Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Organized Crime' is associated with 36 posts.

FTR#1226 and FTR#1227 Microcosm, Parts 1 and 2

With the world demon­strat­ing all-encom­pass­ing dis­po­si­tion­al insta­bil­i­ty on numer­ous fronts, these pro­grams high­light the career of the late–alleged “liberal”–Luis Kut­ner, as a micro­cosm of con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion.

In addi­tion to his work on behalf of the Dalai Lama and Ezra Pound, Kut­ner:

Worked with the Chica­go Mob.
Net­worked with Jack Ruby.
Was involved with attempts at recruit­ing ele­ments of the mob to kill Fidel Cas­tro.
Net­worked with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations and Yaroslav Stet­sko.
Net­worked with the Infor­ma­tion Coun­cil of the Amer­i­c­as.
Front­ed for Moi­se Tshombe.
Worked in tan­dem with ele­ments of what appeared to have been CIA in an ear­ly man­i­fes­ta­tion of attempts at replac­ing Chi­ang Kai-shek with some­one less embar­rass­ing.
Was involved in the betray­al of Fred Hamp­ton.
Was car­ry­ing water for Raoul Wallenberg–OSS agent and liai­son agent for SS gen­er­al Karl Wolff.

This descrip­tion also con­tains mate­r­i­al about Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al’s work on behalf of the Pinochet regime in Chile and its role in rein­forc­ing the canard about Iraqi troops dis­con­nect­ing Iraqi babies from life-sup­port sys­tems dur­ing the run-up to the first Gulf War.


FTR #1150 The Space Plane and Covid-19: The Paperclip Legacy, Part 5

This pro­gram com­pletes the line of inquiry we under­took in FTR #‘s 1146, 1147, 1148 and 1149. Most impor­tant­ly, we bring the evo­lu­tion of events and insti­tu­tions up to the present. Lis­ten­ers who digest the pro­grams in the future should bear in mind that these pro­grams were record­ed dur­ing, and in the imme­di­ate after­math of, the 2020 GOP con­ven­tion.

After review­ing infor­ma­tion about Nixon con­fi­dante Bebe Rebo­zo and the links of his bank to the dead­ly Bor­mann net­work, we con­tin­ue with the unpub­lished man­u­script from which we read in our last pro­gram. The broad­cast high­lights inter­ac­tions between the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion, Bebe Rebo­zo, a mys­te­ri­ous and alleged­ly orga­nized-crime con­nect­ed com­pa­ny called Resorts Inter­na­tion­al, an even more mys­te­ri­ous sub­sidiary of Resorts Inter­na­tion­al called the Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny and the Dewey, Dulles, Nazi, William Casey milieu that is cen­tral to this dis­cus­sion.

The Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny’s direc­tors are sug­ges­tive of a pos­si­ble Bor­mann link: ” . . . . It did, how­ev­er, name a num­ber of Ger­man and Swiss investors, One of these, for exam­ple, was Dr. Heinz Ros­terg of Lau­sanne, a for­mer ‘prin­ci­pal stock­hold­er’ and direc­tor of the Win­ter­shall potash con­cern; Win­ter­shall was one of the major sub­sidiaries of BASF, the largest sin­gle suc­ces­sor firm to I.G. Far­ben. . . . .”

The man­u­script sets forth spec­u­la­tion about the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Mary Carter Paint/Resorts Inter­na­tion­al may have gen­er­at­ed funds that greased the wheels for the release of many Nazi war crim­i­nals. ” . . . . Still unan­swered is the ques­tion of whether the sto­ry of the Dewey-Allen Dulles inter­est in Resorts should have referred to funds, not from the CIA itself, but from its Ger­man-Swiss part­ners in the Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny. Such a hypoth­e­sis might explain some of the many strange coin­ci­dences which sur­round the com­pa­ny’s con­tro­ver­sial his­to­ry. It might, for exam­ple, explain the ‘for­tune in legal fees’ that Mary Carter Paint, on the advice of Thomas Dewey, paid to Allen Dulles’ long­time law part­ner David Peck. (48) The SS-OSS con­nec­tion cer­tain­ly had rea­son to be grate­ful to David Peck. It was on the basis of Peck­’s rec­om­men­da­tion, as chair­man of a three-man advi­so­ry board to review all the Nurem­berg sen­tences, that John J. McCloy com­mut­ed to time served the sen­tence of Sko­rzeny’s post-war employ­er, Baron Alfried Krupp, and eight of his col­leagues, and also ordered Krup­p’s prop­er­ty to be restored. (49) The release of Krupp and oth­er indus­tri­al­ists ful­filled an ear­li­er demand to McCloy from Her­mann Abs, who him­self nar­row­ly escaped pros­e­cu­tion at Nurem­berg. Abs was the first post-war chair­man of BASF, the I.G. Far­ben suc­ces­sor com­pa­ny rep­re­sent­ed among the stock­hold­ers of the Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny. (50) . . . .”

William Casey

The author also engages in spec­u­la­tion about the rela­tion­ship between Resorts Inter­na­tion­al and Cap­i­tal Cities Broad­cast­ing. The lat­ter is the com­pa­ny that bought out ABC in the mid 1980’s and whose largest stock­hold­er was William Casey. ” . . . . Might not the OSS-SS con­nec­tion also throw light on the unex­plained inter­lock between James Cros­by’s com­pa­ny Resorts Inter­na­tion­al, tight­ly con­trolled by the relat­ed and dou­bly inter­mar­ried Cros­by-Mur­phy fam­i­lies, and Cap­i­tal Cities Broad­cast­ing, the major invest­ment of the CIA’s present direc­tor William Casey. (51) Casey would be the log­i­cal per­son to have estab­lished the orig­i­nal con­nec­tion between the Cros­by-Mur­phy fam­i­lies and their mys­te­ri­ous Ger­man-Swiss part­ners. For it was Casey who, in 1944–45, ‘was giv­en over­all oper­a­tional con­trol of [OSS] Ger­man projects,’ and ‘co-ordi­nat­ed . . . the over 150 men’ whom OSS sent into Ger­many. (52) With Dulles, Wis­ner, and For­gan, Casey was also one of the OSS vet­er­ans who lob­bied suc­cess­ful­ly for a CIA which could legit­i­mate­ly uti­lize the resources of the Gehlen Org. (53) . . .”

The “unex­plained inter­lock” between Resorts Inter­na­tion­al and Cap­i­tal Cities is described by the author: ” . . . . James Cros­by’s cousin and broth­er-in-law, Thomas S. Mur­phy, was in 1964, the Exec­u­tive Vice-Pres­i­dent and a direc­tor of Cap­i­tal Cities, as well as a direc­tor of Mary Carter Paint. Low­ell Thomas, a long-time radio broad­cast­er with intel­li­gence con­nec­tions, was a direc­tor of both com­pa­nies. At the time, William Casey was an offi­cer, direc­tor, and major stock­hold­er of Cap­i­tal Cities. . . .”

Trump kept a copy of this by his bed­side for late-night read­ing.

After James Cros­by’s “unex­pect­ed” death in April of 1986, Don­ald Trump–whose oper­a­tions are bankrolled by Deutsche Bank–purchased the com­pa­ny. Fol­low­ing lit­i­ga­tion with Merv Grif­fin, the assets were divid­ed with the tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty. ”  . . . . Real estate devel­op­er Don­ald Trump, who owned two Atlantic City casi­nos, beat out sev­er­al oth­er bid­ders to pur­chase a con­trol­ling stake in the com­pa­ny from Cros­by’s fam­i­ly for $79 mil­lion in July 1987.[26] Trump was appoint­ed chair­man of Resorts Inter­na­tion­al, and said he would com­plete the Taj Mahal in about a year. . . . The two ulti­mate­ly reached a set­tle­ment, which was exe­cut­ed in Novem­ber 1988, with Grif­fin pur­chas­ing the com­pa­ny for $365 mil­lion, and Trump pur­chas­ing the Taj Mahal from the com­pa­ny for $273 mil­lion. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Discussion of Cap­i­tal Cities Broad­cast­ing’s acqui­si­tion of ABC fol­low­ing the CIA’s fil­ing of a “fair­ness doc­trine” com­plaint against the com­pa­ny for their cov­er­age of Bish­op, Bald­win, Rewald, Dilling­ham and Wong. Ron Rewald alleged that he and the firm for which he worked front­ed for CIA. (At the time William Casey was head of CIA and Cap­i­tal Cities largest stock­hold­er.)
2.–The fact that Thomas Dewey, two time GOP can­di­date for Pres­i­dent, was one of the founders of Cap­i­tal Cities. The gen­e­sis of the Nazi branch of the GOP was Dewey’s 1948 cam­paign.
3.–Review of William Casey’s career, includ­ing the posi­tions he held in the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion and his involve­ment with the Black Eagle Trust, which evolved from the Gold­en Lily plun­der acquired by Japan after World War II.
4.–Discussion of Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Bar­r’s back­ground in the CIA, includ­ing his role in George H.W. Bush’s par­don of key play­ers in the Iran-Con­tra scan­dal.
5.–Analysis of Bar­r’s father Don­ald Barr and his work for the OSS in World War II, which may have inter­sect­ed with the machi­na­tions of Dulles, Dono­van, Casey and the Nazi “Oper­a­tion Sun­rise” par­tic­i­pants.
6.–Donald Bar­r’s hir­ing of col­lege dropout Jef­frey Epstein to teach at the Dal­ton School.
7.–Donald Bar­r’s author­ship of a sci­ence fic­tion novel–Space Relations–about a plan­et dom­i­nat­ed by oli­garchs and dri­ven by sex­u­al slav­ery.
8.–Review of a deci­sive strat­a­gem of the Under­ground Reich, enun­ci­at­ed by Army offi­cer Glenn Pinch­back in a let­ter to New Orleans D.A. Jim Gar­ri­son. Pinch­back wrote of a ” . . . . ‘Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism,’ . . .”
9.–In past pro­grams, we have briefly not­ed that mil­i­tary and [osten­si­bly] civil­ian pro­grams offi­cial­ly involved with “epi­dem­ic pre­ven­tion” might con­ceal clan­des­tine bio­log­i­cal war­fare appli­ca­tions designed to cre­ate epi­demics. The offi­cial dis­tinc­tion between “offen­sive” and “defen­sive” bio­log­i­cal war­fare research is aca­d­e­m­ic. In that con­text, one should note that the offi­cial title of Unit 731, the noto­ri­ous Japan­ese bio­log­i­cal war­fare unit was “the Epi­dem­ic Pre­ven­tion and Water Purifi­ca­tion Depart­ment of the Kwan­tung Army.” Unit 731’s research was incor­po­rat­ed into the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram at the end of World War II.
10.–Noteworthy in that gen­er­al con­text is the obser­va­tion by Jonathan King (pro­fes­sor of mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy at MIT), that Pen­ta­gon research into the appli­ca­tion of genet­ic engi­neer­ing to bio­log­i­cal war­fare could be masked as vac­cine research, which sounds “defen­sive.”


