The Anonymous Phone Call to the Tippits of Connecticut

[Matt Cloud]

As others here begin the process of compiling the names of Russian and Eastern European refugees both during and after World War II looking presumably for any bearing the name "Harvey" (!), I will point out that (very) basic discussion of this thread has been commented upon by the creator of the "NoTrueFlags" youtube channel. 

 

NoTrueFlags describes the conclusion that Bentley was in fact the caller as premature.  I think that is correct, as a matter of prudence, but nonetheless it has been worthwhile to pursue an analysis based on the assumption that she was the caller.  Another line of analysis, one that does not rest on the assumption, is also worthwhile. But in describing the conclusion that Bentley was the caller as premature, NoTrueFlags commits the same error he levels at this thread when he states his own conclusion that the call was, in his words, a "hoax" or that of a "crank."

Whether the anonymous caller was Bentley or not, the names mentioned by the anonymous caller -- Gardos and Weinstock -- can in no one way said to be unrelated to the background of Lee Harvey Oswald or the "Oswald Project."  As mentioned before here, according to FBI reports Emile Gardos would go from Hungary into Moscow at the same time that Lee Harvey Oswald was attempting to defect, in November 1959.  Another FBI report indicates that Louis Weinstock visited the Soviet and Czech embassies in October 1960, possibly relaying information about what U-2 pilot Gary Powers told his Soviet captors.  NoTrueFlags makes no mention of these facts in concluding that the anonymous call was a hoax.  Nor does NoTrueFlags mention the incredible coincidence -- if the call was a hoax or made by a crank -- that Weinstock and Oswald wrote each other in 1962, after Oswald's return to the U.S.  This correspondence, along with Weinstock's affidavit, are in the Warren Commission.  But none of this information was publicly known at the time of the call.  So, the specific mention of these names -- Gardos and Weinstock -- by the anonymous caller suggests that the caller was privy to highly confidential information.  That takes it out of the "hoax" and "crank" category, in my view.  It does not mean the call was not intended as some sort of provocation however.  (NoTrueFlags also makes no mention of the possibility of intentional name distortion as recorded in the memo, and other variations in the call's memorialization.  European accent by the caller getting changed to Spanish accent, etc.)

In addition, NoTrueFlags makes no attempt at either inquiry or speculation as to any larger role of the Tippits in this story.  As mentioned here before, J.D. Tippit of Connecticut was not a mere cartoonist.  He was on active duty as a Colonel in the Air Force reserves and, in 1965 certainly, was working in Washington directly under the Secretary of the Air Force, Harold Brown.

A couple of key facts that NoTrueFlags does point out, or remind us of, are these:

 

1. FBI communications surrounding the call indicate that the caller had said she "was from NY" and had "come here" presumably to Connecticut to make the call.  In 1963 Bentley was living in Connecticut so this fact goes against the identification of Bentley as the caller.

2. FBI communications also indicate that Bentley had been in contact with the FBI for the last two weeks of her life keeping the Bureau up-to-date on what was evidently known to her to be already a terminal diagnosis.  

 

There is more surely that could be said about the analysis in NoTrueFlags videos, but that's enough for now, for starters.

 

The NoTrueFlags video about this thread can be found here:

 

 

and here:

 

 

Edited March 27 by Matt Cloud

[Sandy Larsen]

16 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

NoTrueFlags describes the conclusion that Bentley was in fact the caller as premature.

 

Thanks for you report and comments, Matt.

While considering Bentley as the caller is intriguing, I have some problems with it.

First, as NoTrueFlags points out, Bentley was living in Connecticut at the time, not New York.

Second, I just don't see an intelligent, sophisticated person like Bentley making the call to someone who might be related to Tippit, living in a completely different part of the U.S. (Rather than calling authorities in Dallas, or Washington DC, or even in her own city, New York.)

Third, I find it a little difficult to believe she would use a fake accent.

And fourth, how would Bentley know that the orphan she'd seen several years earlier was the same person as Oswald?

 

What I'm inclined to believe is that there was a woman who was charged with taking care of the orphan boy. And that she did have an accent. And that she called Tippit because she was unsophisticated. Finally, that she recognized Oswald as the orphan she had taken care of simply because they looked the same.

When I was in my twenties, I bumped into a guy at Radio Shack who recognized me and remembered my first name. Yet he hadn't seen me since third grade. Point is, the looks of some people don't change a lot from childhood to adulthood.

