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PART 2 (of 3 parts)

(SEE JOE ZEPPA ABOVE POST,BELOW) (of note Fetcher Prouty stated JFK was killed by Greek machanics, see Greece below)

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Bush and the JFK Hit, Part 4: Barbara’s Hair-Raising Day

By Russ Baker on Oct 9, 2013

1234-300x197.jpgWhat possible connection could there have been between George H.W. Bush and the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Or between the C.I.A. and the assassination? Or between Bush and the C.I.A.? For some people, apparently, making such connections was as dangerous as letting one live wire touch another. Here, in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination in November, is the fourth part of a ten-part series of excerpts from WhoWhatWhy editor Russ Baker’s bestseller, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. The story is a real-life thriller.

Note: Although these excerpts do not contain footnotes, the book itself is heavily footnoted and exhaustively sourced. (The excerpts in Part 4 come from Chapter 4 of the book, and the titles and subtitles have been changed for this publication.)

For Part 1, please go here; Part 2, here; Part 3, here;

Block, Bridge, and Beautify

In the art of propaganda, and in the daily business of public relations, a cardinal rule is that if a problem emerges, it must be managed immediately. The trick is to quickly acknowledge and gain control of the new material, mitigating the damage by redirecting it in a beneficial way. This is known in tradecraft as “block and bridge.”

Thus it was that the first and only Bush family acknowledgment of where Poppy Bush was on that red-letter day came in classic form – from the wife, in the most innocuous swathing. The venue was in her 1994 book, Barbara Bush: A Memoir, which was published ten months after the document’s declassification. Deep in that book, mostly a compendium of narrow-gauge, self-serving recollections, there it was: not just a recollection of the assassination, but the reproduction of an actual letter written by Barbara on the very day, at the very moment, that Kennedy was shot. The letter has plenty of details, but it omits one important personal item from that day: Poppy’s call to the FBI; perhaps Poppy did not mention it to her?

Barbara begins to describe that fateful day on page 59 of her memoirs:

On November 22, 1963, George and I were in the middle of a several-city swing. I was getting my hair done in Tyler, Texas, working on a letter home.

Here are some excerpts:

The following is how the excerpts appear in the book, ellipses and all.

Dearest Family,Wednesday I took Doris Ulmer out for lunch. They [Al and Doris Ulmer] were here from England and they had been so nice to George in Greece. That night we went to . . .I am writing this at the Beauty Parlor and the radio says that the President has been shot. Oh Texas – my Texas – my God – let’s hope it’s not true. I am sick at heart as we all are. Yes, the story is true and the Governor also. How hateful some people are.. . . Since the Beauty Parlor the President has died. We are once again on a plane. This time a commercial plane. Poppy picked me up at the beauty parlor – we went right to the airport, flew to Ft. Worth and dropped Mr. Zeppo off (we were on his plane) and flew back to Dallas. We had to circle the field while the second presidential plane took off. Immediately Pop got tickets back to Houston and here we are flying home. We are sick at heart. The tales the radio reporters tell of Jackie Kennedy are the bravest I’ve ever heard. The rumors are flying about that horrid assassin. We are hoping that it is not some far right nut, but a “commie” nut. You understand that we know they are both nuts, but just hope that it is not a Texan and not an American at all.

I am amazed at the rapid-fire thinking and planning that has already been done. L.B.J. has been the president for some time now – 2 hours at least and it is only 4.30.

My dearest love to you all,

Bar

A Tap on the Shoulder

The Tyler story is borne out by the personal recollections of Aubrey Irby, then vice president of the local Kiwanis Club (and later president of Kiwanis International during Bush’s vice presidency). As Irby explained to the author Kitty Kelley, Bush had been waiting to deliver a luncheon speech to his organization – to one hundred men gathered at Tyler’s Blackstone Hotel.

“I remember it was a beautiful fall day,” recalled Aubrey Irby, the former Kiwanis vice president. “George had just started to give his speech when Smitty, head bellhop, tapped me on the shoulder to say that President Kennedy had been shot. I gave the news to the president of the club, Wendell Cherry, and he leaned over to tell George that wires from Dallas confirmed President Kennedy had been assassinated.“George stopped his speech and told the audience what had happened. ‘In view of the President’s death,’ he said, ‘I consider it inappropriate to continue with a political speech at this time. Thank you very much for your attention.’ Then he sat down. I thought that was rather magnanimous of him to say and then to sit down, but I’m a Republican of course, and I was all for George Bush. Kennedy, who was bigger than life then, represented extremely opposite views from Bush on everything.”

In a 2007 interview with me, Irby described George H. W. Bush at the time of the news as matter-of-fact and supremely well composed. It was not unlike his own son’s composure in another moment of crisis, when, after being told about the 9/11 attacks, he calmly returned to reading “The Pet Goat” to a class of Florida second graders. As for Barbara, she miraculously found herself in the unique position of actually writing a very long letter that began while Kennedy was alive, captured the first news of the assassination, and then concluded with confirmation of his death. She, like Poppy, showed impressive composure and focus.

A Lunch with Doris – But where were Al Ulmer and Poppy?

Barbara’s curious role as recording secretary to history-in-the-making was interesting enough that one would expect the letter to have surfaced well before 1994. Yet, until it appeared in Barbara’s memoirs, it was not even known to exist. Meanwhile, the original letter itself has not turned up. Thus, many questions remain – questions that I hoped to pose to Poppy and Barbara, who declined to be interviewed for this book.

The excerpted letter warrants careful scrutiny, especially because of all the perplexing particulars. The note begins with a dull thud – a bland mention of a lunch with a “Doris Ulmer.” No Ulmer appears in any of the Bushes’ other books, which list hundreds of family friends, well-known and completely obscure. Therefore, presumably only very close Bush relatives, such as her children, would know who Doris Ulmer was or would even conceivably wish to learn of Barbara lunching with her. No one else would understand that George had even been in Greece on the occasion Barbara mentions when the Ulmers were said to be so nice to him – nor would anyone else know in what way they were so nice to him.

And yet, the style and comments in the assassination portion of the letter – “we are hoping that it is not some far right nut but a ‘commie’ nut” – are odd things to write to children.

It’s not clear from Barbara’s memoirs who the recipients of the letter were. She says “Dearest Family” and that it was “a letter home.” But those of her children who were at home were all ten years old or younger. The eldest, George W., was away at prep school in New England. Also, it would seem odd to write “a letter home” if you were only gone from home for several days of an in-state campaign swing – you would likely be back home before the letter arrived. And she signed it “Bar,” not the typical identifier in a letter to young children.

Entire_Bush_family-300x240.jpg

Photo taken in the early 1960’s

So the “letter home” more logically would have been to her other home, that is, to her parents living in the house she had left nearly two decades before. But that scenario really doesn’t make much sense either. Her mother had died in a 1949 auto accident, and her father had remarried. Barbara was known not to be especially close to her family during a period of many years and had not attended her mother’s funeral. Was “love to you all” intended for her father and stepmother? Her siblings had also long since left the nest, but perhaps she circulated correspondence among them. Besides, how did Barbara happen upon such a letter that she had purportedly written thirty years earlier? Had she kept a copy and recently discovered it? Had relatives unearthed it?Whether or not the letter was an authentic contemporaneous document, one can assume that many of the particulars of that day were in the letter because they were true and verifiable. Hence, they are of interest here.

Poppy’s call to the FBI about Parrott being the potential assassin obviously did nothing to assist the FBI in any meaningful way. But it clearly did something else: It established in government investigative files that, at the time of the assassination in Dallas, Poppy and Barbara were in Tyler, Texas. (These were things that Poppy had good reason to want established, as we’ll see later.)

The notion that there was more to the phone call than simple altruism and patriotism can be found in an examination of the most seemingly insipid of matters – such as Barbara Bush’s lunch with Doris Ulmer.

Although there were numerous Doris Ulmers in the United States at the time, only one matches the description of an old friend who had helped Poppy when Poppy visited Greece, and who was in 1963 a resident of London: Mrs. Alfred C. Ulmer Jr.

“God, we had fun.”Al Ulmer is sometimes described as having filled the positions of “attaché” and “first secretary” at the U.S. embassy in Athens from the late forties through the mid-fifties. Yet a memorial tribute to him in the alumni publication of his alma mater, Princeton, scores higher on the candor meter, describing his life in the wartime OSS and the CIA. Ulmer was a good friend and confidant of CIA director Allen Dulles. He embodied the attitude that nobody could tell the CIA what to do – nobody. “We went all over the world and we did what we wanted,” Ulmer later recalled. “God, we had fun.” He also managed coups.

When JFK forced Dulles out of the CIA following the Bay of Pigs debacle, Ulmer left as well. He went to work for the Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos. That Ulmer had not fully left the espionage racket is suggested in part by Niarchos’s own long history with the CIA, which he assisted with many covert operations. In fact, the company Ulmer ran, Niarchos London Ltd., was itself a CIA proprietary according to author Peter Evans, who knew Niarchos personally. Niarchos would in turn be introduced into Poppy Bush’s immediate circle, buying Oak Tree Farm, a prime Kentucky horse-breeding property, and leasing it to the manager of Poppy Bush’s financial affairs, William Stamps Farish III.

By 1963, Poppy Bush seems to have known Ulmer for at least a decade. The reference in Barbara’s letter to the Ulmers being “so nice” to Poppy when Poppy visited Greece likely referred to the early 1950s, when Al Ulmer was station chief in Athens and Poppy Bush was beginning his frenetic world travels, ostensibly on behalf of his modestly sized Midland oil company.

Apparently, the relationship had continued, because records at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, show Bush stopping off to see Ulmer in London in the summer of 1963 – as part of Bush’s self-described “world tour.” (Poppy would make another in 1965, and again visit with Ulmer.)

Ulmer also had another connection to Bush – via Robert Maheu. The Zapata Offshore drilling rig that Poppy Bush had positioned near Cuba in 1958 was located off Cay Sal island, which was leased by Howard Hughes. At the time, Hughes employed Maheu as his private spook. A former FBI man whose private security firm sometimes fronted for the CIA on unauthorized operations, Maheu was, in turn, an old friend of Ulmer’s. The two had worked together on cooking up the military revolt against Indonesian president Sukarno in 1958 . . . Maheu was later involved in a series of failed plots, commencing in 1960, that involved recruiting the Mafia for a hit on Fidel Castro. In all such things, one finds a certain circularity.

The Mysterious Flights of Mr. Zeppa’s Plane

Besides Doris Ulmer, the other person Barbara mentioned in her letter is “Mr. Zeppo” – the man who had lent them his plane on November 22. As with so many other clues in documents concerning Poppy Bush, this one appears a dead end until one realizes that the name has been slightly misspelled. There was in fact no Mr. Zeppo, but there was a man, since deceased, by the name of Zeppa. Joe Zeppa founded the Tyler-based Delta Drilling Company, which became one of the world’s largest contract oil drillers, with operations around the globe

By the time Poppy came to Tyler to speak to the Kiwanis, Joe Zeppa was a good man to know. One of his sons, Chris, had previously served as the county Republican chairman, and Joe Zeppa himself owned and lived in the Blackstone Hotel, the site of Bush’s Kiwanis speech.

Barbara, in her letter, notes the use of Zeppa’s plane to leave Tyler early in the afternoon on November 22. What she does not mention is that, in all probability, she and Poppy had also arrived on Zeppa’s plane. The very fact that Zeppa lent his plane to Poppy is surprising, according to Zeppa’s son Keating, who was on company business in Argentina at the time. “Joe Zeppa was not a great one for having an actual active hand in a political campaign,” he told me, adding: “He was not one to say, ‘Here, I’ll send the plane after you.’ If Joe Zeppa were going in a given direction and a politician wanted to go along, that was fine with him.” When told that the plane bypassed Dallas’s downtown Love Field, dropped Zeppa off at Fort Worth’s municipal airport, and then backtracked to Dallas, Keating Zeppa said that was not something that his father ordinarily would have done.

Though the movements of Zeppa’s plane on the afternoon of November 22 once it left Tyler are intriguing, much more important is where it came from on the morning of November 22: Dallas.

The following facts have never been recounted by Poppy Bush nor have they appeared in any articles or books – and Barbara herself says nothing about this. On the evening of November 21, 1963, Poppy Bush spoke to a gathering of the American Association of Oil Drilling Contractors (AAODC) at the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas. Since Zeppa himself was a former president of AAODC, it is likely that he attended that gathering. It is also likely that both Zeppa and the Bushes actually spent the night in Dallas – and that they were in Dallas the next morning: the day that Kennedy was assassinated.

This brings us to the vexing question of Poppy’s motive in calling the FBI at 1.45 p.m. on November 22, to identify James Parrott as a possible suspect in the president’s murder, and to mention that he, George H. W. Bush, happened to be in Tyler, Texas. He told the FBI that he expected to spend the night of November 22 at the Sheraton Hotel in Dallas – but instead, after flying to Dallas on Zeppa’s plane, he left again almost immediately on a commercial flight to Houston. Why state that he expected to spend the night at the Dallas Sheraton if he was not planning to stay? Perhaps this was to create a little confusion, to blur the fact that he had already stayed at the hotel – the night before. Anyone inquiring would learn that Bush was in Tyler at the time of the assassination and planned to stay in Dallas afterward, but canceled his plan following JFK’s death.

A Tip from Poppy

As curious as all that is, nothing is quite so odd as the object of Bush’s patriotic duty. Nobody seems to have believed that James Parrott had the capability – or even the inclination – to assassinate Kennedy. Bush acknowledged in the tip-off call that he had no personal knowledge of anything. He passed the buck to others who supposedly knew more about the threat and about Parrott – though what those others knew, if anything, has never emerged, until now.

During the period Bush ran the Harris County Republican organization, it had no more than a handful of employees. Among those were the two women he had mentioned to the FBI as potential sources on Parrott’s alleged threat (“Mrs. Fawley” and “Arline Smith”), and a sole male – by the name of Kearney Reynolds. Though Bush made no mention of Reynolds, he was in fact the one who was most closely connected to Parrott.

Shortly after receiving Bush’s call, the FBI dispatched agents to the Parrott house. At the time, Parrott was away, but according to a bureau report, his mother provided an alibi – likely in a motherly attempt to protect her son – which Parrott himself would later refute in his own explanation of the day’s events.

She advised [James Parrott] had been home all day helping her care for her son Gary Wayne Parrott whom they brought home from the hospital yesterday. [Mrs. Parrott’s other son could not help, because he was in jail.]

She also mentioned another person who could provide an alibi.

Mrs. Parrott advised that shortly after 1:00 p.m. a Mr. Reynolds came by their home to advise them of the death of President Kennedy, and talked to her son James Parrott about painting some signs at Republican Headquarters on Waugh Drive.

In reality, both Reynolds and James Parrott put the visit between 1:30 and 1:45 p.m. The president’s death became public at 1:38 p.m. central time, when CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite read an Associated Press news flash. Poppy Bush’s call to the FBI followed seven minutes later.

Sometime later that day, agents interviewed Parrott himself. Parrott stated that he had never made any threats against Kennedy and that he had no knowledge of the assassination beyond what he had learned in news accounts. He indicated the extent of his dissent: picketing members of the Kennedy administration when they came to town. In a 1993 interview, Parrott stated that Reynolds had come to his home to ask him to paint some signs for the Republican headquarters – and informed him of the president’s death. Parrott also provided the FBI with Reynold’s first name and said that both were members of the Young Republicans.

The following day, agents interviewed Kearney Reynolds.

On November 23, 1963, Mr. Kearney Reynolds, 233 Red Ripple Road, advised he is a salaried employee of the Harris County Republican Party. He advised at approximately 1:30 p.m., November 22, 1963, he went to the home of James Parrott, 711 Park, and talked to Parrott for a few minutes. He advised he could vouch for Parrott’s presence at 1711 Park between 1:30 p.m. and 1:45 p.m. on November 22, 1963.

What is so remarkable about all this is that at the precise moment when Poppy was calling the FBI with his “tip” about a possible suspect about whom he could offer few details, Poppy’s own assistant was at the suspect’s home, transacting business with him on behalf of Poppy. Clearly Parrott was far better known to Poppy than he let on. Why was Reynolds supposed to go to Parrott’s house at this time? The net effect was that Reynolds bailed Parrott out, by providing him with an alibi. Thus Parrott became Poppy’s alibi, and Poppy’s assistant became Parrott’s. Everyone was taken care of. While the point was to generate two separate alibis, drawing attention to their interconnectedness was problematic. Because when the full picture emerges, the entire affair appears as a ruse to create a paper trail clearing Poppy, should that become necessary. Parrott was merely a distraction and a minor casualty, albeit a person who ought not face lasting consequences or attract undue attention.

(Recent efforts to speak with Parrott were unsuccessful. All telephone numbers associated with the Parrott family, including James Parrott, his mother, brother, nieces, and nephews are disconnected, and no current information on any of them is readily obtainable.)

In 2007, I interviewed Kearney Reynolds. In the interview – which did not initially touch on the FBI report – Reynolds exhibited an excellent memory for detail and extensive knowledge from that period, as the Republicans challenged the Democratic monopoly in Texas politics. He described the politics of the period, Bush’s chairmanship, and the operation of the Republican headquarters – which he said Bush had relocated into an old house in the Montrose section of Houston, a property that Reynolds said the staff dubbed “the Haunted House.”

With prompting, Reynolds confirmed that, due to the temporary absence of an executive director, he was the only full-time male employee, along with a secretary and perhaps a receptionist. He coordinated precinct chairpersons and other volunteers, and thus was the main person to have contact with people like Parrott.

I asked him if he had heard or read of Bush’s call from Tyler to the FBI regarding a threat to Kennedy. Reynolds said he was unaware of it. However, he did then offer, almost as an afterthought, his recollection, not of visiting Parrott that day, but of being asked to accompany Parrott down to the office of the Secret Service:

There was a young man who came around headquarters . . . and somebody said that he had made a threat against Kennedy and this was, I believe, this came up after the assassination . . . The end result was, it was suggested that I contact the Secret Service, the local Secret Service, and I accompanied this young man . . . And we went down, and this was kind of a strange kid, mild-mannered, quiet, kind of seemed to be living in another world, and I took him down one day, escorted him down there.

At that point in our conversation, I shared with Reynolds the details of the FBI report (including Parrott’s name), which stated explicitly that Reynolds had actually visited Parrott at home at around 1:30 p.m. on November 22, or precisely the time that Poppy Bush was calling the FBI.

Well I never went to the guy’s house because, as I remember, the little episode that I mentioned – as I recall, I met him at the headquarters, and we went on downtown to the Secret Service office.

Asked why he would even be accompanying a man whom he said he did not know well – and whom his own boss believed to have threatened the life of the president – to the Secret Service office, Reynolds replied that he did not know, but only perhaps because Bush himself was out of town: “I worked a great deal with the volunteers and the precinct chairman, and probably on a face-to-face, name-to-name basis, probably knew more of them than almost anybody else.”

At that point, Reynolds said his memory had been refreshed. “I knew him by name and sight . . . It was just sort of a casual [acquaintance] within the context of working at the headquarters.” Reynolds mentioned that many of the volunteers were women, so presumably Parrott stood out.

After I read him a portion of the FBI memo, more recollections came back.

I seem to remember that some of this did brew up before the Kennedy assassination.…Kennedy came to Houston, I think on a Thursday night, and he was assassinated on Friday morning.

Reynolds says he was asked to attend an event Thursday night at the home of a party activist named Marjorie Arsht.

There was some kind of little social-political thing at her house, and I was asked to be there and watch Parrott, which I think I did. And again this is conditional because my memory is just not that good. Now, but I do remember the following day or the day after or whatever after the assassination, that somebody called me and asked if I was with Parrott that night or whatever, and I answered yes. I think I remember that.

I asked him why they wanted him to watch Parrott. “I don’t know,” said Reynolds hesitantly.

He was just – he wasn’t your everyday campus guy. He just seemed kind of distant and remote – quiet, polite, soft spoken, but didn’t talk much and just seemed distant. Now who or to what extent other people talked to him or perceived him to be a little on the edge, I don’t know.

He went on to describe people who would come into the headquarters and rant for two hours on some pet topic, like a return to the gold standard, and why you might want to keep an eye on such a person. But then he agreed that Parrott was not such a person.

In fact, as the FBI report reveals, he was quite harmless – barely able to fend for himself. He had only a seventh grade education, had been discharged from the Air force by a psychiatrist, gone into sign-painting, lived with his mother, and apparently volunteered regularly with the Harris County GOP quietly and without incident.

Until the Bush phone call.

No Harm Done

The cumulative result was that Poppy was listed in government files as having been in Tyler on November 22, 1963 – while Parrott faced no long-term consequences for having been secretly accused.

In the aforementioned 1993 interview, Parrott would insist that for many years he had been unaware that it was Bush who had made the accusation against him. He also noted that he had actually gone on to work for Bush’s unsuccessful presidential reelection campaign in 1992. In an article covering the frenzied GOP-convention podium attacks on the Clinton-Gore team over family values, Parrott is described as passing out flyers saying, “No queers or baby killing,” while wearing a plastic shield over his face, explaining that it was protection against the AIDS virus.

As time passed, Parrott increasingly told a story that meshed with Bush’s, inflating his own significance along the lines of what the Bush forces were putting out. “It was mainly a rumor put out by those trying to neutralize us,” he said in the 1993 interview, claiming that he and other conservatives were in the middle of a bitter struggle with Bush and other “moderates” over the need to go after those suspected of Communist activities.

That said, the notion that Parrott was active in any sort of aggressive rightist circles seems either untrue or irrelevant to what actually happened on November 22. More likely, Parrott was simply set up, his right-wing ideology used as a red herring by Poppy to legitimate his phone call. After all, if Parrott did not have an ideological motivation to kill Kennedy, why would he be considered a threat?

Another curiosity: either the FBI agent who took Bush’s phone call, or Bush himself, misspelled the surnames of the two supposed witnesses whom Bush said would know more about Parrott. To be sure, if the phone numbers provided for them were correct, the FBI would be able to find them. But years later, researchers who tried had difficulty figuring out who those people were – or how to track them down. In fact, only extensive cross-referencing reveals that “Mrs. Fawley” is actually a Mrs. Thawley. And “Arline Smith” turns out to be Aleene Smith.

These were either mistakes or deliberate errors; in any case, it is reminiscent of the way Barbara Bush mangled their friend Mr. Zeppa’s name in her letter. George Bush knew both of these women well. Nancy Brelsford Thawley was vice chair of the Harris County Republican Party, and Aleene Smith was a well-known Texas Republican activist who worked for Bush at Zapata Offshore; both women remained with Bush for many years thereafter, accompanying him to Washington. Bush should have at least known how to spell their name.

The background of the FBI agent is also of note. Graham Kitchel was unusually close to J. Edgar Hoover, and his record is full not only of commendations from the head of the vast organization but also of personal notes, including a get-well card in 1963 from Hoover after Kitchel underwent surgery. In addition, in a 1990s interview, Kitchel’s brother George, an offshore oil engineer, explained that he, George Kitchel, was an old friend of George H.W. Bush.

J. Edgar Hoover: The Hoover-Kitchel-Bush connection is intriguing

In summary, then, Bush called in a pointless tip about an innocent fellow to an FBI agent whom he knew, and whom he knew could be counted on to file a report on this tip – out of what may have been hundreds of calls, some of them not even worthy of documenting. And, after a cursory investigation, the tip was confirmed as useless. But the call itself was hardly without value. It established for the record, if anyone asked, that Poppy Bush was not in Dallas when Kennedy was shot. By pointing to a seemingly harmless man who lived with his mother, Bush appeared to establish his own Pollyannaish ignorance of the larger plot.

While Parrott had eyewitnesses to his being in Houston before, after, and at the time of a shooting that took place 240 miles away, Bush had Kiwanis eyewitnesses to where he was at around 12:30, the time of the shooting and the scheduled time of his luncheon speech.

Oh what a tangled web we weave…

The big mystery, of course, is the call to the FBI. Bush clearly made the call; Parrott clearly was never any threat. Therefore, Poppy Bush was willing to divert the investigative resources of the FBI on one of the busiest days in its history. Beyond that are the baffling particulars: Why did Bush have one of his people visit Parrott’s house almost exactly as Poppy was fingering Parrott as a possible suspect? And why was Bush so determined to establish his presence in Tyler that day – and to document, as it were, his concern for Kennedy’s well-being? Why was Parrott so unperturbed to have been falsely accused by Poppy Bush?

The answer may lie in Poppy’s mention to the FBI that he would be traveling next from Tyler to Dallas, and that he would be staying at the Sheraton. This was, in fact, akin to a magician’s trick – drawing the audience’s attention slightly from the real action. In truth, Poppy had already been at the Sheraton in Dallas – the night before, speaking to the AAODC convention. By telling the FBI that he was planning to go there, he created a misleading paper trail suggesting that his stay in Dallas was many hours after Kennedy’s shooting, rather than a few hours before.

In fact although he did travel from Tyler to Dallas, he stayed only briefly, did not stay at the Sheraton this time, and went right back to Houston. The Parrott call served no purpose besides manufacturing a reason to create a government record of his presence in Tyler and his plan to go to Dallas later on the 22nd. Once Parrott had served, however unwittingly, his purpose, there was no reason for him to suffer – hence, Reynolds’s visit to Parrott’s house around the time of the assassination, which effectively created an alibi clearing Parrott. In other words, no harm done.

As for the reference to the Ulmers in Barbara’s letter, why risk introducing so controversial a person? Like Bush’s use of Joe Zeppa’s plane, it helped establish that Bush had in fact spent time with Al Ulmer. Better to include Ulmer’s wife’s name (but not his) and Zeppa’s name (misspelled) so that should a rare hardy investigator bother to figure out the sequence of events, Bush could claim that he obviously had nothing to hide – after all, there it was (in a way) in Barbara’s letter.

In fact, Poppy Bush had good reason to obfuscate the details of his relationships and his conduct because they would, at minimum, lead to further inquiry at a time when an investigation into the death of a president was or should have been – open-ended. The secrets themselves, and the urgency of keeping them hidden, would become a principal rationale in the family’s political efforts. And as we shall see, they go a long way toward explaining the unprecedented information lockdown and seeming paranoia of the George W. Bush administration – whose earliest acts included an effort to put his father’s records under lock and key forever.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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PART 3 of 3

Jack Crichton - Know Your Enemy

Crichton served in the CIA's predecessor, the OSS. He then went to work for Everette DeGolyer. Two of Crichton's company directors were Clint Murchison and D Harold Byrd. In 1952, Crichton was part of a syndicate that included Murchison and DeGolyer to secure mining rights in fascist Spain. The drilling operation was handled by Delta Drilling owned by Joe Zeppa of Tyler, Texas. Zeppa was the man who flew Bush to Dallas on 21 November 1963.