FTR #1149 The Space Plane and Covid-19: The Paperclip Legacy, Part 4

Con­clud­ing the dis­cus­sion con­tained in part of FTR #1147 and all of FTR #1148,  we fin­ish the pre­sen­ta­tion of a very impor­tant arti­cle by the bril­liant Peter Dale Scott, writ­ten almost 35 years ago. With the GOP con­ven­tion in full swing as these pro­grams were being record­ed, the sym­bio­sis between Allen Dulles and the Nazi SS is fun­da­men­tal to under­stand­ing not only the gen­e­sis of the U.S. intel­li­gence estab­lish­ment, but how that insti­tu­tion is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

The link to this arti­cle per­mits the listener/reader to down­load (for free) the entire issue of Covert Action Quar­ter­ly. Mr. Emory strong­ly rec­om­mends that they do so, as the oth­er arti­cles in this excel­lent issue will sup­ple­ment the analy­sis beau­ti­ful­ly.

Due to the length and com­plex­i­ty of this arti­cle, we are not tran­scrib­ing it, but will sum­ma­rize impor­tant points of infor­ma­tion.

Key Points of Analy­sis:

1.–Dulles’s nego­ti­a­tions with the SS pre­ced­ed by months the offi­cial sto­ry of the con­tact between U.S. intel­li­gence and the Gehlen team. ” . . . . It is inter­est­ing to note that Gehlen knew of Wolf­f’s con­tacts with Dulles s ear­ly as Jan­u­ary 1945, the month in which they were ini­ti­at­ed. From this same peri­od he began to con­sol­i­date his net­works for sur­vival after Hitler’s down­fall, which is to say he already expect­ed to reach a modus viven­di with the Amer­i­cans. In April 1945, one month before the war end­ed, Dulles asked Frank Wis­ner to begin talks with Gehlen, who was not tak­en into U.S. cus­tody until May 20. On the Gehlen side, a plan ‘to gain con­tact with the Amer­i­cans’ was approved on April 9. . . .”
2.–Dulles’s nego­ti­a­tions with the SS, involv­ing Wal­ter Rauff–who devised the mobile gas cham­bers used on the East­ern Front–were con­duct­ed as part of Oper­a­tion Sun­rise. ” . . . . Despite the [U.S.] Army inter­roga­tor’s pleas that Rauff ‘is con­sid­ered a men­ace if ever set free, and fail­ing actu­al elim­i­na­tion, is rec­om­mend­ed for life-long intern­ment,’ Dulles kep his bar­gain and Rauff was released. Accord­ing to usu­al­ly reli­able intel­li­gence sources. Dulles then employed Rauff on anti-com­mu­nist oper­a­tions in Italy, which was Rauf­f’s spe­cial­ty under the Nazis. . . .”
3.–Although the Vat­i­can was deeply involved with the SS/OSS nego­ti­a­tions, Dulles’ team was the pri­ma­ry com­po­nent. ” . . . It was Dulles’s con­tacts, not the Vat­i­can, who han­dled the smug­gling of Nazis. Accord­ing to top secret State Depart­ment doc­u­ments, the Ital­ian police pro­vid­ed the false pass­ports for allied agents; the visas came from the Argen­tine con­sulate in the allied intel­li­gence unit based at Trieste;and the embarka­tion paper­work was han­dled by a U.S. State Depart­ment offi­cer in Genoa. Genoa, inci­den­tal­ly was Rauf­f’s area of juris­dic­tion. All of them worked for Dulles. . . .”

Sup­ple­ment­ing the infor­ma­tion in the Peter Dale Scott arti­cle, we present infor­ma­tion about Men­gele’s work in Paraguay in con­junc­tion with the CIA and Pen­ta­gon: ” . . . . In the last named coun­try, the son of a Bavar­i­an cav­al­ry offi­cer, Pres­i­dent Stroess­ner, coop­er­ates with the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary author­i­ties and the CIA, as he does with Bor­mann and his rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Dur­ing the Viet­nam war, Pres­i­dent Stroess­ner per­mit­ted the U.S. Army Chem­i­cal Corps and the CIA to send in teams of 2,500 men to car­ry out field tests, in the Mat­to Grosso jun­gle, of chem­i­cals for use in Viet­nam. In one instance, sev­er­al Amer­i­can sol­diers became casu­al­ties when they acci­den­tal­ly were sprayed with the gas. They were tak­en to a Paraguayan mil­i­tary field hos­pi­tal; the doc­tor who treat­ed them was Josef Men­gele, now a Paraguayan cit­i­zen and an offi­cer in the Paraguayan Army Med­ical Corps. Under Men­gele’s treat­ment, all sol­diers recov­ered. None, of course, knew the true iden­ti­ty of their med­ical bene­fac­tor. . . .”

Of para­mount impor­tance in the con­text of this pre­sen­ta­tion, is the fact that it was William Casey who was in charge of OSS oper­a­tions in Ger­many in late 1944 and 1945, as Dulles, Dono­van, and the SS were forg­ing their alliance!! This places Casey’s role in the Cru­sade For Free­dom and the deriv­a­tive Rea­gan cam­paign and admin­is­tra­tion in per­spec­tive.

Plac­ing the co-evo­lu­tion of the Cru­sade For Free­dom, the GOP and the Gehlen “Org” in con­text, we note that:

1.–The Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion was a direct exten­sion of the Third Reich’s nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment, coa­lesc­ing with the approval of a Ger­man chain of com­mand that was still in effect after the for­mal con­clu­sion of hos­til­i­ties.
2.–The OUN/B, Iron Guard, Croa­t­ian Ustachis and oth­er East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups were part of the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion. They were the pri­ma­ry ele­ments in the GOP’s Eth­nic Her­itage Out­reach Coun­cil.
3.–This places William Casey’s cen­tral role in the GOP Nazi branch as an ele­ment in the per­pet­u­a­tion of the Third Reich’s nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.

Next, we review analy­sis of the Cru­sade For Freedom–the covert oper­a­tion that brought Third Reich alum­ni into the coun­try and also sup­port­ed their gueril­la war­fare in East­ern Europe, con­duct­ed up until the ear­ly 1950’s. Con­ceived by Allen Dulles, over­seen by Richard Nixon, pub­licly rep­re­sent­ed by Ronald Rea­gan and real­ized in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by William Casey, the CFF ulti­mate­ly evolved into a Nazi wing of the GOP.

While serv­ing as chair­man of the Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee, the elder George Bush shep­herd­ed the Nazi émi­gré com­mu­ni­ty into posi­tion as a per­ma­nent branch of the Repub­li­can Par­ty.

Note that the rise of the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion was essen­tial­ly the ascent of the Naz­i­fied GOP, embod­ied in the CFF milieu. Rea­gan (spokesman for CFF) was Pres­i­dent; George H.W. Bush (for whom CIA head­quar­ters is named) was the Vice Pres­i­dent; William Casey (who han­dled the State Depart­ment machi­na­tions to bring these peo­ple into the Unit­ed States) was Rea­gan’s cam­paign man­ag­er and lat­er his CIA direc­tor.

Cen­tral to under­stand­ing the merg­ing of the U.S. with Nazi Ger­many in an anti-Sovi­et alliance–is the under­stand­ing of what glob­al­iza­tion real­ly is and how it pre­cip­i­tat­ed fas­cism and the Sec­ond World War.

