Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'USSR' is associated with 153 posts.

Latest Patreon Talks: Marcos Attorneys Solicit Sterling Seagrave, Review of Jimmy Carter Presidency, Ukraine War Anniversary

The lat­est Patre­on talks, with machine tran­scrip­tions, include: Analy­sis of Jim­my Carter’s Pres­i­den­cy and dis­cus­sion of an approach to the Sea­graves by attor­neys for the deposed Mar­cos cou­ple. Dr. Jef­frey Sachs “pret­ty con­vinced” Covid came from a U.S. Bio-Lab. 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.


Murdering History: Franz Halder’s Post-Reich Career

Gen­er­al Franz Halder has played a deci­sive role in the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca, work­ing for the Pen­ta­gon, along with hun­dreds of oth­er Third Reich alum­ni to rewrite the his­to­ry of the Sec­ond World War. “. . . . Halder’s job was to reha­bil­i­tate Nazism for the ben­e­fit of his new Amer­i­can patrons. If the Nazis could be ide­o­log­i­cal­ly sep­a­rat­ed from the Ger­man peo­ple and the Ger­man Army, Amer­i­ca could use the most use­ful of Hitler’s sol­diers in their war against the Sovi­et Union with­out rais­ing sus­pi­cion. Halder over­saw a team of 700 for­mer Wehrma­cht offi­cers and inten­tion­al­ly set about rewrit­ing his­to­ry to present the image of a clean Wehrma­cht and a Ger­man peo­ple igno­rant of Nazi bru­tal­i­ty. His deputy was CIA agent Adolf Heusinger, a Nazi war crim­i­nal who was large­ly respon­si­ble for plan­ning the end­less mas­sacres of ‘secu­ri­ty war­fare,’ and was lat­er a com­man­der of both the Ger­man Army and NATO. . . . From 1955 to 1991 his works were cit­ed at least 700 times in aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tions, espe­cial­ly by pro­fes­sors and researchers in West­ern mil­i­tary acad­e­mies. Since West­ern his­to­ri­ans were forced to drink from Halder’s well, they passed down the poi­son to their stu­dents, and from there the lies worked their way into the pub­lic con­scious­ness. Even­tu­al­ly, Nazi pro­pa­gan­da was laun­dered into ‘truth’ through sim­ple rep­e­ti­tion and care­ful con­trol of sources. . . . .” Dr. Jef­frey Sachs “pret­ty con­vinced” Covid came from a U.S. Bio-Lab. 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#1268 Interview #7 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.

The pro­gram begins with review of the man­ner in which our soci­ety is dri­ven by visu­al events: the “crawl” at the end of the movie “JFK” led to the for­ma­tion of the ARRB, in a man­ner anal­o­gous to how the air­ing of the Zaprud­er film on Ger­al­do River­a’s Good Night Amer­i­ca led to the for­ma­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

Next, we note that the ARRB staffers were peo­ple who did not believe that JFK’s assas­si­na­tion was a con­spir­a­cy, nor did they think that there was a cov­er-up.

Notable in the ARRB’s pro­ceed­ings is the fact that nei­ther CIA oper­a­tions records nor Con­gres­sion­al records are acces­si­ble via FOIA requests.

Notable in the ARRB’s pro­ceed­ings is the fact that nei­ther CIA oper­a­tions records nor Con­gres­sion­al records are acces­si­ble via FOIA requests.

In this regard, the ARRB was empow­ered in an impor­tant and unprece­dent­ed way.

Meet­ing resis­tance from then President–and for­mer CIA chief–George H.W. Bush, the ARRB was not staffed until Clin­ton became Pres­i­dent.

Judge Tun­heim (of the ARRB) not­ed that var­i­ous Fed­er­al Agen­cies felt that they could just wait out the ARRB until its man­dat­ed time had expired.

The board received exten­sions of its man­dat­ed time, although it still was not able to get all the doc­u­ments released.

The exten­sions stretched out ARRB’s tenure to four years.

A telling inci­dent occurred when Judge Tun­heim and the ARRB was pars­ing a CIA doc­u­ment they want­ed released. The Agency offi­cer present stat­ed that there was a rea­son that the doc­u­ment could not be released, but he just “could­n’t think of it.”

The CIA’s coun­sel, who was present, indi­cat­ed that the ARRB could pro­ceed as planned.

Of note is the fact that Judge Tun­heim dis­closed that George Joan­nides, who over saw Car­los Bringuier’s DRE for the CIA, had served as the Agen­cy’s liai­son to the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions and that the ARRB, as well as the HSCA, was mis­led in this regard.

As not­ed pre­vi­ous­ly, researcher Jef­fer­son Mor­ley’s Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act law­suit direct­ed at oblig­ing CIA to dis­close more infor­ma­tion about Joan­nides was turned down by an appeals court, with Brett Kavanaugh cast­ing a deci­sive vote, just before his nom­i­na­tion to the Supreme Court.

The CIA did release records about Lee Har­vey Oswald, which had been in the province of the late James Jesus Angle­ton.

In our long series of inter­views with Mr. DiEu­ge­nio about Des­tiny Betrayed, we not­ed that Har­ry Con­nick, who suc­ceed­ed Jim Gar­ri­son as New Orleans DA, had ordered some of Gar­rison’s files to be burned.

Many were, how­ev­er one of Con­nick­’s assis­tants did not burn those records and kept the doc­u­ments. Even­tu­al­ly, the ARRB got those doc­u­ments.

Con­nick was not pleased.

Review­ing some of our syn­op­tic dis­cus­sion about Con­nick, from the writ­ten descrip­tion for FTR#1050:

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis about Con­nick:

1.–He was seem­ing­ly omnipresent in Clay Shaw’s crim­i­nal tri­al, oper­at­ing to obstruct Gar­ri­son and aid Clay Shaw and the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment, for which he  worked.
2.–Station WDSU–very close to Clay Shaw and the vehi­cle for both the Wal­ter Sheri­dan dis­in­for­ma­tion hit piece on Jim Gar­ri­son and the Ed Butler/Carlos Bringuier inter­view of the “Com­mu­nist” Oswald–was active on behalf of Con­nick.
3.–The Gur­vich broth­ers, who infil­trat­ed Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion and net­worked with Clay Shaw’s defense team (with William appear­ing as a wit­ness in the hear­ing on Shaw’s per­jury tri­al), were active on behalf of Har­ry Con­nick.
4.–Clay Shaw him­self, as well as DRE oper­a­tive Car­los Bringuier con­tributed to Con­nick­’s elec­tion cam­paign.
5.–In his sec­ond cam­paign to replace Gar­ri­son, Con­nick was suc­cess­ful.
6.–After becom­ing New Orleans DA, he burned many of Gar­rison’s files.