 

[Matt Cloud]

16 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Thanks for you report and comments, Matt.

While considering Bentley as the caller is intriguing, I have some problems with it.

First, as NoTrueFlags points out, Bentley was living in Connecticut at the time, not New York.

Second, I just don't see an intelligent, sophisticated person like Bentley making the call to someone who might be related to Tippit, living in a completely different part of the U.S. (Rather than calling authorities in Dallas, or Washington DC, or even in her own city, New York.)

Third, I find it a little difficult to believe she would use a fake accent.

And fourth, how would Bentley know that the orphan she'd seen several years earlier was the same person as Oswald?

 

What I'm inclined to believe is that there was a woman who was charged with taking care of the orphan boy. And that she did have an accent. And that she called Tippit because she was unsophisticated. Finally, that she recognized Oswald as the orphan she had taken care of simply because they looked the same.

When I was in my twenties, I bumped into a guy at Radio Shack who recognized me and remembered my first name. Yet he hadn't seen me since third grade. Point is, the looks of some people don't change a lot from childhood to adulthood.

 

Well, there are problems here again.  We do not know the validity of the claim about the accent in the first place.  We are unable to test it.  If we assume the call was real, we do not have to assume that all details about the call are authentic.  Indeed, evidently, Mrs. Tippit changes her story from Eastern European accent to Spanish accent.  Perhaps she had no accent at all and the accent story was created to cause the very confusion that is being displayed here.  Likewise the claim that she said she was from NY.  That too may have been added in to throw off the investigation.  There are really quite a lot of realistic variables tied-up in this.

 

There are other problems.  The report of J.D. Tippit of Connecticut being related to J.D. Tippit of Texas -- a fact which, according to the Tippits, they did NOT want published but which was published anyway -- appeared in the Norwalk Hour.  The Norwalk Hour is/was a small, regional paper serving the Norwalk and Westport areas of Connecticut.  It becomes a stretch to think that a New York "governess" of Eastern European extraction was scanning the Norwalk paper and latched on to what was surely a very tiny mention in a Connecticut newspaper about the connection between CT Tippits with TX Tippits, and then decided to call.  

 

I agree that there are problems concluding outright that Bentley was the caller.  But the call may have been a provocation to point to her as being the caller.  Then, to counter that provocation, certain details may have been fudged to throw off the provocation.  Lot of potential intrigue at play here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited March 27 by Matt Cloud

[Sandy Larsen]

5 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

Well, there are problems here again.  We do not know the validity of the claim about the accent in the first place.  We are unable to test it.  If we assume the call was real, we do not have to assume that all details about the call are authentic. 

 

As I explained earlier, I believe that the report was unaltered. The part about the Tippit couple hearing different accents isn't surprising at all.

 

[Matt Cloud]

8 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

As I explained earlier, I believe that the report was unaltered. The part about the Tippit couple hearing different accents isn't surprising at all.

 

The "beliefs" of you or anyone posting here, are irrelevant unless and until they can be subjected to analysis.  I cannot believe statements of personal belief fly around here as even an acceptable level of commentary, let alone being determinative of anything.  

 

So you believe something.  Okay.  Noted.

Edited March 27 by Matt Cloud

[Sandy Larsen]

9 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

The "beliefs" of you or anyone posting here, are irrelevant unless and until they can be subjected to analysis.  I cannot believe statements of personal belief fly around here as even an acceptable level of commentary, let alone being determinative of anything.  

 

So you believe something.  Okay.  Noted.

 

You, in contrast, question everything about the Tippit call report.

Given that it is all questionable, you'll never be able to determine anything.

Good luck with that M.O.

 

[Matt Cloud]

Quite the contrary.  Merely by looking into the Tippit call and pursuing multiple lines of assumption the following, inter alia, has been learned.

1. Elizabeth Bentley testified in 1948 that during the FDR administration, the Soviets learned the U.S. had broken, or were about to break, the VENONA cables.  “That the White House informant, who remained unidentified, gave the word that the Americans ‘were about to break – or translate the Russian code.’  When excited Russians asked ‘which code’ she was at loss for explanation ‘and so was this contact man she said.’”

 

See “Woman Links Spies to U.S. War Offices and White House; Elizabeth T. Bentley Accuses Commerce Official as Source of Data Sent to Russia; Wallace Leader Named; Senate Inquiry Witness Says Informer in President’s Home Warned of Broken Code,” C.P. Trussell, New York Times, July 31, 1948, p. 1.

