"Building the Oswald Legend" - manufactured by the Reich Wing in America

[John Bevilaqua]

"Building the Oswald Legend" as manufactured by the Reich Wing in America

The realization that the "Oswald Legend" was built by card-carrying members of the far right wing in America may come as a surprise to many of you. And certainly it will rock your world if you still believe that the Oswald legend was built by someone else not involved with the Far Reich Wing.

The main Oswald Legend building conspirators all had the following things in common:

1) They all knew each other, directly or indirectly
2) They were somehow involved with Wickliffe Draper of The Pioneer Fund
3) They were involved with Senator James O. Eastland from SISS, the MissSovComm and the Draper Genetics Committee
4) Many of them had close ties to Robert J. Morris either using him as their attorney, because he was their friend from the John Birch Society, McCarthyism or via The American Security Council
5) Most of them interacted with Patrick Frawley, Jr., OSJ from SMOM and INCA in New Orleans which was started by Alton Ochsner, Sr. and then run by his son, Alton Ochsner, Jr.
6) They all had some role with either The World Anti-Communist League or The Council for National Policy or with both organizations
7) Most of them can be shown to be intimately familiar with Guy Banister or with one of the organizations he worked closely with in New Orleans

Here they are for all to see:

1) Senator James O. Eastland of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and the Draper Genetics Committee and The MissSovComm

- Klein's Sporting Goods purchase of the Manlicher-Carcano by Oswald
- The Clinton, LA voter registration drive project done by Oswald

2) Guy Banister from Guy Banister Associates, WACL and the Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee. Knew James Eastland and Elmore Greaves very well.

- The Clinton, LA voter registration drive done by Oswald
- The Oswald leafleting campaign from 544 Camp Street

3) Otto F. Otepka head of State Department Security (Passport Office) who knew Robert J. Morris, and used him as his attorney when he was fired from the State Dept, Charles Willoughby and Edwin Walker, who also used Morris
as his attorney after the Ole Miss riots done for Eastland, the MissSovComm and Wickliffe Draper

- The Oswald "defector" file was sitting on Otepka's desk by his own admission
- Otepka was Oswald's personal travel agent and Passport approver
- Otepka appeared before James Eastland and Thomas Dodd at the Otepka hearings and leaked confidential documents about Rostow to Eastland and spread slanderous statements about alleged relationships between Oswald and the CIA

4) Edward S. Butler from INCA which was organized by Alton Ochsner, Sr. whose son later headed up The Council for National Policy right after Nelson Bunker Hunt from OSJL and IAAEE, Roger Pearson from The Pioneer Fund and Elmore Graves from The MissSovComm and WACL who hired Byron DeLa Beckwith to work for him and raided money for The Freedom Riders killers as well as for Beckwith and Ray S. Cline who headed up WACL after his tenure at the CIA.

- The staged radio debate at the New Orleans station
- The fight between Bringuier and Oswald near 544 Camp St during the leafleting campaign of Guy Banister

5) Gen. Edwin Walker (retired) - Ole Miss and The John Birch Society who knew both Senator James Eastland and Elmore Greaves as well as Greaves friend Byron DeLa Beckwith. He had to have known Draper.

- The Oswald "pot shot" incident only reported on 11/29/1963

Let's see... McCarthyites, MacArthurites, John Birchers, Mississippi Racists, SKOM, SMOM, World Anti-Communist League, INCA, Council for National Policy, Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. Hmmm... these have been MY SUSPECTS for almost 20 years and they were ALL involved in building the Oswald Legend contrary to popular public opinion. Does this make it a Conspiracy? Darn right it does. Was there another conspiracy to scapegoat other groups and persons or alphabet agencies in the Oswald Legend building process? Darn right there was and there still is. And all previous futile attempts to assign the blame for building the Oswald Legend to some other group or groups, person or persons are now declared to be NULL AND VOID.

Were you taken in by this little ruse? Probably. Are you willing to admit that you were at least partially duped? Probably not. But please try. Public confessions and admissions are hereby solicited and encouraged. You will feel a lot better.

