assisting Franco’s administration in rebuilding the arms and ammunition factories after the war. This is but one clue that Askins was well known to General Willoughby and through that connection, he knew fellow Texan “Cactus Jack” Canon. In his role at the embassy in Madrid, Askins undoubtedly encountered Johannes Bernhardt of SOFINDUS, Otto Skorzeny, and Victor Oswald, all of whom need no further introduction to our reader. As attaché, Askins would also have been familiar with US Embassy officials including CIA agent Al Ulmer, and fellow attaché Jere Wittington, Otto and Ilse’s close friend and minder. 

            After several years in Madrid, enjoying the company of his family and bird hunting in the Spanish countryside, Askins was sent to Vietnam to join the select number of Eisenhower “advisors” training South Vietnamese soldiers in shooting and paratrooping. During those years, the colonel managed to earn his airborne qualification with both countries, amassing 132 jumps before calling it quits. While posted on the Vietnamese front, Askins would have encountered Jack Canon and Lucien Conein, among a number of other legends in that ill-fated endeavor. 

            Throughout his military career, Askins also indulged in big game hunting at every chance, and continued to do so the remainder of his life. He retired to San Antonio, Texas having been stationed at Fort Sam Houston when he returned stateside. He died there in March 1999. In a carefully worded statement, repeated by all who write about the legendary “Boots” Askins, “He retired from government service in 1963.”

 

[Steve Thomas]

8 hours ago, David Butler said:

 

I'm interested I this too as I would love too know what they know about Henri Slebodia or whatever his name was then when he was arrested about the same time with Souetre.... 

David,

You might want to read up on "Operation Chamois", which happened in May of 1962 I think.

The deltas-collines site shows him being released from Fresnes in 1965. I can't make out the month.

http://deltas-collines.org/galerie/QQQQQQQQQQQQQQ/D_tenus_SPES_33

Some other stuff I ran across:

https://paras.forumsactifs.net/t13258-oas-objectif-de-gaulle-operation-chamois
"Henri SLEBIODA (legionnaire of the 1st REP, Delta IV, alias Slim, housed in the suburbs with relatives, after the arrest of the Delta commando, will take refuge with his family and flee to Spain, arrested with Jean Claude Perez, will be expelled on March 14, 1963 from Madrid, arrived on March 19, 1963 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will be expelled to Paraguay, On July 2, 1963 returned to Brazil, and on October 16, 1964 in a bar in Campo Grande, Rio de Janeiro, a Brazilian soldier shot in the back, paralyzed, back in France at Orly on December 17, 1964 at 10:00 p.m., was taken by ambulance to Fresnes prison, and died on January 21, 1985 in Paris."

Post by Rifle1   11/02/22
"Henri Slebodia is likely to be a much more important and darker figure than he seems, if the accusations of investigative journalist William Reymond (in his book "JFK, Autopsy of a State Crime, 1998 ) are verified. In this book, Slebodia is indeed suspected of having participated in the assassination of President Kennedy. The spelling of his name varies by research (Slebodja, Slebodia, or even Slebioda). Can someone he tell me which one would be good?"

"Finally, there is also the case of Henri “Slim” Slebiodja, a member of the group that killed Commander Post, but about whom we have very little information(22).
[22. According to the testimony of Paul Mancilla, Slebiodja was killed in Argentina; see Harrison A., Challenging De Gaulle. The OAS and the Counterrevolution in Algeria, 1954-1962, New York, Praeger, 1989, p. 175."

"Which contradicts the fact that he would have died on January 1985 in Paris...
In his book, William Reymond explains simply on page 468: "'Max' disappeared at the beginning of 1964, four months after the operation on Dealey Plaza. After his hideout in Canada, he wanted to go to Spain to mount an attack against de Gaulle. Some rumors claim that he was killed by a bullet in the head, others that he took refuge for a long time in Argentina where a community of the OAS had settled ?"

Steve Thomas

Edited April 18, 2023 by Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

9 hours ago, David Butler said:

I'm interested I this too as I would love too know what they know about Henri Slebodia or whatever his name was then when he was arrested about the same time with Souetre.... 