 

Most histories of VENONA attribute the Soviets learning of VENONA having been cracked to Kim Philby or William Weisband, with usual estimations of the break as occurring in 1948.  That Bentley said it had occurred during the Roosevelt years is significant, and potentially alters all understandings of VENONA material and “when we knew they knew we knew.”  That question, when the U.S. knew that the Soviets knew the U.S. had broken the cables’ code, was – coincidentally of course – a question repeatedly asked by Senator Moynihan of his staff to research in the late 1990s, as the state of knowledge in those years was exploding and very much in flux.  The key point for now is that Soviets knew the cable was cracked and continued using it.

 

 

2. Beginning in 1945, Bentley’s FBI handler was William King Harvey, then of the F.B.I., along with Robert Lamphere and Wililiam J. Cotter.  

 

“Harvey was … among a trio of FBI agents who made up the first U.S. counterespionage team aimed at the Soviets. He was in the thick of a case that became one of the biggest spy stories of the time when it was made public several years later. In the fall of 1945, a woman named Elizabeth Bentley approached the FBI to confess that she had worked for years as a courier for a Soviet spy ring, exposing a shocking penetration of the U.S. government by Soviet intelligence. Eventually, she gave the names of more than a hundred people in the United States and Canada who were working for the Soviets, including twenty-seven people in government agencies, among them Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official.”

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-hick-from-indiana-who-nailed-master-spy-kim-philby

 

 

As discussed here previously, Cotter was married to Virginia Alicia McMahon of Norwalk, CT, who worked as a cryptanalyst on VENONA at Arlington Hall during and after the war.  She deceased at age 42 in 1962.

 

 

3. Elizabeth Bentley would begin teaching in Louisiana in 1953, at a Catholic School, around same time Lee Harvey Oswald also was in school in Louisiana.

 

4. Louis Weinstock, head of the Painters’ Union, would go on trial in the early to mid-‘50s for subversive activities (the Smith Act) and perjury, inter alia, in NY, before Judge Irving R. Kaufman of Rosenberg trial fame and in DC, before E. Barrett Prettyman, later famous for the Castro-Donovan-Alfred Boerum (a McMahon brother-in-law) negotiations to secure the Bay of Pigs prisoners in 1962.  Weinstock served about two-years’ time, and some of the issues over which he was originally charged were dismissed or reversed over the ensuing years – the disposition of the cases is worth noting.

 

See “Weinstock Admits Treachery of CP in Fight on Smith Act,” The Militant, Jan. 31, 1949 (highlighting divisions between Stalinists and Trotskyites) (“Weinstock used to be secretary-treasurer of Painters District Council No. 9, and it was in that capacity in 1944 that he played his part in the scabby Stalinist campaign to prevent the mobilization of the labor movement against the Smith Act when 18 Socialist Worker Party and C.I.O. members were railroaded to prison under its provisions in the Minneapolis trial. The members of the union have since then kicked Weinstock out of that post, and the forum he used in discussing The Militant’s expose was a meeting … held at Yorkville Temple on Jan. 17.  He could not deny that he and his fellow Stalinists had prevented the District Council from extending aid to the Civil Rights Defense Committee, which was helping the 18 Trotskyites.”).

 

From FBI report on Claudia Jones, part 10 of 10, p. 71:

 

“On January 10, 1955, United States District Court Irving R. Kaufman ordered revocation of bail and ordered warrants issued for all defendants except Louis Weinstock, who was then on trial in a separate perjury proceeding in [D.C.].”

 

See also Louis Weinstock v. United States, 231 F.2d 699 (D.C. Cir. 1956); Louis Weinstock, Petitioner, v. Subversive Activities Control Board, Respondent, 331 F.2d 75 (D.C. Cir. 1963) (Submitted October 3, 1962, Decided December 17, 1963)

 

In Harvey and Lee (2003), p. 67, John Armstrong notes the leniency of the treatment toward Weinstock “suggests that he may have been working for the U.S. Government.”  (That seems to have go unnoticed here.)

 

5. On December 8, 1959, an FBI Operation Solo report to Director Hoover from SAC Chicago states that in the investigation pertaining to Louis and Rose Weinstock, an informant stated “Weinstock also stated that while in Hungary, he had seen Emil and Grace Blair Gardos.  They have a son who is attending a university in Hungary.  He is studying to be a physicist and has almost completed his education.  Emil Gardos was scheduled to leave Hungary for Moscow on or about November 1, 1959.  He is scheduled to be a Commercial Attaché in Moscow.”

 

November 1, 1959 is – coincidentally – virtually the precise date that Lee Harvey Oswald is attempting to gain entry via defection into the Soviet Union.

 

6.  On October 25, 1960, a U.S. Department of Justice FBI background memorandum states that Louis Weinstock, along with Communist Party attorney Mary Metlay Kaufman, planned on traveling from NY to DC the next day via train to meet with Soviet Embassy officials.

 

Kaufman had been the invited guest of Moscow to the Francis Gary Powers U-2 trial there a few weeks before. A November 2, 1960 FBI memo to Director J. Edgar Hoover from SAC NY states that an informant “advised that on August 26, 1960,” Kaufman “stated that while in Moscow, she had learned from Powers’ defense counsel Grinev (ph) that ‘Security Police Officials already were in town when Powers was brought in by the local people [after being shot-down].’ [IN OTHER WORDS – THEY WERE WAITING FOR HIM.]  Grinev (ph) also informed Kaufman that Powers is a highly intelligent person.  He told the Moscow officials everything and was most cooperative.  He spared no details, and volunteered information regarding matters he was not questioned about.”

 

QUERY: Is this part of the set-up for having Oswald take blame for Popov’s mole’s claim that a Soviet mole in the U.S. had given technical plans for the U-2 to the Soviets?

 

 

7.  On December 15, 1960, The Joint Study Group on Foreign Intelligence Activities of the United States Government is submitted to Allen Dulles Director of CIA from Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, CIA inspector General and Robert M. Macy, Chief of the International Division, Bureau of the Budget, et al. Recall, above, it was with Bob Macy that Moynihan went around on 11/22/63 saying “We must get hold of Oswald.”

 

 

8.  Spring 1962, Lee Harvey Oswald writes the International Rescue Committee for aid in returning to the U.S.  The IRC had been run by Leo Cherne in the 1950s, and specialized in Hungarian relief aid.  Recall, above, Cherne, along with Clare Booth Luce, who later informed CIA Director Colby of a counterintelligence op run against Oswald after he had infiltrated her anti-Castro Cubans after Bay of Pigs, and Adolf Berle, who had given the cold-shoulder to Bentley’s compatriot Whittaker Chambers’ claims of Soviet espionage in 1939, were authors of various “Situation in Hungary” reports in the 1950s.  Moynihan worked for Cherne at the IRC circa ’53-55.

 

9. June 1, 1962. Ft. Worth Star Telegram, p. 11: “U.S. Moves to Order Registration of Reds.”  “Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy formally requested a government agency Thursday to label 10 persons [including Louis Weinstock] as Communists and order them to register under the 1950 internal security act.”

 

10. December 19, 1962.  Louis Weinstock, now of the Worker, writes to thank him for his offer of photo enlargement services for advertisement purposes for The Worker.  His affidavit on the matter is even included in the Warren Commission. (That important detail, among others, seems to have been overlooked on this forum, btw.)  This photographic work by Oswald would possibly be an offshoot of practices learned while in the employ of Jaggers-Chiles Stovall, and would necessary implicate photo reconnaissance work, which rely on similar enlargement procedures. 

 

See Weinstock’s affidavit to the Warren Commission.  (Among other facts, that seems to have gone unnoticed around here.)

 

Interesting that Bentley, assuming it WAS Bentley, just days after the assassination, somehow was able to link up Oswald and Weinstock – before it had become publicly known that the two had written each other.  Amazing.

 

11. It should be noted further that matters involving the U-2, photo reconnaissance and imagery and balance of power strategic thinking in this area are all matters clearly within the purview of persons such as Whiz Kid Harold brown, formerly of RAND -- along with Paul Kecskemeti – and for who Air Force Col. J.D. Tippit of Connecticut, the person to whom Bentley placed the infamous call at issue just after the assassination, worked for, as Air Force Secretary, at least -- we know -- in 1965.

 

 

I'll stick with my "M.O."

Edited March 27 by Matt Cloud

[Jim Hargrove]

5 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Thanks for you report and comments, Matt.

While considering Bentley as the caller is intriguing, I have some problems with it.