Does being involved with building the "Oswald Legend" make you a likely JFK murder conspirator? Why of course it does. For decades everyone said that those behind the Oswald Legend were the most likely conspirators. Now that the pattern has been analyzed and found, can you accept this as valid evidence that The Far Reich Wing in America was behind the entire plot?

[John Bevilaqua]

A SHORT HISTORY OF INCA
(INFORMATION COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAS)

by Frank DeBenedictis

One aspect of anti-communism which has not received the attention given to the US conflict with the Soviet Union is the more recent war with Fidel Castro and his Communist regime in Cuba. Cuba's conversion to Marxism in 1959 caused much consternation in the United States, and especially in cities doing trade with that Latin American country. New Orleans in particular feared the new regime, and out of this fear a new anti-communist organization based in this city was born in 1961 called the Information Council of the Americas (INCA).
By the 1950s, 75% of US imports from Latin America came through the port of New Orleans. Civic and business leaders of the Crescent City throughout the decades forged closer business, political and social ties with their Latin American counterparts. Fidel Castro's rise to power sent shock waves through New Orleans and threatened a lucrative mutual relationship. In Tampa, Florida (another large port city) where cigar manufacturing played an important part of that cities industry, the Cuban Revolution also caused alarms to go off when Senator George Smathers of Florida proposed an embargo against Cuban tobacco. But Tampa reacted differently from New Orleans.
Instead of fear and reaction leading to the anti-communist INCA, Tampa saw a rise in pro-Castro activity. The Fair Play for Cuba Committee started a chapter and in an early 1961 rally proclaimed Smathers action, "would lead to unemployment in Tampa." Castro's revolution began to take effect in the United States. Three months after the Tampa FPCC rally, the Information Council of the Americas would begin its own campaign against the changing economic sensibilities of a Communist Cuba.
INCA was founded on May 15, 1961 by public relations professional Edward Scannell Butler. From the beginning its agenda was narrowly focused on Communism as an issue. INCA in fact sought support from liberal as well as conservative anti-communists, asking liberal anti-communist Smathers to speak at an organization function. Ed Butler had prior to the Castro takeover, laid plans for an anti-communist organization. But when Castro took over in Cuba, and New Orleans expressed growing anxiety over the new Latin American dictator, the 27 year old public relations man was handed a searing issue and an alarmed constituency.
Ed Butler had an interest in both pubic relations and psychology, so in a real sense his organization was not ideologically based, even though this public relations man exhibited a penchant for conservative politics. He especially expressed admiration for red-baiting Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy whom he described as a great American. So Ed Butler the founder of INCA did have ideological convictions beyond the function of INCA, but he put his promotional talents rather than politics into the organization. INCA soon evolved into an effective propaganda machine under its youthful leader.
Loyola University archivist Arthur Carpenter expressed anti-communism in a realpolitik sense when he poses the question, "Was anti-communism a manifestation of popular, democratic sentiment or of elite interests?" He answers that question in the latter vein, including the formation of INCA. Carpenter also describes anti-communism and the origins of INCA in a post-World War II context.
Popular anti-communism as opposed to an elitist based movement died with the more excessive reactions of Senator Joe McCarthy in the early 1950s. Then the writings of historian Richard Hofstader and sociologist Daniel Bell dismissed the idea of a popular anti-communist movement. They were saying that legitimate anti-communism could be properly understood only by the elite; the public should be encouraged to divert in other directions. So by the late 1950s the better known organizations which had anti-communism as a primary function tended to be organs of business, civic and academic leaders. The John Birch Society in 1958 was founded by Robert Welch and twelve well off business friends in Indianapolis. In 1961 the Young Americans for Freedom met at the Connecticut mansion lawn of National Review editor William F. Buckley to form that group. INCA came on the heels of both of these conservative organizations and had similar patrician origins.
