Abilene Country Club and De Mohrenschildt

[Mervyn Hagger]

Don Pierson was the founder and President of the Abilene National Bank. He was also the Mayor of Eastland, Texas. His UK radio business was built upon advice from Gordon McLendon. Pierson, Murchison and De Mohrenschildt all had dealings with Papa Doc of Haiti. The spin-off CIA in South Miami had plans involving expat Cubans in Florida, and their attempts to overthrow Fidel Castro. Pierson had dealings with the bank in Miami used by Manuel Artime Buesa concerning the CIA purchase of the mv Olga Patricia (bought as a CIA 'mother ship'), and that same ship was used by Pierson in Europe, came back to Florida and began attacking Cuba, again.

Does anyone have more information about the Abilene Country Club and links to any of these people and events?

[Joe Bauer]

I don't think anyone has come close to the full reveal of George De Mohrenschildt.

He looks and sounds like the perfect triple agent in my view. Or perhaps just a free agent player taking on whatever best deal was offered with mostly financial gain as his main ideological motivation?

I chuckle when I recount his machete chopping hiking trek through the outback and jungles of Mexico which at one point just coincidently brought him and his wife Jeannie to some obscure landing area of a plane carrying some Russian official who Jeanne just had to meet upon landing and included a social get together later that night?

Ha...just serendipitous coincidence?

And George's whimsical shoreline drawings on one of his so-called business consulting trips to an Eastern European country during the cold war?

George De M was definitely a "Man Of Mystery."

Including being an impulsive adventure, woman and dollar chasing rogue?

 

Edited August 22, 2023 by Joe Bauer

[Mervyn Hagger]

3 hours ago, Joe Bauer said:

I don't think anyone has come close to the full reveal of George De Mohrenschildt.

He looks and sounds like the perfect triple agent in my view. Or perhaps just a free agent player taking on whatever best deal was offered with mostly financial gain as his main ideological motivation?

I chuckle when I recount his machete chopping hiking trek through the outback and jungles of Mexico which at one point just coincidently brought he and his wife Jeannie to some obscure landing area of a plane carrying some Russian official who Jeanne just had to meet upon landing and included a social get together later that night?

Ha...just serendipitous coincidence?

And George's whimsical shoreline drawings on one of his so-called business consulting trips to an Eastern European country during the cold war?

George De M was definitely a "Man Of Mystery."

Including being an impulsive adventure, woman and dollar chasing rogue?

 

Joe this is why the Abilene to Haiti story takes on significance. There is a ton of material available and none of it has been spliced into the JFK murder discussion.

[Mervyn Hagger]

"George De M was definitely a "Man Of Mystery.

Including being an impulsive adventure, woman and dollar chasing rogue?"

Joe, in 1943 he married a Dorothy Pierson in Florida and she divorced him soon afterwards. So far I have not been able to establish any family links between Dorothy Pierson and Don Pierson, but it is very interesting that the paths of George De Mohrenschildt and Don Pierson both went through Papa Doc and Haiti. Clint Murchison also had business interests there a,nd for a time part of the long term CIA attack plan using Cuban expats was a new invasion of Cuba proceeded by air raids taking off from Haiti.

[Leslie Sharp]

2 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

"George De M was definitely a "Man Of Mystery.

Including being an impulsive adventure, woman and dollar chasing rogue?"

Joe, in 1943 he married a Dorothy Pierson in Florida and she divorced him soon afterwards. So far I have not been able to establish any family links between Dorothy Pierson and Don Pierson, but it is very interesting that the paths of George De Mohrenschildt and Don Pierson both went through Papa Doc and Haiti. Clint Murchison also had business interests there a,nd for a time part of the long term CIA attack plan using Cuban expats was a new invasion of Cuba proceeded by air raids taking off from Haiti.

Clint Murchison, colleague of George de Mohrenschildt over the years and who invested in Radio Nord with Gordon McLendon, also had dealings with Otto Skorzeny in Spain (as well as in the Houston area Jan 1963) along with Empire Trust's Jack Crichton, Joe Zeppa of Delta Drilling, and Algur Meadows of General American Oil and Republic National Bank of Dallas. 

And, it is well documented that Herbert Itkin had represented de M's interests in Haiti; Itkin appears more than half dozen times in the record maintained by New Orleans' based Pierre Lafitte in the lead up to the assassination in Dallas.

Of possible interest to speculation that a reinvasion of Cuba from Haiti - or possibly the Dominican Republic - was in play in 1963:

Talk Joannides Cuba –

he refer to K org. in

Mex – similar setup now.

Discuss with King – Geo 

+Charles about Havana

Mx trips. (Holdout) [followed with a check mark]

 

(Note: We were discouraged from including the following in our book as it remained an unresolved question within "the community," but I determined that in spite of the controversy and in light of Pierre Lafitte's August 1963 entry (seen above), it was important to revisit.)

J. C. King and AMWORLD

AMWORLD was among the most tightly held secrets of the Kennedy administration, and one that would evade five Congressional investigations following his assassination, until documents were finally revealed in 1990. According to author Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann in Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK, the first AMWORLD document was a SECRET, EYES ONLY five-page memo prepared on June 26, 1963. The authors reveal, “The memo is sent by J. C. King, Chief [of the CIA’s] Western Hemisphere Division, to the ‘Chiefs of Certain [CIA] Stations. The memo is titled: ‘AMWORLD’ Background of Program, Operational Support Requirements and Procedural Rules’. It begins: ‘this will serve to alert you to the inception of AMWORLD, a new CIA program targeted against Cuba. Some manifestations of activity resulting from this program may come to your notice before long.’” Author Waldron continues to provide in-depth analysis of the highly classified operation, highlighting in particular that secrecy was so paramount, normal lines of communication were not adhered to. 

Among CIA records that were finally released, a memorandum titled “AMWORLD MEETING IN MIAMI, 28-29 June 1964,” includes the following: “AMBIDDY-1 [Cuban exile leader Manuel Artime Buesa] claims to have been contacted in the past by the Mafia for the sale of arms.” (Note: The memo also states that the Dominican Republic is often mentioned within AMWORLD as a possible source of support, the significance of which is pursued further in Chapter 8.) In light of Lafitte’s entry to indicate that Santo Trafficante arrived in New Orleans to meet with William King Harvey on August 13, the possibility exists that the meeting at Antoine’s on August 16, and subsequent communication between Lafitte and Joannides, and discussions with J. C. King, George Hunter White, and Charles Siragusa may have surpassed plans for Lee Harvey Oswald’s involvement in the forthcoming assassination of the president (plans that were weeks away from being solidified and sanctioned), but were equally, if not more focused on deliberations at the highest level of AMWORLD, an operation that had been in play for months. 

CIA Officer Henry Hecksher, a native of Hamburg, Germany who joined the OSS and later contributed to the evolution of the CIA, was the case officer of Manuel Artime. As such, Hecksher became involved in AMWORLD in 1963. In 1964, he and Artime traveled to Madrid, Spain to meet with Rolando Cubela, the Cuban revolutionary and founding member of the DRE whose agency contact officer was George Joannides. At the time, Madrid was still a base of operation for Otto Skorzeny and arms dealer Victor Oswald. Author Ralph Ganis stresses the significance of the friendship Otto had maintained with the Berlin Operations Base, including chief of base William King Harvey in the early 1950s. Henry Hecksher, Artime’s minder and directly involved in AMWORLD had served under Bill Harvey in Berlin. (see chapter notes for possible further significance.)
 

Also of possible significance, two station chiefs who piggy backed between Havana and Madrid:

Alfonzo Rodriguez: a.k.a. Earl Williamson, a.k.a. Wallace Growery was station chief in Madrid in 1951 as Otto Skorzeny positioned himself in the Spanish capitol to begin his service to the CIA and his lucrative work for not only himself and wife Ilse, but Johannes Bernhardt’s Sofindus, and the World Commerce Corporation. Rodriguez, who had served in Bill Donovan’s OSS during the war, would have been the boss of Al Ulmer who many researchers will recognize as having gone into private business with Win Scott, the former Station Chief in Mexico City at the time of the assassination of JFK. According to records, in 1944 Rodriguez was posted by the Army Counter Intelligence Corps to the OSS, including stints in London and Tangier, where he was vice counsel, affording him ample opportunity to encounter dubious characters named in this investigation. His obituary reads, “After the war, he was assigned to Costa Rica and served as station chief during the revolution there. He was deputy chief of the CIA’s Latin American division in the late 1940s and served in Madrid and Mexico during the 1950s. He was part of the task force that worked with anti-Castro forces in Miami after the attempted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He concluded his career at the CIA as Director of Training.

 

James Noel: Close agency colleague of Rodriguez, James Noel was the CIA Station Chief in Havana at the time of the failed attempt at the Bay of Pigs. In late 1959, Noel had received instructions from Col. J. C. King, chief of the Western Hemisphere for the agency to prepare an analysis of the political situation in Cuba which, for a specific audience in the government hierarchy, that Fidel Castro, under the influence of his closest collaborators had been converted to Communism and that Cubans were preparing to export the revolution throughout the hemisphere to spread the war against capitalism. King then recommended actions to “solve the Cuban problem, including consideration of eliminating Castro.”” Director Dulles then passed on King’s memorandum to the National Security Council which signed off on “Operation 40,” to address the “Cuban” problem. Presided over by VP Richard Nixon, the group included NSA Gordon Gray. The direct Task Force was headed up by Tracy Barnes who we encounter in a significant essay in our appendix focused on the identity of a major player in Pierre Lafitte’s datebook, coded “T.” Tracy Barnes’s team included Gerry Droller, a.k.a. Frank Bender, an egocentric agent at Central Intelligence who appears on a significant date in the 1963 Lafitte datebook. Also named in the datebook is Jack Crichton, among a cadre of Texas oilmen including future president George H.W. Bush that Richard Nixon had assembled to gather necessary funds for the task force.

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by Leslie Sharp