David,

Le Monde December 18, 1961
https://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1961/12/18/les-membres-du-premier-maquis-algerie-francaise-comparaitront-lundi-devant-le-tribunal-militaire_2279543_1819218.html

"Members of the "first French Algerian maquis" will appear before the military tribunal on Monday."
"Three hearings are scheduled for the affair of the "first maquis in French Algeria", which had been installed on February 14 at the "farm Marcel" in Ouled-Chefaa, in the canton of Bouguirat, by Captain René Souètre, of the Air Force.".
After a three-month hiatus, the military tribunal specially created to judge acts of attacks on state security in relation to the events in Algeria resumed its activity on Monday, December 18, under the chairmanship of Mr. Leyris, with a slightly modified composition.
The other defendants, on the run, must be tried in absentia: Staff Sergeant Pierre Esquer, André de Brousse de Montpeyroux, Jean-Loup Blanchy, Aimé Blanc, Alain Loncle de Forville, Hyeck Slebioda, Yvon Agnor, Jean Clavel, Alain Di Crescenzo, Josué Giner, Paul Mancilla, René Monjo, Joseph Rizza and Antoine Terol."

Steve Thomas

Edited April 18, 2023 by Steve Thomas

[Leslie Sharp]

 

                           Souetre—Mexico City-

                     —Lafitte datebook, November 12, 1963

 On November 12, 1963, former French army commando and paratrooper Jean Rene Marie Souetre—and two associates, both Hungarians, Laslo Vango [Laszlo Varga] and Lajos LNU [Marton], who had fled their homeland’s failed revolution and come to Spain where they were trained in specialized sabotage and assassination techniques by Souetre at two of Otto Skorzeny’s three training compounds outside of Madrid—landed on a commercial flight from Spain in Mexico City, Mexico. Each man carried several passports issued under various aliases, as well as their actual identities. Along with their passports each man also carried about $1,000 in US currency. . . . 

As this investigation draws to a close, the implications of the arrival in Mexico City on the 12th of November of two Hungarians and the former OAS paratrooper and marksman Jean Rene Souetre, when considered in context of the datebook entry of the same date, cement that Pierre Lafitte was kept apprised of the progress of Otto Skorzeny’s logistics for the assassination, down to the cast of characters destined for Dealey Plaza. By October 9^th, Lafitte already knew that Souetre and the Hungarians were on that list as evidenced: OSARN-OSARN-OSARN-OSARN-get Willoughby-Litt- plus Souetre, others (Hungarians). . . — Coup in Dallas

 

And Major Ralph Ganis writes in The Skorzeny Papers: Evidence for the Plot to Kill JFK,

During this period, Souetre was said to have used the alias, "Commander Constant," and, in addition to his business dealings in Palma de Mallorca, he also controlled a Madrid "extermination and fumigation company," with the on-the-nose name "Will Kill." The company "hired veteran survivors of Delta commando," and included a man named Lajos Marton . . . 

Although Bastien-Thiry did not name the members of the Study Group, the French Police identified the following OAS personnel: Captains Pierre Sargent, Jean Curutchet, and Jean Rene Souetre. the police believed Souetre "played a leading part in planning the attack at Petit-Clamart." Evident that this is true is revealed by the arrest afterward of [Lajos] Marton, Sari, and [Lazlo] Varga — all of Souetre's "Will Kill" exterminators, out of Madrid.  

[Leslie Sharp]

Draft preview of Continuity of the Coup in Dallas (@copyright — softcover edition in progress)

And speaking of Col. Jack Canon, clearly identified in the Lafitte datebook, 1963, who served under General Charles Willoughby, clearly identified in the Lafitte datebook, 1963: 

The Maltese Cross also lists the associate editors for [Gen. Willoughby's] Foreign Intelligence Digest. they included Prince Michael Sturdy (Costa Rica), Dr. Emilo Nunez-Portuondo (Cuba), Marques de Prat de Nantoulliet (Spain), M. Saint Paulien (France), Dr. Walter Becher (Germany) Hilaire du Berrier (France) [named in the Lafitte datebook, 1963, and guest in the home of Gen. Edwin Walker — named in the Lafitte datebook, 1963 — on November 22), Dr. Gerald Shelly (Italy), Dr. E. Gehlen (Germany), Freiherr von Braun (Germany), George Bard (Czechoslovakia), Leo M. Petit (Belgium), Admiral E. Heifferich (Holland), Dr. Lazarus Choumanides (Greece), Dr. Sten Forshufvud (Sweden), Vicomte Amaury d'Harcourt (France), Com. Div. Jean Népote (France), Abbe Pierre Delecambre (France) and many others . . .