First, as NoTrueFlags points out, Bentley was living in Connecticut at the time, not New York.

Second, I just don't see an intelligent, sophisticated person like Bentley making the call to someone who might be related to Tippit, living in a completely different part of the U.S. (Rather than calling authorities in Dallas, or Washington DC, or even in her own city, New York.)

Third, I find it a little difficult to believe she would use a fake accent.

And fourth, how would Bentley know that the orphan she'd seen several years earlier was the same person as Oswald?

 

What I'm inclined to believe is that there was a woman who was charged with taking care of the orphan boy. And that she did have an accent. And that she called Tippit because she was unsophisticated. Finally, that she recognized Oswald as the orphan she had taken care of simply because they looked the same.

When I was in my twenties, I bumped into a guy at Radio Shack who recognized me and remembered my first name. Yet he hadn't seen me since third grade. Point is, the looks of some people don't change a lot from childhood to adulthood.

 

Sandy,

Bentley did, however, spend considerable portions of her life in NYC,  and it seems entirely reasonable to believe she would have expected greater anonymity as a “resident” of New York City than as an inhabitant of Connecticut.

The caller’s choice of the Tippits puzzled me for a long time, but the probable solution is that although she honestly feared being killed, she wasn’t as afraid of the Commies as she was of the spooks running the Oswald Project in America. No doubt it was obvious to her that “Lee Harvey Oswald” was a U.S. intelligence op.

Matt,

Thanks for the YouTube link.  NoTrueFlags’ belief that Harvey Oswald was at any time “controlled by the Communists” while in the U.S. is at odds with John Armstrong’s careful analysis.  

I agree with you that searching for refugees with a name similar to any part of “Lee Harvey Oswald” would be in all likelihood fruitless.  Harvey was probably given his name and new identity after he was already at least a landed immigrant.

Lately, I’ve been looking for any association between Edwin Ekdahl and groups such as the U.S. Committee for the Care of European Children and the like, without the slightest success so far.  As time permits, I’ll do the same with Gardos, Blair and Weinstock, but even this approach is probably a very long shot.  

[Jim Hargrove]

5 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

3. Elizabeth Bentley would begin teaching in Louisiana in 1953, at a Catholic School, around same time Lee Harvey Oswald also was in school in Louisiana.

As I already stated here, it’s a little more complicated than that.

During the early months of 1953, Russian-speaking Lee HARVEY Oswald was truanting school in NYC, serving a brief sentence in Youth House, and then probably was relocated to North Dakota to avoid the NYC judicial system, and, by late summer 1953 was being eased into the New Orleans public school system by taking just two classes for a semester. He stayed in New Orleans until mid-1954. After a brief period in Fort Worth, TX, he was back in New Orleans, at least until late 1955.

Throughout 1953, American-born LEE Harvey Oswald was living in the Bronx, NYC and attending school regularly.  In early 1954, LEE moved to New Orleans, staying for most of the year at 1454 St. Mary’s, Apt. 6, and then at 126 Exchange until mid-1956.

The Warren Commission published documents showing that, while one LHO was attending school in NYC, the other was in school in New Orleans.

This NYC Board of Education record shows that LEE Harvey Oswald attended Public School 44 in New York from 3/23/53 until Jan. 1954.

But these Beauregard New Orleans records show HARVEY Oswald attended 89 days of school during the fall semester of 1953, at the same time LEE Oswald attended PS 44 in New York City.  Harvey only took Phys Ed and Science during the fall 1953 semester at Beauregard, probably because his handlers were worried about his truancy in NYC, which nearly exposed the Oswald Project.

[Matt Cloud]

14 hours ago, Jim Hargrove said:

As I already stated here, it’s a little more complicated than that.

During the early months of 1953, Russian-speaking Lee HARVEY Oswald was truanting school in NYC, serving a brief sentence in Youth House, and then probably was relocated to North Dakota to avoid the NYC judicial system, and, by late summer 1953 was being eased into the New Orleans public school system by taking just two classes for a semester. He stayed in New Orleans until mid-1954. After a brief period in Fort Worth, TX, he was back in New Orleans, at least until late 1955.

Throughout 1953, American-born LEE Harvey Oswald was living in the Bronx, NYC and attending school regularly.  In early 1954, LEE moved to New Orleans, staying for most of the year at 1454 St. Mary’s, Apt. 6, and then at 126 Exchange until mid-1956.

