The Vehicle on the Grassy Knoll

[Peter Lemkin]

Great thread. The plot sickens.

Magicians know well the technique of hiding in plain sight - something so obvious (were it part of the trick - so thinks the viewer) it would easily be dismissed as too obvious, especially when several alternative foci of attention are provided. Much of what went on in the Plaza that day was, IMO, designed by persons with similar training to the magician's arts of misdirection of attention and cloaking, by various means. What better place to hide someone/something involved in a shooting than a vehicle with a giant fake gun on top!? A few things that were done seem to have been cryptic signals to cognesenti - including the apparent virtual bleachers of high-level spooks watching in the crowd; various pols, mils, spooks and others who were not fooled (at all), but only played the part publicly that they had been. Everyone who was anyone knew it was not LHO, and it had been a coup of sorts by the afternoon of the 22nd. For some the details weren't even that important. For us to convince some of our fellow citizens still in denial, they are.

NB- there is new software available for stabilizing and/or capturing images in the old films of the assassination. I don't know how to use them, but some good examples have been seen around of their application.

[Mark Stapleton]

Magicians know well the technique of hiding in plain sight - something so obvious (were it part of the trick - so thinks the viewer) it would easily be dismissed as too obvious, especially when several alternative foci of attention are provided. Much of what went on in the Plaza that day was, IMO, designed by persons with similar training to the magician's arts of misdirection of attention and cloaking, by various means. What better place to hide someone/something involved in a shooting than a vehicle with a giant fake gun on top!? A few things that were done seem to have been cryptic signals to cognesenti - including the apparent virtual bleachers of high-level spooks watching in the crowd; various pols, mils, spooks and others who were not fooled (at all), but only played the part publicly that they had been. Everyone who was anyone knew it was not LHO, and it had been a coup of sorts by the afternoon of the 22nd. For some the details weren't even that important. For us to convince some of our fellow citizens still in denial, they are.

NB- there is new software available for stabilizing and/or capturing images in the old films of the assassination. I don't know how to use them, but some good examples have been seen around of their application.

Agree on all counts, Peter.

In the unlikely event that we actually discover the full details of what transpired in DP that day, it will probably only bear a faint resemblance to our present understanding of the events. It was a magician's trick all right. As for the technique of hiding within plain sight, it reminds me of Poe's famous tale, The Purloined Letter.

Of course, the post assassination story reads like another Poe classic---A descent into the maelstrom.

[Dawn Meredith]

Would this also not be the similar car found and described by Richard Bartholomew?
Unless Craig saw two Ramblers, possibly "belonging to Ruth Paine".
I have not read RB's long essay in over a decade. It's long and very name intensive but well worth the effort. (And Richard is a member here, as is John Kelin who first published this work in his online mag. Fair Play).
Dawn

Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used
in the JFK Conspiracy:

Foreword

by Richard Bartholomew


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This Foreword is a proposition for those familiar with my monograph, Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used in the JFK Conspiracy, and a prognosticative prologue for those who are not. While based on the facts presented in the monograph, facts in its subsequent updates, and facts from research not included here, this is an interpretation of those facts, meant only as a simplified supposition, to be used as a rough guide through the complex material that follows.


In the 1930s, two anti-communist guerrillas, James Burnham and George Lyman Paine, went undercover as communists, infiltrated the leadership of the American Trotskyist movement -- the world's largest Trotskyist organization -- and helped tear it apart. In 1940, their mission ended with the assassination of Leon Trotsky in Mexico City.


One of the two anti-communist guerrillas, James Burnham, went on to teach the newly formed CIA about covert operations. He also went on to teach philosophy at Yale and recruit CIA agents from among his students.


In 1950, Burnham recruited a Yale student, William F. Buckley, Jr., and introduced him to CIA agent E. Howard Hunt. Hunt was a favorite of CIA Director Allen Dulles. Buckley's father also knew the Dulles family, having shared foreign-policy adventures in Mexico with Dulles' uncle, Robert Lansing, when Lansing was President Wilson's secretary of state.


Buckley, as Hunt's advance man, went to Mexico City to recruit informants for the CIA's soon-to-be Mexico City station. There, Buckley met and recruited a 28-year-old Spanish student from Philadelphia, George Gordon Wing, as an informant among the left-wing student groups at Mexico City College. Hunt arrived soon thereafter and arranged for Wing's CIA payment, which was disguised as a student grant. Wing was an older student because his studies had been interrupted by World War II. He served as a Naval aviation bomb-sight technician, fire controlman and ordnance specialist.


In 1952, Wing continued his Spanish studies at the University of California at Berkeley. Upon earning his Ph.D. in Spanish in 1961, Wing joined his former boss, Hunt, in Little Havana, Miami. From there, he trained with the CIA's Operation Forty assassins on No Name Key, in preparation for the Bay of Pigs invasion.


In the fall of 1962, Wing followed in James Burnham's footsteps and became a professor and CIA recruiter, but at the University of Texas at Austin. UT's past leaders had served in Wilson's cabinet with Allen Dulles' uncle, Robert Lansing. UT was also the alma mater of Lansing's friend, William F. Buckley, Sr.


Wing's association with the Dulles family became closer when John Foster Dulles' son, Jack, came to know him personally as a fellow professor in Latin American studies at UT. Professor Wing was thus in a perfect position to be useful to the plotters of President Kennedy's assassination. In fact, Wing's last name appears on the manifest of the same flight which brought the Oswalds from New York to Texas in 1962.


In early April, 1963, the date for Kennedy's trip to Texas was set for November 21st. The occasion was an appreciation dinner in Houston for Kennedy's friend, Texas Congressman Albert Thomas. On April 23rd, Lyndon Johnson made a cryptic statement at a press conference in Dallas that included a phrase about reporters figuratively shooting Kennedy during his Texas trip. The next day, April 24th, Marina Oswald moved into the home of her friend Ruth Hyde Paine. That same day, Lee Harvey Oswald departed for New Orleans, arriving on April 25th. On April 26th, George Wing acquired a used Rambler station wagon from C.B. Smith Motors, an Austin, Texas dealership owned by C.B. Smith, a life-long student of Latin America, and one of Lyndon Johnson's closest friends. The sales manager was Smith's son, C.B. Smith, Jr. The salesman, R.L. Lewis, died under unusual circumstances seven weeks after Kennedy's assassination. The senior Smith's mentor, Texas historian Walter Prescott Webb, was an intimate friend of those planning Albert Thomas' dinner. Webb died suddenly in late April, 1963, in a one-car accident near Austin.


Although Wing was a lowly associate professor whose first semester -- fall, 1962 -- was typically overburdened by the least desirable assignments and responsibilities, he was allowed to take a leave-of-absence for the entire fall semester of 1963. It was the only extended absence of his academic career. He later continued to teach without interruption, even after a heart attack in 1971.


That fall, Ruth Hyde Paine helped arrange Oswald's employment at the Texas School Book Depository. Another employee in the same building was Fronia Smith, the ex-wife of C.B. Smith, Sr. and the mother of C.B. Smith, Jr.


Wing's whereabouts and activities during that semester are unknown, but a Rambler station wagon identical to his was photographed in the parking lot of the Texas School Book Depository, within ten minutes of the shooting on November 22, 1963. And a Rambler station wagon, whose description fits Wing's car, was used to covertly extract guerrillas from Dealey Plaza immediately after they succeeded in killing John F. Kennedy.


Lee Harvey Oswald told his police interrogators that the Rambler station wagon in which he was seen leaving Dealey Plaza, "belongs to Mrs. Paine." He was referring to either Ruth Hyde Paine or Ruth Forbes Paine, the daughter-in -law and the ex-wife, respectively, of George Lyman Paine -- James Burnham's partner in the destruction of Trotskyism. Ruth Forbes Paine was also a long-time friend of Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles' wartime lover and his chief contact with one of the leaders of the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.


Photographs, taken by White House photographer Cecil Stoughton of Vice-President Johnson taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One at Love Field, show President Johnson and Congressman Thomas winking and smiling at each other immediately after the grim ceremony. The original negative to that photo is the only one missing from that series of 13 exposures.


Hard to believe? Read on.

Richard Bartholomew
April 20, 1997


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Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used in the JFK Conspiracy


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Return to Main Page



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* * *

[Dawn Meredith]

Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used
In the JFK Conspiracy

Copyright © 1993 by Richard Bartholomew


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Introduction
Ten minutes after President Kennedy was shot, Marvin Robinson, Helen Forrest and Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, independently of each other, reportedly saw two men leaving Dealey Plaza in a light-colored Rambler station wagon. One of them entered the car on Elm Street after running from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD). Craig and Forrest described this man as being identical to Lee Harvey Oswald. A few minutes before this incident Richard Randolph Carr saw two of three men, who had come from behind the TSBD, enter what was apparently the same Rambler parked next to the building on Houston Street. He saw the third man enter the car seconds later on Record Street, one block east and two blocks south of the TSBD. 1
The Warren Commission had Robinson's and Craig's reports of November 23, 1963. It also had Craig's statement to the FBI from the day before; as well as Carr's statements to the FBI and Craig's testimony. The Commission, however, apparently never knew about Mrs. Forrest and did not publish Robinson's statement.2 It chose not to believe that Craig took part in Oswald's interrogation or that Craig identified Oswald as the man who entered the station wagon. Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz, Oswald's interrogator, denied to the Commission that Craig was present. Fritz thus never had to deal with Craig's allegation that Oswald admitted to Fritz that he had indeed left Dealey Plaza in a station wagon belonging to Ruth Paine.3

Despite the Robinson statement that corroborated Craig and which the Commission had; and despite other corroborating evidence such as newspaper photographs showing Craig's presence on Elm Street and at the open door of the interrogation room with Fritz during Oswald's questioning, the Commission chose to believe the contradictory and unsupported testimony of taxi driver William Whaley.4 Whaley told the Warren Commission about two witnesses who saw Oswald enter his cab. But there is no indication that the Commission ever attempted to locate, through the simple process of examining the cab company's records, the only two people who could corroborate Whaley.5

With the Warren Commission's attempted classification of Marvin Robinson's statement, the death of William Whaley in 1965, and the 1975 death of Roger Craig after his many failed attempts to make his story public, the truth about this alleged getaway car has eluded the few who have tried to seek it.6

The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) apparently attempted but failed. It reported, "Robinson did not testify before the Warren Commission, and he has not been located by the committee." Despite this attempt, however, the House Committee, like the Warren Commission, avoided the entire matter in its report, choosing instead to repeat the Commission's conclusion that "shortly after the assassination, Oswald boarded a bus, but when the bus got caught in a traffic jam, he disembarked and took a taxicab to his rooming house." In this, as in many other areas of its investigation, the House Committee had it both ways by concluding that "The Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President." Thus leading to the conclusion, voiced in 1980 by DeLloyd J. Guth and David R. Wrone, "after careful study of the HSCA's Final Report, that this most recent official version does not satisfy the need for a thorough inquiry into what happened that day in Dallas."7

Hypothetically, if the getaway car continued to exist for the past thirty years, given the muddied trails, suspicious deaths, and failed investigations, any persons who secretly knew of the car's role in the assassination and also knew that it still existed, could safely assume it would never be identified. If one such person decided to reveal the car's secrets, however, how would he do it? Could he do it without being silenced himself? Could he do it in a way that would survive his own death?

On May 29, 1989, a Rambler station wagon was noticed on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin (UT) which fit the description of the getaway car reportedly seen by Craig, Robinson, Forrest, and Carr on November 22, 1963.8 A cursory examination of the car revealed apparent associations between it and persons whose lives were intertwined with Lyndon Johnson's political machinery, the military-industrial-intelligence complex in the U.S., right-wing politics, and Latin American politics.

Connections between odd characteristics of the car itself and information found elsewhere on the UT campus could be interpreted as a trail of clues in the form of coded messages connecting this Rambler, its owner at the time, and its previous owner to the JFK assassination.9 These clues appear to have been deliberately planted due to specific interrelationships in their content and the encoding technique used.

Specifically, the Rambler was found bearing a 1964 Mexico Federal Turista window sticker and displaying at least two magazines published in 1963 on its rear seat. Although this made it only a minor curiosity, it became increasingly intriguing with subsequent study.

Physical, anecdotal, and documentary evidence has revealed a mosaic of relationships extending from the car's owners to individuals who have been and are currently subjects of interest to researchers of the conspiratorial aspects of the assassination of President Kennedy.

As Dennis Ford writes in the November 1992 issue of The Third Decade, "Discovering the fate of the Rambler will go a long way toward solving this case....Whoever took or drove the car that afternoon is obviously a conspirator."10 This paper reports on a cursory investigation and proposes a more in-depth investigation. It argues that the UT Rambler represents a possible unique opportunity to determine the fate of this alleged getaway car by investigating new leads, current clues, and fresh trails; an opportunity that should not be overlooked.

There is no intention here to implicate innocent persons in the assassination of President Kennedy. Rather, this is a presentation of circumstances which appear to support the proposed investigation.

This paper presumes, as advised by the United States Constitution, that every person referred to herein is innocent. It also presumes, as advised by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that, "The more outré and grotesque an incident is, the more carefully it deserves to be examined...."11


El Turista y los Compañeros

When first noticed, the Rambler station wagon at UT was only of interest because it was similar to the car Craig described. There was no incentive to look any closer because the odds were greatly against it being that car. Another person who had seen the car on campus mentioned the existence of the 1964 Mexican tourist sticker on its window. The inference was that if it was the getaway car it would likely have been driven to Mexico as soon as possible after the assassination and, if not destroyed, remain there during the ensuing investigation. This was judged a coincidence, however, and it seemed an easy task to find a simple fact about the car that would conclusively eliminate it from suspicion. That has not proved to be so easy.
The car was a light, warm-gray 1959 Rambler Cross Country Custom station wagon (License No. 711-TQC). The paint looked old and appeared to be original. During a two-year period of observation it was usually parked near Batts Hall which houses the university's Spanish and Portuguese Department. It had a 1964 Mexico Federal "Turista" Automobile sticker (registration no. 243495) in the right rear window and a "D" (for disabled) UT parking sticker on the windshield. In the back seat were two issues of Esquire magazine published in 1963. Only one of them still had a cover. It showed an illustration of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the movie Cleopatra. The back seat was in disrepair but the interior upholstery appeared to be original.

The car was photographed a year later in exactly the same condition as when it was first seen. This was done because every time it was observed up to that time nothing about the car had changed, not even the identity, number, location or arrangement of the magazines;12 despite the car's daily use. By chance, the day it was photographed, the car's driver was also captured on film driving the Rambler. This lack of change remained through the entire two-year period of observation ending in mid-1991. It was beginning to seem that there might be some significance to the display of these particular magazines in this particular Rambler station wagon with its 1964 turista sticker. In any event photography was the best safeguard against the car's disappearance before it could be studied further.