Various 'associated national and international publications' also appear on the Maltese Cross list. They include A.B.N. Correspondence (Munich, editor Jaroslav Stetzko), . . . The Christian Crusade (Tulsa, editor E. L. White), . . . The Weekly Crusader (Tulsa, Rev. Billy James Hargis whose 1963 cross-country crusade featured Gen. Edwin Walker, clearly identified in the Lafitte datebook, 1963), . . . Interpol Review (Paris, editor Jean Népote). . . — from, "The Spy Who Would Be Tsar: The Mystery of Michal Goleniewski and the Far-Right Underground" by Kevin Coogan.

For our purposes, of special interest is Jean Népote — named here as contributor to Gen. Charles Willoughby's Foreign Intelligence Digest — who has been identified as a N-azi collaborator with the Vichy regime. Népote rose through the ranks of INTERPOL which had been infiltrated by the leading N-azis and assumed the post of Secretary General in August 1963.  

At the risk of referring to historian Gerald Posner with this audience, he reports accurately,

“In 1939 Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo, was voted president of Interpol. In December 1941, Interpol moved its headquarters to the fashionable Berlin suburb of Wannsee, where it shared a villa with the Gestapo.”

It was in this villa where the infamous Wansee Conference was held and where the Final Solution was organized.

. . . Heydrich even made Interpol a division within the SD, the Security Police. When Heydrich was assassinated in Prague in June 1942, Himmler chose Heydrich’s successor at the Gestapo, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, to repace him as Interpol’s president. After Kaltenbrunner was hanged at Nuremberg in October 1946, a Belgian member of Interpol’s executive committee, Florent E. Louwage, became president. He was succeeded in 1956 by Jean Nepote, who had collaborated with the wartime Vichy government in France.

 

With high praise for researcher extraordinaire Robert Montenegro for opening this channel of research, in the following document, item 9, we see Jean Népote as the source for a training film described as providing "excellent detail on planning and execution of safecracking". The significance of the document is that it relates to other characters identified as having been in the spotter program / the QJ/WIN operation. Considering his history, his access, and the power of his role at INTERPOL, we argue that this single record strongly suggests Jean Népote was in fact among the QJ/WIN spotters.

https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/104-10185-10010.pdf

As head of INTERPOL since August of 1963, responsible for cross-border policing on a global scale (including international drug trafficking), Népote was also in a position to lift travel restrictions at any given time. It is also plausible he exercised significant control over the status of (useful and perhaps familiar)convicted criminals who fell under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Justice in France where INTERPOL was headquartered. We also know that Népote's fellow N-azi collaborator during the Vichy regime, Maurice Papon had led the police in major French prefectures for decades and had also dealt closely with Corsicans.  (As secretary general for police in Bordeaux during the war, he participated in the deportation of more than 1,600 Jews, a crime against humanity he was charged with eventually). Papon's activity during the Algerian War from 1954-1962 included torture of insurgent prisoners. As prefect of the Paris police, he was responsbile for the deadly repression of the FLN, overseeing the "Paris massacres" of both 1961 and 1962 in response to anti-OAS demonstrations.  . . . 

Although there is no evidence that either Jean Népote or Maurice Papon knew OAS Captain Jean Rene Souetre — or experienced assassins Alice Lamy, Gerard Litt or Jean Filliol [all identified in the Lafitte datebook, 1963], or Hungarians [loosely referred to in the Lafitte datebook, 1963], or Lajos Marton or Laszlo Varga who were members of Souetre's deadly 'Will Kill' — it can be reasonably argued that both Népote and Papon — not unlike counterparts in Mexico and the US including INS Harlon B. Carter [who had served with Charles "Boots" Askins, named in the Lafitte datebook, 1963] — were in prime positions to order, conceal, and/or confuse details of the movement of known assassins.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Leslie Sharp]

Along with "Souetre" and "Hungarians", award winning Texas sharpshooter Charles "Boots" Askins appears in the 1963 record maintained by Pierre Lafitte in context of the planning for the assassination in Dallas.

For anyone relying on wikipedia for information on Askins, the site currently fails to capture the implications of "Boots" Askins' post in Madrid. He was there to coordinate with Franco as he rebuilt his military and would have been in a position to interact with N-azi Johannes Bernhardt — close associate of Otto Skorzeny — who contributed significantly to Franco's project via his South American conglomerate, SOFINDUS.  This also means that Askins was at the Madrid embassy at the same time as Al Ulmer who as you probably know was in Tyler, Texas on November 22, visiting his brother and the Joe Zeppas (Delta Drilling) who that afternoon allegedly flew Barbara and GHWBush to Dallas in order for them to catch a flight back to Houston. Ulmer was scheduled to go into business with Win Scott along with a group of former intelligence officers.

Zeppa and Delta Drilling were instrumental in the Meadows-Skorzeny Spanish oil scheme of 1952 — at the same time Askins was posted in the Spanish capitol — which had the imprimatur of Franco.

Which brings us full circle to Askins who appears twice in the 1963 Lafitte datebook. Who but someone (Pierre Lafitte) working closely with Skorzeny stateside could have known the name Askins? What are the odds that the head of the SW Region of INS in 1963 and former chief of US Border Patrol Harlon B. Carter was a long-time friend of "Boots"?

We have no reason (yet) to argue that Askins and Canon left the U.S. immediately following the assassination; but certainly Harlon Carter would have been in a position to provide smooth sailing as it were.  Perhaps more significantly: if Askins had known Skorzeny stemming from their early days in Madrid, as well as Carter stemming from the Border Patrol, might he have served as a conduit to INS for Skorzeny's other teams — including Jean Rene Souetre —  for instance those arriving from Europe, Canada, or Mexico?

 

[Paul Brancato]

Leslie - Charles Willoughby is mentioned often. I know basically who he was. It seems he is a central figure in the conspiracy in Coup. Would you say what you and Hank thought his involvement was? What is his connection to Skorzeny etc? 

[Leslie Sharp]

On 4/20/2023 at 6:53 PM, Paul Brancato said:

Leslie - Charles Willoughby is mentioned often. I know basically who he was. It seems he is a central figure in the conspiracy in Coup. Would you say what you and Hank thought his involvement was? What is his connection to Skorzeny etc? 

Paul,
As you likely know, he's most widely recognized as General MacArthur's "little fascist". 

Eleven of Lafitte's datebook entries in 1963 identify Willoughby, leading us to conclude that he was acting as a roving ambassador for international far-right causes, likely advising Ilse Skorzeny, and slotting somewhere between the categories of facilitator and decider. It's also clear from the datebook that Willoughby had either supplied a team for Dallas or made recommendations to Skorzeny and Angleton to bring expert marksmen Jack Canon and Charles Askins (and possibly Robert Emmett Johnson) on board.  And, his correspondence with his friend Dulles in 1963 might seem innocuous enough, but considered in context, it is compelling.
 

Dick Russell writes in his introduction to Coup:

Here established beyond doubt is that the real perpetrators needed a fall guy to take the rap as a lone, Left-leaning gunman. The set-up of Lee Harvey Oswald began many months before, carefully orchestrated by a cabal of evil geniuses in espionage. One of these was James Angleton, then chief of CIA Counterintelligence. Another was Charles Willoughby, who formerly served as spymaster for General Douglas MacArthur. A third was Otto Skorzeny, Hitler’s favorite commando, aided by the US to establish a postwar domicile in Franco’s Spain, where he created secret camps to train assassins. 

In implicating Willoughby (whose possible role was first raised in my book The Man Who Knew Too Much), French hitman Jean Rene Souetre, soldier-of-fortune Thomas Eli Davis, Jr., and oil industrialist Jack Crichton, Coup in Dallas opens wider doors to which researchers have been seeking keys for years. 

Albarelli’s book also adds corroboration to my own work as an investigative journalist, including knowledge imparted to me by double agent Richard Case Nagell. While Nagell is not named in the datebook, it provides substantiation for his stressing Mexico City’s Hotel Luma as a planning site and offers up the name of a Willoughby associate (Jack Canon) who Nagell had hinted was among several shooters in Dealey Plaza.

 

From Dick Russell's limited analysis of the Lafitte datebook:

WILLOUGHBY: Until my first book came out in 1992, assembling circumstantial evidence linking retired General Charles Willoughby as a possible “mastermind” of the assassination, no one had raised such a possibility before. The datebook cites the far-right General Willoughby numerous times, specifying: “Nov 22 – Willoughby backup – team [with a strikethrough of the word team] squad – tech building – phone booth/bridge.” Prior to that, an April 12 entry states: “Willoughby soldier kill squads.” 

Excerpts from Coup:

Pierre Lafitte finally lays out for us the timing and the circumstances of the involvement of Willoughby and Walker, and leads us to the cast of kill squads and teams known particularly to Willoughby for more than a decade, including two retired colonels that acted under the retired general's orders, who evaded scrutiny for decades.

We learn of a vast and tightly woven web of international organizations on the extreme right, driven primarily by religious ideology aligned with attempts to revive the Reich, and disguised by populist political action groups in America like the John Birch Society, which had been advanced by Gen. Walker among the military troops under his command. The reader also gets a better sense of the significance of Willoughby’s decades-long relationship with Allen Dulles, who was a former international lawyer for German corporations, the Director of the CIA, and a pivotal member of the Warren Commission. Their friendship, and the fact that both had known Otto Skorzeny since the inception of the World Commerce Corporation, prompted the authors to delve further into their written exchanges during the 1960s.

 

For now, in light of the Ellen Rometsch scandal, which was first widely exposed by Mollenhoff who was first to compare the pending scandal to the Profumo Affair, and the possibility that more than blackmail was in play, it is important to draw attention to several Lafitte entries:

 

NYC Rest guide ad.

Talk of Ella R. photographs

. . . in NY at Previews

—Lafitte datebook, September 17, 1963

 

Meet with Willoughby at

(Ella R) others at

49 East 53rd St.

NYC

—Lafitte datebook, October 15, 1963

 

 

 

 

June 18, 1963

(Willoughby meet 8:000 pm)

 

A Preliminary Intro to The Generals

The Rev. John Howard Bowen shared membership in radical evangelical organizations with Billy Hargis, and Generals Edwin Walker and Charles Willoughby. Walker had recently participated in the purchase of the American Mercury, previously controlled by arms manufacturer J. Russell Maguire, and served as military editor of the publication. 

            General Willoughby, who published his own propaganda sheet, Foreign Intelligence Digest, was, as noted by CIA press officer Stanley Grogan, on Ulius Ammos’s team of trustees for International Services of Information Foundation (ISI), and provided commentary for INFORM, the publication of ISI. In a June 1961 internal routing slip from then CI Deputy Director Grogan in charge of Press Relations, to DCI Allen Dulles: “Willoughby bent my ear for over an hour yesterday trying to get CIA to pay $150 for each issue of the Weekly Crusader, they want to furnish us with one thousand copies for distribution. Willoughby is a trustee on Amoss’s staff…” [emphasis added]. 

. . . General Willoughby closes one particularly lengthy diatribe he shared with his good friend, DCI Allen Dulles with a quote of fascist philosopher, Oswald Spengler, with, “Untergand de Abendlandes” in reference to Spengler’s “Decline of the West.” Without notes, (Francis Parker] Yockey wrote his first book, Imperium: The Philosophy of History and Politics, in Brittas Bay, Ireland over the winter and early spring of 1948. Clearly, he shared Willoughby’s admiration of Spengler in Imperium, a Spenglerian critique of 19th century materialism and rationalism dedicated to “the hero of the twentieth century.” It is believed that he meant Adolf Hitler. Holocaust Denier Carto of the Liberty Lobby, and later owner of the American Mercury, as well as the American Free Press, took on the task of publishing Yockey’s Imperium when Britain’s infamous fascist, Sir Oswald Mosley failed to do so because of personality clashes with Yockey. The reader is reminded that ad man, propagandist H. Keith Thompson, long-time protégé of Yockey, handled public relations for Lee Oswald’s mother, Marguerite Claverie Oswald in 1964. It has been reported that Willis Carto was Yockey’s last visitor in jail before he bit down on the cyanide pill he had tucked away rather than be interrogated by American authorities.

7

 

The Generals, the Teams and the Kill Squads  

Congress meet- Willoughby- “soldiers kill squad”—

—Lafitte datebook, April 12, 1963

                                    

Willoughby & d. Valle 

NO re Madrid

Church group meet.

check with Hunt & Vickers

—Lafitte datebook, June 5, 1963 

            

                        

Meet with Willoughby –

 (Ella R) —others – at

49 East 53^rd St. NYC       

—Lafitte datebook, October 15, 1963

                                    

In his indispensable book, The Man Who Knew Too Much, writer Dick Russell reveals that in April 1952 US Army Major General Charles A. Willoughby had “accompanied an American military mission to Spain whose ostensible purpose was to discuss with dictator Franco the question of establishing US air and naval bases there.”

            An August 19, 1952 article for The Reporter magazine by Frank Kluckhohn, discovered in CIA files released in January 2003 read:

Prominent Americans have, while traveling in foreign countries, often succeeded in embarrassing the men charged with carrying out the U.S. government’s policies in those countries. The most recent and striking example of this was provided by Major General Charles A. Willoughby, U.S. Army, retired, who last January turned up in Spain, where he was an honored guest of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. Willoughby had served as General of the Army, Douglas MacArthur’s chief of intelligence from 1941 ... until MacArthur’s removal in April 1951. He had retired from the Army in August 1951, and since then had played no important part in MacArthur’s New York headquarters. Early in April of this year [1952] an American military mission arrived in Spain to discuss with Franco and his Ministers the question of establishing U.S. air and naval bases there. Before the negotiations started, the members of the mission knew how delicate their job would be made by the touchiness of the Spaniards. But the Americans had little warning of the way their task would be complicated by Willoughby. The latter, by casting himself as a sort of unofficial spokesman and go-between with Franco, succeeded in building up considerably the Caudillo’s [military dictator] confidence at the bargaining table.  

 

. . . By 1952 Willoughby was widely known throughout the world as a war hero but also a staunch racist and anti-Semite. In spite of that, according to Prof. Scott in Dallas ’63, he enjoyed the respect of military brass including General Maxwell Taylor who would eventually serve as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Willoughby claimed to have immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1910 when he was eighteen years old and joined the US Army at the lowly rank of private. He was promoted to sergeant in 1913, with Company O of the Fifth US Infantry, and honorable discharged not long after. Upon leaving the Army, Willoughby attended Gettysburg College and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree after only one year, having allegedly attended the University of Heidelberg and the Sorbonne in Paris. His university attendance in Europe has been seriously challenged.

         

 . . . Historian Noel Twyman whose assassination research has seldom if ever been successfully challenged writes: “Willoughby has been described as a bull of a man (6 feet 3 inches tall and 220 pounds) who spoke with a German accent and affected a monocle. He was fluent in four languages. He had a reputation for being autocratic and arrogant…. Willoughby had received decorations from Benito Mussolini while serving as a military attaché in Ecuador. He had been toasted in Spain by the secretary general of the Falangist Party (fascists) as a ‘fellow Falangist and Reactionary.’ In a final gesture to Spain’s fascism in 1952, Willoughby lobbied Congress to authorize $100 million for Spain’s dictator, Francisco Franco.”

            According to Bruce Cumings, another historian who focused on Willoughby in his monumental work, The Origins of the Korean War, Volume II, “Willoughby was a profound racist and anti-Semite who saw the Soviet Bloc as ‘the historical continuity of Mongoloid-Pan-Slavism.’ He once wrote that ‘when the teeming millions of the Orient and the tropics got their hands-on magazine rifles, Kipling’s white man was on the way out….” Cumings continues, “During the Occupation of Japan and the Korean War, Willoughby maintained clandestine ties to Japanese militarists, including the bacteriological warfare criminal General Ishii; in the 1950s and 1960s he claimed to have close ties to Reinhard Gehlen and other former National Socialist officers then being used by United States intelligence in the Cold War …. After MacArthur’s sacking, Willoughby frequently visited Spain, and claimed to have been involved in the American military base negotiations with Franco. He set up a kind of right-wing international called the ‘international comite,’ using money from the Hunt brothers in Texas, linking Spain and Portugal together with German right-wingers, the Hargis Crusade, and others. He was an agent for Hunt Oil in seeking offshore oil rights in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique.”

. . . As we now know, Willoughby and Skorzeny met at least a half dozen times in Spain. Russell, unaware of these meetings while finalizing his book, speculated (correctly) that the two former military men had met and that Willoughby’s 1952 trip was followed by several additional trips to Madrid throughout the following years, trips during which we are again certain that he met Skorzeny. (See Endnote.) There can be little doubt that during such sojourns, Charles Willoughby also met Otto Skorzeny’s wife, Ilse, proving the October 15, 1963 Lafitte datebook entry - Meet with Willoughby –49 East 53^rd St. NYC - all the more intriguing. The address on East 53rd was the headquarters of Previews, Inc., the global real estate firm that provided cover for the business and intelligence activities of Otto’s wife, Ilse.