Along with founder Ed Butler, the most important member of INCA was famed physician Dr. Alton Ochsner. Ochsner, 38 years Butler's senior formed a partnership with his younger colleague which would last twenty years. Ed Butler, who didn't have a great knowledge of Latin American affairs, benefited substantially from the association with the celebrated doctor. Alton Ochsner had an internationalist outlook---especially when it pertained to the field of medicine. Ochsner felt medicine transcended national boundaries, and had trained many physician exchange students from Latin America since the 1920s. His prominence as an international physician led him to be elected to leadership of both the International Trade Mart and International House in the 1960s. Both business groups promoted Latin American trade for New Orleans, and had been founded immediately after World War II. Ochsner also was elected to the presidency of the Cordell Hull Foundation which administered a program of Inter-American university study.
Ochsner fit the mode of the wealthy educated elite. He was elderly and encouraged other New Orleans prominent and wealthy citizens to join INCA. Ochsner's persuasiveness helped Ed Butler recruit United Fruit's Joseph W. Montgomery, Delta Steamship Line's John W. Clark, International Trade Mart's William Zetzmann and William B. Reily of Reily Coffee Company. The local Catholic hierarchy also joined with Archbishop Phillip M. Hannan and Dean of Loyola University Law School AE Papale becoming members. INCA also received endorsements from Mayor deLesseps Morrison and Congressman Hale Boggs.
INCA's approach to anti-communism (in addition to being anti-Castro) tended to follow a practical approach of containment. This approach was not conciliatory, but echoed the realities of American foreign policy in the early 1960s with the newly elected Kennedy administration. Dr. Alton Ochsner had written a letter to President Kennedy, at a friend's request, urging a quarantine of Cuba from shipments of troops and military equipment. Yet Ochsner doubted the plea would matter since, "many of Kennedy's advisors were leftists." Presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. echoing the new administrations desire to chart a new course in foreign policy---both with regard to the Cold War and the developing nations---called for a new liberal anti-communism, one that would be more cooperative with the American progressive left, and sensitive to changes in the less rigid post-Stalinist Soviet Union. Schlesinger had expressed his opinion that, "a policy designed for the age of Stalin was not necessary in the age of Khruschev."
Cold War containment dominated foreign policy in Eisenhower's administration. Advisor Dean Acheson was its main proponent, and the incoming Kennedy saw it as static and a remnant of the old order. When Kennedy became president in January, 1961 he faced a dilemma since he inherited the CIA sponsored war against Castro. This war started with the Eisenhower administration and continued with Kennedy, culminating with the Bay of Pigs invasion in April, 1961. Eisenhower's vice president and Kennedy rival Richard Nixon was one of the first Republicans to make a career out of anti-communism and also had been one of the first in his party to support the Democratic Party's contrived Marshall Plan. Nixon was not a disciple of Dean Acheson either, favoring a more aggressive stand against Communism. The Vice President's former membership on the House Committee on Un-American activities belied the difference between two types of anti-communist thought. One was liberal anti-communism which dismissed the American Communist Party as a real political danger in the United States. The other anti-communist wing was politically conservative and domestically counter-subversive in its outlook. Conservatives saw Communists infiltrating public life and imposing "collectivist" values on the population at large. Both Nixon and the Information Council of the Americas with its leadership of Butler, Ochsner and the New Orleans business elite fit the latter. Both Nixon and INCA were also internationalist in outlook. Yet with the new Kennedy administration, INCA opted for a containment policy, since it was unable to be more aggressive toward Cuba. It directed its propaganda energies toward Latin American nationals who had not fallen to Communism, but (who) like the New Orleans business elite felt threatened by Castro.
INCA started expanding its bi-directional support lines into Latin America. Ed Butler in an interview explained to me that INCA was, "an international organization." Nurtured by its benefactor Dr. Ochsner, it expanded its list of supporters to include former Latin American heads of state. Among them were former Guatemalan president Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes, Nicaraguan president Anastasio Somoza, and Juan Peron, former president of Argentina. Ochsner's medical prowess made him revered in Latin American circles, some of the Latins saw him almost like a god. In his early career, Ochsner studied in Europe, practiced in New Orleans, set up the Ochsner medical clinic in 1941, and "cultivated relations with Latins in New Orleans." While he did profess at times extremist personal views toward integration and communism, historically these were somewhat offset by his dedication to internationalism, trade and medicine.