On November 9, 1990, a request was made to the Texas State Department of Highways and Public Transportation, Division of Motor Vehicles in Austin, for an ownership history of the Rambler. The first question to be answered was whether or not Ruth or Michael Paine had ever owned it. Unfortunately the clerk at the Division of Motor Vehicles said all of the state's ownership records prior to title numbers beginning with the digits 85 were routinely destroyed, which included those for this car.13 Fortunately the same man had owned this car for the past twenty-seven years and his title showed up in the current computer record. A Title and Registration Verification was obtained for two dollars. It was typed like this:


NDX 239845 LIC 711TQC EXPIRES MAY/91 EWT 2800 GWT 0000
$40.80 TITLE 33883954 ISSUED 05/07/65 ODOMETER N/A
59 RAMBLER SW D713121 REG CLASS O1
PREVIOUS OWNER CB SMITH MOTORS AUSTIN TEX
OWNER GEORGE GORDON WING, 2101 ROBINHOOD TRL,AUSTIN,TX 78703
LIEN 04/13/65 UNIVERSITY FEDERAL CREDITUNION,PO BOX 8090 U T
STATIO
N,AUSTIN TEX
PLATE AGE: 2.

The possibility remains that the Paines owned the car prior to C.B. Smith because its ownership history during its first four years is yet to be established despite several attempts through various means. But just because Oswald was under the impression that the car belonged to Ruth Paine in 1963 does not mean that it did. Bert Sugar and Sybil Leek apparently had information that Paine borrowed such a car.14 Nevertheless the identities of the two known owners have proven to be of potential importance to the events of November 22, 1963.

Cecil Bernard Smith, the previous owner, personally knew Lyndon Johnson. He was a major land owner in Austin who opened Austin's first Volkswagen dealership at Sixth Street and Lamar Boulevard. He was a native of Texas and a star athlete in college. He donated money to Johnson's political campaigns and to UT. During the 1980s C.B. Smith donated land to the university to endow five chairs in Mexican and Latin American Studies.15 As a result of his generosity he served on various boards and commissions at UT.16 Among the local citizens, however, C.B. Smith had a reputation for being an extreme right-winger who hated hippies.17

George Gordon Wing, the owner of the car from April 1963 until his death in December 1991, was a Ph.D. and associate professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Department.18 Considering what he taught it is not unusual that he bought his car from C.B. Smith, a major donor to Mexican and Latin American Studies. However it must be noted, in addition to the Spanish and Latin American milieu surrounding Oswald in 1963, that Craig reportedly saw a "husky looking Latin" driving the car.19 Both Smith and Wing will be discussed further in this paper.

In December 1990 other intriguing connections came to light. They centered once again around the Spanish and Portuguese Department and former UT President Harry Huntt Ransom, another of Lyndon Johnson's friends. Ransom had risen quickly through the UT ranks from assistant dean of the graduate school in 1951 to Chancellor of The University of Texas System by 1961. After a student career that included membership in Phi Beta Kappa, Ransom began his professional career at UT in 1935 as an instructor of English. He became an assistant professor after receiving his Ph.D. from Yale in 1938. By 1960 he had also created and was serving as editor of The Texas Quarterly, "the preeminent literary journal of Texas." This journal was highly regarded internationally as well and when Ransom died in April 1976, replacing him as editor was considered a formidable responsibility. It could not be entrusted to just anyone. The job ended up in the hands of Ransom's close associate Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth, Ph.D. and professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Department. They were reportedly close friends. Another indication of the closeness of their relationship is the fact that since Ransom's death Gonzalez-Gerth has been a constant companion to his widow, Hazel Harrod Ransom. Thus within and around the Spanish and Portuguese Department a circle of close associations began to emerge among Lyndon Johnson, Harry Ransom, C.B. Smith, Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth, and George Wing. These associations were all the more interesting considering Ransom's service in Air Force intelligence during World War II.20


UT, CIA, and JFK

At first, speculation about vague intelligence connections to the UT Rambler stemmed from the presumption of possible relationships between UT and U.S. intelligence agencies. It has been documented that the CIA has a long history of recruiting from, or using as cover, the foreign language departments of major universities. According to former student activist Amy Chen Mills, "With ample facilities for experimentation and an abundance of physical sites, college campuses are ideal for carrying out much larger and more insidious CIA programs. U.S. universities have housed some CIA activities that go beyond research and into active covert operations." By 1988, UT, along with the University of Miami, George Washington University, Jacksonville University, the Rochester Institute of Technology and Georgetown University were among as many as ten schools where the CIA had placed officers through its recently initiated "Officer in Residence" program.21
Given the massive CIA station on the campus of the University of Miami in the days of operations Zapata and Mongoose, it is not unreasonable to assume that the CIA recruited personnel from the University of Texas Spanish and Portuguese Department for those operations. In fact, anti-Castro sentiment was alive and well in Austin as of October 1, 1963 when JFK assassination figure John Martino spoke to the Austin Anti-Communist League about his arrest and imprisonment by Castro.22 Very likely present to hear Martino was John Birch Society and Austin Anti-Communist League member Jack Nichols Payton, a friend and campaign-organizer of General Edwin Walker.23

Just prior to this, in September, Martino had addressed an anti-Castro meeting in Dallas. According to author Anthony Summers, "While there he mentioned that he knew Amador Odio, a wealthy Cuban then imprisoned by Castro, and that he knew one of Odio's daughters was living in exile in Dallas. This of course was Silvia Odio, the witness whose meeting with `Oswald' remains the firmest evidence of a deliberate attempt to frame the alleged assassin."24 Evidence of Martino's Austin visit was discovered by chance while looking through local newspapers for researcher David Lifton in 1990. The visit was of interest because of a previous discovery in 1989: pages about John Martino had been cut out of the only UT copy of Anthony Summer's book, Conspiracy; including source notes. These were the only pages removed. Like the car itself (and by 1990, because of the car), these incidents involving Mafia associate and CIA agent Martino were a minor curiosity. Of similar interest in the same newspaper was an announcement that William F. Buckley, Jr. would be speaking on campus in December 1963. Later however these curiosities would become integral to an understanding of other discoveries on the UT campus.

Like the university he led, Harry Ransom was no stranger to clandestine activities. Dr. Ransom, born on November 22, 1908, enlisted as a second lieutenant in the Air Corps in 1942. He was the director of the Air Force Editorial Office from 1944-46. He attained the rank of major and received the Legion of Merit in 1947 for work in "editorial intelligence." In 1945, Ransom authored "Notes for an Epitaph: Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe" (Air Force Reprint, 32 pp.). That same year he wrote "Tactical Air Operations," with James Gould Cozzens and Brigadier General Frederic Smith (Air Force Reprint, 30 pp.). In 1946 Ransom wrote "Historical Procedures in the AAF" (Air Force Reprint, 10 pp.) and "Educational Plans of 500,000 AAF Veterans" (Higher Education, United States Office of Education.). In 1962, Dr. Ransom, while Chancellor of The University of Texas System, was elected chairman of the Advisory Panel on ROTC, Department of the Air Force, which advised the Secretary of the Air Force on ROTC programs.25

It must be noted here that John Stockwell, the highest-ranking CIA officer to quit and expose the truth of CIA operations to Congress, and who was an ROTC graduate of UT in the late 1950s, expressed his belief, when asked by reporter Earl Golz in 1991, that CIA associations did exist at UT within the ROTC program, the Spanish and Portuguese Department, the Institute of Latin American Studies, and with Harry Ransom.26 In his book, The Praetorian Guard, Stockwell describes his years at UT:


At the University of Texas, I got into the elite Plan II special reading program and obtained a Naval ROTC scholarship, graduating with what the university billed as its best possible liberal arts degree. Then I took the Marine Corps option and made my way into the elite parachute-and-UDT trained 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company. Only years later did I realize that I had obtained the best half-education available. They taught me the classics; we studied philosophy and history with award-winning professors (including John Silber27 of Boston University). But my generation didn't question. We scribbled furiously in our notebooks, trying to capture the professor's exact words so we could regurgitate them faithfully back to him (there were no women professors in my program at that time) in the examinations. Throughout my school years, I never had a conversation with a liberal, much less a radical critic of the system, or even a serious questioner. There was one professor, Clarence Ayers, who occasionally made a suggestive comment, but he was under constant pressure from the Texas legislature, not to mention the university's regents.28

When asked about CIA recruiting on college campuses, Philip Agee, one of the first CIA officers to resign and tell the truth about the CIA, specifically named the Air Force and Army ROTC programs as prime sources of recruits.29 Also, a student in the Spanish and Portuguese Department was asked if he had ever heard any rumors of CIA involvement in UT's Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS). His response was that he had heard more than just rumors of CIA people and programs there.30 This paper will deal further with ILAS.

Ransom's years at Yale, his past work in Air Force intelligence and his relationships with Lyndon Johnson and CIA recruiting become important when considering that Ransom was instrumental in the recruitment of two men to the faculty at UT, John W.F. Dulles and Walt Whitman Rostow.31

John W.F. "Jack" Dulles is the eldest son of former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and the nephew of former Director of Central Intelligence and Warren Commissioner Allen Dulles. He has worked at UT for many years and is considered one of the world's top experts on Brazil, a Portuguese speaking country. His office is in the Harry H. Ransom Humanities Research Center, which also houses a replica of his father's office.32 John Wheat, a former student of Wing's who has worked with Dulles, said Dulles did not have the usual academic career credentials. His interest in Northern Mexico and Brazil came from his work in the Dulles family's Hannah Mining Company. Dulles was simply made an adjunct professor and given a research position at UT.33

Jack Dulles' relationship with UT's Spanish and Portuguese Department goes beyond the expected professional interest in the language of Brazil however. In the mid-1960's his daughter Ellen, a great niece of Allen Dulles, attended classes in that department.34 John Wheat said Dulles "may have" known Wing.

Walt Rostow, former Kennedy State Department counsel and President Johnson's national security advisor, had been one of President Kennedy's inner circle of advisors. He is currently the Rex G. Baker, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. His wife Elspeth is the Stiles Professor in American Studies.35 Walt Rostow was close, socially and professionally to Allen Dulles, McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's national security advisor, Richard Bissell, former director of all CIA covert operations, and Air Force General Charles P. Cabell, former deputy director of the CIA.36 Like Ransom, Rostow had attained the rank of Major and won the Legion of Merit for his work with the OSS during World War II.37 Whether or not they knew each other at Yale or during the war, Ransom and Rostow had much in common and more than a few mutual friends. It is therefore understandable that Rostow agreed to continue his career at Ransom's university.

We now see within and around UT's Spanish and Portuguese Department a circle of associations that has expanded to include not only Lyndon Johnson, Harry Ransom, C.B. Smith, Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth, and George Wing, but Walt Rostow and at least two members of the Dulles family.38

Relatively little attention has been paid to Walt Rostow in the literature of the Kennedy assassination. It seems, however, that he has several connections relevant to November 22, 1963. He and his friend McGeorge Bundy may have urged their long-time friend, Richard Bissell to establish the "Executive Action" assassination capability known as ZR/RIFLE.39 Bissell told the Senate Church Committee on CIA assassination plots, "There is little doubt in my mind that Project RIFLE was discussed with Rostow and possibly Bundy."40

According to Anthony Summers, these assassination plots were being revived just when Kennedy was considering normalizing relations with Cuba. This peace move was so secret that only six people knew about it. Despite this tight security, Ambassador William Attwood and Arthur Schlesinger believe the secret leaked to the CIA and the Cuban exiles, possibly triggering Kennedy's assassination. Bundy was the aid most involved with the negotiations and it is very likely that Rostow was one of the six.41

It was these same two members of Kennedy's inner circle who advised him, on February 11, 1961, to abolish the Operations Coordination Board of the National Security Council -- the chief reason for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, according to Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon.42 Prior to the invasion, on April 12, Rostow was urging Kennedy to intervene militarily in Laos as well as Cuba.43

And on April 20, after the failure at the Bay of Pigs, along with Admiral Arleigh Burke, the Air Force, and Richard Nixon, Rostow was still pushing for a military intervention in Laos. That same day Kennedy, who still had doubts about it, ordered U.S. advisors in Laos to put on their uniforms.44 Rostow later spearheaded U.S. intervention in Vietnam and was instrumental in initiating the stepped-up arms race of the 1960s.

The things that Rostow supported -- reduced oversight of covert operations, military intervention in Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam, policies that led to nuclear proliferation, and possibly CIA assassinations -- Kennedy later attempted to reverse. It is possible that Rostow and Bundy were not as loyal to Kennedy as he may have thought.

This disloyalty is all the more believable when considering a few more significant Rostow connections to Kennedy's assassination (aside from Rostow's long friendship with Bissell and Cabell). These connections concern his relationships with C.D. Jackson, the publisher of Life magazine who bought and suppressed the Zapruder film, Harold R. Isaacs, a research associate at MIT's Center for International Studies (CENIS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Air Force Major General Edward G. Lansdale.

C.D. Jackson, former president of the CIA's National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), and friend of Allen Dulles, had worked closely with Walt Rostow. Among other things they co-authored Eisenhower's "Chance for Peace" address of April 16, 1953, which was "the opening gun of the post-Stalin phase of the Cold War." It is noteworthy here that the NCFE's most important operation was Radio Free Europe.45 Jackson's connection, through Radio Free Europe, Henry Luce, and Allen Dulles, to the Paines and therefore possibly to Oswald and the Rambler will be discussed further in this paper.

