Fred Lee Crisman is another guy we need to know more about. If we could get to the bottom of who he was and who he was working for and for what purposes, many nagging questions of the last century might start coming into focus. I (like many others I hope) got interested in him from a reading of Joan Mellen’s book A Farewell to Justice.
Below is a bare-bones biographical sketch of Crisman that I posted, along with a lot of other information, on the JFK Research Forum (http://www.jfkresearch.com) last year. Also attached is a time-line that contains many more details.
Ron Williams
++++++++++
Biographical Sketch of Fred Lee Crisman
Fred Lee Crisman, the son of Fred L. Crisman and Eva Louise Joshlin, was born July 22, 1919, in Tacoma, Washington. He moved with his family to Vale, Oregon, in 1933 where his father was the proprietor of a hotel. He graduated from Vale Union High School in 1939 and attended Eastern Oregon College in LaGrande, Oregon, for a short time during the 1939-1940 school year before leaving to go to work for the Union Pacific Railroad as a brakeman. He was with the railroad until joining the military in 1942.
Crisman married Filomena Veristain in 1941. They had a son, Fred, Jr., and a daughter, Chris. His daughter was killed in a car accident in 1964.
He served in World War II and the Korean conflict as a fighter pilot, attaining the rank of Captain. Between the years of his service in the two wars he worked for the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs in Seattle in 1946 and 1947.
In 1947 he became well known as a protagonist, along with his friend and sometime business partner, Harold Dahl, in the famous Maury Island UFO incident near Tacoma, Washington. This was written about in the 1999 Kenn Thomas book, Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy.
He later was a teacher and school administrator in a number of high schools in Washington and Oregon, and he worked for the Boeing Aircraft Company in Seattle for two years in the early 1960s.
For years he was a freelance writer, especially writing books, speeches, and campaign materials for many political figures, including state governors and members of the U.S. Congress.
In the late 1960s he moved back to his native Tacoma, Washington, and became involved in a highly charged political struggle in which he and friends and colleagues sought to end the City-Management form of government. As part of this struggle Crisman became well known and controversial as the host of a radio talk show using the pseudonym “Jon Gold,” and he wrote a book about the period called Murder of a City…Tacoma that was published in 1970.
In November of 1968 he was subpoenaed by New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, to appear before a grand jury that was part of the Garrison investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Early in 1975 he married Mary Frances Borden, whom he had met when he was a member of the Tacoma Library Board of Trustees. He had been appointed to the board in 1970 by the outgoing mayor of Tacoma, A.L. “Slim” Rasmussen, a compatriot in the local political wars.
Fred Lee Crisman died at the age of fifty-six of kidney failure in the Seattle Veterans Hospital on December 10, 1975.
In the summer of 1968, when New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested prominent city socialite Clay Shaw, he may or may not have been on the trail of the assassins he believed were responsible for killing John F. Kennedy. But what Garrison did undeniably get close to exposing were the identities and activities of intelligence agents who not only harbored a deep hatred of Kennedy, but were willing participants in one of the government's more shameful episodes.
Had these men been exposed, Garrison would have unsealed the Pandora's Box on flying saucers, which, if it had occurred, would have forever ripped away the then nearly 20-year-old mythic fabric wrapping the UFO mystery--a veil since used to great benefit by the military to conceal the testing of classified aircraft.
As bizarre as it sounds, Kennedy's assassination and "flying saucers" share common ground.
*Project Paperclip
As the central figure in Garrison's conspiracy, Clay Shaw appears to have been involved in Project Paperclip, a top-secret intelligence operation that began in 1945 with the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. It was a deeply covert program to bring Hitler's secret weapons and their designers to America. Among the aeroforms the Nazis had developed were strangely configured jet-propelled aircraft the likes of which had never been seen.
Then two years later, in late June, 1947, a number of aircraft that looked very similar to some that had been on the Nazi drawing boards were seen flying in and around Washington state, the location of several aerospace defense contractors which were benefiting from the secret Paperclip operation Shaw was a part of.
*Civilian sightings
Among the civilians who saw these aircraft was U.S. Deputy Marshall Kenneth Arnold, who watched a formation streak past in front of his plane while flying near Mt. Rainier on June 24.
The Maury Island sighting allegedly happened three days before Arnold's own rendezvous with destiny. The craft, initially reported by Harold Dahl, was said to have spewed "slag-like" material over a wide area. Crisman, a pivotal player in the ensuing investigation, was ostensibly an official of the Puget Sound Harbor Patrol and Dahl's supervisor.
Twenty years later, Garrison intimately linked Crisman to Clay Shaw. Government records indicate Crisman was much more than a lowly harbor patrol officer. Available evidence also suggests he knew a lot more about the aircraft Dahl saw than he admitted--aircraft some intelligence sources believe were hybrids of those designed early that decade by Nazi engineers who were brought to the U.S. under Project Paperclip.
In 1967, when Garrison launched his investigation of Shaw-- whose intelligence background was not yet documented--Paperclip had been secret for nearly two decades. It continued to be a secret for the next six years. But even when it did begin to unravel in 1973, the government successfully continued to promote the lie that it was a short-lived operation limited to just a few post-war raids on Hitler's hoard of scientific talent. In 1985, the U.S. General Accounting Office--typically not an office known for apologizing for government wrongdoing and bungling--even claimed the operation ended in 1947.
*`T-Forces'
The Paperclip operation got underway even before American soldiers laid down their rifles. Attached to special military units called "T-Forces," scientific teams comprised of the Army, Navy, Army Air Force and intelligence agents from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the forerunner of the CIA) fanned out across Europe to capture and interrogate Hitler's brain trust, locate and microfilm documents and confiscate all useful equipment found in the Third Reich's factories and laboratories. (1)
T-Force teams secured Hitler's most secret aerospace technologies. Among the information that these teams captured were plans for fast, disc-shaped aircraft which the Nazis never got into full-scale production. (2)
Through Paperclip, America secured some top-notch scientific and research specialists, including many involved in Nazi atrocities. The most important of these ex-Nazis ran the Peenemünde Aerodynamics Institute, the installation where Hitler's V-2 rocket and jet aircraft were developed using forced slave labor from the concentration camp at Karlshagen. Peenemünde was a gold mine for the military and its contractors. Under the cloak of Paperclip, the Peenemünde scientists secretly controlled America's rocketry, aerospace and space programs for the next 20 years. (3)
*War crimes `papered over'
Peenemünde scientists serving U.S. interests--including Werner Von Braun and Kurt Debus, who were installed as the first directors of the Marshall Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space Center--had come a long way from being members of Hitler's elite SS. Their war crimes had been papered over and withheld from NASA officials.
Garrison, some suspect, came very close to compromising this and other secrets when he arrested Clay Shaw on charges of conspiracy to murder John Kennedy. But without hard evidence of Shaw's ties to the CIA (clearly established later), and having lost his star witness David Ferrie, who was found dead just before Shaw's trial, Garrison had little to take to court. Consequently, Shaw was acquitted. He died on Aug. 14, 1974--mysteriously, Garrison believed.
*Shaw's CIA background
Documents surfaced in 1977 showing that Shaw had worked for the CIA since 1949. (4) He had also been in business with former Nazis and European fascists involved in several CIA-supported covert operations throughout Europe, and there is strong evidence he had been a member of the OSS; he certainly had worked for a top OSS officer who was involved in Operation Paperclip.
But did Crisman know Shaw from those days? It's possible. Crisman is said to have been attached to the OSS. Intelligence sources say he was a member of a secret fraternity of former intelligence officials. Other sources swear he was involved in gunrunning and was closely tied to organized crime--two factions which certainly worked hand-in-glove at the time.
According to Garrison's information, Crisman knew Shaw well. One of Garrison's informants said Crisman was "the first man Clay called after being told he was in trouble." The same source added that Crisman "flies to New Orleans steadily. 1964, eleven times. 1965, 17 times, 1966, 32 times, 1967, 24 times . . . he seems to have no income and certainly spends a large sum of money on air travel."
