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

[Paul Brancato]

34 minutes ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

When Helms died,  J. Morley wrote this essay on Helms...https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2002/11/the-nasty-career-of-cia-director-richard-helms.html

I wonder if Morley still believes that JFK was supportive of assassination as a foreign policy tool.

[Steve Thomas]

FBI - HSCA Subject File: Jean Souetre

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1434

Document# 7

Notice the date  (Had the CIA decided to use him after all?)

 

FBI - HSCA Subject File: Jean Souetre

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=83405#relPageId=1

Document# 11

Steve Thomas

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

I wonder if Morley still believes that JFK was supportive of assassination as a foreign policy tool.

These ex-CIA guys love to rewrite history before they checkout. I picked up on that too. 
 

I spent some time reading through the Spartacus site and Larry H’s site. I was less than convinced by the Mertz, Roux, Soutre explanation (that’s not to take anything away from Larry’s hard work). The most interesting part is from Soutre himself denying being in the US. He took the opportunity to point the finger at Mertz. Doesn’t it seem a standard cover for people doing such work to travel under an alias or two? From a logical standpoint it certainly makes sense. There is almost humour in using the name of an enemy as an alias. 

[Paul Brancato]

On 2/6/2023 at 9:59 AM, Chris Barnard said:

These ex-CIA guys love to rewrite history before they checkout. I picked up on that too. 
 

I spent some time reading through the Spartacus site and Larry H’s site. I was less than convinced by the Mertz, Roux, Soutre explanation (that’s not to take anything away from Larry’s hard work). The most interesting part is from Soutre himself denying being in the US. He took the opportunity to point the finger at Mertz. Doesn’t it seem a standard cover for people doing such work to travel under an alias or two? From a logical standpoint it certainly makes sense. There is almost humour in using the name of an enemy as an alias. 

Larry’s take seems to be that the FBI looked into it thoroughly and informed their French counterparts that there was no evidence. Maybe a French response to this exists, but I haven’t seen it so I don’t know if the FBI’s explanation satisfied their inquiry. But I doubt it. The report goes into depth on the confusing names, so much so that it strikes me as deliberate obfuscation. Yes it does seem like standard cover, and suggestive that Souetre would point at Mertz. Whenever a thread like this becomes active on the forum the same few people contribute. I’m pretty sure that this is because the whole ‘French Connection’ thing was put to rest decades ago. Christian David was the key to this misdirection. From prison he named names, like Lucien Sarti, and when investigators burrowed in they failed to confirm David’s leads. That seemed to be a dead end. But I’ve never thought it was, and I think David played a critical role for whoever was trying to bury this story. If I’m not mistaken it was the inveterate Bud Fensterwald who pursued it in the first place, and according to him Souetre had multiple passports and visited the US in the summer of 1963, traveling to New Orleans and Dallas, maybe starting in Florida. 
As Steve Thomas says, and he has looked really closely at Souetre, more than just about anyone, Souetre denied being in the US at that time.

 

On 2/6/2023 at 8:38 AM, Steve Thomas said:

FBI - HSCA Subject File: Jean Souetre

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/showlist.php?docset=1434

Document# 7

Notice the date  (Had the CIA decided to use him after all?)

 

FBI - HSCA Subject File: Jean Souetre

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=83405#relPageId=1

Document# 11

Steve Thomas

Thanks for posting this Steve. I see the date of June 25 1963. Are you beginning to suspect there is more to the Souetre story? I guess this is when CIA met with Souetre and others from OAS and maybe Aginter Presse? 
Officially CIA declined any assistance, and denied any involvement with OAS. DeGaulle thought otherwise. Smearing DeGaulle by claiming his government was heavily infiltrated with Communists and Soviet agents was the thing. Someone on this thread mentioned Golitsyn and DeVosjoli. For all their fears of Communist subversion in France, England and elsewhere nothing ever really happened. We are led to believe that’s because Western Intelligence detected and obstructed the Communists, and without CIA and MI 6 things would have been very different. I just don’t buy it. In the name of anti-Communism we lost our best leaders - the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, whose organization was riddled with Communists, according to Hoover. 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Paul Brancato

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Larry’s take seems to be that the FBI looked into it thoroughly and informed their French counterparts that there was no evidence. Maybe a French response to this exists, but I haven’t seen it so I don’t know if the FBI’s explanation satisfied their inquiry. But I doubt it. The report goes into depth on the confusing names, so much so that it strikes me as deliberate obfuscation. Yes it does seem like standard cover, and suggestive that Souetre would point at Mertz. Whenever a thread like this becomes active on the forum the same few people contribute. I’m pretty sure that this is because the whole ‘French Connection’ thing was put to rest decades ago. Christian David was the key to this misdirection. From prison he named names, like Lucien Sarti, and when investigators burrowed in they failed to confirm David’s leads. That seemed to be a dead end. But I’ve never thought it was, and I think David played a critical role for whoever was trying to bury this story. If I’m not mistaken it was the inveterate Bud Fensterwald who pursued it in the first place, and according to him Souetre had multiple passports and visited the US in the summer of 1963, traveling to New Orleans and Dallas, maybe starting in Florida. 
As Steve Thomas says, and he has looked really closely at Souetre, more than just about anyone, Souetre denied being in the US at that time. It looks like Steve is beginning to doubt his original belief that Souetre was being truthful.

 

Thanks for posting this Steve. Yes the date 

I am so impressed with what @Steve Thomas has contributed here, I am surprised others are not interested. 
 

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is mental, ego or pride driven. I am not naming names or speaking of anyone in particular in the researcher community, and I exclude some open minded researchers. When you’re in the latter years of existence, few researchers want to entertain that their lifetimes work could be wrong in its hypothesis. The very idea of published conclusions being wrong is too difficult to bear. Its sad because we could use their minds.

What we have here is circumstantial but, it mostly points in the same direction. If I can get Soutre’s family to confirm that he was in the USA in 1963? Is that enough? 
 

[Paul Brancato]

2 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

I am so impressed with what @Steve Thomas has contributed here, I am surprised others are not interested. 
 

One of the biggest stumbling blocks is mental, ego or pride driven. I am not naming names or speaking of anyone in particular in the researcher community, and I exclude some open minded researchers. When you’re in the latter years of existence, few researchers want to entertain that their lifetimes work could be wrong in its hypothesis. The very idea of published conclusions being wrong is too difficult to bear. Its sad because we could use their minds.

What we have here is circumstantial but, it mostly points in the same direction. If I can get Soutre’s family to confirm that he was in the USA in 1963? Is that enough? 
 

It would be interesting, but they could just as well deny it, or not even engage, or know nothing, which seems more likely. Leslie Sharp might have already done this, or perhaps would be very interested in what you dug up. Souetre figures prominently in the Skorzeny network, according to Leslie, Ralph Ganis, Hank Albarelli. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Paul Brancato said:

It would be interesting, but they could just as well deny it, or not even engage, or know nothing, which seems more likely. Leslie Sharp might have already done this, or perhaps would be very interested in what you dug up. Souetre figures prominently in the Skorzeny network, according to Leslie, Ralph Ganis, Hank Albarelli. 

I am certain that they don’t want their father to be in the news as the man who was involved in Dallas. I think they’ll ignore or deny. However, you never know, there may be a surprise (I hope). Nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

[Paul Brancato]

1 minute ago, Chris Barnard said:

I am certain that they don’t want their father to be in the news as the man who was involved in Dallas. I think they’ll ignore or deny. However, you never know, there may be a surprise (I hope). Nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

I totally agree it’s worth a shot.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Paul Brancato said:

I totally agree it’s worth a shot.

As you are well versed on this; what would be the two or three questions you’d like to know the answer to most from them? 
 

Please bear in mind that this thread shows very prominently in SEO results and may be seen by them too when searching Jean Souetre.  