Crichton was a key member in the Civil Defense of Dallas. This was a program designed to assuage people's fears of nuclear attack. On 1 April 1962, the Dallas Civil Defense opened an underground compound under the Dallas Health and Science Museum. This headquarters was intended for continuity of government in the advent of nuclear war. This meant the compound and tremendous reach into the police and emergency services of Dallas. There is no evidence the Warren Commission ever investigated this compound.

In November 1963, Crichton and George H W Bush were both running for office: governor and senator respectively. Both used the same lawyer, Pat Holloway. Holloway worked out of the Republic National Bank Building. Both Bush and Crichton were recruited by Peter O'Donnell. Thus, Bush and Crichton were working in tandem.

In Crichton's oral history, he only mentions that Bush is an acquaintance

March 29, 2013 at 3:26 pm
In 1963, Zeppa sat on the board of Lone Star Steel along with several of Dallas’ most powerful bankers. It is odd that Lone Star’s direct bank however was American National Bank and Trust of Chicago, coincidentally the same banker used by Ero Manufacturing, employer of Lawrence V. Meyers. Through ANBT there is also a direct link to Leslie Welding in Ft. Worth.
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Leslie Welding in Ft. Worth. (employer Lee Harvey Oswald)
see link
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    Company of Chicago, as. Trustee under Trust Agreement dated ...
  3. Florida Risk Planning Consultants, Inc. v. Transport Life Insurance ...
    Apr 20, 1984 ... American National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago, Cross-Appellee v. ...
    Thus CIA acted as a conduit between FRP and Transport.
  1. Word that the Pentagon and CIA are using bank records to actively spy on ... with
    American National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago to June 15th. Notably ...

Edited by Steven Gaal
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PART 3 of 3

Jack Crichton - Know Your Enemy

Crichton served in the CIA's predecessor, the OSS. He then went to work for Everette DeGolyer. Two of Crichton's company directors were Clint Murchison and D Harold Byrd. In 1952, Crichton was part of a syndicate that included Murchison and DeGolyer to secure mining rights in fascist Spain. The drilling operation was handled by Delta Drilling owned by Joe Zeppa of Tyler, Texas. Zeppa was the man who flew Bush to Dallas on 21 November 1963.

Crichton was a key member in the Civil Defense of Dallas. This was a program designed to assuage people's fears of nuclear attack. On 1 April 1962, the Dallas Civil Defense opened an underground compound under the Dallas Health and Science Museum. This headquarters was intended for continuity of government in the advent of nuclear war. This meant the compound and tremendous reach into the police and emergency services of Dallas. There is no evidence the Warren Commission ever investigated this compound.

In November 1963, Crichton and George H W Bush were both running for office: governor and senator respectively. Both used the same lawyer, Pat Holloway. Holloway worked out of the Republic National Bank Building. Both Bush and Crichton were recruited by Peter O'Donnell. Thus, Bush and Crichton were working in tandem.

In Crichton's oral history, he only mentions that Bush is an acquaintance

March 29, 2013 at 3:26 pm
In 1963, Zeppa sat on the board of Lone Star Steel along with several of Dallas’ most powerful bankers. It is odd that Lone Star’s direct bank however was American National Bank and Trust of Chicago, coincidentally the same banker used by Ero Manufacturing, employer of Lawrence V. Meyers. Through ANBT there is also a direct link to Leslie Welding in Ft. Worth.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Leslie Welding in Ft. Worth. (employer Lee Harvey Oswald)
see link
0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o
  1. Further Issues and Serious Fraud Instances: Thirty-Two Articles ... - Google Books Result
    books.google.com/books?isbn=059586399X
    Sally Ramage - ‎2006 - 261 pages
    One was Helliwell; he was involved with the CIA, and was a well-known political

    ... at the American National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago were found in ...

  2. [PDF] Assignment Assumption and Amendment of CIA (00120942).DOC
    ww2.vbg.org/.../Contingent%20Infra%20Agrmt%20Amended%203-26-2012%20Exhib%20I.pdf
    Mar 26, 2012 ... National Association, successor trustee to American National Bank and Trust

    Company of Chicago, as. Trustee under Trust Agreement dated ...

  3. Florida Risk Planning Consultants, Inc. v. Transport Life Insurance ...
    Apr 20, 1984 ... American National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago, Cross-Appellee v. ...

    Thus CIA acted as a conduit between FRP and Transport.

  1. Word that the Pentagon and CIA are using bank records to actively spy on ... with

    American National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago to June 15th. Notably ...

Steven,

Why you so often post in bold, colored, and grossly oversized letters?

Are you afraid that we will miss them if you don't?

(Interesting information about Joe Zeppa, Jack Crichton, etc...)

Here's an article on Joe Zeppa and his Delta Drilling Company:

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/dod02

note: "A large bank debt helped fuel the expansion."

Thanks,

--Tommy :sun

Edited by Thomas Graves
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Pat Holloway
in 1950 he entered the University of Texas under an accelerated program allowing him to earn both a bachelor's degree and a law degree in 6 rather than 7 years. He graduated first in his UT Law School Class of 1954. He was Grand Chancellor, Articles Editor of the Texas Law Review, Moot Court Semi-Finalist, a member of Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity, and won the annual prize for best and most law review writing. After graduation, he joined the firm now known as Thompson & Knight, then the oldest and largest law firm in Dallas.
- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/statesman/obituary.aspx?pid=155860351#sthash.XWixq8tE.dpuf
++++++++++++
Pat Holloway worked for the law firm (Thompson & Knight) which was the law firm of the (at least post assassination conspiratorial) Great Southwest Corporation.
Two witnesses of Oswald at the rifle range were employees of the Great Southwest Corporation. ((Charles Camplen and James F. Dale, Great Southwest Warehouse, 26 WH 371-72.)).To paraphrase Peter Dale Scott, the Great Southwest provided Marina with a manager, an attorney, and a hideaway. Her manager was James Martin. The lawyer was William Mackenzie, and the hideaway was the Six Flags Hotel.
++++++++++++
Thus GHWB's lawyer ,Pat Holloway, (see above posts # 46, #47 ,#48) also was a lawyer for the assassination conspiratorial Great Southwest Corporation. LHO's "best friend" in Dallas was George De Mohrenschildt and De Mohrenschildt was also a friend of GHWB and associated with the Dulles-CBS milieu.
############
############

Lewis MacNaughton was a board member of the Great Southwest Corporation and Empire Trust (Jack Crichton was also part of Empire Trust. (see above posts) .
DeGolyer and MacNaughton was founded in 1936 by Everette Lee DeGolyer.DeGolyer and MacNaughton became the worlds largest independent oil analysis corporation.
Joe Zeppa had a history with DeGloyer when they partnered in an oil operation in 1953. Of note, Crichton was appointed head of Empire Trust, on whose board was L. W. Douglas, brother-in-law of John McCloy.

see LINK FOR IMPORTANCE OF MACNAUGHTON http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17035&hl=%2Blord+%2Bcordray

PRE ASSASSINATION =MacNaughton's personal accountant (not corporate) George Bouhe helped drive around Marina Oswald and by some accounts also babysat the Oswald children. Additionally former MacNaughton employee Ford housed Marina post assassination.

Bouhe stated he knew Jack Ruby. (Probe Magazine)

AND OF COURSE FROM THE WC

Mr. LIEBELER - At any time after November 1 and prior to December 28, 1962, did you see or talk to Oswald? December 28 is the date of the Ford party.
Mr. BOUHE - Yes.
Mr. LIEBELER - From November 1 to December 28?
Mr. BOUHE - I would say that by some unanticipated chance I might have run into him and her or both at the De Mohrenschildt's, but I wouldn't swear. Let me add that certainly no communication was maintained on my part.


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BLOGGER leslie sharp says:
March 29, 2013 at 4:55 pm

Follow up to Joe Zeppa and the Bush’s flight from Tyler (where they were visiting with the Ulmers) to Ft. Worth to Dallas.

In addition to Joe Zeppa, Lone Star Steel board members included FNB Dallas President Nathan Adams and Texas Bank and Trust CEO W. W. Overton. Mr. Overton’s president was his relative by marriage, Brenham native Pearson Beverly Garrett, board member on the very limited Bell Helicopter board. Also on the board of TB&T were Clint Murchison ((Board member Great Southwest,Gaal)) and Robert Wiley Baxter. Mr. Baxter was the founder and president of Rio Grande National Life Insurance where Louis Steven Witt was employed. Witt walked from the Rio Grande building some ten or twelve blocks if I recall correctly to position himself at the end of the trail so to speak, in order to taunt Kennedy with his umbrella. TB&T was located on the corner of, or in the block adjacent to the corner, Lamar and Poydras, the direction that Oswald pursued when leaving the TSBD.
===========

===========

"taunt Kennedy with his umbrella" ....??? or signal the shooters ...? OR BOTH !!...????? Gaal ??

UmbrellaMan1.jpg

DownUp-1-640x480.jpgIn

FROM THE KONFORMIST

1963, Witt was an insurance salesman for the Rio Grande National Life Insurance company, which anchored the eponymous Rio Grande Building in downtown Dallas. It’s an interesting building. Among the other outfits housed in the building was the Office of Immigration and Naturalization—a place Lee Harvey Oswald visited repeatedly upon his return from Russia, ostensibly to deal with matters concerning the immigration status of his Russian-born wife, Marina. Another occupant of the Rio Grande Building was the US Secret Service, so notably lax in its protection of Kennedy that day, breaking every rule of security on every level.
A major client of Rio Grande was the US military, to which it provided insurance.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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Who was shooting out of the Spiders Web ??
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tom Karamessines the key to the Greek Assassins.
At a now defunct website was posted a page out of David Ferrie's phonebook.Next to the number for the CIA was penned next to it the extension that was identified as for Tom Karamessines.
#########################################################
NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe - Google Books Result
books.google.com/books?isbn=1135767858
Ganser Daniele - ‎2005 - 336 pages
15 The CIA invested millions into the secret Greek army and built an entire ...
Karamessines set up the CIA headquarters in Greece located in Athens on the
fifth ... In 1962 Karamessines was forced to leave Rome amidst rumours that he
had ...
  • SEE PAGE 217 background Karamessines.
########################################
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Postonned in full. Who better to supress JFK assassination records ?? (its a family affair) Some say we dont know who killed JFK and we will never figure it out. Others say we do know ,why its right in front of our faces .
################################
Influential Republicans working to draft Jeb Bush into 2016 presidential race
################
  • 2 days ago ... ... embarked upon a quiet quest to get former Florida governor Jeb Bush to enter
    the 2016 presidential race, The Washington Post reported
####################

www.msnbc.com/.../republicans-courting-jeb-bush-for-2016-212441667511

++++++++++++++++++++
WHY POSTPONNED IN FULL TODAY ?????

WMR has obtained additional details on Business International Corporation, the CIA front company where President Obama spent a year working after graduating from Columbia University in 1983.
BIC used journalists as non-official cover agents around the world. The firm published weekly and fortnightly newsletters for business executives. . .
On February 24, WMR reported: "For one year, Obama worked as a researcher in BIC's financial services division where he wrote for two BIC publications, Financing Foreign Operations and Business International Money Report, a weekly newsletter.....
#####
In his autobiography, "Dreams From My Fathers", Barack Obama writes of taking a job at some point after graduating from Columbia University in 1983. He describes his employer as "a consulting house to multinational corporations" in New York City, and his functions as a "research assistant" and "financial writer." The odd part of Obama's story is that he doesn't mention the name of his employer.
However, a New York Times story of 2007 identifies the company as Business International Corporation. Equally odd is that the Times did not remind its readers that the newspaper itself had disclosed in 1977 that Business International had provided cover for four CIA employees in various countries between 1955 and 1960. The British journal, Lobster Magazine -- which, despite its incongruous name, is a venerable international publication on intelligence matters -- has reported that Business International was active in the 1980s promoting the candidacy of Washington-favored candidates in Australia and Fiji. In 1987, the CIA overthrew the Fiji government after but one month in office because of its policy of maintaining the island as a nuclear-free zone, meaning that American nuclear-powered or nuclear-weapons-carrying ships could not make port calls. After the Fiji coup, the candidate supported by Business International, who was much more amenable to Washington's nuclear desires, was reinstated to power.
In his book, not only doesn't Obama mention his employer's name; he fails to say when he worked there, or why he left the job. There may well be no significance to these omissions, but inasmuch as Business International has a long association with the world of intelligence, covert actions, and attempts to penetrate the radical left -- including Students for a Democratic Society -- it's valid to wonder if the inscrutable Mr. Obama is concealing something about his own association with this world.

‎###########

Clinton accused of not living in the real world again and again because he never had a private sector job.
So why didnt Obama elaborate on his private sector experience ???

Edited by Steven Gaal
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At bottom Greg Parker post that needs to be added as an addendum to Spiders Web.
The Weston ,To Jake Rubenstein, c/o The Carousel Club, article builds on his Spiders Web article and the Parker post adds to that.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
POST # 1 this thread
Although the activities of the schoolbook operatives often overlapped those of Jack Ruby, the only verifiable link was Lee Harvey Oswald. There were many witnesses testifying to an association between Ruby and Oswald, but the most credible is Daniel T. McGown. On March 31, 1963, McGown accidentally found a letter at the Carousel Club addressed to “Jake Rubinstein” with a return address from “Lee Oswald,” at 1106 Diceman Street in Dallas. McGown later confirmed that “Lee Oswald” was indeed Lee Harvey Oswald. [30]
#############################################################
below Diceman article by Weston
##############################################################
To Jake Rubenstein, c/o The Carousel Club

William Weston
October 2001

On October 31, 1976, a government agent greeted a gray-haired gentleman who, on his own initiative, came into the FBI office in Memphis, Tennessee. He had a secret about the Kennedy assassination, he said, and he wanted to disclose it. [1]
The distinguished-looking visitor did not appear to be the type who would know something about the world of spies, pimps, drug dealers, con artists, and other disreputable denizens inhabiting the murky milieu of assassination intrigue. Daniel T. McGown, by anyone's standards, was a pillar of the community, a successful businessman with an honorable career in a prestigious profession. Born in 1908 in Brownwood, Texas, his family moved to Memphis prior to his graduation from high school. After receiving a degree from the School of Architecture at Georgia Tech, he went to work for Schulz & Norton, an architectural and engineering firm in Memphis. In 1941, he married Irma Lee Beasley, a daughter from one of Tennesee's more respectable families. During the course of their marriage, the couple had two children. In 1948, he started his own architectural firm, which over the years grew and prospered. He became president of the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects and was a member of the Calvary Episcopal Church. [2] Family man, businessman, church member, community server, Mr. McGown lived a life that was largely indistinguishable from thousands of other men of his class who lived around the country. However, in that fateful year of 1963, a strange twist of fate had placed within his hands a hitherto unknown secret regarding a connection between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.
The incident occurred during a business trip to Texas in March 1963. McGown had flown to Austin, in order to check over the plans for a new building that was to be constructed on the campus of the University of Texas. When he had completed his survey, he rented a car and drove north to the city of Brownwood, where he spent a day with some relatives. He then drove to Fort Worth, where he visited his first cousin, a prominent attorney in that city. Late in the evening, he used his cousin's telephone to call his wife Irma. He wished her a happy birthday and said that he would see her the next day, when his plane arrived in Memphis. Irma's birthday was March 28.
McGown left his cousin's house and drove east to Dallas. It was almost midnight when he checked in at the Adolphus Hotel on Commerce Street. After getting settled into his room, he felt like having a nightcap before going to bed. He left his room, went down the elevator to the lobby, and went outside. The brightly lit sign of the Carousel Club beckoned from across the street. He walked over to the club entrance door and opened it. Behind the door was a staircase, leading up to the second floor. When he reached the top of the stairs, he was stopped by a heavy-set man. The club was closing up, the man said, who then complained about city regulations that prevented him from keeping the place open after midnight. [3] Rebuffed by the manager of the club, McGown went back to his room.
The following morning, McGown decided to do a little sightseeing, since he had a few hours to kill before his plane departed from Dallas. As he was walking down Commerce Street, he paused at the Carousel Club. Near the entrance was a showcase display featuring pictures of female performers. As he was gazing at the pictures, another man who was walking down the street crowded into the entryway to look at them too. It was an awkward moment for McGown as he tried to make room for the other man while at the same time trying to keep a favorable point of view for himself. Presently, the other man turned to leave. As he did so, he brushed by an overstuffed mailbox that hung on the entrance door. A few large pieces of mail, two magazines, and three letters spilled on the ground. The man continued on his way without stopping.
McGown proceeded to pick up the envelopes and magazines and stuff them back into the box. He noticed that the three letters were written by women and were addressed to "Jake Rubenstein, c/o The Carousel Club." Rubenstein must have been the heavy-set man whom McGown met the previous night. He was probably also the one who hired women to be performers in the club. Perhaps the senders of the three letters were prospective applicants for employment. McGown looked at the envelopes again. Two of the women lived in Fort Worth, and one lived in Dallas. The name on the Dallas letter caught his attention, for he happened to have a friend who had the same last name. [4] After making a mental note of the address, he put the letters back in the box with the rest of the mail. The woman he was planning to visit was "Lee Oswald."
Using a city map as a guide, McGown drove toward Miss Oswald's place. As he was approaching her street, he looked at the houses in the neighborhood. Expecting to see lower class housing, he was surprised to find upper middle class or upper class residences. McGown wondered about this. Why would anyone living in such an area have any dealings with a strip joint?
When he arrived at his destination, he stopped the car and looked at it. It was a two-story apartment building, constructed in the cheap, boxy style that was becoming the prevailing fashion at that time. It had an outside stairway that led up to a balcony walk on the second floor. It was a new building, perhaps two or three years old at the most. For the convenience of the postman, there was a mailbox with individual compartments that stood facing the street next to the curb. In order to find the unit that Miss Oswald was renting, McGown got out of his car and looked over the names of the tenants posted on the compartment doors. When he found Oswald's name, he realized that he had made a mistake. The middle name of Lee Harvey Oswald showed that this person was not a woman. Without further ado, McGown got back into his car and drove away.
Eight months later, when the names of Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby were being broadcasted on radio and television, the details of this episode came vividly back to his memory. Should he tell the authorities what he knew, or should he not? His reputation might suffer if this embarrassing incident ever became widely known. He hoped that the authorities would find out about Oswald's connection to Jack Ruby without his help. When the Warren Report was published, he bought a copy and read it from cover to cover. There was nothing in it to indicate that the government knew what he knew. Furthermore he read that the commission could find no "credible evidence" of an association between Oswald and Ruby. After the death of Jack Ruby in January 1967, McGown wondered if he was the only one left who still had the "credible evidence" that eluded the Warren Commission. Finally, nine years later, he told his wife about it. She encouraged him to go to the FBI. After all, his story might make a difference in the new, upcoming investigation into the JFK assassination that Congress was preparing to launch. Such were the circumstances that led Daniel T. McGown to the local office of the FBI in 1976.
The FBI of course wanted to know where the apartment was. McGown could not remember its exact location, but he drew a diagram depicting the apartment in relation to the mailbox out front, as well as in relation to a nearby apartment that faced another street. He remembered that the address had four digits and sounded something like "Diceland." A Dallas city map showed that there were was no street with the name of "Diceland," but there were two with the name of "Diceman." One was Diceman Drive, and the other was Diceman Avenue.
Dallas FBI agent Robert Gemberling drove out to Diceman Drive to see if there were any apartments matching McGown's diagram and description. Diceman Drive had single-family houses but no apartments. A few inquiries among the residents showed that no apartment had ever existed on that street.
Next stop was Diceman Avenue. Gemberling looked from one end of the avenue to the other, and the only dwellings that he could see were single-family homes - with one exception. At the point where Diceman ran into Cedar Crest Boulevard was a two-story building made of brick. It was the Cedar Crest Heights Apartment. It had a second floor balcony walk with an iron railing just as McGown described it. Next to the curb was a large mailbox with sixteen key-locked compartments with tenant nametags. Adjacent to the building was another apartment facing Birdsong Street. The apartment at 1106 Diceman Avenue must be the place that McGown had visited in 1963. There was no other possibility. Still, Gemberling was not satisfied. He noticed that all the buildings in the neighborhood were rundown, dilapidated, and occupied entirely by lower-class blacks. This was not the upper class neighborhood that McGown claimed to have seen.
Gemberling looked for the manager. He found him at a nearby office at 2514 Birdsong Avenue. The manager told him that the apartment was owned by a company called General Rental. It was built around 1959 or 1960, and it was the only apartment that had ever been on that street. The mailbox seen out front had been there since the apartment was first constructed. So far these extra details provided additional confirmation for McGown's story. Gemberling wanted to see the tenant records for 1963, but the manager told them that they no longer existed. They were destroyed with all the other tenant records in a fire that occurred in April 1968. Gemberling asked the manager if he knew anything about Oswald living in the apartment in 1963. Although the manager acknowledged that he had only been working for General Rental since 1969, he was nevertheless positive that Oswald could not have lived in the apartment in 1963. In an all-black neighborhood, people would have certainly remembered Oswald as the only white man living among them, and such was not the case.
Apparently the manager's statement was enough to convince Gemberling that the 1106 Diceman lead was a dead end. No further inquiries were made, as far as the available records show. (There are however some "postponed in full" documents from the Memphis office of the FBI regarding a "Daniel McGowen" that are now in the National Archives.) To find out more about the apartment, I checked the 1963 Dallas criss-cross directory and found a former tenant by the name of Orlean Dorsey. I located Dorsey in Lufkin, Texas and called him up. Contrary to what the General Rental manager told Gemberling, Dorsey, who is black, said it was not an all-black apartment in 1963. Both white and black people lived there. Furthermore, the apartment was indeed located in a prestigious area. About a mile south of the apartment was the Lakeview Golf Course, where Dorsey worked as a landscape and maintenance man. Among the celebrities who played golf there were such baseball legends as Mickey Mantle and "Dizzy" Dean. At that time, the golf course was racially segregated. Whites played there during the day and blacks played at night.
Not just anyone could live at the Cedar Crest Apartment. A prospective tenant had to have a very good background and excellent references. Dorsey was able to get his unit because he knew the manager, a black named Denny Blair, who often played golf at Lakeview. Blair was an employee of Bailey Rental, a white-owned company that had title to the Diceman apartment. (Bailey Rental was later renamed General Rental.)
The Cedar Crest Apartment was an expensive place to live. It took all of Dorsey's wages to pay the rent. He was making $1.25 per hour and the rent was about $210 per month. The only way he could afford to live there was by working a lot of overtime on the weekends. By way of comparison, Oswald was making $1.35 per hour at Jaggers Chiles Stovall during the month of March 1963, and he was paying $72.68 a month for a one-bedroom flat at the Neely Street house. [5]
Dorsey and his family moved into the apartment in November 1962. Because of his long working hours and because he was going to plumbing school at the same time, he did not get to know the other tenants. His wife and children also did not do much socializing. Thus he was unable to confirm or deny whether Oswald lived there. Dorsey and his family moved to another apartment in October 1963.
The transition from an affluent, mainly white neighborhood to black lower class ghetto occurred during the mid-1960's, according to Dorsey who would come back to visit his former apartment from time to time. The quality of the building and the surrounding area deteriorated as a result of vandalism and neglect. When I called the General Rental office in 1995, I found out that the apartment was still owned by the Bailey family. I also learned that rent was only $50 per week - a real bargain for anyone brave enough to live there.
Did Oswald live at the Cedar Crest Apartment? Considering the high cost of rent in 1963, it is unlikely he would have chosen to live there. A more reasonable possibility is that he used the address simply to receive his mail. As a man astute in the ways of intelligence, he no doubt realized that a mailbox at the post office was under surveillance. A second mailbox in another area would be highly useful for receiving mail from more sensitive sources. This line of reasoning is supported by the fact that most of the units at 1106 Diceman were listed as "vacant" in the criss-cross directories of 1962 and 1963. In 1962 only five of the sixteen units available were occupied. This ratio dropped to only four occupied units the following year. An apartment manager with a 75% vacancy rate might let someone temporarily use an unused mailbox for a small fee.
It is interesting to note that on March 29, the day that McGown was at the Diceman apartment, Oswald was seen at a barbershop in Sparta, Wisconsin. Oswald told John Abbott, the barber, that he got his money by blackmailing a Texas nightclub operator, for whom he had previously worked. Each time he made a contact with this man, he would get fifty dollars. The money he obtained would be used to cover his travelling expenses. (He never gave the name of the nightclub operator.) Perhaps the Oswald letter that McGown saw was another demand for more money.
McGown's story lends credence to the story of a connection between Ruby and Oswald in the May 17 edition of the National Enquirer. It said: "After a sniper shot at but missed General Walker in Dallas, April 10, 1963, Dallas police suspected that Oswald was the sniper and Ruby was the payoff man. The cops were set to arrest the pair. But they never got the chance, because of heavy pressure brought to bear by the Justice Dept. and so Oswald and Ruby were to remain free." The article also said that a top secret document, signed by a high official of the Justice Dept., was sent in April 1963 to Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry requesting the police not to arrest Oswald and Ruby. This document was reportedly in the hands of the Warren Commission.
Given the potentially explosive implications of the above story, it is no wonder that the Warren Commission chose to discount all witnesses to a connection between Oswald and Ruby, including Wilburn Litchfield, Joe Franklin, and Bill DeMar. McGown's story is not only important in rehabilitating the credibility of these undeservedly maligned witnesses, but it also provides a glimpse into the covert ways by which Oswald and Ruby communicated with one another.


ENDNOTES

1. Sources for this article were FBI reports in Memphis and Dallas. Also referred to were ten pages of McGown's hand-written account that was photocopied by the FBI.
2. Engagement announcement, Sept. 14, 1941; wedding announcement, Dec. 3, 1941, and obituary of Daniel T. McGown, March 5, 1985, in the Memphis newspaper, The Commercial Appeal.
3. According to Jack Ruby's bartender, Andrew Armstrong, clean up started at midnight on weeknights and at 1:00 am on Saturday and Sunday. All bottles and glasses had to be cleared off the tables by 12:15. If a vice squad police officer saw anyone drinking after 12:15, he could slap a five-day suspension on the club (Vol. 13 of the Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, p. 325).
4. Actually the friend's surname had a slightly different spelling. Felix Oswalt, a member of the Board of Education in Memphis, was the friend McGown was talking about.
5. Warren Report, p. 743.

____________________________________________________________
(Gaal comments below on above article)
A professional man is traveling alone and
sees an opportunity to meet strippers.


Eight months later, when the names of Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby were being broadcasted on radio and television, the details of this episode came vividly back to his memory. Should he tell the authorities what he knew, or should he not? His reputation might suffer if this embarrassing incident ever became widely known. He hoped that the authorities would find out about Oswald's connection to Jack Ruby without his help. When the Warren Report was published, he bought a copy and read it from cover to cover. There was nothing in it to indicate that the government knew what he knew. Furthermore he read that the commission could find no "credible evidence" of an association between Oswald and Ruby. After the death of Jack Ruby in January 1967, McGown wondered if he was the only one left who still had the "credible evidence" that eluded the Warren Commission. Finally, nine years later, he told his wife about it. She encouraged him to go to the FBI. After all, his story might make a difference in the new, upcoming investigation into the JFK assassination that Congress was preparing to launch. Such were the circumstances that led Daniel T. McGown to the local office of the FBI in 1976.
**********************************************
(Gaal)
PAUSE AND REFLECT
PAUSE AND REFLECT
PAUSE AND REFLECT ...............
What would motivate a professional married man to contact the FBI
(in the early 1960s timeframe) and say he ," improperly looked at US Mail and wanted to 'hunt' down a stripper." ???? Would /could this not hurt his career ?? (YUP)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Answer ZERO
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Posted 06 September 2012 - 12:40 AM

Back in 2001, I made the following post to a news group:


Quote

DPD Criminal Intel Report on narcotics filed on Boxing Day,
1963 in summary states:

From confidential source:
Everett Edward Burnett DPD# 31924 and Robert Ray Jordon DPD#
30119 recently robbed an unknown Mexican from San Antonio,
Texas of 2.5 ounces of heroin.

Source further stated that these two men have also been
committing drug store burglaries.

They live in an apartment house on Gaston Ave. Exact address
unknown.

Informant further stated that Everett Edward Burnett is a
homosexual and has had unnatural sex relations with Jack
Leon Ruby.



http://jfk.ci.dallas...39/3936-001.gif

On pages 4 and 5 of this doc, the FBI has Pike saying that Ruby liked to "surround himself with clean-cut, well-dressed "Hollywood-type" men to make himself feel important.
http://www.maryferre...717&relPageId=5

What immediately struck me about that was at least one of Ruby's prison psych's put in his report that Ruby thought Oswald looked like Paul Newman,

It's also mentioned here:
http://www.maryferre...bsPageId=367099
Edited by Steven Gaal
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  • 2 weeks later...
FROM Weston's Spiders Web
On November 22 while Bergin was flying home from a business meeting in Chicago, his employees were preparing to watch the parade. Avery Davis, Judy McCully, Jane Berry, and Betty Thornton were outside standing in front of the building. Mary Hollies and Betty Foster were on the fourth floor looking out of a window in the stock area between the Scott Foresman office and the west wall of the building. Inside the office were Yola Hopson and Ruth Nelson at a window on the west side, and to their left were Dorothy Garner, Sandra Styles, Victoria Adams, and Elsie Dorman grouped around two more windows. Elsie brought her husband’s movie camera to film the motorcade as it entered Dealey Plaza.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Other directors of First City Bancorporation are John Diesel, pres. of Tenneco, which interlocks with the George Bush oil firm, Zapata Oil Corp., whose chmn John Mackin is a director of Tenneco; Randall Meyer, pres. Exxon; M.A. Wright, former chmn Exxon 1966-76, now chmn Cameron Iron Works.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

6th floor DATA = http://jfk.org/go/exhibits/home-movies/elsie-dorman

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Post assassination Elsie Dorman son got a job at Tenneco.

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By July William Weston hopes to have out another article,some of which has TSBD material.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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  • 3 weeks later...
It is the assertion in the Spiders Web that the TSBD was a secret arms cache.
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Arms Cache Most Likely Kept in Texas by the C.I.A
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05cia1-master675.jpg WASHINGTON — In passing references scattered through once-classified documents and cryptic public comments by former intelligence officials, it is referred to as “Midwest Depot,” but the bland code name belies the role it has played in some of the C.I.A.’s most storied operations. From the facility, located somewhere in the United States, the C.I.A. has stockpiled and distributed untraceable weapons linked to preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion and the arming of rebels and resistance fighters from Angola to Nicaragua to Afghanistan. Yet despite hints that “Midwest” was not actually where it was located, the secrecy surrounding the C.I.A. armory has survived generations of investigations. In a 2007 essay on the 20th anniversary of the Iran-contra affair, for example, a congressional investigator noted that the facility where the C.I.A. had handled missiles bound for Iran remained classified even as other “incredible things were unveiled during the hearings.” But three years ago, it became public that the C.I.A. had some kind of secret location at Camp Stanley http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/us/arms-cache-most-likely-kept-in-texas-by-the-cia.html?hp&_r=0
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JFKcountercoup
Saturday, April 18, 2009

Venezuelan Arms Cache - A Northwoods Operation?



According to the textbook on the investigation of homicide, if the motive is elimination, then attention must be given to the victim's most recent business interest. What was on his desk at the time? (1)

For John F. Kennedy, Cuba was on his mind, and the two most important items on his Oval Office desk at the time were the back channel negotiations with Castro (2), and the discovery of an arms cache on a Venezuelan beach that seemed to have originated in Cuba and were destined to be used by terrorists.(3)

Having the evidence that Castro was exporting his revolution to South America, according to Richard Helms, the messenger, sparked President Kennedy to remark: "Great work, be sure to have complete information when I get back from my trip [to Dallas]. I think we may have got him now." (4)

Of course that never happened, and LBJ, when he did get back to Washington from Dallas, didn't take the bait and refused to have anything more to do with covert Cuban operations, possibly because he knew that those same operations were used to kill Kennedy.

Having Kennedy approve the covert operations against Castro that were used at Dealey Plaza was part of the Valkyrie operation tactics from the General's plot to kill Hitler that were used by the CIA/DOD Special Group counterinsurgency unit against Castro. (5) It was this specific plot that was redirected to kill President Kennedy.

While the President had rejected the Northwood plans to fabricate an incident to provoke an invasion of Cuba, the "black propaganda" operations to justify an invasion continued, including the possibility, probability that the Venezuelan Arms Cache was one such incident. (6)

Framing Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of President Kennedy, the shenanigans at Guatamano (as Greg Parker notes) and the Bay of Tonkin incidents are other Northwoods type - "black propaganda" operations that are specifically designed to appear and are officially designated as the work of the enemy opposition.

The Venezuelan Arms Cache incident stands out however, as it is entwined with the assassination, and affected U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba, justifying the economic sanctions imposed by the Organization of American States (OAS). (7)

I also suspect that if the origin of the 6.5 ammunition found on the sixth floor of the TSBD were actually traced, it would stem from a stash of arms that were taken from either the Huma, La. bunker in 1961, those stolen from a Texas Army Reserve supply dump in 1963, the arms from the Cuban commando training camp at McLaney's in LaComb, La. in July 1963, or somehow related to this Venezuelan Arms Cache, which is said to have originated in Belgium. (8)

It seems like you can't be objective about this incident. On the one hand you have Stephen Rabe using it as an example Kennedy's continued aggression against Castro, David Kaiser and Lamar Waldron citing it to advance their argument of mafia responsibility for Dealey Plaza, while Phil Agee and Joe Burkhauser Smith suspect it’s a Northwood operation that the US spooks manufactured.

Then you have Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, pointing to the fine work of the "Special Group on counterinsurgency" for the success in keeping the arms from the terrorists and democracy alive in Venezuela. (9)

"The Special Group on counterinsurgency," the same guys, under the command of Gen. Krulak, who were utilizing the Valkyrie plot tactics against Castro. (10)

STEPHEN G. RABE

From The Most Dangerous Area in the World – John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution In Latin America, by Stephen G. Rabe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999) [p. 107] :

President Kennedy tried to help his Venezuelan friend find damning evidence against Castro. While in Washington in February 1963, (Venezuelan President Romulo) Betancourt publicly denounced Castro, advising the National Press Club that "we should continue constantly and unremittingly our actions against this regime in Cuba to encircle it, to cut it off without ceasing and failing." 26

After meeting with Betancourt, the president wrote to CIA Director John McCone that "it is obvious that the Communists in Venezuela support Castro. Do we have any information that could be presented in a public forum, such as the OAS, that would indicate that the link between the anti-Betancourt terrorists and Castro is direct? 27

That link surfaced on a Venezuelan beach in November 1963, when Venezuela announced that it had discovered a cache of Cuban arms, consisting of eighty-one rifles, thirty-one machine guns, and ammunition for heavy weapons. These arms were allegedly left for insurgents determined to disrupt the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election. CIA officers brought one of the rifles in the cache to Robert Kennedy, who then sent it on to his brother. The president was shown where the coat of arms was sanded off the rifle. According to Richard Helms, a pleased president said: "Great work. Be sure to have complete information for me when I get back from my trip [to Dallas]. I think maybe we've got him now." 28

The Cuban intervention surprised intelligence analysts in Washington, for Castro had not previously exported arms, although they also noted that Castro reportedly stated "he would like very much to get rid of 'Betancourt and company.'" 29

In fact, some have subsequently questioned the validity of the discovery. Joseph Burkholder Smith, who had previously served as CIA chief of station in Caracas, has implied that CIA operatives, responding to presidential pressure, engaged in a form of "black propaganda" and planted the arms. Philip Agee, a former CIA agent who turned against the agency, also recalled that he immediately suspected that the Caracas station, working with Venezuelan agents, planted the arms. But neither man had hard evidence to sustain his suspicions. As Agee recorded in the diary he reconstructed, "For the sake of discretion I haven't asked." Perhaps predictably, Fidel Castro charged that the CIA had "faked" the evidence. Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev seconded the Cuban's allegation. 30.

The arms cache incident provided an opportunity for the Johnson administration to intensify, in McGeorge Bundy's words, "our present nasty course" against Cuba. CIA Director McCone showed President Johnson "the evidence that proved absolutely that arms had been imported into Venezuela from Cuba." 31

The administration, through the U.S. Information Agency, launched a massive anti-Cuban campaign throughout Latin America. Venezuela lobbied Latin Americans, telling them that serial markings on the weapons and intercepted messages provided irrefutable proof that Cuba had violated the nonintervention principle of the OAS charter. In July, 1964, the OAS acted on the Venezuelan complaint; by a vote of 15 to 4, it called on member states to break relations and impose economic sanctions on Cuba. Cuba was effectively ostracized from the inter-American community, with only Mexico ignoring the sanctions…..
p. 108

"Reflecting on Betancourt's constitutional success, Attorney General Kennedy claimed that the Special Group on counterinsurgency that he directed "was responsible for the preservation of the democratic system in Venezuela." Without U.S. assistance to the military and police, "Venezuela would have been taken over by the Communists." 32.

[bK Notes: Stephen Rabe background and his abstract on the Kennedy's aggression against Castro]

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120702476/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

After the Missiles of October: John F. Kennedy and Cuba, November 1962 to November 1963

STEPHEN G. RABE 1

Professor of history at the University of Texas at Dallas. His most recent book is The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (University of North Carolina Press, 1999). Copyright 2000 Center for the Study of the Presidency

ABSTRACT

In analyzing U.S. relations with Cuba during the Kennedy administration, scholars have focused on the Bay of Pigs invasion, Operation Mongoose, and the Cuban missile crisis. Less attention has been given to the state of U.S.-Cuban relations in the aftermath of the missile crisis and during the last year of President John F. Kennedy's life. Scholars have assumed, however, that Kennedy was in the process of reevaluating his hostile policies toward Cuba. This article challenges those assumptions by closely examining what Kennedy and his administration intended for Cuba. The article is based on new documentary evidence. It suggests that the Kennedy administration never renounced its policy of overthrowing Fidel Castro.

[bK Notes: David Kaiser also mentions the Venezuelan Arms Cache in his book on the assassination, but fails to mention that the Rex was leased by Collins Radio, of Richardson, Texas, which has more direct ties to the assassination]

DAVID KAISER

From: The Road to Dallas (Harvard, 2008)– David Kaiser [Page 295]

…The situation was so potentially explosive that Bundy asked Chase to list all the American officials who knew that the United States was behind the raids. There turned out to be at least thirty, Chase replied, including Thomas Hughes of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Assistant Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, and Vance's two deputies for Cuban matters, future Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Joe Califano and future Secretary of State (then Lieutenant Colonel) Al Haig. 14

A few weeks later, on September 29, Chase asked subordinates to consider the possibility that Castro might somehow retaliate, as he had publicly threatened to do early in the month. 15

And on October 21 he suggested that the government might do well to lift some of its restrictions on autonomous raids, so that the CIA would not be held solely responsible for every action that took place. 16

On October 31 Castro himself identified the 174-foot boat Rex, moored in Palm Beach, as the mother ship for a recent attack that resulted in the capture of several raiders in small boats. Reporters discovered that the Rex's berthing fees were paid by the Sea Key Shipping Company, a mysterious entity with a post office box address. The owner of the Rex, J. A. Belcher, was an oil company executive who bought the ship from a Nicaraguan company owned by the Somoza government. He denied any involvement in the raids. 17

On November 8, 1963, the Venezuelan government indicated that it had discovered a cache of about three tons of arms, with serial numbers removed, on a beach. They accused Castro of having sent the weapons into the country, and an OAS delegation later claimed to have seen Cuban insignia on them. 18

Evidence from American archives, however, suggests that the cache may have been a plant the execution of a long-discussed plan dating back to August 31, 1962. The first hint comes in a memorandum written by General Edward Lansdale, head of Operation Mongoose, listing possible psychological actions against Cuba.

Psychological Activity: 24. Make available to the International Narcotics Commission documented evidence of Cuban exportation /importation of narcotics. (State)…This activity will be undertaken only on a spot basis, coordinated with U.S. objectives in the specific country. 19

The September 6 comment of Thomas Parrott, General Maxwell Taylor's assistant at the White House, on this point are somewhat more enlightening despite deletions in the released version.

I would suggest a couple of additional activities: (a) under number 25, calling for the [less than 1 line of source text not declassified] Bloc arms in Latin American countries, this could be extended to include [less than 1 line of source text not declassified] propaganda materials and perhaps sabotage materials; ( the possibility of [less than 1 line of source text not declassified] Incidents which could lead to the breaking of diplomatic relations by selected countries….

Paragraph 25 was deleted in its entirety from a revised September 12 version that Lansdale submitted for Bundy's approval. In a September 14 meeting of the Mongoose task force, "the 12 September addendum to the Phase Two Mongoose Operation was discussed and the entire Phase Two was approved in principle as a platform from which to proceed. Activities which may be especially sensitive are to be brought before the Group, and this body wishes to be kept generally advised on progress." 21

The minutes continue:

[1 paragraph (3 lines of source text) not declassified]

CIA Headquarters and all WH stations are to be especially alert for any shipments of arms or other subversive material from Cuba to other Latin American countries. (Chief, Task Force W says this alert has been laid on and is in force.)

In May 1963, an undated list of "Additional Actions Against Cuba" included the following (the second paragraph apparently consists of CIA comments):

7. Deception operations involving the laying down of arms caches containing Soviet, Czech and Chicom arms in selected areas of Latin America, ostensibly proving the arms were smuggled from Cuba.

7. [comments] The key consideration in such an operation is the possibility that the 'discovery' of such arms caches might lead to embarrassment for the Administration since arms smuggling is one of the points most often stated for the U.S. possibly taking a more aggressive action against Castro. This type of operation, while feasible, is an extremely difficult and dangerous one to undertake in terms of making the operation plausible and foolproof. 22

Then, six months later, three tons of arms turned up on a northwestern Venezuelan beach. The story broke in the newspapers on November 12, and on November 27 – five days after JFK's assassination – Rusk informed the new President, Lyndon Johnson, that Venezuela planned to make a public announcement that the arms were of Cuban origin. 23

In Richard Helm's fifth appearance before the Church Committee, on September 11, 1975, the former director described the incident this way:

Mr. Kelly. Mr. Ambassador, was it your perception that the Kennedy Administration's program against Cuba and the pressure to implement that program vigorously was any different in 1963 than it was in 1962?

Mr. HELMS. Well, I find this a difficult question to answer for the simple reason that I don't have any recollection in 1963 once the operations – put it this way – cranked up again, that there were any particular limitations placed on what we were attempting to do. I realize that the character of some of them were changed. I think they must have changed because the conditions in Cuba had changed, the Cuban Missile Crisis had changed relations. We learned a great deal about Cuba because of the Cuban Missile Crisis itself.....

…But I do not recall having been told by anyone in authority that there is any less interest or intention on the part of the Kennedy administration to unseat the Castro government. And I do recall that sometime, I guess it was in the summer or fall of 1963, talking to Mr. Robert Kennedy about the problem of Castro's efforts to send arms and trained guerrillas and so forth into other Latin American and Central American countries. And it just seemed to me that this was dangerous indeed, particular after the difficulties we'd had with Castro and the Cuban Missile Crisis, and my general recollection is that Mr. Kennedy said, yes, but what can the President do? If you bring him evidence that Castro is sending arms and trained guerrillas and so forth to Latin American countries, then you give him something to work with. But under the circumstances, what can he do, what can any of us do?

Well, by chance, sometime after that, and I don't recall how long but it wasn't a terribly long time. The Venezuelan authorities, as I recall it, or maybe it was one of the Agency operations in Venezuela in conjunction with the Venezuelan security people or police, found a large arms cache on, I think way out in the country in Venezuela, and they also found through some penetration or agent, rather, a plan of some guerrillas, Venezuelan guerrillas, in touch with the Cubans to tie off certain sections of Caracas with armed men and so forth, and bring the city to a halt…..But out of this cache were found some weapons and among those weapons I actually was given a submachine guns, which I believe was manufactured in Belgium, and on that submachine gun there was a place where there had been an insignia and the insignia had been brazed off, so that to the naked eye you could see nothing. But when the technicians in the Agency actually [began] to work with the chemicals and so forth, they were able to bring up for very short periods what was underneath. In other words, what the insignia had been long enough to photograph it.

And so we had photographs of what was on that thing, and it was the insignia of Castro's Cuba. So that these had obviously been sent from Belgium manufacture for the Cuban account. In other words, they had manufactured them and sent them to Cuba. 24

Given the sensitivity of planting an arms cache, we do not know whether any documents showing that the CIA was actually behind the Venezuelan operations ever existed, much less if they will ever be released.

But the arms cache was discovered, it did not, for reasons we shall examine, lead to any major new action against Castro. [p. 301]


[bK Notes: Ah, but they did lead to major new action against Castro, at least according to the PIIE, whose chronology of key events includes the Venezuelan Arms Cache as the reason the OAS began economic sanctions against Cuba, sanctions that are just now being reversed.]

http://www.iie.com/research/topics/sanctions/cuba.cfm

Peterson Institute for International Economics
Case Studies in Sanctions and terrorism
Case Study 60-3
US v. Cuba (1960- : Castro)
Chronology of Key Events

Case Studies in Sanctions and Terrorism: Cuba

President John F. Kennedy prohibits shipments of cargoes paid for by the US government ... Following discovery of arms cache of Cuban origin in Venezuela, ...

July 1964

Following discovery of arms cache of Cuban origin in Venezuela, and led by US and Venezuela, OAS calls for mandatory sanctions covering all trade except food, medicine (then about $18 million annually); severing of diplomatic relations (Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay, Mexico dissent). (Doxey 37; Schreiber 389)

[bK Notes: Don Bohning also calls attention to what an impact the Venezuelan Arms Cache had on OAS]

DON BOHNING

US Policy Towards Cuba: Still Stuck in a Time Warp

http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:uHQIZdzoiQcJ:hnn.us/articles/45024.html+Venezuela+arms+cache+JFK&cd=16&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Mongoose was a multi-agency program devised in late 1961 by then White House aide Richard Goodwin and overseen by Bobby Kennedy, the President's brother and U.S. Attorney General. Its day-to-day direction was under Air Force Brig. Gen. Col. Edward Lansdale, a somewhat quirky and flamboyant officer who had made a reputation in the Philippines as a counter-insurgency expert.

Landsdale, in a January 18, 1962, program review of Mongoose, noted under the heading of economic warfare that the "State [Department] is basing future economic actions, including plans for an embargo on Cuban trade, on the outcome of the forthcoming OAS meeting.…" 10

In a follow-up memo to Lansdale dated February 16, 1962, Robert Hurwitch, the State Department's officer in charge of Cuban Affairs and the department's representative for Mongoose, noted that "the outcome of the OAS meeting provided excellent political basis in a multilateral context for a U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba. Upon termination of the MFM [meeting of foreign ministers] the Department reiterated its previous recommendation that an embargo be imposed. The President took this action February 3, 1962." 11

On two later occasions, decisions affecting the embargo under both the Johnson and the Ford administrations also were predicated on action by the OAS foreign ministers.

Venezuela convoked a July 1964 foreign ministers meeting in Washington after a Cuban arms cache destined for anti-government guerrillas was found on a Venezuelan beach in November 1963.

The meeting's final resolution – with Chile and Mexico dissenting – called on member states to (1) sever diplomatic relations with Cuba; (2) suspend all trade with the island nation except for humanitarian purposes; and (3) suspend all sea transportation except that necessary for reasons of a humanitarian nature. 12

Again, in July 1975, in Costa Rica, the foreign ministers essentially reversed what they had approved in 1964 and resolved that each country was free to "normalize or conduct their relations" with Cuba as they saw fit. 13

While the action served to relieve the pressures within the OAS over Cuba policy, it did nothing to modify the view from Washington. It is a view stuck in a time warp through 47 years, 10 U.S. presidents and 16 years after the end of the Cold War.

[bK Notes: In his review of Legacy of Secrecy, Jimmy DiEugenio calls attention to the way the Venezuelan Arms Cache story is treated by those with an agenda]

Legacy of Secrecy by Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann. Reviewed by James DiEugenio

http://www.ctka.net/2009/legacy_secrecy.html

...In this regard I must note that the authors pay me a backhanded compliment in this book. My review of Ultimate Sacrifice was fairly coruscating and it received some notoriety within the research community. Waldron and Hartmann clearly read it and took it seriously because they try and counteract several of my criticisms. One of the most serious ones was my relating of an anecdote in Richard Helms' autobiography entitled A Look Over my Shoulder. On November 19, 1963 Helms visited Robert Kennedy's office and told him that Castro was shipping a large amount of arms into Venezuela in order to upset their upcoming elections. (Helms, pgs 226-27). Helms has RFK saying nothing. He looks at the evidence the CIA took in—a foreign made submachine gun allegedly retrieved from an arms cache-and told Helms to go see President Kennedy. Helms and his assistant do so and JFK asked a couple of questions about how that large a shipment of weapons got through. They then left and later that day, Helms asked Kennedy's assistant, Ken O'Donnell, for a picture.

Now, in my original critique I posed the question that if C-Day was coming up in 12 days, and if all the principals involved in this episode were knowledgeable about it i.e. RFK, JFK and Helms, why would the CIA Director even bother to see the Kennedys if he knew we were invading Cuba shortly? This story shot a harpoon into the guts of their whole C-Day scenario. Because the authors maintained that even though McNamara, Rusk, and Bundy did not know about C-Day, Helms did. And it would be impossible for all four not to know. But this story, in Helms' own book, indicates he did not. When they relate this tale in Legacy of Secrecy (p. 36), they leave out the capper. In his book, Portrait of a Cold Warrior (p. 383), CIA analyst Joseph B. Smith mentions this specific arms seizure. And from the reports on it, he deduced that the CIA planted the weapons. So if Helms knew about C-Day, why did he go to the trouble of planting those weapons if he knew we were invading Cuba anyway?

This is their hapless reply to that question: Helms was testing JFK to see if he was getting cold feet about the invasion. But the problem is there is not any indication of this in Helms' book. On anyone's behalf. But further, the authors now contradict themselves in another important way to give their phony spin a pretext in reality. In their first book, they characterized JFK's back channel to Castro through people like Lisa Howard, Jean Daniel, and William Attwood as going nowhere. In my review, I showed this was false. There was progress being made and JFK was very interested in that progress continuing. I postulated that what Helms was actually trying to do with the planted arms cache was to scuttle those talks since he knew that JFK did not want Cuba interfering in Venezuela's elections. Now, sit down before you read the next sentence. Waldron and Hartmann have stolen my explanation and try and make it work for them! Now they say that Helms was doing all this to ensure the invasion against the back channel's imminent success. Without noting that in their previous volume they said there would be no point in doing such a thing since the talks were useless.

To me, the rearranging of facts, recasting of events, and posthumous mind reading into Helms' psyche, all this is not scholarship. Plain and simple, it is CYA….


JOSEPH B. SMITH

Joseph B. Smith, in Portrait of a Cold Warrior (Putnam, 1976), p. 373:

Between the Argentine elections in 1963 and the Chilean election of 1964, my attention was once again focused on Cuba. Gerry Droller had become branch chief of the countries of the "Cono Sur," the southern cone of Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, and Chile. He came down to Buenos Aires to remind us Cuba was more important than any of them.

"Listen, this guy Des is a genius and he's got the inside track to the Whit House," Gerry explained. "I also think J.C.'s going to retire soon and Des will run the whole division in name as well as in fact. Already we get dozens of old FE hands in the division and more guys from Germany too. WH Division is now all chopstick users and umlaut speakers. And we're all supposed to concentrate on Cuba."

The matter we all concentrated on from December, 1963, until the summer of 1964 was making the discovery of a small arms cache on the coast of Venezuela seem important enough proof of Castro's interventionist intentions that the OAS would declare Cuba an outlaw nation and refuse to allow OAS members to have political or economic relations with her. I initially paid little attention to the news of the discovery of these arms that came from Caracas just after John Kennedy's assassination. I still hadn't gotten over the terrible shock of the President's death when I received a cable saying headquarters wanted maximum press coverage given to the announcement on December 3, 1963, that the OAS had agreed to investigate Venezuelan charges the arms had been secretly delivered by Castro's forces for the use of Venezuelan leftist guerrillas....

....The new chief of covert action operations for WH came down to Buenos Aires just before Christmas to explain how important the Venezuelan arms cache discovery was considered. Dramatically, he related how much the discovery had meant to John Kennedy. "The President had been pressuring us for months before he was killed to come up with some solid proof that Castro was exporting his revolution. He wanted to make his anti-Castro crusade a Latin American cause not just a U.S. mission. He wanted to have some really convincing evidence of Castro's interference in the affairs of Latin countries so that we could get the OAS to take collective action against Castro. This discovery is what he was looking for."

Herb (Ray Herbert, J.C. King's deputy as chief of Western Hemisphere WH division CIA) explained that the news of the discovery had come in from Caracas just the day before President Kennedy left for Texas. He and another officer rushed over to see Bobby Kennedy with the cable. Bobby called the President and he ordered them to come immediately to the Oval Office. "President Kennedy was extremely pleased and excited about the prospects," Herb said. "It was very late in the evening when we left the White House. I think this was the last piece of business he took up before he left Washington. We all like to think we're running this operation for him."

Herb presented us the case against Cuba. The arms had been found on a remote peninsula served only by one secondary road and with no large settlements nearby. Local fishermen had discovered the cache by accident. No Venezuelan guerillas ever had come near the spot. Herb’s story was that on such a coast a boat could land at night with little chance of being detected, the stuff stashed in the dunes, and picked up some subsequent night by the revolutionaries receiving Castro's assistance.

We were working very closely, Herb said, with the Venezuelan authorities to establish complete proof the arms had come from Castro and investigations were going on in Europe and Canada. Some of the arms had been traced to a Belgian manufacturer and Belgian security officials were helping us find records that would show when they were purchased by the Cubans. The Canadians had already advantageously found us proof that a sixteen-foot aluminum boat found hidden with the arms had been sold by a Canadian firm to the Cuban Agrarian Reform Institute just one month before the arms were discovered.

He was most excited about a story from a Venezuelan leftist in the custody of the Venezuelan security police. The prisoner confessed that maps found in his apartment showed where attacks were to be made in Caracas, using these arms, on the eve of the December 1, 1963, presidential elections. Also found in his apartment were instructions on how to use the arms found in the cache. They were a type of weapon which hitherto had not been used by any Venezuelan rebel groups.

The story of the maps sounded familiar to me. I couldn't remember anything about arms instructions, but I remembered the maps were found in this man's apartment way back when I had been Venezuelan desk chief.

"Aren't these the maps we found the other year and couldn't make any sense of?" I asked.

"Yes, that's right," Herb replied. "Our intelligence assistant on the Venezuelan desk got the material out again right after we found the arms and she came up with a beautiful research job we sent to Caracas for the police to use in questioning the suspect. He's confessed."

I was not too impressed with this evidence of the Venezuelan guerrillas' intended use of the arms. It sounded to me as though we might have manufactured it to meet President Kennedy's requirements for an OAS case. I was especially unimpressed by the confession. There are few prisoners of security police in Latin America who refuse to confess. If they don't confess they usually have died in the process of making up their minds, having thought too long about the matter with their heads under water or something.

"I like the touch about the boat's being sold by Canadians to the Cuban Agrarian Reform Institute. Makes it sound as though Castro's trying to be real spooky, using a cover likes the Agrarian Reform Institute to deliver arms." I couldn't resist saying. "How did we actually get the arms there?"

Herb looked at me very hard. "Joe, you are too fond of black operations. Of course, we didn't put the arms there ourselves. Come on."

.....A week after my visit to the camp, Des Fitzgerald came to Buenos Aires. As Gerry Droller had predicted, Des was now WH Division chief and this was his first swing around the hemisphere to visit his new stations. He gave us all a short pep talk - the theme of which was the importance of the success of the OAS sanctions operation. He also briefed us on the overall status of other operations against Cuba being run from JMWAVE, but he sounded a trifle discouraged.

"If Jack Kennedy had lived," Des said, "I can assure you we would have gotten rid of Castro by last Christmas. Unfortunately, the new President isn't as gung-ho on fighting Castro as Kennedy was."

"What do you mean by 'gotten rid of,' Des?" I asked.

"Assassination?"

"Well, you know, Joe, we don't use that language," he replied. "Just say I mean he wouldn't still be doing business in Havana."

Des asked me what I thought about the guerrillas in Salt. I told him I didn't think there was a shred of evidence that they were receiving any support from Castro. "They're just a bunch of bored middle-class kids, Des, who maybe had a fight with their parents."

..."Well," mused Des, "maybe we have enough friends in Argentina that somebody important might just say he thought Castro was helping them."


VENEZUELAN ARMS CACHE - A NORTHWOODS OPERATION? PART II -


Here's some more docs on the Venezuelan Arms Cache.
(Thanks to Rex at Mary Ferrell)

Of course as soon as you get into the official government records, the first thing you come up with are reports from people like General Krulak at SACSA, Al Haig, Sam Halpern and Joe Califano, who is diligently trying "crash" research into the exact origins of the arms cache, and he finds that they originated with the US military and were shipped to Cuba via the port of New Orleans.

And then there's Frank Forini Sturgis' report from Miami about the relative of a Venezuelan government minister in Miami trying to by guns and ammo in May, 1963, which is disseminated to various government agencies.

I also found a quote from Bohning's Castro Obsession in which President Johnson asks Fulbright's advice and rants about the Cuban arms shipment, and Bohning informs us that Helms showed LBJ the same Cuban machine gun that he showed JFK right before they killed him.

While at least one cable dismisses the Venezuelan Arms Cache as a joke, the other drums up media support and refers to editorials and media assets, including The Miami Herald, who were cranked up to promote the story.

Then there's Luis Eduardo Sanchez Madero, the hapless Venezuelan they arrested and tied to the arms cache, even though the maps found in his apartment were in CIA hands a year earlier (according to Joe B. Smith).

The mainstream media, personified by Mark Weisberd in The Use of Force, pretty much assumes that the OAS explanation that the arms were Cuban is correct and the consequences were the Cubans being booted from the OAS. Not even a hint of a question regarding the origin of the arms cache.

Califano is getting the military investigators in Canada and Europe to investigate the boat, the guns and the ammo in December 1963, at the same time they were investigating the origins of the rifle and the ammo that killed President Kennedy.

Where are their reports on what they found out?

- BILL KELLY


“TO JOINT STAFF, SERVICE AND OSD CONTACT POINTS: This is our final working draft of the paper on Control of Arms Movement. I have sought to work in your contributions whenever feasible. Please submit your views 0900, 14 March 1963.”

V.H. KRULAK
Major General, USMC

SECOND WORKING DRAFT
CUBA
DIRECT CONTROL OF THE MOVEMENT OF ARMS TO AND
WITHIN LATIN AMERICAN COUNTRIES.
p.20 - 27

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...mp;relPageId=20


FRANK FORIONI APPROACHED BY VENEZUELAN TO BUY WEAPONS AND AMMUNITION

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=3

ON 22 MAY 1963 WAS APPROACHED BY A VENEZUELAN KNOWN TO HIM ONLY AS FRANK WHO EXPLAINED THAT HE WAS IN MIAMI TO BUY WEAPONS AND AMMUNITION FOR VENEZUELA….FRANK SAID THAT HIS FATHER WAS A GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL. FIORINI FIRST MET FRANK THROUGH ALLEN MACDONALD, AN AMERICAN PILOT WHO HAD WORKED WITH THE 26TH OF JULY MOVMENT IN PRE-COMMUNIST DAYS. FRANK CLAIMS TO BE A C-46 PILOT. ON 9 MAY FIORINI SAW FRANK IN THE COMPANY OF BILL JOHNSON, AN AMERICAN PILOT.

FIELD DISSEM: FBI, STATE, CUSTOMS, I&NS, BORDER PATROL.


http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...ult&id=8419


Record: SANCHEZ MADERO, LUIS EDUARDO
Sources: Fortress Cuba, Jay Mallin, p. 103
Mary's
Comments: In Nov 1963, Venezuelan police arrested Sanchez (a Venezuelan citizen) and in his apartment found detailed plans for assassination of President Betancourt. Sanchez had been in Cuba.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=4

7. COMMENT BY NON-WAVE ASSET MEDIA GAINING MOMENTUM. EXAMPLES INCLUDE STRONG EDITORIAL IN 5 DEC MIAMI HERALD. JURE STATEMENT SUPPORT FOR BETANCOURT AND WEN POSITION AND PAID ANNOUNCEMENT BY ASSOCIATION CUBAN LAWYERS WHICH TIES IN ASSASSINATION PRES. KENNEDY WITH CASTRO COMMUNIST INFLUENCE THAT DISTURBES PEACE OF HEMISPHERE.

8. FURTHER ACTION ALONG LINES REF C BEING INITIATED AND WILL BE REPORTED SUSEQUENTLY.

SECRET

C/3 COMMENT: “DESIRED CONTINUED KUMOLF ACTION RE: ARMS CACHE.

Page 4 http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=4


MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD
SUBJECT: Interdepartmental Meeting on Communications Pertaining to Contraband Shipments of Arms or Personnel to Venezuela and Columbia.

Participants, John H. Crimmins, Coordinator of Cuban Affairs, State; Vance, Califano, Col. Jack F. Wilm, J-3, Joint Staff; Col. Robart G. Rushforth, J-6, Joint Staff; Haig, Des Fitz, Mr. James Smith of the CIA

“A meeting was held in the office of the Secretary of the Army at 1000 hours on December 14, 1963 for the purpose of discussing problems related to contraband shipments of arms and personnel to Columbia and Venezuela. Specifically, the meeting was convened to initiate appropriate action designed to provide for the prompt communication of intelligence associated with contraband shipments and to provide responsive operational communications associated with cooperative surveillance and intercept efforts by US and indigenous military forces.”

Joseph Califano.

(Source – C.O. Watervliet Arsenal)

“In further reference to the M57 Rifles, it is also verifiable that the US Army did shop weapons of this make and model to Cuba in 1957. Definite proof is available on a shipment of 6 on requisition number HA-10-03-7-009. They were shipped from Anniston Army Depot through the New Orleans Port on Bill of Lading Number 7108185. The commercial carrier was the Cummings Truck Company. The voucher number was 280054. They were physically received in Cuba on 28 March 1957. (Source – MIDA and New Orleans Port.)

cc: Mr. Sam Halpern,

The Castro Obsession by Don Bohning.
Page 239 [/b]

Johnson started thinking about Cuba when he became president, however, as indicated by a December 1 conversation with Senator J. William Fulbright, a conversation which also reflected concerns about Vietnam. Johnson asked Fulbright what he should be doing about Cuba. Fulbright said he didn’t think “we ought to stir that up any. I think this election sound good – what I heard of it today – in Venezuela. I think the god-damned thing ought to be let alone, as of the moment. I think if you don’t stir it up….”

Johnson interrupted: They’re shipping arms all over the damned hemisphere. [Helms had shown him a Cuban rifle two days before that had been seized as part of the Venezuelan arms cache.]

Fulbright: That we ought to stop. I thought you meant about going into Cuba.

Johnson: No, I’m not getting into any Bay of Pigs deal! No, I’m asking you what we ought to do to pinch their nuts more than we’re doing. Whey don’t you give me a one-page memo on what you’d do, if you were President, about Cuba?

Fulbright: You mean, exclusive of any direct interference?

Johnson: I mean what you’d do, if you were President, about Cuba. Inclusive or exclusive of anything. Just what you’d do. And get your good brain to working. I’d like to look at it and see….

As president, Johnson’s first serious formal session on Cuba policy came December 19, 1963, with a high-level briefing in the White house. The meeting generated an advance flood of papers from various agencies and departments, recommending everything from a presidential statement supporting internal dissents to tightening the economic embargo, sabotage air strikes, and accelerating efforts at rapprochement….

…The agency’s covert action program, according to the report “is designed to support other governmental measures to proliferate and intensify the pressures on Castro to encourage dissident elements, particularly in the military, to carry out and eliminate Castro and the Soviet presence in Cuba.”

The report saw the “ultimate objective” as replacing the Castro regime “with one which will be fully compatible with the goals of the US and will cooperate with US efforts to establish friends and stable regimes throughout Latin America.”

…McGeorge Bundy, who had remained in the White House as Johnson’s national security assistant, laid out for his new boss a comprehensive twenty-two page paper on Cuba policy in advance of the December 19 meeting. Its elemental nature clearly indicated the new president had only a basic knowledge of the Kennedy administration’s Cuba policy….


Use of Force, by Arthur Mark Weisburd
Page 186


Cuba/Venezuela (1963, 1966,1967)

In November 1963 an arms cache, subsequently proven by the OAS to be of Cuban origin, was discovered in Venezuela; the arms were intended to aid Venezuela’s Communist Party overthrow the government of that state. 122

Cuba’s motives, apparently, were straightforwardly ideological – it sought to help bring about the replacement of a non-Communist government with a Communist one. 123

The main international response to this action was that the OAS which voted 15-4 (Venezuela not voting) in July 1964 to impose trade sanctions against Cuba because of its behavior and also called on OAS members to end diplomatic relations with Cuba; only Bolivia, Chile, Mexico, and Uruguay voted against the resolution. All of these except Mexico duly ended diplomatic relations with Cuba by September 1964; all fifteen states that had voted for the resolution had ended relations with Cuba prior to July 1964. 124

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...do?docId=112478

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=3

December 23, 1963

MEMORANDUM NO. XX FOR GENERAL EARL G. WHEELER (JC8)
MR. FRANK K. SLOAN, Dep Asst Sec/Def ISA (Regional Affairs)
MAJOR GENERAL J.D. ALGER, USA
REAR ADMIRAL W.F.A. WENDT, USN
MAJOR GENERAL J.W. CARPENTER, III, USA
BRIGADIER GENERAL C.J. QUILETER, USMC

SUBJECT: Interdepartmental Coordinating Committee of Cuban Affairs:
Interim Report by US Military on Venezuelan Arms Cache

The attached report outlines the status of the US military technical team’s research on the Venezuelan arms cache. It was submitted to State on December 23 and his circulated to points of contact for information.

Joseph A. Califano, Jr.
General Counsel

Cc: Mr. Yarmolinsky (OSD)
Col. LeRoy Nigra (DIA)

Mr. Califano
ASG
LtCol Haig

MEMORANDUM FOR THE COORDINATOR OF CUBAN AFFIARS
Department of State

SUBJECT: interim Report by US Military on Venezuelan Arms Cache

Outlined below is an interim report on the status of the investigation of the US military investigating team concerning the Venezuelan arms cache. It is suggested that a report along the following lines be provided to the Venezuelan government on December 23, 1963.

“The US military investigating team which visited Venezuela from 12 December 1963 to 16 December 1963 succeeded in obtaining clear and adequate identification of many of the items of arms and ammunition found in the Venezuelan arms cache. Photographic evidence as well as the identification by arms and ammunition experts on the team provided clear proof that many of the items found were in fact of US origin. There is evidence that some of the ammunition lots found in Venezuela were shipped to Cuba from the US in 1957. There is also evidence that weapons of the type found in Venezuela were shipped by the US to Cuba in 1956 and 1957.

“Investigation based on the items identified by the team is now progressing. This investigation involves an almost total world-wide survey of the disposition of specific lot numbers of ammunition by caliber and type found. Attempts are being made to trace weapons by serial number from the time of manufacture during the immediate post World War II period. Actual laboratory investigation of certain materials is being pursued to determine their origin and also to trace their transmittal from a US source to a Cuban destination.

OAS, ASG
Mr Califano
LT COL Haig

“Principal difficulties which have been encountered to date have been the problems of researching the records on transactions which took place more than three to five years in the past. The records retirement program of the US Government provides that most records such as shipping documents, bills of lading, requisitions and related records are removed from file and either destroyed or placed in permanent storage. Their identity either becomes lost or confused. Despite the inherent difficulties involved, some significant success has been achieved and at this point it is believed that certain documentation is available which will verify the transmission of particular lots of ammunition from US depot through a US Port of Embarkation to Cuba. Research is continuing on these cases to insure that we have absolute and incontrovertible proof of such transactions. It has been determined that the following items are lots of which were found in the Venezuelan cache which were definitely of US manufacture and origin and which were shipped to Cuba in 1957. Adequate documentation has been found which indicates place of manufacture, and dates of shipment to Cuba with appropriate bills of lading and the Port of Embarkation.

Rocket, HEAT, 3.5 inch M28A2
Lot No. COP 4-802

Cartridge, 57 mm. HE, M306A1 W/F PD
M503A1 Lot No. LOP 13-54

“The team has also researched the source of certain of the weapons contained in the cache. At this point it is know that the 57mm recoilless rifles were fabricated at the following US facilities:

National Pneumatic Corporation
Firestone Corporation
Sunbeam Corporation

Concrete evidence has been uncovered that 57mm recoilless weapons of the make and models found in Venezuela were shipped to Cuba in 1957. Additionally, although no positive identification has been made of the 3.5mm rocket launchers found in the cache, positive proof has been uncovered confirming that weapons of this type were shipped by the US to Cuba in 1956 and 1957.

“The 57mm recoilless weapons referred to above have also been traced to Aberdeen Proving Ground where they were proof-fired prior to delivery. Investigation continues in an effort to trace the onward movement of the weapons. Extreme difficulty is being encountered in this process because of the fact that the US Army, in view of the magnitude of the bookkeeping task, discontinued the shipment of weapons by serial number during World War II. It is therefore very difficult to trace a specific weapon through the supply system. Nevertheless, at present there exists verifiable evidence that US manufactured weapons and ammunition of the type found in the Venezuelan arms cache were shipped to the Cuban government during the period 1956-1957.

“Certain laboratory work has been accomplished on the fabric containers discovered in the cache used to package Composition C3. The Natick Laboratories in the State of Massachusetts have determined that these specific bags are of US origin. The canvas coving is of US Army origin dyed with a US Navy dye. The rope attachments are of both US Navy and US Army and US commercial origin. At this point investigation continues on this item. It is believed, since it is a non-standard item that must have been manufactured for a specific purpose. It has been determined also that the 3.5 inch HEAT rockets bearing lot numbers SZ 1-44A and SZA 1-58 are of Italian origin. The Commanding General of the United States Army, Europe is investigating the disposition of two separate lots manufactured under a US off-shore procurement contract in Italy to determine if documentation exists which could substantiate any shipments having been made to Cuba.

”Lot number AYR L-3 of. .50 caliber ammunition has been determined to be an off-shore procurement item. These items were made in Raufoss Arsenal in Norway in 1958. The entire quantity of ammunition shipped under this contract was a MPA commitment to Pakistan. The Commanding General of the United States Army, Europe has researched this lot and has documentary evidence that 17 boxes containing 3400 rounds of this item disappeared somewhere between Norway and Pakistan. At this point, there appear to be no further means of tracing these rounds and efforts in this regard have been temporarily abandoned.”

Signed
Joseph A. Califano, Jr.
General Counsel

CIA
++++++++++++++++++++++

  • IMAGE NOT ALLOWED // copyright, see link below
  • San Antonio Arsenal (Tex.) ; Arsenals. ; Aerial photographs. ; United States Army Arsenal (San Antonio, Tex.) ; Flores Street (San Antonio, Tex.) ; Main Avenue (San Antonio, Tex.)
  • Photograph shows Main Avenue (center) going through the arsenal property. S. Flores Street on far left. Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad Station, center left. Thomas Devine house, surrounded by large yard, on lower left. San Antonio River on far...
Edited by Steven Gaal
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It is the assertion in the Spiders Web that the TSBD was a secret arms cache.
++++++++++++++ (((((O.V. Campbell = TSBD )))))
==============

Mark Valenti:
Billy Lovelady was involved in illegal gun sales prior to his employment as Lee Oswald's co-worker. In fact, he was arrested at the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building and taken into custody at the Dallas County Jail in January, 1963.

A few years earlier, as an Airman 2nd class at Andrews Air Force Base, Lovelady was accused of crimes connected with the theft and sale of government-issued weapons. He was sentenced to pay a fine, which he did not pay in full before skipping town and moving to Dallas. He was tracked down in Dallas as a fugitive in 1963 and arrested. His boss, O.V. Campbell, paid the balance of his fine, and the FBI closed the case.

Interesting to note that FBI agent James Hosty was tracking the sale of weapons stolen from various military bases in Texas. On the morning of Nov. 22, he was meeting with ATF Agent Frank Ellsworth about that very subject.

It has been floated as a possibility that Lee Oswald was an FBI informant who provided intelligence regarding these weapons thefts and subsequent sale to anti-Castro Cubans.

John Platko:
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Billy Lovelady was involved in illegal gun sales prior to his employment as Lee Oswald's co-worker. In fact, he was arrested at the Texas Schoolbook Depository Building and taken into custody at the Dallas County Jail in January, 1963.

A few years earlier, as an Airman 2nd class at Andrews Air Force Base, Lovelady was accused of crimes connected with the theft and sale of government-issued weapons. He was sentenced to pay a fine, which he did not pay in full before skipping town and moving to Dallas. He was tracked down in Dallas as a fugitive in 1963 and arrested. His boss, O.V. Campbell, paid the balance of his fine, and the FBI closed the case.

Interesting to note that FBI agent James Hosty was tracking the sale of weapons stolen from various military bases in Texas. On the morning of Nov. 22, he was meeting with ATF Agent Frank Ellsworth about that very subject.

It has been floated as a possibility that Lee Oswald was an FBI informant who provided intelligence regarding these weapons thefts and subsequent sale to anti-Castro Cubans.


I never heard that before, it's nice to learn something new. Thanks!

Do you know a place where I can read more about this?

Wes Riddle:
Interesting stuff Mark. I've wondered before about the Terrell Armory heist a few days before the assassination. Miller and Whitter were arrested after a high speed chase.. There was another member of the group named Perry Hydell/Rydell that was involved and could have been an informant. Sounds a lot like Alex Hidell. Richard Borchardt claimed Ruby was also involved. Can you post the documents on Lovelady? Wes

Mark Valenti:
Referenced from Barry Ernest, author of THE GIRL ON THE STAIRS.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 years later...
On 2/2/2006 at 12:59 PM, Ron Ecker said:

Mr. Weston,

Very interesting article. I have a couple of questions regarding sources. You state that the move into the TSBD building on Elm Street was made in the summer of 1963, even though this contradicts the sworn testimony of several people who said that the move was made from 3 to 5 years before 1963. What is your source (besides Bergin Jr., who said only that it was “after 1960” – note 42) that the move took place in the summer of 1963?

Also, two things particularly caught my eye in the article because of their obvious significance if true. One is the letter that you say was found in the Carousel Club in March, 1963, addressed to Jack Rubenstein and with the return address showing Lee Harvey Oswald. The second is the man in a brown suit coat who exited an elevator and ran past Shelley and Lovelady and out of the building after the shooting. In both cases, your cited source for these occurrences is yourself (notes 30 and 35). What were your primary sources on these occurrences?

Thanks,

Ron

Ron -

I'm not sure about "sworn testimony of several people" in cases like this, as sworn testimony these days has been shown to be quite ambiguous. Just ask all of those people exonerated by the Innocence Project (getting toward 350, now...). Or read the "sworn testimony" of what's-her-name standing at the bus stop at Oak when Tippit was shot. Would you trust that crazy lady to take a message while you're at lunch??? Egads.

According to JFK.org (https://www.jfk.org/the-assassination/history-of-the-texas-school-book-depository/) the TSBD Company leased the building in 1963, before which it was housed by John Sexton & Co. (a grocery company out of - you guessed it - Chicago, incidentally), as most know. If even on the day of the assassination there was much confusion over the name of the building, as it was still called "the Sexton building" up until then, I tend to think that the present occupants had not been there for any number of years, but of months, in fact.

re: https://flashbackdallas.com/2014/04/04/sexton-foods-bldg/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog

"The building ... would later become the Texas School Book Depository. But prior to that, the building housed Sexton Foods, a Chicago-based wholesale grocer which occupied the building for twenty years (1941-1961). The building was known commonly in town as “the Sexton building,” even after it was leased to the Texas School Book Depository in 1963, which explains why some people — citizens and police officers alike — were still referring to it by that name on the day of the Kennedy assassination..." 

Granted, the Spider's Web article is clearly published without benefit of an editor, but I kinda think Mr.Weston's overall premise - Federally funded drugs-for-guns (hear that, GHWB and BC? ya'll WEREN'T the first), the origins of Shelley and the floor layers; and in fact of the TSBD company as a whole, along with DH Byrd's, HL Hunt's and Pawley's backgrounds - is pretty damn intriguing.

Minutiae in bigger stories like this tend to be distracting, as is so well exemplified by the perpetual snarking and slandering that goes on in all of these forums by "researchers" who claim to "just want the facts" over men in brown suit coats and revolver barrels and whatever.

The discussion of this stuff is addicting, for sure, and I'm eager to look further into this felonious fleeing fellow in a brown suit coat - I also try to keep my eye on the big picture, which, to me, is who knew who and how and why, i.e. Shelley was CIA? No xxxx? And Eva Ruby facilitated opium sales through Mexico? And the Sexton Co., Scott Foresman's enterprise, Hugh Perry/TSBD and the Rubynsteins (and on and on) were ALL based in Chicago, land of The Outfit...???

No offense, Ron - I respect your thoughts and your posts; it's important to question even the smallest incidentals - people in "this thing of ours" (JFK studies - a nod to la Cosa Nostra :) ) really will write the most outlandish crap - I feel comfortable that TSBD leased and occupied the building in 63. That they were in the Dal-Tex building previous to this is pretty interesting, too. But I yet again refer to Mary Bancroft (and my signature):

"General material about background and people’s interrelationships can be both illuminating and important. Quite often missing pieces of the mosaic emerge that make a previously incomprehensible picture unexpectedly clear."

I think she was on to something. ;) 

 

 

 

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check out this gem of an advertisement (TSBD building, 1908):

southern-rock-island-plow_city-directory-1908.jpg

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Looking at the 1908 ad above, and at pictures of the TSBD, makes me curious.  How do the five arched windows in the middle of the sixth floor open?  Do they have bottom sashes that slide up, as on the east and west rectangular windows?  If not, this would put a "second" sixth-floor shooter at the west window out of necessity.

Edited by David Andrews
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4 hours ago, David Andrews said:

Looking at the 1908 ad above, and at pictures of the TSBD, makes me curious.  How do the five arched windows in the middle of the sixth floor open?  Do they have bottom sashes that slide up, as on the east and west rectangular windows?  If not, this would put a "second" sixth-floor shooter at the west window out of necessity.

yeah, it's been suggested that there was a shooter in the West window - what was the book about the interviews with the guy who met Mac Wallace at the funeral and getting sucked into the shooting?? don't remember the book's name or the author, but he said that there was a second shooter toward the west end of the floor, and there are pics of it that MIGHT show a figure in the window. That pic to me is more convincing than those of Badgeman. I've yet to see badgeman without the aid of overlaid graphics drawing him/them in for me...

I read also from one person that the limo couldn't be seen from the west window because of the tree(s), but that sounds like as much speculation as the idea itself. Professional Officials come from the woodwork in this thing... I tend to think that would have been a terrific spot with a diversion in the east window. I like that or the Dal-Tex stair railing or window, but I'm not convinced of anything, 'cept that this thing took more than one person.

edit>>

The Men on the Sixth Floor. Glen Sample. that was it. interesting, pseudo-plausible book. makes for some good speculative consideration of accesses and egresses, etc... I personally don't get what all the hullabaloo is about "the only employee missing after the shooting" and "no one else was in the building" and all that. too small of a theoretical box, if you ask me (which few ever do). there are other possibilities...

Edited by Glenn Nall
i just thought of something. again.
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