In 1951 Rostow "helped launch" CENIS46 with backing from his former OSS buddies now in the CIA. It is a think tank and well known CIA front that defended communist ideology while admitting to its industry benefactors that it was actually fighting communism.47 For ten years at CENIS, Rostow worked closely with Isaacs. Warren Commission Document 942 says that it had been alleged that Marilyn Dorothea Murret (Oswald's cousin) was linked in some manner with the apparatus of Professor Harold Isaacs. And Warren Commission Document 1080 (CD 1080), an FBI report entitled "Marilyn Dorothea Murret," is entirely about Isaacs' background and contains no mention of Murret. This document describes Isaacs as a disillusioned leftist intellectual who had become a professional anti-communist -- which also reveals the true nature of the secret goals of CENIS. This report had been classified by the Warren Commission as a withheld file open only to the federal government and the Commission. It would probably still be secret if an assassination researcher had not discovered it misfiled in the National Archives in the mid-1970s.48

This report was the result, no doubt, of Isaacs' name being linked to the JFK assassination by two sources in 1964. One, according to researcher Peter R. Whitmey, was a right-wing reporter named Paul Scott who was convinced that Isaacs was a "...mastermind of the communist movement which planned to take over the government." Whitmey adds that


Scott told the FBI on May 7, 1964 that Isaacs was being supported in his efforts by members of Johnson's cabinet, including Rusk, McNamara, Rostow, Cleveland and Yarmolinsky. He also accused Robert Kennedy of hiring a Communist speech writer, and linked Rusk to the British spies, Burgess and MacLean. In addition, he indicated that reliable sources had linked Prof. Isaacs and Marilyn Murret, although he did not seem to know of her relationship to Oswald; he had earlier reported in a column that she was one of the three female defectors, which, in her case was not true.
The FBI prepared a report on Murret also dated May 7, outlining her extensive travels around the world beginning in 1959, and also drew up a report on Isaacs dated May 22, entitled "Re: Marilyn Dorothea Murret", although no connection between the two was established. The first page of the six-page background report was erroneously titled "Marilyn Dorothea Murret", which created suspicion when it was found in the files at the National Archives some years later.49


The second source linking Isaacs' name to the assassination was Richard Giesbrecht, a Winnipeg resident who reported to the FBI that on February 12, 1964, he overheard a conversation in the Horizon Room of the Winnipeg International Airport among two men talking about the assassination. Based on what he heard he believed they were in some way involved. They were discussing how much Oswald knew about the assassination and were concerned about how much he might have told his wife. According to Peter Whitmey, the men said Isaacs "was supposed to get rid of a 1958 Dodge (later reported as a Ford.)" And according to co-authors Michael Canfield and Alan J. Webberman, Giesbrecht said that "when the first man asked the second how much Oswald knew, the second one said, `We have a film that I have seen where Issacs [sic] is near Kennedy after the landing.' The first man then mentioned something about Issacs [sic], ending the query, `Why should a person with such a good record such as Isaacs, become mixed up with a psycho?' In a November 1967 article in McCleans Magazine, Giesbrecht stated that the `psycho' referred to was Oswald."50

Peter Whitmey believes that, "It is abundantly clear that it [CD 1080] was classified in order to protect the good name of Professor Isaacs, who was a distinguished lecturer, researcher and writer, and a strong supporter of recognizing Red China during the 1960s." Whitmey further believes that the man being referred to in the Winnipeg airport "...is much more likely to have been Charles R. Isaacs, whose 1960 phone number was listed in Jack Ruby's notebook, and who was an airline service manager for American Airlines at Love Field." Whitmey confirmed that Charles Isaacs had known Ruby after locating and interviewing Charles' second ex-wife (of three) who had worked for Ruby "as a wardrobe designer for some time."51

While it is possible that the men in the airport were talking about Charles Isaacs, it is not "much more likely" that they were referring to Charles rather than Rostow's CENIS associate, Professor Harold R. Isaacs. If the men knew Charles well enough to know of links to Oswald, they must have known of his and his wife's close association with Ruby. Between the "distinguished" MIT Professor and the divorced Ruby friend, which one would most likely be talked about in terms of having "such a good record"? And of the two, which one would elicit the most incredulity over being "mixed up with a psycho"? On both counts it would more likely be the Professor. It must also be surmised that since Charles Isaacs had apparently moved to San Mateo, California by the time of the assassination, he would have about the same access to Love Field as anyone else, including Harold Isaacs.52

In addition, Dr. Isaacs had reportedly been a Trotskyite when he worked as a journalist in China in the 1930s.53 As we will see in this paper, there is much evidence of a determined effort by several right-wing individuals (with links to Oswald) to blame the assassination on Communists by spreading false stories and planting false evidence linking Oswald and Ruby to Trotskyists and others. In the context of those efforts, right-wing journalist Paul Scott, the first to link Dr. Isaacs to Marilyn Murret, may very well have known that she was Oswald's cousin. After all, Paul Scott believed that Dr. Isaacs was the mastermind of a high level communist plot to take over the United States government -- a plot that had infiltrated the White House. Finding a reliable source linking his Trotskyist mastermind to the alleged Marxist Oswald, in the midst of a welter of deliberate lies about such links, would seem to have been the fulfillment of Paul Scott's greatest desire.

Neither is it "abundantly clear" that the FBI reports of investigations into the alleged links between Isaacs and Murret were classified "to protect the good name of Professor Isaacs." The FBI, who had Paul Scott's allegations, Richard Giesbrecht's allegations, and Ruby's notebooks, apparently chose only to investigate the information from Paul Scott's "reliable sources." We will see in this paper, how the FBI and CIA had a habit of cutting short investigations (and classifying reports) that threatened to reveal conspiratorial links. The investigation of Marilyn Murret not only threatened to lead to Isaacs' long-time associate Walt Rostow, who in turn had a long-time friendship with CIA assassination plotters, but to her father, Oswald's uncle and surrogate father, Charles "Dutz" Murret, who worked for New Orleans Mob boss Carlos Marcello, who in turn was also closely tied to the same CIA/Mafia assassination plots. Such an investigation would certainly have come across a report by FBI agent John William Miller stating that CIA agent William George Gaudet told him of a purchase of paintings by Jack Ruby from Lorenzo Borenstein, a close relative of Leon Trotsky.54 Gaudet is the CIA agent who got the Mexican tourist card next to Oswald's in New Orleans in September 1963.55 He also told attorney Bernard Fensterwald in 1975: "She [Murret] may have worked for the agency in New Orleans."56

With regard to Harold Isaacs' "good name" deriving from his strong support for recognizing Red China during the 1960s, consider the following. At the LBJ Library's May 1990 symposium, LBJ: The Difference He Made, journalist Tom Wicker, who was in the audience, became disturbed, during one panel discussion, that the conference was focused exclusively on domestic policy. He pointed out that the Johnson Administration has received practically no credit for being the first to develop serious arms control proposals to be taken to the Soviets. Because of the timing of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Johnson was unable to follow through on it. The proposals survived into the Nixon Administration and were fundamentally those which Nixon took into the SALT I negotiations. Panelist Nicholas Katzenbach, the former deputy attorney general who right after the assassination was as concerned as J. Edgar Hoover about "...having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin,"57 added a historical note similar to Wicker's that had always interested him.


...President Nixon got so much credit for opening the door to China, and that was something that LBJ wanted to do. And indeed we developed -- the first proposals that were made by President Nixon were developed for President Johnson."
And after the election, knowing Nixon was coming in, he had us go to President Nixon and say, "If you want me to start this process, I'll be happy to do it and take the political flack for doing it, which there will be from the right, but if you want to do it, I'll hold off and do nothing."

And Nixon said he wanted to do it. So we did hold off, and they went down, and it was fascinating to me because I had worked on it. They were word for word what we had developed at the end of the administration.58


The two major achievements historically credited to an otherwise disgraced Republican administration were actually given to it by the previous Democratic administration. And the recognition of China, which Harold Isaacs had so strongly supported, was credited to Richard Nixon, Kennedy's chief political nemesis (especially on such things as arms control and détente with communist countries), through an under-the-table deal between Johnson and Nixon. This paper will explore the possible culpability of both former presidents in Kennedy's assassination stemming from apparent ties which Johnson and Nixon had to each other as well as to Ruby and Oswald.

Thus, considering that everything about Marilyn Murret seemed to lead to a CIA/Mafia conspiracy and a phony Trotskyite conspiracy (which, as we will see, may have led to the same persons), it would be a great irony indeed if the FBI, who reportedly destroyed evidence and threatened witnesses to hide conspiratorial leads, stopped further investigation of Murret solely out of politeness to Harold R. Isaacs. And although an investigation of Charles Isaacs may have led to the conspiracy through Ruby, it is hard to imagine how he could have provided a more direct route.

Aside from his association with Harold Isaacs, Rostow's history with CENIS is important because of its implications regarding UT, where Rostow has been employed since leaving the government in 1969. As mentioned before, there are apparently more than just rumors of CIA activities at UT's Institute of Latin American Studies, which works closely, no doubt, with the Spanish and Portuguese Department; and has benefited, no doubt, from the donations of C.B. Smith, who had a life-long interest in Latin American politics and culture.59

Continuing in 1954 with the African-American Institute in cooperation with a U.S.-African mining company, and in 1956 with the Asia Foundation at Michigan State University, the CIA, from its earliest days, has been establishing academic foreign studies institutes as part of a larger effort to generate academic interest in a country and "spin-off" institutes that could subsequently be tapped by the CIA and other government agencies.60 UT's ILAS could very well be CIA established or a spin-off. On the other hand, ILAS's director, Richard Adams, is a harsh critic of the right-wing government in Guatemala. He is currently persona non grata to that government.61 ILAS could also be similar to CENIS in its chameleon-like ways. In fact, as we shall see, the idea of ILAS was introduced to Walt Rostow by George de Mohrenschildt, Oswald's CIA friend.

Given a few more bits of information, the possible connections between CENIS, ILAS, C.B. Smith, Wing and the Rambler begin to take on ominous overtones. The first bit is only a few steps away from Walt Rostow's office on the eighth floor of the LBJ Library. According to assassination researcher Dick Russell "In 1966-67, from residences in Haiti and Dallas, de Mohrenschildt would correspond regularly with the Johnson White House. On file at the LBJ Memorial Library in Austin, Texas, the letters show high level interest in the baron's proposal for establishing an `Institute of Latin American Resources.' Replied presidential assistant Arthur C. Perry: `I feel that the President will be interested in having your views in this regard and I shall be pleased to bring them to his attention at the earliest opportunity.'...A State Department memorandum of January 14, 1967, from executive secretary Benjamin H. Read to Walt W. Rostow notes: `The Department's reply to Mr. de Mohrenschildt should be considered a de minimus62 response to his letter of December 27 to the President. A lengthy file in the Office of Special Consular Services clearly indicates that de Mohrenschildt is an unstable and unreliable individual who would not hesitate to misuse or misrepresent even the slightest expression of interest.'"63

Russell does not tell us what "The Department's reply to Mr. de Mohrenschildt" was. It was dated the day before the memo to Rostow, January 13, 1967, from State Department Deputy Assistant Administrator Milton Barall to de Mohrenschildt: "...the United States Agency for International Development would not have an interest in supporting the creation of such an institute in Texas."

Apart from the fact that the proposal was forwarded to the CIA-backed Agency for International Development, why would Rostow be bothered with a memo about this? Despite the first expression of interest, the reply had already been sent and was final in its rejection of de Mohrenschildt's proposal. It is as if Rostow or someone else was contemplating a continued interest in the proposal and had to be warned of potential consequences.

What is also of concern here is that de Mohrenschildt's letter of December 27 proposed placing the institute at Southwest Texas State College, Lyndon Johnson's alma mater. ILAS is just such an institute that was later created at the University of Texas at Austin, in the same complex as the LBJ library and across a breezeway from Harry Ransom's posh new office. And again, the belief that CIA personnel and programs exist there was voiced to Earl Golz by John Stockwell in 1991. It is also worth noting that the golden age of collecting for UT's Latin American collection was during the reign of Harry Ransom. According to UT librarian and former Spanish student John Wheat, the Latin American collection was Ransom's favorite. Nettie Lee Benson, the collection's long-time head librarian, received major funding from and had direct access to Ransom at any time. And ILAS, as we have seen, very likely had financial support from C.B. Smith.

The close proximity to, and involvement in the creation and activities of ILAS of Rostow, de Mohrenschildt, Dulles, and Ransom, who were in just as close proximity to the CIA, is of further concern considering that the CIA had once been greatly angered by the head of Stanford's Institute of Hispanic American and Luso-Brazilian Studies. This institute was one of the first programs of inter-American studies in the U.S. It was started in 1944 by Professor Ronald Hilton, "a tough-minded liberal scholar."64

In October 1960, Dr. Hilton, editor of his institute's prestigious journal, the Hispanic American Report, learned of the CIA's plans to invade Cuba from Guatemala's leading newspaper, La Hora. He published a report that the purpose of the CIA's Retalhuleu training camp was "common knowledge". Hilton's report inspired a November 19 article in The Nation calling the invasion plans a "dangerous and hare-brained project" urging "all U.S. news media" to check the story out. The Nation made it as easy as possible by sending information about the CIA's plans to AP, UPI, and all major news media in New York, including virtually flooding the Times with copies of the reports. On November 20, more than a week after receiving the advance notice, the Times buried a story on page 32 essentially calling these reports "a lot of lies." In their Sunday edition, after the U.S. broke off relations with Cuba in January 1961, the New York Times reported that the final straw was Castro's propaganda offensive about an imminent invasion of Cuba. That same month, after the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post Dispatch confirmed American funding of the base, Time magazine, apparently hedging its bets, reported that a "Mr. B." of the CIA was in charge of the whole operation.65

Despite this whisper of vindication, Dr. Hilton was not popular in Washington or among Stanford's trustees who represented international corporations. After Stanford received a sizable grant from the Ford Foundation, Hilton was pressured not to offend the university's powerful fund raisers -- even if it was just an opinion expressed in an editorial. In 1962, after the CIA's top Cuban invasion planners had been fired and Cuba had become a major problem for the U.S., Ford gave a grant to a Stanford committee formed to plan an international studies program. Heading the committee was Dean Carl Spaeth, former assistant to Nelson Rockefeller in the State Department, and former director of the Ford Foundation's Division of Overseas Activities. After a year of "studies," without explanation to or input from Dr. Hilton, the Hispanic Institute was gutted and assigned mundane responsibilities. When asked how they could do such a thing, Stanford's administration told him: "The administration can do anything it pleases." Hilton resigned, his journal was suspended, and two weeks later the Ford Foundation gave Stanford $550,000 for Latin American studies to those who did not protest what had happened to Hilton and his independent, intellectually respected institute. According to Ramparts magazine, "This largesse was repeated on every campus where significant efforts on Latin America were taking place."66 Interestingly, these Hilton controversies were taking place while George Wing was a teaching assistant and earning his PhD. in Spanish at the University of California at Berkeley.67

Was de Mohrenschildt's proposal the genesis of UT's institute? Was C.B. Smith involved with de Mohrenschildt in this first proposal? The last of the de Mohrenschildt-to-LBJ letters, dated June 13, 1969, adds fuel to such speculation. It reads, "You possibly remember me and we do have a lot of mutual friends, Barbara and Howard Burris, George Brown and the late Herman Brown....This summer I am not teaching at U.T.A. [The University of Texas at Arlington] and we could drive any time to visit with you." Eighteen months earlier, C.B. Smith had been named a distinguished alumnus of U.T.A.68

The 1969 letter is of further interest with regard to JFK assassination connections to UT. Not only was de Mohrenschildt teaching at a school which was part of the "system" that Harry Ransom oversaw, and one which had given C.B. Smith one of its highest honors, he also shared two particularly interesting mutual friends with Lyndon Johnson: Barbara and Howard Burris. Howard Burris was Vice President Johnson's military representative and an Air Force intelligence officer. His connections to UT and the assassination will be discussed further in this paper.

By 1961 Rostow was also working closely with Edward G. Lansdale. Lansdale was an Air Force Major General at the time of his retirement on November 1, 1963. He had an advertising background and extensive counter-insurgency experience in Southeast Asia. Lansdale is credited in many circles with coming up with the idea, single handed, that destroyed the Huk rebellion in the early fifties in the Philippines. The Huk were very superstitious. They believed in vampires. Lansdale got a few dead Huk bodies, put holes in their necks and hung them upside down.69

Like Rostow, Lansdale was a veteran of the OSS. He had served in Vietnam during the Eisenhower administration and had become a close personal friend of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.70

His advertising background blended well with his expertise: psychological warfare; or psy-ops. There are now manuals on psy-ops and Lansdale is considered the father of that type of warfare.

He was the model for the imperialistic "Colonel Hillindale" in the William Lederer/Eugene Burdick novel The Ugly American; the most celebrated American dark spy.71

During January through April of 1961, Lansdale's overriding motive was to be Ambassador to South Vietnam. Lansdale, by that time, was probably the only American advisor Diem trusted. Diem was very isolated by then. After his first White House meeting with Lansdale on Vietnam, Kennedy had decided to fire Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow. Kennedy would change his mind about this in a month or two.72

Following the firing of Durbrow, Kennedy appointed Frederick E. Nolting. So Lansdale sought to capture the apparatus to formulate, approve and implement Vietnam policy and be the key player in all three stages until a U.S. victory was achieved in Vietnam. It almost worked. The reason it did not, as far as military historian John Newman can tell, is because Dean Rusk threatened to resign if Lansdale got his way. Lansdale's letters from 1964 show that he found out from some of his contacts that Rusk had laid his job on the line.73

As the author of the book JFK and Vietnam, John M. Newman, explained: "Lansdale's a loose cannon on deck. Kennedy liked him, at least initially for a while, but he had big problems. No doubt about it. In the Pentagon, the Pentagon brass didn't like him. Secretary of State Rusk did not like him. However he did have a big patron in Kennedy's inner circle....Walt Rostow! Walt Rostow, the Vietnam guy. And I was able to track this fairly successfully I think. If it weren't for Walt Rostow, Lansdale wouldn't have had a prayer with this crazy plan of his to try and capture this emerging Vietnam policy apparatus."74

So in the first four months of the Kennedy Administration Lansdale sought the ambassadorship and then control of the emerging policy apparatus of Vietnam and failed at both. The only evidence of Rusk's motive is a document released in 1991 by the State Department. It is a document in which Rusk wrote about not trusting Lansdale. He was unsure of Lansdale's loyalties.75

Although he cannot document it, Newman is certain that Lansdale worked for the CIA while wearing an Air Force uniform. One indication of this in Lansdale's private letters and memoranda is that General Curtis Le May, the Air Chief of Staff, seemed to be unable to promote him. Allen Dulles had to be involved in getting Lansdale promoted from colonel to general. And a number of other patterns are apparent such as social events with Charles Cabell. Edward Lansdale and Charles Cabell were very close.76

The end result of these first few months, in essence, is that Lansdale was fired from any position on Vietnam policy. For Edward Lansdale that was a traumatic experience. Vietnam was his primary concern. South Vietnam was his creation. In his book, Newman stopped writing about Lansdale at that point although there was a lot more to him. It involved Cuba and Operation Mongoose and other matters that were not the focus of his book.77

Lansdale had lost something that mattered a great deal to him. In his letters he wrote about going through the experience of being relieved of these responsibilities in Vietnam. Newman describes him as a man whose heart was broken "because he could not play any more in his favorite sandbox." By the end of 1961 Kennedy had put him in charge of Operation Mongoose. He was in charge of an enormous apparatus with tremendous resources, weapons and personnel. Newman, having read the NSC meeting minutes where Kennedy announced Lansdale was now going to be in charge of Mongoose, believes that Kennedy did not appreciate the way Lansdale related to being involved in Vietnam policy.78

With such extreme feelings about his predicament in 1961, Lansdale might have gone any number of ways to rectify his situation. What was he thinking? In what direction and how far would he go? Newman summarized the portion of his book in which he dealt with that question:


Lansdale was not a combat troops man, yet the very first piece of paper ever in the history of the Vietnam war where an American officer recommends a U.S. troop commitment to Vietnam, Lansdale was the one who authors it. It's right in that critical time frame right after the failure at the Bay of Pigs; right before the crucial decision Kennedy has to make on going into Laos. His Vietnam Task Force paper is coming in through the door. The night, the very night that the Joint Chiefs figure out that Kennedy is going to say no on Laos, Lansdale, late at night in the Pentagon, slips in this combat troop proposal in the Vietnam Task Force report. It's not like him. The way I interpret that -- and I may be in error -- the way I interpret that is he understands that the star rising on the horizon is U.S. intervention in Vietnam. And he understands that he has lost his position in the Kennedy administration which has a decidedly different approach. So he switches forces and he joins forces with those planning for intervention. And it was a good decision on his part, was it not? He was there when they arrived. He was on the team.79

The Mongoose files of the Senate Church Committee reveal that they wanted to know when and who authorized assassination. The Kennedy Administration had supposedly gotten away from that. It was clear to the committee, however, that they had not. There were plans and resources being devoted to assassinate Castro. So the purpose of the questioning was to find out who, and when it was authorized.80

Lansdale testified that he did it all alone. When asked why, his answer was that during the missile crisis the Russians had changed the terms of reference by putting missiles in Cuba. So Lansdale decided all on his own that he was going to change things and get rid of Castro.

After reading a pre-galley copy of JFK and Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg called Newman one night very excitedly. Ellsberg had worked with Lansdale and knew him extremely well. He said, "This is the first time I've ever thought that Lansdale might have been involved in the assassination." Ellsberg based this on Lansdale being removed from Vietnam planning and moved to Operation Mongoose.81

By February 1963 Lansdale had no position in Cuban policy and was focusing on Latin America. He was traveling to countries like Bolivia and elsewhere. The U.S. had a lot of personnel in South America under Kennedy. And a lot of them ended up going to Vietnam. According to Newman there is a blind spot as to exactly what they were doing and how many people the U.S. had in Latin America.82

"I can tell you," Newman said, "that in the collateral research that I did, names that I came across, I found a correlation between -- I don't say this is definitive but I got a lot of hits -- the same names of the guys that were running around in Latin America, particularly in Cuban policy, end up in the Far East Division. Very strange coincidence. There were three -- it wasn't just one -- there were several. A neat nexus between the Southeast Asian guys and Cuban guys."83

Lansdale was also spending a lot of time at air bases and other areas in the southern United States; in Florida and in Alabama. Newman recalled from Lansdale's travel records that one of these other areas was some sort of a Cuban-exile camp. The record for that trip included a cover note to the person coordinating it telling him to keep quiet. Lansdale apparently wanted to make sure that no one knew that he was going there.84

There was also an honorary graduation certificate from the sniping school that the U.S. had in Panama. He went there, Newman recalled, in May or April 1963. He was made an honorary graduate there. Lansdale was going to various clandestine and special forces places in the spring and summer of 1963.85

One more event that Newman remembered from the spring 1963 period was that Lansdale was due to retire. And he was extended by Le May, arbitrarily, for another six months or so to November 1, 1963; with no job; no real responsibilities. Fletcher Prouty claims Lansdale was just at a desk by himself.86

In the summer of 1963 there were two interesting events concerning Vietnam. The U.S. had a problem with Diem. The regime would not compromise at all. It went in the opposite direction. Buddhists were killed. They began immolating themselves. The regime still would not relent. The political bottom completely fell out in Saigon.87

Newman said he came across an intriguing article in a local, small magazine from this period. It had a picture of Lansdale and a typical title like, "America's Most Celebrated Spy." It was about a Lansdale trip to Saigon. His travel records, however, indicate that he was not supposed to be in Saigon. This was around July-August 1963.88

The article reported an assassination attempt on Lansdale. The assassins missed and somebody killed the alleged assassin. Then he went to a meeting with Ambassador Lodge. According to Newman, "This is clearly impossible from the record because Lansdale has no authority or position to be involved in Vietnam policy. It would make sense in terms of going back and pleading with Diem and getting Lansdale to do it. Maybe Diem would listen to Lansdale. But I did find a record. He might have been in Saigon." Newman found evidence of a six- or seven-day break in Lansdale's normal activities.89

Among Lansdale's contacts in the last three to four months of Kennedy's life, Newman found "a lot of Spanish names. I found names that were reminiscent of CIA type folks."90

In 1963, Lansdale was Fletcher Prouty's boss. Prouty insists that he was sent to the South Pole by Lansdale to get him out of the way so that he would not witness the events of November 22, 1963. Presumably this was done because if Prouty had been there he would have figured out what was going on. Prouty has claimed that in the photograph of the three tramps walking across Dealey Plaza, the man in a suit with what looks like a wire coming out of his ear and going into his suit coat is Edward Lansdale -- that he recognized the back of his head and his gate. Among Lansdale's letters, John Newman and David Lifton found a slip of paper that has "The Texas Hotel" on it and a phone number in Denton. Lansdale's letters also reveal that he was headed in the direction of Dallas in November 1963.91

Lansdale wrote to a number of friends and associates beginning in September 1963, of his intention to go to Texas in November. There are as many as ten letters, according to Newman, where he described this upcoming trip to two people. One was his son. The other one was General "Hangin' Sam" Williams, an old buddy and McGarr's predecessor in Vietnam. He lived in San Antonio.92

The last piece of paper that Newman found placing Lansdale physically in Washington is dated November 14, 1963. It concerns running errands for his wife. After that there is no record of his whereabouts except for a box of incidentals, which had this piece of paper in it. It has on it "Texas Hotel" and "Denton" and a name and phone number. As Newman said, "That might be from 1949 or it might be 1968 and again it might be November 1963. Because the Texas Hotel is where Kennedy stayed the night before he died, and Denton, Texas is just north here of Dallas, it all fits in. But it certainly is not conclusive."93

Lansdale dropped out of sight at this point. He resurfaced back in Washington in the Food for Peace Program and was soon given a job by Johnson back in Vietnam. He had contacts who got him interviews in the White House. In fact he would be on the ground in Vietnam when U.S. combat troops arrived.94

Lansdale was not the only one whose fortunes were changing now that Kennedy was dead. One of Lansdale's contacts in the White House, no doubt, was his sponsor and "big patron," Walt Rostow, who later resurfaced in a big way himself. According to Newman, "Kennedy got rid of him out of the White House after the first year; sent him packing over to the State Department."95 Back in the White House under Kennedy's successor, Rostow moved to solidify his position. As things heated up in Vietnam, "Johnson protected himself from contrary arguments and discussions by dismissing the doubters from his staff. First McGeorge Bundy left. Then George Ball. Then Bill Moyers. The emphasis shifted to Walt Rostow, who believed that Johnson was doing the right thing in Vietnam; soon Rostow became the man who screened what the President heard and saw. Under Rostow's regime, the most optimistic news was packaged and sent to the President with covering notes which said such things as, `This will give confirmation to the statement which the President so wisely made to the Congressional leadership yesterday.'"96 It was, most likely, only because Johnson had selected the man "who screened what the President heard and saw" that Johnson referred to Rostow as having "the most important job in the White House, aside from the President." Johnson gave credit for one crucial decision to Walt's brother, however. Eugene Victor Debs Rostow gave Johnson the idea for the Warren Commission the day Oswald died.97

George de Mohrenschildt's mutual friends with Lyndon Johnson, Barbara and Howard Burris, represent such significant ties between the political, economic, cultural and academic elites in Texas and the assassination of President Kennedy that they tax one's ability to call it a coincidence. The implications of their ties as they relate to the UT Rambler can be especially appreciated in their full context.

As previously mentioned, Howard Burris was Vice President Johnson's military representative and an Air Force intelligence officer. He is also much more.98

John Newman first learned of Howard Burris in the course of researching his book, JFK and Vietnam. Newman connected Burris with a pattern of gross deceptions involving battlefield statistics that took place in 1962. Kennedy and McNamara were being lied to while Johnson was being given the truth through a secret back-channel. The end point of that secret back-channel was Howard Burris. Burris would write the final memoranda that Johnson received concerning combat intelligence. Newman had discovered a foreign policy situation where the President and the Vice President were getting briefed in opposite terms. It is comparable to a hypothetical situation in which, during Operation Desert Storm, George Bush is lied to and Dan Quayle gets the truth about the status of the U.S. led coalition forces in the Persian Gulf.99

"I often get asked," Newman said, "about what was the exact back-channel. How did it function? How did it get there? And the best I can determine from ground zero in Vietnam all the way back to the Vice President's desk is a chain of Air Force intelligence officers all the way to Burris."100

In May 1961, during the Johnson trip to Vietnam, Burris was being rehearsed on how to control LBJ in the context of that trip. He was told what he could say or could not say to the vice president; which is amazing because ostensibly he works for the vice president. No one should be able to tell an Air Force colonel what he can and cannot tell to a vice president. The question is: Who is telling him? The answer is the boys in the woodwork.

There is another time period in Newman's book which deals with the back-channel to LBJ. Newman had long discussions with Burris about where he got this. "And the answer was the boys in the woodwork. And the question was: Who are the boys in the woodwork? And the answer was: `Well I'd rather not really say and bring all of that up. You, I know, you're one of them.' Alright, I'm military, I also have an intelligence background. Peter Dale Scott and I have been working very closely on a number of issues. He's writing a book as a matter of fact. He was assuming for a while that it was military. And I said, `Peter, it may not be that. It may be Langley.' He said, `Why do you say that?' Well there's one more piece. Burris told me that later on, `McCone put a stop to what I was getting from him.' This was relating to the combat intelligence. McCone was directing CIA. And all of the clues I got out of this fellow on who his contacts were -- my own interpretation was that they were in fact CIA. I don't know that for sure."101

Information about Burris originally began to surface with the book The Senator Must Die by Robert Morrow. Morrow wrote about two colonels whom he did not name. In 1977 a young man was hitchhiking in Baltimore who had a story he wanted to tell about his father's involvement in the Kennedy assassination. Robert Morrow happened to pick him up.102

The young man learned that Morrow had investigated aspects of the JFK assassination. He told Morrow a story about his father, a former Air Force intelligence officer, who was involved in the Kennedy assassination. The young man had witnessed his father, who was very close to Lyndon Johnson, taking money to Haiti during 1963. Not only did he see the money he heard the telephone conversations as well.103

Not really believing him, Morrow put the story out of his mind -- until the Colonel, the young man's father, went to his son's girlfriend and confessed. He said, "Everything my son told you (to the girlfriend and to Morrow) is true. Can you get me immunity from the House Select Committee?" This conversation took place in 1977.104

The Colonel admitted it. And this offer to testify if given immunity was given to Committee Chairman Louis Stokes in 1978. Assassination researcher Gus Russo reportedly saw the affidavit and spoke to the people involved. But when Robert Morrow gave the affidavit to the HSCA it ended there. The HSCA did not want to deal with it.105

The names of these colonels aren't given in the book. Morrow gives them the code names "Intellfirst" and "SIO" (First Intelligence Officer and Second Intelligence Officer). There are a few clues given in the book. He gives a couple of Air Force assignment clues in Europe; what they had done in the forties and fifties. They are at the top of the military intelligence ladder. They are connected to the CIA.106

Following Morrow's clues, Russo discovered their identities. He then located one of the colonels -- the one who wanted to go to the HSCA, "Intellfirst." Russo and Jim Marrs and another researcher went to meet "Intellfirst" at his home in Florida. He is eighty years old. They said they were researching the Johnson Administration and that they knew he was on Johnson's I...

[Dawn Meredith]

Part two was missing the first paragraph, so I will try this again. Hope enough time has passed to let me post it- this will be my third attempt

________________

evening with M.B., C.W. had his secretary phone his office every ten minutes until news came across the wire that Harding had a stomach ache from eating crab. C.W. then exclaimed, "That's it! Get me the Vice President!" Vice President Coolidge was spending that evening visiting his father. With them that evening was a good friend of C.W.'s.150

Depending on which history book is consulted, the cause of Harding's death was either from a heart attack that was misdiagnosed as ptomaine poisoning by the so-called "incompetent crony whom he had made surgeon general," or to an apoplectic stroke (a blood clot in the brain), or is left entirely to the reader's imagination. Barron's anticipation of and reaction to Harding's stomach ache would seem to corroborate poisoning as the cause of death.151

Now almost lost to history is the fact that poisoning was indeed suspected by the American people for many years after Harding's death, much in the same way that suspicions linger in President Kennedy's death. Like Kennedy's, Harding's was one of the few presidential deaths deeply mourned by the American people. Shortly before he died, Harding had been asking Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover's advice on publicly exposing "a great scandal in our administration." Hoover advised disclosure, but Harding died before taking his advice. Mrs. Harding permitted no autopsy and destroyed her late husband's private papers.152 Scandals surfaced which tended to be more damaging to Harding's reputation than to what he called his "goddamn friends" who kept him "walking the floors nights." Even in the worst of these scandals, known as Teapot Dome, the culprits escaped conviction on the charge of conspiring to defraud the government. Barron also knew, before any other journalist, the exact moment of the Supreme Court's Teapot Dome decision (not expected for several months). M.B. called this "a nose for news."153

Upon Harding's death in August 1923, Vice President Coolidge became president and was himself succeeded by Hoover in 1928. Coolidge had "cryptically" removed his name from consideration allowing Hoover, whom he detested, to easily win the Republican nomination.154 It is interesting to note, as will continue to be evident in this paper, the similarities in this to Johnson's succession, subsequent surprise withdrawal in 1968, and Nixon's succession to the presidency. To paraphrase Napoleon: It is not necessary to bury the truth. It is sufficient merely to delay it until nobody cares.

M.B.'s first husband, Sherwin Badger, had a job lined up at United Fruit prior to his June 1923 graduation from Harvard. Sherwin's job was in the head office. The manager of the company's sugar mill town of Banes, Cuba, where M.B. and Sherwin requested to be transferred, was David Armstrong a man who had devoted his life to United Fruit. Sherwin did not share his devotion.155

After a year at United Fruit, Sherwin quit and went to work for the Boston News Bureau. He later transferred to The Wall Street Journal and eventually became editor of Barron's.156 Their son, Sherwin Badger, Jr. was born on July, 26, 1928.157

Mary's and Sherwin's Boston friends, the Paines, moved to New York and were there when Mary and Sherwin moved back to the city after living in the suburbs of Scarsdale for most of 1929. [George] Lyman Paine was an architect and Ruth [Forbes] Paine was a painter. M.B. had her first love affair with a friend of the Paines. He was Leopold Mannes, a pianist/composer who helped perfect Kodachrome color processing. The affair began at the end of the summer of 1930 while M.B. was visiting Ruth Paine at her family summer home on Naushon Island off the coast of Massachusetts. Because of anti-Semitism in M.B.'s family and the disapproval of Leopold's mother, the affair ended. Still, M.B. and Sherwin decided to divorce in the summer of 1933. M.B. then took a trip to France with Ruth Paine by ship. On this trip M.B. met her next husband, Jean Rufenacht.158 She and Leopold were still in love, however.159

At this point in the chronology, around the time of the birth of the Paines' son Michael, it is important to look at an overview of the Paine family for insight into M.B.'s past history with them as well as an understanding of their impact on her future. It is equally important here not to ignore the dominating dynamics in the U.S. of the so called "Old Boy Network."


Michael Paine...was sixth in descent from Robert Treat Paine the signer of the Declaration of Independence. His mother Ruth Forbes was a great-granddaughter of Emerson and a granddaughter of William Hathaway Forbes, founder and first president of the American Bell Telephone Company. Her father, Ralph Emerson Forbes, left an estate of $2.5 million when he died in 1937. Her uncle, W. Cameron Forbes, a former Ambassador to Japan, had been until his recent demise a director of United Fruit....Michael's great-great-great-uncle, Robert Bennet Forbes, is said by the Dictionary of American Biography to have played "a prominent role in the outbreak of the Chinese Opium War." Robert's mother was a Perkins, of a family who were partners in the "most powerful American house in China." ...Michael Paine was descended from the Cabots on both his father's and his mother's side; he was thus a second cousin once removed of Thomas Dudley Cabot, the former President of United Fruit who offered another of his companies, Gibralter Steamship, as a "cover" for the CIA during the Bay of Pigs adventure. He was also a cousin of Cabot's partner, Alexander Cochrane Forbes, a director of United Fruit and trustee of Cabot, Cabot and Forbes. Paul F. Hellmuth vice-president of Cabot, Cabot and Forbes, was a trustee of the J. Frederick Brown Foundation, a CIA "conduit", along with G.C. Cabot. Thus the Paine family [had] links with the blue-blood intelligence circles of the "Oh So Social" OSS and CIA, though one would not guess this from their description in the Warren Report....In the summer of 1963 it was Ruth [Michael's wife], rather than Michael, who maintained close relations with the patrician Paine and Forbes families, traveling east in July to stay with her mother-in-law at the traditional Forbes clan retreat of Naushon Island near Wood's Hole, Massachusetts (CE 416, 17 H 119).160
..Michael Paine...had an uncle, Eric Schroeder, who was a friend and investment associate of [Dallas oil man Everette Lee] deGolyer;161 his cousin Alexander "Sandy" Forbes, a former director of United fruit, belonged to the elite Tryall Golf Club retreat in Jamaica with former deGolyer associate Paul Raigorodsky, a financial patron of the St. Nicholas Parish.162


With that history in mind, it must be noted that Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster had, and profited from, extensive conflicts of interest between their government positions and the United Fruit Company.163

Between the fall of 1933 and the end of June 1934, M.B. moved to Zurich; married Jean, returned to the U.S. to get custody of her daughter, Mary Jane (born May 15, 1930), and returned to Zurich on a steamship of the Italian Line called Rex.164 She and Mary Jane lived for a while in the village of Les Geneveys-sur-Coffrane in the Val de Ruz above the city of Neuchâtel in the Swiss canton of the same name; visited on weekends by Jean. He had inherited the Villa Joliette from his father. Eventually, feeling like a hermit, M.B. moved back to Zurich. Mary Jane had started school at this time. M.B. joined the "American Women's Club, a flourishing organization in those days. There were a surprising number of American women married to Swiss in Zurich, as well as American Businessmen and their wives and a large consular corps."165 Did Elspeth or Walt Rostow participate in the American Women's Club while in Switzerland? If so they probably met Mary Bancroft by 1937 and were among her mutual friends with Allen Dulles, whom she met in 1942.

Some weeks after "The Night of Long Knives," June 30, 1934, M.B. and Jean went to Germany on a business trip. On the eve of their departure King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Louis Barthou, the French foreign Minister, were assassinated in Marseilles [by a Croatian gunman named Petrus Kalemen on Oct. 9, 1934]. Mary discovered in Germany that this assassination was blacked-out in the German press and that it was known about but never discussed by the Germans with whom she and Jean socialized. The Germans felt that discussing politics would lead to speculation about the true meaning of events -- something they did not want to know.166 It was a lesson in mass psychology that was valuable in the world of assassination plotting and cover-up.

She had also prepared herself psychologically for her future work with Allen Dulles: "For if there was one thing my work during the war convinced me of, it was essential to have a very clear-cut idea of your own moral values, so that if you were forced by necessity to break them, you were fully conscious of what you were doing and why....In short, I personally would be incapable of engaging in intelligence work in the service of an idea. But when war broke out and my own country was under attack, that solved the problem for me."167 Did Bancroft consider Kennedy a threat to her country after the Bay of Pigs? If so, she probably shared that opinion with mutual United Fruit friends of Allen Dulles and the Paines.

She shared another interest with Dulles as well: "I also developed an interest in Yugoslavia, which was to continue all during the war, until my file on Yugoslavia actually became second in size only to my file on Germany. I noted with interest that the grandmother of the new, eleven-year-old King Peter of Yugoslavia was Grandpa Barron's friend, Queen Marie, now the Dowager Queen of Rumania...."168

Bancroft spent the next four years getting to know the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung and developing a lifelong interest in his work.169 She also made friends at this time with two American Women: Mary Briner and Carly Goetze.170

Mary and Jean went to Venice, Italy in early summer 1938, staying until early August 1938. During their absence the Queen of Rumania had died. "I would eventually become much more familiar with her country and her people because of Jean's many trips to Rumania during the war, as well as by meeting his Rumanian friends who came to visit us on their way to Paris or other European capitals."171

After Pearl Harbor, Bancroft, through her friend Don Bigelow, the First Secretary at the American Legation, met and began writing articles on Switzerland and Germany for Gerald Mayer, a representative of the Office of Coordinator of Information172 [predecessor to the OSS].173 Through Mayer, after working for him for several months, M.B. met Allen Dulles, who was posing as assistant to the American Minister, in early December, 1942. Mayer was actually an OSS recruiter and Dulles was head of U.S. intelligence in Switzerland. A few days later over dinner at Dulles' apartment in Bern, they "...discovered [they] had many mutual friends and talked about them for a while." Prior to this meeting M.B. had learned that Dulles had held various positions in the State Department and that his uncle, Robert Lansing, had been Wilson's Secretary of State.174

Wilson also had several powerful University of Texas personalities in his cabinet: Colonel Edward M. House, David Franklyn Houston, Albert Sidney Burleson, and Thomas Watt Gregory. House, then a kingmaker in Texas politics was the man principally responsible for Wilson being nominated for and elected President.175

Dulles asked M.B. to continue to analyze the speeches of Hitler, Goering, and Goebels and send them to him rather than Gerald Mayer. "He'd also like me to see some people coming from adjacent countries who had to be careful where they went and whom they saw because they would be returning to occupied territories. Switzerland was riddled with enemy agents. Officially, mine was a Swiss household where such people could visit with a minimum of risk. Or, if I had to meet them in public, I was a journalist and that was an excellent cover.... Useful was a word that was constantly on his [Dulles'] lips. He judged everyone and everything by the yardstick of its usefulness in the war effort....176 It is speculated that such techniques and personality traits would also have been useful if Bancroft had to relay information from Dulles to Ruth and Michael Paine in 1963.

Dulles said of Howard Burris' close friend, Richard Helms, that he was "useful," and he "knew how to keep his mouth shut." According to Helms biographer Thomas Powers, "When Dulles undertook the delicate job of getting a Postmaster General's okay for an illegal mail-opening program, it was Helms he picked to go with him."177

Considering that Helms "had a certain slippery ability to avoid crisis situations in which failure might wreck a career..." and considering "...his skepticism of covert action," the reason he worked on this delicate job might have been due to another trait of Allen Dulles. As Bancroft describes it: "One of his greatest strengths was the devotion he was able to evoke in those who worked for him and this kind of devotion on my part began on that very first evening in Bern."178

Mary Bancroft and Allen Dulles fell in love. For M.B. it was much deeper than her feeling for Leopold had been. M.B. did not like Allen's attitude toward John Foster, however. When their father was dying he told all his children to regard Foster as the head of the family. M.B. thought the American people should have made more of a fuss "over the constellation of power resulting from Foster at State and Allen at the CIA."179 She probably knew about their conflicts of interest with the United Fruit Company.

M.B. noticed that Dulles was annoyed with the wrongness of facts in Hitler's speeches and found herself having to explain the Nazi theory of propaganda, "how it had nothing to do with presenting facts accurately but solely with an appeal to the emotions of the German people."180 To do this she translated passages on the subject from Mein Kampf for Dulles. M.B.'s work included comparing articles in the most respected German newspaper with the contents of Goebbel's weekly and issues of the Nazi party paper. She summarized significant articles in each "and also reported on the obituaries -- how many deaths were of the military or seemed significant in connection with specific bombings."181

While she never mentions the term "editorial intelligence" in her book, Bancroft, nevertheless, gives a good definition of it: "But intelligence is a mosaic. General material about background and people's interrelationships can be both illuminating and important. Quite often missing pieces of the mosaic emerge that make a previously incomprehensible picture unexpectedly clear."182 Indeed.