[Paul Brancato]

It boils down really to two questions with follow ups - did you travel to the US in summer 1963? If so who did you meet with? Did you work with Otto Skorzeny in Spain? If so, in what capacity? The whole alias thing is confusing. I wouldn’t ask if he was in Dallas on Nov 22, even though I’d like to know the answer. 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Paul Brancato

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

 If I’m not mistaken it was the inveterate Bud Fensterwald who pursued it in the first place, and according to him Souetre had multiple passports and visited the US in the summer of 1963, traveling to New Orleans and Dallas, maybe starting in Florida.

deleted.

Steve Thomas

Edited February 7, 2023 by Steve Thomas

[Steve Thomas]

Souetre's father

http://gw.geneanet.org/jls29?lang=fr&pz=gabin&nz=souetre&ocz=0&p=rene+jean&n=souetre&oc=1

 

Rene Jean Souetre:

Born on August 3, 1893 at 33 rue dirot - Brest,29200, Finistere, Bretagne, FRANCE

January 18, 1930 Marriage (avec Jeanne Helytte SAUGNAC) - Bordeaux,33000,Gironde,Aquitaine,FRANCE

July 2, 1936 Marriage annuled (avec Berthe Marie Agnes VANDAL de COLLIGNY) - Rome,ITALIE

(He had divorced her on December 28, 1928)

Honors: La Legion d'honneur Cote LH/2530/60

February 16, 1944 Died Ayguemortes les Graves, 33 Gironde, FRANCE (He would have died when Jean-Rene was 13).

Sous officier de la Marine Nationnale (Non-commissioned officer)

 

http://gw.geneanet.org/jls29?lang=fr&m=N&v=SOUETRE

Jean-Rene Marie Souetre

First marriage to Marcelle Christiane Berrotte in a civil ceremony on August 21, 1954, and in a Catholic ceremony in St. Nicolas at Bordeaux on August 23, 1954. They had a child named Myriam.

Second marriage to Josette Suzanne Marcailhou d'Aymeric on January 26, 1962. They had a child named Yannick.

Third marriage to Françoise Marie Agnes Hourtic on August 3, 1972.

They had a child named Yann Fabrice.

 

At 11 years old, he embraced the military career, enrolling in a military prep school (enfant de troupe) first at Billom, then at Autun.

 

As I understand it, the system of military prep schools was established by the ordinance of King Louis XV in 1766 for the sons of former officers. http://www.aet-association.org/aet/ecoles/ecoles_disparues_france/9/file.2005-02-06.3750752970.pdf

 

Jean-Rene was in a military boarding school and then in the Air Force from the time he was 11 years old.

 

I was never able to really nail down the following. I don’t know if there really is such a person, or if it was somebody trying to contact Jean-Rene through a ruse.

 

Post by a guest in the Forum: Le Forum des Commandos de L'Air Lun 14 Jul 2008 14:58

http://commando-air-forum.forum2discussion.com/t2562-presentation

Bonjour, Grâce à votre site, j'ai pu voir hier soir pour la première fois des photos de mon père Jean René Souêtre. Cela m'a beaucoup émue. Je n'avais vu qu'une minuscule photo de lui, parue dans un journal. Ma mère l'a connu à Châlons sur Marne. A l'époque de ma naissance en 1954, on avait le culte du secret en ce qui concerne les enfants naturels, et ma mère n'a accepté de me révéler son identité que quand j'ai eu 19 ans. J'ai décidé à l'époque d'enfouir tout cela le plus profond possible, ne connaissant rien de lui, et craignant un rejet, et de déranger. Seulement quand mon fils unique a eu 13 ans, son visage s'est transformé, et il s'est mis à lui ressembler... Maintenant que le temps a passé et qu'il n'est plus de ce monde, j'aimerais apprendre à le connaître par des personnes qui l'ont apprécié, et peut-être avoir quelques photos de lui si vous pouvez m'en procurer. J'aimerais aussi entrer en contact avec le sergent Lemineur, qui apparemment était l'un de ses amis proches. Merci d'avance à tous ! Catherine

 

Hello,

 

Thank you for your site, I have could to see tonight for the first time some photos of my father Jean Rene Souetre. It is most touching to me. I have never seen that small photo of him, published in a journal.

 

My mother was well known in Chalons on Marne.

At the time of my birth in 1954, we had the cult of secrecy concerning the bith of natural children, (another translation is illegitimate children) and my mother had not accepted to reveal to me her identity that until I was 19 years old. I decided at the time to bury it all deep as possible, not knowing anything of him and fearing rejection and to disturb. Only when my only son was 13 years old, his appearance changed and he began to look like him...

 

Catherine

 

Now that time has passed and he his not more of this world, I would like to begin to know by those who appreciated him and perhaps to have some photos of him if you can provide them to me.

 

I would like also to enter into contact with Sergeant Lemineur, who apparently was one of his close friends.

 

Thanks in advance to you!

 

Catherine.

 

(Chalons was a city in the Marne Department of France. It was re-named Châlons-en-Champagne near Rheims. This is champagne country). - Wikipedia - http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tramway_de_Châlons-sur-Marne

 

(For a short while, the city was known as Chalons-sur-Marne but in 1998, reverted back to its original name of Chalons-en-Champagne. The city has since consolidated its position as regional capital.).

http://www.chalons-en-champagne.net/index.php/english/

 

(It was here that Atilla the Hun was defeated in 451 by the Romans and Visigoths).

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Chalons-sur-Marne

 

In 1967 Bob Denard was sent by the SDECE to Luanda to muder Jean Rene Souetre

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/S%20Disk/Souetre%20Jean%20with%20aka's/Item%2015.pdf page16 see also page19 for the details.

 

Jean-Rene and Josette were marriedi n February, 1962.

On March 9, 1963, Josette was arrested traveling on a fake passport at the small border crossing between Spain and France known as Perthus. She was trying to get back into France to file for a divorce.

 

Mme SOUÈTRE AFFIRME QU'ELLE EST VENUE EN FRANCE POUR DIVORCER

LE MONDE | 13.03.1963 à 00h00 • Mis à jour le 13.03.1963 à 00h00

http://www.lemonde.fr/archives/article/1963/03/13/mme-souetre-affirme-qu-elle-est-venue-en-france-pour-divorcer_2217664_1819218.html?xtmc=souetre&xtcr=14

" Je n'ai été chargée d'aucune mission pour le compte de l'O.A.S. ", a-t-elle ajouté.

“I am not on a mission for the OAS.” she said

Steve Thomas

[Leslie Sharp]

On 2/6/2023 at 8:26 AM, Steve Thomas said:

Chuck,

Sorry. I mis-spoke - it was Lisbon.

Steve Thomas

Yves Guillou a.k.a Ralf Guerin-Serac and Aginter Press . . . from Hank Albarelli's Coup in Dallas,

The OAS and the Aginter Press

Before being air dropped into Vietnam again in 1954, Lucien Conien spends a few weeks at Otto Skorzeny’s training camp outside of Madrid. It is the same camp where multiple French ultraright guerre révolutionnaire tacticians who would meld into the OAS are going through intensive warfare training before being dispatched to Vietnam. By 1957, they had become bitterly opposed to Senator John Kennedy from Massachusetts when he advocated for Algerian independence. The training is rigorous, even brutal at times. Skorzeny’s chief trainers at the camp, Jean Rene Souetre, mentioned in the mysterious correspondence of Frenchman Paul Gluc, and fellow Frenchman Yves Guiliou who widely used the alias Ralf Guerin-Serac, are relentless in their objective to shape their trainees into thoroughly trained professional soldiers. Conien meets every several days with the former SS officer for drinks, dinner, and an occasional choice cigar. 

            Not surprisingly, and especially germane to one of this investigation’s central characters, is that Lucian Conien knew Otto Skorzeny quite well. His initial links to Skorzeny can be found in the La Cagoule, the French Resistance, and the long-standing, mysterious and Portugal-based Aginter Press. Ostensibly a press or media agency, Aginter Press fronted for what CIA officials privately called “assassination central.” Often wrongly cited as being founded in 1966, Aginter Press was first organized in 1962 by Skorzeny’s prized trainer, Guérin-Serac, as a “counterinsurgency, counter-guerrilla center with support of the CIA, of the paramilitary Portuguese Legion, and especially of PIDE, the feared Portuguese secret police, which supposedly financed Aginter Press at the tune of two million escudos per month. Aginter Press was a sizable operation. Between 1962 and 1965, it organized and established an important network of informers linked, through PIDE, to the CIA and to the security services of such countries as West Germany, Spain, Greece, and South Africa,” as well as numerous Latin American and several other European countries. . . .

    . . .  Significantly, as readers shall learn in detail later—regardless of the fact that today the CIA maintains that it knows nothing about Guillou and that he does not appear in their voluminous files—we know that, only about six months before the JFK assassination, on May 23, 1963, Guillou, under the alias Guerin-Serac, accompanied by OAS member and trained assassin Captain Jean Rene Souetre, met with CIA representatives in Lisbon, Portugal. A brief glimpse at Captain Souetre before we encounter him in full in Chapter 10 tells us that a detailed once-secret memorandum by CIA Deputy Director of Plans Richard Helms, identified the purpose of the Lisbon meeting, as described in at least two declassified CIA documents, was to enlist the CIA in OAS efforts to assassinate French leader Charles de Gaulle. . . . '

 ' . . . Souetre’s companion at the meeting in Lisbon was his compatriot, Guerin-Serac who before he established Aginter Press, had been a French soldier serving in France, before fighting in the Korean Conflict in the early 1950s, and “possibly served as a liaison man between the CIA and the French services.” Guillou/Guerin-Serac had also been a master parachutist in Algeria, “before he deserted the French army and joined the OAS rebellion. (This at the very same time as Jean Rene Souetre.) After Algerian independence and the OAS’s defeat, he emigrated to Spain and then to Portugal, the last colonial empire that appeared willing to fight for Western values over ‘communist imperialism.’”  

            Historians Michael Bale and Franco Ferraresi have emphasized Guerin-Serac’s instructive writings for novice terrorists, which, although written over fifty years ago, appear tailor-made for today’s senior terrorists. Some apt excerpts from Guerin-Serac’s manual Missions Spéciales are:

—Subversion acts with appropriate means upon the minds and wills in order to induce them to act outside all logic, against all rules, against all laws. In this way, it conditions individuals and enables one to make use of them as one wishes.

—Action psychologique [is] a nonviolent weapon [used] to condition public opinion through the use of the press, the radio, conferences, demonstrations, etc. . . . with the goal of uniting the masses against the authorities.

—Terrorism breaks the population’s resistance, obtains its submission, and provokes a rupture between the population and the authorities. . . . There is a seizure of power over the masses through the creation of a climate of anxiety, insecurity, and danger.

—Selective terrorism . . . destroys the political and administrative apparatus by eliminating the cadres of those organs.

—Indiscriminate terrorism . . . destroys the confidence of the people by disorganizing the masses so as to manipulate them more effectively. . . .

. . . As mentioned, the two years before forming Aginter, Guerin-Serac both trained and served as a trainer in the arts of sabotage, explosives, and assassination at Otto Skorzeny’s secret training camps outside of Madrid. Indeed, Guerin-Serac, along with Jean Rene Souetre, were considered Skorzeny’s most competent trainers, and they were often called upon to work with US Special Forces who attended the camps. About this same time, claim several European historians, “US Army special forces began a program of targeting Western/NATO installations in Belgium, while disguising themselves as terrorists.”  

