Meredith Gardner

[Jim Root]

Robert

Your questions penetrate to the heart of my thoughts.

"I am just trying to understand your perception of Edwin Walker. Are you saying that you believe that Walker's history (distributing John Birch literature to troops under him in W. Germany, assertions that both the US Government and the military were under Communist control and his resignation from the Army in 1961,) was an occasion of creating a 'legend' for a counter-intelligence assignment?"

The most important question that has not been answered is, "Was Oswald an intelligence asset?" IF Oswald was an intelligence asset "gone bad" then the Warren Commission cover up has an understandable albeit less than credible motive. If Oswald was an intelligence asset then we could assume (if Oswald was a shooter) that Oswald may well have had a motive for both the attempt on Walker and the killing of Kennedy and we could assume that the motives could be tied together (which I have attempted to do).

My "IFS" alone are difficult to follow and perhaps difficult to accept but if you closely examine the career of Major General Edwin Walker what is really difficult to accept is that he would denounce and turn against the leadership of the coutry that he had served so faithfully for so long. You also would have to be willing to discard Walker's relationship to Maxwell Taylor as insignificant which I cannot do. Way to often did Taylor turn to Walker to accomplish the most difficult assignments. As Chief of Staff of the Army Taylor turned to Walker in two of what the Arlington National Cemetery refers to as Taylors four most difficult challenges.

And then again we find that the association of Max Taylor and John J. McCloy is way to tight to be discarded. From WWII forward their careers and association grows and joins together repeatedly. I cannot believe that this association and the fact that both differed on the Limited Test Ban Treaty with Kennedy is insignificant. That both can be associated to Walker is again important in my mind.

Walker was also involved in two specific assignments that were important to John J. McCloy during WWII. Mix this together with Walker's turn to the right being timed to Oswald's initial attempt to return to the US from Russia and one could begin to speculate that what motivated the change in Walker was duty rather than a professional soldiers political beliefs. Remember that the Soviets had their own Walker, Yuri Nosenko, whose turn against his country is also timmed to the movements of Oswald.

Then there is that letter written to Walker from John J. McCloy on June 12, 1963. As a curiosity it should rank very high but when placed in historical context and against the career of Walker as a backdrop you find a letter that may well be less than coincidental in its placement and timming.

But then Oswald's intelligence mission would have to have been extremely important and would place him in the position of being used by both the Soviets and the Americans with neither quite sure of his real allegence. This does in fact tie into Walker's later pronouncements and would provide him with a reason to believe what he said, truthful or not, in every detail.

When Oswald declared that he was a "Patsy" because he had gone to the Soviet Union his statement may have been more true than most have given him credit for and may have been a confession of his motive in very persise words! Oswald's desire to have Jonathan Abt, a Smith Act Attorney, to act as his attorney, I believe, suggests that his defense was to be centered around the intelligence communities of both east and west and how they worked to sabotage the Parris Summit and prevent an opportunity for world peace.

The name of John Hurt may be what ties this all together. Everyone of the principal people that I associate with this crime can be associated with that name. The NSA's investigation into IF Oswald had intelligence connections is done by persons who can be asssociated with a person of that name. McCloy, Taylor and Walker can be associated with a person of that name. Oswald attempted to contact a person of that name.

My story does not begin and end on the day of the assassination or even the weeks and months before the assassination. Instead it begins with a group who became Cold Warriors. A group of men who first begin working together as early as 1927 then gained power and authority right up until the assassination and beyond. The story can trace Oswald from the first letter he writes to the Socialist Workers Party before he joins the Marines. It is that letter and the fact that he enlists so soon after it, I believe, that marked Oswald as a potential intelligence asset that could be manipulated, rather than trained and used for a covert operation that was hatched at the highest level of US intelligence.

But Oswald was not supposed to return to the US. When he did I can imagine that a counter-counter-intelligence operation of the highest level may have been suspected. It is here that the White Russian Community's involvement with Oswald becomes of significance. Oswald had to be watched and he had to be monitored. The question becomes how and by whom? With a Russian wife the Russian community could be used to initiate contact with both Lee and Marina. I suspect that both sides were doing that watching and the monitoring which would account for the fact that every conspiracy theorists seems to be able to find traces of intelligence assets abounding around Oswald's life and movements.