The Warren Commission published documents showing that, while one LHO was attending school in NYC, the other was in school in New Orleans.

This NYC Board of Education record shows that LEE Harvey Oswald attended Public School 44 in New York from 3/23/53 until Jan. 1954.

But these Beauregard New Orleans records show HARVEY Oswald attended 89 days of school during the fall semester of 1953, at the same time LEE Oswald attended PS 44 in New York City.  Harvey only took Phys Ed and Science during the fall 1953 semester at Beauregard, probably because his handlers were worried about his truancy in NYC, which nearly exposed the Oswald Project.

Let's see here.  Since you evidently carry around in your back-pocket the entire and unquestionable "Harvey & Lee" theory -- or is that fact? -- biography, which you then seem wiling to wield as a veto over any and all comments that may in any way stray from, let alone alone merely question, that dogma, perhaps it is time, past time even, to present the chronology in your own words, with your own name and face attached to it, along with of course the supporting evidentiary citations that make the case.  

 

As far as I am aware this thread is not an advertisement for you, John Armstrong or whatever knowledge you claim -- but never present -- to possess.

 

You keep stepping on top of comments here pronouncing what is and isn't.  Why not now, "at long last," lay it out.  Take the time and compose the chronology with support.  Then we can test it.

[Sandy Larsen]

22 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

Quite the contrary.  Merely by looking into the Tippit call and pursuing multiple lines of assumption the following, inter alia, has been learned.

1. Elizabeth Bentley testified in 1948 that during the FDR administration, the Soviets learned the U.S. had broken, or were about to break, the VENONA cables.  “That the White House informant, who remained unidentified, gave the word that the Americans ‘were about to break – or translate the Russian code.’  When excited Russians asked ‘which code’ she was at loss for explanation ‘and so was this contact man she said.’”

 

See “Woman Links Spies to U.S. War Offices and White House; Elizabeth T. Bentley Accuses Commerce Official as Source of Data Sent to Russia; Wallace Leader Named; Senate Inquiry Witness Says Informer in President’s Home Warned of Broken Code,” C.P. Trussell, New York Times, July 31, 1948, p. 1.

 

Most histories of VENONA attribute the Soviets learning of VENONA having been cracked to Kim Philby or William Weisband, with usual estimations of the break as occurring in 1948.  That Bentley said it had occurred during the Roosevelt years is significant, and potentially alters all understandings of VENONA material and “when we knew they knew we knew.”  That question, when the U.S. knew that the Soviets knew the U.S. had broken the cables’ code, was – coincidentally of course – a question repeatedly asked by Senator Moynihan of his staff to research in the late 1990s, as the state of knowledge in those years was exploding and very much in flux.  The key point for now is that Soviets knew the cable was cracked and continued using it.

 

 

2. Beginning in 1945, Bentley’s FBI handler was William King Harvey, then of the F.B.I., along with Robert Lamphere and Wililiam J. Cotter.  

 

“Harvey was … among a trio of FBI agents who made up the first U.S. counterespionage team aimed at the Soviets. He was in the thick of a case that became one of the biggest spy stories of the time when it was made public several years later. In the fall of 1945, a woman named Elizabeth Bentley approached the FBI to confess that she had worked for years as a courier for a Soviet spy ring, exposing a shocking penetration of the U.S. government by Soviet intelligence. Eventually, she gave the names of more than a hundred people in the United States and Canada who were working for the Soviets, including twenty-seven people in government agencies, among them Alger Hiss, a senior State Department official.”

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-hick-from-indiana-who-nailed-master-spy-kim-philby

 

 

As discussed here previously, Cotter was married to Virginia Alicia McMahon of Norwalk, CT, who worked as a cryptanalyst on VENONA at Arlington Hall during and after the war.  She deceased at age 42 in 1962.

 

 

3. Elizabeth Bentley would begin teaching in Louisiana in 1953, at a Catholic School, around same time Lee Harvey Oswald also was in school in Louisiana.

 

4. Louis Weinstock, head of the Painters’ Union, would go on trial in the early to mid-‘50s for subversive activities (the Smith Act) and perjury, inter alia, in NY, before Judge Irving R. Kaufman of Rosenberg trial fame and in DC, before E. Barrett Prettyman, later famous for the Castro-Donovan-Alfred Boerum (a McMahon brother-in-law) negotiations to secure the Bay of Pigs prisoners in 1962.  Weinstock served about two-years’ time, and some of the issues over which he was originally charged were dismissed or reversed over the ensuing years – the disposition of the cases is worth noting.

 

See “Weinstock Admits Treachery of CP in Fight on Smith Act,” The Militant, Jan. 31, 1949 (highlighting divisions between Stalinists and Trotskyites) (“Weinstock used to be secretary-treasurer of Painters District Council No. 9, and it was in that capacity in 1944 that he played his part in the scabby Stalinist campaign to prevent the mobilization of the labor movement against the Smith Act when 18 Socialist Worker Party and C.I.O. members were railroaded to prison under its provisions in the Minneapolis trial. The members of the union have since then kicked Weinstock out of that post, and the forum he used in discussing The Militant’s expose was a meeting … held at Yorkville Temple on Jan. 17.  He could not deny that he and his fellow Stalinists had prevented the District Council from extending aid to the Civil Rights Defense Committee, which was helping the 18 Trotskyites.”).

 

From FBI report on Claudia Jones, part 10 of 10, p. 71:

 

“On January 10, 1955, United States District Court Irving R. Kaufman ordered revocation of bail and ordered warrants issued for all defendants except Louis Weinstock, who was then on trial in a separate perjury proceeding in [D.C.].”

 

See also Louis Weinstock v. United States, 231 F.2d 699 (D.C. Cir. 1956); Louis Weinstock, Petitioner, v. Subversive Activities Control Board, Respondent, 331 F.2d 75 (D.C. Cir. 1963) (Submitted October 3, 1962, Decided December 17, 1963)

 

In Harvey and Lee (2003), p. 67, John Armstrong notes the leniency of the treatment toward Weinstock “suggests that he may have been working for the U.S. Government.”  (That seems to have go unnoticed here.)

 

5. On December 8, 1959, an FBI Operation Solo report to Director Hoover from SAC Chicago states that in the investigation pertaining to Louis and Rose Weinstock, an informant stated “Weinstock also stated that while in Hungary, he had seen Emil and Grace Blair Gardos.  They have a son who is attending a university in Hungary.  He is studying to be a physicist and has almost completed his education.  Emil Gardos was scheduled to leave Hungary for Moscow on or about November 1, 1959.  He is scheduled to be a Commercial Attaché in Moscow.”

 

November 1, 1959 is – coincidentally – virtually the precise date that Lee Harvey Oswald is attempting to gain entry via defection into the Soviet Union.

 

6.  On October 25, 1960, a U.S. Department of Justice FBI background memorandum states that Louis Weinstock, along with Communist Party attorney Mary Metlay Kaufman, planned on traveling from NY to DC the next day via train to meet with Soviet Embassy officials.

 

Kaufman had been the invited guest of Moscow to the Francis Gary Powers U-2 trial there a few weeks before. A November 2, 1960 FBI memo to Director J. Edgar Hoover from SAC NY states that an informant “advised that on August 26, 1960,” Kaufman “stated that while in Moscow, she had learned from Powers’ defense counsel Grinev (ph) that ‘Security Police Officials already were in town when Powers was brought in by the local people [after being shot-down].’ [IN OTHER WORDS – THEY WERE WAITING FOR HIM.]  Grinev (ph) also informed Kaufman that Powers is a highly intelligent person.  He told the Moscow officials everything and was most cooperative.  He spared no details, and volunteered information regarding matters he was not questioned about.”

 

QUERY: Is this part of the set-up for having Oswald take blame for Popov’s mole’s claim that a Soviet mole in the U.S. had given technical plans for the U-2 to the Soviets?

 

 

7.  On December 15, 1960, The Joint Study Group on Foreign Intelligence Activities of the United States Government is submitted to Allen Dulles Director of CIA from Lyman B. Kirkpatrick, CIA inspector General and Robert M. Macy, Chief of the International Division, Bureau of the Budget, et al. Recall, above, it was with Bob Macy that Moynihan went around on 11/22/63 saying “We must get hold of Oswald.”

 

 

8.  Spring 1962, Lee Harvey Oswald writes the International Rescue Committee for aid in returning to the U.S.  The IRC had been run by Leo Cherne in the 1950s, and specialized in Hungarian relief aid.  Recall, above, Cherne, along with Clare Booth Luce, who later informed CIA Director Colby of a counterintelligence op run against Oswald after he had infiltrated her anti-Castro Cubans after Bay of Pigs, and Adolf Berle, who had given the cold-shoulder to Bentley’s compatriot Whittaker Chambers’ claims of Soviet espionage in 1939, were authors of various “Situation in Hungary” reports in the 1950s.  Moynihan worked for Cherne at the IRC circa ’53-55.

 

9. June 1, 1962. Ft. Worth Star Telegram, p. 11: “U.S. Moves to Order Registration of Reds.”  “Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy formally requested a government agency Thursday to label 10 persons [including Louis Weinstock] as Communists and order them to register under the 1950 internal security act.”

 

10. December 19, 1962.  Louis Weinstock, now of the Worker, writes to thank him for his offer of photo enlargement services for advertisement purposes for The Worker.  His affidavit on the matter is even included in the Warren Commission. (That important detail, among others, seems to have been overlooked on this forum, btw.)  This photographic work by Oswald would possibly be an offshoot of practices learned while in the employ of Jaggers-Chiles Stovall, and would necessary implicate photo reconnaissance work, which rely on similar enlargement procedures. 

 

See Weinstock’s affidavit to the Warren Commission.  (Among other facts, that seems to have gone unnoticed around here.)

 

Interesting that Bentley, assuming it WAS Bentley, just days after the assassination, somehow was able to link up Oswald and Weinstock – before it had become publicly known that the two had written each other.  Amazing.

 

11. It should be noted further that matters involving the U-2, photo reconnaissance and imagery and balance of power strategic thinking in this area are all matters clearly within the purview of persons such as Whiz Kid Harold brown, formerly of RAND -- along with Paul Kecskemeti – and for who Air Force Col. J.D. Tippit of Connecticut, the person to whom Bentley placed the infamous call at issue just after the assassination, worked for, as Air Force Secretary, at least -- we know -- in 1965.

 

 

I'll stick with my "M.O."

 

Oh goodie... another data dump. Noted.

I guess the rest of us will have to use our considered reasoning and judgement to discern which parts of it are relevant and which parts aren't.

Of course, in doing so we risk the condemnation of Matt Cloud, who is averse to the concept of an individual forum member BELIEVING something, even if the belief is based on sound reasoning.

 

[Matt Cloud]

If you fail to grasp the significance of any of those items with respect to the anonymous call to the Tippits of Connecticut, just ask.  Such failure, if it indeed exists, is your problem, not mine.  Till then, I will assume, rightly or wrongly, that you do grasp the significance and await -- still -- discussion of the implications here by you or anyone.  

 

Statements based on mere belief, without more -- without an articulation of the sound reasoning you profess to have but do not reveal -- are just that: mere opinion.  Such comments do nothing to advance understanding in any direction.  Searching for the truth of history -- my history as well as yours -- is not a poll-driven exercise.  

 

I would think Admin moderators would encourage commentary which fulfills that goal, and suggest limitations upon others and themselves no less, which do not add value to the discussion as a whole.  Alternatively, as Admin here, you can keep the thread devoted to more or less daily updates between two individuals as to what phone book they looked for today but couldn't find.  

 

Which do you want?

 

Edited March 28 by Matt Cloud

[Sandy Larsen]

52 minutes ago, Matt Cloud said:

Statements based on mere belief, without more -- without an articulation of the sound reasoning you profess to have but do not reveal -- are just that: mere opinion.

 

I DID use sound reasoning. Here's my post that you criticized:

 

On 3/27/2024 at 12:33 PM, Sandy Larsen said:

As I explained earlier, I believe that the report was unaltered. The part about the Tippit couple hearing different accents isn't surprising at all.

 

I had given my reasoning earlier in the thread. Apparently you missed it.

Now, if you had asked me to repeat my reasoning rather than responding with your smart-ass reply, I would have been happy to give it to you.

 

[Matt Cloud]

6 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I DID use sound reasoning. Here's my post that you criticized:

 

 

I had given my reasoning earlier in the thread. Apparently you missed it.

Now, if you had asked me to repeat my reasoning rather than responding with your smart-ass reply, I would have been happy to give it to you.

 

Sandy -- why not quote the explanation you state you gave earlier?  Where is it?  

[Sandy Larsen]

2 hours ago, Matt Cloud said:

Sandy -- why not quote the explanation you state you gave earlier?  Where is it?  

 

It is several pages back and I don't have the time or patience to search for it. But I will reconstruct it the best I can if you like.