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Posted

Over the last few weeks I have been researching the Suite 8F Group, a collection of right-wing political and businessmen. The name comes from the room in the Lamar Hotel in Houston where they held their meetings. Members of the group included George Brown and Herman Brown (Brown & Root), Jesse H. Jones (multi-millionaire investor in a large number of companies and chairman of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation), Gus Wortham (American General Insurance Company), James Abercrombie (Cameron Iron Works), Hugh R. Cullen (Quintana Petroleum), William Hobby (Houston Post), William Vinson (Great Southern Life Insurance), James Elkins (American General Insurance and Pure Oil Pipe Line), Morgan J. Davis (Humble Oil), Albert Thomas (chairman of the House Appropriations Committee), Lyndon B. Johnson (Majority Leader of the Senate). John Connally, Alvin Wirtz and Edward Clark were also members of the Suite 8F Group.

Suite 8F helped to coordinate the political activities of other right-wing politicians and businessmen based in the South. This included Robert Anderson (president of the Texas Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association, Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of the Treasury), Robert Kerr (Kerr-McGee Oil Industries), Billie Sol Estes (entrepreneur in the cotton industry), Glenn McCarthy (McCarthy Oil and Gas Company), Earl E. T. Smith (U.S. Sugar Corporation), Fred Korth (Continental National Bank and Navy Secretary), Ross Sterling (Humble Oil), Sid Richardson (Texas oil millionaire), Clint Murchison (Delhi Oil), Haroldson L. Hunt (Placid Oil), Eugene B. Germany (Mustang Oil Company), Lawrence D. Bell (Bell Helicopters), William Pawley (business interests in Cuba), Gordon McLendon (KLIF), George Smathers (Finance Committee and businessman), Richard Russell (chairman of the Committee of Manufactures, Committee on Armed Forces and Committee of Appropriations), James Eastland (chairman Judiciary Committee), Benjamin Everett Jordan (chairman of the Senate Rules Committee), Fred Black (political lobbyist and Serve-U Corporation) and Bobby Baker (political lobbyist and Serve-U Corporation).

What I have found out so far can be found here:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKgroup8F.htm

I would be grateful if any other members have any information on these people. I am particularly interested in the possible links with this group and the General Dynamics Corporation and the $6.5 billion contract for the TFX jet fighter. I have reason to believe that this contract played a factor in the Kennedy cover-up of the assassination. This involves an ex- FBI agent called I. B. Hale. He was head of security at General Dynamics. He was also caught placing a bug in the apartment of Judith Exner. Any help with this would be much appreciated.

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Posted (edited)

John, from Livingstone's new book on page 84:

There was one more big Texas connection with the Navy who succeeded Connally in Washington. Fred Korth, also of Fort Worth, like Connally, took Connally's job as Secretary of the Navy under Kennedy, who then prepared to dump him because, as Seth Kantor wrote, was taking advantage of his job to "further some of his Fort Worth banking investments." Korth showed favoritism to the Continetal National Bank of Fort Worth, which he had been president of until his appointment as Navy Secretary by Kennedy in 1961.

The Contintel National Bank was one of twenty banks that loaned $200 million to F. Worth's General Dynamics to start building the TFX fighter plane. The TFX became one of the biggest boondoggles and scandals in American history and threatened the entire Kennedy adminstration, as did so much else which emanated out of Texas from Bobby Baker and Howard Hughes, to Lyndon Johnson.

When the scandal got out of control, Korth was asked to resign by Robert McNamara, a man much hated then and for many years after for his later role in the Viet Nam War. The request for his resignation came just six weeks before Kennedy was assassinated. Korth had helped award the TFX contract to General Dynamics instead of Seattle's Boeing, which lost out. Boeing had it's friends...

In 1961, Korth was on the board of directors of Bell Aerospace, formerly Bell Helicopters, where Michael Paine worked...

And...

Billy Byars, Clint Murchinson, Sid Richardson and HL Hunt, along with many others, frequented the Top Of The Hill Terrance, a gambling club owned and run by Benny Binion. The club was managed by top mobster Lewis McWillie from 1948 to 1958.

McWillie was close to Jack Ruby and Ruby visitied him often in Cuba after he left Dallas and went to work for the Lanskys.