Toward the end of May, 1943, M.B. was asked by Dulles to translate a book on the Third Reich by Hans Bernd Gisevius, a member of the Canaris organization -- the Abwehr -- stationed under the diplomatic cover of vice-consul at the German consulate in Zurich. His book was about the July 20 plot against Hitler, being coordinated by Admiral Canaris' subordinate, Colonel Hans Oster. M.B. reported: "I told Allen it all made sense to me. Difficult as it might be to believe, the conspirators actually hoped that if they got rid of Hitler they would be able to take over the whole country and to negotiate peace with the Anglo-Americans. Their hopes went even further: They envisaged the western Allies joining them in a crusade against Russia -- and communism. Gisevius had been sent to Switzerland to get in touch with the western Allies. Other emissaries were making similar contacts in Sweden and elsewhere."183

Bancroft reveals more about Dulles' background: "In addition to Rumanians, I was also meeting with a considerable number of Yugoslavs....Allen was already thoroughly familiar with both the history and present conditions in Yugoslavia, having at one point in his State Department career been in charge of the desk that dealt with the affairs of that part of the world. He apparently knew the names of every city, town, river, bridge, railway line, and personality in the entire country."184

Gisevius told M.B. that the Rumanians, Bulgarians, and Hungarians were watching how the U.S. treated Italy after the fall of Mussolini in the summer of 1943. He said we should have made peace with them and followed it with peace offers to the Balkan countries, who would have jumped at the chance. This, he said would have destroyed German morale enough that Germany would have collapsed "within seventy-two hours."185

Gisevius claimed that the Allies behavior in Italy was proof they were not interested in fighting fascism. He also felt that Allied bombing strategy and the demand for an unconditional surrender would drive the German's toward "an eastern solution" being offered by the Russians and their Freies Deutschland ("Free Germany") committee established in Moscow after Stalingrad and headed by Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus and General von Seydlitz. "This was causing difficulties for the conspiracy of civilians and officers who wanted to get rid of Hitler -- particularly the older men who, like Gisevius himself, favored `a western solution.'" Gisevius felt that if we "disappointed" the Germans "they might well fling themselves in the arms of the Russians, and the resultant terror would mean `the end of Western Civilization.'" M.B. felt this phrase was overused to promote ones menace of choice -- in this case the menace of Russian communism. The July 20 plotters were both anti-Nazi and anti-communist, but not necessarily anti-fascist.186

Concerning intelligence which would have been of certain interest to Rostow, Mary tells us, "Allen had been beside himself with eagerness for Jean's return. On August 1, Allied planes had raided the Rumanian oil fields at Ploesti, and Allen, realizing that the railroad ran by these fields, knew Jean would be able to give him a firsthand report of the damage caused by the raid....The Rumanians were greatly upset by the bombing of Sofia. They couldn't understand why Sofia had been bombed and not Bucharest. Their pride had been hurt!" Although the Rumanians loved the Americans and hated the Germans, they preferred German over Russian occupation.187

In early July, 1944, Gisevius left for Germany to prepare for the coup. M.B. and Mary Jane left for Ascona for six weeks. Gisevius' friend and Abwehr colleague, Eddie Waetjen, also attached to the German consulate in Zurich, also spent the summer in Ascona with his family. On July 20, the coup failed. M.B. and Mary Jane returned to Zurich on September 1, 1944. Jean spent the summer traveling.188

In late January, 1945, Gisevius returned to Zurich and eventually moved to a rented house on Lake Geneva. In the weeks preceding July 20, Gisevius had been constantly on the move between Basel, Bern, Geneva, the Grisons, and Zurich.189

On July 13, Gisevius met with General Beck who wanted to put the whole plan down on paper. "Men of Beck's generation had no conception of how, under a terror, everyone, including one's own children, must be regarded as potentially dangerous spies. Nor did it occur to such old school gentlemen that any slip of paper, even if only written for ones own private information, might find its way into the hands of the Gestapo with devastating results for all concerned. Gisevius was only too aware of this problem." One detail of the putsch was that "Immediately after the bomb exploded, the headquarters' communications center would be put out of commission. This would insure that headquarters would be cut off from the outside world for several hours and prevent the issuance of counter-orders should there be any survivor with the authority to issue them." This never happened and allowed not only counter-orders but verification of Hitler's survival.190

It is recalled here that Kennedy's entire cabinet was out of the country at the time he was killed. Also, for an hour after the JFK assassination, phone service in Washington was sporadic at best.191 Whether or not this was due to deliberate tampering can be researched by checking the memories of people in other cities with large populations about whether their phone system was having problems during that hour.

By July 23 Gisevius had managed to find a hiding place where he waited for Dulles to smuggle false papers to him. On January 20, 1945 the papers mysteriously appeared at the house where he was staying. "The papers included a special pass and a letter from Gestapo headquarters signed by Himmler (a perfect forgery), instructing all government officials to assist said Hoffman [his new identity] on an important secret mission to Switzerland." Still, he was lucky to make it back.192

After analyzing Gisevius, Carl Jung told M.B., "`Of course, he still has rather grandiose ideas, and if he goes to the United States, he might attach himself to some current of power there that would permit him to realize at least some of them.'"193 Prior to this comment, the only contact Bancroft had established between Gisevius and the United States was with Dulles through Bancroft herself. Did Gisevius wish to continue his work in anti-communist assassination plots? As we shall see, Gisevius did go to the U.S. He "spent some time in Texas, then returned to Germany...."

In another statement that overlaps with the interests of Ransom and Rostow M.B. writes that among Dulles' achievements cited in his Medal for Merit is "...his reports on damage inflicted by the Allied Air Forces as a result of raids on Berlin and other German, Italian, and Balkan cities, which were forwarded within two or three days of the operations."194

On her relationship with Dulles, M.B. says, "He knew that there was nothing he could say or do that would affect in the slightest my deep affection for him. He was also aware that I knew his dark side and that it didn't bother me in the least." Again we see personality traits that were and would remain useful in the business of assassination plotting.

Dulles went to Germany in the spring of 1945 to head the OSS mission there.195 When the Russians learned of the secret negotiations for the first great German surrender, from which they were excluded, they protested to Washington. "So Allen withdrew personally from the negotiations, but indicated, without saying so in so many words, that it would be quite all right for others to proceed as long as he didn't know anything about what they were doing. This was an old trick, similar to the one practiced by Admiral Canaris in connection with the July 20 conspiracy."196 And again we see techniques that were and would remain useful in the business of assassination plotting.

According to Robert Morrow, it was Tracy Barnes, second in command of the Bay of Pigs operation under Rostow's friend Richard Bissell, who was the recipient of Lee Harvey Oswald's information from Minsk. Barnes went on to head the CIA's super secret Domestic Operations Division (DOD); and was therefore the boss for whom J. Walton Moore was working in Dallas in 1962 when he initiated de Mohrenschildt's relationship with Oswald. Though fired from the CIA by Kennedy, Dulles was still considered "the Director" by some who had worked under him.197 One of them was very likely Tracy Barnes. Barnes was disliked at CIA but got top jobs because Dulles liked him. E. Howard Hunt, a mutual friend of Barnes and Dulles, was Barnes' covert action chief at DOD.198

In early summer 1952, M.B. and Mary Jane "again returned to the States, and she and Horace Taft announced their engagement at the Republican Convention in Chicago, where Horace's father, Senator Robert A. Taft, was contending with General Dwight D. Eisenhower for the presidential nomination. Mary Jane and Horace were married that September in Washington, where we made our headquarters with Clover [Allen's wife] and Allen. Sherwin [Jr.] could not make the wedding because by then he was a lieutenant in the United States Navy serving off Korea. Clover and Allen's son was also in Korea serving as an officer in the US marines." In the fall of 1953, M.B. moved back to the States permanently and Sherwin, Jr. started working for Time magazine. Of particular interest, Bancroft reveals that "Gisevius married his Fräulein Braut, spent some time in Texas, then returned to Germany where he published several more books; he finally settled on the Lake of Geneva near Vevey. We kept in touch until his death in 1974."199

When Allen Dulles retired in 1961 he took M.B.'s wartime reports home with him. Despite his urging, M.B. procrastinated on writing her war memoirs (Allen wanted to "go over them" with her). After his death, in 1969, she asked Clover for the reports. Richard Helms had them by then and took two years to return them to her.200

With all of her references to Kennedy assassination-related persons and subjects, Bancroft could scarcely have overlooked another detail of her life that was not in her book. Perhaps Bancroft is purposely making it conspicuous by its absence -- a possible coding technique.201 It is in Leonard Mosley's 1978 book, Dulles. Mosley says that in 1948, a year after her divorce from Jean Rufenacht, "Mary Bancroft was still a friend of Allen Dulles, as she would continue to be until his death, but the intimacy they had achieved in wartime Switzerland had now gone out of their relationship. Mrs. Bancroft had turned her strong personality in other directions and lighted upon Henry M. Luce, president and editor-in-chief of Time magazine, whom she set out to "convert" from his right-wing ways to her more liberal philosophy."202

Also in a description, that researchers of the JFK assassination will find intriguing, Mosley says about Allen Dulles: "He had periods when he was out on the tennis courts owned by his rich friends, the Belins, challenging and beating Bill Bundy, Jim Angleton, and Bob Amory, or other members of the Agency's top echelon bold enough to take him on." Whether or not this is the family of Warren Commission attorney David Belin, or the family of Gaspard d'Andelot Belin, acting Secretary of the Treasury at the time of the assassination (making him the ultimate head of the Secret Service because Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon was out of the country) and husband of Harriet Lowell Bundy, niece of Kennedy's National Security Advisor, Frederick McGeorge Bundy, this reference has probably been overlooked all these years because the name Belin is not in Mosley's index.203

Clover Dulles and M.B. continued to be close friends until her death in 1974. Mary Bancroft continued to keep in touch with her daughter, Joan. Her book ends with a quote from C.W. Barron, which M.B. used in other parts of her book: "But remember that facts are not the truth. They only indicate where the truth may lie."204

This comment, along with Bancroft's statement about knowledge of "interrelationships" which "make a previously incomprehensible picture unexpectedly clear"; her experience with codes (she used a different verbal and written code with each of her contacts and informants); the importance of the Paines in her life: the mutual ties to United Fruit, their involvement with her meeting her first love and her second husband, and their possible mutual friendship with Dulles -- who also had close ties to United Fruit; her knowledge and understanding of "the Nazi theory of propaganda"; the fact that she was Dulles' secret contact with a group planning to take over a government by assassination, using techniques of forgery and plausible deniability, so they could wage "a crusade against Russia -- and communism"; all of these facts leave no doubt that she would have followed the events following, if not leading up to, the Kennedy assassination and would realize the importance of revealing these "interrelationships" in 1983.

Can there be any doubt that Bancroft asked, if she did not know first hand, how her close friend's son and daughter-in-law, Ruth and Michael Paine, came to know Lee Harvey Oswald? If she did, she would have learned that George de Mohrenschildt, who in 1940 worked briefly for his distant cousin, Baron Constantine Maydell, then the top German Abwehr agent in the U.S., had introduced Oswald to Volkmar Schmidt, who had lived and studied with one of the July 20 plotters.205

She would have learned that after talking to Oswald, Schmidt particularly wanted him to meet Michael Paine. Schmidt arranged the party where, allegedly, Oswald and Ruth Paine met. And Paine eventually got him the job in the School Book Depository.206 Oswald also met, at that party, a man whose father had worked for C.D. Jackson's Radio Free Europe. Jackson, along with being the man who bought the Zapruder film for Bancroft's lover Henry Luce's Life magazine, was the CIA's propaganda mastermind.207

What did Mary Bancroft think of all this? Did she know Michael's friend, Volkmar? Did she know Volkmar's former professor and housemate, Dr. Wilhelm Kuetemeyer?208 Did she know de Mohrenschildt?

While in Yugoslavia in 1957 de Mohrenschildt was accused by the authorities of making drawings of military fortifications. At this time de Mohrenschildt was working for a subsidiary of the CIA funded Agency for International Development.209 Upon returning to the U.S. he met with a CIA representative who "obtained foreign intelligence which was promptly disseminated to other federal agencies in ten separate reports" according to a CIA report.210 Whether or not Bancroft knew Oswald's CIA friend, Dulles surely must have known him, being one of the CIA's top experts on Germany and Yugoslavia.211 De Mohrenschildt had applied to the OSS in late 1942 (about the time Bancroft and Dulles met) and was rejected because of FBI reports that he had done undercover work in the U.S. for Nazi Germany.212

And just what is the rest of the story of Gisevius' grandios ideas that required currents of power in the United States? Was this his motivation for a trip to Texas?213 Researcher Bruce Campbell Adamson discovered that, by 1953, Hans Gisevius was working for Dresser Industries, a Dallas-based oil equipment company. Adamson's research, for a book he is writing about George de Mohrenschildt, revealed that Dresser's long-time chairman of the board, Henry Neil Mallon and newly appointed CIA Director Allen Dulles were mutual friends of Gisevius. He was "handling" one of Mallon's prized projects -- a worldwide economic development program called the "Institute on Technical Cooperation."214

The "current of power" to which Gisevius had attached himself in the United States did not stop there. Prescott Bush, the father of former U.S. President George Bush, had just ended a record setting twenty-two year stint on Dresser's board to take his seat in the U.S. Senate in 1952. The senior Bush, who had been inducted into Yale's secret Order of the Skull and Bones with Mallon in 1917, used his financial expertise to reorganize his friend's company in 1928 and 1929.215

As Adamson points out, "It was at a Dresser subsidiary, International Derrick and Equipment Company (IDECO), where young George [Bush] would get his first start in 1948." And "For clear evidence of George Bush's admiration for Mr. Mallon, one need look no further than the birth certificate of Bush's third son. Neil Mallon Bush was born on January 22, 1955, in Midland, Texas. In fact it was Mallon who personally offered George Bush the IDECO job." Like his father, the future president would form a close personal friendship with Mallon, "the man who used his company, friends and business contacts as cover for CIA-sponsored projects."216

Adamson's research also indicates that Mallon and Dulles also formed a close friendship. They visited each other in Washington and Dallas, exchanged gifts, and noted significant family anniversaries. Bruce Adamson notes that, "it was Neil Mallon who helped introduce Allen Dulles to the wealthy and influential in Dallas society." He further notes that when George Bush was founding Zapata Oil (which later explored for oil near a Carribean base used for CIA raids against Cuba), Prescott Bush and Neil Mallon were meeting in Washington, D.C. with CIA Director Dulles to discuss a "Pilot Project" in the Carribean.217

Adamson also discovered that George Bush offered more pay to Wayne H. Dean, a top engineer at Kerr & McGee Oil, to come work for him as one of Zapata's first drilling superintendents. Adamson learned from another engineer who worked at Kerr & McGee in 1952, that "Wayne Dean and de Mohrenschildt were very good friends." Dean went on to become a top executive at Zapata.218

According to Zapata's 1960 annual report, "In September, Mr. Wayne Dean resigned his position as executive vice president and director in order to go into the drilling business in Mexico. Mr. G.H. Walker, managing partner of G.H.Walker and Co., New York City, has been elected to fill the vacancy on the board." As we will see, in 1934, a shipping line established at the end of World War I in a deal arranged for Brown Brothers, Harriman by Prescott Bush's partner and father-in-law, G.H. Walker, was found by Congress to be subsidizing "a wide range of pro-Nazi propaganda efforts both in Germany and the United States."219

In other Bush-de Mohrenschildt links, Adamson notes that wealthy oilman Edwin Wendell Pauley, with whom Bush and others at Zapata formed the Permargo drilling company in Mexico, is listed in de Mohrenschildt's phone book four times. An employee at Mexico's Pemex Oil Company, Antonio J. Bermudez, is also in de Mohrenschildt's phone book. Bermudez was "a very close friend to Everette DeGolyer, owner of DeGolyer & MacNaughton and father-in-law of one of LBJ's right-hand men, George Crew McGhee."220

Of all of the possible implications of Mary Bancroft's cryptic reference to a post-war trip to Texas by Hans Gisevius, it turns out that Dulles' and Bancroft's fellow expert on political assassination continued to stay in close proximity to the places and people whose names would one day be linked to the Kennedy assassination. Considering Gisevius' "rather grandios ideas" that this current of power in the U.S. "would permit him to realize," two questions are raised: what were these ideas, and did he realize them? Given the truth behind Mary Bancroft's seemingly mild statement that Gisevius "spent some time in Texas," this more severe but equally cryptic statement takes on greater importance.

All of this makes crucial the need for research into the possible relationship between George Lyman Paine and CIA covert action pioneer, James Burnham. Both had been leaders in the Trotskyist movement in the U.S. Burnham is responsible for introducing William F. Buckley, Jr. to E. Howard Hunt in June 1950.221 Hunt then hired Buckley to work with him at the infamous Mexico City station. Paine and Burnham would certainly have shared a common interest in one of Stalin's most successful covert operations -- the assassination of Trotsky in Mexico City.222

After a failed attempt in May 1940, Stalin and his secret police, the GPU, succeeded three months later, in assassinating the anti-Stalinist Leon Trotsky, who was living in exile in Mexico. It was accomplished by Spanish Communist Ramon Mercader, a trained agent of the secret police, who cunningly, over a period of several weeks, used unwitting Trotsky loyalists to penetrate Trotsky's guarded and fortified house in Mexico City. Mercader struck the fatal blow with an alpenstock (an iron staff used in mountain climbing) into Trotsky's head during a private, unguarded meeting in the exiled leader's workroom.223

The Burnham-Paine link is one of at least nine Trotskyite connections to Oswald:


Harry L. Power, an Army veteran and "Trotskyist or Maoist type" from San Antonio was an associate of Oswald, according to undercover intelligence operative Richard Case Nagell. On Nov. 23, 1963, a 7.65 German Mauser rifle (the type of rifle Roger Craig and others identified as the murder weapon on the sixth floor of the TSBD) was found in his Indiana hotel room. Another San Antonio man who professed knowledge of Power, John Robert Glenn, an Air Force intelligence operative whose life story was strikingly similar to Oswald's, also professed to be a Trotskyist.224

Oswald is holding the Trotskyite newspaper The Militant in the backyard photos;225

Michael Paine's father (a friend of Mary Bancroft) was a leader of the movement;226 as was

James Burnham, the CIA covert-action chief who introduced William F. Buckley, Jr. to E. Howard Hunt.227
This connects to Oswald not only because Burnham may have known Paine but because Hunt had just become chief of the Mexico City station when he and Tracy Barnes became involved with David Atlee Phillips (Maurice Bishop?) in the 1954 overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala for United Fruit228 -- the Paine-Dulles connected business.

Also, Hunt hired Buckley to work at his Mexico City station. De Mohrenschildt had worked at Buckley's parent's oil company, Pantipec, with his future business partner, Pantipec's president, Warren Smith;229


On New Year's Day 1963, Oswald ordered several political pamphlets from the Trotskyite Pioneer Press and soon began checking out books about Marxism, Trotskyism, and American imperialism in Latin America, especially Cuba;230

Vaughn Marlowe, the executive officer of the Los Angeles chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) whom Leopoldo and Angel almost recruited to be the shooter in the June 1963 plot against JFK, had been associated with "Trotskyists";231

Harold R. Isaacs (Rostow's co-worker at CENIS) is referred to as a "Trotskyist" in two books about the Far East;232

FBI agent John William Miller reported that CIA agent William George Gaudet told him of a purchase of paintings by Jack Ruby from Lorenzo Borenstein, a close relative of Leon Trotsky.233 Gaudet is the CIA agent who got the Mexican tourist card next to Oswald's in New Orleans in September 1963.234 He also told attorney Bernard Fensterwald in 1975: "She [Dorothea Murret, Oswald's cousin linked to Rostow's associate Harold Isaacs] may have worked for the agency in New Orleans."235

Felipe Alvahuete, a secretary and aide of the late Leon Trotsky and a leader of the Fourth Internationale, accused the Communist Party of complicity in the Kennedy assassination a few days after the murder.236
There are at least three possible explanations for this Trotsky business. First, Burnham and Paine may have been plants in the movement (Richard Gibson, one of FPCC's founders was suspected of being CIA),237 or they may have been rightists who sought to use Trotsky as the best hope for overthrowing Stalin; a sort of "Trotsky-right." Since Burnham and Paine had close ties to Oswald by the time of the assassination, Trotskyism may have been part of his intelligence cover as well -- a link that made him a prime candidate as a patsy for those wishing to blame the assassination on the Communists.

Second, Leopoldo and Angel, the two unknown, shadowy figures who were reportedly posing as pro-Castro agents around Oswald in 1963, were apparently thinking of recruiting Marlowe, a real leftist with a Trotskyite background, to shoot Kennedy in Los Angeles in June 1963. They may have been working in league with Burnham and Paine in efforts to set up several Trotskyists as patsies.

And third, since Oswald was either becoming a Trotskyite, or it was part of his sheepdipping as a leftist, and since he told Volkmar Schmidt that he thought the U.S. was becoming fascist,238 he may have suspected that a Trotsky-right, foiled by the GPU in its attempt to overthrow Stalin, was now conspiring to assassinate JFK and blame it on the KGB for revenge (among other motives).

Recall that Oswald was reading Trotskyite literature, books on U.S. imperialism in Cuba and Latin America, and checking out library books on Kennedy simultaneously with books on the assassination of Huey Long. Oswald may have been the original assassination researcher, studying aspects of the conspiracy in advance that other researchers would be examining thirty years hence. The GPU's assassination of Trotsky in Mexico City, while not as sophisticated, had its similarities to the conspiracy involving Oswald. Maybe Paine and certainly Burnham were inspired by the KGB's institutionalized assassination program; especially given the infamous William Pawley- and Allen Dulles-assisted Doolittle Report of 1954 which urged the CIA to think more like the KGB.239

It has been said that neither Rostow nor his father had ever been leftists but actually avowed Mensheviks (anti-communists).240 This fact may shed light on Isaacs' Trotskyite past and on Rostow; especially since Oswald's cousin and Isaacs' associate Marilyn Dorothea Murret may have worked for the Agency in New Orleans with William George Gaudet.

Many researchers still think of Rostow as a reformed leftist and still others think he continued to be a leftist and a victim of the extreme right. This type of confusion has served the cover-up well. Dick Russell himself seems to be confused by all of these Trotsky goings-on when he says of Michael Paine that "...interestingly enough, his father, George Lyman Paine, was one of the leaders of the American Trotskyite movement."241 While having obviously read Scott's manuscripts, Russell overlooked the Paines' extensive ties to the national security establishment.

Also needed is a close look at how and when Foster Dulles' son, John W.F."Jack" Dulles, expert on Brazil, came to be employed at George de Mohrenschildt's alma mater, The University of Texas at Austin. Foster's and Allen's uncle, Robert Lansing, after all, had several powerful friends there, some of whom were fellow cabinet members in the administration of Woodrow Wilson, Harding's predecessor.242

Perhaps the more fitting question is how de Mohrenschildt came to attend the academic halls of Lansing's fellow cabinet members. Keeping in mind the earlier discussion of Harding's death which ultimately resulted in the presidency of his "detested" commerce secretary, Herbert Hoover, it is worth noting that Harding's secretary of state was Charles Evans Hughs, who narrowly missed becoming president in 1916 when Woodrow Wilson was elected. Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919 while on a countrywide speaking tour to gain support for ratification of the League of Nations. He was trying to overcome the protests of the Republican controlled Congress.243 Harding, who won the nomination in 1920 because his "...lack of strong convictions made him attractive to many of the politicos after eight years of the headstrong Wilson,"244 also became "determined that America should join the League of Nations' World Court despite Congressional disapproval...." Like Wilson, he went on a cross-country tour to take the issue to the people -- the tour on which he, again like Wilson, suffered his so called stroke.245 As will be seen in this paper, the fact that President Wilson had several powerful University of Texas personalities in his cabinet, as well as Allen Dulles' uncle, Robert Lansing, has potentially major implications concerning links between the UT Rambler and the JFK assassination. For now, however, we will take a closer look at these Texan cabinet members.

Colonel Edward M. House, a kingmaker in Texas politics and an advisor to four Texas governors, was the man principally responsible for Wilson being nominated for and elected President. He was not elected or appointed to any office. "He was, simply, President Wilson's friend and adviser."246

David Franklyn Houston, UT's president in 1905, had as three of his closest friends in Austin, Colonel House, Albert Sidney Burleson, and Thomas Watt Gregory. He served Wilson as agriculture secretary and later as treasury secretary. His first jobs after leaving Washington, were as vice president of AT&T and then president of Bell Telephone Securities of New York; linking him to associates of Michael Paine's maternal great grandfather, William Hathaway Forbes, founder and first President of the American Bell Telephone Company. Houston died in 1940 after directing Mutual of New York through the Depression; earning twice the salary of the President of the United States.247

Albert Sidney Burleson, descendant of soldiers in the Texas Revolution, Mexican War, Civil War and American Revolution, was one of UT's first students. Later as a Texas congressman he was generous in matters where his alma mater was concerned. He served Wilson as postmaster general for eight years establishing the first air mail service; which no doubt led to associations with aviation pioneers. In 1918 Burleson became chairman of the U.S. Telegraph and Telephone Administration, a capacity in which he could have also known members and associates of the Paine family.248

Wilson's attorney general, Thomas Watt Gregory, was admitted to the bar in 1885 after earning his law degree at UT in only one year. After eight years on the Board of Regents, he worked with Colonel House to secure Wilson's nomination in 1912. As attorney general he concentrated on anti-trust violations, creating the War Emergency Division, and enlarging the FBI.249

These were the men who were fellow cabinet members of Allen Dulles' uncle, Robert Lansing. It appears Wilson fared no better with his Texans and Dulles family member than did Kennedy with his. And like Kennedy, Wilson was well aware of the dangers. "`Remember,' Woodrow Wilson warned his daughter when his first administration was sailing smoothly, `the pack is always waiting to tear one to pieces.'"250 According to Wilson biographer Arthur S. Link:


Wilson's greatest problem was Robert Lansing, Secretary of State from 1915 to 1920. Lansing, who looked every inch the statesman, was brilliant while executing routine business and often bungling while conducting important negotiations. A very bad blunder by Lansing in a controversy over armed ships in January 1916 first revealed the Secretary of State's ineptitude to Wilson and was one reason why Wilson increasingly refused to permit him to make any important decisions on his own. Worse still, the discussions over policy toward German submarine warfare in the spring of 1916 first made it apparent to Wilson that Lansing was trying to lead him into war. Lansing revealed this purpose even more clearly in the following autumn and winter. Since Wilson did not want to go to war, his distrust of Lansing naturally increased. Finally, Wilson lost all confidence in his Secretary of State when he tried to sabotage Wilson's efforts to end the war through mediations in December 1916 and January 1917. Unable to find a good replacement or dismiss Lansing in the midst of various crises, Wilson thought that he had no recourse but to conduct all important negotiations himself. This isolation only increased Lansing's bitterness and tendency toward disloyalty, particularly during the peace conference and afterward. There is some evidence that Lansing contemplated a coup that would put him in the White House after Wilson's breakdown in October 1919. There is good evidence that Lansing tried to provoke a war with Mexico about this same time.251
Wilson's critics have suggested a final reason for his techniques as a diplomatist -- his personal egotism, jealousy of others, and inability ever to delegate authority. A search of the record does not yield much evidence to support these charges. A fairer conclusion would be that Wilson was generous in dealing with subordinates, welcomed and took advise, and often changed his mind. Indeed, Wilson's chief weakness as a diplomatist was his soft heart and unwillingness to dismiss incompetent and even disloyal subordinates. He could not do anything to embarrass or hurt another person. He finally dismissed Lansing in January 1920, but Lansing had done irreparable damage by then. Even though Wilson had good proof of House's disloyalty at Paris during the early stages of the peace negotiations, Wilson appointed the Colonel as his chief spokesman when he, Wilson, left the conference for a visit to the United States. House gave away most of Wilson's positions during the President's absence.252

Thus Wilson's cabinet members were anti-Wilson and Wilson's successor, Warren G. Harding, had anti-Wilson cabinet members. Both presidents were stricken with a "stroke" when they pushed for participation in the League of Nations. Harding died of his stroke/heart attack/poisoning and was replaced by Coolidge who was immediately (if not sooner) informed of Harding's anticipated stomach ache by Bancroft's step-grandfather. Coolidge, with his "genius for inactivity,"253 withdrew from the election in 1928 allowing Herbert Hoover to win. Hoover had been the member of the anti-Wilson cabinet in whom Harding (just prior to his death) confided about publicizing a "great scandal" in his administration which was rumored never to have surfaced.

In light of Bancroft's revelations about "old-boy" Dulles-UT connections, it might be worthwhile for researchers of the JFK assassinating to take a closer look, in the future, at two other past and present members of UT's power structure, Harry Huntt Ransom and Walt Whitman Rostow. As discussed earlier, Rostow, who selected bombing targets as a major in the OSS, went on to a dubious career guiding Vietnam policy with the advice of his close friends Allen Dulles, Charles Cabell, Richard Bissell, and Edward G. Lansdale. Ransom, as we have seen, was head of Air Force editorial intelligence during World War II, and went on to become Chancellor of the University of Texas System from 1962 until his death in 1976. He had been instrumental in the recruitment of professors Walt Rostow and Jack Dulles.

In Mary Bancroft's book about facts, truth, interrelationships, the Paines, and the Warren Commission's most active member, Allen Dulles,254 it is apparent that Bancroft is deliberately telling the true story of one assassination conspiracy while telling us "where the truth may lie" in others. And perhaps most disturbing of all, as we shall see next, are the implications of a Navy Department document which reports that Ruth Paine was requesting information about the family of Lee Harvey Oswald in 1957. Schmidt's party was in late February 1963.255



Strange Magnolias

George de Mohrenschildt, born in 1911, served in the Polish military and government throughout the 1930s and worked for French counterintelligence in the U.S. after 1938. In this latter capacity he recruited agents to gather intelligence about oil exports to Europe.256
This activity certainly brought him into contact with the OSS considering the fact that the British and American commanders planning the European invasion did not trust the French resistance. Even when Churchill decided to aid the French in 1944, the U.S. Army Air Force refused to cooperate. Through the persistence of the OSS' William "Wild Bill" Donovan, however, most of the war material dropped into France in 1944 came from the United States.257

By 1941 de Mohrenschildt was involved with German and Japanese intelligence, the OSS, and Nelson Rockefeller, who was then coordinator of information for Latin America. After the war de Mohrenschildt got a degree in petroleum engineering at UT and entered the joint worlds of oil exploration and the CIA; working for William F. Buckley, Sr. along the way, while E. Howard Hunt was getting to know William F. Buckley, Jr.258

By 1962 Allen Dulles' friend, Tracy Barnes was head of the CIA's mysterious Domestic Operations Division (DOD). That same year J. Walton Moore was head of the DOD's Domestic Contact Service in Dallas when he encouraged de Mohrenschildt to pursue a relationship with Oswald. E. Howard Hunt, a mutual friend of Barnes and Dulles, was Barnes' covert action man at DOD.259

During 1962 Lee and Marina were "befriended" by de Mohrenschildt's associates in the small, wealthy, heavily petroleum-connected and U.S. intelligence-connected Russian exile community in Dallas. According to Peter Dale Scott, "One of the chief Russian guardians, George Bouhe, was a sixty-year old personal accountant for Lewis MacNaughton of the famous oil exploration consulting service DeGolyer and MacNaughton, a man with numerous CIA contacts. Bouhe was said actually to have been `rather mad at Marina for taking an apartment at Oak Cliff because it was rather too far for him to drive and help her when she needed help with the baby.'"260

In April 1963, despite that kind of intimacy among the Oswalds and their Russian "babysitters" there was an apparent change in the people with whom the Oswalds associated. Marina moved in with Michael's wife, Ruth Hyde Paine, and Lee left for New Orleans. Although they would never see or hear from de Morhrenschildt again, neither Lee nor Marina had "escaped from the United Fruit-CIA sphere of influence." With regard to Marina, we have already explored the Paines' CIA connections. Most of Lee's known political connections "after April 1963 in New Orleans and Dallas were with right-wing anti-Castro Cubans and their contacts, many of whom (possibly including an Army Intelligence Officer) were also bitterly hostile to John F. Kennedy."261

As mentioned earlier, the Oswalds, according to the Warren Commission, first made contact with the Paines at a party in Dallas. Considering the Navy Department report mentioned earlier, however, indicating that Ruth Paine was aware of Lee Oswald in 1957, it must at least be said that this introduction was anticipated. This "initial meeting" between the Paines and the Oswalds was also strange in other ways.

It seems that almost everyone at the party was connected to an oil company in Dallas called Magnolia. While that alone is not unusual, these particular party guests, as we will see, had other associations that were.

Not only were these Magnolia employees now in contact with Oswald, but another man with older and just as dubious links to the company happened to be connected to Jack Ruby and David Ferrie.262 And like Oswald, this man ended up in Dealey Plaza.

This strange party came about because in February 1963 de Mohrenschildt introduced Oswald to Volkmar Schmidt. In Germany several years earlier Schmidt lived with and studied under a professor at the University of Heidelberg who had been involved in the plot to assassinate Hitler. After meeting Oswald, Schmidt "particularly wanted him to meet Michael Paine...."263

Volkmar Schmidt had come to Dallas from Germany in the fall of 1961 to do geological research for the Magnolia Laboratories in Duncanville, Texas. Schmidt's teacher and housemate in Germany had been Dr. Wilhelm Kuetemeyer, professor of psychosomatic medicine and religious philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. His work involved conducting experiments on a group of schizophrenics until Kuetemeyer became involved in the "20th of July" plot against Hitler and had to go into hiding -- like Gisevius. When Schmidt first met Oswald he brought up the subject of General Walker and Hitler. As Schmidt told Edward J. Epstein, "Oswald instantly seized on the analogy...to argue that America was moving toward fascism. As he spoke, he seemed to grow more and more excited about the subject."264

Schmidt's two housemates, geologist Richard Pierce and chemist Everett Glover, who owned the house, also worked at Magnolia.265 Glover arranged the February 22 party at which the Oswalds met Ruth Paine and Pierce also attended. Michael wasn't able to come. This would be the first of an apparent pattern of incidents whereby Ruth would have closer contact with the Oswalds than Michael. However, as we have seen, it was Ruth, not Michael, who was in contact with Michael's CIA-United Fruit relatives during the same period as her contacts with the Oswalds. Two other guests at the party, Pierce's girlfriend Betty MacDonald and geologist Norman Fredricksen were also Magnolia employees.266

Fredricksen, was invited because he had been studying Russian with Schmidt and Pierce. Fredricksen's father, it turns out, had been director of Radio Free Europe. RFE was the main project begun by Life magazine's purchaser of the Zapruder film, C.D. Jackson, when he was president of the CIA's National Committee for a Free Europe.267

Schmidt, Fredricksen and Paine represent many overlapping connections between this party and Allen Dulles. Schmidt had been closely associated in Heidelberg with a man who was involved in one of Allen Dulles' and Mary Bancroft's most important wartime exploits. Frederickson's father had directed the CIA project created by C.D. Jackson, friend and co-worker of Walt Rostow and of Bancroft's two lovers, Allen Dulles and Henry Luce. Furthermore, "Fredricksen had been hired by [Magnolia]268 to come to Dallas after studying Russian with the U.S. Army in Heidelberg."269 And Ruth Hyde Paine probably knew Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles' former lover and Henry Luce's current lover, and may have visited with her in July 1963 when she was at Ruth Forbes Paine's home on Naushon Island, Massachusetts.

In 1975 Dick Russell got an anonymous letter telling him that the mastermind of the JFK assassination was one Tscheppe Weidenbach, a famous American general who was born in Heidelberg Germany in 1892. Years later Russell discovered in a history of General MacArthur's era, "that Adolf Tscheppe-Weidenbach of Heidelberg, Germany, had changed his name, upon arrival in the United States shortly before World War I, to Charles Willoughby." Willoughby was MacArthur's radical right-wing chief of intelligence.270

Schmidt, Pierce and Fredricksen were taking scientific Russian classes at Magnolia from Ilya Mamantov who, after the assassination, would become Marina's interpreter by arrangement of Jack Alston Crichton. According to Peter Dale Scott, "Crichton of Army Reserve Intelligence Service, was the apparent outsider who arranged for Marina Oswald to have the "excessive rightist" Ilya Mamantov as her interpreter."271

Scott adds, "There is an Army Intelligence Reserve Office under the Army's Director of Combat Intelligence (along with the Special Warfare Branch)."272 As discussed earlier in this paper, Vice President Johnson's military aid, Colonel Howard Burris, was the end point of a treasonous secret back-channel of information to Johnson concerning combat intelligence; Edward G. Lansdale was visiting special forces bases in the spring and summer of 1963; Lansdale, "Intellfirst" and Burris were friends with Rostow's long-time friend, General Charles P. Cabell (Lansdale and Cabell were very close); and Rostow was Lansdale's sponsor and "big patron" in the White House.

A fellow director of Crichton's firm, Dorchester Gas Producing, was D.H. Byrd, close friend of Barbara J. Burris' father, and owner of the Texas School Book Depository building in which Ruth Paine helped arrange a job for Oswald.273 Paine herself was tutoring a "boy astronomer" at Dallas' St. Marks School in scientific Russian.274 As Peter Dale Scott points out, "The task of keeping abreast of Soviet science and technology is of course an intelligence responsibility, albeit a perfectly legitimate one without "black" overtones, for which an overall coordinating responsibility is assumed by the CIA."275

If that is not strange enough, Eugene Hale Brading, who was arrested and released in Dealey Plaza because his new alias, "Jim Braden" was not yet known to local authorities, had a connection to Magnolia Oil. Brading had travelled to Dallas the day before the assassination and stayed at the infamous Cabana Motel with his friend Victor Periera and other traveling companions. The Cabana is where Jack Ruby met with friends from Chicago in the Bon Vivant Club on the evening of November 21.276

Brading and Periera had a long history of marrying rich widows and embezzling from them. In a much publicized vagrancy arrest by Sheriff Bill Decker in Dallas in 1952, Brading's fifty-dollar fine was paid by Periera. "The vagrancy rap stemmed from Brading's lingering presence, without any apparent effort to earn his take, at the Dallas area mansion of D.A. Little, president of Magnolia Oil Co. Little had died and Mrs. Little had become Periera's sixth wife after a whirlwind courtship."277

In Texas, a "community property" state, married couples equally own each other's assets. Therefore, Periera could have owned an interest in Magnolia Oil at the time of Schmidt's party.

Brading told the sheriff's department, after his arrest in Dealey Plaza, that he was in Dallas on "oil business." Only four years out of prison, Brading had checked with the U.S. Probation Office in Dallas when he arrived, as was required for his out of state travels. Had the deputy sheriffs checked his name with that office they would have gotten negative results because Brading had given chief probation officer Roger Carroll only his real name. In the early 1970s Brading was investigated by federal authorities for an alleged role as courier for laundering the mob's illegitimate money in Amsterdam and Zurich.278

Brading and Periera may have visited the offices of Lamar Hunt the day before the assassination on "oil business." The Dallas probation office's report of his visit to Dallas states Brading "advised that he planned to see Lamar Hunt and other oil speculators while here." Years later Brading reportedly told an official of the Los Angeles Police Department that he did not go to the Hunt offices on November 21 because of his criminal record. He said one of his traveling companions, Morgan H. Brown of Los Angeles, did go however. Brown, who had signed the Cabana register for the travellers' third floor suite, has since served time in a California prison. According to Earl Golz, "An old friend of the Hunt brothers who first met Brading almost 20 years ago said Brown, Brading's traveling partner, `knew the Hunts very well -- knew Lamar and Bunker and all of them.' Brown and his wife and other couples played `mixed poker' in Dallas with the Hunts about 25 years ago,' he said." Jack Ruby also admitted being at the Hunt office building that day but claimed he was just dropping someone off there.279

H.L. Hunt's security chief, Paul Rothermel, told researcher Peter Noyes that he is sure Brading visited the Hunt offices (of Lamar and Nelson Bunker) on Nov. 21, 1963.280 If so, this is very likely a right-wing/Orlando Bosch/Paine/CIA link given Brading's fellow Hunt visitor and Magnolia Oil friend Periera, and the Magnolia sponsored party where the Oswalds met Ruth Paine.

Bosch comes into the linkage because Hinkle and Turner raised the question of where Orlando Bosch got the massive funding he needed to continue his raids on Cuba after splitting from the CIA. Bosch rebelled against U.S. government backing in 1963 after an FBI informant foiled his Violynn III raid (involving Frank Sturgis, Alex Rorke, and the Minutemen) and brought twin FBI raids against his Florida airfield and Lake Pontchartrain training camp. The answer to the funding question came when "During a 1968 trial of Bosch's group in Miami, a telephone tape transcript was introduced in which Bosch indicated that a Mr. Hunt -- `the one with the wells' -- was providing backing."281 These raids were in July 1963, the same month Ruth Hyde Paine was visiting her mother-in-law, Ruth Fo rbes Paine (Mary Bancroft's long-time friend).

During 1963 in New Orleans, Brading frequented an office in the Pere Marquette building down the hall from an office frequented by David Ferrie. In a building across the street were the New Orleans offices of (H.L.) Hunt Foods and Zapata Off-Shore; as well as both of Oswald's employment agencies, and many other intriguing companies and individuals.282

Zapata Off-Shore was the oil company owned by former President George Bush after he split it off from Zapata Oil partner Hugh Liedtke in 1954.283 Beginning in 1957...

[Dawn Meredith]

I give up. The article is also posted elsewhere on this forum- just noticed when I ws googling it. I wanted to post it in full here as sometimes people-like me- read it when posted as opposed to having to google. I also tried to post the link from google but it won't copy and paste. (Maybe it's just my demonic equipment
Dawn

[Dawn Meredith]

The problem I was having was that the first paragraph of part two would not come through. I copied the full piece and pasted 4 times before giving up. Like I said me and technical stuff: demonic is the only explanation I have.
Dawn

[Adele Edisen]

Dawn and everyone,

I apologize to one and all for being absent for so long a time. I have been suffering from a slipped disc which caused a great deal of pain down my entire left leg (sciatica). Trips to an ambulatory surgical clinic on an outpatient basis for epidural steroid injections for treatment of this condition have taken up much of my time and energy. I am finally able to walk with relatively little pain, but am not well enough to get back to work just yet. I am hoping to start catching up there as well as here on the Forum.

I certainly appreciated your entry on the Rambler station wagon which was observed as a getaway vehicle. There is so much information in your posts, which deserve a thread of their own. However, the Rambler station wagon does not quite meet the description I have of the vehicle on the Grassy Knoll.

That vehicle was a large station wagon. The Rambler was a relatively smaller vehicle. The vehicle on the Grassy Knoll in the Nix film (from an enlarged still photograph taken from the Nix film) had letters painted on it, "Honest Joe's Pawn Shop". Honest Joe was Rubin Goldstein, a very good friend of Jack Ruby's. His vehicle was an Edsel, a big car, much more like my own 1969 Wide-Track Pontiac station wagon (with 290 horses that could pass anything on the road except the gas station!).

It was this Edsel station wagon which Forrest Sorrels (Agent-in-Charge of the Dallas US Secret Service) must have noticed as he rode past the Grassy Knoll in the lead car ahead of the Presidential limousine on November 22, because after the assassination, on Sunday, November 24, he noticed it parked on Commerce Street. He also visited Honest Joe's Pawn Shop and spoke with Rubin Goldstein. I also understand that he purchased a Mannlicher-Carcano there. It seems that he was doing some investigating on his own, even though the Secret Service had been ordered to defer to the FBI to do such work.

More later. HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY! Let's hope that 2009 is better than 2008.

Adele

[David Guyatt]

It was this Edsel station wagon which Forrest Sorrels (Agent-in-Charge of the Dallas US Secret Service) must have noticed as he rode past the Grassy Knoll in the lead car ahead of the Presidential limousine on November 22, because after the assassination, on Sunday, November 24, he noticed it parked on Commerce Street. He also visited Honest Joe's Pawn Shop and spoke with Rubin Goldstein. I also understand that he purchased a Mannlicher-Carcano there. It seems that he was doing some investigating on his own, even though the Secret Service had been ordered to defer to the FBI to do such work.

How fascinating...

Hope your disc has now recovered Adele. I had one once and it hurt like hell and I spent weeks walking doubled over -- that's when I could walk.

[Adele Edisen]

Hope your disc has now recovered Adele. I had one once and it hurt like hell and I spent weeks walking doubled over -- that's when I could walk.

Hi, David,

I surely could have sympathized with you. I kept thinking I was walking (when that was possible) like Groucho Marx, as if seated; it was more comfortable that way.

Take care,
Keep the New Year Happy,
Adele