Fear of Communism was no less a concern for Ed Butler, Dr. Ochsner, or the other prominent INCA members than it was for the many right-wing segregationist groups springing up in the South in the early 1960s. INCA, however, studiously avoided forming alliances with the segregationists. INCA had never defended segregation. Its own rapport with Latin Americans further strengthened this image, and the organization made alliances with local anti-Castro Cuban refugees. Then in August, 1963 an event proving important to both the Cubans and INCA occurred. INCA was to have an encounter in New Orleans with the future accused assassin of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald.
On August 5, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald visited Casa Roca, a clothing store managed by Carlos Bringuier. Bringuier, a Cuban refugee, was one of the important Cuban exile leaders in New Orleans at the time. The ex-Marine offered help to the beleaguered Cuban exiles in the form of military training for the purpose of fighting Castro. Four days later Bringuier became inflamed when he saw Oswald on Canal Street passing out pro-Castro literature, urging "hands off Cuba" and promoting the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). The two got into a fight and were arrested. Again on August 16, Oswald passed out literature, this time in front of the International Trade Mart. On August 21, Oswald joined in a radio debate with Bringuier of the Cuban Student Directorate, an anti-Castro group and Ed Butler of INCA. The participants were ready for Oswald, having done some research on him, and shifted the discussion to his defection to the Soviet Union, his sympathy for Cuba and his professed Marxism. Ed Butler described Oswald as an articulate speaker, and well versed in his topic. But having looked into the defector's background and discrediting him, the INCA director also expressed the view that they had driven him and the FPCC out of town.
President Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, three months after the New Orleans radio and TV sessions. Oswald was charged with the murder. Ed Butler recorded the debate sessions and produced a new propaganda tool with two LP records entitled Oswald: Self-Portrait in Red and Oswald Speaks. Butler after the assassination argued Communist propaganda had incited Oswald to violence. The Oswald episode also provided new raw material for yet another propaganda film, the lurid Hitler in Havana---which equated the Cuban Communist and Nazi German leaders. The film showed graphic accounts of murder replete with firing squads and corpses in both totalitarian states. Also the there was a split screened sequence showing the rantings of both Castro and Hitler side by side. This film went on to blame Castro for Kennedy's death. Possibly foreseeing a future spread of INCA out of New Orleans, Ed Butler and his organization claimed that if there had been an INCA chapter in Dallas, Oswald may have been neutralized and the president's life may have been saved.
Louisiana politics has had a tendency,during certain periods, of not only being colorful, but spreading beyond the boundaries of the state and into the nation. The first example of this phenomenon was former governor and US senator Huey P. Long who challenged Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the presidency in 1932 and found himself to be at odds with the Roosevelt administration many times in the early 1930s. Long founded the Share Our Wealth Clubs, which originated in Louisiana and spread to other states. INCA in the mid-Sixties started seeing something similar for its organization. Unlike Long's left wing group, INCA made no pretensions to populism. But it did share with Long a desire to move its politics out of the South and into the nation. So INCA soon found itself in a new partnership with California contributors such as National Airline chairman Dudley Swim and more importantly with Schick Razor executive Patrick Frawley, Jr. In the fall of 1966, Frawley underwrote the cost for television showings of Hitler in Havana in several large cities. The reaction proved rewarding for Butler in New Orleans as several hundred Cuban exiles rallied at New Orleans city hall and saluted INCA's film. By this time Butler had relocated his home base from New Orleans to practice his public relations craft in Los Angeles, the communications center of America. Since he felt Oswald was the vanguard of the later student revolt, he held meetings to determine what to do---what program would best expose the radicals.