The Ukraine Crisis In Pictures UPDATED ON 1/26/2022

We have exhaus­tive­ly cov­ered the return to pow­er in Ukraine of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions, heirs to the Third Reich allies who per­pe­trat­ed Nazi eth­nic cleans­ing there dur­ing World War II. The Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry is exe­cut­ing a gov­ern­ment man­date to erase and rewrite the World War II his­to­ry of Ukraine and the OUN/B, mak­ing it a crime to pub­licly crit­i­cize the OUN/B and its aux­il­iary ele­ments. Recent­ly, the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly vot­ed on a res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing cel­e­bra­tions of Nazism. Only the U.S. and Ukraine vot­ed against it. It is said that “a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words.” Pic­tures in this post explain very clear­ly what our media have pur­pose­ly ignored. Pro­fes­sor Ivan Katchanovs­ki has metic­u­lous­ly set forth foren­sic evi­dence that the sniper fire that killed both demon­stra­tors and police at the Maid­an erup­tion came from build­ings occu­pied by Svo­bo­da and oth­er OUN/B suc­ces­sor groups. Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment made Roman Shukevyech a Hero of Ukraine and the city of Lviv–in which he led the mas­sacre of thou­sands of res­i­dents of the city–commemorated him on the anniver­sary of the begin­ning of the pogrom. You can view pic­tures of his hench­mens’ hand­i­work here. One fea­ture of the 1941 Lviv pogrom was the preva­lence of “street humiliations”–the strip­ping, rap­ing and mur­der of women. The Shukevyech­fest com­mem­o­ra­tive fes­tiv­i­ties elicit­ed no protest from fem­i­nists. 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.


Gehlen, Nazis, Nuclear War: History of Cold War, Germany, the U.S. and China

A recent “Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy” post pro­vides his­tor­i­cal depth and con­text to the Full Court Press against Chi­na. West­ern anti-Chi­na pol­i­cy incor­po­rat­ed and was informed by Third Reich exter­mi­na­tion­ist ide­ol­o­gy and prac­tice. Prepara­to­ry to the planned drop­ping of 34 nuclear war­heads on Chi­na, Nazi East­ern-Front tank com­man­ders work­ing under BND aus­pices helped draw up and coor­di­nate plans for Kuom­intang units to occu­py Chi­na after the nukes were dropped. Work­ing direct­ly with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s son “Wego, for­mer­ly a cadet in the Nazi mil­i­tary,” the Nazi units con­tin­ued their work on Tai­wan. In addi­tion, Nazi SS influ­ence man­i­fest­ed in the show­ing on Ger­man TV of SS doc­u­men­tary films about Tibet, fea­tur­ing footage of Bruno Beger (above right), an SS war crim­i­nal and mem­ber of the Tibetan Gov­ern­ment-in-exile. Vet­er­ans of the Waf­fen SS and Wehrma­cht helped pro­pel the momen­tum of the Uighur “op” in Bavaria.


Failure in Afghanistan

A rel­a­tive­ly rare piece of qual­i­ty, inci­sive analy­sis from the Main­stream Media, Craig Whit­lock­’s “At War With The Truth” presents an hon­est, albeit atten­u­at­ed, analy­sis of the fail­ure of the war in Afghanistan. In addi­tion, this paper presents the back­ground to, and foun­da­tion of, the lat­est iter­a­tion of the Rus­sia-gate psy-op: “Boun­ty­gate.” A thought­ful piece by Scott Rit­ter in “Con­sor­tium News” pars­es the deep pol­i­tics of “Boun­ty­gate” and the real­i­ty of Russ­ian pol­i­cy vis a vis the Tal­iban and Cen­tral Asia.


FTR #1102 Fascism: 2019 World Tour, Part 12 (The Intermarium Continuity, Part 3–Further Reflections on The Pivot Point)

Full appre­ci­a­tion and analy­sis of the his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal depth of Ukraine as a piv­ot point–a nexus vital to con­trol of the Earth Island and, con­se­quent­ly, the world–can be gleaned from exam­i­na­tion of the extent of net­work­ing between Ukrain­ian fas­cists, oth­er Cen­tral and East­ern Euro­pean fas­cists and Third Reich intel­li­gence. Note the mas­sive pres­ence of a Ukrainian/Nazi Fifth Col­umn in the US, linked to and direct­ed by Third Reich intel­li­gence.

The Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist alliance with Nazi Ger­many had as its foun­da­tion the under­stand­ing that Hitler would invade the Sovi­et Union and enlist the Ukraini­ans as allies.

This por­tion of the dis­cus­sion over­laps mate­r­i­al pre­sent­ed in FTR #907.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include:

1.–The role of for­mer Czarist intel­li­gence agent Boris Bra­sol in the White Russian/fascist under­ground oper­at­ing in con­junc­tion with Axis intel­li­gence. [Note: in FTR #511–a recap of Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M11–we not­ed Boris Bra­sol’s role as a con­duit of funds between Amer­i­can indus­tri­al­ist Hen­ry Ford and Adolf Hitler.]
2.–The pres­ence in this milieu of Gen­er­al George Van Horn Mose­ley, who was: an aide to Dou­glas MacArthur; an aide to Sen­a­tor Joseph McCarthy; as dis­cussed in AFA #10, a plot­ter with Third Reich intel­li­gence to over­throw FDR.
3.–Harry Ben­net­t’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Axis agent Father Couglin. Ben­nett was in charge of Hitler finan­cial backer Hen­ry Ford’s “Per­son­nel Ser­vice,” which used pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nals to attack Ford employ­ees and union orga­niz­ers. Ben­nett was a key mem­ber of the Michi­gan parole board and got some of the most vicious crim­i­nals in that state’s cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem released into the ser­vice of Ford, where they con­tin­ued to ply their trade.
4.–The key pres­ence in this milieu of the OUN, which had a head­quar­ters in Rome. ” . . . . In late 1940, the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists [OUN–D.E.] moved to Rome, where a cor­re­spon­dent of the offi­cial Ukrain­ian Fas­cist news­pa­per Svo­bo­da, of New Jer­sey, was the pay­mas­ter of funds sup­plied in the Unit­ed States. All mem­bers of the orga­ni­za­tion in Ger­many were in the Gestapo or the Reg­u­lar Army from the moment war broke out in Europe. They kept up con­stant con­tact with their Amer­i­can asso­ciates. . . .”

The Ukrain­i­nan fas­cist milieu was exposed in by Alex­ei Pelypenko. A Roman Catholic priest, Pelypenko turned against the Axis after the Hitler-Stal­in pact. No longer hav­ing con­fi­dence in Hitler’s plans to invade the Sovi­et Union and enlist the sup­port of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists as a polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary ally.

Pelypenko and oth­ers sought to ally them­selves with Britain and the U.S. in a Cen­tral Euro­pean alliance that listeners/readers will rec­og­nize as a man­i­fes­ta­tion of the Inter­mar­i­um. ” . . . . the action of the Moscow gov­ern­ment in mov­ing into East Poland and stop­ping the Ger­man advance and the sign­ing of the pact between Hitler and Stal­in caused him and his fel­low Ukraini­ans to lose faith in the Ger­mans’ car­ry­ing out their part of the agree­ment. He and his col­leagues felt that they should throw their lot in with the British and work for the for­ma­tion of a bloc of Slav­ic states, includ­ing Yugoslavia, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Roma­nia, Bul­gar­ia, and ‘Ukrainia.’ These col­leagues knew that it would be nec­es­sary to have British and Amer­i­can sup­port to form the bloc and defend the area from Russ­ian aggres­sion. . . .”