Also cen­tral to an under­stand­ing of the real­iza­tion of the con­sum­mate man­i­fes­ta­tion of both glob­al­iza­tion and fascism/Nazism–is analy­sis of the machi­na­tions of the Bush fam­i­ly. The hero­ic Jus­tice Depart­ment inves­ti­ga­tor (lat­er author) John Lof­tus delin­eat­ed the Bush fam­i­ly’s role in the laun­der­ing of Nazi funds between the Thyssen Bank in Berlin, the Bank voor Han­del en Scheep­vaart, N.V. and the Union Bank in the U.S.

The net­work­ing of the Bush fam­i­ly with the Thyssens, and the Rock­e­fellers, in turn, is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the coa­les­cence and oper­a­tion of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann flight cap­i­tal net­work, high­light­ed in FTR #305, among oth­er pro­grams.

Of para­mount impor­tance is the role of the two insti­tu­tions in which Prescott Bush served–Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man and the Union Bank–as a fun­da­men­tal vehi­cle for laun­der­ing mon­ey from the con­sum­mate­ly pow­er­ful Rock­e­feller fam­i­ly and relat­ed inter­ests in Nazi Ger­many. ” . . . . But what did the Bush fam­i­ly know about their Nazi con­nec­tion and when did they know it? As senior man­agers of Brown Broth­ers Har­ri­man, they had to have known that their Amer­i­can clients, such as the Rock­e­fellers, were invest­ing heav­i­ly in Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions, includ­ing Thyssen’s giant Vere­inigte Stahlw­erke. As not­ed his­to­ri­an Christo­pher Simp­son repeat­ed­ly doc­u­ments, it is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that Brown Brother’s invest­ments in Nazi Ger­many took place under the Bush fam­i­ly stew­ard­ship. . . . It should be recalled that in Jan­u­ary 1937, he hired Allen Dulles to ‘cloak’ his accounts. But cloak from whom? Did he expect that hap­py lit­tle Hol­land was going to declare war on Amer­i­ca? The cloak­ing oper­a­tion only makes sense in antic­i­pa­tion of a pos­si­ble war with Nazi Ger­many. If Union Bank was not the con­duit for laun­der­ing the Rockefeller’s Nazi invest­ments back to Amer­i­ca, then how could the Rock­e­feller-con­trolled Chase Man­hat­tan Bank end up own­ing 31% of the Thyssen group after the war? It should be not­ed that the Thyssen group (TBG) is now the largest indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate in Ger­many, and with a net worth of more than $50 bil­lion dol­lars, one of the wealth­i­est cor­po­ra­tions in the world. TBG is so rich it even bought out the Krupp fam­i­ly, famous arms mak­ers for Hitler, leav­ing the Thyssens as the undis­put­ed cham­pi­on sur­vivors of the Third Reich. Where did the Thyssens get the start-up mon­ey to rebuild their empire with such speed after World War II? . . . . A for­tune this size could only have come from the Thyssen prof­its made from rearm­ing the Third Reich, and then hid­den, first from the Nazi tax audi­tors, and then from the Allies. The Bush­es knew per­fect­ly well that Brown Broth­ers was the Amer­i­can mon­ey chan­nel into Nazi Ger­many, and that Union Bank was the secret pipeline to bring the Nazi mon­ey back to Amer­i­ca from Hol­land. The Bush­es had to have known how the secret mon­ey cir­cuit worked because they were on the board of direc­tors in both direc­tions: Brown Broth­ers out, Union Bank in. . . .”

Fur­ther solid­i­fy­ing the con­ti­nu­ity between the Third Reich, the Gehlen Org and the GOP, we note that, while it was the BND (the intel­li­gence ser­vice of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic) the “Org” was financ­ing the East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups that were part of the Eth­nic Her­itage Out­reach Coun­cil.

Flesh­ing out infor­ma­tion about the BND financ­ing of groups linked to the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, we present sup­ple­men­tal infor­ma­tion from an unpub­lished man­u­script. The author is well-known to vet­er­an researchers, but will remain anony­mous, since the work was nev­er for­mal­ly com­plet­ed or pub­lished.

Pro­vid­ing back­ground to dis­cus­sion of the rela­tion­ship between the milieu of Resorts Inter­na­tion­al, Nixon, his bank­ing asso­ciate Bebe Rebo­zo and William Casey, we note that Rebo­zo’s bank­ing of funds from the dead­ly Bor­mann net­work, the insti­tu­tion that Mr. Emory feels will prove to be the deci­sive ele­ment on this earth.

Con­tin­u­ing with dis­cus­sion from the unpub­lished man­u­script ref­er­enced above, the broad­cast high­lights inter­ac­tions between the Nixon admin­is­tra­tion, Bebe Rebo­zo, a mys­te­ri­ous and alleged­ly orga­nized-crime con­nect­ed com­pa­ny called Resorts Inter­na­tion­al, an even more mys­te­ri­ous sub­sidiary of Resorts Inter­na­tion­al called the Par­adise Island Bridge Com­pa­ny and the Dewey, Dulles, Nazi, William Casey milieu that is cen­tral to this dis­cus­sion.

Note that Don­ald Trump was a suit­or for the own­er­ship of Resorts Inter­na­tion­al (after the 1986 death of James Cros­by), ulti­mate­ly pur­chas­ing the Taj Mahal Casi­no from the firm after a law­suit with tele­vi­sion star Merv Grif­fin.


FTR #1133: The Plot to Kill King

In the after­math of the killing of George Floyd, there has been wall-to-wall cov­er­age of his mur­der and of the world-wide demon­stra­tions stem­ming from it. The advent of smart phone (with cam­eras) and the inter­net affords detailed and inti­mate expe­ri­ence of such an event.

How­ev­er, the orgias­tic cov­er­age of that event, the memo­r­i­al ser­vice led by FBI infor­mant and alleged [by the late War­ren Hinck­le] CIA oper­a­tive in Grena­da Al Sharp­ton stands in stark con­trast to the utter silence across the board on the cir­cum­stances of Dr. Mar­tin Luther King’s assas­si­na­tion.

On the fifti­eth anniver­sary of King’s mur­der, Mr. Emory did a twelve hour pro­gram about the cir­cum­stances of the assas­si­na­tion, repris­ing AFA #8 (done in 1985 on the 17th anniver­sary of the killing) and FTR #46, record­ed a decade lat­er and sup­ple­ment­ed on 4/3/2018.

Despite exhaus­tive and per­ilous research done by the likes of Dr. William F. Pep­per, 4/4/2018 was notable for the absence of sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion of King’s mur­der.

The polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of such an event was pre­sent­ed by Dr. Pep­per in his third book about the King assas­si­na­tion, The Plot to Kill King: ” . . . . . . . . When one is con­front­ed with the assas­si­na­tion of a major leader who per­son­i­fies the most trea­sured val­ues of the species and it becomes clear that those respon­si­ble for the mur­der are offi­cials of his own gov­ern­ment act­ing with the sanc­tion of those in the shad­ows who actu­al­ly rule, sure­ly one should strive to under­stand what that means now and for the future. In oth­er words, when the removal of a leader who has offend­ed pow­er­ful forces and spe­cial inter­ests in the Repub­lic takes on the sta­tus of an act of state, cit­i­zens must con­tem­plate what this reveals about their cul­ture and its civ­il and polit­i­cal sys­tems, their free­dom, the qual­i­ty and sta­tus of the rule of law, and their entire way of life. . . . ”

It seems that–for many–black lives mat­ter, but not Dr. King’s, appar­ent­ly, past a point.

Again, Dr. Pep­per not­ed that: ” . . . . cit­i­zens must con­tem­plate what this reveals about their cul­ture and its civ­il and polit­i­cal sys­tems, their free­dom, the qual­i­ty and sta­tus of the rule of law, and their entire way of life. . . . ”

In said con­tem­pla­tion, this pro­gram sup­ple­ments our pre­vi­ous work on the killing.

Although Dr. Pep­per repris­es the stun­ning infor­ma­tion he set forth in Orders to Kill in The Plot to Kill King, we will not reprise that here, in the inter­ests of time. (We do recap a short excerpt from Orders to Kill com­pris­ing an appar­ent evi­den­tiary trib­u­tary between King’s mur­der and the assas­si­na­tion of Robert F. Kennedy, which occurred two months lat­er.)

The bulk of the dis­cus­sion in this pro­gram is pre­sen­ta­tion and analy­sis of the polit­i­cal machin­ery in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee that engi­neered Dr. King’s mur­der. (Dis­cus­sion of the Spe­cial Forces team that was in Mem­phis as a back-up unit in case the civil­ian sniper missed King is detailed in FTR #46.)

In Pep­per’s inves­ti­ga­tion of King’s mur­der­ers, he detailed the appar­ent role of the late Rus­sell Lee Adkins, a mem­ber of the Dix­ie Mafia in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee. (The Dix­ie Mafia is dis­tinct from the Mafia, per se, that oper­at­ed in the South, although–as Pep­per makes clear–they worked with Mafiosi like New Orleans capo Car­los Mar­cel­lo and Mar­cel­lo asso­ciate Frank Lib­er­to, like Adkins, an oper­a­tor in Mem­phis.) 