*Dahl's correspondence
In August, 1967, a year before Garrison announced his subpoena of Crisman, Dahl allegedly corresponded with UFO researcher Gary Lesley, in which he said Crisman "has been in the deep South for some time . . . certain government agencies are very interested in his movements at all times. He sometimes drops out of sight for months on end and returns just as quietly. I do not know how he supports his manner of living, but he never lacks for money." (4)
When Garrison's office announced its subpoena of Crisman on Oct. 31, 1968, the press release read: "Our information indicates that since the early 1960s, (Crisman) has made many trips to the New Orleans and Dallas areas in connection with his undercover work for that part of the warfare industry engaged in the manufacture of what is termed, in military language, a `hardware'--meaning those weapons sold to the U.S. government that are uniquely large and expensive."
According to FBI records on Crisman, disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act and on file at the Assassination Archives & Research Center (AARC) in Washington, D.C., Crisman was a Captain in the Army Air Corps and had flown during World War II. From March 20, 1946 to March 31, 1947, he was employed as a "special investigator" on veterans' matters for the state of Washington.
*Blank phase
What Crisman did between March 31 and June 21 when Harold Dahl encountered the six "doughnut-shaped" aircraft near Maury Island can't be determined, though presumably that's when he got the Harbor Patrol job. Then, on August 21, the FBI began a security check of Crisman for an unspecified position with the Atomic Energy Commission, which Crisman did not end up taking, according to the files.
The FBI's background check, which includes details about Crisman's life prior to the war, disclose that the Seattle office had a file dealing with the UFO incident at Maury Island, including a sworn statement from Crisman and another individual (presumably Dahl), dated Aug. 7.
Crisman's life from that time until Garrison ordered him to New Orleans is a confusing puzzle, as he turned up in many different and bizarre occupations. He was involved in a government program to help Gypsies (5); he was listed as the president of a car lot and official of at least a half-dozen companies that had no offices; he was a rabid right-wing talk show host on KAYE Radio in Puyallup, WA, under the name of Jon Gold: he was an industrial psychologist for Boeing, and he was a bishop in the Universal Life Church, a murky organization which seems to have had ties to the CIA and whose members included old Bay of Pigs veterans like Ferrie (6).
*Crime file
And there were Crisman's brushes with the law, including the early morning arrest the day after Garrison announced his subpoena of Crisman. He was arrested for what today would be considered drunk driving, in addition to carrying a concealed weapon--a loaded .38-caliber pistol.
The last of his legal troubles occurred a year before he died. At that time, Crisman was under investigation by the FBI for apparent stock fraud involving certificates of the Idaho First National Bank.
Until he died, garrison strongly believed Crisman was connected in some crucial way to the men Garrison was trying to indict for President Kennedy's murder--all men he believed were tied to the CIA's ill-fated Bay of Pigs operation to oust Fidel Castro.
Crisman disappeared into obscurity after appearing before the New Orleans Grand Jury that was hearing Garrison's case. He died with little fanfare on Dec. 10, 1975.
*Mystery remains
Twenty-five years after Crisman failed to yield much value for Garrison, he remains much of a mystery. But what can be pieced together indicates Crisman was part and parcel of the seamy underworld of the intelligence community that flourished during the 1950s and '60s.
*Garrison's conclusions
In a lengthy handwritten memo to Jonathan Blackmer, an investigator for the House select committee that re-investigated Kennedy's assassination in the late 1970s and had a keen interest in Crisman, Garrison spelled out what he had concluded about Crisman:
" . . . I suggest the only reasonable conclusion is that he was (and probably is, if still around), an operative at a deep cover level in a long-range, clandestine, intelligence mission directly (in terms of our national intelligence paranoia) related to maintaining national security . . . Crisman emerges as an operative at a supervisory level . . . acquired by the apparatus to carry out the menial jobs that are needed to push a current mission forward, a middle man--in the final analysis--between the mechanics who eliminate, and the handy men, who otherwise support a termination mission, on one hand, and the distant, far removed, deeply submerged command level, on the other."
The events surrounding the Maury Island episode in 1947 involving Crisman were serious and raise further questions about Paperclip and Crisman's involvement in it: They include the deaths of two Army G-2 intelligence officers enroute to Wright Patterson Air Force Base with specimens of the "slag-like" substance one of the discs supposedly spewed out, given to them by Crisman; a persistent newsman's sudden death, and the bugging of Arnold's hotel room while he investigated the sighting with Capt. E.J. Smith of United Airlines, a friend of his. (7)
*Why G-2?
The two Army intelligence officers had become involved probing what Dahl saw after having already paid a visit to Arnold. Why G-2 was so interested in those early UFO sightings has always been somewhat of a mystery. But perhaps it's not when considering that it was G-2's responsibility to keep a lid on Paperclip, as well as to provide security for Paperclip activities. Another function of G-2 involved illegal surveillance of anyone whose activities put Paperclip security at risk. (8) This illegal eavesdropping operation expanded into the notorious Army spying activities of the 1960s and 1970s.
When the two G-2 agents, Capt. William L. Davidson and Lt. Frank M. Browm were killed shortly after take-off, they were enroute to Wright-Patterson AFB, an installation that, if the objects Dahl saw were indeed Nazi hybrids that had malfunctioned, would have been the logical place for G-2 to escort the pieces. Wright Patterson was a major research and development center where many of the Peenemunde scientists had been gathered to continue their work. (9)
*Classified cargo
The Army reportedly admitted that "classified" material had been on board the flight. News accounts of the crash and statements by Army officials hinted that sabotage had brought down the B-25 on which Davidson and Brown were flying. Brown's wife Velma also spelled out her suspicions in a letter to Arnold. "I have never thought that Frank's death was an accident," she wrote.
The way U.S. intelligence agencies and the military treated UFO encounters in the late 1940s and early 1950s left similar bitter tastes. They were hiding something, that much is evident. The Maury Island incident was no exception. With this fresh look at Crisman, the theory that Operation Paperclip got a lot more than just rocket technology from the Third Reich becomes more credible.
If Maury Island was a hoax, as most ufologists today assume, then Crisman's role in perpetrating it is equally as bizarre; more so considering his intelligence connections.
What is clear is that the intelligence community was deeply immersed in the very events that launched contemporary ufology. And because it was, using men like Crisman, it deserves much closer scrutiny than it has ever been given.
*An award-winning investigative journalist, Anthony L. Kimery is an associated editor at American Banker Newsletters, a major publisher of financial publications, and former Washington Bureau Chief of Money Laundering Alert. His past reporting on intelligence community activities has appeared in a variety of national newspapers and magazines.
NOTES
1. One of the best accounts of Operation Paperclip is Linda Hunt's book, *Secret Agenda, St. Martin's Press, 1991.
2. *Argosy Magazine, XXXXXXX< XXXXXX, 19XX, pp. XX_XX. 3. Paperclip was still in full swing at the time of Kennedy's murder, and was actually responsible for the European "brain drain" phenomenon at the time. U.S. aerospace industries were among the top beneficiaries of the Paper-clip inspired immigration of German scientists to the U.S. in 1962-1963.
4. Copies in author's possession.
5. It may be coincidental, but some scientists brought to the U.S. via Paperclip had used Gypsies for experimentation.
6. Garrison expounds at length on the church and the similar organizations he contends were used as CIA fronts, in a memo he wrote to Jonathan Blackmer, an investigator for the select House committee of the late '70s that re-investigated Kennedy's assassination.
7. An unknown informant reportedly would call a local reporter after every meeting Arnold and Smith had with Crisman, Dahl and the two agents of G-2, and relate in detail what had been said.