Jack Ruby helped Harry Hall take big bets from the oil men on sporting events, and (would) even fleece them from time to time.

And this interesting passage on page 111:

Ruby stated that McWillie was on his mind when he shot Oswald. McWillie worked for Lansky and was tight with Santos Trafficante...Ruby's mention of the "Fox Brothers" to Warren probably referred to the Lansky brothers and not the real Fox brothers in Havana, who were not important. Ruby calls them "the greatest that have been expelled from Cuba" and that would have to be Lansky and his brother. He said that they came to Dallas to meet with him and Wynne family attorneys. They came to "collect a debt owned the cotton gin company." The Jaffe family made their money first in cotton. This might have meant that Lansky was helping Jaffe.

McWillie, Ruby might have been trying to tell us, was the one who conveyed the order for him to kill Oswald.

Edited by Stan Wilbourne
Posted

Stan, I think you are on a good trail there.

In support of it you have several informants who reported Rugy making a very low key, fast trip to Vegas only days before the assassination... where McWillie was working and where Roselli had gone after losing his FBI tail.

You have the call from the Desert Inn to recruit Belli to covertly defend Ruby... most likely coming either from Roselli or McWillie, certainly from someone Belli's partner had known in Havana.

And then you have Alex Gruber as a potential side channel for orders and money out of LA to Ruby - not to mention Ruby's call to him the afternoon of the assassination.

None of this solidly confirms that Ruby was contracted in advance to eliminate Oswald, however it suggests to me that if Ruby was performing some minor tasks and then got called in for a desparation effort to eliminate Oswald - as the only resource available - it's pretty clear to see where he was getting his direction.

Posted

Excellent stuff, John. I wondered what you were talking about (Suite 8F) this is very important historical info you gathered, into what groups would have the influence and control to manage a coups or protect the fact a coups occured

A gander into other presidential assassinations in US history will illustrate the same type of operation as Dallas ex- a little-known loser, guy takes rap but a look at the background of little guy unveils a lineage, a trail and guys controlling him from the top of the "food chain." (insert the Latin "who gains?")

IMHO, after the bullets flew the only thing left was the cover up, which there certainly was and to achieve this you had to have extremely powerful men to undertake this and you did: Warren, Russell, LBJ, Ford, Dulles, Hoover etal.

I have been combing books about these powerful groups to try to nail down who was the Military Industrial Complex? What was their common bond, the fraternal order they followed? Good thread, fellows

Posted
Excellent stuff, John.  I wondered what you were talking about (Suite 8F)  this is very important historical info you gathered, into what groups would have the influence and control to manage a coups or protect the fact a coups occured 

I should point out that there is no evidence that members of the Suite 8F Group paid for the assassination of JFK. Nor will evidence of this ever be found. We do now know a great deal about the cover-up. However, we cannot be certain that the people who covered it up were the same people who paid for it. In fact, I think that LBJ was the only one involved in the cover-up who was possibly associated with the planning of the assassination. Even this is unlikely (in the sense that LBJ did not know the details of the plot although he probably knew it was connected to a visit to Texas).

Although I do believe in the next few years the men who organized the assassination (Morales, Philips and Robertson) and the gunman who carried it out will be named (with accompanying evidence). The people who paid for the assassination will for ever remain a secret. I am not even convinced that Morales knew who he was working for. I suspect that the go-between did not enjoy a long life after the assassination.

All we can do is to study JFK’s behaviour in the months leading up to the assassination. What was he trying to do? Who was he about to hurt? Who benefited from the assassination? This will not prove who paid for the assassination but it will give people a great many clues.

In the months leading up to the assassination JFK was concerned with two major issues:

(1) Secret negotiations to bring an end to the Cold War and to normalize relations with Cuba.

(2) Secret plans to get LBJ removed as vice president. This would have been the first step in removing the chairman of the powerful Congressional Committees who were blocking his legislation. In 1963 JFK found what he thought was the perfect way of doing this. The Bobby Baker affair.

Robert Kennedy had been investigating Baker for several years. By 1963 he had enough information to get a conviction and began leaking information to John Williams who passed it on to Carl Curtis. However, JFK was not just interested in Baker. He wanted the whole network that had been corrupting American politics since the 1930s to be destroyed. This was the network that was controlled by the Suite 8F Group. Baker was only a small part of this operation. He had done the deals but could not deliver the contracts. That could only be done by people like LBJ, Sam Rayburn, Richard Russell, and other chairman of the powerful committees who controlled Congress. By exposing Bobby Baker he would bring down the whole network. In doing so he would remove the existing right-wing power base in Washington. After this has happened, JFK could run the country as he wanted. He would also prepare the way for RFK to finish off the job he had started.

However, JFK and RFK had underestimated LBJ. They should have studied the way he ran his network. LBJ also obtained silence by implementing those with dangerous information in his corrupt activities. Once in, there was no way out. He had been taught this by Richard Russell when he entered Congress. In fact, it was what Russell did to him. After all, he knew all about LBJ relationship with the Brown brothers that had started in 1937.

The obvious way to trap JFK was through sex. This was his weakness and this was the way to get a stranglehold over JFK. His main pimp was Bill Thompson. LBJ got Baker to do some sub-contracting. The important thing was to get him involved with women with links to the KGB. This he did when he arranged for JFK to have relationships with Ellen Romestsch and Maria Novotney.

LBJ was not comfortable with only having the one scandal at his disposal. JFK had shown he was very good at keeping his sexual relationships out of the press. He also had the problem of J. Edgar Hoover. He wanted to use this information to control JFK. His main concern was to retain his position as Director of the FBI. This information had already been used to get JFK to promise him the job for life.

LBJ therefore decided to get JFK involved in a couple of financial scandals. On the surface this appeared to be difficult as JFK did not need money. However, his financial backers did. This included Matthew McCloskey, the man who was in charge of raising funds for JFK’s presidential campaign in 1960. McCloskey was an old friend of JFK and a member of what became known as the Irish Mafia. LBJ therefore used Baker to get McCloskey the District of Columbia Stadium contract. This government project was initially fixed at $6m but eventually McCloskey was allowed to charge $20m for the project. Paperwork was kept that showed that McCloskey paid Baker $25,000 for the contract.

This was not the finish of JFK’s entrapment. When JFK was elected, LBJ insisted that he appointed John Connally as Secretary of the Navy. When Connally left to become Governor of Texas, he was replaced by another one of LBJ’s friends from Texas, Fred Korth.

The reason LBJ wanted his man as Secretary of the Navy was because of the negotiations taking place for the TFX jet fighter plane (later known as the F-111). During the summer of 1962 it appeared that this $6.5 billion contract would go to the Texas based company, General Dynamics.

The military men who ran the air force and navy wanted the contract to go to the Boeing Aircraft Company based in Seattle. This was based on information supplied by George A. Sprangenberg, chief of the navy’s technical evaluation division. Fred Korth (he had replaced John Connally as Secretary of the Navy in January, 1962) wanted to overrule this decision and grant the contract to General Dynamics, a company in serious financial difficulties (it had lost $400m in the previous two years).

JFK was uneasy about this as rumour began circulating that the contract had been acquired by paying bribes to Korth. JFK was considering stopping this contract going through. However, he was forced to change his mind after he was informed about information that General Dynamics had on him. For in August, 1962, a former FBI agent named I. B. Hale, planted a bug in the apartment owned by Judith Campbell Exner. Hale was also the head of security of General Dynamics. The company had obviously been tipped off that JFK was having a relationship with Sam Giancana’s girlfriend. JFK was therefore blackmailed into allowing the contract to go to General Dynamics.

When Don Reynolds gave evidence to the secret session of the Senate Rules Committee on 22nd November, 1963, he gave information on three scandals. The story of LBJ’s insurance kickback was the least important of these. He also provided information on the District of Columbia Stadium and TFX contracts. When RFK found out what had been said at this secret session he had no option but to cover up the Bobby Baker scandal. Nor could not call for a full investigation of the JFK assassination. To do so, would have revealed enough information to destroy JFK reputation and RFK future political career. LBJ had achieved all his objectives. The cover up had begun.

Posted (edited)

JFK was uneasy about this as rumour began circulating that the contract had been acquired by paying bribes to Korth. JFK was considering stopping this contract going through. However, he was forced to change his mind after he was informed about information that General Dynamics had on him. For in August, 1962, a former FBI agent named I. B. Hale, planted a bug in the apartment owned by Judith Campbell Exner. Hale was also the head of security of General Dynamics. The company had obviously been tipped off that JFK was having a relationship with Sam Giancana’s girlfriend. JFK was therefore blackmailed into allowing the contract to go to General Dynamics.

When Don Reynolds gave evidence to the secret session of the Senate Rules Committee on 22nd November, 1963, he gave information on three scandals. The story of LBJ’s insurance kickback was the least important of these. He also provided information on the District of Columbia Stadium and TFX contracts. When RFK found out what had been said at this secret session he had no option but to cover up the Bobby Baker scandal. Nor could not call for a full investigation of the JFK assassination. To do so, would have revealed enough information to destroy JFK reputation and RFK future political career. LBJ had achieved all his objectives. The cover up had begun.

John, from what source did you get that Hale, Connallys' dead daughter's father-in-law, was bugging Judy Campbell's place? Has anyone ever testified to this?

Edited by Pat Speer
Posted
John, from what source did you get that Hale, Connallys' dead daughter's father-in-law, was bugging Judy Campbell's place?  Has anyone ever testified to this?

My information on the TFX scandal comes from a variety of sources. This includes several biographies of LBJ. Surprising, Robert A. Caro does not mention it in the relevant volume: Master of the Senate. The most detailed account comes in Robert Art’s The TFX Decision (1968) and Clark Mollenhoff’s The Pentagon: Politics, Profits and Plunder (1967).

Details of the break-in appears in Seymour Hersh’s The Dark Side of Camelot (1998). It is a strange book, full of fascinating information, mainly acquired from in-depth interviews. The problem is that Hersh does not know enough about the politics of the period and fails to make enough sense of the information he has acquired. For example, he has no understanding of the role LBJ played in these events.

Hersh's source for the break-in comes from several different sources. Judith Exner’s apartment had been under FBI observation since March, 1962. They had already bugged the apartment in order to find out information about her relationship with Kennedy and Giancana. Hersh claims that this information is available from FBI documents released under the Freedom of Information Act. Hersh then tracked down the FBI agent who had responsible for the Exner operation. His name is William Carter and he was interviewed by Hersh in Oklahoma City in February 1997. From Carter Hersh was able to discover who carried out the break-in. It was Bobby and Billy Hale, the 20 year old twin sons of I. B. Hale.

The FBI never reported the incident to the Los Angeles Police Department as they feared it would compromise their own operation.

Hersh also interviewed Judith Exner in July, 1994. She was unaware of the break-in but knew from JFK that the FBI had bugged the apartment and that they had information about their relationship. I will be writing more about this later but this information included a lot more than about the plots to kill Castro. JFK was doing other deals with Giancana. This is why JFK had to break off his relationship with Exner. However, it had all come to late. By this time, the FBI, LBJ and General Dynamics knew all about what had been going on.

The Senate investigation of the TFX scandal was suspended when JFK was assassinated. The case was never reopened.

Posted

John, something that your posts continue to point out is the unfortunate breadth of knowledge of the JFK sex scandals. Certainly it is clear that Hoover had sufficient ammunition from both the Exner and Rometch scandals (not to mention the Monroe information) to exercise extreme leverage over both JFK and RFK. The thought that his job was actually at risk is rather unrealistic given that sort of leverage. And of course Hoover was directly connected to Texas oil men, primarily Murchison. Summers does a fine job of laying out a lot of those associations in his book on Hoover and its clear that Hoover did well off oil investements recommended by his Texas friends. As a side note I have previously mentioned the one very mysterious share owned by Hoover in Dallas Oil and Uranium. And of course DUO had an office in the DalTex.

Matthew Smith has written several books which deal with the possiblity that Roselli in particular may have been involved in instigating and attempting to use sexual blackmail on the Kennedy's over a three year period....eventually becoming very frustrated when all the projects worked but none gained any signficiant leverage other than for Hoover since they all were kept suppressed and out of the media.

Other than that minor DalTex mystery, you also have to consider that if the oil men had really put pressure on Hoover its unlikely he would not have shared information on Kennedy's affairs, given Hoover's personality he would probably have enjoyed doing so. And given Murchisons immense lobbying network with people like Davidson, I can't avoid the thought that if Murchison had truly wanted to blow JFK out of the 64 raise he had access to a doomsday class election weapon in the sex scandals.

Another thought, from everything I have studied about the oil men, they were extreme individualists. They may have played cards together and they may have done deals together when each thought they could get something they wanted. But to think that they trusted each other enough to initiate a group assassination project is just too much for me personally. On the other hand as I mention in the book, there is concrete evidence - and much more gossip - to suggest that individually they did broach eliminating Kennedy with a variety of people. In particular I feel that H.L. Hunt had good reason o anticipate that some of the offers from he and his sons might produce an attack in Dallas or on the Texas trip.

Finally, in regard to the TFX scandal, I should note that JFK was equally upset with Johnson over both the the TFX and Baker scandals; in his long distance very early morning call to Johnson at the Ranch in Texas in October he chewed out Johnson on both points.

Posted
John, something that your posts continue to point out is the unfortunate breadth of knowledge of the JFK sex scandals. 

I am not sure if this is a compliment or an accusation. I have studied these sex scandals in some detail because I do think it is relevant in understanding JFK’s state of mind in the 1960s.

Certainly it is clear that Hoover had sufficient ammunition from both the Exner and Rometch scandals (not to mention the Monroe information) to exercise extreme leverage over both JFK and RFK.  The thought that his job was actually at risk is rather unrealistic given that sort of leverage. 

I do believe that if information on JFK’s relationship with Rometch and Exner was released he might have had difficulty in winning in 1964. However, I don’t think there was any chance of that happening. The main reason for Hoover and LBJ to have this information was to apply pressure on JFK to act in a certain way. The great irony of the situation was that as one of the men put this information into the public domain the other two would have had their careers destroyed. The same goes for RFK.

Matthew Smith has written several books which deal with the possiblity that Roselli in particular may have been involved in instigating and attempting to use sexual blackmail on the Kennedy's over a three year period....eventually becoming very frustrated when all the projects worked but none gained any signficiant leverage other than for Hoover since they all were kept suppressed and out of the media. 

I have not read these books but it does not surprise me the tactic did not work. It is true that JFK had no problems keeping his sexual affairs out of the press. There were several attempts to blackmail JFK with a wide variety of potentially damaging affairs he had with women during the 1950s and 1960s. JFK never paid up and these stories were taken to the press but they were never published. The most significant of these was Florence Kater who had photographs and tape-recordings of his affair with Pamela Turmure. When JFK refused to pay up she passed this evidence on to the press and the FBI. JFK responded by threatening Kater that he would get her and her husband dismessed from their jobs.

The press refused to publish the story and so she followed JFK around with a placard that showed a photograph of JFK attemting to cover his face while leaving Turmure’s apartment. Despite this campaign by Kater, JFK refused to end his affair with Turmure. In fact, after he became president he appointed Turnure as Jackie’s press secretary.

However, I do believe that the affairs with Exner and Rometsch were of a different nature as the women were connected to the Mafia and the KGB. He might have survived but it would have caused him serious problems. Rosselli might not have had this information but Hoover and LBJ definitely did. But, as I have said before, both could not use this information without hurting themselves.

Another thought,  from everything I have studied about the oil men,  they were extreme individualists.  They may have played cards together and they may have done deals together when each thought they could get something they wanted.  But to think that they trusted each other enough to initiate a group assassination project is just too much for me personally.  On the other hand as I mention in the book,  there is concrete evidence - and much more gossip - to suggest that individually they did broach eliminating Kennedy with a variety of people.  In particular I feel that H.L. Hunt had good reason to anticipate that some of the offers from he and his sons might produce an attack in Dallas or on the Texas trip.

I was not suggesting that the Suite 8F Group had a whip round to pay for JFK’s assassination. The group was a network that enabled them to get both government contracts and to block damaging legislation. They did not act as a group. Although, depending on the issue, for example, the oil depletion allowance, some members did join together to make their efforts more productive.

I am almost certain that it was just one man who paid for JFK’s assassination. After all, most of them gave away more money to charity each year than it would have cost to kill Kennedy.

Who paid? Well, some of the main candidates were dead by 1963: Herman Brown, Jesse H. Jones, Sid Richardson, Robert Kerr and Lawrence D. Bell. Of those left, my choice would be H. L. Hunt. The other possibility was Clint Murchison but he was very ill in 1963 and was probably not up to organizing it. George Brown is another possibility.

Whoever it was, he selected a good person to organize it. This was probably David Morales. He probably got help from David Phillips and Rip Robertson. The person who organized it knew enough about LBJ, Hoover, Bobby Baker, JFK, RFK and the FBI/CIA to ensure that the cover up took place. It was a brilliant operation and was virtually guaranteed success.

Posted

John, my remarks were to the point that I think this is a very important topic and you have done a fine job bringing it out as an issue. JFL's sex scandals included Monroe and Matthew Smith makes a strong case that Roselli and company plus the FBI had her bugged, Exner whom Roselli allowed to use his phone knowing it was bugged by the FBI and Rometch whose affair with JFK gossiped about by Baker to all his cronies (per his own statement). Given that Roselli, Hoover and Baker all knew about such affairs and knowing that Hoover was very much inclined to accomodate Texas oilmen like Murchison - who gave him tips on wells that made him good money - it seems likely that Hoover may even have gossiped about such things when they were all hanging out at La Costa together. Summers does a good job of detailing that sort of thing in his book on Hoover. On a side note I should mention that Hoover owned one very mysterious share in Dallas Oil and Uranium, the company with a representative in the DalTex building.

Given this broad knowledge I feel that many of the people often thought of as "at risk" such as Hoover, Murchison and perhaps even Johnson had "doomsday" class leverage over JFK. You have described Johnson using leverage during the VP nomination, we know Hoover used it on JFK and RFK and who knows what Murchison could have done with his lobbiests and media assets if he had decided to put that into play in 1964.

That was the real point to my remark - the press had let Kennedy slide during his first administration but a dedicated PR campaign with that sort of ammunition would have been another story indeed. JFK had to stretch to cover the whispering campaign about his healty during his initial push for the nomination and it appears some of that was pushed by Johnson. My personal view is that this all suggests that the individual or individuals who decided to literally kill JFK had more personal and more emotional motivations than eliminating him as a political or economic threat in a second administration. Just my opinion of course.

Posted

Quoting John:

"However, I do believe that the affairs with Exner and Rometsch were of a different nature as the women were connected to the Mafia and the KGB. He might have survived but it would have caused him serious problems. Rosselli might not have had this information but Hoover and LBJ definitely did. But, as I have said before, both could not use this information without hurting themselves."

John, it was Rosselli who introduced Campbell to Sinatra who in turn introduced her to JFK (in Las Vegas, Sands Hotel, February of 1960). I believe that Rosselli "planted" Campbell on JFK. So Rosselli knew for sure about JFK and Campbell.

Apparently, Campbell remained very friendly with Rosselli while she was "dating" JFK. In fact, I think it was through the FBI's surveillance of Rosselli that it eventually linked Campbell to JFK.

Query (John, Larry, anybody)

Do you have any basis for believing that when Baker's protege or friend Bill Thompson introduced JFK to Rometsch he or Baker had any reason to suspect her possible connections to East bloc intelligence?

Posted (edited)

Quoting John:

"Hersh also interviewed Judith Exner in July, 1994. She was unaware of the break-in but knew from JFK that the FBI had bugged the apartment and that they had information about their relationship. I will be writing more about this later but this information included a lot more than about the plots to kill Castro. JFK was doing other deals with Giancana. This is why JFK had to break off his relationship with Exner."

JFK and other deals with Giancana? Fascinating; can hardly wait to read your new posts!

Query though: weren't LBJ and JFK in a classic "Mexican stand-off" position? In other words, why could LBJ not stop the Baker investigation by threatening to reveal to the press the Campbell and Rometsch matters? Mexican stand-off: "You cannot kill me because if you do I will also kill you."