Jim Root

[John Simkin]

Several months ago Ron Ecker shared information with this Forum about Meredith Gardner. I was surprised to read that Gardner, as an NSA employee, had written a report for the Warren Commission on Oswald's possible intelligence connections that was then censored by Frank Rowlett. Both these men had worked with John B. Hurt, a man who, at a minimum, shares a name with a person that Oswald attempted to contact after the assassination of JFK.

Today one of my students asked if Gardner's work had anything to do with the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenber. Not only did I realize that Gardner did have something to do with the discovery of the Rosenberg's as Soviet spies it also places Gardner's work in the middle of US attempts at understanding of Soviet Nuclear capabilities, a subject that greatly concerned John J. McCloy and Maxwell Taylor.

James Bamford's book, Body of Secrets (page 135) deals with Meredith Gardner's investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Meredith Gardner, the cryptanalyst, exposed over 200 Soviet spies, but was unhappy that it led to the execution of the Rosenbergs.

Peter Wright met Meredith Gardner in London after the arrests of the atom spies: "He was a quiet, scholarly man, entirely unaware of the awe in which he was held by other cryptanalysts. He used to tell me how he worked on the matches in his office, and of how a young pipe-smoking Englishman named Philby used to regularly visit him and peer over his shoulder and admire the progress he was making. Gardner was rather a sad figure by the late 1960s. He felt very keenly that the cryptanalytical break he had made possible was a thing of mathematical beauty, and he was depressed at the use to which it had been put." Wright revealed that he was upset that his research had resulted in McCarthyism and the executions of Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg. Wright quotes Gardner as saying: "I never wanted it to get anyone into trouble." Wright added that Gardner "was appalled at the fact that his discovery had led, almost inevitably, to the electric chair, and felt (as I did) that the Rosenbergs, while guilty, ought to have been given clemency. In Gardner's mind, VENONA was almost an art form, and he did not want it sullied by crude McCarthyism."

http://spartacus-educational.com/Meredith_Gardner.htm

[Robert Howard]

As everyone knows, one of my ersatz areas of interest has to do with cryptologic history. Bamford, by far, is the MC, when it comes to this area; Body of Secrets is the penultimate book re NSA overlap with the Kennedy saga.

Operation Shamrock is a interesting area, one of my observations has to with the 303 Committee. A 303 Committee document at maryferrell.org seems to provide a 1963 chronology, with a large amount of redactions.

Two people, mentioned in the 303 Committee document, [not incl. here;] who are not exactly household names are Dr. MacMillan and Colonel Frank Steakley1. We all know there are large numbers of still-classified documents. Some wonder what 2017 will be like when the curtain raises on these docs, my guess is that they will contain large amounts of redactions, and impossible to read documents. I would like to know more about the genealogy of Dr. MacMillan, knowing who he was and if his name is spelled correctly would be nice.

Possibly linked to the McMillan Publishing Co., has anyone ever explored that cranny, and yes, I am aware of the spelling variable. To me Oswald's significant history started with mail drops to the FBI, the most significant doubtlessly

monitored by Harry Holmes, the last person Lee spoke to, whatever Holmes said to him, I bet it was "not very nice."

1 See different document Maxwell Taylor papers dated Jan 8, 1963.

https://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=178&relPageId=3

There is also a Col Ralph Steakley, relationship unknown

Another newbie area of interest is "The International Telecommunications Union, Space Radio Communications & U.S. Cold War Diplomacy, 1957-1963."

One of the cast of characters in that little drama is a person known as "America's Rasputin, Dr. Walt Rostow." 2

2 See Diplomatic History, Oxford University Press April 2013 Volume 37, Number 2

A small blurb from the article [p.355, footnote 147,] reads:

"Classified Report of the United States Territories Delegation to the EARC"

November 20, 1963, 3 folder "Telecommunications TEL 8-1 Radio Frequencies 8/1/63 ITU,"

box 3655, Central Foreign Policy File 1963, General Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59,

National Archives & Record Administration, College Park, Maryland. The United States Territories delegation

was separate from the main U.S. delegation but still under McConnell's authority. 3

3 Joseph H. McConnell, President of Reynolds Metals, who was given the title of U.S. Ambassador, when

he was appointed to head the delegation.

For More See

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TTbbEY4hd8

Edited July 28, 2014 by Robert Howard