8. Linda Hunt, *Secret Agenda, 1991.
9. Ibid
'UFO' Magazine, edited by Vicki Cooper (no relation to William Cooper -- who insists that Vicki has admitted that 'her' magazine was being funded by the CIA), carried an article in its Vol.6, No.5 issue, titled THE SECRET LIFE OF FRED L. CRISMAN, by veteran writer on financial conspiracy, Anthony L. Kimory (Note: IF William Cooper is correct, 'UFO' Magazine's apparent self- condemnation, in accusing the CIA, might indicate that those who helped establish UFO Magazine may be involved in a type of intelligence war with an opposing faction of the highly compart-mentalized CIA, similar to the internal CIA intelligence wars between what appears to be a 'Bavarian' and an 'American' faction referred to by former CIA operative Gunther Russbacher and others).
The article dealt with Fred Crisman's connection with PROJECT PAPERCLIP -- a top-secret operation which brought Nazi scientists to America as part of a program to duplicate Nazi flying discs, and to develop other revolutionary technologies. This operation was not actually carried out by the U.S. Constitutional government as we know it, but by a branch of Bavarian Intelligence which had INFILTRATED American Intelligence and later took control of the government through an internal fascist coup d'etat which involved the death of President John F. Kennedy. James Garrison, the Louisiana attorney depicted in the movie 'JFK' -- who investigated the John F. Kennedy assassination -- reportedly discovered the connection between Crisman and PAPERCLIP.
The Project reportedly sent elite teams of scientists and investigators, known as 'T-Forces', into Europe to confiscate all documents, files, hardware in German labs, and even scientific personnel who were involved in the Nazi aerospace research, an operation which led to the great European 'brain drain' following WWII. The plan was to develop UFO-type craft similar to those which the Nazis had experimented with. The Army, Navy, Army Air Force, CIA and OSS reportedly assisted in the 'T-Forces' and 'Paperclip' Projects, according to Kimory. Several high-ranking Nazis who assisted in the 'atrocities' were brought to America also, and their crimes suppressed. Many of these worked at the Peenemünde Aerodynamics Institute, which built the V-2 rockets, German fighter jets, etc., using forced slave labor from the Karlshagen concentration camp.
Peenemünde scientists, under PROJECT PAPERCLIP, according to Kimory, have controlled the U.S. rocketry, aerospace and space projects for over 20 years, with the majority of those at NASA being oblivious of the fact. Kimory claims that Wernher von Braun and Kurt Davis, heads of Marshall Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space center were both Nazi S.S. agents brought into America with the help of Nazi infiltrators or sympathizers in U.S. Intelligence.
Garrison arrested Clay Shaw on conspiracy to murder JFK, linking him with the CIA. However, when Garrison's star witness David Ferrie was found dead only a few days before Clay Shaw's trial, Garrison did not have enough against Shaw to make a convict- ion. It was later discovered in a FOIA document in 1977 that Clay Shaw HAD BEEN in the CIA since 1949. Garrison also linked Crisman to Shaw, and in fact sources indicate that Crisman was the first one Clay Shaw called when Shaw learned that he was in trouble. Is was discovered that Shaw was in business with European Nazis and fascists who were involved in covert operations sponsored by the CIA, according to the article. Shaw was also allegedly tied-in with the O.S.S. Crisman, who worked as a go-between in the Military-Industrial establishment (especially the aerospace companies which were the major beneficiaries of Project Paperclip) was believed by Garrison to be a 'middle man' within a deep-level intelligence network, working in-between those who gave the orders (which included assassinations) and those who carried them out.
Garrison also believed that Crisman was involved with the men who carried out the JFK assassination, and Crisman had also made several trips to Dallas just prior to JFK's death, which is why Garrison subpoenaed him. Crisman was also involved with a government program to 'help gypsies', was tied-in with the O.S.S., and was a member of a secret fraternity of former Intelligence officers, and was also involved with organized crime, according to Garrison's investigations.
Of course the strangest aspect of the Crisman connection was that it was Fred L. Crisman himself who handed over 'metal-slag' samples that were reportedly found after a UFO dropped the substance over the Maurey Island area near Tacoma, Washington in 1947. Crisman handed the samples to two Army G-2 Intelligence officers, Capt. William L. Davidson and Lt. Frank M. Brown. On their way to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio (where several German Peenemünde scientists reportedly worked) with the 'classified' material their plane crashed and both were killed. News reports of the time mentioned that the plane MAY have been sabotaged.
Frank Brown's widow did in fact state her conviction that her husband was murdered. In addition to this, a particularly persistent reporter into the Maurey Island episode died shortly after the investigation, and Kenneth Arnold (who had his Mt. Rainier sighting and almost fatal engine failure only a few days later) reported that his room, where he often discussed the Maurey Island case with United Airlines Captain E. J. Smith, had been bugged. Kimory suggests that the Maurey Island UFO may have been a 'hybrid' of the Nazi UFO designs developed by the Military-Industrial Establishment and PROJECT PAPERCLIP, which might explain the mystery (for more information on 'Project Paperclip', see also: SECRET AGENDA, by Linda Hunt. St. Martins Press. 1991).
HOAX?
This is probably the only case on record of a Hoax indirectly leading to the death of UFO Investigators.
The story surfaced from Ray Palmer (editor of Amazing Stories), regarding a man called Fred Crisman who claimed to have actual physical evidence of a flying saucer.
Palmer passed the story onto Kenneth Arnold, who was investigating UFO reports in the Northwest. Arnold interviewed Crisman an his associate Harold Dahl who claimed they were harbour patrolmen (their first lie). Crisman reported that they had seen a doughnut-shaped craft dump piles of slag like material on the beach of Maury Island in Pugent Sound. The next morning a mysterious man in black had threatened Dahl, who claimed the man said 'I know a great deal more about this experience of yours that you will want to believe.'.
The 2 men showed Arnold the material who in turn contacted an Army Air Force intelligence officer, Lieutenant Frank Brown, who flew up from Hamiltion Field in California in the company of another Air Force officer.
The 2 Air Force officers immediately recognised the material as ordinary aluminium but did not say so in front of Arnold due to the fact that he would feel embarrassed. While flying back to Hamiltion, their B-25 caught fire and crashed, killing both officers.
Crisman and Dahl later confessed to investigators that they had made up the story. Before his death Crisman changed the Maury Incident story to that of an American Plane dropping radioactive waste instead of a UFO dropping unknown substances.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
24-03-2009, 03:53 PM (This post was last modified: 24-03-2009, 04:07 PM by Linda Minor.)
In my opinion Crisman's importance stems from this portion of his background from the timeline at the link which Ron posted but then overlooked:
"FLC recruited into the OSS to be trained as a liaison officer with the British Royal Air Force. Assigned to the China-Burma-India theater"
When he returned to Tacoma, Washington after the war, he becomes involved with a man named Harold Dahl and his son who were allegedly observers of UFO at Maury Island. Neither of the Dahls was ever clearly identified. There was a junk dealer named Harold Dahl living in Washington, who may have been the person mentioned:
"Four people, including Harold Dahl and his son, witnessed the event from a salvage boat in a nearby bay. They reported seeing six doughnut-shaped craft, approximately 20 feet in diameter, hovering high above. Five of the craft formed a circle surrounding a craft in the middle that was wobbling badly. The seemingly damaged craft suddenly dropped down about 700 feet, then spewed two substances -- one was a paper-like metal that floated in the bay and the other was a hot, steaming, black sludge that rained down, striking Dahl's son and killing his dog. Dahl reported these events to Fred Crisman, a man he believed to have some connections in the intelligence community.
Crisman subsequently went to Maury Island to investigate the incident. He found a great deal of both materials on the shore and recovered some for himself. Soon thereafter, Crisman shared his experience with Ray Palmer, a magazine publisher, who then hired Kenneth Arnold (the original pilot) to investigate further. Three days later, Arnold had more sightings, culminating with a woman recovering some unusual material in the same vicinity, who then turned the material over to FBI agent Guy Banister. Capt. Lee Davidson and Lt. Frank Brown, Air Force investigators under the command of Gen. Nathan Twining, soon joined Arnold in retrieving debris on Maury Island. Ultimately, Crisman was compelled to turn over his samples to the two Air Force investigators.
Classified documents, recently discovered under the freedom of information act, also indicate that Crisman turned additional samples he had held back over to CIA agent Clay Shaw." http://www.the-boondocks.org/forum/index...&frm_id=19
What is intriguing to me is that there was another man named Harold E. (Whitey) Dahl, an internationally-known American pilot from Champaign, Ill., who had served with loyalist forces in Spain during its civil war, then was captured by Franco in 1937. During his imprisonment, his blonde "wife," actress Edith Rogers, who was "appearing as a singer and a violinist at a Philadelphia theater" at the time of his release, had written and sent her picture to Franco to try to obtain his freedom. Whitey was freed "after dodging a Spanish Nationalist firing squad and spending almost three years In prison" in March 1940. Later news reports indicated Edith was only posing as his wife.
Five years later his name turned up again in the news when he was "acquitted on 10 of 14 charges by an R.C.A.F. court martial" but dismissed from the Royal Canadian Air Force. His crime was "disposing of $650 worth of RCAF property, including a vacuum cleaner and two rafts, while stationed in Brazil" where he was commander of a transport unit of the RAF.
The most telling story about Whitey was disseminated in 1958 by the infamous NAMA, the North American Newspaper Alliance acquired by Ernest L. Cuneo in the mid-1950's. The headline read " Civilization and Changing Times Can't Deter Soldiers of Fortune."
A New York lawyer, Cuneo was associate counsel to the Democratic National Committee during the FDR administration and was close to the clique involving another British spy named Dahl, Roald Dahl, the children's author, who was the subject of a recent book by Jennet Conant called "The Irregulars."
In my opinion, Crisman and Whitey Dahl were actively working for the same unit of intelligence for which Roald Dahl worked. When you read The Irregulars, you get a sense that the British had no respect for any "special relationship" with America. They only had respect for their own investments and their own economy and were out to subvert whatever attempts the Americans would make to end their colonial enterprise. This was done through propaganda of the highest order directed at Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and especially FDR's then vice-president Henry A. Wallace, who wanted to force the Brits to compete against American private interests in air routes after the war.
It should also be remembered that Clay Shaw was also very close to men in high British circles while he served in Europe during WWII.
"History records that the Money Changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance." --James Madison
How very intriguing Linda. FBI agent Guy Bannister was, as has been noted elsewhere on this forum, the one time head of the FBI's real "X Files", a fact I continue to find fascinating to this day.
I do not recall anything on Dempster I have to say, although I knew Brinsley Le Poer Trench well also knew and remained in occasional contact with Gordon Creighton who took over as editor of FSR after Brinsley. It was only many years (actually several decades) later that I began to suspect something other may have been involved and your post on Dempster reinforces that suspicion.
Brinsley and Desmond Leslie both championed the fake "contactee" George Adamski and this poses some questions. Also, some of the people Brinsley introduced me to (he was very well connected) often had prior military/RAF backgrounds. I'm thinking particularly of the the head of BUFORA, the British UFO investigation group who's name now escapes me. Meanwhile, Gordon was formerly in the Foreign Office until his retirement.
All in all I think you could well be right that these Brits were up to something -- and that something may well have been a covert operation aimed at learning the nature of the technology the US acquired from the Nazis at the close of WWII.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
24-03-2009, 11:39 PM (This post was last modified: 24-03-2009, 11:43 PM by Jan Klimkowski.)
Plus that Casolaro Octopus thingie....
Linda kindly rescued some tracks in the snow that I'd posted elsewhere (now defunct), courtesy of Kenn Thomas & Jim Keith:
Quote:Jan Klimkowski;Jun 12 2008, 05:12 PM
There are some Wackenhut clues in a book called "The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro" by Kenn Thomas & Jim Keith.
Appendix Three is the transcript of a prison interview with Michael Riconosciuto (MR), mainly revolving around Fred Crisman (FC) whom MR claims to have known since he was a child. The first part of the interview concerns claims that the "Maury Island Incident" was effectively a cover story put together by Crisman to disguise the crash of an experimental plane designed by Nazi Paperclip scientists and carrying some sort of radioactive device. Guy Banister was also involved in the propagation of the general flying saucers cover story. (Levenda separately documents this.)
Quite where the Cabazon reservation and Riconoscuito's top secret, deep black, experiments fit into this is currently unknowable.
Paperclip > Maury Island > Cabazon > ?????
>>> Psyop?
>>> As disinformation or coverup?
(my emphasis in quote below)
Quote:Crisman's life from that time until Garrison ordered him to New Orleans is a confusing puzzle, as he turned up in many different and bizarre occupations. He was involved in a government program to help Gypsies (5); he was listed as the president of a car lot and official of at least a half-dozen companies that had no offices; he was a rabid right-wing talk show host on KAYE Radio in Puyallup, WA, under the name of Jon Gold: he was an industrial psychologist for Boeing, and he was a bishop in the Universal Life Church, a murky organization which seems to have had ties to the CIA and whose members included old Bay of Pigs veterans like Ferrie (6).
Uh oh. tickyman:
One of those pesky Wandering Bishops just strolled by again....
It's Keyser Söze time.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
Whoa! I had no idea that Crisman was one of them thar pesky wandering bishops Jan. Nor that Riconosciuto was involved in this either.
This seems to again point to the Himmlerian/Thule Gesellschaft "Schwarze Sonne" aspect of this Nazi technology.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
25-03-2009, 03:46 PM (This post was last modified: 25-03-2009, 03:58 PM by Ron Williams.)
Thanks Linda, David, and Jan for adding to the thread.
Linda, I didn’t overlook that item about Crisman and the OSS if that is what you meant, but that comes from the so-called “Easy Papers” document and as far as I am aware that is still unknown territory. That is why I made a special notation in the time-line for anything that is claimed in that document. And thanks for the info about The Irregulars book. That is something I definitely want to read. My library system has a copy of it and I hope to have it soon.
My general thinking for the time-line was that there might be some people with an interest in Fred Lee Crisman but they would not have access to the two main books, Maury Island UFO by Kenn Thomas and Crisman’s book Murder of City …Tacoma.
Regarding the Riconosciutos: Crisman and Michael’s father, Marshall Riconosciuto, were boyhood friends growing up in Tacoma, Washington. Michael gave a prison interview with Kenn Thomas that is an appendix in Maury Island UFO.
Take a look at the time-line and I would be happy to try and answer any further questions from information in the sources that I have available.
In addition, those who are members of the JFK Research Forum have access to all the info on Crisman posted there.
Jan Klimkowski Wrote:Plus that Casolaro Octopus thingie....
Quite where the Cabazon reservation and Riconoscuito's top secret, deep black, experiments fit into this is currently unknowable.
Paperclip > Maury Island > Cabazon > ?????
>>> Psyop?
>>> As disinformation or coverup?
Jan,
My opinion is that what is largely unknown is the same thing I stated was overlooked by the outline attached to Ron's post. Not the OSS, but this:
"liaison officer with the British Royal Air Force"
Friday, April 20, 2007
MICHAEL RICONOSCIUTO: The Math/Science Wizard Who Said TOO Much, Part 7
In February, 2001, through his lawyers, Riconoscuito contacted Colin Powell and John Ashcroft offering information about terrorists within the United States who planned to hijack planes and bomb American sites. Michael also offered information about “sleepers” in the United States. He was also concerned about the possibility that 37 Soviet surface to air missiles had been shipped from Bulgaria to Canada and that they could be misused. In return for his information, he asked for immunity for himself and his contacts regarding anything learned in following up his leads. Nothing was done. This man had been involved in providing Stinger missiles (SAMs) and other weapons for the Mujahadeen in the 1980s and had even dealt with Osama bin Laden, who was known as Tim Osman when he visited the United States. After he contacted the press about the FBI rejecting his warnings, he was moved from Allenwood Federal Prison to the hole in Springfield, Missouri. He was not allowed to take any records or papers with him.
