Pierre Lafitte datebook, 1963

[Jonathan Cohen]

7 hours ago, David Josephs said:

How about the freaking Zapruder film?  do you realize that hasn't even been authenticated?

Uh, except that it has, by Roland Zavada:

https://archive.org/stream/ZavadaReport/Zavada+Report_djvu.txt

http://www.jfk-info.com/zavada1.htm

It's incredible that you, as someone who seems to believe nearly every major piece of evidence in the case has been falsified or altered, jumps right in with both feet to trumpet the veracity of the "Lafitte datebook."

7 hours ago, David Josephs said:

Ben, we have an independent panel of experts right here.  If we can't offer a coherent reason for it to be a fraud in the first place, there's a problem, no?

A "coherent reason" would be to make money and insert one's self/selves into the JFK assassination case, which unfortunately has already happened with Judyth Baker. By the way, this forum is hardly made up of "an independent panel of experts" ...

Edited July 30, 2023 by Jonathan Cohen

[Andrej Stancak]

17 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

@Andrej Stancak It feels wrong that Lafitte's family and Albarelli could decide which records to show to the public and which not. What if anything in unpublished parts of the datebook would be of greater importance than the published records? What if any of the records would shed new light on Lafitte's role in the assassination case? Also, the unpublished entries could help to verify the integrity of the datebook as such.

I appreciate your remarks, and it's understandable that anyone following the assassination research would have a subjective feeling about what is right or wrong in this field of inquiry:

I've asked myself:

1) Why hasn't the Robert Kennedy family allowed access to the files he accumulated during his private investigation into who killed his brother?

2) Why haven't expert(s) on Win Scott published the remaining diaries in his private collection?  A single reference is made in Our Man in Mexico to Scott's post as the Western European division of Office of Special Operations "overseeing all espionage operations collecting intelligence in the friendly nations of West Germany, France, and Great Britain.: We know now that the machinations of Madrid-based Otto Skorzeny crossed Win's desk in the early years of the Cold War. 

3) Why hasn't the DC attorney(s) made available to the "community" writ large the Shaw/Fensterwald records and research on Jean Rene Souetre provided to the HSCA?

4) How many private archives sit idle?

 

Leslie:

while it may be an interesting exercise to compare how primary data have been handled by different researchers, such exercise is not an appropriate response to my and others members' request to submit for analysis a high-resolution copy of the datebook. It is your responsibility as the surviving author and the one who promotes the datebook as a breakthrough in the case to provide the sources on which you base your conclusions. Please post all high-resolution scans (pages) of the datebook you have at your disposal in public domain, for instance on a dedicated web page or a suitable Open Access server. This is the open access policy which has become a standard in modern research. There is no way forward without this step. 

My analysis of one of the pages that I showed in my yesterday post was based on a Kindle version of the book. I opened the document on a PC and made a screenshot from a large screen. I then applied different enhancement methods, such as resizing, adding light, increasing the contrast and reducing the noise. I cannot know what my procedure did with bits of the original text.

In addition to making the high-resolution copies of datebook pages available to the research community, it will be necessary to proceed with authentication of the datebook by a criminal investigation body based on the fact that the diary suggests that the alleged assassin Lee Oswald was unjustly blamed for the murder of the US President. I am not a lawyer and neither am I familiar with the US legal system. However, there must be a legal way to subpoena the datebook and let it be analysed by experts. The authentication process would not be a simple matter, however, it can be done. You may appreciate that I am not asking you to arrange for the authentication of the datebook which may be a costly affair. 

Analysing the datebook as a whole would also allow to evaluate the importance of individual records by someone else than the Authors team. This is essential for acceptance of any conclusions.

May I ask to kindly respond to my points in one post rather in separate posts?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Andrej Stancak

[Ed Berger]

On 7/28/2023 at 2:39 PM, Leslie Sharp said:

Ed, I'm impressed you understood the Javelin angle to this investigation.

Like you, Hank and I looked under the rocks, chased characters that danced between the raindrops (John Wilson- Hudson was a favorite), kicked tires no one was willing to - or perhaps better said, bee hives.

Hank was contacted by a woman who knew the Lafitte children having spent summers at a resort together.  When Hank asked about the Loomis case, she immediately recognized the m.o. Lafitte had defrauded her own father in an exotic flower scheme. She later provided me with a caricature of Lafitte that I'm unable to post on EF due to the size of the file.  I've attempted to get some guidance from our hosts, so hopefully I can add more visuals soon.  One in particular may be of interest: Thomas Grattan Proctor, featured in Coup, in a full blown Heil Hitler salute.


Not to switch gears, but in the event Greg Doudna remains interested in this thread, I want to call attention to the appearance of 'Rothermel' in the Lafitte records.  @Greg Doudna, did you discuss Paul Rothermel at length when you interviewed John Curington? 



