25-01-2010, 10:38 PM
About 19 or 20 years ago, around the time of Oliver Stone’s JFK project (and the storm it unleashed prior to release), I was introduced to a fellow about my age who wanted to talk. It was in the Toronto newsroom I worked, and he was brought over to my desk by colleague who had produced, with my father, some JFK radio documentaries in the mid 70s (Vince Palamara used some of them for parts of his SS work),
The fellow had the usual handful of newsclips & photos you expect in these sort of encounters...but the story got my attention, though I didn’t actively poke around it more than at surface level.
This fellow said he had good reason to believe that TUM was a co-ordinator of the script/performance aspect of the ambush, as has been put forward before, and that TUM was Dr. Rodney William Whitaker (pen name - Trevanian).
He continued that when Louie Steven Witt appeared before the HCSA in 1978, it actually was Whitaker/Trevanian playing the role, and he enjoyed the little ‘play within a play’.
I looked things over a bit in my books, and it was not as bizarre as it might seem. Which really surprised me. The poor photos of TUM, Witt, and the notoriously camera shy Trevanian were a bit unsettling...in the same way looking at some of the Richards, Eaglesham and Schallhorn Familiar Faces work is.
Things I remember, apart from the unsettling ‘spidey-sense’ I got:
• The fellow had a - I believe Toronto Star - profile/interview with Trevanian (can’t remember byline or date) that was sinister in parts. In the article apparently the writer said he was told something by Trevanian, and that Trevanian would kill him if he ever repeated it. According to the fellow showing it to me, he contacted the writer, and he was still fearful, and wouldn’t talk about it further. (If I made a copy - which I am sure I did - it is long gone. And I never spent the time to check the archives for it again.)
• Dr. Rodney Whitaker was considered a stage/visual narrative expert, and his book The Language of Film is still considered an important book in the field (I have just ordered a copy, to finally get a look at it). His academic career, and then massively rewarding career in novels, is not an unfamiliar Intelligence arc.
• I seem to recall that the fellow said Trevanian/Whitaker was in the Toronto area at the time, and that the fellow had spoken with him to some extent. (not sure when T/W went into European exile; he seemed to have some sort of Canadian connection, and one of his novels was set in Montreal).
* Witt was ‘turned in’ by someone to Penn Jones Jr. if I remember correctly, which eventually lead to the farce on the Hill. I had meant to contact Jones back then, and find out the story from him directly, and to see if Witt was real and had gone back to living his life as one expect given his muddled, silly testimony, or whether he had disappeared. I suspected the latter, but missed the window. (Did anyone follow up with Witt in the years after his testimony, or try to?)
Anyway, a little diversion from a newcomer.
Never saw the fellow again. Never saw anything come from his poking around.
The fellow had the usual handful of newsclips & photos you expect in these sort of encounters...but the story got my attention, though I didn’t actively poke around it more than at surface level.
This fellow said he had good reason to believe that TUM was a co-ordinator of the script/performance aspect of the ambush, as has been put forward before, and that TUM was Dr. Rodney William Whitaker (pen name - Trevanian).
He continued that when Louie Steven Witt appeared before the HCSA in 1978, it actually was Whitaker/Trevanian playing the role, and he enjoyed the little ‘play within a play’.
I looked things over a bit in my books, and it was not as bizarre as it might seem. Which really surprised me. The poor photos of TUM, Witt, and the notoriously camera shy Trevanian were a bit unsettling...in the same way looking at some of the Richards, Eaglesham and Schallhorn Familiar Faces work is.
Things I remember, apart from the unsettling ‘spidey-sense’ I got:
• The fellow had a - I believe Toronto Star - profile/interview with Trevanian (can’t remember byline or date) that was sinister in parts. In the article apparently the writer said he was told something by Trevanian, and that Trevanian would kill him if he ever repeated it. According to the fellow showing it to me, he contacted the writer, and he was still fearful, and wouldn’t talk about it further. (If I made a copy - which I am sure I did - it is long gone. And I never spent the time to check the archives for it again.)
• Dr. Rodney Whitaker was considered a stage/visual narrative expert, and his book The Language of Film is still considered an important book in the field (I have just ordered a copy, to finally get a look at it). His academic career, and then massively rewarding career in novels, is not an unfamiliar Intelligence arc.
• I seem to recall that the fellow said Trevanian/Whitaker was in the Toronto area at the time, and that the fellow had spoken with him to some extent. (not sure when T/W went into European exile; he seemed to have some sort of Canadian connection, and one of his novels was set in Montreal).
* Witt was ‘turned in’ by someone to Penn Jones Jr. if I remember correctly, which eventually lead to the farce on the Hill. I had meant to contact Jones back then, and find out the story from him directly, and to see if Witt was real and had gone back to living his life as one expect given his muddled, silly testimony, or whether he had disappeared. I suspected the latter, but missed the window. (Did anyone follow up with Witt in the years after his testimony, or try to?)
Anyway, a little diversion from a newcomer.
Never saw the fellow again. Never saw anything come from his poking around.