Ruth Paine in Nicaragua - A New Witness (Vox Charles Swift)

[Max Good]

Here are just a few highlights from my 2016 interview with a new witness who says he worked with Ruth Paine and Pronica.  He claims that Pronica actually wasn't doing the charity work they said they were doing in Nicaragua and he suspected others in the group of corruption and possibly being intelligence agents.  I could not find anyone else to go on the record to backup his explosive allegations, so I didn't include it in the movie.  The full interview with much more detail is on my Patreon page here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/vox-charles-his-70668932

I'm happy to provide additional details to anyone who wants to follow up on this.  When I asked Ruth Paine if she knew who this guy was, she said she did not.  I don't claim know the veracity of his claims.  I support anyone who wants to get to the bottom of it honestly.

Unfortunately, Vox Charles Swift passed away a few months ago: https://www.snyderfuneralhome.com/obituary/vox-charles-pete-swift/

[James DiEugenio]

Max, 

So this guy was involved with the same group Ruth Paine was involved with?

[Max Good]

Yes, he lived in St. Petersburg, FL and was part of the same Friends Meeting as Ruth.  He did charity work in Latin America and had a house in Nicaragua.

[Derek Thibeault]

Find his family, see if they have any evidence, writings, physical evidence, stories....

[James DiEugenio]

Its interesting the way this, overall, corresponds to what Wheaton had to say.

Edited August 27, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Paul Brancato]

Hey Max - I know the cellist Burke, saw him last month in fact. 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

12 hours ago, Max Good said:

Yes, he lived in St. Petersburg, FL and was part of the same Friends Meeting as Ruth.  He did charity work in Latin America and had a house in Nicaragua.

Was Swift the anonymous man in the Nicaragua section of the film or are they separate individuals? 

[Guest]

Just wondering, was this the same Pronica ?

They closed a few years ago it seems, they were talking about archiving in 2019.

http://pronica.org/

Quote : " We are archiving ProNica’s history to make it accessible for academic research. After the closing of Quaker House and our office in Managua we began the formal process of closing the NGO. At this time, we are awaiting our final audit and hope to have the closing finalized by the end of the year."

[Guest]

From WIKI :  "Several years later, a Senate committee investigated the several Contra-connected corporations that had been used by the State Department to supply "humanitarian aid" to the region. The committee connected the crack-cocaine epidemic to the Contra-connected corporations and found that the drugs were distributed on the streets in Los Angeles. CIA participation, albeit indirect, was a result of a partnership with well-known drug trafficker Alan Hyde. Hyde had been known by the criminal syndicate world to be a large distributor and trafficker of cocaine. From 1987 to 1989, the CIA cooperated with Hyde and used his vast network of covert shipping lanes in the Caribbean to supply arms to the Contras. The CIA operated during the crucial moments of proxy-war against the Sandinista government. The Central American Task Force had warned the CIA of involvement with Hyde, but the CIA persisted. Regarding involvement with Hyde, CIA deputy director Robert Gates remarked, "We need to use him, but we also need to figure out how to get rid of him."^[28] Despite intelligence suggesting Hyde's involvement with the Tampa/St. Petersburg air smuggling ring, the CIA authorized the use of more storage facilities owned by Hyde."

 

[Guest]

Now, I am not making any accusations, I remember myself - in the 1980's, must have been 16 or 17 yo - being part of a letter-writing campaing about human-rights in Nicaragua.   Well... our teacher had a lot to do with that... and the grades we would get... 

[Greg Doudna]

I listened to the interview of Vox Charles Swift on patreon yesterday.

He had a house in Granada (name of city) in Nicaragua which he built in 2000 and divided his time between there and in St. Petersburg Fl. He attended the St. Petersburg Friends Meeting sporadically starting from mid-1990s and became aware of Ruth Paine and ProNica there. He was not a member of the Quakers or the Friends Meeting in St. Petersburg but visited/attended.

He would see in a quarterly Bulletin at the Friends Meeting photos of what ProNica was doing in Nicaragua including in his city of Granada. He tried to confirm ProNica activities in Granada claimed in the Friends Bulletin, and says he found nothing happening that was claimed in the photos and brochures in the St. Petersburg Meeting which were used for fundraising.

He became convinced ProNica was nothing other than a total money-making fraudulent scam. At first he thought Ruth Paine was duped and victim by people in Nicaragua, then he believed she had been l-ying to him all along and that Ruth had duped the head of the Friends in St. Petersburg. Then he realized the top Quaker also was in on it (when he tried to tell the head Quaker his allegations and that man did not believe him). In a visit to his hometown in Pa. he visited the Friends Meeting there and talked to a leading Quaker there for an hour who also was not convinced, and he became convinced that man was in on it too and the top Quakers in Philadelphia running the Quakers in America were also all in on the financial fraud--"millions of dollars"—all the Quaker leaders in America were in it for the money, all a scam, none of the money fundraised was going to claimed projects. 

(His time of sporadic attendance at the St. Petersburg Friends meeting overlapped when I was there 2001-2003, though I do not recall him if I ever did cross paths with him there.)

His evidence of financial fraud is he says he tried for eighteen months to verify activity of ProNica in Granada and elsewhere in Nicaragua and he could not verify anything that was claimed. He told a couple of stories of going to addresses of claimed projects and finding empty rooms or buildings. The claimed hq of ProNica in Nicaragua in a city told to him by Ruth Paine, he found ProNica was not known to the mayor’s office and the phone company never heard of ProNica. A claimed home where youth were said to be living he went there and found an empty building and a caretaker only.

(I remember the youth project in Managua that the St. Petersburg Friends was supporting and the guy who ran it visiting the St. Petersburg Meeting telling of it; certainly sounded real to me at the time.)

When asked if any others in the Friends Meeting shared his suspicions that ProNica was a financial scam he said no. They all supported Ruth Paine, thought she was a hero. He was the only one who thought she was a fraud.

(That agrees with what I remember, everyone in the St. Petersburg Friends Meeting regarded Ruth Paine favorably.)

He thought due to his criticisms ProNica probably had changed to doing legitimate things today [at time of interview in 2017], but he thought at the time—2000-2001--nothing at all was happening, that it was pure graft with "millions of dollars" in Quaker fundraising none going to claimed purposes, a total fraud by design and intention of which all Quakers in St. Petersburg and America were either fooled or part of. He said the persons in America doing fundraising for ProNica were helping themselves to that money personally. He offered no evidence of such misappropriation of funds for personal enrichment but was sure it was happening. He offered no evidence for his belief that the leaders of Quakers in America were running a scam charity in an organized way from the top as a moneymaking scheme.

He tried to show his evidence—a photo of an empty building, photos of that nature—to the "top Quaker" in Saint Petersburg but he only got halfway through and the man told him Ruth Paine and others had worked very hard and he did not believe the allegations. He then realized that man was in on it too.

He believed both Ruth Paine and Michael Paine have been CIA their entire lives "because their relatives were", that Ruth supported the contras in Nicaragua, and that Ruth was spying giving CIA intelligence in Nicaragua. No evidence offered or claimed from him on that but he believed that. He had no doubt that Ruth and Michael Paine knew in advance that JFK would be assassinated.

As for the claimed activities and projects of ProNica in Managua which many people from the St. Petersburg Meeting had visited and seen personally, he was convinced they were "cook's tours" of wealthy donors flown to Managua and shown around, visiting poor people living on dirt floors, etc., which he believed could easily be arranged with twenty-dollar bills to poor people in Nicaragua to set up fake photo ops to fool the prospective donor being shown around. He believed the Quakers and ProNica were very good and professional at fooling people this way. 

He never reported to authorities his allegations (nor am I aware of any reported complaints to authorities of allegations of this nature), and his attempts to report once to the top St. Petersburg Quaker and again in Philadelphia to a leading Quaker there, both were fruitless and he realized they were in on it was why.

[Cory Santos]

Lol ask about her time in Belize and who she met there.    Lol.   I won’t say more.  

[Max Good]

14 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

Hey Max - I know the cellist Burke, saw him last month in fact. 

Hi Paul.  Yes, I know him quite well.  In fact, I made a video with him not long ago.  Good to know we have a local friend in common.

--

I did correspond with a couple people who Vox Swift named or referred me too.  One person was unwilling to go on the record, but they did confirm Swift's story that the Pronica projects in Nicaragua could not be found.  Another person, who Swift was also suspicious of, told me that they had heard of the accusations around Ruth and Pronica, but didn't give them any credence.  When I asked them if they could give me references to others who could speak on the matter, they didn't have any names.

I was contacted by some interesting characters while making the movie and I was skeptical of everyone, at first.  One person setup a conversation on an anonymous phone line just to tell me that they knew the identity of the "dark complexioned man" who was seen driving "Ruth Paine's station wagon."  He claimed to have inside information that it was one of Fidel Castro's agents.

I don't know what to think about Vox Swift or his story, but I'm putting it out there in the hopes that someone can get to the bottom of it.

 

[Ron Bulman]

So, who was dark complected man?  Morales wouldn't have driven the Rambler. 

[W. Tracy Parnell]

11 hours ago, Max Good said:

I don't know what to think about Vox Swift or his story, but I'm putting it out there in the hopes that someone can get to the bottom of it.

I think I have a very reasonable explanation. Swift (rightly or wrongly) became suspicious of ProNica. When he became aware of the allegations of people like Wheaton, he conflated these allegations with his suspicions and came up with the idea that ProNica was doing no real work but was instead a CIA front.

Now, ProNica, as I understand it, was not running any charity operations themselves but simply funding the work in Nicaragua. Is it possible that some of the operations they funded were coopted by unscrupulous individuals? Certainly. But it is another thing to claim that ProNica was doing "nothing." In this day and age, I believe that type of obvious fraud by a charity would be very difficult to get away with.

One of the other things I find difficult to believe in the Wheaton story is that CIA assets (allegedly Ruth and others) would gather intelligence in a completely overt manner as described by Wheaton and others. That doesn't make any sense to me.

For those who haven't seen it:

The Assassination and Mrs. Paine-Ruth Spied in Nicaragua? ~ W. Tracy Parnell (wtracyparnell.blogspot.com)