Oswald a member of the Minutemen?

[Steve Thomas]

I have been reading Peter Noyes, Legacy of Doubt over the weekend.

In his book, Noyes wrote, "I was somewhat startled during a conversation with the California Attorney General's office in 1968, when he said that information picked up by agents in the field indicated that Oswald was connected with far right extremist groups following his return from the Soviet Union; he was not the sniveling little Communist everyone thought him to be. The Attorney General's official pointed out that undercover officers had infiltrated the Minutemen and were startled to hear members of the gun-toting cadre heap praise on Oswald and embrace him as one of their own."

It sort of reminded me of Guy Bannister telling his Secretary, "He's one of us."

Does anyone have any information on this subject? It might explain why American Nazi Party Head, George Lincoln Rockwell's name was in Oswald's address book.

Steve Thomas

[Gibson Vendettuoli]

I don't know about it, but Banister was connected to the Minutemen and the Lake Pontchartrain camps and maybe Oswald was related to that extent, that he trained there and was in a rifle unit with some Minutemen. That would have put him in a position to tell the FBI about the arms cache that a lot of Cubans were arrested over when Kennedy shut down the camps.

[John Dolva]

I have been reading Peter Noyes, Legacy of Doubt over the weekend.

In his book, Noyes wrote, "I was somewhat startled during a conversation with the California Attorney General's office in 1968, when he said that information picked up by agents in the field indicated that Oswald was connected with far right extremist groups following his return from the Soviet Union; he was not the sniveling little Communist everyone thought him to be. The Attorney General's official pointed out that undercover officers had infiltrated the Minutemen and were startled to hear members of the gun-toting cadre heap praise on Oswald and embrace him as one of their own."

It sort of reminded me of Guy Bannister telling his Secretary, "He's one of us."

Does anyone have any information on this subject? It might explain why American Nazi Party Head, George Lincoln Rockwell's name was in Oswald's address book.

Steve Thomas

Any one heard of a George Bumb or a Bill Schmitt in this context?

Edited August 19, 2006 by John Dolva

[David G. Healy]

I have been reading Peter Noyes, Legacy of Doubt over the weekend.

In his book, Noyes wrote, "I was somewhat startled during a conversation with the California Attorney General's office in 1968, when he said that information picked up by agents in the field indicated that Oswald was connected with far right extremist groups following his return from the Soviet Union; he was not the sniveling little Communist everyone thought him to be. The Attorney General's official pointed out that undercover officers had infiltrated the Minutemen and were startled to hear members of the gun-toting cadre heap praise on Oswald and embrace him as one of their own."

It sort of reminded me of Guy Bannister telling his Secretary, "He's one of us."

Does anyone have any information on this subject? It might explain why American Nazi Party Head, George Lincoln Rockwell's name was in Oswald's address book.

Steve Thomas

Some rumors had Oswald working undercover (ATF?), doing grunt work on gun running, illegal fire arm sales or some such thing. Not sure if Stone's 'JFK' alluded to this or not.

[Ashton Gray]

I don't know about it, but Banister was connected to the Minutemen and the Lake Pontchartrain camps and maybe Oswald was related to that extent, that he trained there and was in a rifle unit with some Minutemen. That would have put him in a position to tell the FBI about the arms cache that a lot of Cubans were arrested over when Kennedy shut down the camps.

Do you (or might anyone reading here) have any actual media or other accounts of that incident with the Lake Pontchartrain camp(s) being shut down and the arms cache that was confiscated with specific dates? Any web-accessible sources on this would be greatly appreciated.

Ashton

[John Dolva]

commission exhibit 25 looks like a draft that all together seems to be a statement of belief. It seems to be written once he got his visa for return to the USA. It shows Lee was very aware of the Minutemen. He saw them as most farsighted and seemed to talk of them as 'we'.

.

[John Dolva]

on second thought a better way of putting it is the minutemen as a subset of 'we'

[Steve Thomas]

Ashton,

Do you (or might anyone reading here) have any actual media or other accounts of that incident with the Lake Pontchartrain camp(s) being shut down and the arms cache that was confiscated with specific dates? Any web-accessible sources on this would be greatly appreciated.

Ashton

There were two camps. The one with the explosives was raided on July 31, 1963.

ARRESTED AT LACOMBE

John Koch Gene, Sam Benton, Richard Lauchli, Earl J. Wassem Jr. Ralph Folkerts, Victor Espinosa, Carlos Eduardo Hernandez Sanchez, Acela Pedros Amores, Miguel Alvarez Jimenez, Antontio Soto Vasquez, Victor Panque. In response to FBI queries, Carlos Hernandez took the Fifth Amendment about the dynamite, and said he was associated with Manuel Artime.

You might want to read ajweberman's Nodule 14, about two thirds ddown the page.

http://ajweberman.com/nodules2/nodulec14.htm

Steve Thomas

[Ashton Gray]

Ashton,

Do you (or might anyone reading here) have any actual media or other accounts of that incident with the Lake Pontchartrain camp(s) being shut down and the arms cache that was confiscated with specific dates? Any web-accessible sources on this would be greatly appreciated.

Ashton

There were two camps. The one with the explosives was raided on July 31, 1963.

ARRESTED AT LACOMBE

John Koch Gene, Sam Benton, Richard Lauchli, Earl J. Wassem Jr. Ralph Folkerts, Victor Espinosa, Carlos Eduardo Hernandez Sanchez, Acela Pedros Amores, Miguel Alvarez Jimenez, Antontio Soto Vasquez, Victor Panque. In response to FBI queries, Carlos Hernandez took the Fifth Amendment about the dynamite, and said he was associated with Manuel Artime.

You might want to read ajweberman's Nodule 14, about two thirds ddown the page.

http://ajweberman.com/nodules2/nodulec14.htm

Thanks very much, Steve. The 31 July date is very helpful.

Any other information that anyone has on this would be greatly appreciated.

Bringuier refers in his testimony to several newspaper accounts of the raids of these camps, but in a confusing section of the testimony keeps referring to the dates of these newspaper accounts being in early September. Apparently these were in a Spanish language newspaper and they were not entered as exhibits.

Ashton

[Steve Thomas]

Ashton,

Thanks very much, Steve. The 31 July date is very helpful.

Any other information that anyone has on this would be greatly appreciated.

Would you be willing to receive an email from me with an attachment?

I have about 100 pages of raw notes theat I've collected on the Christian Democratic Party and some of the people associated with the training camp - not the one where the explosives were found.

Steve Thomas

[Ashton Gray]

Ashton,

Thanks very much, Steve. The 31 July date is very helpful.

Any other information that anyone has on this would be greatly appreciated.

Would you be willing to receive an email from me with an attachment?

I have about 100 pages of raw notes theat I've collected on the Christian Democratic Party and some of the people associated with the training camp - not the one where the explosives were found.

Steve Thomas

I've sent you a PM.

Ashton

[Michael Hogan]

Do you (or might anyone reading here) have any actual media or other accounts of that incident with the Lake Pontchartrain camp(s) being shut down and the arms cache that was confiscated with specific dates? Any web-accessible sources on this would be greatly appreciated.

Ashton

Hello Ashton,

I hope this fits under the category of other. According to John Armstrong:

In the summer of 1963 there were as many as six Cuban exile training camps and weapons bunkers on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. According to Rene Carballo, a Cuban refugee living in New Orleans, one or more of the camps were run by "El Mexicano" (Francisco Rodriguez Tamayo), a Cuban exile who formerly resided in Miami.

On July 24, a group of anti-Castro Cubans from Frank Sturgis' International Anti-Communist Brigade (Miami) arrived in New Orleans and joined one of the training camps on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain.

Al Campbell worked as an investigator for Guy Banister in 1958, 1959, 1962 and 1963 gathering information on suspected communist groups in the City. One one occasion, Campbell overheard Banister's secretary, Delphine Roberts, tell Banister that she saw Oswald handing out pro-Castro leaflets on a street corner. Banister replied, "Don't worry about him. He's a nervous fellow, he's confused. He's with us. he's associated with the office." Campbell said that Banister worked closely with Ray Huff of the CIA. He told HSCA investigators that Sergio Arcacha Smith spent a lot of time at the camps, and that many of the guns used for training the exiles were furnished by the Mardi Gras Corporation.....

Thomas Beckham, a runner for David Ferrie, Banister, Clay Shaw, Sergio Arcacha, and Grady Durham, told the HSCA that Ferrie came to meetings at Banister's office dressed in his green fatigues directly from the training camps at the Lake. Beckham once flew to Miami with Arcacha and Louis Rabel with a large suitcase of money and delivered it to Eugenio Martinez, a future Watergate burglar along with E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis....

It was at one of the training camps that Lee Oswald was seen, and filmed, with an 8mm home movie in the summer of 1963, which was found in the Georgetown University Library. Following is a short excerpt from the film as described by Tanenbaum to Assassination Records Review Board in 1996:

"The camera's view moved to another group of men standing by a truck. One of the men in the group turned around and smiled at the camera. It was actually more of a smirk than a smile, the famous smirk....Lee Harvey Oswald. There were several unidentified men...."

President Kennedy orders the FBI to close the camps

Few people today realize there were actually two separate factions of Cuban exiles--one with close ties to Robert Kennedy (moderates), and another with close ties to the CIA (right-wing radicals). In the summer of 1963 President Kennedy, reacting to criticism that his administration was not doing enough to stop para-military activities against Cuba, ordered the FBI to get tough with the Cuban exiles. The communist-hating Director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, undoubtedly knew the administration was seeking rapprochment with Cuba and was reluctant to follow the President's instructions and close down the camps.

Hoover knew all about the 6 exile training camps on Lake Pontchartrain through New Orleans FBI agents Warren DeBrueys and Regis Kennedy. He knew that one of the camps was located on land owned by William Julius McClaney, who had close ties to Robert Kennedy. Hoover responded to President Kennedy's order by sending FBI agents to close down only the "McClaney Camp." This was Hoover's way of thumbing his nose at President Kennedy's order to close down the camps, and it placed the Kennedys in a potentially embarassing position if Robert Kennedy's ties to William McClaney became public.

On July 31, 1963 the Associated Press reported, "FBI agents swooped down on a house in a resort section near here today and seized more than a ton of dynamite and 20 bomb casings. An informed source said the explosives were part of a cache to be used in an attack on Cuba. But the FBI would only say that the materials were seized in connection with an investigation of an effort to carry out a military operation from the United States against a country with which the United States is at peace...."

The materials seized by the FBI included 48 cases of dynamite, 20 firing caps, M-1 rifles, grenades, and 55 gallons of napalm. The FBI arrested two men: Sam Benton, a conduit between William McClaney and the anti-Castro Cubans, and Richard Lauchli, co-founder of the Minutemen and a close friend of Jack Ruby.

From newspaper articles it appeared to the public the FBI was doing its job by confiscating illegal explosives. But, no indictments were handed down against either of the men who were arrested, and the eleven men who had been detained were quietly released. Neither the President nor the Attorney General were able to complain publicly about the FBI raid because they feared that Hoover might make their relationship with McClaney known to the press.

Ashton, I know you were seeking more dates, and information that can be found on the internet, but I thought I would throw this into the New Orleans gumbo pot anyway.

Mike

Edited August 22, 2006 by Michael Hogan

[Michael Hogan]

MICHAEL L. KURTZ is professor of history and dean of the graduate school at Southeastern Louisiana University and the author of Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination from a Historian’s Perspective. The University of Tennessee Press 1982. On page 203, Kurtz writes:

One of the most significant eyewitness observations was of Ferrie, Oswald, and numerous Cubans, all dressed in military fatigues and carrying automatic rifles, conducting what appeared to be a "military training maneuver." This event took place near Bedico Creek, a swampy inland body of water near Lake Ponchartrain, about fifty miles north of New Orleans. This occurred in early September 1963, two months after the final government raid on anti-Castro guerrilla camps in the United States.

Kurtz has a reputation as a careful historian; however his only citation for the above is: Author's interview with George Wilcox, 9 Sept. 1979.

I doubt that there are many researchers with more documents on the Lake Pontchartrain events than Kurtz.

Kurtz has a new book coming out in November: The JFK Assassination Debate; Lone Gunman versus Conspiracy.

http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/kurjfk.html

Edited August 22, 2006 by Michael Hogan

[Ashton Gray]

I thought I would throw this into the New Orleans gumbo pot anyway.

Hoooo, boy, and you just made that some bodacious gumbo, I guar-on-tee.

Thanks for all you posted!

Ashton