 

Thank you Leslie. I have to say, when I got to the section of CiD that discussed Canadian Javelin, I nearly dropped the book in surprise—such a foreign topic, one that I had come to via the World Commerce Corp, and yet there it was. It was only after that, via looking into Mark Millard, that I found that Javelin also directly interlocked with well-trod assassination research alleyways like D.H. Byrd's companies and Great Southwest. 

I would love to know more about the flower scheme, if you're in a position to share that information. The essential component of financial fraud is far too overlooked in studies of dark operations, yet they're vital because they induce much-needed revenue streams for off-the-books matters, in addition to enriching the participants. This became near-universal by the 1980s, but there is a long history of development that got us to that juncture. That's part of the reason I'm interesting in other figures that "danced between the raindrops" like David Baird and Alexander Guterma. 

A question I'd like to pose: in the study of Javelin, did you or Hank ever come across anything on the mysterious Jean-Pierre Francois or his company Societe Transshipping? The encounter between Javelin and JPF/Societe Transshipping dates to at least 1965 (so post-assassination and Lafitte/Loomis fraud, but around the same time as the Roselli stock purchase in Jubilee), and culminated in a deal in 1968 that became the subject of a General Assembly of Newfoundland inquiry:

Quote

This agreement was signed on March 6, 1968, Canadian Javelin Limited, Mr. Speaker. agreed to pay approximately $4 million to get whatever rights were given by this letter. Now any lawyer who acted for them on it would advise them that this letter has no validity, It would not be worth paving a dollar for. But they agreed to pav $4 million, the directors of Canadian Javelin or the people who signed this, to acquire this letter. They have paid $1,977,500 to whoever Society Transshipping is, They owe them $2 million more they say. The question arises: Who owns Society Transshipping? As far as I am concerned this was a scheme to divert $4 million out ,of this project or out of Canadian Javelin for person or persons unknown hiding behind Society Transshipping incorporated in Liechtenstein also a tax haven and also a place where you can incorporate a company and the real owners will never be known. Anyway there is a detailed agreement here as to how the money is to be paid, etc, There is a copy of the Premier's letter attached. Now that agreement was later signed by Society Transshipping to another company called, Pioneer Investment Limited..

Subsequent inquires clarified that the person hiding behind Societe Transshiping was Jean-Pierre Francois. While not much has been written about JPF in English, French press and books have linked him to a wide gamut of shadow-world players, such as the Cagoule, the mafia, the P2 lodge... Take this from a profile that the French paper Liberation did on him after his death (apologies for wonky google-translate):

Quote

At the Liberation, he moved to Switzerland. “I first worked in international trade. A pioneering orientation: the development of third world countries.The use of a decoder is recommended: his first big deal, in 1948, is an arms sale to Pakistani nationalists, performed with a Corsican partner. Over the years, it shows an enigmatic penchant for men with a slightly dubious ties: defectors from Vichy and the Hood [Cagoule], representatives of Opus Dei or P2 lodge, mafia are his business relationships "In his company Transhipping, he recruits the writer Raymond Abellio part-time, hood, refugee in Switzerland and sentenced in France in absentia for acts of collaboration. "This will is cold, impersonal and even hard," said Raymond Abellio of his boss. She is especially impersonal.»Of personnel: this is what characterizes the financial. In Geneva, he established his first political relations: Jean Jardin, the former chief of staff to Pierre Laval, a refugee in Switzerland, introduced him into the circle of Antoine Pinay, where he was offered to serve as a "prête-nom In a insider trading case. François became a banker. "Name breaker": it's quite ironic, when his is falsified. For a time, moreover, he was an honorary consul of Panama: the kingdom, precisely, of straw men.

Given what is written about Vichy and the Cagoule in CiD, it all makes me wonder...

[David McLean]

A few random observations on an enthralling but tedious word slam…

George White and Pierre Lafitte were from at least 1953 engaged in highly illegal druggings and worse (Frank Olsen!) at the behest or employ of the CIA. It seems they both kept factual diaries as insurance against “the pigeon way” that assuredly befell Lee Harvey Oswald.
 

“Authentification” may take different forms and degrees, through physical examination, through contextual verification and corroboration, through the credibility and propenquinity of/to the source material, eg the Gospels and Apostles, or  Pierre, Renee and Phen Lafitte.

One would hope  that accusations of fraud or forgery would be accompanied by some evidence or hint of malfeasance. So far, not convincing. Lafitte was indeed  a con man, but predominantly in the service of the US government. 

Albarelli was a cautious researcher, refusing for example  to endorse the judgment of Frank Olsen’s son re American CBW in Korea or of the esteemed Douglas Valentine re the CIAs LSD ambitions. And the integrity of Hank’s relationship with his sources over many years impressed me, and Leslie seems to be respectful of the responsibility she has inherited from him.

