FTR#1269 Interview #8 with Jim DiEugenio about “JFK Revisited”

In this broad­cast, we con­tin­ue our dis­cus­sion with the hero­ic Jim DiEu­ge­nio, select­ed by Oliv­er Stone to write the screen­play for his doc­u­men­tary JFK Revis­it­ed. Jim also wrote the book con­tain­ing tran­scripts of both the two-hour and four-hour ver­sions of the doc­u­men­tary and sup­ple­men­tal inter­views.

No dis­cov­ery by the ARRB was more impor­tant than its uncov­er­ing of the Oper­a­tion North­woods con­tin­gency plan to set up a provo­ca­tion to jus­ti­fy a U.S. inva­sion of Cuba.

The law­suit filed by the Mary Fer­rell Foun­da­tion aims at com­pelling fur­ther dis­clo­sure about North­woods.

At log­ger­heads with then Chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lem­nitzer, JFK replaced him with Maxwell Tay­lor, unaware that Tay­lor and Lem­nitzer were close. 

The ARRB faced seri­ous resis­tance from the Secret Ser­vice in its attempts to shed fur­ther light on the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Although pro­hib­it­ed by law from doing so, the Secret Ser­vice destroyed doc­u­ments.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly note­wor­thy are doc­u­ments from the agency about two attempts on JFK’s life in 1963 that may very well have been part of the con­stel­la­tion of events lead­ing up to Dal­las on 11/22.

That agency was par­tic­u­lar­ly reluc­tant to share records about the two attempts on JFK’s life.

ARRB mem­ber Dou­glas Horne uncov­ered some fas­ci­nat­ing infor­ma­tion about pay records of both Oswald dur­ing his last months in the Marines and TSBD man­ag­er Roy Tru­ly, Oswald’s super­vi­sor at the build­ing.

FTR#1225 Further Analysis of Nazi Involvement in the Assassination of JFK

This broad­cast con­tin­ues a decades-long path of explo­ration that Mr. Emory has walked, once again uti­liz­ing mate­r­i­al from Coup in Dal­las:

We have detailed the fun­da­men­tal involve­ment of Nazis in the assas­si­na­tion of JFK in numer­ous pro­grams, over the decades, includ­ing: FTR#‘s 54, 168, 971, 1123, 1222, 1223, 1224, AFA #‘s 11, 12, 13, 15, 37, as well as The Guns of Novem­ber, Part 4.

Fur­ther explor­ing Nazi involve­ment in the JFK assas­si­na­tion,  we high­light net­work­ing between Thomas Eli Davis–linked to Jack Ruby and Lee Har­vey Oswald–and a vet­er­an spook named Vic­tor Oswald (no rela­tion to the JFK assas­si­na­tion pat­sy).

About Vic­tor Oswald:

1.–” . . . . Dur­ing the war, he became close friends with Alfred Barth, the vice-pres­i­dent for Mid­dle Euro­pean Affairs for the Chase Nation­al Bank in New York, owned by the Rock­e­feller fam­i­ly. Barth was a close friend of John McCloy . . . . who in 1964 would become a mem­ber of the War­ren Com­mis­sion. In 1950, Barth trav­eled to Madrid to meet with Gen­er­alis­si­mo Fran­co, and it was Vic­tor Oswald who accom­pa­nied him to the pri­vate meet­ing. Not long after­ward, Oswald became the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the Chase Man­hat­tan Bank in Spain, hav­ing been appoint­ed by his friend Lawrence Rock­e­feller. Oswald was also a close friend and busi­ness part­ner with Pierre S. Du Pont III. . . .”
2.–”. . . . He was also a low-pro­file mem­ber of Madrid’s large coterie of for­mer Nazis, some of whom joined him in his var­i­ous busi­ness ven­tures . . . .”
3.–” . . . . Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Vic­tor Oswald was also a long­time busi­ness part­ner with fel­low Madrid res­i­dent Otto Sko­rzeny, who, more impor­tant­ly and to the point here, was present for Davis’s meet­ing with Vic­tor Oswald. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Sko­rzeny and Vic­tor Oswald had known each oth­er since at least 1951. This was the point dur­ing which Sko­rzeny was estab­lish­ing an inde­pen­dent engi­neer­ing office in Madrid. Intro­duc­tions between the two appear to have come through Johannes Bern­hardt, the for­mer senior SS intel­li­gence offi­cer who head­ed SOFINDUS, the cor­po­rate net­work used by the Nazis in Spain. Read­ers may recall that SOFINDUS assets were acquired by the Allies after the war. Vic­tor Oswald . . . was involved in the post­war acqui­si­tion of SOFINDUS, plac­ing him in close con­tact with Bern­hardt. . . .”

Much of the pro­gram con­sists of analy­sis of the high­ly sus­pi­cious “sui­cide” of Edward Grant Stock­dale, JFK’s ambas­sador to Ire­land and an indi­vid­ual who pos­sessed infor­ma­tion about a num­ber of sen­si­tive mat­ters that may have led to his elim­i­na­tion.

Much of that sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion con­cerned the large Nazi dias­po­ra which mate­ri­al­ized in Ire­land in the 1960’s, heav­i­ly cap­i­tal­iz­ing the Irish econ­o­my and aug­ment­ing a Nazi/fascist polit­i­cal base in that island nation.

Draw­ing on vir­u­lent anti-British sen­ti­ment in the “Emer­ald Isle,” as well as pro­found Vat­i­can influ­ence in that coun­try, a strong Third Reich under­ground fused with domes­tic fas­cist ele­ments such as the Blueshirts to cre­ate a strong ide­o­log­i­cal, oper­a­tional and eco­nom­ic foun­da­tion for the Nazi dream of a “Euro­pean Argen­tine.”

“ . . . . A decade lat­er, accord­ing to his­to­ri­an Den­nis Eisen­berg in his thor­ough expose Re-Emer­gence of Fas­cism. ‘The ear­ly spring of 1961 saw one of the most impor­tant changes in plans for the fas­cist international’s future activ­i­ties. . . . It was decid­ed at this meet­ing to try and make Ire­land the future home for their activ­i­ties in the same way as the Argen­tine had been used in the days imme­di­ate­ly after the war. . . . The meth­ods used were the same as those which had been direct­ed against Per­on; the coun­try will be flood­ed with cap­i­tal in such a way that the Gov­ern­ment would become depen­dent on the men who con­trol the mon­ey purs­es. Now Ire­land was to become a kind of ‘refuge’ on the door-step of Europe for fas­cist-mind­ed extrem­ists.’ . . . .”

Stockdale’s “sui­cide” fol­lowed Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion by ten days.

“ . . . . On the morn­ing of Decem­ber 2, 1963, ten days after the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy, Edward Grant Stock­dale, a rugged­ly hand­some, forty-eight-year-old busi­ness­man and cohort of both Jack and Robert Kennedy, fell to his death from the thir­teenth floor of the Alfred I. DuPont Build­ing in down­town Mia­mi.

Stock­dale tum­bled eight floors from his busi­ness office win­dow before his body struck and land­ed on a fifth-floor ledge. . . .”

There is ample rea­son to believe that Stockdale’s death was not sui­cide.

“. . . . Inter­viewed in June 2004, Grant’s daugh­ter, Ann Stockdale—apparently acute­ly aware of the dan­gers of speak­ing can­did­ly about her father’s alleged sui­cide even four decades lat­er . . . . “[Pres­i­dent] Kennedy asked Dad­dy to go to the Air Force Base south of Mia­mi to see if (against Kennedy’s orders) bombs were being loaded on the planes. Bombs were being loaded on the planes! I believe one of the rea­sons Dad­dy was killed was because he knew that the Gov­ern­ment was being run by the Mil­i­tary Com­plex. . . .”

Stock­dale expressed fear for his life: “ . . . . Author and pub­lish­er David Tal­bot writes that Stock­dale flew to Wash­ing­ton and talked with Robert and Edward Kennedy about the assas­si­na­tion of their broth­er. On his return [to Mia­mi] Stock­dale told sev­er­al of his friends that ‘the world was clos­ing in.’ On Decem­ber 1, he spoke to his attor­ney, William Frates, who lat­er recalled: ‘He start­ed talk­ing. It didn’t make much sense. He said some­thing about ‘those guys’ try­ing to get him. Then about the assas­si­na­tion.’’ . . . .”

The authors spec­u­late that Stockdale’s “sui­cide” may have been arranged in part, to obscure his aware­ness of the pro­found Nazi pres­ence in Ire­land, includ­ing oper­a­tions of Otto and Ilse Sko­re­ny. Sko­rzeny, of course, may have been a key tac­ti­cal plan­ner for the JFK assas­si­na­tion as posit­ed by Albarel­li and his co-authors.

“ . . . . ‘Fre­quent­ly attend­ing these gath­er­ings in all their splen­dor were Otto and Ilse Sko­rzeny . . . With­out doubt, Stock­dale was amply famil­iar with for­mer Nazi SS offi­cer Sko­rzeny, who often vis­it­ed the embassy for meet­ings with var­i­ous Amer­i­can busi­ness­men, mil­i­tary offi­cers, and intel­li­gence offi­cials, as well as var­i­ous embassy staff mem­bers through­out 1960, 1961, and 1962. For­mer embassy per­son­nel vivid­ly recall Sko­rzeny com­ing to the embassy on a near ‘week­ly basis.’ Evi­dence also reveals that the Sko­rzenys were occa­sion­al din­ner guests join­ing the ambas­sador and his wife. . . .”

Both of JFK’s sur­viv­ing broth­ers made trips abroad in 1964, pos­si­bly to inves­ti­gate aspects of their brother’s mur­der.

Short­ly after announc­ing his can­di­da­cy for the Sen­ate, Ted Kennedy made a trip to Ire­land, short­ly after which he nar­row­ly escaped death in a plane crash: “ . . . . Six months after the mur­der of his broth­er in Dal­las, Sen­a­tor Edward Kennedy, the youngest of Joe and Rose Kennedy’s sons, flew to Ire­land. He had recent­ly announced his cam­paign to run for a six-year Sen­ate term in Mass­a­chu­setts . . . . He returned to the States, and less than three weeks lat­er, on June 19, 1964, he was a pas­sen­ger in a fatal plane crash that killed the pilot, Edward Zim­ny of Lawrence, MA. . . .”

Robert Kennedy trav­eled to Mex­i­co: “ . . . . Toward the end of 1964, his broth­er, Attor­ney Gen­er­al Robert F. Kennedy, made a trip to Mex­i­co City, osten­si­bly to observe the young rad­i­cal move­ment in the coun­try. Cov­er­age of the mys­te­ri­ous trip was tight­ly con­trolled, and it was only years lat­er that researchers began to spec­u­late on the real pur­pose of the trip. Some his­to­ri­ans argue he was pur­su­ing links between the assas­si­na­tion of his broth­er and a net­work oper­at­ing in Mex­i­co. . . .”

FTR#1224 Update on Nazi Connections to the JFK Assassination

In our pre­vi­ous pro­grams, we set forth the deep polit­i­cal milieu span­ning the land­scape of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, as embod­ied by a French fas­cist net­work stretch­ing from the 1930’s up until the ear­ly 1990’s. Over­lap­ping dom­i­nant French and transna­tion­al fas­cist com­po­nents of mul­ti­ple intel­li­gence agen­cies and transna­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, these net­works exem­pli­fy the pow­er­ful forces that killed Pres­i­dent Kennedy and sit astride the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal land­scape.

In this pro­gram, we fur­ther devel­op some of the Nazi net­works involved with the JFK assas­si­na­tion, in order to flesh out under­stand­ing of the struc­tur­al and oper­a­tional nature of the dom­i­nant ele­ments in our polit­i­cal cul­ture.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the fas­cist con­nec­tions in the JFK assas­si­na­tion high­light­ed in Coup in Dal­las is the fact that Robert Schacht–a blood rel­a­tive of Hjal­mar  Horace Gree­ley Schacht, Hitler’s finance min­is­ter who was deeply involved with Clay Shaw and Permindex–was the admis­sions direc­tor for Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, the first des­ti­na­tion of Lee Har­vey Oswald when he “defect­ed” to the Sovi­et Union.

We also include a pas­sage from Jim DiEu­ge­nio’s clas­sic work on the Gar­ri­son investigation–Destiny Betrayed.

This pas­sage places the Schacht fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in greater depth.

We also include a pas­sage from Jim DiEu­ge­nio’s clas­sic work on the Gar­ri­son investigation–Destiny Betrayed.

This pas­sage places the Schacht fam­i­ly con­nec­tion in greater depth.

Per­min­dex was involved with, among oth­er things, attempts on the life of French pres­i­dent Charles De Gaulle in con­junc­tion with ele­ments of CIA and the OAS. 

he posi­tion of Hjal­mar Schacht’s rel­a­tive Robert as the New York admis­sions offi­cer of Albert Schweitzer Col­lege is the fact that Albert Schweitzer him­self was the hon­orary chair­man of Stille Hilfe—“Silent Help”—one of the post­war SS assis­tance orga­ni­za­tions, head­ed by Gudrun Bur­witz, Hein­rich Himmler’s daugh­ter. We have cov­ered Stille Hil­fe in pre­vi­ous pro­grams and posts.

When rail­road exec­u­tive Bill Thomp­son inquired of LBJ assis­tant Bob­by Bak­er about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of intro­duc­ing Pres­i­dent Kennedy to alleged East German/Soviet spy Ellen Rometsch, Bak­er offered a very inter­est­ing reply, indi­cat­ing that Rometsch was a Nazi.

Impor­tant polit­i­cal con­text to the alleged “Com­mu­nist Spy” cov­er sto­ry of Ellen Rometsch con­cerns the polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions of the jour­nal­ist who was the pri­ma­ry shep­herd for the sto­ry. Clark Mol­len­hoff was an inti­mate of the ABN, OUN/B ele­ments who ascend­ed to a dom­i­nant role in the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment of the cur­rent Ukraine gov­ern­ment.

In AFA#15, as well as FTR#’s  777,  778 and 876, we set forth the role of OUN/B ele­ments in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, chiefly in gen­er­at­ing what Pro­fes­sor Peter Dale Scott termed the “Lev­el One Cover-up.”—putting the blame on “the Com­mu­nists” in order to deflect atten­tion from the actu­al per­pe­tra­tors.

In the above-cit­ed pro­grams, we not­ed how the assas­si­na­tion of Stepan Bandera—represented as part of a Sovi­et assas­si­na­tion pro­gram with which Lee Har­vey Oswald was alleged­ly affil­i­at­ed, we not­ed that the behav­ior of assas­sin Bog­dan [or “Bohdan”] Stashyn­sky sug­gest­ed that he was a dou­ble agent and that the Ban­dera assas­si­na­tion was—in effect—a provoca­tive gam­bit lend­ing grav­i­tas to the “Lev­el-One Cov­er-up” posit­ed by Pro­fes­sor Scott.

Research uncov­ered by author Albarel­li strong­ly rein­forces the prob­a­bil­i­ty that Stashynsky’s work for the Sovi­ets was a dou­ble agent, with his remark­able behav­ior ele­vat­ing the Ban­dera hit to the lev­el of Gehlen/Western pro­pa­gan­da.

(Stashyn­sky still had the shaft of the bro­ken key to Bandera’s apart­ment at the time of his arrest and the head of the key was still in the lock of Bandera’s apart­ment when dis­cov­ered by the Ger­man police, as was revealed at Bandera’s tri­al two years lat­er.)

We con­clude with dis­cus­sion of Thomas Eli Davis.

Gun­run­ner Thomas Eli Davis appears to have been sub­ject­ed to a degree of mind con­trol at the Lafayette Clin­ic in Detroit. Ernst Rodin—his “therapist”—was an Aus­tri­an émi­gré with a Third Reich pedi­gree.

Of par­tic­u­lar note is the fact that MK/ULTRA oper­a­tive extra­or­di­naire Louis Joly­on West was a pro­tégé of Rodin.

Davis was a gun­run­ning asso­ciate of Jack Ruby and was, appar­ent­ly, involved with Lee Har­vey Oswald’s sojourn in Mex­i­co.

In our next pro­gram, we will set forth Davis’s con­nec­tions to Vik­tor Oswald, an “Under­ground Reich” asso­ciate who net­worked exten­sive­ly with the milieu of Otto Sko­rzeny in Spain.

More About “Coup in Dallas”: La Cagoule Connections to the JFK Assassination

In our last post, we high­light­ed “Coup in Dal­las” by the late Hank Albarel­li, Jr. This might be termed “a break­through book.” Plac­ing JFK’s assas­si­na­tion in prop­er his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal con­text, author Albarel­li details the pri­ma­ry role in the Dal­las coup of French fas­cist ele­ments. Those ele­ments: 1) Were from the orga­ni­za­tion La Cagoule, which attempt­ed to over­throw the French gov­ern­ment of Leon Blum in 1938. 2) Coa­lesced as impor­tant parts of the Vichy col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment that took pow­er fol­low­ing the Ger­man con­quest of 1940. 3) Net­worked with, and, in many cas­es, became part of, the French SS. 4) Found refuge, com­mer­cial employ­ment and renewed polit­i­cal activism in Franco’s Spain. 5) Inte­grat­ed into the post­war Nazi under­ground cen­ter­ing on Otto Sko­rzeny in Spain and around the world. 6) Worked with US intel­li­gence. 7) Were inte­grat­ed into what Dan­ish jour­nal­ist Hen­rik Kruger termed “The Inter­na­tion­al Fascista.” 8) Through some of the Skorzeny/French/US net­works, par­tic­i­pat­ed in the OAS’s secret war against French pres­i­dent Charles De Gaulle. 9) In con­junc­tion with the CIA/Skorzeny milieu, appear to have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the JFK hit. 10)Worked for cos­met­ics giant L’Oreal, which has a fascist/Nazi past. 11) Came to the atten­tion of the Jus­tice Department’s anti-Nazi Office of Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.

FTR#1216 The Dealey Plaza Blues

Revis­it­ing the event that pro­pelled Mr. Emory into this field of endeav­or, this pro­gram reflects on the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy on the 58th anniver­sary of his killing.

One source of Mr. Emory’s “Dealey Plaza Blues” is a depress­ing piece in Rolling Stone mag­a­zine from 11/22/2021.

In addi­tion to the minor styl­is­tic sin of end­ing a sen­tence with a prepo­si­tion, Tim Wein­er tars those who have grasped the doc­u­men­tary truth of the JFK assas­si­na­tion as vic­tims of Soviet/Russian pro­pa­gan­da.

In the midst of the red-bait­ing, Wein­er does offer one unin­ten­tion­al­ly iron­ic, true state­ment: “ . . . . Our body politic is being poi­soned by lies. . . .”

Iron­ic arti­cle selec­tion by The New York Times fea­tured a mul­ti-page sto­ry on the Chi­nese pur­chase of a Freeport McMoRan cobalt mine in the Con­go.

This sto­ry, too, was pub­lished by Times on the anniver­sary of the assas­si­na­tion.

Pre­sent­ing the pre­dictable ide­o­log­i­cal fram­ing of the pur­chase as part of Chi­na’s grab of min­er­als that are key to the devel­op­ment of “Green” tech­nolo­gies, the arti­cle com­pris­es a syn­op­sized, slant­ed Cold War reca­pit­u­la­tion of U.S. min­er­al devel­op­ment in the Con­go, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the reign of Joseph Mobu­tu.

(What does not occur to U.S. media out­lets, is that Chi­na’s pro­pri­etary advances in this area are an alto­geth­er com­pre­hen­si­ble strat­e­gy for con­tin­ued indus­tri­al expan­sion in the cen­tu­ry to come, while mov­ing to reduce green­house gas­es and pol­lu­tion in keep­ing with the inter­na­tion­al legal and diplo­mat­ic tar­gets for envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.)

Below, we present infor­ma­tion fea­tured in FTR#‘s 1054, 1055 and 1056.

The arti­cle has his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance on this 58th anniver­sary of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion in sev­er­al respects:

1.–Freeport Sul­phur (part of the com­pa­ny involved with the Con­go) was one of the insti­tu­tions in which Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie’s maneu­ver­ing per­mit­ted Jim Gar­ri­son to con­nect them with the milieu of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.
2.–Freeport also ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. The events of 11/22/1963 reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy of engage­ment with Indone­si­a’s Sukarno. The bloody 1965 coup–highlighted in FTR#1212–permitted Freeport to ben­e­fit enor­mous­ly by devel­op­ing Indone­si­a’s min­er­al resources.
3.–Kennedy’s killing dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered U.S. pol­i­cy vis a vis what was the Bel­gian Con­go at the time. Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion, the U.S. threw its weight behind the forces pro­mot­ing Joseph Mobu­tu and Moi­se Tshombe in the Con­go. Iron­i­cal­ly, Tshombe char­ac­ter­ized the unrest in the Con­go as “Chi­nese inspired.” (In the Con­go, as in so many coun­tries, the World War II Allies reneg­ing on their ini­tial pledge to grant inde­pen­dence to Euro­pean colo­nial ter­ri­to­ries that had been occu­pied by Axis coun­tries, pro­pelled colo­nial prop­er­ties into the Cold War meat-grinder in an attempt to gain inde­pen­dence.)

Per­spec­tive on this unhap­py anniver­sary comes from The New York Times’ use of a Third Reich alum­nus named Paul Hof­mann as a for­eign cor­re­spon­dent, begin­ning with the Gray Lady’s cov­er­age of the CIA’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the over­throw of Patrice Lumum­ba.

” . . . . Dur­ing the war, he served in Rome as a top aide to the noto­ri­ous Nazi gen­er­al Kurt Malz­er, who was lat­er con­vict­ed of the mass mur­der of Ital­ian par­ti­sans. At some point, Hof­mann became an informer for the Allies, and after the war he became close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Jim Angle­ton. . . .”

The Times pub­lished the his­tor­i­cal fic­tion enshrined as the War­ren Report.

Next, the pro­gram high­lights parts of the HSCA’s inves­ti­ga­tion that sup­port Gar­rison’s the­sis.

” . . . . On Sep­tem­ber 1, 1977, staff coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer, authored a 15-page mem­o­ran­dum addressed to Blakey, as well as staff mem­bers, Gary Corn­well, Ken Klein, and Cliff Fen­ton. Black­mer was the lead coun­sel for team 3, the HSCA team respon­si­ble for the New Orleans and Cuban angles of the inves­ti­ga­tion. After an inves­tiga­tive trip to New Orleans, Black­mer con­clud­ed in his memo: ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960’s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . .” 

The excerpt comes from anoth­er mag­nif­i­cent book on the Gar­ri­son investigation–Let Jus­tice Be Done by Bill Davy. The book was the focus of FTR#190.

The lat­ter por­tion of the broad­cast high­lights the CIA’s intense inter­est in the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. This inter­est was man­i­fest­ed through an agency con­clave infor­mal­ly named “The Gar­ri­son Group.”

” . . . .  [CIA Direc­tor Richard] Helms want­ed the group to ‘con­sid­er the pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions for the Agency’ of what Gar­ri­son was doing in ‘New Orleans before, dur­ing, and after the tri­al of Clay Shaw.’. . . [CIA offi­cial Ray] Roc­ca then said some­thing quite omi­nous. He said that he felt ‘that Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy.’ This must have had some impact on the meet­ing. Since every­one must have known that Roc­ca had devel­oped, by bar, the largest data­base on Gar­rison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .”

We con­clude with a sto­ry that gauges the degree of psy­cho­log­i­cal dys­func­tion grip­ping much of this soci­ety becomes more iron­ic as the date Novem­ber 22nd approaches–this is anoth­er gen­er­at­ing force behind “The Dealey Plaza Blues.”

The QAnon milieu is embrac­ing the notion the JFK, Jr. will re-appear in Dealey Plaza and all sorts of things will then tran­spire.

For a nation that has cho­sen to ignore what is per­haps the deci­sive event in Amer­i­can history–the assas­si­na­tion of JFK (Sr.) in Dal­las, Texas–the goth­ic fan­ta­sy dri­ving a dis­turbing­ly sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple is, per­haps, a fas­cist after-din­ner drink.

Kool-Aid?

A Blast From The Past–Literally

Iron­ic arti­cle selec­tion by The New York Times fea­tured a mul­ti-page sto­ry on the Chi­nese pur­chase of a Freeport McMoRan cobalt mine in the Con­go. Pre­sent­ing ide­o­log­i­cal fram­ing of the pur­chase as part of Chi­na’s grab of min­er­als that are key to the devel­op­ment of “Green” tech­nolo­gies, the arti­cle com­pris­es a syn­op­sized, slant­ed Cold War reca­pit­u­la­tion of U.S. min­er­al devel­op­ment in the Con­go, with par­tic­u­lar empha­sis on the reign of Joseph Mobu­tu.The arti­cle has his­tor­i­cal res­o­nance on this 58th anniver­sary of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion in sev­er­al respects; we present infor­ma­tion from FTR#‘s 1054, 1055 and 1056.) Freeport Sul­phur (part of the com­pa­ny involved with the Con­go) was one of the insti­tu­tions in which Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie’s maneu­ver­ing per­mit­ted Jim Gar­ri­son to con­nect them with the milieu of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. 2) Freeport also ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from JFK’s assas­si­na­tion. The events of 11/22/1963 reversed JFK’s pol­i­cy of engage­ment with Indone­si­a’s Sukarno. The bloody 1965 coup–highlighted in FTR#1212–permitted Freeport to ben­e­fit enor­mous­ly by devel­op­ing Indone­si­a’s min­er­al resources. 3) Kennedy’s killing dra­mat­i­cal­ly altered U.S. pol­i­cy vis a vis what was the Bel­gian Con­go at the time. Fol­low­ing the assas­si­na­tion, the U.S. threw its weight behind the forces pro­mot­ing Joseph Mobu­tu and Moi­se Tshombe in the Con­go. Iron­i­cal­ly, Tshombe char­ac­ter­ized the unrest in the Con­go as “Chi­nese inspired.” WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

A Measure of the Current Malaise

We have dis­cussed the assas­si­na­tion of JFK for decades. The atten­tion devot­ed to that event is war­rant­ed. One could not exag­ger­ate the impor­tance of that event or its impact on our world. A sto­ry that gauges the degree of psy­cho­log­i­cal dys­func­tion grip­ping much of this soci­ety becomes more iron­ic as the date Novem­ber 22nd approach­es. The QAnon milieu is embrac­ing the notion the JFK, Jr. will re-appear in Dealey Plaza and all sorts of things will then tran­spire. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

FTR #1085 Interview with Tom O’Neill about “Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties”

Tom O’Neill has writ­ten a book doc­u­ment­ing the involve­ment of ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty with the oper­a­tions and milieu of the Man­son Fam­i­ly.

Those intel­li­gence con­nec­tions appear to have led to fun­da­men­tal dis­tor­tions in the behav­ior of the courts, law enforce­ment and cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem with regard to the oper­a­tions of the Man­son Fam­i­ly.

FTR #1048 Interview #17 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Guy Ban­is­ter employ­ee Tom­my Baum­ler: ” . . . . what­ev­er hap­pens, the Shaw case will end with­out pun­ish­ment for him [Shaw], because fed­er­al pow­er will see to that.”

This is the sev­en­teenth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

In this pro­gram, we pro­ceed into New Orleans’ DA Jim Gar­rison’s actu­al tri­al of Clay Shaw.

Before going into the tri­al, per se, we high­light the “turn­ing” of The New Orleans States-Item. This “turn­ing” fea­tures one of the prin­ci­pal infil­tra­tors into Gar­rison’s office, William Gur­vich.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 275.

. . . . From this inter­view [with Tom­my Baum­ler], what appears to have hap­pened is that the CIA sent some­one into New Orleans to impact pub­lic opin­ion about Gar­ri­son. This may have been occa­sioned by a let­ter for­ward­ed to CIA HQ to Lloyd Ray of the local New Orleans office. . . . William Gur­vich, now work­ing with Shaw’s lawyers, vis­it­ed the offices of The New Orleans States-Item. Ross Yock­ey and Hoke May had been seri­ous­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the Shaw case. And they had been doing that in a fair and judi­cious man­ner. They had uncov­ered some inter­est­ing facts about how Gor­don Novel’s lawyers were being paid. After Gurvich’s vis­it, the States-Item pulled Yock­ey and May from the Gar­ri­son beat. When this author inter­viewed Yock­ey in 1995, he said that after this, he was then assigned to cov­er­ing high school foot­ball games. With the States-Item now neu­tral­ized, the cov­er­age in New Orleans now became imbal­anced. . . .

Jim titled the chap­ter ded­i­cat­ed to the tri­al “Anti-Cli­max.” It was indeed an anti-cli­max after Gar­ri­son was sub­ject­ed to the irre­sistible engine of the syn­the­sis of: the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, their lone-wolf oper­a­tors infil­trat­ing his office, those infil­tra­tors’ net­work­ing with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s media hatch­et men ded­i­cat­ed to smear­ing Gar­ri­son pub­licly, Clay Shaw’s defense team and the Jus­tice Depart­ment.

Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion was sub­ject­ed to an onslaught, includ­ing out­right, state-spon­sored ter­ror direct­ed at wit­ness­es.

A syn­op­tic overview of the wit­ness­es and their sig­nif­i­cance:

1.–Richard Case Nagell–A U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tive infil­trat­ed into Sovi­et intel­li­gence, and then assigned by KGB to assas­si­nate Oswald, whom they knew was to be a pat­sy in an assas­si­na­tion plot against JFK for which they would be blamed.
2.–Reverend Clyde Johnson–A right-wing activist who was wit­ness to Clay Shaw and a “Jack Rubion” net­work­ing togeth­er against JFK.
3.–Aloysius Habighorst–A good New Orleans cop who was the book­ing offi­cer for Clay Shaw, when Shaw vol­un­teered that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”
4.–Edwin McGehee–One of the wit­ness­es con­nect­ing Clay Shaw to Oswald and David Fer­rie in Clin­ton, Louisiana.
5.–Reeves Morgan–Another of the wit­ness­es con­nect­ing Clay Shaw to Oswald and David Fer­rie in Clin­ton, Louisiana.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 294.

. . . . Before and dur­ing the tri­al, Garrison’s wit­ness­es were being sur­veilled, harassed, and phys­i­cal­ly attacked. For instance, Richard Case Nag­ell had a grenade thrown at him from a speed­ing car in New York. Nag­ell brought the remains of the grenade to Gar­ri­son and told him he did not think it wise for him to tes­ti­fy at Shaw’s tri­al. Even though Gar­ri­son had spir­it­ed Clyde John­son out of town and very few peo­ple knew where he was, the FBI’s total sur­veil­lance even­tu­al­ly paid off. He was bru­tal­ly beat­en on the eve of the tri­al and hos­pi­tal­ized. Aloy­sius Habighorst, the man who booked Shaw and heard him say his alias was Bertrand, was rammed by a truck the day before he tes­ti­fied. After he tes­ti­fied, Edwin McGe­hee found a prowler on his front lawn. he called the mar­shal, and the man was arrest­ed. At the sta­tion, the man asked to make one phone call. The call he made was to the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart. After he tes­ti­fied, Reeves Mor­gan had the win­dows shot out of his truck. What makes all this vio­lent intim­i­da­tion more star­tling is what Robert Tanen­baum stat­ed to the author in an inter­view for Probe Mag­a­zine. He said that he had seen a set of doc­u­ments that orig­i­nat­ed in the office of Richard Helms. They revealed that the CIA was mon­i­tor­ing and harass­ing Gar­rison’s wit­ness­es. . . .

The vio­lent harass­ment of the wit­ness­es may be viewed against the back­drop of Tom Bethell and Sal Panze­ca.

Shaw attor­ney Sal Panze­ca received a list of Gar­ri­son wit­ness­es from Gar­ri­son office infil­tra­tor Tom Bethell.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 290.

. . . . Tom Bethell had been one of the DA’s key inves­ti­ga­tors and researchers . . . . Since Gar­ri­son had des­ig­nat­ed him as his chief archivist, he had access to and con­trol of both Gar­rison’s files and his most recent wit­ness list. . . . Secret­ly, he met with Sal Panze­ca, one of Shaw’s attor­neys, and gave him a wit­ness list he had pre­pared, with sum­maries of each wit­ness’s expect­ed tes­ti­mo­ny for the pros­e­cu­tion. . . .

Exem­pli­fy­ing the effec­tive neu­tral­iz­ing of wit­ness­es is the drum­beat of dis­cred­i­ta­tion and intim­i­da­tion of Per­ry Rus­so, a wit­ness to Shaw and Fer­rie dis­cussing plans to assas­si­nate JFK. By the time of Clay Shaw’s tri­al, Rus­so relent­ed and assent­ed to the canard that the Shaw/Ferrie assas­si­na­tion plan­ning was just a “bull ses­sion.”

FTR #1038 Interview #8 with Jim DiEugenio About “Destiny Betrayed”

The eighth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing, this pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the devel­op­ment of the leg­end (intel­li­gence cov­er) of Lee Har­vey Oswald.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

The dis­cus­sion begins with review of the deep state intel­li­gence con­nec­tions of Ruth and Michael Paine, who took over the han­dling of the Oswalds from George De Mohren­schildt:

1. Michael Paine was a Cabot and drew from trust funds bequeathed by both the Cabot and Forbes fam­i­lies, both mem­bers of the “Boston Brah­mins.” His moth­er was Ruth Forbes Young.
2. Michael’s cousin Thomas Cabot was a direc­tor Unit­ed Fruit.
3. Thomas’s broth­er John was–like Thomas–a State Depart­ment vet­er­an, who was exchang­ing infor­ma­tion with Guy Ban­is­ter employ­ee Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin about the impend­ing CIA over­throw of Guatemalan pres­i­dent Jacobo Arbenz, who was pur­su­ing poli­cies detri­men­tal to Unit­ed Fruit’s feu­dal monop­oly in that unfor­tu­nate nation.
4. Dur­ing the ear­ly six­ties, Thomas was pres­i­dent of the Gibral­tar Steamship Com­pa­ny, a Hon­duran-based front that owned no ships but oper­at­ed Radio Swan, a CIA radio sta­tion used in the Bay of Pigs, among oth­er oper­a­tions.
5. Before relo­cat­ing to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, Michael Paine had worked for the Franklin Insti­tute, a CIA con­duit.
6. Michael Paine also was appar­ent­ly pos­ing as a left­ist to infil­trate and cat­a­log, Cas­tro sym­pa­thiz­ers, not unlike the work Guy Ban­is­ter was doing in New Orleans in con­junc­tion with, among oth­ers, Lee Har­vey Oswald.
7. His step father was Arthur Young, mar­ried to Ruth Forbes Young. Arthur Young was a devo­tee of “The Nine” and became a major fig­ure at Bell Heli­copter. Arthur got Michael a job at Bell.
8. Ruth Forbes Young was best friend with Mary Ban­croft, Allen Dulles’s sub­or­di­nate and long-time mis­tress while he worked for OSS, Amer­i­ca’s World War II intel­li­gence ser­vice.
9. Ruth Paine’s father was William Avery Hyde, an insur­ance exec­u­tive who had worked for the OSS in World War II and lat­er went to work for the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment, a fre­quent CIA cov­er.
10. Ruth’s father, like George De Mohren­schildt, worked for the Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tive Alliance.
11. In the sum­mer of 1963, Ruth trav­eled cross-coun­try and vis­it­ed her sis­ter Sylvia Hyde Hoke, who was a CIA psy­chol­o­gist.
12. Sylvi­a’s hus­band John Hoke also worked for the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment.
13. In the 1980s, Ruth Paine was appar­ent­ly infil­trat­ing and cat­a­loging anti-“Contra” activists with regard to the attempts at over­throw­ing the San­din­ista forces in Nicaragua.
The Paines–Ruth in particular–played a deci­sive role in the shap­ing of the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to Lee being framed for the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Among the oper­a­tions per­formed by the Paines:

1. Ruth sep­a­rat­ed Lee and Mari­na, bring­ing a preg­nant Mari­na back to Dal­las while Lee was in New Orleans and then facil­i­tat­ing Lee’s stay at a room­ing house after he returned to Dal­las.
2. Ruth got Lee his job at the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry, despite the fact that Lee had actu­al­ly received a bet­ter job offer. It was Lee’s employ­ment at the TBSD that was the foun­da­tion for fram­ing him for the assas­si­na­tion.
3. Ruth may well have been the per­son who got the phone call com­mu­ni­cat­ing the bet­ter-pay­ing job offer to Lee. It does not appear that she told Lee about the offer.

The dis­in­for­ma­tion used to frame Oswald for the assas­si­na­tion stemmed in con­sid­er­able mea­sure from what we might call “Ruth Paine’s garage sale.”

Many of Oswald’s effects were stored in Ruth Paine’s garage after his return to Dal­las from New Orleans. Ruth Paine’s garage even­tu­al­ly yield­ed:

1. The ludi­crous pic­ture of “Oswald” pos­ing with two Com­mu­nist mag­a­zines and the weapons he sup­pos­ed­ly used to kill JFK and Dal­las Police offi­cer J.D. Tip­pitt. The shad­ows under “Oswald’s” chin and behind his body go in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, indi­cat­ing that Oswald’s head had been super­im­posed on the body posed for the pic­ture. In addi­tion, “Oswald’s” body tilts in a ludi­crous fash­ion. (See the pho­to at right.) This pho­to did much to con­vince a naive pub­lic that Oswald had been the assas­sin.
2. The cam­eras found in Ruth Paine’s garage were not con­sis­tent with the film used to take the “Lean­ing Tow­er of Oswald” pho­to­graph.
3. Ruth Paine’s garage sale yield­ed the “evi­dence” that Oswald–who sup­pos­ed­ly killed a lib­er­al President–had also tried to kill the right-wing Gen­er­al Walk­er. This includ­ed an appar­ent­ly forged note incrim­i­nat­ing Oswald, which had nei­ther Lee’s nor Mari­na’s fin­ger­prints on it.. This was spun in such a way as to neuter any notion that Oswald was a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed killer. In this pro­gram, Jim reca­pit­u­lates some of the facts that negate the hypoth­e­sis that Oswald fired at Walk­er, includ­ing eye­wit­ness accounts of two men fir­ing and dri­ving away (Oswald did­n’t dri­ve), the fact that the marks­man­ship required to hit a seat­ed Walk­er would have been far less dif­fi­cult than the match­less fir­ing skill required to have done what Oswald had alleged­ly done in Dal­las and dis­crep­an­cies in the bal­lis­tics and muni­tion evi­dence in the Walk­er shoot­ing.
4. A sil­ver bracelet sup­pos­ed­ly pur­chased by Oswald in Mex­i­co City which pro­vides sup­port­ing “phys­i­cal evi­dence” of Oswald’s alleged pres­ence in the impor­tant Mex­i­co City vis­it.
5. There was a pack­age found in Ruth Paine’s garage, addressed to Oswald and from George Bouhe, one of the White Rus­sians involved with the han­dling of the Oswalds in the Dal­las area. There was an address stick­er past­ed on the pack­age, and yet the FBI made no effort to deter­mine the address under the stick­er. Why? Fur­ther­more, the pack­age con­tained wrap­ping paper con­sis­tent with the paper the War­ren Com­mis­sion said Oswald used to bring the Mannlicher/Carchano into the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry. Had Oswald opened the pic­ture and han­dled the paper, he would have left fin­ger­prints which would have cor­rob­o­rat­ed the offi­cial cov­er-up.
6. In the con­text of the pre­vi­ous item, it is note­wor­thy that George Bouhe lived next door to, and shared a swim­ming pool with, Jack Ruby!
Next, the pro­gram piv­ots to New Orleans DA Jim Gar­ri­son and his inves­ti­ga­tion of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

One of the calum­nies used to dis­cred­it Gar­ri­son is the alle­ga­tion that he engaged in his inves­ti­ga­tion of David Fer­rie, Clay Shaw et al in order to fur­ther his career–that he was ambi­tious. And yet, as Jim notes, Gar­ri­son TURNED DOWN oppor­tu­ni­ties to become Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor (of Louisiana), Attor­ney Gen­er­al, a Sen­a­tor and also to acquire lucra­tive bank­ing inter­ests. All of those goals were for­sak­en so that Gar­ri­son could pur­sue his inves­tiga­tive career, includ­ing and espe­cial­ly the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Anoth­er lie that has been used to dis­cred­it Gar­ri­son is the alle­ga­tion that he high­light­ed the CIA’s role in the JFK assas­si­na­tion in order to eclipse the Mafi­a’s role in it and, in so doing, pro­tect what are said to be his Mob asso­ciates.
Des­tiny Betrayed destroys that alle­ga­tion as well, chron­i­cling the fact that Gar­ri­son vig­or­ous­ly pros­e­cut­ed orga­nized crime fig­ures in New Orleans and was known to have fac­tored Mob par­tic­i­pa­tion in the JFK assas­si­na­tion in his inves­ti­ga­tion.
Mr. Emory read into the record a pas­sage which not only refutes the Mafia smear­ing of Jim Gar­ri­son, but pro­vides an inter­est­ing peek into the account of the tri­al to come. After not­ing rack­e­teer influ­ence on judges who had obstruct­ed Jim Gar­rison’s activ­i­ties, Jim writes:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 171.

. . . . The insin­u­a­tion about rack­e­teer influ­ences had some under­pin­ning. Two of Gar­rison’s assis­tants had drinks with one of the judges, Judge Hag­ger­ty, who would pre­side over the Clay Shaw tri­al. Hag­ger­ty intro­duced them to Fran­cis Gior­dano. Gior­dano was a Car­los Mar­cel­lo asso­ciate. He com­plained to them that when Dowl­ing took away their ille­gal gam­ing machines, he returned them. Gar­ri­son did not. “How Come,” Gior­dano asked? . . . .