Mike claimed that the famous MI6 agent, Sir Denis Kendall advised Oliver North before he appeared before the Senate. Kendall was proprietor of some biological labs in Los Angeles.
At one point, he asked to speak to representatives of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network because he had something to say about SWIFT chips. SWIFT is a an exchange agency for international banks. He hinted that he could prove that the US had somehow tampered with SWIFT chips.
Some say Mike was a casualty in a small war between two intelligence factions. On the one side is the Aquarius faction, clustered around MJ-12. It can be assumed that it is somehow tied to the rogue intelligence operations that emerged in the late 1970s called The Enterprise. The other faction , COM-12, is based in Naval Intelligence and is trying to keep intelligence work lawful.
The late Sherman Skolnick believed that Robert Booth Nichols was somehow involved in the World Trade Center bombing. When he told Michael, he went through the roof. Michael shouted into the phone:” “ *get* *off* *that* *case*!” Skolnick insisted Nichols was part of Reagan’s Kitchen Cabinet.
Robert Booth Nichols ( born 1943) was a licensed arms trader and invented the submachine pistol. He was an admitted CIA agent. In 1993 he sued the LA police, claiming they had ruined a multi million dollar arms deal in an action that ended as a mistrial. He claimed to be an intelligence expert and his office/apartment number in Marina Del Rey was “007.” Nichols has been described as a “handsome, dashing figure, frequently described as ‘Clark Gable without ears….” His friend Steven Seagal got him a cameo role in “Under Siege.” He headed Meridian International Logistics (MIL) and did substantial business in Japan and Australia. MIL also controlled Meridian Arms Corporation, and eccentric scientific genius Michael Riconosciuto was Vice President of that firm for a brief period. MIL, in 1988, made a substantial grant to a Japanese medical school, probably to carry out research in biological weapons. Directors of MIL include Harold Okimoto and Eugene Giaquinto, head of MCA Home Entertainment. He and Riconoscuito worked together in the development of weapons at the once secret Wackenhut-Cabazon joint venture. Although that venture was also involved in the drug trade used to support the Nicaraguan Contras, there is no solid evidence that Nichols was intimately involved in the domestic side of the drug business.
Nichols was Senior Vice President of F.I.D.C.O.( First Intercontinental Development Corporation) a firm closely tied to the NSA that carried out various contracts, including construction, abroad. Another director and friend is George Pender, who is also tied to the Summa Corporation , which is linked to Howard Hughes. Pender, Meese, Dr. Earl Brian, and Nichols were close friends of Ronald Reagan and members of his California kitchen cabinet. Reagan advisor Michael McManus and Clint Murchison, owner of the Dallas Cowboys,were also directors of F.I.D.C.O.
Nichols and Earl Brian were involved in a firm known as Bio-Rad Laboratories, which occupied some of the property owned by Hercules, in Hercules, California. The above facility looks insignificant, but it sets on twenty underground stories. It manufactures the most deadly biological substances known to man. Their most important produce was Cytotoxic Tlymphocytes, which can be used to wipe out people with certain DNA codes. He has also claimed that Bio-Rad had developed deadly toxins designed to attack people with certain DNA structures. In other words, it can attack races. Conversely, people with certain DNA structures could be immunized, leaving others to be attack by biological agents. About the time one has written off this claim, evidence turns up that there could be some truth to it.
In September 1987, FBI Special agent Thomas Gates of Los Angeles began investigating Nichols and International Logistics. They suspected he was running drugs in connection with Eugene Giaquinto, and they thought Eugene Giaquinto was funneling MCA-Home Entertainment profits to Ed “The Conductor” Sciandra of the Buffalino crime family. They also thought Nichols had ties to the Gambino family and was infolved in a $500 million stock fraud case. The matter became public when the feds indicted Giaquinto and said they had a picture of him handing Nichols a box and tapes of their conversations. Nichols’ lawyer introduced a great deal of information about his involvement with prominent people and the White House and offered to call witnesses from the intelligence community. Nichols admitted that he had no visible means of support for fifteen years. Then the trial simply stopped and was never resumed.
Attorney Allan Boyak, a former DEA agent, published a piece on Nichols in the Executive Intelligence Review that claimed Nichols was a major heroin dealer but that he kept all of his dealings outside the country. Boyak also found Nichols had close ties to the leading Japanese crime figure in Hawaii, Harold Okimoto. Okimoto was a ranking Japanese intelligence officer in World War II.
For a time in the late 1980s, Nichols was head of the Special Service Unit in Dominica. It is a small security force for the island. It is said that there boiling lake that provides energy for a remarkable geothermal power plant on the island used to power multiple intelligence computer complexes belonging to Project Echelon, a joint effort of the USA, UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Hughes Aviation had some kind of tie to the power plant. It was designed to combine as many data bases as possible and was coordinated by Douglas Dillon of New York City, a former Eisenhower and Kennedy Official. Casolaro knew about this and believed Michael Riconosciuto‘s claim that it is going private, and the late Senator Frank Church had warned congress about efforts to take it private. Nichols also operated a rum-importing firm that some thought was a cover for drug operations, including moving China white heroin into Mexico.
According to Robert Booth Nichols’ estranged brother, James, he was a hit man for the Tongs in Hawaii as a young man. Boyak claims that Nichols laundered $50,200,000,000 for Ferdinand Marcos. It’s a good bet that this was done on behalf of the CIA and that the money was World War II Japanese gold that Marcos was minding for the US. Nichols has a castle outside Milan and an estate in Hawaii as well as the Marina Del Ray home. Bob Nichols also had business ties with the Yakuza crime clan of Japan.
Robert Booth Nichols was a major source for Joseph “Danny” Casolaro ( 1947-1991) , who was investigating PROMIS, and died an apparent suicide in a Martinsburg, West Virginia motel on August 10, 1991. Barbara Bittinger, the assistant head housekeeper, reported that there was blood everywhere but it also appeared that someone tried to wipe it up. He was not a nail-biter but three nails were damaged and there was a bruise on the top of his head. Danny had told his brother, Dr. Tony Casolaro, that he had been receiving a number of threatening telephone calls. Danny told FBI agent Thomas Gates that Nichols warned him, "If you continue this investigation, you will die." He went to Martinsburg to meet a “source,” Bill turner, who gave him documents about corruption in Hughes Aircraft. The papers were not found in Danny’s hotel room,. He told Turner there was a second source he planned to meet there.
Danny published Computer Age for ten years before giving it up in 1990. Studying the origin of PROMIS software was a natural for him. Michael Riconosciuto provided the initial information on it, and Bill Hamilton egged him on. Soon he was chasing many leads and meeting spooks and quasi spooks. Other information came from Alan D. Standorf, an NSA employee who worked in electronic intelligence. He also provided information to Michael Riconosciuto. Standorf gave Danny records showing wire payments to Brian from foreign entities, most likely in connection with the sale of PROMIS software. He also provided information on banking scandal and government ties to the underworld. In room 900 of the Hilton, Danny placed a high speed copier so that Standof’s files could be quickly copied and returned. Before Danny was found dead, Standorf’s body would be found stuffed into his a car trunk at Washington National Airport on January 31, 1991. He died from a blow to the head and luggage and personal items were placed on top of his body.
Danny learned about the BCCI scandal before it became news and found the story of the Republicans' 1980 deal with the Iranians fascinating. He had earlier published a novel about the JFK conspiracy and was prepared to look for pieces that would fit together and to believe that all was not as it appeared to be. David Corn of The Nation, who later worked to hard to discredit critics of the official 9/11 explanation, said that Casolaro was pursuing the “silly theory” of the Christic Institute that a secret intelligence and political team, which Danny called the Octopus, was somehow behind the theft of PROMIS, supplying the Contras, the October, 1980 Surprise, the BCCI scandal and much else. Eliot Richardson, attorney for Inslaw, had written Attorney General Thornburgh asking for an independent counsel to investigate the PROMIS case and never got a reply. Richardson later said: "I have never understood why ... I mean, I was attorney general when Thornburg was a U.S. attorney. I appointed him chairman of a committee of U.S. attorneys, newly formed for the first time. I am a responsible former public official. I am not a wild-eyed nut." Richardson thought Danny’s death a suicide was “highly implausible” and should be investigated further.
Posted by Sherman De Brosse at 12:21 PM
Digest this information. Then ask yourself "who was Denis Kendall?"
"History records that the Money Changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance." --James Madison
There was another Brit also lurking around the scene in California in 1960, as well as later, named Denis Kendall 34 of 1319 N Doheny Drive West Hollywood. This is not only in Hollywood; it's in Laurel Canyon! http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=1319...1&ct=title
Quote:Oakland Tribune--October 1960
INGLEWOOD, Oct. 14-UP--Admiral Arthur W. Radford, USN, ret., former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has joined the board of directors of American Marc Inc., W. Denis Kendall, the company's president, announced.
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What was Kendall's connection to the Riconosciutos? http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/11.htm
CHAPTER 11
Michael Riconosciuto had some, if not all, of the answers to the gene splicing technology that Zokosky and Wackenhut had attempted to sell to the Army weapons division in 1983, and later fronted to the Japanese, through Meridian International Logisitcs, in 1988.
I felt that time was of the essence in uncovering the nature of this technology, so I pushed Riconosciuto to talk about it. "It looks like Earl Brian, Sir Denis Kendall,
...I had read about Sir Denis Kendall, the famous M16 British intelligence officer during World War II, in "Who's Who in America," 1989 issue. Kendall had worked with Michael in some, as yet, undefined capacity. Bobby Riconosciuto had noted to me that Kendall and Ted Gunderson had counseled Oliver North prior to his testimony to Congress. Kendall was also heavily involved in arms and biotechnology, according to Michael Riconosciuto. "Who's Who" described Denis William Kendall as a "medical electronic equipment company executive," born in Halifax, Yorkshire, England on May 27, 1903. Kendall came to the United States in 1923, was naturalized in 1957. His background included being a consultant to the Pentagon on high velocity small arms from 1940 to 1945. He was listed on Churchill's War Cabinet Gun Board from 1941-45. He was later executive vice president of Brunswick Ordnance Plant in New Jersey from 1952 to 1956. From 1961 to 1973, became president of Dynapower Medonics in Los Angeles, and chief executive of Kendall Medical International, Inc. in Los Angeles in 1973.
Hercules Research, Wackenut, Zokosky and Bob Nichols were all involved in the same biotechnological agenda ..."
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http://www.lycaeum.org/books/books/last_circle/12.htm
The issue of Viedenieks' connection with Earl Brian or Terry Sanford, or even Nichols himself, had not been raised publicly yet. At the time, I didn't place any particular significance on Nichols' relationship with Earl Brian or Peter Viedenieks, I just took the information at face value and wrote it in my notes.
Nichols reacted violently when I asked him if he had any business dealings with Brunswick Corporation in New Jersey. He jumped up from his chair by the window and yelled, "Absolutely not!"
I quickly explained that I had looked up Sir Denis Kendall (the famous M16 World War II British officer) in "Who's Who in America" and learned that he had once been associated with Brunswick. Nichols said he did not know Sir Denis Kendall. His eyes told me otherwise.
I noted that was strange since Michael Riconosciuto seemed to know him well. Nichols and Zokosky exchanged glances. I further explained that Bobby Riconosciuto said she had been to Kendall's home on Doheny Drive in Beverly Hills with her children once. She had often called Kendall when she was trying to locate Michael, and within hours of calling Kendall, Michael always called her back. Nichols and Zokosky seemed disturbed by that statement.
I didn't mention that Riconoscituo had stated Kendall was Nichols' supervisor (CIA "handler"), or that J.M., Ted Gunderson's research partner, had found a brochure in Ted's files advertising for Swedish nurses at a medical research complex in Mexico. The brochure contained both Gunderson's picture and Sir Denis Kendall's.
Just to the west of Laurel Canyon, and slightly to the east of Coldwater Canyon, lies a large estate known as Greystone Park, home of the long-vacant Greystone Mansion. The home, and the grounds it sits on, is said to be, to this day, the most expensive private residence ever built in the city of Los Angeles. Constructed in the 1920s, the home and grounds carried the then-unfathomable price tag of $4,000,000 (by way of comparison, the Lookout Inn, built a decade-and-a-half earlier, was projected to cost from $86,000-$100,000; in other words, the single-family residence cost at least 40 times what the lavish 70-room inn cost – and the inn required bringing infrastructure and building materials to a remote mountaintop). The massive, 46,000 square-foot edifice sits amid 22 lavishly landscaped acres of prime Hollywood Hills real estate. This rather ostentatious home was built by uberwealthy oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny as a wedding present for his son, Edward “Ned” Doheny, Jr.. ...Upon the home’s completion, in September 1928, young Ned Doheny and his new bride moved into the humble abode. Within months, the home would be bloodstained; soon after, it would be permanently abandoned.
Poor Ned, you see, was found dead in the cavernous home on February 16, 1929. Near him lay the lifeless body of his assistant/personal secretary, [Theodore] Hugh Plunkett. Both men had been shot. Despite persistent rumors of an inordinately long delay in reporting the deaths, and of the bodies having been moved to re-stage the crime scene, no formal inquest was ever conducted and the case was written off as a murder/suicide arising from a gay lovers’ quarrel. Plunkett was said to be the triggerman and the media quickly went into a frenzy playing up the scandalous homosexuality angle and portraying young Plunkett as positively demented.
It is anyone’s guess whether or not the two really were gay lovers, but it matters little; the rest of the story was almost certainly a work of fiction. In reality, both men were likely murdered as part of the massive cover-up/damage-control operation that followed the disclosure of the Harding-era Teapot Dome scandal, which the Doheny family, as it turns out, was very deeply immersed in. The murder/suicide scenario was then trotted out because, as we all know, if the alleged perpetrator is already dead, it pretty much eliminates the need for things like investigations and trials....Some forty years after those gunshots rang out in the opulent Greystone Mansion, a new Ned Doheny, scion of the very same Doheny oil clan, would join the ranks of the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters club.
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If anything, Kendall brings us back to Laurel Canyon and the 1920's before there were talking pictures a la Hollywood. Kendall's address, years after Hollywood became synonymous with movies and rock stars, was 1319 N Doheny Drive West Hollywood--in the heart of Laurel Canyon. http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=1319...1&ct=image
http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/2550
Greystone, the Doheny mansion which sits on the hillside above Doheny Road on the eastern edge of Beverly Hills is now a park, so named officially in 1971.When it was built,in the late 1920s, it was the second largest house (56,000 square feet) in California after Hearst’s castle at San Simeon.
[COLOR="Red"]In the 1920s, all of that area, which includes what is now Trousdale Estates and the adjacent Doheny Drive properties, extending westward and upwards into the foothills of the range that is known as the Santa Monica Mountains; all of it belonged to the Dohenys, and most specifically Edward L. Doheny Jr., known as “Ned,” son of E.L. Sr., who first struck oil in the Los Angeles area in 1892.[/COLOR] At the beginning of the 20th century, the elder Mr. Doheny was pumping enough oil to rival only one other oilman of consequence in America, John D. Rockefeller.
In those early days, the family lived where all the rich of Los Angeles lived, in the southwest part of the city (Beverly Hills and the western sections like Holmby, Bel Air and Brentwood had yet to be developed), in the vicinity of West Adams Boulevard, Chester Square and Lafayette Square.
Sunset Boulevard around what is now Doheny Drive wasn’t much more than a bridlepath (and often used as one). What is West Hollywood now was then poinsettia fields in an area known as Sherman. The Dohenys used their land in the hills now know as Truesdale, as a ranch -- a place to get away -- out of town, for horseback riding, hiking and other healthy outdoor activities.
By the early 1920s, young Ned, with his wife Lucy and their five children occupied a large and stylish house up in these hills, as did several of their relatives with young families like them.
By the early 1920s, E.L.Doheny Sr. was one of the richest men in the world with hugely productive oil fields in the southwest and Mexico. His wealth made him a very powerful man politically, and he used that power to ingratiate himself with, and even create, national political leaders, such as presidents. One president whose administration was profoundly affected by old man Doheny was Warren G. Harding.
President Harding had a Secretary of the Interior named Albert Fall who was a very close friend of the elder Mr. Doheny. In fact, Mr. Doheny once gave Mr. Fall $100,000 to help him along (that’s about $10 million in today’s dollars). In return -- out of gratitude of course, as it so often is with our politicians -- Secretary Fall made it possible for Mr. Doheny to secure oil drilling rights to a large deposit of oil on federally owned lands, particularly one rich one which was called the Teapot Dome because its vastness was shaped like ... a teapot.
The Teapot Dome was to become the nemesis in the downfall of Warren G. Harding and his administration, as well as the greatest political scandal in American history until Watergate, a half century later. Albert Fall was disgraced and went to jail. Mr. Doheny escaped a prison sentence by the skin of his teeth and an incident which caused his family fortunes took a far more tragic turn.
The $100,000 cash bribe to the Secretary of Interior Fall had been hand delivered in a black valise, by Mr. Doheny's son Ned, who was then in his late twenties, and a boyhood friend who was then employee of the family, Hugh Plunkett. That single act -- carrying that black bag and handing it over to Secretary Fall -- was to seal the fate of both young Doheny and his friend Plunkett in a most terrible way.
In the early 1920s while all of this political mischief was going on with men in high places in Washington, Ned Doheny, an only child, decided to build his dream house on the ranch land in the hills. The original design by architect Wallace Neff, was inspired by the Petit Trianon at Versailles, and, like Rosecliff it became a massive project, dwarfed at the time only by the activities of William Randolph Hearst who at about the same time farther up the coast at San Simeon, was building his castle.
The property of pines and barren hillside was transformed and planted and replanted to make way for a sprawling stone mansion with broad terraces overlooking the city (which at that time was mainly bungalows and clusters of stores amidst a lot of vacant land) as far south as the family oil wells on Signal Hills, just north of Long Beach. Hollywood was several miles down those almost remote roads to the east, and what is now Downtown L.A. was about forty-five minutes away.
As the house was abuilding, Ned Doheny and his wife Lucy (daughter of a local gas station owner), and their designers scoured Europe for artisans and craftsmen, and for antiques and interiors. After several years and an expenditure said to be about $5 million (or a hundred times that today), Greystone was finished. Huge, regal, a kind of neo-Tudor confection, solid and substantial, it was equipped with all the luxuries any young modern family could want or need, including stables, and athletic facilities, tennis courts, gyms, swimming pools, screening room, ballroom, bowling alleys. It even had its own switchboard and telephone system.
It was the largest house in Los Angeles and it commanded a legend by the time of its completion. Later generations of Los Angelenos called it Dragonwyck, after the movie that was said to have been inspired by the property.
The house was completed to take occupany in the late summer of 1928. The family, Ned and Lucy Doheny, their five children and fifteen in staff, moved in in the autumn.
The son’s taking possession of Greystone was a milestone in the life of E.L. Doheny, a rough and tumble oil wildcatter who worked long and hard at his quest to finally hit one of the biggest oil strikes on the North American continent that would make him rich and powerful. And now, at the completion of the son’s palace, he, and because of him, the son, he was also in trouble with the Feds. Because of Teapot Dome.
A bribe is a bribe is a bribe. And a hundred grand to a White House Cabinet member? All this, not to mention Hugh Plunkett, the Dohenys’ retainer, the trusted confidant of young Ned -- so trusted that he signed many of the checks in the building of Greystone -- Hugh Plunkett was in trouble with the Feds too. The black bag with the hundred grand that the two pals delivered that day to Secretary Fall, was under investigation.
At the same time the young Dohenys were the golden couple of Los Angeles society with their elevated Eastern social and political connections. When they finally moved into Greystone, with its real kind of palatial splendor, with the world at their feet, so to speak, the shadow of the Teapot Dome had begun to cast its shadow.
Congress was calling for blood. Secretary Fall went first: indicted, convicted and sent to jail. And the bribers? They were next. And who were they? Were they the men who carried the black bag of cash? Young Ned Doheny and his cohort Hugh Plunkett? Or was it the man with the money, E.L. Sr.?
The world was about to find out because a Senate investigation had been launched, and the guilty were going to be dealt with. Now a pillar of the community and an elder; one of the world's richest men, Doheny couldn’t fathom the ramifications. Now a pious Roman Catholic as well, a great contributor to the community and most especially the Roman Catholic church in Los Angeles, guilt was, in his mind, outside his purview, yet now under his skin.
There was now speculation going on in the national press: what would happen to E. L. Doheny when he had to testify under oath before the committee? Would he fold? Would he incriminate himself? Was this the end of the line?
The world was about to see. It was going to start first with the two men who carried the black bag of bribery: Ned Doheny and his buddy Hugh Plunkett. The family was in turmoil. Neither father nor son had any plans on taking the rap. They intended to protect themselves. Hugh Plunkett, however, was a different story. He was involved also. And his relationship to the family was so close that there could be a case made for his taking matters into his own hands. And getting his own hands dirty.
This reality became apparent to Plunkett as the date of testifying in Washington drew nearer. His own behavior, as revealed in later testimony became unhinged to the point that his friend, young Doheny suggested he be institutionalized until he calmed down.
He did not calm down, however. And as young Doheny pulled away from his boyhood friend, the unhinging took a sharper turn for the worse,. Finally, on a Saturday night in early February 1929, only four months after the young family moved into the house, a very troubled Hugh Plunkett drove up to Greystone from his apartment in Hollywood. A familiar figure on the property, he was let through by the gatekeeper at the big gate (still standing) on Doheny Road.
Just exactly what his movements were after that will never be known precisely. However, Plunkett did let himself into the big house (he had his own key), and made his way to a bedroom in the east wing of the house, a room which might have been available for his use. It was there that he called his friend Ned, who was in another part of the house, through the switchboard, and asked if they could talk.
Ned Doheny, a good-looking man of thirty-five with dark hair, sharp dark eyes, a Black Irishman’s bearing and sometimes alcoholic demeanor, in his silk dressing robe, made his way across the long corridors of the house to meet with Hugh Plunkett.
What happened thereafter remains, seventy-eight years later, mere speculation. The newspaper accounts at the time generally went like this:
Lucy Doheny had been sitting by herself in the library reading magazines when about 11:30 she heard a gunshot. According to press accounts, she didn’t look for the source of the gunshots, nor did she call the police. Instead she called the family doctor who was with his wife at the movies in Beverly Hills. Paged at the theatre, the doctor immediately drove up to the house (about a ten minute drive from downtown Beverly Hills). There he was greeted at the imposing front door (see photos) by Lucy Doheny who led him immediately escorted him to the east wing where she claimed to have heard the gunshot.
At that point, as the doctor and Mrs. Doheny approached the room where Plunkett had called Ned from, Plunkett came out of the room in a state of anguish and with a gun in his hand.. On seeing the family doctor (whom he knew) and Lucy Doheny, he ran back into the room and slammed the door. Whereupon, the doctor and Lucy Doheny (later) claimed they heard another gunshot.
Mind you, this, according to the official story, occurred more than twenty minutes after Lucy Doheny had heard the first gunshot.
