Magda Hassan Wrote:Peter Lemkin Wrote:Yes, the Byrd Expedition was VERY strange and many of its logs and findings are still held from release as 'SECRET', without explanation. They came in great strength - military strength - not scientific expedition strength and then hastily left as if in a panic - of what, is not publicly known and to my knowledge has never been explained. Stranger than strange! It is fairly clear that they went to see what the earlier German mission to Antarctica had done and built...but apparently never even reached it. Although, this is NOT known due to the secrecy about the mission.
Remember too that Admiral Byrd was a direct relative of the Byrd who owned the TSBD in Dallas and was definitely in the know about some aspects of the assassination before the fact - IMO, about most all of them after the fact. A very strange family, indeed.
Fascinating stuff Peter. Is there more about Byrd and his missions? And the family?
Pffft! Your question requires much work for a decent answer....and hunting on this computer for files and references. I've studied, and am working on a book related to, the Nazi 'Special Weapons and Technology' Program[s]. Yes, they by War's end had just developed a few prototype disk-shaped craft that flew and had others on the drawing boards. So, much of what was in the film on that is exaggerated or wishful thinking IMO. However, that the Nazis may have had a base in Antarctica is likely not. Somewhere I have all the public statements make by Admiral Byrd after the mission [few]; one was quoted in the film - the others were of the same general nature. He wrote of fear and destruction, but did not address from what - nor explain in any logical manner. I'll look for it when I can. Now fighting to stay under roof and not become homeless soon. Admiral Byrd had nothing to do with Dallas that I know of. D. Harold Byrd, in 1963 had leased it to the Texas School Book Depository. Admiral Byrd supposedly kept a diary and the scientists on board had detailed notes - legend and all researchers seem to share that these are being withheld in their entirety. Mystery and secrecy surrounds the Operation Highjump! When Byrd returned to the States, he was hospitalized and was not allowed to hold any more press conferences. In March 1955, he was placed in charge of Operation Deepfreeze which was part of the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958) exploration of the Antarctic. He died, and some have suggested he was murdered, in 1957.
More about Bryd the cousin:
Dallas oilman David Harold Byrd, born April 24, 1900, was the cousin of Admiral Richard E. Byrd and his brother, Senator Harry F. Byrd, "the leader of conservative opinion in the United States."305 D.H. Byrd owned the Texas School Book Depository building from the 1930s to the 1970s. In May 1964, he had the "Oswald window" removed and kept it as part of his estate.306 In 1972, after Byrd sold the building to Mr. Aubrey Mayhew, an arsonist set it on fire. It was saved, however. Shortly thereafter Mayhew defaulted on his payments to Republic National Bank of Dallas307 and the property reverted to the Byrd family.308 In 1975 Byrd sold it again.309
Byrd had a close relationship with both Lyndon Johnson and John Connally. Evidently not satisfied with being the cousin of a powerful and respected U.S. senator,310 for D.H. Byrd, "Another goal was to reach a rapport with the politicians who ran things, especially at the seat of state government in Austin....Sam Rayburn, Morrie Sheppard, John Connally, and Lyndon Johnson on the national scene were to become men I could go to any time that I wanted action, and so were a succession of Texas governors. Among the ablest was John Connally...who says he's in my debt for pleading his cause... with...Ida Nell (Nellie) Brill, Sweetheart of The University of Texas in 1940...."311
Byrd probably also knew George de Mohrenschildt, David Atlee Phillips and George Bush through the Dallas Petroleum Club.312 In 1945, future club member de Mohrenschildt obtained a masters degree in petroleum engineering after eighteen months at the University of Texas at Austin.313 During that year he was investigated by the FBI and ONI.
That same year he worked under Warren W. Smith, president of Pantipec Oil, owned by the parents of William F. Buckley, Jr. Smith and de Mohrenschildt soon quit and formed the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company. When Castro took over, this company forfeited oil leases covering about half of Cuba. Jack Crichton of Army Intelligence Reserve Service, mentioned earlier, had also worked under Warren Smith at Pantipec, which sells to Sun Oil.314 By 1957, George de Mohrenschildt had established himself in oil ventures ranging from wildcat drilling to aerial surveillance and had begun working for the CIA.315
It is probable that Byrd knew David Ferrie and he definitely knew the very top Air Force brass through Civil Air Patrol (CAP). CAP Captain David Ferrie was CAP cadet Lee Harvey Oswald's trainer.316
Byrd was a co-founder of Civil Air Patrol. Displayed in his office, at 1110 Tower Petroleum Building in Dallas, were many pictures of himself in uniform with aviation dignitaries and Air Force Generals.317 He was an aviation buff but could not become a fighter pilot because his eyesight was bad.318 He co-founded CAP six days before Pearl Harbor.319 After World War II he spearheaded the establishment of the Cadet Program in CAP and contributed many scholarships to its cadets.320 In Dallas on May 24, 1963, the U.S. Air Force presented to Byrd its Scroll of Appreciation, which reads:
For rendering meritorious service to the United States Air Force from Dec. 1941 to April, 1960. Motivated by a strong sense of patriotism, Mr. Byrd played a major part in the successful operation of the Texas Wing, Civil Air Patrol, throughout World War II. After the war he assisted in the incorporation of the Civil Air Patrol and its designation as an Auxiliary of the Air Force. Mr. Byrd helped initiate the International Air Cadet Exchange and worked closely with the Air Cadet League of Canada. The many scholarships established or supported by Mr. Byrd have aided countless cadets in the attainment of additional training and higher education. His contributions of material and personal aircraft to the use of Civil Air Patrol materially aided in the performance of its mission.. The distinctive accomplishments of Mr. Byrd have earned for him the sincere gratitude of the United States Air Force.
(Signed) - Curtis E. Le May
Chief of Staff
(Signed) - Eugene M. Zuckert
Secretary of the Air Force321
D.H. Byrd counted among his close friends one of the most famous aviators, General Jimmy Doolittle.322 Byrd and Doolittle were hunting buddies. Of Doolittle he wrote, "Having a fondness for being Number One in all my undertakings, it doesn't come naturally for me to confess that Doolittle is the one man whom I would gladly serve in any venture as Number Two."323 On one intriguing trip without Doolittle, Byrd went hunting in central Africa in November and December 1963. It was his first such trip of five during his lifetime outside of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada.324
Byrd prepared well for the trip: Temco, Inc. was an aircraft company founded by D.H. Byrd and which later merged with his friend James Ling's electronics company (1960), and aircraft manufacturer Chance Vought Corporation (1961) to form Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV). Byrd became a director325 of LTV and bought, along with Ling, 132,000 shares of LTV in November 1963.326 Byrd then left the country to go on his two-month safari in central Africa. He returned in January to find his good friend Lyndon Johnson president of the United States, his building famous, and a large defense contract awarded to LTV to build fighter planes -- to be paid for out of the 1965 budget which had not yet been approved by Congress.327
Mac Wallace, who received a five-year suspended sentence in the shooting death of John Douglas Kiner in Austin on October 22, 1951, went to work for Temco, Inc. of Garland, Texas five months after his trial. He remained in that position until February 1961, four months before Henry Marshall's mysterious death on June 3, 1961, when he transferred to the Anaheim, California offices of LTV.328
The transfer required a background check by the Navy. "The most intriguing part of the Wallace case was how a convicted murderer was able to get a job with defense contractors. Better yet, how was he able to get a security clearance? Clinton Peoples [the Texas Ranger Captain who investigated the Marshall and Kiner murders]329 reported that when the original security clearance was granted, he asked the Naval intelligence officer handling the case how such a person could get the clearance. `Politics,' the man replied. When Peoples asked who would have that much power, the simple answer was, `the vice president,' who at the time was Lyndon Johnson. Years later, after the story broke [of Billie Sol Estes' March 20, 1984 testimony that implicated Lyndon Johnson, Malcom Wallace, and Clifton Carter in the death of Henry Marshall], that investigator could not recall the conversation with Peoples but he did say no one forced him to write a favorable report. He also added that he wasn't the one that made the decision to grant the clearance. The whole matter might have been solved with a peek at that original report but unfortunately, when the files were checked, that particular report was suspiciously missing. It has never been seen since."330
Wallace was transferred and given clearance in February 1961. "In January 1961, the very month Johnson was sworn in as vice president, and the month Henry Marshall was in Dallas discussing how to combat Estes-like scams, Billie Sol Estes learned through his contacts that the USDA was investigating the allotment scheme and that Henry Marshall might end up testifying. The situation was supposedly discussed by Estes, Johnson, and Carter in the backyard of LBJ's Washington home. Johnson was, according to Estes, alarmed that if Marshall started talking it might result in an investigation that would implicate the vice president. At first it was decided to have Marshall transferred to Washington, but when told Marshall had already refused such a relocation, LBJ, according to Estes, said simply, `Then we'll have to get rid of him.'"331
According to Craig Zirbel, author of The Texas Connection, in May 1962, "...Johnson flew to Dallas aboard a military jet to privately meet with Estes and his lawyers on a plane parked away from the terminal....This incident would probably have remained secret except that LBJ's plane suffered a mishap in landing at Dallas. When investigative reporters attempted to obtain the tower records for the flight mishap the records were "sealed by government order."332
Still more LTV intrigues were revealed by Peter Dale Scott: "A fellow-director of [Jack Alston] Crichton's333 firm of Dorchester Gas Producing was D.H. Byrd, an oil associate of Sid Richardson and Clint Murchison, and the LTV director who teamed up with James Ling to buy 132,000 shares of LTV in November 1963. While waiting to be sworn in as President in Dallas on November 22, Johnson spoke by telephone with J.W. Bullion, a member of the Dallas law firm (Thompson, Wright, Knight, and Simmons) which had the legal account for Dorchester Gas Producing and was represented on its board. The senior partner of the law firm, Dwight L. Simmons, had until 1960 sat on the board of Chance Vought Aircraft, a predecessor of Ling-Temco-Vought. One week after the assassination, Johnson named Bullion, who has been described as his `business friend and lawyer,' to be one of the two trustees handling the affairs of the former LBJ Co. while its owner was President."334
Another appreciative friend of Byrd's was Arthur Andrew Collins, the founder of the Collins Radio Company. Byrd, along with John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was a financier of his cousin Admiral Richard E. Byrd's polar expeditions by air. A mountain range at the South Pole is named the Harold Byrd Mountains in his honor.335 Some of that money went for the purchase of radio equipment and technical support from Arthur Collins. The 1933 expedition was the first big break for the young Collins Radio Company of Cedar Rapids Iowa.336
In May 1951 Collins began an expansion program to build a one-million dollar plant near the Dallas suburb of Richardson. A hanger was leased at nearby Red Bird Airport to install and repair airborne equipment. The move was due to a decentralization plan urged by the Defense Department for security reasons.337
According to Dick Russell, "At about 1:OO p.m. on the afternoon of November 22, half an hour after the president was shot, neighbors who lived along the road that runs by the little Redbird [sic] private airport began calling police. A twin-engine plane, they reported, was out there behaving very peculiarly. For an hour it had been revving its engines, not on the runway but parked at the end of the airstrip on a grassy area next to the fence. The noise prevented nearby residents from hearing their TVs, as news came over about the terrible events in downtown Dallas. But the police were too busy to check it out, and shortly thereafter the plane took off....
"Louis Gaudin, the government's air traffic control specialist at Redbird [sic] airport...recalled observing three men in business suits board a Comanche-type aircraft at about 2:00 p.m. on November 22, head north, then return with only two occupants, where they were met by a Dallas policeman named Haake."338
In August 1978, former Dallas Assistant District Attorney Bill Alexander and author Anthony Summers were retracing Oswald's movements. According to Summers, Alexander told him that the spot where Tippit was killed was near R.L. Thornton Freeway, the route to Red Bird airport. Alexander speculated that Oswald may have expected to be picked up and taken to the airport.339
In 1963, Wayne January rented planes at Red Bird Airport. He told researcher Jones Harris in 1966 and Summers in 1978 that before the assassination he was approached by two men and a woman, who inquired about renting an aircraft on November 22, to go to Mexico. After the assassination he thought that Oswald strongly resembled one of the men he had encountered.340
On November 24, 1963, FBI Special Agent Norman W. Propst was in Witchita Falls, Texas inquiring whether a South Texas pilot named Chuck Rogers or anyone from South Texas had been in contact with anyone at an aircraft plant in Olney, Texas or the crop dusting industry in North Texas in recent months.341 In 1991, Houston Police Department Forensic Artist Lois Gibson concluded, after photographic studies, that one of the Dealey Plaza tramps was either Charles Frederick Rogers, the CIA pilot and CAP member from Houston, "or a dead ringer close enough to be an identical twin."342
Rogers joined CAP in the early 1950s to learn to fly. "During his spare time, he participated in various CAP activities, including searches for downed pilots, which brought him into contact with other CAP leaders and cadets in the Texas-Louisiana region."343
Raymond Broshears, the former roommate of Oswald's Louisiana CAP unit captain, David Ferrie, told Dick Russell in 1975, that the purpose of Ferrie's sudden trip to Houston on the night of November 22, 1963, "was to meet a plane. He was going to fly these people on to Mexico, and eventually to South Africa, which did not have an extradition treaty with the United States. They had left from some little airfield between Dallas and Fort Worth, and David had a twin-engine plane ready for them, and that was the purpose of his mad dash through a driving rainstorm from New Orleans."344 Ferrie told New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison that the purpose of his "mad dash" was to go goose hunting. Perhaps D.H. Byrd also had reasons other than hunting for his first trip to Africa in November 1963.
A vice president at Collins Radio in Richardson knew George de Mohrenschildt and Oswald. Throughout the summer of 1962, de Mohrenschildt and his wife, Jean, made almost daily visits to the home of Admiral Henry C. Bruton. De Mohrenschildt introduced the Brutons to Lee and Marina and solicited the Brutons' help in his attempts to arrange and rearrange the Oswalds' lives.345
De Mohrenschildt was not only friends with Bruton, a former director of top secret Naval communications, he was also a friend of Colonel David L. Schurger, a Czech-born engineer who had served in Air Force intelligence. De Mohrenschildt was a frequent guest at this same house when it was owned by Schurger from 1954 to 1958.346
Carl Mather of Garland, Texas, a twenty-one year employee of Collins radio at the time of the assassination, had security clearance for electronics work and had done work on Johnson's airplane, Air Force Two. At about 2:00 p.m. on the day of the assassination a mechanic saw a man who looked like Oswald sitting in a red 1957 Plymouth in the parking lot of El Chico restaurant. The license number of the car (Texas PP 4537) was the same number issued to Mather's blue 1957 Plymouth. Mather was a close friend of J.D. Tippit's.347
Within the first year after the assassination, Kenneth Porter quit his job at Collins Radio. Soon thereafter articles began to appear in the Dallas papers about his dating Marina Oswald. J.H. "Bart" Bartholomew, an employee at Collins' Richardson plant since 1955, reported that after Porter had been working there for a while he quit "all of a sudden." Fellow workers wondered why he quit so suddenly. According to Bartholomew, Porter got along with everyone at the plant. No one knew any reason why he would quit. Then the news media reported that Kenneth and Marina were engaged. He had divorced his wife just prior to the engagement announcement. Porter also had children and had not mentioned any domestic problems. When news of the engagement broke, rumors began at Collins that he was marrying Marina for her money. Bartholomew said the talk around the plant was that the quitting, divorce and engagement all happened very quickly in that order within a year of the assassination.348
Bartholomew's job at Collins was inspecting work done on two-man communications "Huts" used in Korea and Vietnam. Collins also equipped military aircraft and ships with sophisticated top secret electronic gear. In March 1963, Collins was awarded a two-million-dollar-plus contract from the CIA connected United States Information Agency (USIA) to build nine short-wave transmitters to be used in Southeast Asia. Two weeks later, however, the work had to be postponed when President Kennedy requested a cut in USIA funds. By October, it appears, the contract had turned into a scandal. Assistant Secretary of Defense BeLieu was charged with giving false data to the House Human Resources subcommittee on a "sole source" contract awarded to Collins. Despite his denials, subcommittee members urged that BeLieu be dismissed if he did not give a satisfactory explanation. One week later, however, this heated debate would be eclipsed by a bigger scandal involving Collins Radio and the CIA.349 It also involved a ship with sophisticated electronics -- installed while Ken BeLieu was Assistant Navy Secretary for Installations and Logistics under Navy Secretary John Connally.350
On Halloween night 1963, Castro's soldiers captured four CIA agents attempting to infiltrate Cuba from a 174-foot ship called the Rex that was based in the Port of Palm Beach, flew a Nicaraguan flag and was being leased to the Collins Radio Company of Dallas by J.A. Belcher, a Miami oilman. The four agents confessed on Cuban television. One of those captured, Montero Carranzana, said he had "once landed twelve infiltrators on the north coast of Matazzas Province from a yacht that had a crew of American CIA agents." The U.S. government did not deny Castro's charges. The Rex mission was not the first time Collins had provided cover for CIA operations. Two weeks after Kennedy's death, the Rex and another mystery ship called Leda, again left their Florida ports.351 This paper will further explore several apparent connections between the Rex and the UT Rambler.
Byrd was able to give Arthur Collins his "big break" in 1933 because he had made his fortune by 1931. When he mapped out his goals he decided, "High on my list was the University of Texas. Despite my enforced drop-out after two years, I have nursed an abiding affection for the "Forty Acres" and its fortunes, especially on the football field...."352 D. Harold Byrd, as he is known on campus, donated large sums of money to the University of Texas and its Longhorn Marching Band. Among the things this money helped purchase was "Big Bertha," the largest bass drum in the world, and the construction of the Music Building East, in which a lounge is named the "Byrd Room" in his honor. Each year three band members receive the "Harold Byrd Awards" for leadership.353
As mentioned earlier, D.H. Byrd knew Barbara J. Burris, a mutual close friend and supporter of pianist Van Cliburn. "I wanted to be a welcome member of Dallas Society." Byrd wrote, "I was an early booster and close friend of pianists Van Cliburn and Jose Iturbi...."354 Barbara J. is the wife of Air Force intelligence Colonel Howard L. Burris, Vice President Johnson's military representative, discussed earlier in this paper. Her father, Texas Governor Beauford Jester was a "dear friend" of D.H. Byrd's.355
[URL="http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/17th_Issue/rambler3.html"]http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/17th_Issue/rambler3.html
[/URL]Commander Gerald L. Ketchum (5 December 1908 22 August 1992)[1] of the United States Navy commanded the icebreaker USS Burton Island (AG-88) in Task Group 68.2 during Operation Highjump, The United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program 19461947; also known as the Fourth Byrd Anatarctic Expedition. He was also Commander of "Task Force 39" consisting of 500 men for Operation Windmill, an Antarctic expedition in 19471948.
He was also Commander of "Task Force 39" consisting of 500 men for Operation Windmill, an Antarctic expedition in 19471948.
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