Note, also, that the OUN assas­si­nat­ed the Pol­ish Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or. The assas­sin was said by Pelypenko to have been tar­get­ing FDR on behalf of the Axis. ” . . . . he [Pelypenko] revealed that a White Russ­ian who had assas­si­nat­ed the Pol­ish Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or in 1934, was being import­ed to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Roo­sevelt. . . . ”

We con­clude the pro­gram with dis­cus­sion of the OUN’s mur­der of Pol­ish Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or Bro­nis­law Pier­ac­ki. Accord­ing to Pelypenko, the assas­sin was going to be brought into the Unit­ed States to kill FDR. Note that the assas­si­na­tion of Pier­ac­ki was planned at a meet­ing in Berlin.

” . . . . The assas­si­na­tion of Bro­nisław Pier­ac­ki, referred to as the War­saw process in the Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­og­ra­phy, was a well-orches­trat­ed tar­get killing of Poland’s top politi­cian of the inter­war peri­od, Min­is­ter of Inte­ri­or Bro­nisław Pier­ac­ki (1895–1934) by the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) as a retal­i­a­tion for the gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy of Paci­fi­ca­tion which was car­ried out by the police. OUN was formed in Poland as an amal­ga­ma­tion between a num­ber of extreme right-wing orga­ni­za­tions includ­ing the Union of Ukrain­ian Fascists.[2] From the moment of its found­ing in 1929, fas­cism played a cen­tral role in the orga­ni­za­tion, com­bin­ing extreme eth­no-nation­al­ism with ter­ror­ism, cor­po­ratism, and anti-Semitism.[2][3] The cho­sen assas­sin, Hry­horij Maciejko pseu­do­nym ‘Gon­ta’, was a trust­ed mem­ber of OUN.[4] The assas­si­na­tion plan was decid­ed at an OUN meet­ing in Berlin. Maciejko was sup­plied with a makeshift bomb and a 7.65mm cal­iber pis­tol from Bandera.[1] In the morn­ing of 15 June 1934 Maciejko (age 31) appeared at the Fok­sal Street in War­saw in front of a social club fre­quent­ed by Pier­ac­ki. He wait­ed there for sev­er­al hours unde­tect­ed. The min­is­ter arrived in his lim­ou­sine at 3:30 p.m.; how­ev­er, Maciejko’s bomb failed. He pulled the gun and shot the min­is­ter from behind twice in the back of his head.[4] Maciejko escaped suc­cess­ful­ly with the help of OUN emis­saries all the way to Czecho­slo­va­kia and fur­ther to Argenti­na. . . . ”

Ulti­mate­ly, OUN per­son­nel were involved in cov­er­ing-up the assas­si­na­tion of JFK by help­ing to cre­ate the “Sovi­ets did it” diver­sion. This was cov­ered at length in FTR #876.


FTR #1053 Interview #22 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

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 twen­ty-sec­ond in 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.

This pro­gram con­tin­ues exam­i­na­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

Even­tu­al­ly, the col­lab­o­ra­tionist main­stream media began an assault on Richard Sprague and the work of the com­mit­tee. The New York Times, The Los Ange­les Times and The Wash­ing­ton Post began the assault, which quick­ly drew blood. . . .

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 333–334.

. . . . The only time he ever had his cre­den­tials ques­tioned was dur­ing the six months he agreed to swerve as coun­sel to the HSCA. And that is sim­ply because he was going to super­vise a real inves­ti­ga­tion of the JFK case. Yet, the same thing hap­pened to him as hap­pened to Jim Gar­ri­son. In fact, like Gar­ri­son, Sprague was also even accused of being in bed with the Mafia. When the first press attacks began. HSCA staffer Chris Shar­rett remem­bers think­ing, ‘It’s Gar­ri­son all over again.’ Or, as Joe Rauh, who knew Sprague from Philadel­phia and had a front row seat to the con­tro­ver­sy in Wash­ing­ton said, ‘You know, I nev­er thought the Kennedy case was a con­spir­a­cy until now. But if they can do that to Dick Sprague, it must have been.’ With Sprague’s res­ig­na­tion, the House Select Com­mit­tee sur­vived. The inter­im Chief Coun­sel was Tanen­baum with Al Lewis, a friend and col­league of Sprague’s as his deputy. . . .

In the inter­im, between Sprague’s res­ig­na­tion and the ascen­sion of G. Robert Blakey to the Chief Coun­sel posi­tion, George DeMohren­schildt died of a shot­gun wound to the head.

DeMohren­schildt: was part of the fam­i­ly that man­aged the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Kon­stan­tin May­dell, in charge of Abwehr oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States for a time (Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence); was a sus­pect­ed Nazi spy in World War II; was an asso­ciate of George H.W. Bush; was a long­time CIA asset; was a petro­le­um geol­o­gist.

DeMohren­schildt imple­ment­ed the Oswalds’ intro­duc­tion to the White Russ­ian milieu in Dal­las. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­pose is the fact that he made con­tact with the cou­ple at the sug­ges­tion of J. Wal­ton Moore, who was the pri­ma­ry CIA offi­cer in the Dal­las area!

The White Rus­sians appeared to be work­ing to sep­a­rate Mari­na and Lee, and were involved in han­dling Mari­na after the assas­si­na­tion.

A long-stand­ing CIA asset, DeMohren­schildt had worked with the agency on numer­ous projects in Yugoslavia, Haiti and else­where. Sus­pect­ed of hav­ing spied on the Aransas Pass Coast Guard Sta­tion (in Texas) for the Third Reich, DeMohren­schildt was the cousin of Baron Kon­tan­tin May­dell, who over­saw Abwehr oper­a­tions in the U.S. for a time. (The Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence.)

As dis­cussed in FTR #712, we high­light­ed DeMohren­schildt’s links to for­mer CIA direc­tor George H.W. Bush, for whom CIA head­quar­ters is named. In that same pro­gram, we cov­ered Bush’s involve­ment  in the JFK assas­si­na­tion. LIke DeMohren­schildt and many of the White Rus­sians who asso­ci­at­ed with the Oswalds in the Dal­las area, Bush had roots in the petro­le­um indus­try.

Note­wor­thy in the con­text of Oswald’s pres­ence in Dal­las, is that this alleged trai­tor was employed by Jag­gars, Chiles and Sto­vall, a firm that did clas­si­fied work for the mil­i­tary, includ­ing projects asso­ci­at­ed with the U‑2 spy plane! That the “trai­tor” Oswald, who offered to dis­close clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about the U‑2 and U.S. avi­a­tion oper­a­tions to the Sovi­ets could be employed by such a firm is unthink­able, IF we are to take the offi­cial ver­sion of Oswald at face val­ue.

Ulti­mate­ly, DeMohren­schildt hand­ed the Oswalds–Lee and Marina–off to the “Quak­er lib­er­als” Michael and Ruth Paine.

DeMohren­schildt’s death was ruled a sui­cide, but the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his demise are note­wor­thy.

At the time he died, DeMohren­schildt was net­work­ing with a Dutch jour­nal­ist named Willem Olt­mans, who began spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion after DeMohren­schildt’s demise. DeMohren­schildt was also net­work­ing with jour­nal­ist Edward Epstein, who pressed the “Sovi­ets did it” meme for a time and whose behav­ior vis a vis DeMohren­schildt is ques­tion­able.

Pri­or to his death, DeMohren­schildt was under­go­ing psy­chi­atric treat­ment, appar­ent­ly includ­ing elec­tro-shock ther­a­py, from a Dal­las physi­cian named Men­doza. DeMohren­schildt’s wid­ow thinks the treat­ments may have had some­thing to do with her hus­band’s death.

The phys­i­cal evi­dence in con­nec­tion with DeMohren­schildt’s death sug­gests the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty of foul play.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 337.

. . . . Even though a coro­ner’s inquest ruled his death as self-inflict­ed, there are some seri­ous ques­tions about DeMohren­schildt’s demise. First, accord­ing to the crime scene report and the autop­sy, there was not any exit wound to the rear of the skull. Yet DeMohren­schildt alleged­ly placed a shot­gun in his mouth and pulled the trig­ger. It’s true that shot­gun shells dis­perse more quick­ly than jack­et­ed bul­lets. But his shot was almost with­in con­tact dis­tance. Nei­ther the maid nor the cook heard the shot­gun blast, even though both women were right below the room that DeMohren­schildt was in at the time. The police also had prob­lems explain­ing the blood spat­ter on the wall. When a blood spurt hits a flat sur­face, it cre­ates a dif­fer­ent pat­tern than if it hits a sur­face that is per­pen­dic­u­lar to it. In look­ing at pho­tographs of the spat­ter pat­tern, it appears that the bath­room door was closed at the time the shoot­ing took place, because the blood pat­tern looked con­tin­u­ous. But the police said this was not the case. The bath­room door was open at the time. The tes­ti­fy­ing offi­cer demeaned the jurors for ask­ing this ques­tion and then jumped to a new top­ic. But it would appear that some­one altered the crime scene after­wards. The final odd­i­ty about the scene is the posi­tion of the weapon after death. It fell trig­ger side up, par­al­lel to the chair DeMohren­schildt was in, with the bar­rel rest­ing at his feet and the butt of the rifle away from him and to his left. The police had a prob­lem with this issue and so did the inquest jurors. As author Jer­ry Rose has not­ed, this strange posi­tion­ing of the rifle sug­gests it was “placed” by some­one.

Ms. Tilton was not at home at the time of DeMohren­schildt’s death. But she had left strict instruc­tions for the maid to record her favorite TV pro­grams. The home had an alarm sys­tem which caused a qui­et bell to ring, any­time an out­side door or win­dow was opened. Dur­ing the hear­ing, the tape of the pro­gram was played. When it was the alarm bell went off and then the gun blast was heard. . . .

Sub­se­quent­ly, writer Jer­ry Poli­coff felt that Olt­mans was threat­en­ing him and that the Dutch jour­nal­ist was a male­fac­tor.

An ini­tial can­di­date to replace Richard Sprague was for­mer Supreme Court Jus­tice Arthur Gold­berg, who had been JFK’s Sec­re­tary of Labor.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 339.

. . . . For­mer Jus­tice of the Supreme Court Arthur Gold­berg was one can­di­date who turned down the job. Al Lewis had talked Gold­berg into fill­ing the posi­tion. But Gold­berg had one reser­va­tion. He want­ed to know if the CIA would coop­er­ate with him. Lewis sug­gest­ed call­ing up Stans­field Turn­er, Pres­i­dent Carter’s CIA Direc­tor. So Lewis called him and told him Gold­berg want­ed to talk with him. He put Gold­berg on the line and the can­di­date asked Turn­er if he could guar­an­tee the Agency would coop­er­ate if he became Chief Coun­sel. A long silence ensued. It got so long and so qui­et that Gold­berg turned to Lewis and said, ‘I’m not sure if he’s there any­more.’ Lewis sug­gest­ed that he say some­thing. So Gold­berg asked if he was still on the line and Turn­er said he was.  Gold­berg asked him for an answer to his ques­tion. Turn­er said, ‘I though my silence was my answer.’ . . . .

Even­tu­al­ly, the HSCA set­tled on G. Robert Blakey as Chief Coun­sel and Richard (Dick) Billings as a key aide. Both had been involved with tar­ring Jim Gar­ri­son with the Mafia brush in a 1967 Life Mag­a­zine series.

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

. . . . But [David] 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. . . .

Blakey:

1.–Effectively eclipsed the New Orleans leads devel­oped by Jim Gar­ri­son.
2.–Bought into the Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry.
3.–Eclipsed evi­dence about “Oswald’s” sniper’s nest in the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry.

Most impor­tant­ly, Blakey gave the intel­li­gence ser­vices the right to veto what infor­ma­tion would go into the com­mit­tee’s report.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 350.

” . . . . When Robert Blakey took charge of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions, he agreed to do some­thing that Richard Sprague would not. In return for access to clas­si­fied mate­ri­als, mem­bers and employ­ees f the com­mit­tee signed agree­ments pledg­ing not to dis­close any infor­ma­tion they gar­nered while doing their work. Then, when Blakey, Gary Corn­well, and Dick Billings edit­ed the report and vol­umes, the agen­cies they made agree­ments that [the agen­cies] were allowed to veto what infor­ma­tion was includ­ed in the pub­lished vol­umes. This is the rea­son that the HSCA report on Mex­i­co City–assembled by two law stu­dents of Blakey’s from Cornell–was not part of the pub­lished vol­umes in 1979. For when it came time to vet the report for release, Blakey, Ed Lopez and Dan Hard­way met with the CIA rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The Agency made so many objec­tions, it took four hours to get through the first two para­graphs. The report is over 300 pages long. It was there­fore clas­si­fied until the ARRB was cre­at­ed. And then it had to go through sev­er­al reviews. But even today, an annex to the report, ‘Was Oswald an Agent of the CIA’ has not been released. This long clas­si­fied report con­firms that, as Gar­ri­son wrote in 1968, the Com­mis­sion ver­sion of what hap­pened in Mex­i­co City was delib­er­ate­ly cov­ered in mist. . . .

Near the end of his inves­ti­ga­tion, Blakey was on the receiv­ing end of some ques­tion­able behav­ior from CIA liai­son Reg­is Blahut:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 340.

. . . . Toward the end, when CIA liai­son Reg­is Blahut was caught mis­han­dling Kennedy’s autop­sy pho­tos while they were secured in a safe, the Agency offered Blakey four ways to do an inquiry of what had hap­pened. The main object being to see if Blahut was part of  a larg­er oper­a­tion to under­mine the HSCA. One option was to do the inquiry through the D.C. police, anoth­er was through the FBI, and the third was an inter­nal HSCA inquiry. The last was to have the CIA do it. Even though the Agency offi­cers at this meet­ing strong­ly encour­aged Blakey not to choose them to do the inves­ti­ga­tion, he still did. The report­ing offi­cer, Hav­i­land Smith, made the only con­clu­sion he could from this meet­ing He wrote that his inter­pre­ta­tion of what Blakey want­ed was the Agency ‘to go ahead with the inves­ti­ga­tion of Blahut and that he expects us to come up with a clean bill of health for the CIA.’ Which, of course, they did despite the fact that Blahut flunked three poly­graph tests. When the author talked to HSCA staffer Eddie Lopez about this mat­ter, I told him that in read­ing these mem­o­ran­da, I was struck by  how friend­ly Blakey was with these CIA offi­cers. That is, what a  seem­ing­ly easy rap­port he had with them. I said, ‘You know, Eddie he talks to them . . . “Lopez inter­rupt­ed me in mid-sen­tence and com­plet­ed the thought for me: ‘He talks to them like he’s one of them.’ . . . .”

We note that, dur­ing the ear­ly phase of the HSCA’s inves­ti­ga­tion, George H.W. Bush was in charge of the CIA. George Joan­nides, who man­aged the DRE for CIA, was the Agen­cy’s main liai­son to the HSCA.


FTR #1051 Interview #20 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the twen­ti­eth in 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.

This pro­gram deals with Oswald in Mex­i­co City, one of the most impor­tant ele­ments in con­struct­ing the cov­er-up of the assas­si­na­tion.

The Mex­i­co City gam­bit entails “Oswald” osten­si­bly trav­el­ing to Mex­i­co City to vis­it the Cuban and Sovi­et embassies, the lat­ter involv­ing “Oswald’s” alleged con­tacts with Valery Kostikov, the KGB’s agent in charge of assas­si­na­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. When reports of this were cir­cu­lat­ed in the Amer­i­can media on the week­end of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, it appeared to many that the Sovi­et Union and/or Cuba was behind the assas­si­na­tion.

Ulti­mate­ly, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of World War III and a nuclear holo­caust break­ing out as a result of the assas­si­na­tion were used by Lyn­don Baines John­son to engi­neer a cov­er-up.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 359.

. . . . To say this decep­tion about Oswald in Mex­i­co worked well does not begin to do it jus­tice. For at the first meet­ing of the War­ren Com­mis­sion, the for­mer DA of Alame­da Coun­ty Cal­i­for­nia, Earl War­ren, came out meek as a lamb:

1.–He did not want the Com­mis­sion to employ any of their own inves­ti­ga­tors.
2.–He did not want the Com­mis­sion to gath­er evi­dence. Instead he wished for them to rely on reports made by oth­er agen­cies like the FBI and Secret Ser­vice.
3.–He did not want their hear­ings to be pub­lic. He did not want to employ the pow­er of sub­poe­na.
4.–Incredibly, he did not even want to call any wit­ness­es. He want­ed to rely on inter­views done by oth­er agen­cies.
5.–He then made a very curi­ous com­ment, “Meet­ings where wit­ness­es would be brought in would retard rather than help our inves­ti­ga­tion.

In oth­er words, as John­son told [then Sen­a­tor Richard] Rus­sell, they were to rat­i­fy the FBI’s inquiry. There was to be no real inves­ti­ga­tion by any­one. The Mex­i­co City cha­rade, with its threat of atom­ic holo­caust, had secured the cov­er up of Kennedy’s mur­der. . . .

Key ele­ments of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis on this top­ic include:

1.–Warren Com­mis­sion coun­sels David Slaw­son and William Cole­man relied on CIA and FBI liai­son for their infor­ma­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, they relied on coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence chief James Jesus Angle­ton and and his aide Ray Roc­ca for their infor­ma­tion. NB: Mr. Emory erred at one point in this inter­view, iden­ti­fy­ing Richard Helms a head of the CIA, he was Deputy Direc­tor of the Agency at this point in time.
2.–Slawson even con­sid­ered join­ing the CIA at this point. We can but won­der if, in fact, he did just that.
3.–Richard Helms appoint­ed Angle­ton to be the main liai­son for the Agency to the War­ren Com­mis­sion. Recall that Angle­ton and Ray Roc­ca were in charge of the Oswald pre-assas­si­na­tion files.
4.–Angleton and the FBI’s William Sul­li­van coor­di­nat­ed their response con­cern­ing Oswald hav­ing ties to U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies, deny­ing that that was, in fact, the case.
5.–A hand­ful of CIA offi­cers known as the SAS (not to be con­fused with the British com­man­do orga­ni­za­tion with the same ini­tials) devel­oped an inter­est in Oswald weeks before the assas­si­na­tion.
6.–Slawson and Cole­man relied on CIA sta­tion chief Win­ston Scott when in Mex­i­co City.
7.–Sylvia Duran, employed at the Cuban embassy in Mex­i­co City, report­ed the “Lee Har­vey Oswald” with whom she met as ” . . . being short, about five foot, six inch­es, blond and over thir­ty years old. Oswald was five foot, nine inch­es, dark haired, and twen­ty-four years old. . . .” (p. 349.)
8.–Duran not­ed that the pro­ce­dure used by the Oswald impos­tor to obtain a visa was sus­pi­cious: ” . . . . “They [U.S. com­mu­nists, which “Oswald” alleged­ly was] usu­al­ly fol­lowed a pro­ce­dure, arranged for by the Amer­i­can Com­mu­nist Par­ty, which allowed them to obtain a visa in advance through the Cuban Com­mu­nist Par­ty. . . The fact that Oswald did not do this was reveal­ing. It seemed to sug­gest that either Oswald was not a real com­mu­nist, or that peo­ple inside the com­mu­nist cir­cles in Amer­i­ca thought he was an agent provo­ca­teur. They there­fore did not trust him. . . .” (pp. 349–350.)
9.–The phone calls made to Sylvia Duran at the Cuban embassy con­tain sig­nif­i­cant dis­crep­an­cies: ” . . . . Duran stat­ed firm­ly that after the twen­ty-sev­enth, when Oswald had failed to secure his spe­cial visa, he did not call her back. Again, some­one embroi­dered this for the Com­mis­sion. For in the War­ren Report, she is quot­ed as say­ing ” . . . . she does not recall whether or not Oswald lat­er tele­phoned her at the Con­sulate num­ber she gave him.” This was an impor­tant dis­crep­an­cy in tes­ti­mo­ny. Because, as we shall see, there was anoth­er call to the Russ­ian con­sulate on Sat­ur­day the twen­ty-eighth [of Sep­tem­ber, 1963]. The CIA claims this call was by Duran, with Oswald also on the line. But if Duran’s recall is cor­rect, then the CIA evi­dence is spu­ri­ous. . . .” (p. 350.)
10.–When G. Robert Blakey and his asso­ciate Richard Billings assumed con­trol over the HSCA, they made a sig­nif­i­cant con­ces­sion: ” . . . . In return for access to clas­si­fied mate­ri­als, mem­bers and employ­ees f the com­mit­tee signed agree­ments pledg­ing not to dis­close any infor­ma­tion they gar­nered while doing their work. The, when Blakey, Gary Corn­well, and Dick billings edit­ed the report and vol­umes, the agen­cies they made agree­ments that [the agen­cies] were allowed to veto what infor­ma­tion was includ­ed in the pub­lished vol­umes. . ..” (p. 350.)
11.–While “Oswald” was sup­pos­ed­ly in Mex­i­co City, Sylvia Odio was vis­it­ed by three men, one whom was iden­ti­fied as “Leon Oswald,” an ex-Marine, an excel­lent shot, and some­one who felt that JFK should be assas­si­nat­ed for fail­ing to sup­port the Bay of Pigs inva­sion. ” . . . . After read­ing the War­ren Report, [HSCA’s first Chief Coun­sel Richard] Sprague won­dered why the com­mis­sion chose to dis­count the tes­ti­mo­ny of Sil­via Odio. . . . When she first heard of Oswald’s involve­ment with the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, she imme­di­ate­ly recalled the vis­it of the three men. That after­noon she became very fear­ful, so much so that she faint­ed. She then met with her sis­ter, ans and they had both been watch­ing tele­vi­sion with Oswald’s pho­to on the screen, they both real­ized he was the man who thought the Cubans should have killed Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. . . .” (pp. 350–351.)
12.–The Odio inci­dent cre­at­ed prob­lems for the War­ren Com­mi­sion: ” . . . . The third prob­lem, the one that both­ered Sprague, was that the dates of the vis­it clashed with the dates that Oswald was sup­posed to be going to Mex­i­co. . . .” (p. 352.)
13.–To dis­cred­it Sylvia Odio, War­ren Com­mis­sion coun­sel Wes­ley Liebler impugned her sex­u­al mores: ” . . . . Odio described what hap­pened next to Fonzi and the Church Com­mit­tee: ‘Not only that, he invit­ed me to his room upstairs to see some pic­tures. I did go, I went to his room. I want­ed to see how far a gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tor would go and what they were try­ing to do to a wit­ness. . . . He showed me pic­tures, he made advances, yes, but I told him he was crazy.’ Liebler was­n’t through. To show her what kind of oper­a­tion the Com­mis­sion real­ly was, he told her that they had seen her pic­ture and joked about it at the War­ren Com­mis­sion. They said things like what a pret­ty girl you are going to see Jim. . . . For HSCA staff lawyer Bill Triplett told this author that the rea­son that chair­man Earl War­ren did not believe Sylvia Odio is that she was some kind of a ‘loose woman.’ . . .” (pp. 352–353.)
14.–The lin­guis­tic capa­bil­i­ties of the “Oswald” who alleged­ly was con­tact­ing the Cuban and Sovi­et embassies in Mex­i­co City are con­tra­dic­to­ry: ” . . . . it has Oswald speak­ing flu­ent Span­ish, which no one has ever said Oswald did. Fur­ther, the HSCA report says that Oswald spoke poor, bro­ken Russ­ian. Yet both Mari­na Oswald and George DeMohren­schildt said Oswald spoke Russ­ian quite well upon his return to the Unit­ed States. Fur­ther, pro­fes­sion­al trans­la­tor Peter Gre­go­ry thought Oswald was flu­ent enough to give him a let­ter cer­ti­fy­ing Oswald’s abil­i­ty to serve as a trans­la­tor. . . .” (p. 353.)
15.–The “Oswald” pho­tographed in Mex­i­co City was obvi­ous­ly an impos­tor: ” . . . . The CIA had mul­ti­ple still cam­eras set up out­side the Cuban embassy in Mex­i­co City to catch every­one com­ing out of and going inside in order to secure a visa to Cuba. When, at the request of the Com­mis­sion, the FBI asked the CIA for a pho­to of Oswald enter­ing the con­sulate, they got Com­missin Exhib­it 237. This is a pic­ture of a husky six foot­er with a crew-cut. Obvi­ous­ly not Oswald. . . . In Owald’s com­bined five vis­its to the Cuban con­sulate and Sovi­et con­sulate, the bat­tery of CIA cam­eras failed to get even one pic­ture of him enter­ing or leav­ing. In oth­er words, they were zero for ten. And the cam­era right out­side the Cuban con­sulate was pulse acti­vat­ed. . . . ” (pp. 353–354.)
16.–Both David Phillips and his assis­tant Anne Good­pas­ture were involved in mul­ti­ple obfus­ca­tions of the facts: ” . . . . Anne Good­pas­ture was in charge of the ‘dai­ly take’ from both tar­get embassies. That is the pho­tographs tak­en from out­side and the clan­des­tine tape record­ings made from inside the com­pounds. This is impor­tant because she then would have been the first per­son to see a pho­to of Oswald. There­fore, she should have sent for a pho­to of Oswald from Lan­g­ley in a time­ly man­ner while Oswald was still in Mex­i­co City. She did not. . . .” (p. 354.)
17.–Next, we high­light more of Phillip­s’s obstruc­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion: ” . . . . Phillips said that they had no audio tapes because they ‘recy­cled their tapes every sev­en or eight days.’ The tapes were actu­al­ly recy­cled every ten days. But they were held for a longer time if so request­ed. Fur­ther, if any Amer­i­can cit­i­zen spoke bro­ken Russ­ian inside the Sovi­et con­sulate, the tape would be sent to Wash­ing­ton. Because he would be con­sid­ered of pos­si­ble oper­a­tional inter­est to the Sovi­ets. . . . Phillips also told [HSCA coun­sel Robert] Tanen­baum that the rea­son the CIA did not have a pho­to of Oswald was because their cam­era was out that day. This appears to be anoth­er lie. First of all, Oswald went to the Sovi­et con­sulate on two dif­fer­ent days, the twen­ty-sev­enth and twen­ty-eighth. So all three of the cam­eras cov­er­ing the site would have had to have been out on both days. . . .” (p. 354.)
18.–Phillips also dis­sem­bled con­cern­ing a cable sent to CIA head­quar­ters: ” . . . . The sur­veil­lance of the Russ­ian con­sulate revealed that by Octo­ber 1, the CIA knew that “Oswald” was in direct con­tact with those who worked there, such as Valery Kostikov of the KGB. But yet, the cable alert­ing head­quar­ters to this fact did not arrive until a week lat­er, Octo­ber 8, Phillips tried to explain this delay by blam­ing the trans­la­tors. He then said he knew that this was the case since he signed off on the cable. Hard­way and Lopez found out that Phillips did not sign off on the cable, since it did not deal in any way with Cuban mat­ters. But even worse, he could not have signed off on it because he was not in Mex­i­co City at the time. The like­ly rea­son the cable was sent out so late was to keep Oswald’s pro­file low while he was alleged­ly in Mex­i­co City. . . .” (pp. 354–355.)
19.–Oswald’s file at CIA began to be bifur­cat­ed: ” . . . . On or about Sep­tem­ber 23, Angle­ton began to bifur­cate Oswald’s file. the FBI reports on Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba Com­mit­tee activ­i­ties in New Orleans went into a new oper­a­tional file, sep­a­rate from his 201 file. There­fore, the bizarre things Oswald was doing in New Orleans . . . .were all kept out of his 201 file. So when the late arriv­ing cable final­ly did come into CIA HQ from Mex­i­co City about Oswald in the Sovi­et con­sulate, this was kept sep­a­rate from his New Orleans activ­i­ties. Then two dif­fer­ent cables were sent out on Octo­ber 10. One was sent to the Bureau, the State Depart­ment, and the Navy, describ­ing a man who does­n’t fit Oswald’s descrip­tion: he is thir­ty-five years old, has an ath­let­ic build, and stands six feet tall. This descrip­tion resem­bles the Mys­tery Man pho­to. . . .” (pp. 355–356.)
20.–An alto­geth­er remark­able and reveal­ing aspect of the “Oswald” in Mex­i­co City gam­bit con­cerns the FBI’s “FLASH” notice on Oswald: ” . . . . Oswald was not placed on the FBI’s Secu­ri­ty Index list which was passed on to the Secret Ser­vice in advance of Kennedy’s vis­it to Dal­las. If he had been on that list, the Secret Ser­vice would have made sure he was not on the motor­cade route, since he con­sti­tut­ed a clear risk to Pres­i­dent Kennedy. One rea­son he was not on the list is because the FBI “FLASH” on Oswald, which had been in effect since his defec­tion in 1959 was removed. This warn­ing required any infor­ma­tion or inquiry on the sub­ject to e imme­di­ate­ly for­ward­ed to the Espi­onage Sec­tion of Divi­sion Five, the Domes­tic Intel­li­gence unit. Incred­i­bly, the “FLASH” was can­celed on Octo­ber 9, 1963. In oth­er words, after being attached to Oswald’s file for four years, it was removed just hours after he cable from Mex­i­co City arrived in Wash­ing­ton report­ing Oswald’s vis­it to the Sovi­et com­pound and meet­ing with Kostikov . . . .” (p. 356.)
21.–In light of Valery Kostikov’s iden­ti­ty, the FBI’s behav­ior is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing: ” . . . . Kostikov’s true iden­ti­ty was revealed. His was the KGB unit respon­si­ble for assas­si­na­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. After being method­i­cal­ly lulled to sleep . . . this infor­ma­tion must have felt like a hard punch to the jaw. Oswald had met with the KGB rep­re­sen­ta­tive for assas­si­na­tion sev­en weeks before Kennedy arrived in Dal­las. Yet, he was allowed to be in the build­ing behind where the Pres­i­den­t’s lim­ou­sine would be dri­ving. And no one in the FBI or Secret Ser­vice did any­thing for near­ly two months. The dia­bol­i­cal trap had been sprung. Hoover had no choice. He went into CYA over­drive. . . .” (p. 357.)
22.–In response to a tele­phoned ques­tion from Lyn­don Baines John­son, Hoover revealed that his agents had heard the tapes of “Oswald” speak­ing and seen the pho­tographs of “Oswald” vis­it­ing the Mex­i­co City diplo­mat­ic posts, but that nei­ther the calls, nor the pic­ture was the real Lee Har­vey Oswald. ” . . . . Hoover replied that this was all very con­fus­ing. He said that they had a tape and a pho­to of a man who was at the Sovi­et con­sulate using Oswald’s name. But, ‘That pic­ture and the tape do not cor­re­spond to this man’s voice, nor to his appear­ance. In oth­er words, it appears that there is a sec­ond per­son who was at the Sovi­et Embassy down there.’ On that same day, Hoover wrote a mem­o­ran­dum in which he said that two FBI agents who had been ques­tion­ing Oswald heard this tape and con­clud­ed that the voice on the tape was not Oswald’s. . . .” (p. 357.)
23.–In order to resolve the con­tra­dic­tions that the FBI had high­light­ed about “Oswald” in Mex­i­co City, the lie was gen­er­at­ed that the tapes had been destroyed before the assas­si­na­tion. Yet, Stan­ley Wat­son demon­strat­ed oth­er­wise: ” . . . . CIA offi­cer and Deputy Sta­tion Chief Stan­ley Wat­son tes­ti­fied to the HSCA that at least one record­ing exist­ed after the assas­si­na­tion. Fur­ther, the man who was first in charge of the CIA’s inquiry for the War­ren Com­mis­sion, John Whit­ten, wrote that while some tapes had been erased, some of ‘the actu­al tapes were also reviewed,’ and that anoth­er copy of the Octo­ber 1 ‘inter­cept on Lee Oswald’ had been ‘dis­cov­ered after the assas­si­na­tion. . . .” (p. 358.)
24.–In 1971, after the death of for­mer Mex­i­co City sta­tion chief Win­ston Scott, his wid­ow was threat­ened with removal of her sur­vivor ben­e­fits if she did not per­mit CIA coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence chief James Angle­ton access to her late hus­band’s safe: ” . . . . April 28, 1971 was the day after Janet Scott buried her hus­band Win­ston Scott. When she heard of Scot­t’s death, Anne Good­pas­ture told James Angle­ton about the con­tents of the for­mer Mex­i­co City sta­tion chief’s safe. On that day, on a mis­sion approved by Richard Helms, James Angle­ton flew to Mex­i­co City. He was in such a hur­ry that he for­got his pass­port. And if the record­ings were of the same false Oswald’s voice on tape, it would endan­ger the cov­er sto­ry about those tapes being destroyed pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion. After enter­ing the house, Angle­ton vague­ly threat­ened Janet’s wid­ow’s ben­e­fits. He then had scot­t’s safe emp­tied. The con­tents were shipped by plane to Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia. The man most respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing first, the Oswald leg­end, then the design of the dooms­day sce­nario to the plot had now dis­posed of a last obstruc­tion to his hand­i­work. . . .” (p. 361.)


FTR #1036 Interview #6 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The sixth 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.)

In FTR #1035, we set forth the sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the Sovi­et Union:

• A num­ber of aspects of his tenure the Sovi­et Union sug­gest that, not only was he there as a spook, but the Sovi­ets knew that he was there to spy. Among the note­wor­thy aspects of his Sovi­et sojourn that are set forth in this pro­gram:
• Oswald was giv­en a hard­ship dis­charge with just a few months remain­ing on his enlist­ment tour. He got this in an inor­di­nate­ly short amount of time. He was sup­posed to take care of his moth­er, and yet his broth­er Robert was there to care for her, mak­ing Lee’s pres­ence there unnec­es­sary.
• Oswald booked his steamship pas­sage from the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart in New Orleans, head­ed up by Clay Shaw, who was the focal point of Jim Gar­rison’s tri­al.
• Oswald osten­si­bly was going to Europe to attend Albert Schweitzer Col­lege, an obscure Swiss insti­tu­tion that the Swiss police required two months to locate.
• He defect­ed to the Sovi­et Union from Helsin­ki, Fin­land. His stay there rais­es sev­er­al ques­tions, includ­ing the fact that he stayed at the Torni Hotel, a five-star, lux­u­ry hotel.
• After leav­ing the Torni Hotel, he stayed at the Hotel Klaus Kur­ki, anoth­er high-end insti­tu­tion. How Oswald was able to pay for his stay at these insti­tu­tions is a mystery–he did not have enough mon­ey in his Marine Corps pay checks to do this.
• His selec­tion of Helsin­ki is sig­nif­i­cant, also, because the Sovi­et Embassy there was the only one that could issue a trav­el visa to the Sovi­et Union in a lit­tle more than a week. It was the only Embassy that could do this. How did Oswald come to know this?
After review­ing the curi­ous aspects of the begin­ning Oswald’s “defec­tion” to the Sovi­et Union, the pro­gram notes many aspects of his stay in the U.S.S.R. that strong­ly sug­gest he was there as an under­cov­er intel­li­gence oper­a­tive.
After leav­ing from the curi­ous­ly con­ve­nient depar­ture point of Helsin­ki, Fin­land, Oswald met an agent from Intourist, the Sovi­et state trav­el agency. Once again, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Oswald’s stay in the Sovi­et Union are sug­ges­tive of an intel­li­gence cov­er, a “leg­end.”

1. Meet­ing with his Intourist guide, Oswald indi­cat­ed that he had secret infor­ma­tion about U.S. air oper­a­tions that he wished to share with Sovi­et intel­li­gence.
2. After being denied res­i­dence in the U.S.S.R. Oswald was involved in an appar­ent­ly “pho­ny” sui­cide attempt, which was almost cer­tain­ly an attempt to remain in the U.S.S.R. longer than his trav­el visa would have per­mit­ted. Were the Sovi­ets on to him? It seems alto­geth­er prob­a­ble.
3. Oswald was housed at the Metro­pole Hotel, which Sovi­et intel­li­gence out­fit­ted with sophis­ti­cat­ed sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy, indi­cat­ing sus­pi­cion on their part.
4. Oswald was inter­viewed by U.S. Embassy offi­cer Richard Sny­der, who had strong links to U.S. intel­li­gence, includ­ing a pro­gram at Har­vard to vet stu­dents for intel­li­gence-con­nect­ed trav­el to the U.S.S.R. One of the stu­dents he over­saw was Zbig­niew Brzezin­s­ki.
5. Sny­der appears to have “han­dled” Oswald in such a way that he would nev­er cease being a U.S. cit­i­zen. Once again, Oswald repeat­ed his intent to give secret intel­li­gence about U.S. air oper­a­tions to Sovi­et intel­li­gence, most like­ly a ref­er­ence to the U‑2 project.
6. Oswald was sent to Min­sk, where he was put to work in a radio fac­to­ry, after being afford­ed more-than-com­fort­able liv­ing cir­cum­stances by Sovi­et author­i­ties.
7. Oswald sub­mit­ted a detailed, 30-page paper on the radio fac­to­ry that appears to have been an intel­li­gence report on the instal­la­tion.
8. Also while in the U.S.S.R., Oswald gave inter­views to jour­nal­ists, includ­ing Priscil­la John­son MacMil­lan, who was a “will­ing CIA asset.” In that inter­view, Oswald gave a per­for­mance which could only be described as a hack­neyed man­i­fes­ta­tion of a stereo­typed Marxist/Communist.
9. The han­dling of Oswald’s files in the cor­ri­dors of U.S. intel­li­gence are more than a lit­tle strange. Despite hav­ing threat­ened to open a trea­so­nous breach in the secu­ri­ty of U.S. air oper­a­tions, no 201 file was opened on Oswald, and his doc­u­men­ta­tion at Lan­g­ley was rout­ed to James Angle­ton’s files on the false defec­tor pro­gram. This was unthink­able. As we will see in future dis­cus­sion, the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the FBI’s FLASH clas­si­fi­ca­tion on Oswald–which would have sound­ed an alert upon this osten­si­ble trai­tor­’s re-entry into the U.S.–is also out of the ordi­nary. Recall the unusu­al treat­ment afford­ed State Depart­ment offi­cer Otto Otep­ka in con­nec­tion with inquiries into Oswald and the false defec­tor pro­gram. This was high­light­ed in FTR #1035.
10. While in the U.S.S.R. he met Mari­na Prusako­va (lat­er Mari­na “Oswald”), who may very well have been a Sovi­et intel­li­gence agent.
11. Mari­na lived with her uncle, who was an offi­cer with the MVD, the Sovi­et equiv­a­lent of the FBI.
12. Mari­na inter­act­ed with Robert Web­ster, anoth­er appar­ent “pho­ny” defec­tor from the U.S. to the U.S.S.R. Web­ster had worked for the CIA-linked RAND cor­po­ra­tion. It is high­ly unlike­ly that she would have inter­act­ed with both Oswald and Web­ster as a mat­ter of coin­ci­dence.
13. Mari­na also dis­cussed hav­ing enter­tained Afghanistan’s ambas­sador to the Sovi­et Union, again, indica­tive of a prob­a­ble intel­li­gence link on Mari­na’s part.
14. Fur­ther bur­nish­ing Mari­na’s prob­a­ble intel­li­gence con­nec­tions is the fact that she was pro­fi­cient in the Eng­lish lan­guage, both spo­ken and writ­ten. The notion that she would have need­ed an inter­preter, as she is alleged to have required in post-assas­si­na­tion inquiries.
15. Mari­na’s prob­a­ble intel­li­gence con­nec­tion and the prob­a­bil­i­ty that she was assigned to Oswald dove­tails with the sit­u­a­tion of Richard Case Nag­ell. While in Japan, Oswald came in con­tact with Richard Case Nag­ell, a deep-cov­er intel­li­gence offi­cer assigned to play a dou­ble agent. Even­tu­al­ly, Nag­ell was assigned by his [osten­si­ble] Sovi­et han­dlers to kill Oswald, whom they felt was going to be a fall guy for a plot to kill JFK, and use that as pre­text for a war either against the U.S.S.R. and/or Cuba. Unable to talk Oswald out of engag­ing in the asso­ci­a­tions with which he was con­nect­ed, Nagell–who had infil­trat­ed the New Orleans anti-Cas­tro Cuban milieu in which Oswald was entrenched, shot up a Texas bank in order to get him­self put in prison, say­ing he did not want to become a trai­tor. Nag­ell is the focal point of the remark­able book The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Rus­sell, who was inter­viewed in FTR #54.
16. The rapid­i­ty and ease with which Oswald and Mari­na were grant­ed per­mis­sion to leave the Sovi­et Union togeth­er also sug­gests that she may have been per­form­ing an intel­li­gence func­tion. Nor­mal­ly, it might have tak­en some years for a Sovi­et woman who had mar­ried an Amer­i­can to obtain per­mis­sion to emi­grate.

After get­ting back to the Unit­ed States, the con­nec­tions and activ­i­ties of the Oswalds con­tin­ue to be “pass­ing strange,” IF one takes the leg­end of the so-called assas­sin at face val­ue.

Hav­ing threat­ened to com­mit trea­son by dis­clos­ing clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about U.S. air oper­a­tions, (the U‑2 being the salient item), Oswald is met not by the CIA, not by the FBI, but by Spas T. Raikin, the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations. Orig­i­nal­ly called the Com­mit­tee of Sub­ju­gat­ed Nations when it was formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations became, in turn, an inte­gral part of the Rein­hard Gehlen spy out­fit, a key ele­ment of the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League, and an impor­tant part of the Repub­li­can Par­ty. It is unthink­able that he would not have been de-briefed by U.S. intel­li­gence and the FBI. In fact, Jim men­tions that a for­mer CIA offi­cer Don­ald Dene­selya told the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions that the CIA did, in all like­li­hood, debrief Oswald. The Agency, how­ev­er, sought to dis­tance itself from the JFK assas­si­na­tion fall guy.

When the sup­posed Marx­ist trai­tor returned to the U.S., he was embraced by the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Com­mu­nist White Russ­ian com­mu­ni­ty in the Dallas/Fort Worth are, them­selves with close links to the Gehlen milieu.
Among the peo­ple with which the Oswalds net­worked in Texas were:

1. Max Clark and his Wife, the for­mer Princess Sherba­tov, a mem­ber of the Romanov Roy­al fam­i­ly!
2. Peter Gre­go­ry.
3. George Bouhe, who will fig­ure promi­nent­ly in our next pro­gram.
4. George de Mohren­schildt, who we will exam­ine at length in our next inter­view. De Mohren­schildt was part of the fam­i­ly that manged the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Kon­stan­tin May­dell, in charge of Abwehr oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States for a time (Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence); an asso­ciate of George H.W. Bush; a long­time CIA asset; a petro­le­um geol­o­gist.