His son Rus­sell Jr. took over exec­u­tive man­age­ment of the assas­si­na­tion machin­ery after his father’s death in 1967.

Note the coop­er­a­tion between the Ku Klux Klan and ele­ments of the Masons in Mem­phis. This should NOT be mis­un­der­stood as buy­ing into the myr­i­ad of anti-Mason­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries which have pro­lif­er­at­ed on the Inter­net. The bulk of Freema­son­ry are what they rep­re­sent them­selves as being–civic activists and phil­an­thropists. The Third Reich planned to exter­mi­nate the Masons, along with the Jews and oth­ers.

That hav­ing been said, there have always been net­works with­in the Masons which, due to to their clan­des­tine oper­at­ing struc­ture, have been uti­lized for con­spir­a­to­r­i­al pur­pos­es. In these broad­casts, we have not­ed the P‑2 lodge of Licio Gel­li as one such enti­ty.

The Rus­sell Adkins Klan/Mason nexus is anoth­er. Note Rus­sell Sr.‘s son Ron Adkins depo­si­tion about the deci­sive influ­ence of this insti­tu­tion­al­ly racist enti­ty and its pow­er­ful oper­a­tional con­nec­tions:

1.–It dom­i­nat­ed Mem­phis munic­i­pal pol­i­tics empow­er­ing May­or Hen­ry Loeb and Fire and Police Com­mis­sion­er Frank Hol­lo­man, among oth­ers fig­ur­ing in the mur­der of King.

2.–The Adkins/Klan milieu had long-stand­ing oper­a­tional links with the FBI. Num­ber two man in the bureau at the time, as well as J. Edgar Hoover’s live-in lover, was close to Rus­sell Adkins and used him to dis­pense pay­ments to bureau oper­a­tives, includ­ing the Rev­erend Jesse Jack­son.

2.–The Adkins/Klan milieu net­worked with the Mafia, as stat­ed above.

3.–Ron Adkins, Rus­sell Sr.‘s son, deposed under oath that: ” . . . . Ron said that his father took him to his first lynch­ing when he was just six years old. . . .”

4.–The Adkins milieu was close to Dr. Breen Bland, whose alleged role in King’s death is dis­cussed below.

Next, we present the role of the Adkins machine as a con­duit for Hoover and Tol­son’s financ­ing for the escape of pat­sy-to-be James Earl Ray: ” . . . . . . . . [FBI offi­cial Clyde] Tol­son was a sub­stan­tial con­nec­tion for his [Ron­nie Adkins’] father . . . . Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to this case is that he brought the mon­ey which was to be paid to Harold Swen­son, the War­den of the Mis­souri State prison, in Jef­fer­son City, Mis­souri, in order for him to arrange for the escape of James in 1967. At Hoover’s request, James had been pro­filed as a poten­tial scape­goat, although the nature of the crime was not revealed. Ron told us about this assign­ment because he was an actu­al observ­er. He saw the mon­ey being deliv­ered by Tol­son and then, at his father’s invi­ta­tion, he rode to the prison where the mon­ey was paid to Swen­son by his father. . . Ray (who was always kept in the dark about this arrange­ment) suc­cess­ful­ly escaped from prison on April 23, 1967, and then . . . was mon­i­tored, con­trolled . . . . and moved around until the plans for the assas­si­na­tion and his use were final­ized. . . . .”

In the run-up to the assas­si­na­tion of king: ” . . . . In ear­ly 1968, two work­ers, thir­ty-five-year-old Echole Cole and twen­ty-nine-year-old Robert Walk­er were lit­er­al­ly swal­lowed by a mal­func­tion­ing ‘garbage pack­er’ truck. We would lat­er learn this was a planned mur­der by the Dix­ie Mafia fam­i­ly of Rus­sell Adkins, in coor­di­na­tion with Mem­phis Police Depart­ment Direc­tor of Police and Fire Frank Hol­lo­man, in order to com­pel Dr. King to return to sup­port the strik­ers. . . .” 

Sworn depo­si­tions by Lenny Cur­tis (a cus­to­di­an for the Mem­phis Police Depart­ment) and Nathan Whit­lock, a Mem­phis police­man named Frank Strauss­er was the actu­al shoot­er select­ed to exe­cute King: ” . . . . On that day, he [Strauss­er] broke to take lunch with [MPD Cap­tain Earl] Clark, and when he returned he resumed fir­ing. When he left at around 3:30 p.m., he put the top down on the con­vert­ible, took off his pow­der blue shirt, and threw it over the rifle in the back­seat, leav­ing only his white T‑shirt on. He ruf­fled his hair and put on a pair of sun­glass­es. When he left, May­or Loeb, Hol­lo­man, and the oth­er vis­it­ing police offi­cers were still there. They had met in Lieu­tenant Bullard’s office. . . .”

After high­light­ing the alleged role of Frank Strauss­er as the actu­al assas­sin, we present the oper­a­tional sequence of events on the ground in Mem­phis, Ten­nessee. Again, note the ubiq­ui­tous pres­ence of the Adkins/Dixie Mafia/Klan machine in the pro­gres­sion of events. ” . . . . Also observed arriv­ing at the MPD fir­ing range build­ing where he met with the shoot­er and Earl Clark were Direc­tor Hol­lo­man and May­or Hen­ry Loeb. . . .”

Note, also, the roles of Jesse Jack­son and the Rev­erend Bil­ly Kyles in these maneu­vers. (As dis­cussed in FTR #1005, both were being paid by FBI offi­cial Clyde Tol­son, through the Adkins machine. Jack­son’s appar­ent role was to help secure Room 306 in the Lor­raine Motel, over­look­ing the pool and afford­ing a clear shot, as well as to maneu­ver the Invaders out of the area. (The Invaders were a local Black Pow­er group who were present for secu­ri­ty pur­pos­es.) Kyles was there to help lure King out onto the bal­cony for the kill shot.

After King was shot, he was tak­en to St. Joseph’s hos­pi­tal, where, again the influ­ence of the Adkins machine came into play: ” . . . . . . . . Ron Adkins Tyler, under oath, told me that Dr. Breen Bland, who, remem­ber was also the Adkins’ fam­i­ly doc­tor, was in fact, the head sur­geon at the hos­pi­tal. . . . He said he was present and over­heard con­ver­sa­tions between his father and Dr. Bland, and then, fol­low­ing his father’s death, between his broth­er (Rus­sell Junior), Police and Fire Direc­tor Frank Hol­lo­man, and Dr. Bland about the impor­tance of Dr. King being tak­en to St. Joseph’s if he was still alive. . . . Ron Adkins Tyler has no doubt that they were deter­mined to make cer­tain that Dr. King would nev­er leave the emer­gency room at St. Joseph’s Hos­pi­tal alive. Though he did not know the details of the final cause of death, it appears that he was cor­rect. . . .”

Next, we focus on events at St. Joseph’s Hos­pi­tal on 4/4/1968:

1.–Among those events ” . . . . was the large pres­ence of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cers who had tak­en up posi­tions in the hos­pi­tal well before the shot was fired. Accord­ing to Dr. Cause­way, who was on duty at the time, the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cers knew the names of all of the emer­gency room nurs­es and doc­tors on duty. . . .”

2.–The atten­tion giv­en to the grave­ly wound­ed Dr. King: ” . . . . He [Dr. Cause­way] observed that no con­sid­er­a­tion was giv­en to mov­ing the crit­i­cal­ly injured vic­tim to the oper­at­ing room and he saw no sur­gi­cal effort being made to save him. When he inquired about treat­ment, he was told that he was being treat­ed. . . .”

3.–According to sur­gi­cal aide Lula Mae Shel­by: ” . . . . there were many MPD offi­cers and army peo­ple milling about, in addi­tion to men in suits. . . . Dr. King was lying on a blood­ied gur­ney. She saw the huge hole in the low­er left side of his face, but heard one of the ER doc­tors say that he has a pulse. The ER doc­tors had per­formed a tra­cheoto­my and insert­ed a breath­ing tube. . . . in a while, the head of surgery (who appears to have been Dr. Breen Bland–the Adkins’ fam­i­ly doc­tor and col­lab­o­ra­tor dis­cussed ear­li­er) came into the emer­gency room with a cou­ple of men in suits and shout­ed at the staff work­ing on Dr. King, ‘Stop work­ing on the nig­ger and let him die. Now, all of you get out of here, right now. Every­body get out.’ . . . . as she was leav­ing, she heard three sounds of the men gath­er­ing or suck­ing up sali­va in their mouths–and then she heard two or three spit­ting sounds. This caused her, on the way out, to glance back over her shoul­der, and see that the breath­ing tube had been removed and Dr. Bland put a pil­low on and over the face of Dr. King. . . .”

After the mur­der, the above-men­tioned Lenny Cur­tis heard rumors about Frank Strauss­er being the assas­sin of King, as well as dis­cus­sion of Strauss­er being pres­sured to leave the MPD because of civ­il rights com­plaints being lodged against him.

Con­cerned that Cur­tis might dis­close infor­ma­tion about him to the FBI, Strauss­er con­front­ed him dur­ing a dri­ve and deliv­ered a warn­ing: ” . . . . ‘Lenny, you be care­ful now.’ The look he gave him was clear­ly threat­en­ing. . . .”

Fol­low­ing this inci­dent, Cur­tis expe­ri­enced strange, fright­en­ing things: ” . . . . . His gas was strange­ly turned on once when he was about to enter his house. He had lit a cig­a­rette, but as he opened the door he smelled gas and quick­ly put out the cig­a­rette. A strange Lin­coln was occa­sion­al­ly parked across the street from his apart­ment house. . . .  One morn­ing when the car was there, he got into his own car and quick­ly drove off, and the strange car pulled out and fol­lowed him. He man­aged to see the dri­ver. It was Strauss­er. At that time, new evi­dence in the case came up. He said that every time new evi­dence arose the offi­cer would pop up. He tried to move to a new house with­out notice but the land­lord of the new com­plex would report see­ing a man in the back of his house. When Lenny checked the area, he found a ‘tree stand,’ a V‑shaped stand where you could rest a rifle. When he put a stick in it, it focused on his kitchen and bath­room win­dows. He moved again, with­out notice. . . .”

Pep­per found Cur­tis to be inspir­ing, wait­ing until after his death in 2013 to come for­ward with his tes­ti­mo­ny out of fear for Lenny’s safe­ty. ” . . . . I safe­guard­ed his infor­ma­tion and his depo­si­tion for all of these years, fear­ful that the assas­s­in’s mas­ters would kill him if they learned about his coop­er­a­tion with me. . . .”

Before con­clud­ing the pro­gram, we revis­it the state­ment of one of the Spe­cial Forces offi­cers com­pris­ing the back-up fire team–a man Pep­per described under the pseu­do­nym “War­ren.” ” . . . .  . . . . War­ren said that on that occa­sion they also had a sec­ondary mis­sion, which was to do recon (recon­nais­sance of a home up in the West­ern Hills near the UCLA cam­pus.) The recon was to deter­mine the fea­si­bil­i­ty of a ‘wet insert ops deter­mined’ oper­a­tion. (‘Wet insert ops deter­mined’ means that the unit car­ries out a sur­rep­ti­tious entry at night into the tar­get­ed res­i­dence, kills every­one there, and leaves with­out a trace.)  He said that their recon deter­mined the fea­si­bil­i­ty of such an oper­a­tion. War­ren sub­se­quent­ly learned that the house was used by Sen­a­tor Robert F. Kennedy when he was in Los Ange­les in 1967–68. . . .”

We end the pro­gram with a caveat deliv­ered to for­mer Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Wal­ter Faun­troy [of Wash­ing­ton D.C.]–a founder of the Con­gres­sion­al Black Cau­cus. After inform­ing then Speak­er of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Carl Albert that he wished to head what was to become the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions: ” . . . . Albert said to him, ‘Wal­ter, you don’t want that job.’ To which Faun­troy replied, ‘But I do want it; why not?’ Albert whis­pered, ‘Wal­ter, they will kill you.’ . . .”


FTR #1047 Interview #16 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the six­teenth 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.

The pro­gram opens with con­tin­u­a­tion of dis­cus­sion of an unfor­tu­nate piece from The Huff­in­g­ton Post about Clay Shaw. In addi­tion to par­rot­ing canards about Gar­rison’s case being base­less, Clay Shaw being a “Wilsonian/FDR lib­er­al” and Gar­rison’s nonex­is­tent stance that the JFK assas­si­na­tion was a “homo­sex­u­al thrill killing” by Clay Shaw & com­pa­ny, the HP piece men­tioned an appear­ance by Jim Gar­ri­son on John­ny Car­son­’s “Tonight Show.”

The actu­al sto­ry of Gar­rison’s appear­ance on Car­son is impor­tant and inter­est­ing. When the bril­liant come­di­an Mort Sahl was on Car­son­’s show, the sub­ject of the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion came up. Sahl asked the audi­ence if they would like to have Gar­ri­son come on the show, and they respond­ed with over­whelm­ing enthu­si­asm.

Even­tu­al­ly, Gar­ri­son did appear on the show and Car­son engaged in an open­ly con­fronta­tion­al dis­cus­sion. Car­son was so out­raged that he told Mort Sahl that he would nev­er appear on the pro­gram again. Mort did not appear on the “Tonight” show until Jay Leno suc­ceed­ed Car­son as the host.

In this regard, it is worth not­ing that NBC–the net­work that aired Wal­ter Sheri­dan’s hit piece on Garrison–has pro­found con­nec­tions to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, as dis­cussed in FTR #1045.

Jim also relates that, when in Los Ange­les, Robert Kennedy was query­ing Chi­na Lee–Mort’s wife at the time–about what Gar­ri­son was doing in New Orleans. As we have seen in past programs–including FTR #‘s 809, 892, 1005–Robert Kennedy was wait­ing until he got elect­ed Pres­i­dent before open­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into his broth­er’s mur­der. Of course, he, too was killed before he could become Pres­i­dent.

The pro­gram then turns to James Kirk­wood, anoth­er of the des­ig­nat­ed media hatch­et men who pil­lo­ried Gar­ri­son. Net­worked with James Phe­lan, he helped mint the canard that Gar­ri­son pros­e­cut­ed Shaw in the con­text of what the DA sup­pos­ed­ly saw as a “homo­sex­u­al thrill killing.” Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this non­sense has endured, as a Huff­in­g­ton Post arti­cle makes clear.

Anoth­er of the media hit men who defamed Gar­ri­son was David Chan­dler:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 276.

. . . . But Chandler’s most seri­ous blast against Gar­ri­son and his inquiry was a two-part arti­cle writ­ten for Life in the fall of 1967. This appeared in the Sep­tem­ber 1 and Sep­tem­ber 8 issues of the mag­a­zine. The pieces mas­quer­ad­ed as an expose of Mafia influ­ence in large cities in Amer­i­ca at the time. But the real tar­get of the piece was not the mob, but Gar­ri­son. The idea was to depict him as a cor­rupt New Orleans DA who had some kind of neb­u­lous ties to the Mafia and Car­los Mar­cel­lo. There were four prin­ci­pal par­tic­i­pants in the pieces: Chan­dler, Sandy Smith, Dick Billings, and Robert Blakey. Smith was the actu­al billed writer. And since Smith was a long-time asset of the FBI, it is very like­ly that the Bureau was the Bureau was the orig­i­nat­ing force behind the mag­a­zine run­ning the piece. . . .

. . . . It was the work of Chan­dler, a friend of both Clay Shaw and Ker­ry Thorn­ley, which was the basis of the com­plete­ly pho­ny con­cept that Gar­ri­son was some­how in bed with the Mafia and his func­tion was to steer atten­tion from their killing of Kennedy. . . .

The sub­ject then turns to Clay Shaw’s defense team. It should nev­er be for­got­ten that Shaw’s attor­neys net­worked with: the infil­tra­tors into Gar­rison’s office, the CIA and the media hatch­et men who helped destroy Gar­rison’s pub­lic image.

We return briefly to Guy John­son, ini­tial­ly a mem­ber of Shaw’s defense team. In this con­text, it is worth remem­ber­ing what Ban­is­ter inves­ti­ga­tor Tom­my Baum­ler said:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 274.

. . . . In the spring of 1968, Harold Weis­berg inter­viewed Tom­my Baum­ler. Baum­ler had for­mer­ly worked for Guy Ban­is­ter as part of his corps of stu­dent infil­tra­tors in the New Orleans area. Because of that expe­ri­ence, Baum­ler knew a lot about Banister’s oper­a­tion. For instance, that Banister’s files were cod­ed, and that Ban­is­ter had black­mail mate­r­i­al on the sub­jects he kept files on. He also knew the intel­li­gence net­work in New Orleans was con­struct­ed through Ban­is­ter, Clay Shaw, and Guy John­son; how close Shaw and Ban­is­ter were; and that “Oswald worked for Ban­is­ter.” In Weisberg’s inter­view with Tom­my, he would occa­sion­al­ly ask to go off the record by telling him to turn the tape recorder off. Clear­ly, there were things going on in New Orleans that Baum­ler con­sid­ered too hot to be attrib­uted to him.

At this time, April of 1968, Weis­berg con­sid­ered Baum­ler to be an “unabashed fas­cist.” He explained this fur­ther by say­ing that Baum­ler was ‘aware of the mean­ing of his beliefs and con­sid­ers what he describes as his beliefs as prop­er.” He then explained to Weis­berg the fol­low­ing, “that what­ev­er hap­pens, the Shaw case will end with­out pun­ish­ment for him [Shaw], because fed­er­al pow­er will see to that.” He fur­ther said that this would also hap­pen to any­one else charged by Gar­ri­son. . . .

In addi­tion to John­son, Irv Dymond, anoth­er Shaw attor­ney, net­worked with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, Wal­ter Sheri­dan and the spook infil­tra­tors into Gar­rion’s office. In FTR #1045, we not­ed that Fred Lee­mans claimed he was coerced, in part, direct­ly by Irv Dymond in Dymond’s law office. Dymond worked direct­ly with Hunter Leake of the CIA’s New Orleans office.

Shaw attor­neys Edward and William Weg­mann also net­worked with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, employ­ing Wack­en­hut, for­mer­ly South­ern Research, an intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed pri­vate secu­ri­ty out­fit to mon­i­tor Gar­rison’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

Anoth­er 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. . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with the obstruc­tive efforts of then Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­sey Clark.

Clark tried to dis­miss Clay Shaw’s involve­ment inthe assas­si­na­tion by claim­ing that the FBI had cleared him back in 1963.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 261.

. . . . One point man for the John­son Admin­is­tra­tion in dam­ag­ing Gar­rison’s case was Ram­sey Clark. In March of 1867, right after his con­fir­ma­tion as Attor­ney Gen­er­al by the Sen­ate Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee, Clark made an extra­or­di­nary inter­ven­tion into the case: he told a group of reporters Gar­rison’s case was base­less. The FBI, he said, had already inves­ti­gat­ed Shaw in 1963 and found no con­nec­tion between him and the events in Dal­las. . . .

Clark also assist­ed with the quash­ing of sub­poe­nas that Gar­ri­son served.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 272–273.

. . . . At around this time, Gar­ri­son issued sub­poe­nas for both Richard Helms and any pho­tographs of Oswald in Mex­i­co City that the CIA held. . . . [CIA Gen­er­al Coun­sel Lawrence] Hous­ton then wrote a let­ter to New Orleans judge Bernard Bagert who had signed the sub­poe­na. He denied there were pho­tos of Oswald in Mex­i­co City. This reply was run by Attor­ney Gen­er­al Ram­sey Clark and White House advis­er Har­ry MacPher­son. . . .

Final­ly, Clark denied Gar­ri­son prop­er access to autop­sy pho­tos and infor­ma­tion about the assas­si­na­tion.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 287.

. . . . After the Attor­ney Gen­er­al had bun­gled his first attempt to dis­cred­it Gar­rison’s case, he secret­ly tried anoth­er method. Gar­ri­son had been try­ing to secure the orig­i­nal JFK autop­sy pho­tos and X‑rays to exhib­it at the tri­al. They would form an impor­tant part of his case, since, to prove a con­spir­a­cy, he had to present evi­dence against the War­ren Report, which main­tained there was no con­spir­a­cy and that Oswald had act­ed alone. In 1968, Clark con­vened a pan­el of experts–which did not include any of the doc­tors who had per­formed the orig­i­nal examinations–to review the autop­sy pho­tos and X‑rays. In ear­ly 1969, just a few days before he left office and on the eve of the tri­al, Clark announced that this pan­el had endorsed the find­ings of the War­ren Report. The pan­el released its find­ings, but none of the orig­i­nal evi­dence on which it was based. This was clear­ly meant to influ­ence pub­lic opin­ion before Shaw’s tri­al began. . . .


FTR #1043 Interview #12 with Jim DiEugenio About Destiny Betrayed

CIA’s Expert on the JFK Assas­si­na­tion Ray Roc­ca: ” . . . . Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy. . . .”

House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions Assis­tant Coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer: “. . . . ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the Anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . .”

This is the twelfth 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 con­tin­ue with analy­sis of Clay Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tion, begin­ning with review of his work for the Domes­tic Oper­a­tions Divi­sion.

A fas­ci­nat­ing intel­li­gence involve­ment of Shaw’s is his work with Per­min­dex.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 385–386.

. . . . The next step in the CIA lad­der after his high-lev­el over­seas infor­mant ser­vice was his work with the strange com­pa­ny called Per­min­dex. When the announce­ment for Per­min­dex was first made in Switzer­land in late 1956, its prin­ci­pal back­ing was to come from a local banker named Hans Selig­man. But as more inves­ti­ga­tion by the local papers was done, it became clear that the real backer was J. Hen­ry Schroder Cor­po­ra­tion. This infor­ma­tion was quite reveal­ing. Schroder’s had been close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Allen Dulles and the CIA for years. Allen Dulles’s con­nec­tions to the Schroder bank­ing fam­i­ly went back to the thir­ties when his law firm, Sul­li­van and Cromwell, first began rep­re­sent­ing them through him. Lat­er, Dulles was the bank’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel. In fact, when Dulles became CIA direc­tor, Schroder’s was a repos­i­to­ry for a fifty mil­lion dol­lar con­tin­gency fund that Dulles per­son­al­ly con­trolled. Schroder’s was a wel­come con­duit because the bank ben­e­fit­ed from pre­vi­ous CIA over­throws in Guatemala and Iran. Anoth­er rea­son that there began to be a furor over Per­min­dex in Switzer­land was the fact that the bank’s founder, Baron Kurt von Schroder, was asso­ci­at­ed with the Third Reich, specif­i­cal­ly Hein­rich Himm­ler. The project now became stalled in Switzer­land. It now moved to Rome. In a Sep­tem­ber 1069 inter­view Shaw did for Pent­house Mag­a­zine, he told James Phe­lan that he only grew inter­est­ed in the project when it moved to Italy. Which was in Octo­ber 1958. Yet a State Depart­ment cable dat­ed April 9 of that year says that Shaw showed great inter­est in Per­min­dex from the out­set.

One can see why. The board of direc­tors as made up of bankers who had been tied up with fas­cist gov­ern­ments, peo­ple who worked the Jew­ish refugee rack­et dur­ing World War II, a for­mer mem­ber of Mus­solin­i’s cab­i­net, and the son-in-law of Hjal­mar Schacht, the eco­nom­ic wiz­ard behind the Third Reich, who was a friend of Shaw’s. These peo­ple would all appeal to the con­ser­v­a­tive Shaw. There were at least four inter­na­tion­al news­pa­pers that exposed the bizarre activ­i­ties of Per­min­dex when it was in Rome. One prob­lem was the mys­te­ri­ous source of fund­ing: no one knew where it was com­ing from. Anoth­er was that its activ­i­ties report­ed­ly includ­ed assas­si­na­tion attempts on French Pre­mier Charles De Gaulle. Which would make sense since the found­ing mem­ber of Per­min­dex, Fer­enc Nagy, was a close friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a leader of the OAS, a group of for­mer French offi­cers who broke with De Gaulle over his Alger­ian pol­i­cy. They lat­er made sev­er­al attempts on De Gaulle’s life, which the CIA was privy to. Again, this mys­te­ri­ous source of fund­ing, plus the rightwing, neo-Fas­cist direc­tors cre­at­ed anoth­er wave of con­tro­ver­sy. One news­pa­per wrote that the orga­ni­za­tion may have been “a crea­ture of the CIA . . . set up as a cove for the trans­fer of CIA . . . funds in Italy for legal polit­i­cal-espi­onage activ­i­ties.” The Schroder con­nec­tion would cer­tain­ly sug­gest that. . . .

His involve­ment with Per­min­dex places him in the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate milieu that spawned fas­cism and Nazism. Key obser­va­tions about Per­min­dex and Shaw’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in it:

1.–Shaw was part of the deep polit­i­cal orbit of the Dulles broth­ers and Sul­li­van & Cromwell.
2.–The Per­min­dex oper­a­tional link to the Schroder Bank places it in the same milieu as the Himm­ler Kreis, the indus­tri­al­ists and financiers who financed the work­ings of the SS through an account in the Schroder Bank.
3.–Shaw was a friend of Hjal­mar Horace Gree­ley Schacht, who became the finance min­is­ter of the Third Reich and was very close to the Dulles broth­ers.
4.–Permindex was appar­ent­ly involved with the OAS efforts to assas­si­nate De Gaulle. This places Shaw in a net­work includ­ing: Ban­is­ter inves­ti­ga­tor Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin, who boast­ed of hav­ing trans­ferred mon­ey to the OAS from the CIA; Rene Souetre–an OAS oper­a­tive who was expelled from Dallas/Ft. Worth the day of the assas­si­na­tion of JFK.
5.–As dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 1031 and 1032, JFK was an ear­ly crit­ic of the French pol­i­cy in Alge­ria, crit­i­ciz­ing it on the floor of the Sen­ate in 1957.

The con­clu­sion of the broad­cast focus­es large­ly on the CIA’s intense inter­est in the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. This inter­est was man­i­fest­ed through an agency con­clave infor­mal­ly named “The Gar­ri­son Group.”

“Des­tiny Betrayed” by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 270.

. . . . 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. It is cru­cial to keep in mind the phrase: before, dur­ing, and after. As we will see, the effec­tive admin­is­tra­tor Helms was think­ing not just of some short term fix, but of for­mu­lat­ing a strat­e­gy for the long haul. Accord­ing to the very sketchy memo about this meet­ing, [CIA Gen­er­al Coun­sel Lawrence] Hous­ton dis­cussed his deal­ings with the Jus­tice Depart­ment and the desire of Shaw’s defense to meet with the CIA direct­ly. [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 note that House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions assis­tant coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer wrote the fol­low­ing:

“Des­tiny Betrayed” by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 332.

. . . . “We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the Anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.” . . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with analy­sis of Clay Shaw’s close rela­tion­ship to the Stern fam­i­ly of WDSU. In addi­tion to car­ry­ing staged inter­views between Oswald and Car­los Bringuier, the broad­cast out­let pil­lo­ried Jim Gar­ri­son and his tri­al of Clay Shaw.


FTR #1042 Interview #11 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the eleventh 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 broad­cast, we explore the asso­ci­a­tion of David Fer­rie and Clay Shaw in the con­text of the plan­ning of assas­si­na­tion plots against JFK, as well as Shaw’s involve­ment with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

NB: In our pre­vi­ous inter­view, Mr. Emory mis­tak­en­ly linked “The Bomb” to Clay Shaw and to a plot to assas­si­nate JFK. Shaw was, accord­ing to cred­i­ble tes­ti­mo­ny involved with Fer­rie in anoth­er, prob­a­bly con­nect­ed, asso­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss killing Kennedy.

David Fer­rie had a desk in the  office of C. Wray Gill, a lawyer for Car­los Mar­cel­lo. When anoth­er of Gill’s clients–a woman named Clara Gay–was in the office, she wit­nessed anoth­er Fer­rie assas­si­na­tion schemat­ic on Novem­ber 26, 1963:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 217.

. . . . Clara looked  over at Fer­rie’s desk and she saw what looked like a dia­gram of Dealey Plaza: it was a draw­ing of a car from the per­spec­tive of an angle from above, the car was sur­round­ed by high build­ings, rem­i­nis­cent of Dealey Plaza. After the sec­re­tary threw it out, Clara  retrieved it. She said it should be giv­en to the FBI or Secret Ser­vice. The sec­re­tary took it back and a pulling con­test ensued. The sec­re­tary even­tu­al­ly won, but not before Clara saw the words “Elm Street” on the dia­gram. She lat­er recon­struct­ed this expe­ri­ence for Gar­ri­son. She said she came for­ward because she con­sid­ered her­self a good cit­i­zen, and Fer­rie must  have been  some­thing evil . . . .

After dis­cus­sion of the Fer­rie Dealey Plaza assas­si­na­tion schemat­ic, the dis­cus­sion turns to a con­ver­sa­tion wit­nessed by Per­ry Rus­so, one of Gar­rison’s most impor­tant wit­ness­es.

Key points of infor­ma­tion about what Rus­so wit­nessed:

1.–Present at the meet­ing where the dis­cus­sion took place were: Clay Shaw, David Fer­rie, Lee Har­vey Oswald and sev­er­al Cubans.
2.–Shaw was using one of his most com­mon aliases–“Clay Bertrand.”
3.–Ferrie became increas­ing­ly agi­tat­ed and high­light­ed “tri­an­gu­la­tion of cross­fire” as nec­es­sary to assure a kill shot on Kennedy.
4.–Ferrie and Shaw dis­cussed the neces­si­ty of being some­where else, to give them­selves “cov­er.” This led Rus­so to con­clude that the plans were con­crete not the­o­ret­i­cal.
5.–Ferrie said he would be in Ham­mond, LA., on the cam­pus of South­east­ern Louisiana. He was, in fact, there on the day of the assas­si­na­tion.
6.–Shaw said that he would be on the West Coast. He was, in fact, at the San Fran­cis­co Trade Mart, where he was to give a talk. When news of of the assas­si­na­tion reached Shaw and his host, Shaw seemed remark­ably detached. When asked if he thought the talk should go for­ward in light of the news, Shaw said yes. This struck those around him at that time  as  curi­ous.

The issue of Shaw’s alias­es is an impor­tant one. The day after the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, New Orleans attor­ney Dean Andrews got a call from “Clay Bertrand,” request­ing that he rep­re­sent Lee Har­vey Oswald in Dal­las. Andrews had pre­vi­ous­ly encoun­tered Shaw using the same alias when seek­ing legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for some gay Lati­nos.

Key aspects of Andrews’ con­tact with Shaw/Bertrand:

1.–Andrews feared for his life if this came to light. He claimed to have been told, after call­ing Wash­ing­ton D.C., that he might get a bul­let in the head if he talked.
2.–After Andrews changed his tes­ti­mo­ny, Gar­ri­son charged him with per­jury, even­tu­al­ly gain­ing a con­vic­tion.
3.–Andrews’ state­ments about Shaw/Bertrand were bol­stered by some­one at the VIP lounge at the East­ern Air­lines ter­mi­nal at New Orleans air­port, who knew Shaw to sign in under that alias.
4.–Numerous peo­ple in bars and bistros–particularly in the French Quarter–knew that Shaw used that alias. Because of Gar­rison’s crack­down on orga­nized crime-relat­ed oper­a­tions in New Orleans, his poten­tial infor­mants remained silent.

When being booked, Shaw actu­al­ly stat­ed that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”

Shaw was booked by a New Orleans police offi­cer named Aloy­sius Habighorst–who had an excel­lent record. When being booked, Shaw stat­ed that he used the alias “Clay Shaw.” Before tes­ti­fy­ing at Shaw’s tri­al, Habighorst’s car was rammed by a yel­low truck, and he was injured.

At Shaw’s tri­al, Judge Hag­ger­ty refused to admit Shaw’s admit­ted alias as evi­dence.

The con­clud­ing por­tion of the broad­cast deals with Clay Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions. Key points of infor­ma­tion in that regard:

1.–Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions date to World War II, when he worked as a aide-de-camp to Gen­er­al Charles Thrash­er. This placed him in the Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Sec­tion, a branch of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and one which was involved with recruit­ing some of the Paper­clip per­son­nel to work for the U.S.
2.–After the war, he became involved with Inter­na­tion­al House, a Rock­e­feller-linked oper­a­tion deeply involved with the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.
3.–His work for the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart fol­lowed log­i­cal­ly on the heels of his work for Inter­na­tion­al House.
4.–Shaw also worked with the  Mis­sis­sip­pi Ship­ping Com­pa­ny, which did a lot of work with the CIA.
5.–His “Y” file indi­cat­ed that Shaw’s work for CIA involved con­fer­ring with the agency before trav­el­ing to Latin Amer­i­ca, not after he returned as was the case for most infor­mants.
6.–At least one of Shaw’s files with the CIA was destroyed.

One of the most impor­tant ele­ments of Shaw’s intel­li­gence career was uncov­ered by researcher Peter Vea, whose dis­clo­sures were sup­ple­ment­ed by some inter­est­ing com­men­tary by Vic­tor Mar­che­t­ti.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 385.

. . . . Peter Vea dis­cov­ered a very impor­tant doc­u­ment while at the Nation­al Archives in 1994. Attached to a list­ing of Shaw’s numer­ous con­tacts with the Domes­tic Con­tact ser­vice, a list­ing was attached which stat­ed that Shaw had a covert secu­ri­ty approval in the Project QKENCHANT. This was in 1967 and the present tense was used, mean­ing that Shaw  was an active covert oper­a­tor for the CIA while Gar­ri­son was inves­ti­gat­ing him. When William Davy took this doc­u­ment to for­mer CIA offi­cer Vic­tor Mar­che­t­ti, an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion ensued. As Mar­che­t­ti looked at the doc­u­ment, he said, “That’s inter­est­ing . . . . He was . . . He was doing some­thing there.” He then said that Shaw would not need a covert secu­ri­ty clear­ance for domes­tic con­tacts ser­vice. He then added, “This was some­thing else. This would imply that he was doing some kind of work for the  Clan­des­tine Ser­vices.” When Davy asked what branch of Clan­des­tine Ser­vices would that be, Mar­che­t­ti replied, “The DOD (Domes­tic Oper­a­tions Divi­sion). It was one of the most secret divi­sions with­in the Clan­des­tine Ser­vices. This was Tracey Bar­nes’s old out­fit. They were get­ting into things . . . Uh . . . exact­ly what, I don’t know. But they were get­ting into some pret­ty risky areas. And this is what E. Howard Hunt was work­ing for at the time.” And in fact, Howard Hunt did have such a covert clear­ance issued to him in 1970 while he was work­ing at the White House. . . .


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? . . . .


FTR #1034 Interview #4 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The fourth 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 with dis­cus­sion of the cast of char­ac­ters that fig­ure in Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion and their rela­tion­ship to anti-Cas­tro Cuban intrigue.

(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.)

Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion from FTR #1033, the pro­gram high­lights activ­i­ties of Bay of Pigs and Water­gate par­tic­i­pant E. Howard Hunt. One of the pri­ma­ry CIA offi­cers in the abortive Bay of Pigs, Hunt loathed Kennedy, helped ghost-write the Charles Mur­phy apolo­gia for Allen Dulles & Com­pa­ny in For­tune mag­a­zine (see FTR #1032), and may have been involved with the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

E. Howard Hunt was also present in Dal­las, Texas on 11/22/1963, as revealed in a memo craft­ed by James Angle­ton.

A sub­ject that will be dis­cussed at greater length in future con­ver­sa­tions with Jim is the man­i­fes­ta­tions of Ker­ry Thorn­ley:

1.–One of the Marine Corps bud­dies of Oswald the Marx­ist Marine.
2.–Reinforced the Oswald the Com­mie meme.
3.–Was involved with Oswald’s alleged pro-Cas­tro leaflet­ing orig­i­nat­ing from Guy Ban­is­ter’s office.
4.–Was appar­ent­ly involved with most of Oswald’s asso­ciates in the New Orleans area.
5.–Wrote two con­tra­dic­to­ry books about Oswald decades apart.
6.–Supplementing dis­cus­sion of Gor­don Nov­el from FTR #1033, the pro­gram fore­shad­ows future dis­cus­sion of infil­tra­tors into Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion. An elec­tron­ics expert involved with CIA and the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion, Nov­el was involved with infil­trat­ing Gar­rison’s office and sup­ply­ing infor­ma­tion to Gar­rison’s ene­mies.

Also car­ry­ing over from FTR #1033, the pro­gram high­lights Guy Ban­is­ter’s so-called “detec­tive agency,” from which Oswald oper­at­ed his one-man New Orleans chap­ter of the Fair Play For Cuba Com­mit­tee. Sam Newman–the own­er of the New­man build­ing which housed that oper­a­tion, was eva­sive about Oswald oper­at­ing from an office there. New­man’s state­ments in that regard are con­tra­dic­to­ry. Oswald’s pres­ence there has been sub­stan­tive­ly con­firmed.

Of sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that Corliss Lam­ont of the pro-Cas­tro FPCC authored a pam­phlet for the orga­ni­za­tion in 1961, while Oswald was in the Sovi­et Union. It was the 1961 edi­tion of the pam­phlet that Oswald was hand­ing out when he had his alter­ca­tion with Car­los Bringuier. This sug­gests that Oswald got his edi­tion of the pam­phlet from the CIA. (Recall that David Phillips and James McCord head­ed the CIA’s anti-FPCC effort.)

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

1.–Review of JFK’s strip­ping of Charles Mur­phy of his Air Force Reserve com­mis­sion and Mur­phy’s state­ment that he did­n’t mind because his real alle­giance was to Dulles.
2.–Discussion of Guy Ban­is­ter’s detec­tive agency as a far right/fascist intel­li­gence ser­vice, infil­trat­ing lib­er­al and left­ist polit­i­cal milieux.
3.–Richard Nixon’s pres­ence in Dal­las on 11/22/1963 and the pro­found con­nec­tions between Water­gate and the JFK assas­si­na­tion.


FTR #1033 Interview #3 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The third 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 with dis­cus­sion of Cuba and JFK’s pol­i­cy with regard to Cas­tro.

(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.)

After review­ing dis­cus­sion from FTR #1032, the pro­gram high­lights the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis. The best known of JFK’s actions with regard to Cuba, the “Thir­teen Days” exem­pli­fies how Kennedy stood against the Cold War polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment and what Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er called “The Mil­i­tary-Indus­tri­al Com­plex,” earn­ing the hatred of key play­ers on the U.S. polit­i­cal stage at the time.

Once it became clear that the Sovi­ets had placed offen­sive inter­me­di­ate range bal­lis­tic mis­siles in Cuba, plans were drawn up for both air strikes to take out the mis­siles and a mil­i­tary inva­sion of Cuba as a whole. Kennedy was exco­ri­at­ed for tak­ing a more thought­ful tack.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 63.

. . . . On Octo­ber 9, Kennedy had a meet­ing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy got into a back and forth with the hawk­ish Air Force Gen­er­al Cur­tis LeMay. . . . LeMay frowned upon the block­ade option. . . . “If we don’t do any­thing in Cuba, then they’re going to push on Berlin and push real hard because they’ve got us on the run.” LeMay, who was nev­er one to mince words, then went even fur­ther. To  show his utter  dis­dain for the block­ade con­cept, the World War II vet­er­an actu­al­ly brought up some­thing rather bizarre. He said, “The block­ade and polit­i­cal action, I see lead­ing into war. . . . This is almost as bad as the appease­ment at Munich.” LeMay was now com­par­ing Kennedy’s pref­er­ence for the block­ade with Neville Cham­ber­lain’s giv­ing away the Sude­ten­land to the Nazis, which encour­aged Hitler to invade Poland. Although not express­ing them­selves in such extreme fig­ures of speech, the rest of the chiefs of staff agreed with LeMay. . . .  

Think­ing that the Sovi­et buildup may have been a gam­bit to oblige the U.S. to for­go sup­port for West Berlin in exchange for with­draw­al of the nuclear forces in Cuba, Kennedy sought oth­er alter­na­tives. (Younger lis­ten­ers should bear in mind that West Berlin was the West­ern-aligned half of Berlin, which was itself locat­ed deep in East Ger­many.)

Ulti­mate­ly, Kennedy and Sovi­et pre­mier Niki­ta Khr­uschev drew down hos­til­i­ties, after Kennedy insti­tut­ed a naval block­ade of Sovi­et mar­itime ship­ments of mil­i­tary materiel to Cuba. Jim presents the alto­geth­er for­mi­da­ble order of bat­tle in Cuba, indi­cat­ing the strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that, had the more aggres­sive U.S. con­tin­gency plans been imple­ment­ed, it would have led to a Third World War and the end of our  civ­i­liza­tion.

As the elder Von Moltke observed: “No bat­tle plan sur­vives con­tact with the ene­my.” Some­thing would not have gone accord­ing to plan in the pro­posed mil­i­tary adven­tures against the Sovi­et pres­ence in Cuba. When that hap­pened, there would have been World War III.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 66.

. . . . The deploy­ment includ­ed 40 land based bal­lis­tic launch­ers, includ­ing 60 mis­siles in five mis­sile reg­i­ments. The medi­um range mis­siles had a range of 1,200 miles, the long-range ones, 2,400 miles. In addi­tion, there were to be 140 air-defense mis­sile launch­ers to pro­tect the sites. Accom­pa­ny­ing then would be a Russ­ian army of 45,000 men with four motor­ized rifle reg­i­ments and over 250 units of armor. There would also be a wing of MIG-21 fight­ers, with 40 nuclear armed IL-28 bombers. Final­ly, there was to be a sub­ma­rine mis­sile base with an ini­tial deploy­ment of eleven sub­marines, sev­en of them capa­ble of launch­ing one mega­ton nuclear war­heads. In addi­tion, there were low-yield tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons for coastal defense in case of an inva­sion. . . . 

Fol­low­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, Kennedy sought to woo Cas­tro away from the Sovi­et Union with a diplo­mat­ic rap­proche­ment between Cuba and the U.S.

Using U.S. diplo­mat William Atwood, French jour­nal­ist Jean Daniel and Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Lisa Howard as inter­me­di­aries, JFK was seek­ing to nor­mal­ize U.S./Cuban rela­tions.

The CIA and its anti-Cas­tro Cuban con­tin­gent learned of the nego­ti­a­tions, and under­took a num­ber of covert oper­a­tions, such as the Pawley/Bayo/Martino raid to break up the nego­ti­a­tions.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

The roles of many of the “Drama­tis Per­son­ae” who fig­ure in Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the JFK assas­si­na­tion in anti-Cas­tro Cuban intrigue, includ­ing:

1.–David Fer­rie’s work as a para­mil­i­tary train­er at camps used to train anti-Cas­tro guer­ril­las and as a pilot on var­i­ous “ops” against Cas­tro.
2.–Clay Shaw’s work orga­niz­ing CIA anti-Cas­tro Cuban activ­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the New Orleans area.
3.–Guy Ban­is­ter’s “detec­tive agency,” which served as a front for para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against Cas­tro’s Cuba and also as a cov­er for Lee Har­vey Oswald’s role as a faux Cas­tro sup­port­er and Fair Play For Cuba mem­ber.
4.–Bernardo de Tor­res’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Bay of Pigs and sub­se­quent anti-Cas­tro activ­i­ties, as well as his work with silenced weapons devel­op­er Mitchell Wer­Bell and as an infil­tra­tor into Gar­rison’s office.
5.–Eladio Del Valle’s work with David Fer­rie, among oth­ers, and his bru­tal mur­der.
6.-Sergio Arcacha Smith’s role as a key offi­cial of the CIA front orga­ni­za­tion CRC and his links to many oth­er fig­ures in Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion.
7.–CIA offi­cer David Atlee Phillips and his work against Cas­tro, as well as against the U.S. Cas­tro sup­port group Fair Play For Cuba. In a 1988 con­ver­sa­tion with his estranged broth­er short­ly before his death, Phillips admit­ted hav­ing been in Dal­las when Kennedy was killed.
8.–Future Water­gate bur­glar James McCord’s work with Phillips against the FPCC.
9.–Antonio Veciana’s work with Alpha 66, arguably the most mil­i­tant of the anti-Cas­tro exile groups and his mys­te­ri­ous con­trol offi­cer “Mau­rice Bish­op,” who appears to have been David Atlee Phillips.
10.–Future Water­gate Bur­glar E. Howard Hunt’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Allen Dulles and Charles Mur­phy on the anti-Kennedy For­tune Mag­a­zine arti­cle, as well as his work on the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion.