Naval Intelligence Gazing

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

As possible meaningless generalizations go, is it the impression of this forum that the ONI was further to the right than perhaps the CIA and other intelligence agencies?

I realize that "farther right" can be a vague term when some of the psychological aspects of intel. work are considered so let me clarify two characteristics of "far right" the way I am using the term here.

1. Possibly having more connections to the China Lobby and people of the Willoughby-Frank Capell-

Billy James Hargiss- Edwin Walker chain.

2. Unilateralists with strong direct investment ties in Latin America

My motivation in posing the question in terms of ONI are the following disparate observations

1. John Newman seems to be arguing that LBJ was receiving back channel intel. on Vietnam that was

deliberately kept from JFK

2. P.D. Scott suggests that Willoughby et al. may have had close ties to Diem and his brother's wife.

Domestic friends of this far right intel network seem to have been critical of the Diem coup of 63,

and according to Newman, LBJ voiced scepticism about the wisdom of the Diem removal on his

first cabinet NSC? meeting. Was this a signal to a possible ONI intel chain that also had domsestic

connections in Texas?

3. Naval Admiral Burke of the JCS seems to have been the single most bellicose JCS meber on Laos and

Vietnam in the April 1961 meetings dealing with the Laos crisis. He clashed openly with Kennedy and

seems to have been supported mostly by Johnson.

4. Years later in 1970, the Naval cheif Admiral Thomas H. Moorer seems to have been the leader in a JCS

spy ring inside Nixon's NSC. Moorer, according to Silent Coup authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin,

seems to have been deeply distrustful of Nixon's moves toward detente, and Moorer was more

optomistic than most about the chances for military victory in Vietnam. Moorer was a southerner as

was most of the domestic links in the Willoughby chain.

5. I am wondering if the independent intelligence network that Johnson was using might also have some

connections with Hunt and Buckley in the Mexico City CIA station that might explain why one part of the

CIA got info about the Oswald trip and other's did not? Might there be ONI agents with connections to

CIA that could sometimes share intelligence, and sometimes choose to "park" it i.e. save it for a later

date?

6. What do you make of this except from the Bartolomew article quoting Newman:

There is another time period in Newman's book which deals with the back-channel to LBJ. Newman had long discussions with Burris about where he got this. "And the answer was the boys in the woodwork. And the question was: Who are the boys in the woodwork? And the answer was: `Well I'd rather not really say and bring all of that up. You, I know, you're one of them.' Alright, I'm military, I also have an intelligence background. Peter Dale Scott and I have been working very closely on a number of issues. He's writing a book as a matter of fact. He was assuming for a while that it was military. And I said, `Peter, it may not be that. It may be Langley.' He said, `Why do you say that?' Well there's one more piece. Burris told me that later on, `McCone put a stop to what I was getting from him.' This was relating to the combat intelligence. McCone was directing CIA. And all of the clues I got out of this fellow on who his contacts were -- my own interpretation was that they were in fact CIA. I don't know that for sure."101

I now realize that Burris was Air Force and not Naval intel. Nevertheless, what do we make of

McCone's aparent ability to turn on and off sources of info for Burris. Remember, according to Newman, LBJ was getting Burris' reports but JFK wasn't.

[Robert Howard]

I find your comments concerning ONI as a back channel source very credible, the only comment I can make is that when it comes to history in books as opposed history as it happened, I occasionally get the feeling that the subject matter we all are delving into was pretty much 'a separate universe' of which only a fraction of has been surveyed, as many times as I have heard, 'that's what happens when a government doesent properly investigate the assassination of a President.

Regarding Charles Willoughby, MacArthur's Little Fascist, he also wote a couple of books, one was, I think pretty much of the WW2/Pacific Theater variety, and the other a Cold War/Korea/China book focusing on intelligence matters, has anyone heard of them or better yet read them? I've always felt that Willoughby a/k/a Adolph Tscheppe-Weidenbach is it, ties in with Allen Dulles somehow.

As a matter of fact:

Willoughby formed an ultra rightist network whose most visible spokesman was a fire and brimstone preacher Billy James Hargis (who died recently by the way) and which included H.L. Hunt and CIA agent turned jounalist Edward Hunter (credited with inventing the term "brainwashing"). Willoughby stayed in close touch with Allen Dulles, director of the CIA later fired by Kennedy, and subsequently appointed to the Warren Commission to investigate the slaying of the President who had fired him. -From The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of All-Time. pages 551,552. Johnathan Vanken & John Whalen

Although I don't think the book focuses on the ONI much, if at all, you should read 'The Ordeal of Otto Otepka' I am in the process of reading it and it seems to present some obscure revelations about a conspiracy, according to Otepka to clear out State Dept. officials for nefarious purposes, Oswald's name comes up quite a few times, but I am only just beginning it.

Edited February 25, 2006 by Robert Howard

[Tim Gratz]

Authorizing the coup against Diem was one of the worst mistakes JFK made.

The coup was opposed not only by LBJ but also by RFK (talk about strange bed-fellows!).

[William Kelly]

ONI - THE OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE (ONI)

The CIA has always taken the heat for the assassination of President Kennedy, but the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) is also suspect, not for any one reason but for an increasingly accumulating body evidence that implicates it’s operations in the assassination.

For starters, both victims – John F. Kennedy and John Connally, as well as their alleged attacker, Lee Harvey Oswald, had Navy backgrounds.

John F. Kennedy served as an officer in the ONI during World War II before being transferred to the Pacific. Connally was the Secretary of Navy at the time of the defection of Lee Harvey Oswald, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps, which comes under the Department of Navy.

ONI, as the Intelligence Department of the Department of the Navy, is the oldest, smallest, least publicized and most influential of all official U.S. government intelligence agencies.

For their official history see: http://sun00781.dn.net/irp/agency/oni/fac_desc.htm

Where you learn about the “Corporate enterprise”:

ONI MISSION STATEMENT

“Naval Intelligence is part of the ‘corporate enterprise’ of military intelligence agencies working within the Intelligence Community. Naval intelligence produces and services support the operating forces, the Department of the Navy, and the maritime intelligence requirements of national level agencies. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), located primarily in the National Maritime Intelligence Center in Suitland, Maryland, is the national production center for global maritime intelligence.”

“ONI is the center of expertise for every major maritime issue – from the analysis of the design and construction of surface ships to the collection and analysis of acoustic information on foreign sensor systems, ocean surveillance systems, submarine platforms and undersea weapons systems. Its analysis of naval air warfare ranges from appraisals of opposition combat tactics to analysis of rival missile signatures, making it the authorative resource for maritime air issues.”

“…The intelligence and cryptologic communities provide a wide range of intelligence support to tactical forces and commands and staffs ashore. Shore-based intelligence and cryptologic operations involve the collection, processing, analysis and reporting of information from many sources from communications intelligence to human intelligence…”

“…Naval intelligence is under the command of the Director of Naval Intelligence, who also serves as the staff advisor on intelligence matters to the Chief of Naval Operations. The DNI is also duel-hatted as the Director of Office of Naval Intelligence, an echelon two command. The DNI also oversees the operations of the Naval Security Group (NSG), which is also an echelon two command.”

“ONI’s missions are established by law, serving the Secretary of the Navy by providing the intelligence needed to train and equip naval forces. The Office works closely with the Joint Intelligence Centers of the United and Specified Commands to ensure that they have the detailed background information needed to enhance their support to the joint operating forces.”

“The ONI no longer has only a Navy focus. It provides national products to national consumers and focus on all aspects of maritime intelligence vice Navy-only….From ONI’s 1989 position of devoting 75 percent of analysis efforts to the Soviet problem, with only 25 percent for Rest-of-the-World (ROW) issues, the Office has reversed its emphasis to a 70/30 commitment and the 30 percent that is Soviet related is primarily concerned with Soviet-made weapons for ROW sale.”

ONI HISTORY

The Office of Naval Intelligence was established on March 23, 1882, founded by a linguist, Lieutenant Theodorus B. M. Mason, who was named the first Chief Intelligence Officer after he recommended the Navy “assign naval attaches to embassies and Negations throughout the world to collect intelligence on advances in naval science.” He also recommended that a section be created in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy “to assemble, correlate, and distribute reports on the intelligence gathered.”

According to the official history, “When Theodore Roosevelt became Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897, he quickly let it be known that he was going to work closely with office personnel. He believed Chief Intelligence Officers should provide advice and assistance to Department heads, as would Admiralty Board members in England’s Royal Navy.”

“In 1939, Rear Admiral Walter Anderson became the DNI. Anticipating the outbreak of war in Europe, he established a section to keep track of the world’s merchant shipping routes, a strategic information center to gather and furnish information on request, and a secret intelligence section to handle confidential agents….There were four different DNIs in the year prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor…The DNI and the Director of Communications disagreed over who would control the dissemination of communications –derived intelligence; the transcript of the Japanese Navy operational code was broken by the Office of Naval Communications, but the translation work was done by intelligence linguists. The conflict was resolved in the DNI’s favor.”

“In January, 1944, it assumed control of the Photographic Interpretation Center from the Deputy CNO’s Air Intelligence Center (NPIC)…Immediately after the war, the CNO was reorganized; and the DNI was titled Chief of Naval Intelligence, heading the Office of Naval Intellignce…In August, 1946, ONI was shifted to the Operations Division of OPNAV and absorbed the Operations Chartroom, which became the Operations Intelligence Branch; ONI then became formally involved in operational intelligence. At the same time, part of ONI’s organization, the Office of Naval Records and Library, was removed, combined with the Office of Naval History and placed under the Deputy CNO for Administration.”

“The National Security Act of 1947 required unification of military services and provided for greater coordination between intelligence activities of the various armed forces…the Chief of Naval Intelligence again became the DNI in November, 1948….The outbreak of hostilities in Korea dramatically increased ONI’s workload, resulting in authorization of new billets and the recall of Naval Reserve intelligence officers…”

“The Defense Intelligence Agency (DNI) was created in October 1961 to improve the effectiveness and responsiveness of Department of Defense intelligence products and activities…”

“Until 1963, it had been Navy policy to fill the DNI billet with an unrestricted line officer. Rear Admiral Rufus Taylor was the first Intelligence Specialist to hold the position of DNI….”

UNOFFICIAL HISTORY OF ONI

Other than the official history, the most authorative independently researched history of

ONI is the two-volume work by Rutgers University (Camden, N.J.) professor Jeffrey M. Dorwart, “The Office of Naval Intelligence 1865-1919,” and “Conflict of Duty, The U.S. Navy’s Intelligence Dilemma 1919-1945,” (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md., 1983).

[Note: Dorwart mentions that for interested researchers, ONI records are held at the National Archives Records Group 38, but they are generally restricted, classified and unavailable to the public.]

According to Dorwart, ONI agents, “….broke into safes, eavesdropped, vandalized private property and consorted with unsavory characters in pursuit of domestic pacifists and radicals. Still others interfered in the internal affairs of Latin American nations, dabbed in Asian politics, and accompanied Fascists Black Shirts into Africa. These men were not covert agents of the CIA, FBI or some elite American espionage team. They were U.S. naval and marine officers attached, between 1919 and 1945, to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), a relatively obscure bureau whose primary mission was to provide strategic and technical information for the U.S. Navy.”

“Dorwart explains the intense rivalry that developed among the military intelligence agencies during the war, how President Roosevelt utilized his own private espionage network outside the military and state department, and how the British tutored Roosevelt’s most important private spy, William “Wild Bill” Donovan.

Dorwart: “Successful information gathering trips for the president to Britain and to the Balkans and Middle East prepared the way, while his (Donovan’s) appointment in June as Coordinator of Information secured his place. As COI, he hired brilliant, creative and controversial assistants. He became close friends with (Ian) Fleming (assistant to Director, British Naval Intelligence) and Churchill superspy (Sir William) Stephenson, achieving unprecedented access to the very good British secret services. He stepped on the toes of other intelligence agencies, bypassed regular channels, and created interdepartmental jealousies – the kind of approach understood and admired by FDR…ONI appeared most perturbed by the competition from the fast moving civilian…”

The increasing reliance on crypto, cipher and communication and code intercepts and their translation, and the failure to properly analyze it, led to the intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor.

- Though ignored in the official history, Dorwart manages to give credence to the Mafia connections with the U.S. intelligence community, which were first established by the ONI in New York. As Dorwart reports, “The sensational fire on the converted ocean liner NORMANDIE in New York harbor on 17 February accelerated security measures, especiall waterfront control, port security and boarding patrols to interrogate passengers and search incoming vessels. In cooperation with other agencies ONI prepared a joint survey of New York harbor, and in a less covert operation began to send agents into the city’s seamy world of prostitution, organized crime, and racketeering in search of America’s enemies. Reportedly from March 1942 ONI cooperated with local crime syndicate leaders including Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Joseph “Socks” Lanza to locate leaks of convoy information along the waterfronts and infiltrate the fishing industry with ONI agents….”

JFK & ONI

- Navy Ensign John F. Kennedy was assigned to the ONI and was working as an ONI officer when he met his sister’s college roommate Inga Arvad of Denmark. Miss Denmark 1931, Arvad attended the propaganda tinged 1936 Olympics in Berlin where she “charmed Adolph Hitler and his cohorts so much that she gained access to their inner circle, and was Hitler’s guest” at the Olympics.

As a 1940 student at the Columbia School of Journalism [which later received funding from the CIA front Catherwood Foundation], Arvad lived with JFK’s sister Kathleen when they both worked for the New York Times Herald. At the time JFK dated Arvad, she worked for the ubiquitous North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), which also employed Ernest Hemingway when he liberated Paris with the OSS, Priscilla Johnson McMillan when she interviewed Oswald in Moscow and Virginia Prewett when she covered Alpha 66 operations in Cuba.

Kennedy and Arvad spent some time together in a Charleston, South Carolina hotel that was bugged by the FBI, and when Arvad’s background was established, Kennedy was transferred out of ONI to the PT boat squadron in the Pacific.

- Meanwhile, on another front, the ONI’s flirtation with the Mafia, which was established to protect the Northeast ports from Nazi saboteurs, blossomed into a full fledged marriage when a deal was struck with the imprisoned “Lucky” Luciano to obtain Mafia assistance in preparing for the invasion of Sicily, which became known as Operation Lucky.

- In modern American history texts, “Current Events” begins where World War II ends, though it never really ended, but sort of just flowed into the Cold War, which flared up with hostilities in Korea, when interests in and experimentation with mind control and the attempt to create the perfect Manchurian Candidate assassin.

We do know that the ONI played a major role if it was not the lead agency in the study of assassination and various ways, means and methods. At a NATO conference in Norway on the subject of stress in combat, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Thomas Narut was quoted in the London Sunday Times as saying that such research is continuous, on going and operational.

According to Narut, “…combat readiness units…include men for commando-type operations and….for insertion into U.S. embassies under cover,…ready to kill in those countries should the need arise….U.S. Navy psychologists specially selected men for these commando tasks, from submarine crews, paratroops, and some were convicted murderers from military prisons…Research on those given awards for valor in battle [ie. Audie Murphy] has shown….that the best killers are men with ‘passive-aggressive’ personalities….Among the tests used is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. This consists of hundreds of questions, and rates personality on many traits including such things as hostility, depression, psychopathy….”

The Times reported that, “The men selected were brought either to the Navy’s neuropsychiatric laboratory in San Diego, California (which also trains spys in techniques to counter interrogation), or to the laboratory where Narut works in the U.S. Naval Medical Center in Naples.”

- From Gerald Posner’s “Case Closed” (Random House, 1993, p.13), that when Oswald was tested by R. Hartog as a New York City delinquent, “Hartog’s diagnosis [of Oswald] was that of a ‘personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies.” Just what the Navy psychs were looking for in a potential assassin.

- Following in the footsteps of his older brother, Lee Harvey Oswald joined the USMC as soon as he was legally of age, and was twice stationed in San Diego, California, home of the Navy’s “neuropsychiatric” lab where they taught counter-intelligence and interrogation resistance techniques.

- Trained as a radar operator, Oswald was stationed at Atsugi, Japan, where he occasionally stood guard duty at the U2 hanger. In 1956, Edwin P. Wilson was assigned to a sixty man detachment responsible for U2 security, which was based at North Las Vegas, Nevada, abut assigned overseas under cover of the Maritime Survey Associates, of 80 Boylston St., Boston, Mass. For some time Wilson served in Japan but he also was stationed at Adana, Turkey when Francis Gary Powers was flying out of there. Wilson would later – 1971, serve in ONI’s Task Force 157, and could fill us in as a witness because he is currently incarcerated at Merion Federal Pen in Illinois.

- Oswald may have become involved in ONI counter-intelligence operations in Japan, where he is said to have been the target for recruitment by KGB assets. Although the Navy has refused to even admit that such a program existed, and some, like Otto Otepka of State Dept. Security, lost their jobs over it, it was the Navy that ran the Defector Program, which is said to have included Oswald as well as others in a program to send agents behind the Iron Curtain.

- When he left the USMC he returned to his hometown of New Orleans, from where he obtained, from a travel agency at the World Trade Mart, passage on a tramp steamer to Europe, the first leg of his journey to Russia. On his passport was stamped his occupation: Import-Export Agent.

- In New Orleans at the same time, and the only time and place their careers and travels have thus far shown to overlap, Col./Dr. Jose Rivera, USAR was teaching at a local medical college.

- After Oswald defected, his honorable discharge was changed to “undesirable,” which infuriated Oswald once he learned of it. And indeed, how could he be declared “undesirable” after he had already left the service. Another Catch-22.

- Writing a letter to the Secretary of the Navy John Connally, Oswald compared his sourjourn to Minsk “like Hemingway went to Paris.” Now Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who knew Oswald in Moscow, wrote that Oswald compared his stay in Russia to when Hemingway went to Paris in the 1920s. But Oswald didn’t say the 1920s, when Hemingway lived there with the Lost Generation, and he could have instead been referring to Hemingway’s liberation of Paris in 1944.

After working in liaison with the ONI in the Caribbean, Hemingway kept watch for Nazi subs and ships while fishing aboard his boat the Pilar, the fuel for which was supplied by the ONI. After D-Day however, Hemingway went to England, where his son was a trained British Special Operations trained JEDBERG, and dropped behind the lines where he was captured and held prisoner until after the war. After D-Day, Hemingway obtained correspondent credentials and went to France, where he hooked up with an OSS contingent led by Col. David Bruce.

Actually, after the fighting was mainly over, Hemingway, Bruce and their guerillas commandos liberated the bar of the Ritz Hotel, which had been occupied by the German General command earlier that morning. Putting his sidearm and a few hand grenades down on the bar, Hemingway took a head count of his party and ordered sixty vodka martinis, shaken-not-stirred.

And that is what I believe Oswald was referring to when he wrote to Connolly that he was in Russia as Hemingway went to Paris – as an agent.

- Rather than Connally however, Connally had since become Governor of Texas, Oswald’s letter was received by the new Secretary of the Navy, Fred Korth, a Fort Worth attorney who had been the lawyer for Oswald’s stepfather. Korth was also entwined with the controversial TFX jet fighter contract negotiations with General Dynamics and the Continental National Bank of Fort Worth. Korth was also present at the Hotel Cortez meeting when JFK and LBJ hashed out the details of the Texas trip.

- When Oswald returned to Texas with his Russian wife, he met George DeMohrenschildt, who became a close friend. In one of the more bizarre incidents between Oswald and DeMohrenschildt, is the story of how DeMohrenschildt tried to get Oswald a job at Collins Radio by introducing him to Collins executive retired Admiral Chester Bruton.

Bruton later claimed he met him when DeMohrenschildt came knocking at his door, saying that he knew the previous owners of the house. DeMohrenschildt, using his well-honed charm, finagled himself an invitation to use Bruton’s pool, and invited Marina to use it as well. One day, while Marina and DeMohrenschildt were lounging by the pool with Bruton, Oswald arrived unannounced and stayed for lunch. Of course Oswald didn’t get along very well with the Admiral, an officer and “lifer” who made the Navy a career. And needless to say, he didn’t get a job at Collins, although DeMohrenschildt tried to sell him on the fact that after all, Oswald did work in a radio factory in Russia.

Bruton was a former nuclear submarine commander who was hired by Collins after he retired from the Navy. He was working, at the time, on a new electronics system for communicating with nuclear submarines at sea.

Operating under the code names “Binnacle” and “Holystone,” the ONI began using nuclear subs, not only for nuclear Polaris missile deterrent, but for electronic espionage. As mentioned in “Blind Man’s Bluff – The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage” (By Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, Harper, 1998), “Congress okayed these popular proposals and offered up funding that caught the attention of the Office of Naval Intelligence. The Navy might have been promising an era that mirrored Jules Verne, but a few submarine espionage specialists now saw the means to launch a new age of spying that would be much closer to James Bond.”

“In addition to these operations off the Soviet Coast, some diesel subs carried Russian émigrés back to the Soviet Union to spy for the United States, and other diesel subs were landing commandos in places like Borneo, Indonesia and the Middle East to track the expanding Soviet influence. [shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, Navy commandos used diesel submarines to engineer the escape of prominent Cubans from Castro’s regime. Over several weeks, commandos slipped from the subs and rowed to shore in inflatable rafts. The Cubans who were piloted back to the subs often had to dive 15 to 30 feet through dark waters to enter the submerged craft through special pressurized compartments. May of those rescued likely would have been jailed or executed for plotting to overthrow Castro, according to former U.S. sailors involved in the operation.”

“Couriers met returning submarines at the dock, ready to whisk the intelligence directly to NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. The spooks themselves were so valuable that the Navy ordered them to travel to and from ports by train rather than on commercial plane. The Navy wasn’t willing to risk even a slim chance that they might be hijacked to Cuba.”

I prefer the train too, but Lee Harvey Oswald took the bus from Texas to his hometown of New Orleans, where through the efforts of an old family friend he obtained a job at the Riley Coffee Company and an apartment on Magazine Street.

- Two weeks earlier, in Washington, D.C., Dr./Col. Jose Rivera, USAR, gave Adele Edisen Osawald’s New Orleans Magazine street phone number, that’s two weeks before Oswald himself knew where he would be living. At the time, Dr./Col. Rivera, although in the U.S. Army Reserves, he was officially stationed at the U.S. Naval Biological Lab at the University of California, Berkeley.

- The ONI offices in New Orleans are in the same building where Oswald kept his Post Office box, just across the street from the now infamous 544 Camp Street base of various nefarious operations run by Guy Bannister, who is said to have served with the FBI in New York in liaison with the ONI when they were working with the Mafia to cover the docks.

- In his book “Reasonable Doubt,” Henry Hurt attributes some shady “bagman” activities in New Orleans to an unnamed former Navy man and Notre Dame alumni, while former D.A. Jim Garrison recalled being approached about his investigation into the Kennedy assassination and threatened by Colorado oilman John Miller, who had attended the U.S. Naval Academy.

- A number of Oswald’s former USMC shipmates return to action in the drama, G.P. Hemming in San Diego, Kerry Thornley and A. Hidell in New Orleans and Roscoe White in Dallas. Roscoe White according to documents obtained by his son, received ONI typed orders:

Navy Int.

Code A. M R C

Remark data

1666106

NRC VRC NAC

- 1963

Remarks Mandarin : Code A :

FOREIGN AFFAIRS ASSIGNMENTS HAVE BEEN CANCELED.

THE NEXT ASSIGNMENT IS TO ELIMINATE A NATIONAL

SECURITY THREAT TO WORLD WIDE PEACE. DESTINATION

WILL BE HOUSTON, AUSTIN OR DALLAS. CONTACTS ARE

BEING ARRANGED NOW. ORDERS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE

AT ANY TIME. REPLY BACK IF NOT UNDERSTOOD.

C. Bowers

O S H A

Re-rifle Code AAA destroy / on /

- Oswald also returned to Texas, via Mexico City, around the same time that three men visited Sylvia Odio and her sister, one of whom was Leon Oswald, an ex-Marine who could kill anyone, like the Secretary of the Navy.

- Around the same time, Edward Bray was visited by three men in suits who claimed to represent JFCOTT – Justice for the Crew of The Thresher, the nuclear sub that went down with all hands, ostensibly because of faulty hardware. They too threatened the President and Governor Connally, the former Secretary of the Navy, and Bray wrote to Connally to warn him of the threats. After the assassination, some people, like reporter James Reston, Jr., speculated that Oswald intended to shoot Connally rather than Kennedy.

- Two days after the assassination Det. Paul Bently of the Dallas Police Department received a letter from Robert D. Steel, Commander, USNR-R, of 7960 June Lake Drive, San Diego, California, who wrote Bently that, “Perhaps you are aware that ONI has quite a file on Oswald, which no doubt has been made available on the Washington level. If not, I am certain that this information can be obtained for you through our resident special agent in charge of the Dallas office, A. C. Sullivan, who is a wonderful agent, and whom I hope you know. As a personal friend, I congratulate you, wish you continued success, and pray that your guardian angel will remain close at hand and vigilant, always.”

- The HSCA learned from an officer who flew aboard the same flight, that the USMC sent a special investigations team to Japan to report on Oswald’s activities when he was there, but that report has never been acknowledged let alone released, even though the officials were supplied with the plane’s tail numbers, flight data and the names of others aboard. The Assassination Records Review Board’s Final Report merely notes [p. 84] that, “the Marine Corps did not locate evidence of any internal investigations of Lee Harvey Oswald, other than correspondence already published in the Warren Report.”

- When the CIA director was asked about their interests in Oswald after his defection, he said that, “It would have been considered a Navy matter.”

- In the Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board [p,158] it is noted for the record: “ONI stated that it conducted an extensive review of ONI records held at the Federal Records Centers throughout the country. ONI did not identify any additional assassination records. ONI was unable to find any relevant files for the Director of ONI from 1959 to 1964. ONI also acknowledged that there were additional ONI records that were not reviewed for assassination records, but these records would be reviewed under Executive Order 12958 requiring declassification of government records. The Office of Naval Intelligence submitted its Final Declaration of Compliance dated May 18, 1998.”

George Orwell : “For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building….What effected him with a sense of nightmare was that he had never understood why the huge imposture was undertaken. The immediate advantages of falsifying the past were obvious, but the ultimate motive mysterious.” – 1984

Sorry that took so long,

Hope somebody got through it all, and got something out of it,

Bill Kelly

xxyyyyzzz

[James Richards]

- When the CIA director was asked about their interests in Oswald after his defection, he said that, “It would have been considered a Navy matter.” (Bill Kelly)

This got me thinking about defecting Americans and their relationship to Intelligence agencies. In 1960, two NSA code clerks based at Fort Meade defected to Russia. Their names were Bernon F. Mitchell and William H. Martin. Before their joining the ranks of NSA they served together in the Navy.

Just after their defections, NSA Director Lt. Gen. John Samford retired citing health problems. He was replaced by the then Director of Naval Intelligence, Laurence Frost.

Interesting to note that Mitchell and Martin travelled to New Orleans and then on to Mexico. From there they went to Cuba where they boarded a Soviet fishing boat out of Havana. (familiar locations for assassination researchers)

FWIW.

James

[Jack White]

One of the most important finds by John Armstrong when he

spent weeks of research in Washington was this photo he

FOUND IN THE FILES OF THE OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

Jack

[James Richards]

Good one, Jack.

It is indeed curious since Oswald's DOD card has him at 71 inches which in my calculations is 5 foot 11 inches.

James

[William Kelly]

One of the most important finds by John Armstrong when he

spent weeks of research in Washington was this photo he

FOUND IN THE FILES OF THE OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

Jack

Can someone who is in contact with John Armstrong ask him about the ONI files he found?

Thanks,

BK

[Kathleen Collins]

Authorizing the coup against Diem was one of the worst mistakes JFK made.

The coup was opposed not only by LBJ but also by RFK (talk about strange bed-fellows!).

Pardon me. When did President Kennedy "authorize" the killing of the Diem Brothers? They were Catholic and horrible. Their own people got rid of them.

Love,

Kathy C

[William Kelly]

One of the most important finds by John Armstrong when he

spent weeks of research in Washington was this photo he

FOUND IN THE FILES OF THE OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

Jack

Can someone repost the photo Jack is referring to here?

Also link to Armstrong's files of ONI?

Thanks,

BK

[William Kelly]

One of the most important finds by John Armstrong when he

spent weeks of research in Washington was this photo he

FOUND IN THE FILES OF THE OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

Jack

Can someone repost the photo Jack is referring to here?

Also link to Armstrong's files of ONI?

Thanks,

BK

[Robert Howard]

One of the most important finds by John Armstrong when he

spent weeks of research in Washington was this photo he

FOUND IN THE FILES OF THE OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE.

Jack

Can someone repost the photo Jack is referring to here?

Also link to Armstrong's files of ONI?

Thanks,

BK

Sometimes contextualization in this case in the context of ONI history, can give a little more direction to being pointed in the right direction, hopefully, you know what that means.

A few months ago, probably over a year ago, I saw the following book, but didn't have the resources to get it....

World Turned Upside Down

By (author) Durning, Marvin B.; Foreword by Massie, Robert K.

In 1955, after assignments at the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and on board a destroyer, Marvin Durning arrived at ONI's office in Munich, Germany. During this year, he participated in the final stages of transforming Germany from a defeated enemy into a respected democracy, reestablishing its sovereignty, and shepherding its membership in NATO, which also involved rearming America's erstwhile foe. At that time, Munich, like Berlin, was a nerve center for the Cold War. It was crowded with U.S. troops and German and Slav refugees. "Radio Free Europe" called it home. The city was, Durning writes, "a jungle of competing secret intelligence organizations: British, French, American, Russian, West and East German, Czech, Polish, and others." Beneath the calm surface of everyday life in Munich roamed agents and double agents who witnessed defections, kidnappings, interrogations that ended in death, and assassinations by bomb explosions and by poison dart. "World Turned Upside Down" is Durning's account of such activities. Durning served as the de facto executive officer of a small office of German intelligence specialists tasked with routine navy issues. But they were doing much more. Known only to his commander and himself, former admirals of the defunct German Kriegsmarine attended secret meetings at his office, where they worked to plan and create a future West German Navy. In addition, Durning served as a liaison officer to the Gehlen Organization, the supersecret German intelligence and espionage organization, and he recounts their activities here.

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[目次]

* Foreword by Robert K. Massie

* Author's Note

* Prologue

* PART I - The Mystery Office in Munich

* Chapter 1 A Pre-Dawn Drive to Airbase Furstenfeldbruck

* Chapter 2 To Germany and to Munich

* Chapter 3 Val Rychly - "the Skipper"

* Chapter 4 The People of Possart Platz 3

* Chapter 5 "Another Intelligence Organization"

* Chapter 6 A Highly Productive Intelligence Office

* Chapter 7 U.S. Navy Visitors

* PART II - Life in Munich

* Chapter 8 Friends Made and Housing Found

* Chapter 9 Max's Party

* Chapter 10 Erika Muller

* Chapter 11 Freedom to Publish - East and West

* Chapter 12 Some Vignettes of Germany

* Chapter 13 Visits to Dachau

* PART III - Germany Transformed - Enemy to Ally

* Chapter 14 The Gehlen Organization - Reinhard Gehlen and James Critchfield

* Chapter 15 The Admirals and the New Germany Navy

* Chapter 16 The Generals and the New Armed Forces - Sovereignty Restored, NATO

* Chapter 17 Adenauer to Moscow, September 9-13, 1955

* Chapter 18 Return of German Prisoners of War

* PART IV - Enduring Friendships

* Chapter 19 Helmuth Pich

* Chapter 20 Max Pamitzki

* Chapter 21 Vladimir Rychly

* Epilogue

* Appendices:

* A. Max Parnitzki's Brief Curriculum Vitae and Experience as a Prisoner of War

* B. Max Parnitzki's Iron Cross

* C. U.S. Navy Letter of Recommendation for Max Parnitzki

* D. Letter from Undersecretary of Navy to Val Rychly

* E. Two Pages from V.L. Rychly Travel Diary

* Glossary

* Selected Bibliography

* Acknowledgements.

The book is good in the sense that it seems like a what you see is what you get, it doesen't seem to get to big

into opinions about critical issues, sort of like Jack Webb ala Dragnet...just the facts maam....

The reason I highlighted CDR Vladymir L. Rychly, USNR is due to the authors claim that Rychly worked closely with Jim Critchfield re the Gehlen org......Durning says Val retired from the Navy in 1962 and died in 1992; is buried at

They, Hannelore and Val, rest peacefully at Walfriedhof Grunwald...Grunwald Forest Cemetery.

If you're into those German connections, then you might at least want to peruse google books......

My last post on Kerry Thornley's training at Atsugi got a big yawn....I swear to God, I am about an inch away from saying Sayonara.....

Signed Don't really give a.......

[Mark Knight]

Robert, I can't speak for the others here...but I truly appreciate your efforts and your research. You have helped shed light on MANY areas that many have been overlooked. And unlike some here who have been sold on their own brilliance, I know I can count on your research as being guided by a search for truth, as opposed to being a defense of dogma.

[Thomas Graves]

[...]

ONI, as the Intelligence Department of the Department of the Navy, is the oldest, smallest, least publicized and most influential of all official U.S. government intelligence agencies.

(emphasis added by T. Graves)

[...]

Is ONI more influenial than even the CIA?

--Tommy

Edited January 8, 2012 by Thomas Graves

[Thomas Graves]

[...]

UNOFFICIAL HISTORY OF ONI

[...]

(T)he two-volume work by Rutgers University (Camden, N.J.) professor Jeffrey M. Dorwart, "The Office of Naval Intelligence 1865-1919," and "Conflict of Duty, The U.S. Navy's Intelligence Dilemma 1919-1945," (Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md., 1983).

[Note: Dorwart mentions that for interested researchers, ONI records are held at the National Archives Records Group 38, but they are generally restricted, classified and unavailable to the public.]

According to Dorwart, ONI agents, "….broke into safes, eavesdropped, vandalized private property and consorted with unsavory characters in pursuit of domestic pacifists and radicals. Still others interfered in the internal affairs of Latin American nations, dabbed in Asian politics, and accompanied Fascists Black Shirts into Africa. These men were not covert agents of the CIA, FBI or some elite American espionage team. They were U.S. naval and marine officers attached, between 1919 and 1945, to the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), a relatively obscure bureau whose primary mission was to provide strategic and technical information for the U.S. Navy."

[...]

Though ignored in the official history, Dorwart manages to give credence to the Mafia connections with the U.S. intelligence community, which were first established by the ONI in New York. As Dorwart reports, "The sensational fire on the converted ocean liner NORMANDIE in New York harbor on 17 February accelerated security measures, especiall waterfront control, port security and boarding patrols to interrogate passengers and search incoming vessels. In cooperation with other agencies ONI prepared a joint survey of New York harbor, and in a less covert operation began to send agents into the city's seamy world of prostitution, organized crime, and racketeering in search of America's enemies. Reportedly from March 1942 ONI cooperated with local crime syndicate leaders including Charles "Lucky" Luciano and Joseph "Socks" Lanza to locate leaks of convoy information along the waterfronts and infiltrate the fishing industry with ONI agents…."

[...]

--- [T]he ONI's flirtation with the Mafia, which was established to protect the Northeast ports from Nazi saboteurs, blossomed into a full fledged marriage when a deal was struck with the imprisoned "Lucky" Luciano to obtain Mafia assistance in preparing for the invasion of Sicily, which became known as Operation Lucky. [Note to BK: Perhaps you meant to say Operation Husky?--T. Graves]

- In modern American history texts, "Current Events" begins where World War II ends, though it never really ended, but sort of just flowed into the Cold War, which flared up with hostilities in Korea, when interests in and experimentation with mind control and the attempt to create the perfect Manchurian Candidate assassin.

We do know that the ONI played a major role if it was not the lead agency in the study of assassination and various ways, means and methods. At a NATO conference in Norway on the subject of stress in combat, U.S. Navy Lt. Commander Thomas Narut was quoted in the London Sunday Times as saying that such research is continuous, on going and operational.

According to Narut, "…combat readiness units…include men for commando-type operations and….for insertion into U.S. embassies under cover,…ready to kill in those countries should the need arise….U.S. Navy psychologists specially selected men for these commando tasks, from submarine crews, paratroops, and some were convicted murderers from military prisons… {b]Research on those given awards for valor in battle [ie. Audie Murphy] has shown….that the best killers are men with 'passive-aggressive' personalities[/b} [...]

The Times reported that, "The men selected were brought either to the Navy's neuropsychiatric laboratory in San Diego, California (which also trains spys in techniques to counter interrogation), or to the laboratory where Narut works in the U.S. Naval Medical Center in Naples."

- From Gerald Posner's "Case Closed" (Random House, 1993, p.13), that when Oswald was tested by R. Hartog as a New York City delinquent, "Hartog's diagnosis [of Oswald] was that of a 'personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies." Just what the Navy psychs were looking for in a potential assassin.

- Following in the footsteps of his older brother, Lee Harvey Oswald joined the USMC as soon as he was legally of age, and was twice stationed in San Diego, California, home of the Navy's "neuropsychiatric" lab where they taught counter-intelligence and interrogation resistance techniques.

[...]

- Oswald may have become involved in ONI counter-intelligence operations in Japan, where he is said to have been the target for recruitment by KGB assets. Although the Navy has refused to even admit that such a program existed, and some, like Otto Otepka of State Dept. Security, lost their jobs over it, it was the Navy that ran the Defector Program, which is said to have included Oswald as well as others in a program to send agents behind the Iron Curtain.

- When he left the USMC he returned to his hometown of New Orleans, from where he obtained, from a travel agency at the World Trade Mart, passage on a tramp steamer to Europe, the first leg of his journey to Russia. On his passport was stamped his occupation: Import-Export Agent.

- In New Orleans at the same time, and the only time and place their careers and travels have thus far shown to overlap, Col./Dr. Jose Rivera, USAR was teaching at a local medical college.

- Two days after the assassination Det. Paul Bently of the Dallas Police Department received a letter from Robert D. Steel, Commander, USNR-R, of 7960 June Lake Drive, San Diego, California, who wrote Bently that, "Perhaps you are aware that ONI has quite a file on Oswald, which no doubt has been made available on the Washington level. If not, I am certain that this information can be obtained for you through our resident special agent in charge of the Dallas office, A. C. Sullivan, who is a wonderful agent, and whom I hope you know. [...]

- The HSCA learned from an officer who flew aboard the same flight, that the USMC sent a special investigations team to Japan to report on Oswald's activities when he was there, but that report has never been acknowledged let alone released, even though the officials were supplied with the plane's tail numbers, flight data and the names of others aboard. The Assassination Records Review Board's Final Report merely notes [p. 84] that, "the Marine Corps did not locate evidence of any internal investigations of Lee Harvey Oswald, other than correspondence already published in the Warren Report."

- When the CIA director was asked about their interests in Oswald after his defection, he said that, "It would have been considered a Navy matter."

[...]

(emphasis added by T. Graves)

--Bill Kelly

Bill,

Fascinating post!

Thanks,

--Tommy

Edited January 23, 2013 by Thomas Graves