In early 1962, when Guerin-Serac first moved to establish Aginter Press, he acted in concert with Robert Leroy, a French SS officer during the war and WWII National Socialist SS officer Otto Skorzeny, both of whom served as the strategic leadership for Aginter. Leroy was a prewar member of Charles Maurras’ Action Française, a Far-Right political group, and then as an active member of La Cagoule’s terrorist underground. He took part in the Requête Carlist militia forces during the Spanish Civil War and then served as a Vichy intelligence operative. He was also a member of the Waffen SS Charlemagne division and was a key member of Otto Skorzeny’s commando forces, where he served as an instructor. Along with Skorzeny, following the end of the war, Leroy served as a lead instructor with Skorzeny’s efforts to train Egyptian leader Abd al-Nasir’s intelligence and security services, after recruiting a hundred German advisers from National Socialist soldiers serving during WWII, the SS underground, and from among technical experts with military industries. The purpose was to train Arab guerrillas in commando tactics and in protecting the former National Socialist technicians working for Nasir from Israeli “hit” teams. The job was carried out at the CIA’s bequest.”    

            Professor Tunander writes revealingly of Aginter: 

[The] international fascist intelligence network, Aginter Press, was established to implement the Strategy of Tension, with support from the Portuguese security service PIDE and the CIA. This network included a unit specializing in the infiltration of anarchist and pro-Chinese groups, and its “correspondents” would use such organizations as a cover for carrying out bombings and other violent attacks. Aginter Press also included a strategic centre for subversion and intoxication [drugging and poisonings] operations, along with an executive action organization that carried out assassinations (most likely the same “pool of assassins” that William Harvey, CIA station Chief in Italy, had recruited in Europe for the CIA’s “Executive Action Capability”). All of these divisions of Aginter Press were under the leadership of French OAS officer and former US liaison officer Captain Yves Guillou (alias Yves Guerin Serac), in collaboration with Robert Leroy, a former French SS officer, and Otto Skorzeny, a senior German SS officer. [Italics added]         

A portentous January 1968 affidavit sworn by Aginter Press assassin and Jean Rene Souetre associate Jacques Godard reveals the group’s relationship with certain American persons and organizations: “In the course of our services we had relations with certain persons and organizations like, for example, President Tschombe and with Biafra. We likewise were in charge of relations with the John Birch Society, which was an American political group financed especially by Texas oil producers whose activity is absolutely anti-communist. Everywhere where there is a struggle, either open or covert, with communists, the John Birch Society [JBS] lends its financial aid to the people who are struggling against international communism.”   The reader encounters the significance of the Texas oil producers and the Dallas branch of the JBS the chapter titled, “Lay of the Land,” to further understand the width and breadth of influence of Aginter Press and similar fascist organizations.

***

Readers will soon learn about two other far-reaching organizations quite similar to Aginter Press. These are the post-war World Commerce Corporation and the National Socialist-created Spain-based SOFINDUS group, both ubiquitous commercial organizations that served as multi-faceted intelligence operations and assassination bureaus. . . . '

[Leslie Sharp]

2 hours ago, Chris Barnard said:

I am certain that they don’t want their father to be in the news as the man who was involved in Dallas. I think they’ll ignore or deny. However, you never know, there may be a surprise (I hope). Nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

Christian, I wonder if you've come across a researcher writing under the alias "Mateo Messina" who in the past has been active on Facebook using that name? Apparently he is now posting under the name "Richard Helms" on social media.

I engaged with Mateo for several months following publication of Coup in Dallas. He claimed to have been in communication with a number of published investigative journalists over the years including Larry Hancock. 

During our communication, Mateo insisted that he knows members of the extended Souetre family, as well as members of the Michel Mertz family, all of whom attest that neither Jeanne Rene nor Michel were in Dallas in November 1963. Eventually, he threatened that representatives those families could arrive on my doorstep one day to sue me for my contribution to Albarelli's investigation that culminated in our book, Coup in Dallas. 

I wrote off his threats to nothing other than incoherent bluster, but I was intrigued by his last message that included photos from a French publication that attributes the source of those images to the DST ... and the caption of the photos misidentifies Souetre as Michel Mertz.  I've shared the composite photos on other Ed Forum threads. Let me know if you're interested in seeing them. 

L. 

  

[Steve Thomas]

2 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

and the caption of the photos misidentifies Souetre as Michel Mertz.  I've shared the composite photos on other Ed Forum threads. Let me know if you're interested in seeing them. . 

  

Leslie,

I would be interested, if you're willing.

Steve Thomas