Then the doctor and Mrs. Doheny entered the room where they found Hugh Plunkett dead on the floor in a pool of blood, and Ned Doheny also dead on the floor in a pool of blood. This was the official story carried in the newspapers in Los Angeles the next day.
The gunshots occurred around eleven-thirty and midnight that Saturday night. Whatever occurred afterward is obscured by time and testimony. The police were called almost three hours later at 2 a.m. In the meantime, many of Lucy Doheny’s relatives who lived nearby showed up at the house. Called, obviously by someone in the house. Later it was admitted that the bodies were also moved before the police could see and photograph them.
The Dohenys were the richest family in Los Angeles. Their oil wells were everywhere including in many neighborhoods. The sudden death by gunshot of the only son and heir was big news. Everyone wanted to know what happened. Two days later the local DA’s office, however, closed an inquest on the deaths. It was officially concluded that Hugh Plunkett shot Ned Doheny, his boyhood friend, and then turned the gun on himself. About a half hour later, of course, if the official story is to be believed.
Ned Doheny was buried with pomp and circumstance a few days later. His stepmother (his mother, a half-Cherokee, had died many years before), Estelle Doheny, was one of the biggest contributors to the Roman Catholic church in Los Angeles (she owned the Gutenberg Bible, acquired many decades later by Bill Gates). Curiously, Ned was not buried in a Catholic cemetery but instead at Forest Lawn in Glendale. The reason for this has never been explained, although it could be deduced that his death was not necessarily by murder but perhaps by his own hand -- a mortal sin in the eyes of the Church.
After a much simpler ceremony, without pomp or public clamoring, Hugh Plunkett was buried in the same cemetery just a few yards from his friend Ned. From all this arose the story that the two men had been lovers, and that the quarrel which had ensued that night in the big house had to do with their relationship. The implication that both men were at some time engaged in a homosexual relationship became the note of interest in the case, and remains so to this day. Nothing was ever written in the newspapers at the time about the fact that Hugh Plunkett was, with Ned Doheny, a participant in the bribery of Albert Fall, and was scheduled to testify before the Senate investigating committee, and that the elder Doheny would be next..
Instead it was assumed that the mystery of their deaths had to do with a sexual drama. On the face of it, the idea that two men in their thirties who had been friends since their teenage years were having a sexual relationship is almost absurd. The idea that Hugh Plunkett might have been terrified and enraged that he was going to be “hung out to dry” and face jail time in the case of delivering the bribe money to Secretary Fall, is another matter entirely.
However, none of that came to the surface. The two men were buried days later, and everyone’s life went on. The sympathy for the father of the dead man, Ned Doheny, was so great that the Congressional investigation was called off and he never had to testify. Lucy Doheny, a little more than a year later, almost to the day, married a man named Leigh Batson, a stockbroker whom she and her late husband had known for some time. Six years later E.L. Doheny Sr. died – “of a broken heart” it was written in the papers.
The Batsons lived at Greystone for the next twenty-six years, raising her children, until 1955 when Mrs. Doheny Batson decided the big house was too big. She gave the property to the city of Beverly Hills and built a new “smaller” house for herself on the adjoining property that ran along Schuyler Road.
Equipped with 22 bathrooms, the newer house, called “The Knoll” was later sold to film producer Dino di Laurentiis, who sold it to singer Kenny Rogers, who in turn sold it to Barbara and Marvin Davis. With the occupation by the Davises, “The Knoll” has been the scene of some of the greatest parties in America in the 1980s and 1990s.
Lucy Smith Doheny Batson lived to a very great age, over a hundred. At the end of her life, she moved to a large (5000 square feet) and luxurious condominium on the Wilshire Corridor. A very formidable character, at the very end of her life, she would arise each morning, get herself dressed up for a luncheon engagement, place herself in a wingback chair in her livingroom, her handbag on the floor at her side, and sit. And wait.
Her grandchildren would visit the intimidating dowager. It was said that even her grandchildren, ever curious, were afraid to ask her “what happened” in the big house on that fateful night in February 1929. One of them told me once that they wondered why she went to the trouble to dress and sit there, handbag ready, and wait. Was she, the very devout Roman Catholic lady, waiting for her Maker to come a-calling. Was she worried about the Judgment Day, the believer that she was? Did she have reason to suffer guilt? Was it because of what really happened to Neddie and Hughie on that fateful February night almost seventy years before?
These are their ghosts of Greystone. JH, with his Digital taking in the architectural details one afternoon, and on hearing the story, he thinks so. His comments reminded me of the house that sat on the top of the hill behind Greystone, visible through the giant pine trees still standing. That house, built in 1927, belonged to Gypsy Rose Lee in the 1960s. She died there in 1970. Later owners of the house claimed that Gypsy’s ghost was active in the house, so much so that they sold it to another party. That buyer became so exasperated by her ghost that they too sold it. The third new buyer, aware of the ghostliness of the property, tore the place down and built a new house in its stead.
A tour of Greystone produces a curiosity that has no direction and no conclusion. There is a vibe about the place. Most visitors have no idea of the house’s story or the economic importance of the Dohenys in Los Angeles, or the scourge of the political scandal that destroyed at least two young lives. The house however, 78 years after its building, still stands stolid, solid and substantial. It has been used many many times for television and film shoots.
For many years it was occupied by the American Film Institute. It remains, however, lifeless, a hapless reminder of great wealth, without a hint of spent lives.
The story of Ned Doheny ended up in rumor to be linked with Hugh Plunkett, his boyhood friend. The idea that the two men died because of a lover’s quarrel is a compelling but deeply misleading testament to the corruption of the patriarch. When E. L. Doheny died in 1935, his widow Estelle buried all of his personal papers. She later gave tens of millions more to the Church. They also built a library at USC in memory of Ned. But they also buried him outside the church.
Ned, it was said, was a spoiled son, Over indulged and reckless, he drank too much, as was the fashion during his time (Prohibition). It might have been a relief, it has been suggested more than once, that Ned was gone. That way Lucy could have a decent life, good life, with a man who respected her. Which is what, apparently, she did. At least until the very end when she was old and frail, and dressed and waiting, for the Judgment Day.
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So we have been told that Sir Denis came to America in 1923 before going back to England to build first a munitions factory and later an economy car works with a retired American admiral on the American subsidiary board. We also are told that he lived on a street in Laurel Canyon named for the famous oilman whose family owned the entire area which became "Laurel Canyon".
Could there be a connection?
"History records that the Money Changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance." --James Madison
Sir Denis Kendall - aka Sir Denis William Kendall - was actually Sir William Denis Kendall.
See Chapter 11 of The Last Circle for more on his relationship with Riconosciuto.
According to his Wiki entry he was a fascist and was under MI5 and MI6 scrutiny because of his close pre-WWII connections to various Germans and membership of the BNP.
And then comes the stunning revelation. The company he formed was the Manufacturing and Research Company Ltd., which later changed its name to the British Manufacturing and Research Company Ltd.
Immediately after Thatcher lost power BMARC as it then become known, was investigated for illegal arms dealings with Iraq and with Jonathan Aitken, the disgraced MP and former Chairman of the fascist leaning "Le Cercle". During Thatcher's "reign" BMARC was sold to Astra, the arms company at the heart of the illegal arms to Iraq affair that became the subject of the Scott inquiry, by Lord Justice Scott.
This was a very big affair in the UK. For those who are unfamiliar with it, the Thatcher government supplied weapons to Iraq and then later to Iran, so that both nations would kill each other. But it was worse than that. When the US and UK went to war with Saddam in 1991, the UK continued to provide weapons - in particular a 40 wagon trainload of 155 millimeter sabot discarding anti-tank shells as part of the (fig leaf end user agreement) "Jordan Package".
For a general background see the Wiki entry on BMARC .
See also Gerald James downloadable .pdf essay on this matter HERE
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
tickyman: