E. Grant Stockdale

[John Simkin]

John,  I'd like to know a lot more about the sources for some of those remarks about sex parties and collecting bag money;  if JFK trusted Stockdale and its true then Stockdale apparently was not a man to keep secrets.  On the other hand its such great gossip and sounds so much like Bobby Baker that I'll remain skeptical unless someone can dig up who and when and where it actually came from from Stockdale to the son or others.

However I can comment on why Stockdale had ample reason to be worried about Baker.  Stockdale had operated a vending company that seems to have been the prototype for Baker's ServeUCorp.  And Stockdale's company had gotten into legal trouble and one of Stockdale's associates had gotten into the ServeUCorp thing with Bobby....at least that's how I remember it. And the Congressional Committees were very interested in that fellow and his background.  If the investigation had really expanded I suspect Stockdale had every reason to anticipate some time on the stand himself - which would have refloated the problems he had been earlier and caused him all sorts of trouble.

Seymour Hersh interviewed Grant Stockdale in Washington in April, 1996. I assume that Grant must have been fairly young in 1963 (Stockdale was 48 when he died). As you have said, it is unlikely that his father would have told him a story about the sex party (however, he does say his father was appalled by the behaviour and never went again).

I think the important point is that Grant refers to a family friend who went with his father to deliver the money to JFK. I suspect that it was this family friend who told Grant about the party, the JFK money and Bobby Baker.

According to Bobby Baker the vending machine scam was first suggested by Robert Kerr (of Suite F8 group). He initially intended to go into partnership with Fred Black. However, Clark Clifford, his lawyer, warned him he was in danger of being accused of making use of his position in the Senate. Therefore the idea was given to others. I suspect this is when Grant Stockdale and George Smathers formed Automatic Vending. Ralph Hill, another of Kerr’s associates, established the Capitol Vending Company. (It was Hill who eventually exposed the vending machine scam). Kerr then decided to use Fred Black and Bobby Baker to establish the Serv-U Corporation. Kerr invested money into the venture. He also arranged a $400,000 loan from Fidelity National Bank and Trust Company in Oklahoma City.

In the interview Grant claims that his father was in financial difficulties in 1963. He also argues that is why he resigned as ambassador to Ireland. Apparently the job cost him too much and had to return to the business world. This is probably what he told his son. However, I suspect the real reason for the resignation was the legal difficulties he was encountering over Automatic Vending. In 1961 the company was sued for improper actions in getting a contract at Aerodex. Smathers own resignation from the Senate has never been explained.

Smathers is still alive. Have you interviewed him?

You might find this interview interesting:

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/11/29/State/A_...r__if_not.shtml

[Judyth Baker]

George Smathers resigned from the Senate in 1968. According to the Biographical Directory of Congress website George Smathers is still alive. Has anyone interviewed him about these issues? Does anyone know anything about the possible business relationship between Smathers, Stockdale, Baker and Black? (John Simkin)

George Smathers was alive when researchers and Sixty Minutes contacted him after talking to me. He refused to be interviewed and said `no comment,` I was told. This was three years ago. The last I heard, a hospital that was going to be named for him changed its mind... in 1999 I insisted that Smathers' role in cooperating with LBJ, re the events of 1963 and 1964, were of immense importance. I have always known this, Smathers being my sponsor at UF and in informal contact with me until Spring, 1963, and through what I learned in New Orleans in 1963. The key, Lee said, was Bobby Baker, Billie Sol Estes, and David Atlee Phillips. Keep your eye on those three names. The connections between Phillips and Smathers have not been made public. I know they met through INCA. I hope more proof of these associations will be uncovered, though evidence tends to gets destroyed once these matters are brought up.

For example, people are always writing asking how to get a copy of the documentary that was suppressed - The Love Affair. I have a copy, but promised not to make copies (except for a couple of backup copies), though have been offered a surprisingly large amt. of money for a copy.

Such suppression of witness testimony is modern and recent. Imagine how much has been suppressed from the past. John, you´ve done a terrific job hunting down the truth about Smathers. I wish you all the best.

Best Regards,

Judyth Vary Baker

Seeking the Exoneration of Lee Harvey Oswald

[John Simkin]

I recently discovered that three senators, Carl T. Curtis, John Williams and Hugh Scott made strenuous attempts to expose the Bobby Baker scandal. The LBJ tapes reveal that he was able to blackmail Williams and Scott into silence (they had both been recorded doing unspecified things at the Quorum Club). However, it is clear from the tapes that they were unable to dig up any dirt on Curtis. Therefore, in theory he was free to say what he knew about the case.

Searching on the web I discovered that Curtis died on 24th January, 2000. However, I was delighted to discover that he published a book on his fight against corruption in Congress: Forty Years Against the Tide (1986). I ordered the book from Adsrus Books (Des Moines) and it arrived this morning. It contains a lot of interesting information that helps us understand the Grant Stockdale case and the whole issue of Bobby Baker. He also has a lot to say about Billie Sol Estes.

Curtis was a member of the Senate Rules Committee that interviewed Don Reynolds in secret on the day that JFK was assassinated. He remained on the Senate Rules Committee and spent two years trying to get the case investigated. Curtis admits that most of the information against Baker came from John Williams. According to Burkett Van Kirk, the lawyer who worked with Williams on this case, this information came from Robert Kennedy, who had leaked it in an attempt to get LBJ dropped as vice president.

Curtis also reveals that much of the information on Baker came from a “bug” placed in Fred Black’s Washington hotel room on instructions from RFK.

In his book Curtis reveals what went on behind closed doors on the Senate Rules Committee. The committee was made up of B. Everett Jordan (chairman and a man fully under the control of LBJ), Carl Hayden, Claiborne Pell, Joseph Clark, Howard Cannon and Robert Byrd. The three Republicans were Sherman Cooper (also on the Warren Commission), Hugh Scott and Carl Curtis.

The secret testimony of Don Reynolds on the day that JFK was assassinated led to other people being interviewed. This included Carole Tyler, Baker’s secretary. It became clear that she had handled funds involved in the bribing of politicians. She had also travelled several times to Los Angeles on Serve-U Corporation business. Tyler was called before the committee but she refused to answer questions in case she incriminated herself.

Curtis wanted to interview Margaret Broome, who had also been employed by Baker as a secretary. It seems that she could not be relied on to keep quiet. As a result, the six Democrats voted against allowing her to appear. Others they voted against interviewing was two people linked to Grant Stockdale. The first of these was Stockdale’s business partner, Eugene Hancock. He had been involved in running Automatic Vending with Stockdale and George Smathers. Hancock had then been recruited to run Serve-U Corporation. It seems that Baker was no longer willing to accept a rake-off from Automatic Vending and Capitol Vending (run by Ralph Hill). Instead he wanted Serve-U Corporation to have all these government contracts. Ralph Hill decided to fight back by giving evidence against Baker. Did Grant Stockdale decide to do the same? Hancock also went to the meetings with Hill when they were trying to keep him from testifying before the Senate Rules Committee.

The other man linked to Stockdale who they refused to interview was Matthew McCloskey. A Roman Catholic and former treasurer of the Democratic Party, McCloskey was a friend of both Stockdale and JFK. McCloskey also owned a large construction company based in Philadelphia. According to the evidence obtained from Don Reynolds, Baker had arranged for McCloskey to get the contract for the building of the stadium in the District of Columbia. The government project was initially fixed at $6m but for some reason it was agreed to allow McCloskey to charge $20m for the project. Reynolds was able to provide paperwork to show that $25,000 was paid to Baker for this contract.

When this investigation of McCloskey began JFK sent him to be ambassador to Ireland. He replaced Grant Stockdale who had been sent to Ireland in March, 1961, when he had been under investigation as the owner of Automatic Vending. It seems this was a method that helped prevent them from being interviewed by the Senate Rules Committee. RFK had done the same thing with Ellen Rometsch when she was sent back to West Germany.

I am now able to put these pieces of information together in order to develop a theory of what was going on between 1960 and 1963. LBJ, with the help of Bobby Baker, had done what he had done with a wide variety of powerful politicians. He had drawn JFK and RFK into his network of corruption. This was done in two different ways.

One involved Baker’s sex parties that enabled him to get enough evidence to blackmail JFK, RFK, John Williams, George Smathers and Hugh Scott into silence.

The other one concerned the raising of campaign funds for the 1960 presidential election campaign. McCloskey and Stockdale both played important roles in raising funds for Kennedy. A great deal of this money came in via the Suite 8F group. This corrupt money was linked to government projects such as the District of Columbia stadium. Stockdale, as owner of Automatic Vending, also benefited from the patronage of LBJ and Bobby Baker. Grant Stockdale and Ralph Hill were both upset when their government contracts were withdrawn and placed with Serve-U Corporation. They both became dangerous. Stockdale, who was better connected than Hill and had refused to go to Baker’s sex parties (he had attended one in New York in 1962 but was disgusted by what went on and refused to go anymore) was especially dangerous.

I suspect that Stockdale told Robert and Edward Kennedy about this elaborate conspiracy at their meeting in Washington on 26th November, 1963. Robert already knew as he had been desperately trying to keep the whole story quiet throughout 1963. When RFK refused to take action (it was now far too late as he had by this stage been fully compromised by these events) Stockdale knew he had to betray the Kennedys in order to expose the truth of what had happened. Therefore, he became the first of the many witnesses to die.

[Larry Hancock]

John, that's great background information and certainly fleshes out elements of the Baker influence pedaling and scandal. Do I understand that you are saying that political fund raising was going on directly for the Kennedy's and that Jack and Bobby were actively covering up elements of that as it became exposed - first sending Stockdale overseas and then McCloskey? Is that correct... since up to this point we would have thought that Johnson was the primary person at risk and that it was just greed/influence pedaling - and the Kennedy's only politically exposed through Baker and Johnson?

And I'm not sure I follow you on how this gave Stockdale an insight into a conspriacy to kill JFK? Plus I'm completely lost on the last part - are you saying Stockdale was a threat to the Kennedy's and after the assassination the Kennedy family had him eliminated?

Or that Baker had him eliminated, or Johnson or exactly whom? - and why since Johnson was in power and would surely be able to derail the investigation further?

...sorry, looks like I'm lost on several of your points... Larry

[John Simkin]

John, that's great background information and certainly fleshes out elements of the Baker influence pedaling and scandal.  Do I understand that you are saying that political fund raising was going on directly for the Kennedy's and that Jack and Bobby were actively covering up elements of that as it became exposed - first sending Stockdale overseas and then McCloskey?  Is that correct... since up to this point we would have thought that Johnson was the primary person at risk and that it was just greed/influence pedaling - and the Kennedy's only politically exposed through Baker and Johnson?

And I'm not sure I follow you on how this gave Stockdale an insight into a conspriacy to kill JFK?  Plus I'm completely lost on the last part - are you saying Stockdale was a threat to the Kennedy's and after the assassination the Kennedy family had him eliminated?

Or that Baker had him eliminated,  or Johnson or exactly whom? - and why since Johnson was in power and would surely be able to derail the  investigation further?

What I am saying is that both JFK and RFK were being blackmailed in 1963. After the assassination, John Williams and Hugh Scott were also blackmailed into silence. Others, like Carole Tyler, were being threatened. Curtis gives the names of several others who fell into that category. They were allowed to appear before the Senate Rules Committee but refused to testify. I will be writing about these people later.

The Senate Rules Committee also claimed that Don Reynolds had gone missing and so therefore could not be called back to testify. Curtis says that was a lie. Curtis remained in contact with Reynolds throughout this period. However, the Democratic majority refused to call Reynolds before the committee.

Although LBJ could control the Senate Rules Committee he could not stop people going to Curtis or the press. These were the people who were dangerous to LBJ and his network. I suspect Stockdale fell into this category. I do not believe the Kennedys had anything to do with his death. Although Stockdale must have found the meeting on 26th November very depressing. Maybe he did commit suicide. If not, the conspirators could not allow him to carry on living.

Do you know what happened to Ralph Hill or Eugene Hancock? They must have had a good idea of what had been going on. Curtis claims that Reynolds was willing to testify. What happened to him? What happened to Margaret Broome? Was she willing to talk? Why would the Senate Rules Committee refuse to call her when they had documentary evidence that she had knowledge of Baker’s corrupt activities.

Why was Carole Tyler allowed to live until May, 1965. Was it connected to the rows that Baker and Tyler were having about his unwillingness to leave his wife. Was she threatening to talk to Curtis. He definitely thinks her death is suspicious.

This also raises the issue of Mary Jo Kopechne, who shared an apartment with Tyler (the place where the recorded sex parties took place). She had also been George Smathers’ secretary, Stockdale’s partner in Automatic Vending. If Tyler knew where the bodies were buried, so would Kopechne. Does the Baker scandal explain her death as well?

[Larry Hancock]

Thanks John, that's an excellant synopsis; it certainly sounds as if Hoover was not the only one who had some strong leverage over JFK and RFK.

There are pretty strong indications that Johnson was willing to take serious action to cover his trail when scandals got really nasty. Plus we do know that he was still concerned over Baker and that scandal even after he had taken the Presidency....that's when he made the remark about paying Baker a million dollars to shut up.

I've often thought that there were real mystery deaths related to people that knew Ruby was more than the WC pictured him to be in terms of crime connections and probably in terms of an Oswald association.

I think you have added a very good lead that there are another set of deaths relating to the Johnson/Baker scandal..... sort of reminds me of Estes and the west Texas deaths.

-- Great work! Larry

[John Simkin]

You will find a photograph of E. Grant Stockdale here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3519

[John Simkin]

Namebase entry for Grant Stockdale:

http://www.namebase.org/xste/Edward-Grant-Stockdale.html

Hersh,S. The Dark Side of Camelot. 1997 (409-11)

State Dept. United States Chiefs of Mission 1778-1973. 1973 (81)

As you can see, he has not been written about much. There is also information about him on three online sources:

Grant Stockdale (Spartacus)

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKstockdale.htm

William Torbitt, Nonmenclature of an Assassination Cabal (1970)

http://scribblguy.50megs.com/torbitt3.htm

Richard E. Sprague, The Taking of America (1985)

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp10.html

[Dick Russell]

After my book first came out, Stockdale began to intrigue me, too. I can't remember quite why, maybe something in reference to the Underhill murder happening around the same time. I did interview someone about Stockdale in D.C. - and again memory eludes me as to who, although I don't recall their saying much if anything of significance.

[John Simkin]

Joachim Joesten appears to have been the first investigator to link the death of Grant Stockdale to the JFK assassination (The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1968):

On December 2. 1963, an AP dispatch from Miami reported:

'Grant Stockdale, former Ambassador to Ireland, plunged to his death todtiy from his offices on the 13th floor of the du Pont Building.

'The police said Mr. Stockdale, an intimate friend of President Kennedy, had committed suicide. No notes were found, however. Mr. Stockdale was 48 years old...'

Note that Stockdale, according to this dispatch, did not jump out of his office window, as suicides normally do. He 'plunged to his death', a conveniently ambiguous statement that is frequently used when a person dies by a fall from a window and the authorities just don't know for sure (or don't want to say) whether the victim had jumped or had been pushed out of the window.

With no eyewitnesses in the case, and no notes suggesting suicidal intent, how could the Miami police come out with a flat statement that Stockdale had committed suicide? Or did the Associated Press lend an unquestioning note to a somewhat less affirmative police statement? The question must be raised because The New York Herald Tribune in a dispatch from Washington by Dom Bonafede, published on December 3, 1963, stated: 'Police said it was an apparent suicide.'

'Miami police investigators, however, were unable to find a suicide note or provide any motive,' the Herald Tribune dispatch went on to say.

No motive. But the unnatural death of a prominent personality has to be explained somehow to the public. And so we are promptly treated to a variety of 'explanations', one more implausible than the other.

The AP dispatch cited above hints strongly that Grant Stockdale - a very rich man-had run into financial troubles, but substantiates this suggestion with ridiculous assertions:

'In a recent newspaper interview, he (Stockdale) said that he had borne heavy expenses by serving as Ambassador...'

Stockdale's appointment as ambassador to Ireland, made by President Kennedy in March 1961, was a typical political payoff, such as follow traditionally all changes in the Administration. Stockdale was not a career diplomat. His principal qualifications for the job were his services to the Democratic Party, his great personal wealth and the fact that he was a practising Roman Catholic. The latter circumstance, incidentally, makes the suicide version look even more improbable than it would otherwise be, for the Catholic Church strongly condemns suicides and inexorably relegates them to hell.

Ambassadorial appointments like that of Grant Stockdale are made primarily for two reasons: in order to reward a faithful party stalwart for substantial campaign contributions and because the nominee can afford to supplement his salary with personal income in order to meet the expenses of diplomatic high living. No rich man appointed to a political ambassadorship ever went broke in the service. The suggestion that the religious Stockdale, having ruined himself in the service of his country, saw no other way out than to commit the sin of sins is simply ludicrous.

Aware of it, apparently, the AP dispatch adds some other possible sources of financial despair:

'When he left Ireland to return to his real estate business in July, 1962, Mr. Stockdale said, he found that the market had declined badly. He also spoke of the great expense of a large family. He had two sons and three daugthers.'

If Stockdale found in July, 1962, that business had declined so badly that he could no longer afford to raise a large family, why did he wait another 17 months to jump out the window? And, what other big real estate operator was wiped out by the alleged 'decline' of the market between early 1961 and mid-1962?

All this is just plainly absurd, and the most preposterous of all is the suicide motive Dorn Bonafede managed to dig up: 'Miarni friends said yesterday that Mr. Stockdale, who was in the real estate and investment business, was despondent over the death of President Kennedy. He is reported to have fallen on his knees and prayed when lie heard the news...'

On the strength of this paragraph, the Herald Tribune actually published the Bonafede dispatch under this four-column headline:

"Despondent' Kennedy Friend Dies in Plunge"

Hardheaded businessinen - and Stockdale was certainly hardheaded, as his record shows - don't kill themselves because a friend has been murdered, be it the President of the United States. Besides, relations between Kennedy and Stockdale had soured considerably, as we shall see.

All this is part and parcel of the official myth making that goes on day after day in the United States to gloss over the conspicuous taints in The Great Society. It has been going on at a greatly accelerated pace since the assassination of President Kennedy.

The truth of the matter is that Grant Stockdale was also a wheelerdealer and had found himself caught in the Bobby Baker web, If his death was suicide, the reason was that he feared exposure. More likely, Stockdale was murdered because he knew too much and somebody else feared exposure.

Dom Bonafede's dispatch indicates that Stockdale did not resign his ambassadorship of his own free will but was in effect fired by President Kennedy in May 1962, even though this was done with the usual diplomatic niceties:

'Prior to his resignation it was disclosed that he had borrowed $1,000 interest-free from Sidney Kessler, a New York and Miami builder, who was seeking an $£3,000 commitment froin the Federal Housing Administration. The petition was later approved.

'President Kennedy reportedly learned of the loan and demanded that Mr. Stockdale return the $5,000.

'In a trans-Atlantic telephone call to a Miami reporter, Mr. Stockdale reportedly commented that the President was "afraid the loan could make it look like I was finagling around with the FHA"...'

So much for the allegedly warm relationship between Kennedy and Stockdale which caused the latter to kill himself out of 'despondency' after ten days of mourning over his assassinated friend.

Coyly, the Herald Tribune story touches on the background to Stockdale's latest and last entanglements:

'Mr. Stockdale's name also came up briefly as a part time associate of Eugene Hancock, a vending-machine operator, mentioned in the investigation of Bobby Baker...'

The New York Times of December 3, 1963, is more explicit: 'Grant Stockdale once had close business connections with vending-machine concerns that are under investigation in the Robert G. Baker inquiry...

'In an interview published in the Miami Herald last October, shortly after the Senate authorized a study of Mr. Baker's dealings, Mr. Stockdale said:

"I hope I don't get cut up too bad, I haven't done anything wrong..,'

'Mr. Stockdale's responses were to questions about the similarities between the Washington damage suit against Mr. Baker, which touched off the Baker case, and a 1961 damage suit against Mr. Stockdale and others in Miami.

'In April, 1961, just as Mr. Stockdale was leaving Miami to assume his duties as Ambassador to Ireland, he was served with papers in a $131,000 damage suit. The suit alleged that he had used "undue influence" to gain contracts for Automatic Vending Services, Inc., a Miami company in which he owned stock.

'Mr. Stockdale accused the complainant, the Pan-Am Tobacco Corporation, of trying to "get some publicity because I am a United States Ambassador." He denied the charges.

'Pan-Am contended in its suit that Mr. Stockdale had been instrumental in gaining for his company the vending service contract at Erodex, Inc., an aircraft engine maintenance company in Miami.

'Subsequently, Automatic Vending Services, Inc., won contracts totalling $500,000 a year at Patrick Air Force Base and the Air Force missile test center at Cape Kennedy...'

To recapitulate the many and striking similarities between the Stockdale and Baker cases:

Grant Stockdale is a big wheel in the Democratic Party and a person of considerable influence in Washington; Bobby Baker is also a big wheel in the Democratic Party geared to one of the biggest and exercises even greater influence in the capital.

Stockdale is also a major stockholder in a vending-machine company. This outfit garners, one after another, extremely lucrative contracts in Government installations and Government-controlled defence plants. And eventually it becomes the target of a damage suit by a competitor, charging the use of 'undue influence' in obtaining these contracts.

Two years later, Bobby Baker travels exactly the same road with all its way stations, as has already been described in previous chapters.

Any thought that all this could be purely coincidental is now dispelled by this paragraph in the Times story:

'Mr. Stockdale, one business associate said, was then "harassed" by newsmen concerning his connection with Automatic Vending Services and its president, Eugene A. Hrzncock...'

There you have it, in a nutshell. Eugene A. Hancock is the president of Automatic Vending Services. One of his biggest assets is a prominent stockholder, Grant Stockdale, who has plenty of pull in Washington.

Coincidentally, of course, profitable government contracts start tumbling out of Washington's cornucopia and into the lap of the Hancock-Stockdale enterprise.

"Then, a couple of years later, the scene shifts. Hancock is now president of the Serv-U-Corporation, another automatic vending concern, with the very, very influential Bobby Baker as his principal stockholder (in fact, though not in name). Automatically, again, the cornucopia tilts and starts pouring out juicy government contracts.

And, exactly as before, the new venture leads to a large damage suit in which it is charged that these contracts were obtained through the misuse of influence in Washington.

Hancock is then the conspicuous connecting link between the affairs of Grant Stockdale and those of Bobby Baker. Yet after Stockdale's 'suicide', the Senate committee investigating the Baker scandal blandly declared that there was no tie at all. Stockdale, a spokesman for the committee said, was not under investigation and there had been no plans for the committee to question him. And, indeed, the committee did not ask Hancock as far as is known, any questions about Stockdale when it grilled him.

Just one more of those fabulous 'coincidences', you see, that abound in every phase and facet of the Johnson regime, and most strikingly in the Oswald story: at the precise moment that the Bobby Baker investigation gets under way, an earlier high-ranking influence peddler formerly associated with the same figurehead president, Hancock, a man hoping and praying that he won't 'get cut up too bad' in the process, mysteriously plunges to his death from a tall building. Yet, in the official view, there is no link, no connection.

Mystery befitting a B-grade thriller surrounds the third body in the Baker case, one that belonged, in life, to a beautiful woman.

Like other housewives in the crime-ridden Washington area, Mrs. Sheila Drennan made it a standing practice to keep the doors of her home in suburban Maryland not only closed, but locked. Yet one day, early in 1964, when her children caine home from school, they were surprised to find the front door not only unlocked, but wide open.

Their misgivings found horrible confirmation. On the floor of the bathroom, the children found the lifeness nude body of their 34-yearold mother. Nothing else had been touched and in the adjoining bedroom, the police found the woman's clothing and rings arrayed on the bed. Apparently, she was about to take a bath when sudden death overtook her.

What had happened? Did Mrs. Drennan slip in the bathroom and break her neck, or was she murdered? The medical authorities were as puzzled as the police. County Medical Examiner Dr. John Kehoe was unable to make a firm determination of the cause of death. He noted an internal neck injury but expressed the view that this could have been caused 'by a fall or a mugging'. He thought, therefore, that the woman's death could have been 'either accidental or homicide.'

And, what has this all to do with the Baker case? Simply this: Sheila Drennan was the wife of Lorin H. Drennan Jr., a government accountant who gave the Senate probers a detailed picture of Bobby Baker's financial entanglements, including the fact that he had borrowed a total of $ 1.7 million from various banks in four years. And that Lorin Drennan's testimony was followed, in a matter of days, by the mysterious death of his wife.

If the 'accident' that befell Drennan's wife may possibly have been unconnected with the Baker affair who will ever be able to tell for sure? - the 'accidental' death, a few months later, of Bobby's Girl Friday, Carole Tyler, was certainly not due to mere coincidence. However, her case is so Complex and so important that we must deal with it separately in a subscqucut chapter.

Remember, this book was published in 1968. He did not know that Grant Stockdale’s wife had been warned that if she contradicted the “suicide” story, her daughter would be murdered (disclosed by Anne Stockdale on this Forum on 16th June, 2004).

This helps to explain the Shelia Drennan story. Was Lorin Drennan warned that his wife would be murdered if he gave evidence against Bobby Baker? Can we be really be surprised about the lack of witnesses coming forward to claim that LBJ and Bobby Baker were behind the assassination of JFK?

[John Simkin]

Members might be interested in some newspaper reports on Stockdale's death:

(1) The Miami Herald (2nd December, 1963)

The police said Mr. Stockdale, an intimate friend of President Kennedy, had committed suicide. No notes were found, however. Mr. Stockdale was 48 years old...

In a recent newspaper interview, he (Stockdale) said that he had borne heavy expenses by serving as Ambassador...

When he left Ireland to return to his real estate business in July, 1962, Mr. Stockdale said, he found that the market had declined badly. He also spoke of the great expense of a large family. He had two sons and three daugthers.

(2) Dom Bonafede, The New York Herald Tribune (3rd December, 1963)

Miarni friends said yesterday that Mr. Stockdale, who was in the real estate and investment business, was despondent over the death of President Kennedy. He is reported to have fallen on his knees and prayed when lie heard the news...

Prior to his resignation it was disclosed that he had borrowed $1,000 interest-free from Sidney Kessler, a New York and Miami builder, who was seeking an $£3,000 commitment froin the Federal Housing Administration. The petition was later approved.

President Kennedy reportedly learned of the loan and demanded that Mr. Stockdale return the $5,000.

In a trans-Atlantic telephone call to a Miami reporter, Mr. Stockdale reportedly commented that the President was "afraid the loan could make it look like I was finagling around with the FHA"...

Mr. Stockdale's name also came up briefly as a part time associate of Eugene Hancock, a vending-machine operator, mentioned in the investigation of Bobby Baker.

(3) The New York Times (3rd December, 1963)

Grant Stockdale once had close business connections with vending-machine concerns that are under investigation in the Robert G. Baker inquiry...

In an interview published in the Miami Herald last October, shortly after the Senate authorized a study of Mr. Baker's dealings, Mr. Stockdale said:

"I hope I don't get cut up too bad, I haven't done anything wrong..."

Mr. Stockdale's responses were to questions about the similarities between the Washington damage suit against Mr. Baker, which touched off the Baker case, and a 1961 damage suit against Mr. Stockdale and others in Miami.

In April, 1961, just as Mr. Stockdale was leaving Miami to assume his duties as Ambassador to Ireland, he was served with papers in a $131,000 damage suit. The suit alleged that he had used "undue influence" to gain contracts for Automatic Vending Services, Inc., a Miami company in which he owned stock.

Mr. Stockdale accused the complainant, the Pan-Am Tobacco Corporation, of trying to "get some publicity because I am a United States Ambassador." He denied the charges.

Pan-Am contended in its suit that Mr. Stockdale had been instrumental in gaining for his company the vending service contract at Erodex, Inc., an aircraft engine maintenance company in Miami.

Subsequently, Automatic Vending Services, Inc., won contracts totalling $500,000 a year at Patrick Air Force Base and the Air Force missile test center at Cape Kennedy.

[John Simkin]

Interesting passage in G. R. Schreiber's The Bobby Baker Affair (1964):

In April, 1963, two months after President Bosch took office, Bobby Baker made a trip back down to Santo Domingo. He stayed at the Ambassador Hotel and called his friend the minister, Diego Bordas, who by that time had taken a house on the outskirts of the city. Bordas had a party going at his house, so he sent his chauffeur down to the hotel to pick up Bobby. The two had an hour's visit, and then Bobby left.

Bobby had some other people with him when he made that April visit to Santo Domingo, but Bordas said he didn't get to meet them. Bordas might have enjoyed meeting Ed Levinson, the big time Las Vegas gambler, and he might have recognized Grant Stockdale, another member of Bobby's party. (Stockdale, of Miami, was Kennedy's ex-Ambassador to Ireland, who had been mixed up in the vending business with Eugene Hancock, the president of Serv-U, Bobby's vending concern.) The fourth member of Bobby's party was none other than that most colorful figure in Serv-U, Jack B. Cooper. And it is questionable whether Diego Bordas would have enjoyed meeting Cooper.

Jack Cooper had been found guilty in 1961 of income tax evasion in the case growing out of Cooper's help to Dictator Trujillo's regime in buying forty-two American made fighter planes through a front in Sweden. In 1962, Cooper's lawyers asked to have the United States reopen the income tax case. Cooper was prepared to admit that he had helped embezzle some $744,000 from the Dorrainican government. But Cooper maintained he only got to keep $69,000 because the Dictator's son, Rafael Trujillo, Jr., made off with the remainder. It doesn't seem that any reminiscences Cooper and Bordas could have exchanged would have been pleasant ones.

[Kathleen Collins]

Smathers was also friends with JFK's arch rival Nixon, as well as Dr. alton Ochsner.

He was also interested in Judyth's cancer research. He sent Judyth a letter that she still has.

Wim

If Judyth has this letter from Smathers, why can't we see it? Was it written in Papyrus?

Kathy

[John Simkin]

There is an interesting reference to Grant Stockdale in an article in Time Magazine on 17th February, 1961.

It starts with the following:

On the campaign trail last fall, Jack Kennedy pledged that U.S. embassies would no longer be political plums for heavy campaign contributors, would be staffed solely "on the basis of ability." But last week, as reports of the Administration's favorites for diplomatic posts filtered through Washington, many of Kennedy's staunchest admirers wondered aloud where reward stopped and ability began. "Almost everybody has given three cheers for President Kennedy's top domestic appointees," wrote the New York Times's James B. Reston, a Kennedy admirer, "but two cheers is all he is likely to get for his diplomatic appointees." Among the front runners for top ambassadorial assignments:

The article goes on to report on those expected to get posts. This included three names of interest to JFK assassination researchers:

Grant Stockdale, 45, a Miami real estate dealer and former administrative assistant to Jack Kennedy's old Senate pal, Florida Democrat George Smathers, will be Ambassador to Ireland.

William Attwood, 41, foreign editor of Look magazine and an erstwhile ghostwriter for Adlai Stevenson, will get his first taste of diplomacy as Ambassador to Guinea, where left-leaning President Sékou Touré is a potential spark for the African tinderbox.

Earl Edward Toiler Smith, 57, is slated to go to Bern as Ambassador to Switzerland, although the Swiss have made it clear that they are less than pleased. Financier, sportsman, onetime member of the Republican national finance committee, Palm Beach neighbor and old friend of Jack and Jackie Kennedy. Smith was Ambassador to Cuba from 1957 to 1959. An ardent supporter of ex-Strongman Fulgencio Batista, Smith early recognized Fidel Castro as a pro-Communist fanatic but underestimated the strength and public support of Castro's rebel band—an oversight that helped fan the smoldering embers of Cuba's anti-Americanism. Smith left Yale after two years, married Consuelo Vanderbilt in 1926. Twice divorced (second wife was Mimi Elaine Richardson), Smith is now married to Florence Pritchett, television personality and sometime clothes designer.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...26842-1,00.html

[John Simkin]

I have managed to obtain a collection of newspaper articles about Grant Stockdale. This one is from the Bridgeport Telegram (3rd December 1963):

Reportedly plagued by financial troubles, Grant Stockdale, former ambassador to Ireland, plunged to his death today from the window of his offices on the 13th floor of Miami's DuPont building.

Police said the 48-year-old Stockdale, an intimate friend of the late President John F. Kennedy, made a suicide leap. No

notes were found immediately, however.

In a recent newspaper interview, Stockdale talked about how much money it had cost him to serve as ambassador to

President Kennedy's ancestral nation. He said that when he quit the job to return to his real estate business, he found that the market had declined badly. And he spoke of the great expense of a large family. He had two sons and three daughters.

Clad in blue-gray trousers and a white shirt, Stockdale's body struck a fifth floor ledge with an impact heard in many offices

in the midtown Miami building. Dr. Schellel H. Wright, who has an office in the DuPont building, examined Ihe body and reported that Stockdale apparently died instantly. Last rites were administered by a priest from the nearby Gesu Catholic church.

Stockdale, big, bluff and handsome, entered politics in 1946 as administrative assistant to then Rep. (now Sen.) George Smathers, D-Fla., Stockdale served in the Florida legislature from 1948 to 1960.

Before Kennedy became President, he visited frequently in Stockdale's Miami home, and in 1961 he named his friend ambassador to Ireland. Stockdale quit the post 15 months later to return to his real estate business, Grant Stockdale and Associates.

Friends said he took the news of Kennedy's assassination very hard.

Before taking the Ireland assignment, Stockdale disposed of his holding in a Miami firm, Automatic Vending Services, Inc., which held contracts at Homestead Air Force base, Miami International airport, Eastern Airlines and Aerodex, Inc. When his firm replaced the Pan-Am Tobacco Co. at Aerodex a $131,000 damage suit was filed charging undue influence in the

award of the contract. But the suit was thrown out of court as "frivolous."

Last Sept. 25, Stockdale confirmed reports that he had helped Automatic Canteen Co. of America win a contract at Cape

Kennedy. He said he represented the company on a strict commission basis. The Air Force said the contract, with an estimated gross annual income of $500,000 went to the firm bidding the highest commission.

Kennedy once sent his press secretary, Pierre Salinger, to speak at a Miami dinner honoring Stockdale.

As chairman of the University of Miami homecoming celebration, Stockdale had invited the late President's brother. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., to speak at the Dec. 14 affair, but he withdrew because of the assassination.

It was a lawsuit over vending machine contracts that precipitated what Washington now calls the "Bobby Baker affairs." But sources in the Senate Rules committee, which is investigating the business transactions of Robert G. Baker, former secretary to the Senate Democratic majorily, said they knew of no connections between Slockdale's vending machine interests and Baker's nor of any connection between the two men.

Baker's interests, outside of his Senate job, came under scrutiny when Capitol Vending Co. Inc., filed a 5300,000 suit charging unfair tactics. The suit alleged that Baker accepted $5,600 from Capitol Vending to get its machines into plants of Melpar, Inc., an aerospace contractor. Baker then acquired an interest in a rival vending concern, Serv-U Inc., and

conspired lo get Capitol Vending's contract with Melpar canceled, the suit charged.

Subsequent inquiry developed that Baker, had, or had had, interests in motels in Maryland and North Carolina. The Senate

investigators want to learn more about how he acquired his wealth.

Baker, 36. lives in a $I25.000 home in Washington. His pay as secretary to Senate Democrats was about $20,000 a year.