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William Torbitt: Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal


John Simkin

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William Torbitt is the pseudonymous author of Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal (1970). When the book was published the author claimed he was a lawyer working in the southwestern part of the United States.

During the Second World War he served in the United States Navy. After completing a law degree from the University of Texas he worked as a prosecuting attorney (1949-51). He admits that his clients includes people involved in committing political murder. He claims he has also represented people involved in the "financial dealings of organized crime in Texas".

In Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal Torbitt claims that John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a "fascist cabal... who planned to lay the blame on honest right-wing conservatives, if their first ploy, to lay the blame on Oswald and the Communists, was not bought."

Torbitt argues that a Swiss Corporation named Permindex engineered the assassination. Also involved included Defense Industrial Security Command, organized by J. Edgar Hoover and William Sullivan. Torbitt claims that DISC agents included Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby with Louis M. Bloomfield of Montreal, Canada in charge.

According to the author Permindex was comprised of:

(1) Solidarists, an Eastern European exile organization.

(2) American Council of Christian Churches led by Haroldson L. Hunt.

(3) Free Cuba Committee headed by Carlos Prio Socarras.

(4) The Syndicate headed by Clifford Jones, ex-lieutenant governor of Nevada. This group also included Bobby Baker, George Smathers, Roy Cohn, Fred Black and Lewis McWillie.

(5) Security Division of NASA headed by Wernher von Braun.

According to Torbitt, others involved in the assassination included Lyndon Johnson, Walter Jenkins, Fred Korth, John Connolly, William Seymour, Robert McKeown, Sergio Arcacha Smith, Lee Harvey Oswald, Ruth Paine, Micael Paine, Gordon Novel, and Clint Murchison. For example, he claims that Seymour impersonated Oswald in the School Book Depository and killed J. D. Tippit.

Torbitt adds that the "anti-Castro Cuban part of the plan was to tie the Castro regime into the murder of Kennedy and thus to have the U. S. military give all service to the overthrow of Castro".

In his book Who Shot JFK? (2002) Robin Ramsay argues that Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal was an attempt by the Central Intelligence Agency to link the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. "Torbitt took Garrison's inquiry into the ClA's links to the assassination and converted them into a story about the FBI's responsibility for the assassination. (This, in my view, tells us that the author/s of Torbitt were working for the CIA, trying to diminish the 'Garrison effect.')"

Torbitt also argues that J. Edgar Hoover and Louis M. Bloomfield planned the execution of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy. He names Albert Osborne as the man who organized these two assassinations.

What do members think of Torbitt's book?

You can read the full manuscript here:

http://www.parascope.com/articles/1196/torbitt.htm

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Statements are made in Torbitt’s book that are known to be incorrect; others are suspect but should be subject to being proven right or wrong.

Particularly suspect is Torbitt’s claim that Albert Osborne, the self-professed itinerant preacher who sat next to Oswald on the bus ride to Mexico City, led a group of 25 to 30 assassins, based in Mexico, as a long-time trusted aide of J. Edgar Hoover, and led the assassination team in Dallas. If this were true (and Osborne’s known activities provide virtually no evidence for it), it seems odd that Hoover would allow his FBI agents to hound Osborne after the assassination (because of his bus ride with Oswald), interviewing him no less than 5 times before giving up because Osborne wouldn’t quit lying about the bus ride. If Osborne was doing assassination work for Hoover and others, it seems likely to me that Hoover would have told his agents after the second or third interview to leave this itinerant preacher alone and do some real work.

According to Torbitt, Osborne kept his group of assassins at “Clint Murchison’s huge ranch in Mexico.” Does anyone know if Murchison had a huge ranch in Mexico, and if so, who stayed there?

Torbitt’s source for all this info on Osborne is the “private file” of “Bill Allcorn, special assistant Attorney General of Texas,” who helped work on the Buddy Floyd murder case in Texas (Sapet v. State, 256 SW2nd 154). This private file, Torbitt alleges, contains information about Osborne’s team of assassins that was provided by an informant in the Floyd case. Would anyone like to spend time trying to run down this alleged private Allcorn file?

Torbitt also says that an associate of Osborne since the 1920s was a Syrian named (oddly) Fred Lee Crismon. Crismon, born in 1919, was not Syrian and was a child in the 1920s. Torbitt says also that Osborne was a minister of the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC), which is not true based on everything we know about Osborne’s ministerial activity.

I am still intrigued by the alleged secret DOD agency, the Defense Industrial Security Command (DISC), which Torbitt says was central to the assassination plot. Did this agency actually exist or not?

According to James DiEugenio, DISC was located in Columbus, Ohio, one of the cities to which Gordon Novel is said to have fled from the Garrison investigation (Destiny Betrayed, pp. 136, 357). How much information does DiEugenio have on DISC?

When Grover B. Proctor, Jr. interviewed John Hurt of Raleigh NC, he asked him, “Were you ever involved as an agent in the Defense Department’s Industrial Security Command?” Hurt answered, “No, I was not.” Why did Proctor ask Hurt about DISC? What might Proctor know about DISC?

I did a Google a while back on “Defense Industrial Security Command,” and found a DOD memo from 1995 about regulations on access to classified information. Attached to this memo was a distribution list, and among the recipients on the list was “Director, Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office, P.O. Box 2499, Columbus, OH 43216-5006.” Was this DISC renamed, or under an alternate name? One would think that this federal “clearance office” in Columbus would have some traceable history.

These are questions that perhaps some researcher or researchers might want to pursue, as a way to confirm or to further discredit info in Torbitt.

Edited by Ron Ecker
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...

According to Torbitt, Osborne kept his group of assassins at “Clint Murchison’s huge ranch in Mexico.” Does anyone know if Murchison had a huge ranch in Mexico, and if so, who stayed there?

...

http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online...s/MM/fmu10.html

The link listed above claims: "He was a cattleman throughout his life and acquired extensive ranches in Mexico and East Texas. "

If the above source is correct, it would seem to indicate that Clint Murchison did, in fact, have a huge ranch in Mexico. It does not say who might have stayed there, but there might be additional information to be found with some digging.

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...

I am still intrigued by the alleged secret DOD agency, the Defense Industrial Security Command (DISC), which Torbitt says was central to the assassination plot. Did this agency actually exist or not?

According to James DiEugenio, DISC was located in Columbus, Ohio, one of the cities to which Gordon Novel is said to have fled from the Garrison investigation (Destiny Betrayed, pp. 136, 357). How much information does DiEugenio have on DISC?

When Grover B. Proctor, Jr. interviewed John Hurt of Raleigh NC, he asked him, “Were you ever involved as an agent in the Defense Department’s Industrial Security Command?” Hurt answered, “No, I was not.” Why did Proctor ask Hurt about DISC? What might Proctor know about DISC?

I did a Google a while back on “Defense Industrial Security Command,” and found a DOD memo from 1995 about regulations on access to classified information. Attached to this memo was a distribution list, and among the recipients on the list was “Director, Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office, P.O. Box 2499, Columbus, OH 43216-5006.” Was this DISC renamed, or under an alternate name? One would think that this federal “clearance office” in Columbus would have some traceable history.

While I'm at it...

3990 East Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio is frequently listed as the address associated with DISC. FWIW, this address is very real and *is* widely known to be an area owned and used by the DoD. There are two major military functions at this location. DSSC is the Defense Supply Center Columbus, and the other is the DLA (Defense Logistic Agency). It is no coincidence that these areas are located near Airport and Train facilities. Both organizations apparently make extensive use of civilian contractors, so it seems consistent that there would be some clearance-related functions run out of these areas.

http://www.dscc.dla.mil/

I'll see if I can track down any information on Gordon Novel and any Columbus connections that might be of interest.

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Statements are made in Torbitt’s book that are known to be incorrect; others are suspect but should be subject to being proven right or wrong.

Particularly suspect is Torbitt’s claim that Albert Osborne, the self-professed itinerant preacher who sat next to Oswald on the bus ride to Mexico City, led a group of 25 to 30 assassins, based in Mexico, as a long-time trusted aide of J. Edgar Hoover, and led the assassination team in Dallas. If this were true (and Osborne’s known activities provide virtually no evidence for it), it seems odd that Hoover would allow his FBI agents to hound Osborne after the assassination (because of his bus ride with Oswald), interviewing him no less than 5 times before giving up because Osborne wouldn’t quit lying about the bus ride. If Osborne was doing assassination work for Hoover and others, it seems likely to me that Hoover would have told his agents after the second or third interview to leave this itinerant preacher alone and do some real work.

According to Torbitt, Osborne kept his group of assassins at “Clint Murchison’s huge ranch in Mexico.” Does anyone know if Murchison had a huge ranch in Mexico, and if so, who stayed there?

Torbitt’s source for all this info on Osborne is the “private file” of “Bill Allcorn, special assistant Attorney General of Texas,” who helped work on the Buddy Floyd murder case in Texas (Sapet v. State, 256 SW2nd 154). This private file, Torbitt alleges, contains information about Osborne’s team of assassinations that was provided by an informant in the Floyd case. Would anyone like to spend time trying to run down this alleged private Allcorn file?

Torbitt also says that an associate of Osborne since the 1920s was a Syrian named (oddly) Fred Lee Crismon. Crismon, born in 1919, was not Syrian and was a child in the 1920s. Torbitt says also that Osborne was a minister of the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC), which is not true based on everything we know about Osborne’s ministerial activity.

I am still intrigued by the alleged secret DOD agency, the Defense Industrial Security Command (DISC), which Torbitt says was central to the assassination plot. Did this agency actually exist or not?

According to James DiEugenio, DISC was located in Columbus, Ohio, one of the cities to which Gordon Novel is said to have fled from the Garrison investigation (Destiny Betrayed, pp. 136, 357). How much information does DiEugenio have on DISC?

When Grover B. Proctor, Jr. interviewed John Hurt of Raleigh NC, he asked him, “Were you ever involved as an agent in the Defense Department’s Industrial Security Command?” Hurt answered, “No, I was not.” Why did Proctor ask Hurt about DISC? What might Proctor know about DISC?

I did a Google a while back on “Defense Industrial Security Command,” and found a DOD memo from 1995 about regulations on access to classified information. Attached to this memo was a distribution list, and among the recipients on the list was “Director, Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office, P.O. Box 2499, Columbus, OH 43216-5006.” Was this DISC renamed, or under an alternate name? One would think that this federal “clearance office” in Columbus would have some traceable history.

These are questions that perhaps some researcher or researchers might want to pursue, as a way to confirm or to further discredit info in Torbitt.

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William Torbitt is the pseudonymous author of Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal (1970). When the book was published the author claimed he was a lawyer working in the southwestern part of the United States.

http://www.parascope.com/articles/1196/torbitt.htm

Torbitt (is) was an attorney in Waco TX. His name is (was) Bill Allcorn.

I was told he at one time was the personal attorney of Penn Jones.

Jack

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Jack,

According to two sources that I know of, Martin Shackelford and David Reitzes, Torbitt was the late Texas attorney David Copeland.

If Torbitt is Bill Alcorn, it would certainly explain Torbitt's professed knowledge of the "Bill Alcorn private file" containing info on Albert Osborne's Mexico-based assassins.

It also raises the question of why Alcorn, if he is known to be Torbitt, would write about this file without producing what's in it.

Ron

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The name of the Waco lawyer who wrote the Torbitt Document was David Copeland and I recalled speaking with him when I worked for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in the 1970s. Copeland told me he got his information from two government agents - one with the Secret Service and the other with the FBI. He don't think he ever revealed the identities of these agents. He seemed quite sincere at the time and said he wanted to show the public that "right wingers" did not kill JFK. Personally, I think that he truly believed the Torbitt scenario because he trusted his sources. I think his sources may have been on the level but there's always the possibility they were fed misinformation.

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I am still intrigued by the alleged secret DOD agency, the Defense Industrial Security Command (DISC), which Torbitt says was central to the assassination plot. Did this agency actually exist or not?

According to James DiEugenio, DISC was located in Columbus, Ohio, one of the cities to which Gordon Novel is said to have fled from the Garrison investigation (Destiny Betrayed, pp. 136, 357). How much information does DiEugenio have on DISC?

When Grover B. Proctor, Jr. interviewed John Hurt of Raleigh NC, he asked him, “Were you ever involved as an agent in the Defense Department’s Industrial Security Command?” Hurt answered, “No, I was not.” Why did Proctor ask Hurt about DISC? What might Proctor know about DISC?

I did a Google a while back on “Defense Industrial Security Command,” and found a DOD memo from 1995 about regulations on access to classified information. Attached to this memo was a distribution list, and among the recipients on the list was “Director, Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office, P.O. Box 2499, Columbus, OH 43216-5006.” Was this DISC renamed, or under an alternate name? One would think that this federal “clearance office” in Columbus would have some traceable history.

Yes, DISC was a real organization, charged with maintaining security among, and vetting, the employees working for US military defense contractors. [The name was changed to DISCO at some point, though I've not been able to determine the date. I came across the new name in a US Senate report, issued in the early 1970s, on money-laundering, so the name change predates that.]

If the unit's history is hard to trace, the reason may be attributable to the covert nature of its role. Literally millions of US employees work at highly sensitive military defense jobs, and it was the purview of DISC/O to ensure that prospective security threats never made it into those positions. This involved in-house spying on employees without their knowledge. A favoured ruse was to drop a leftist ne'erdowell into a sensitive workplace, and see who among the employees fraternized with him, playing on guilt by association. It has been suggested that arranging for defector LHO to work at JCS in Dallas may have exemplified a DISC operative in action.

According to an old article I have from Counterspy mag, there are indications that DISC may have played a role in the MLK assassination as well. Cannot recall the pertinent details off the top of my head, but there was allegedly a DISC office in Memphis that arguably facilitated either the hit, or the getaway.

DISC/O is/was situated in a very interesting nexus. As an adjunct to the Defense Intelligence Agency, it had access to the Pentagon's intelligence resources, but by maintaining a necessary reciprocal relationship with the FBI's Division V, it traded in civilian political intelligence as well. Via either of these conduits, DISC/O would also have had access to virtually any police force in the country, and its files. In short, a powerful and entirely clandestine investigative agency.

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Frank, Jim, and Robert,

Thanks for the info on Murchison, Copeland, and DISC.

It sounds like Copeland may have at least been on to something in being the first (as far as I know) to implicate the almost completely unknown agency DISC in the assassination plot. It sounds like something he would have gotten only from government agents. Which of course doesn't mean it was true.

I think Copeland's claim that Albert Osborne was in charge of a Mexico-based assassination team, and did Dallas on 11/22, is disinformation, wherever Copeland got it from. The only proof of this claim is allegedly in the "Bill Alcorn private file" on the Floyd murder case. Why can't this file be shared with the world, the alleged existence of its sensational contents having been divulged years ago?

Ron

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It sounds like Copeland may have at least been on to something in being the first (as far as I know) to implicate the almost completely unknown agency DISC in the assassination plot. It sounds like something he would have gotten only from government agents. Which of course doesn't mean it was true.

I think Copeland's claim that Albert Osborne was in charge of a Mexico-based assassination team, and did Dallas on 11/22, is disinformation, wherever Copeland got it from. The only proof of this claim is allegedly in the "Bill Alcorn private file" on the Floyd murder case. Why can't this file be shared with the world, the alleged existence of its sensational contents having been divulged years ago?

The answer to this could be in Jim Marrs post. He said that Copeland had two main sources. Maybe one was good and the other one was involved in disinformation. I find the book contains important insights that do not appear in other books written at the time. It also includes information, such as that on Albert Osborne, that is difficult to believe.

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From Reitzes website:

http://www.jfk-online.com/jfkbooks2.html

Kenn Thomas (editor) and "William Torbitt," NASA, Nazis and JFK (Steamshovel Press, 1997, aka "Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal," self-published, 1970). Texas attorney David Copeland based this ludicrous hodge-podge of fictional allegations on a multitude of unsubstantiated reports from the Garrison files. Unreadable writing, appalling pseudo-scholarship, nonexistent evidence: Who could ask for anything more? Out of print, but ridiculously easy to find on the Internet.

?

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From the Reitzes website, I find this quoted statement of Vincent Bugliosi intriguing: "I agree with all of Posner's conclusions -- that Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone -- but I disagree with his methodology. There's a credibility problem. When he is confronted with a situation antithetical to the view he's taking, he ignores or distorts it."

This means that Bugliosi is not going to ignore or distort anything in his eternally forthcoming Oswald-did-it tome (or is it a two-tome set?). No wonder he can't finish it!

Edited by Ron Ecker
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William Torbitt is the pseudonymous author of Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal (1970). When the book was published the author claimed he was a lawyer working in the southwestern part of the United States.

http://www.parascope.com/articles/1196/torbitt.htm

Torbitt (is) was an attorney in Waco TX. His name is (was) Bill Allcorn.

I was told he at one time was the personal attorney of Penn Jones.

Jack

I received my copy of the Torbitt document from Gary Shaw, a close friend of Penn Jones. Under the name William Torbitt on the first page is handwritten "Bill Alcorn(?)" with an arrow connecting the names. This was in the late 70s. Maybe I am confused, but I remember Gary telling me that Allcorn was Penn's attorney... but maybe it was Copeland. Anyway, Penn had a lawyer in Waco who was connected to Torbitt. This always made me wonder...

...was Torbitt an information source for Penn?

...or was Penn an information source for Torbitt?

Jack

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