Ed Butler also worried about the Kennedy assassination since many books started coming out during this period. He noticed a predilection among the new writers to questioned the Warren Report and its conclusion that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy. Although the investigation of District Attorney Jim Garrison occurred in New Orleans and in fact implicated Clay Shaw, who at the time was a former director of the International Trade Mart, INCA itself never was implicated. He and Carlos Bringuier both were very critical of Garrison and his theory of CIA and Cuban exile involvement in the assassination, but INCA's propaganda instead focused on writer Mark Lane.
Ed Butler criticized Mark Lane, claiming he had been informed that Lane had been associated with several communist front groups between 1952 and 1967. He had gotten the information by asking Louisiana Congressman F. Edward Hebert to get information on Lane from HUAC committee member Congressman Willis. INCA's memos showed much concern for Lane, who was one of the leading critics of the Warren Commission. Two INCA leaders in a public statement criticized Lane's Rush to Judgment and branded him an unscrupulous communist. The Garrison investigation and the descendency upon New Orleans by Lane and others proved to be a distraction for INCA. But the organization continued in New Orleans, California and Washington DC with propaganda activities unrelated to the JFK assassination trial.
In a 1968 memo explaining INCA's "programs and plans," a warning enveloped in hysteria was issued. Calling for mobilization of anti-communists from the left, right and center, INCA touched on several issues in this very turbulent year. Described in the memo was a resistance to the war in Vietnam in the US, which was according to INCA designed to split children from their parents. It spoke of events creating urban anarchy, and creating divisions between blacks and whites. Assassination was also spoken of in this April 8, 1968 memo which it describes as being used to divide government from the people. The memo went on to talk about the upcoming Democratic and Republican national conventions, which warned of "Communist convergence and predicted riots. INCA also lambasted black militancy claiming "Castroite Black Power extremists" wanted to assassinate black moderates such as Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young.
While in the early 1960s the issue of race was generally avoided by INCA, the latter part of the decade proved different. This memo and Butler's book Revolution is My Profession outlines this change of emphasis brought on by urban riots and campus unrest. In the memo the example of race as an issue outside the US is brought out. The INCA memo states, "From experience in Malaya and elsewhere, Communists know a one-race revolution won't work. If the Communists capture campuses, and attack the white sections from these sanctuaries the outlook will be very dark for America. Reiterating an old INCA theme in this memo, the New Orleans based group called for a mobilization of anti-communists of the left, right and center.
In order to counteract the increasing radical and anti-war activities on college campuses, INCA set up some of their own programs. In a Readers Digest article from January, 1965 the author speaks of "red agents" and "front groups" and calls upon citizens to organize specific attack forces to "wreck the wreckage." The article brought up as one of its examples INCA and the Oswald/FPCC episode in New Orleans. And it went at the end to tell its readers how to contact INCA and get involved. INCA turned its attention to college campuses. In St. Louis, Missouri it set up a booth at the conservative Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) national conference. In Chicago at another conference, INCA members picketed the Student for a Democratic Society's national headquarters. INCA member Dick Warren of New Orleans was congratulated by hawkish South Carolina Congressman Mendel Rivers for his organization's work.
INCA in the late 1960s took on the image as an all-American organization which believed in wholesome positive values. This attitude nurtured in part by negative New Left rhetoric became incorporated into Ed Butler's organization with vigor. Another project was Up With People (UWP). UWP developed as a singing group in 1966 and expressed its desire to work with others, promote non-violent programs, and avoid rebellion toward the older generation. INCA also got involved in drug education with a program entitled "Drugs and Teenagers." The purpose of the proposed TV documentary was to focus on why teenagers used drugs. It proved to be another effort by INCA which indicated a yearning for the turbulence of the 1960s to end, not unlike the so-called "decency rallies" which took place in some localities during this time. INCA's lip service to creating anti-communist coalitions were not that successful. Butler's organization did spread but increasingly sought out and formed alliances with politically conservative groups. One of the most important of these was the Young Americans for Freedom. The YAF increasingly started mimicking the New Left in its tactics. YAF engaged in liberating campus buildings taken over by the New Left activists. One YAF activist exclaimed quite succinctly, "We don't need all the flag-wavers (referring to "Old Right" heroes such as California Superintendent of schools Max Rafferty and radio talk show host Joe Pyne). We need people who are hip to the media, like [Yippie leader] Jerry Rubin. Increasingly Ed Butler found his organization's themes dated when compared to the YAF, but he understood the media, imagery of the person, and its effect on an audience. So the New Orleans public relations man grew his hair longer, wore mod clothing and hosted a television show called the SQUARE world of Ed Butler.