May some empathy and compassion go some way to healing the wounds of division and bring better understanding of our common purpose.

 

 

 

 

 

[Leslie Sharp]

10 hours ago, Greg Doudna said:

I noted earlier that, to my surprise, I found no reference to Jean-Pierre Lafitte in Ralph Ganis's book The Skorzeny Papers (2018)--even though Coup in Dallas (2021) claims Skorzeny was "chief tactician" and Jean-Pierre Lafitte immediately under Skorzeny was "project manager" of an international conspiracy which assassinated JFK. However I was unaware when I wrote that of the actual true reason why Lafitte is missing in Ganis's book.

The true reason was explained by Leslie in a different thread that I did not see until yesterday. The reason is because Ganis had developed significant skepticism about the Lafitte datebook, the only document known that purports to connect Jean-Pierre Lafitte either to Skorzeny or to the assassination of JFK.

Therefore without the Lafitte datebook, whose authenticity Ganis considered questionable, there was no other basis or reason for including any mention of Lafitte in a book dedicated to arguing that Skorzeny assassinated JFK, even if there had not also been a non-disclosure agreement.

The non-disclosure agreement prevented Ganis from discussing the Lafitte datebook, which Albarelli, who lived in North Carolina for two years with access to Ganis's Skorzeny papers, did not allow Ganis, who lived in North Carolina, to see in the United States, or to cite the Lafitte datebook even if Ganis had believed it to be authentic. 

From the thread, "Skorzeny's papers in context of Albarelli's 'Coup in Dallas'", Leslie Sharp, July 4, 2023:

 

"A research friend recently asked: What does Ganis say about Souetre and/or his relationship with Skorzeny? Does Lafitte appear in the book as well? 

"My response: I believe Major Ganis [author of "The Skorzeny Papers: Evidence of the Plot to Kill JFK"] relies primarily if not solely on Otto's Skorzeny's papers along with open source material related to OAS Captain Jean Souetre. The dissolution agreement of the Ganis-Albarelli collaboration prohibits him from including anything Hank may have shared in confidence from the Lafitte datebook about Souetre's movements in November 1963. 

 

"Major Ganis was also prohibited from mentioning Pierre Lafitte in context of the Dallas plot for the same reason. It is my understanding that he developed significant skepticism about the datebook so he was entirely comfortable with the restriction. He argued with me that Hank never showed him the physical instrument. I've made attempts to explain to him that — to my knowledge — Hank did not actually take physical possession of the datebook until November 2018; he invited the Major to meet him in London for the launch of authentication and Ganis declined the invitation. By then, their collaboration was "in trouble" primarily over the characterization of Otto Skorzeny as a "FORMER" N.a.z.i.. Hank contended Skorzeny wasn't a "former" N.a.z.i. (see, for example, evidence in the film footage from his 1975 military funeral.)

"Lafitte hints strongly at an active fascist ideology fueling the plans for the assassination in Dallas. We now realize that "Rudel", Hitler's ace pilot Hans-Ulrich, appears in Lafitte's '63 notes, and that after more than a decade in pursuit of a visa for entry into the US, he suddenly landed one, and landed on the continent around October 9 to attend a conference at Wright-Patterson. The October 9 Lafitte datebook entry spells out active contributors to the plot for Dallas, including Jean Souetre. 
 

"On Hank's behalf, I should make clear he also believed strongly that the information from Ganis's Skorzeny collection which he presented in "The Skorzeny Papers" would some day prove invaluable to serious historians." (https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/29299-skorzenys-papers-in-context-of-albarellis-coup-in-dallas/)

Have you crossed paths with Valery Aginsky and/or Oliver Thorne?

[Greg Doudna]

3 minutes ago, Leslie Sharp said:

Have you crossed paths with Valery Aginsky and/or Oliver Thorne?

Beats me. Who are these people and what does this have to do with anything. This is just deflection. Knock it off. If I did know these people, which I don't, it would be none of your business anyway. 

[Leslie Sharp]

13 hours ago, David Josephs said:

Yes, Elsworth was onto John Masen - who he said resembled Oswald.  Masen bought and sold 6.5 cal ammo fitting the Carcano

this doesn't describe the incident I'm referring to, but it's provides interesting backstory in light of the focus on the Birch Society in Coup.  (fwiw, I see no resemblance other bone structure; features do not resemble, at least to my eye.)

MASEN also advised him that "Minutemen" and John
Birchers in the Dallas area had contacted him for the purpose of
buying ammunition. MASEN never mentioned the names or locations of
these individuals. MASEN never advised SNOGA that he was himself a
member of a John Birch Society or "Minutemen." It was SNOGA's
impression that MASEN was not a member of either of these
organizations, if, in fact, he was in contact with them. This
impression was based primarily on the fact that MASEN was more
interested in money than in political beliefs.

https://alt.assassination.jfk.narkive.com/sO6Pp0YG/frank-ellsworth-s-informant-on-john-masen

[Leslie Sharp]

Just now, Greg Doudna said:

Beats me. Who are these people and what does this have to do with anything. This is just deflection. Knock it off. If I did know these people, which I don't, it would be none of your business anyway. 

Correct me if I've misunderstood: you present as an expert in carbon dating, ink and paper analysis, handwriting examination, do you not?

[Greg Doudna]

 

1 minute ago, Leslie Sharp said:

Correct me if I've misunderstood: you present as an expert in carbon dating, ink and paper analysis, handwriting examination, do you not?

I am not expert in ink and paper analysis or modern handwriting examination. On radiocarbon dating I have some knowledge and publications.   

[Leslie Sharp]

1 minute ago, Greg Doudna said:

 

I am not expert in ink and paper analysis or modern handwriting examination. On radiocarbon dating I have some knowledge and publications.   

So, you've spent the past week or so, and another few weeks in early 2022, lobbing accusations that the datebook is fraudulent when you actually know nothing about ink and paper analysis or handwriting examination?  Do I have that right?

[Leslie Sharp]

I am not expert in ink and paper analysis or modern handwriting examination. On radiocarbon dating I have some knowledge and publications. @Greg Doudna  

Add to that, Greg Doudna is clearly not an expert in Kennedy assassination research: he focused on a couple of key characters in the past few years, and apparently — based on an academic credential —he has been "taken seriously" and welcomed into "the fold."  There are so many holes in his Walker research it is embarrassing. His emotional attachment to Ruth Paine's reputation is curious at best.

Greg is not qualified to analyze the datebook, the information contained therein, nor is he informed enough to assess the material gathered during Hank's investigation.

 I believe "we as a community" should insist that he cease the deflection from this objective approach to solving the cold case murder investigation. 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Greg Doudna]

1 minute ago, Leslie Sharp said:

So, you've spent the past week or so, and another few weeks in early 2022, lobbing accusations that the datebook is fraudulent when you actually know nothing about ink and paper analysis or handwriting examination?  Do I have that right?

Could you rephrase that to "raising questions concerning authenticity" instead of characterizing it as "accusations"? 

It is an issue of scientific method process.

Why not take a different tack of transparency and welcoming of critical questioning, and use the powers at your disposal to aggressively pursue ink and paper analysis and handwriting examination?

No, you and I are both not experts on this, and few on this forum you are asking to engage in hundreds of hours of research on this artifact are. And your point?

[Greg Doudna]

Leslie's whole reaction of personal attacks and deflection in response to questions raised regarding the authenticity question is so bizarre. It is how a wilful forgery operation would respond, not how most sincere researchers would respond. And Leslie seems to be on a continuum in disdaining of questions raising the authenticity question from Albarelli.

[Leslie Sharp]

11 minutes ago, Greg Doudna said:

 

Leslie's whole reaction of personal attacks and deflection in response to questions raised regarding the authenticity question is so bizarre. It is how a wilful forgery operation would respond, not how most sincere researchers would respond. And Leslie seems to be on a continuum in disdaining of questions raising the authenticity question from Albarelli.

Extreme projection, not dissimilar to your projecting the personality traits of Herbert W. Armstrong in an effort to resolve some deep seeded psychological damage. Let Lafitte be the conman that he was, and deliberate the cold case investigation with us, without working through your personal issues.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Leslie Sharp

[Leslie Sharp]

1 hour ago, Greg Doudna said:

Could you rephrase that to "raising questions concerning authenticity" instead of characterizing it as "accusations"? 

It is an issue of scientific method process.

Why not take a different tack of transparency and welcoming of critical questioning, and use the powers at your disposal to aggressively pursue ink and paper analysis and handwriting examination?

No, you and I are both not experts on this, and few on this forum you are asking to engage in hundreds of hours of research on this artifact are. And your point?

Tell me again why you reviewed Coup, without reading it, based on the datebook and the coauthor's independent statement, while ignoring Hank's own introductory remarks related to its provenance and authenticity, when you know nothing about the authentication process?

I'll make another trade: revise your reviews and comments to include an opening caveat with each one that says: I am not an expert in document analysis, nor am I an expert in the Kennedy assassination investigation.  

That would be a giant leap toward that "professionalism" you expect in others.

and use the powers at your disposal to aggressively pursue ink and paper analysis and handwriting examination?

And you're suggesting I haven't?  Oh the hubris.

Do a bit of googling for Aginsky and Thorne.

Edited July 30, 2023 by Leslie Sharp