The General and The Director

Charles Willoughby was in frequent correspondence with the DIAs rising star, Allen Dulles from the early 1950s. Writes Dick Russell:

In 1955 . . . Willoughby’s “German connections” were the subject of an exchange of correspondence with CIA director Allen Dulles and Dulles’s then-deputy Frank Wisner, who was in charge of relations with the Gehlen network as well as the American resettlement of several hundred ex-National Socialist scientists under “Operation Paperclip.” By now Willoughby was living on Park Avenue in New York. I obtained the correspondence from among Willoughby’s personal papers. . . .

       Dulles to Willoughby, January 17, 1955: I appreciate your letter of 5 January and its interesting enclosures, which I have sent to some of my people for study. Also many thanks for the interesting books which arrived separately. . . . Regarding your idea of a trip to a certain country for the purpose of writing a book, I find this matter interesting and I shall be in touch with you further about it.

       Willoughby to Dulles, March 17, 1955: I believe in “centralization” of intelligence. In a covert outfit, the command leadership is most important . . . I would be entirely satisfied to serve with or under you and have every conviction that CIA could not be in better or more responsible hands. . . .

       On the “book” idea, I take the liberty of making certain suggestions: i.) I am more interested in Europe or So. America than in the Far East, at this time. ii) It is true that I have an exceptional entrée in Spain. iii) However, I can develop the same thing in Germany. My father’s family (though a divorce took place) is unimpeachable in Wilhelminian society. I am in touch with very high-level people. As you know, I have a Fluent command of French, German and Spanish. iv) I think “rapprochement” with Germany is becoming frightfully important. It can only be done on a personal basis, in the end. v) . . . I will develop for you a weekly report. . . . 

The correspondence between Dulles and Willoughby continued. Among Willoughby’s myriad of associations, OSS officer Ulius Amoss—architect of leaderless resistance—is reflected in memos that crossed Dulles’s desk. In October 1955, Willoughby offered the director aid in setting up “promising. . . social contacts” between young American servicemen stationed in Germany and their counterparts, perhaps implementing Amoss’s theories. 

            “The new generation has less to remember—and to resent,” Willoughby wrote to Dulles, suggesting that “In American garrison towns, in Germany, this approach can become the first step in developing [sic] a literary youth-movement, by utilizing existing Karl May clubs.” (Adolf Hitler, from his teenage years onward, was a devotee of the Wild West novels of Karl May, the German imitator of James Fennimore Cooper.) “From the viewpoint of social relations and youth indoctrination,” Willoughby continued, “it fits neatly, as you know, into one of the many facets of ‘psychological warfare.’ It could become the medium by which we can gain young adherents and partisans. Anyway, I am going to try it. . . . However, I do not want to stand alone (though the Germans will take it up) and I suggest that you examine it, from the viewpoint of a ‘discrete’ penetration and the ‘making of friends.’” 

Willoughby, the ABN and Ukraine’s OUN

Prof. Peter Dale Scott, poet, assassination expert and author cited previously, was among the first to recognize the potential significance of an obscure figure in the saga of Lee and Marina Oswald named Spas T. Raikin. Raikin holds the dubious distinction of having been one of the very first “officials” to have met Lee and Marina Oswald after they had left the Soviet Union, where Lee had allegedly defected in 1959, and arrived by steamship in the harbor at Hoboken, New Jersey. Raikin told the Oswalds that he was a representative for the Travelers Aid Society and that he was there to assist them anyway he could. 

            Interviewed twice by author Albarelli, Raikin said that he didn’t tell the Oswalds that he held a high-ranking position with the American Friends of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. The ABN was strongly supported by Willoughby since its formation in Munich, Germany in 1946. 

            Confirming that SS Otto Skorzeny and General Charles Willoughby were at the very least aware of one another prior to Willoughby’s trips to Spain that began in the early 1950s, was their mutual associations with radical far right Ukrainians. . . .

Edited April 22, 2023 by Leslie Sharp