Edited by Tim Gratz
Posted
Query though: weren't LBJ and JFK in a classic "Mexican stand-off" position? In other words, why could LBJ not stop the Baker investigation by threatening to reveal to the press the Campbell and Rometsch matters?  Mexican stand-off:  "You cannot kill me because if you do I will also kill you."[/color]

Exactly. It was like two men pointing guns at each other’s heads. That is why I suspect JFK was trying to get RFK to stop leaking information about Baker. However, the problem was that the information was now in the hands of Williams and Curtis. Because of their investigation Reynolds had come forward with his evidence. Ralph Hill had gone to the press with his story. JFK could no longer control the Baker scandal. He did not have the power. Once LBJ was president he was able to use his influence to turn it into a form (a long delayed court-case of Baker and Black that did not touch on the important issues) that would not expose him and the rest of his Suite 8F Group.

Posted
John, from Livingstone's new book on page 84:

There was one more big Texas connection with the Navy who succeeded Connally in Washington.  Fred Korth, also of Fort Worth, like Connally, took Connally's job as Secretary of the Navy under Kennedy, who then prepared to dump him because, as Seth Kantor wrote, was taking advantage of his job to "further some of his Fort Worth banking investments."  Korth showed favoritism to the Continetal National Bank of Fort Worth, which he had been president of until his appointment as Navy Secretary by Kennedy in 1961.

The Contintel National Bank was one of twenty banks that loaned $200 million to F. Worth's General Dynamics to start building the TFX fighter plane.  The TFX became one of the biggest boondoggles and scandals in American history and threatened the entire Kennedy adminstration, as did so much else which emanated out of Texas from Bobby Baker and Howard Hughes, to Lyndon Johnson.

When the scandal got out of control, Korth was asked to resign by Robert McNamara, a man much hated then and for many years after for his later role in the Viet Nam War.  The request for his resignation came just six weeks before Kennedy was assassinated.  Korth had helped award the TFX contract to General Dynamics instead of Seattle's Boeing, which lost out.  Boeing had it's friends...

In 1961, Korth was on the board of directors of Bell Aerospace, formerly Bell Helicopters, where Michael Paine worked...

Thank you for that Stan. The comment about Robert McNamara is interesting. It was McNamara who actually approved the TFX contract. This meant ignoring the advice given by George A. Spangenberg, chief of the navy’s technical evaluation division. Spangenberg later claimed that McNamara was told that the General Dynamics design was “useless” and that the navy did all it could to deny the contract to General Dynamics. Why did McNamara insist on General Dynamics? Why did JFK issue a statement giving his full support to McNamara’s decision?

According to Roswell Gilpatric, the deputy secretary of defense, JFK knew that the contract would go to General Dynamics long before McNamara made his final decision. Fred Korth and Lyndon Johnson were lobbying for General Dynamics but the decision came from JFK and McNamara. Apparently, John McClellan, the chairman of the investigating committee looking into the TFX contract, was informed that it was JFK’s decision and that it was not a good idea for him to question what had taken place.

The TFX contract was a disaster. The original contract stated that each plane would cost $2.8m. In fact, the government was charged over $22m per aircraft. They were completely useless. They ended up being overweight and were far too heavy to land on aircraft carriers. As a result, the navy stopped buying them in 1968.

Fred Korth was the only victim of the scandal. However, he was allowed to resign over an issue that was not related to the TFX scandal. He was replaced by Paul H. Nitze.

This is an interesting statement made by Cliff Carter on 20th May, 1964 that includes details of Korth:

The original conversations concerning President Kennedy's trip to Texas occurred on June 5, 1963 at the Cortez Hotel in El Paso, Texas. President Kennedy had spoken earlier that day at the Air Force Academy and Vice President Johnson had spoken at Annapolis. The President and Vice President met with Governor Connally at the Cortez Hotel to discuss a number of matters, including a trip by the President to Texas. Fred Korth and I were present when the three men assembled, but Fred Korth and I left during their discussion of the President's proposed trip. The first tentative date was to have the trip coincide with Vice-President Johnson's birthday on August 27th, but that was rejected because it was too close to Labor Day. President Kennedy's other commitments prevented him from coming to Texas any sooner than November 21st, which was the date finally set.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKkorth.htm

To get an alternative view of Korth see:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r105:E15OC8-738:

http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/people...s/korth0924.txt

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