Ed Butler's Westwood village SQUARE started in California as an auxiliary to the INCA organization. It too was funded by California business executive Patrick J. Frawley. Among the persons he debated were 1960s radical figures such as Chicago Seven trial defendants Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, and William Kunstler. Butler also used a tactic which he learned from his public relations work which consisted in "aping" or copying the opposition. He countered the hippie "love-ins" with "SQUARE-ins, and accused the New Left of sponsoring love-ins to break down moral values." Butler also organized the INCA Information Service to counteract the counterculture and New Left oriented Liberation News Service. The object was to give timely reports of happenings at universities around the country. INCA's media proved as slanted as the New Left media was. At one particular gathering reported by SQUARE magazine, Butler sat on a panel with SDS founder Tom Hayden, and other 1960s radical figures such as Stu Alpert and Steve Shapiro. The radicals chastised Butler and when he rose to speak his mike cord was pulled. The radicals got up to leave and Butler's magazine reported it with the caption, "the revolutionaries beat an ignominous retreat."
In addition to the radical left criticizing INCA's counterrevolutionary incursions, the establishment press chided in also. Hitler in Havana was roundly criticized in a New York Times review unflatteringly, "as the crudest form of propaganda." Dr. Ochsner complained to his friend Turner Catledge the executive editor of the Times, but reported to Butler, "that we have a real problem when we have to fight the leftist press." But INCA had friends on the right such as Patrick Frawley, Congressman Edward Hebert (a Congressional Medal of Honor Winner), and eventually included in its list of advisors General William Westmoreland, Cuban military figure Admiral George Anderson, and some intelligence experts such as Herbert Philbrick (former FBI agent and subject in the television series I Led Three Lives), and Malaysian psychological warfare expert C.C. Too. The inclusion of the Asian intelligence expert is revealing since INCA in addition to fighting Communism in the Western Hemisphere became increasingly involved in countering campus unrest and urging support of the US war effort in Vietnam. Butler continuously described the leftists as "tyrannists."
A figure from the early INCA days started complaining about this turn of events. Carlos Bringuier, who had earlier debated Lee Harvey Oswald with Ed Butler, voiced his support of the U.S. war effort, but lamented with concern how Castro had increased subversive activities when the U.S. started escalating in the Vietnam war. This article by Bringuier appeared in INCA's information service newsletter. Bringuier wrote about President Nixon's plan to "Vietnamize" the war, and urged a new program on called "Flan Torrienta" which would create an organization of Latin American nations for the purpose of countering Castro's subversion. This article appeared in March, 1970 and is an early indication of at least one INCA associate expressing a desire to get the organization back to its original purpose---which was to combat Communism in Latin America.
INCA rhetoric is described by Arthur Carpenter as "rational but overwrought and its analysis simplistic." But when one takes into account Butler's profession of public relations, the simplicity, the reliance on visual symbols and the need for simple but persuasive rhetoric Butler's communications style becomes more understandable. Ed Butler was a salesman at heart, and since his constituency was an elite and consequently more prominent, wealthy and educated, the message conveyed need not be complex, philosophical, and academically inclined. It also didn't need alliances with other anti-communist groups on the far right which were concerned with segregation and paranoiac conspiracy theories of the variety talked about by the likes of Richard Hofstadter in his book the Paranoid Style of American Politics. One of Ed Butler's associates during the late 1960s was Lee Edwards, a former campaign worker for Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign.
Edwards writes in his book Goldwater: The Man Who Made a Revolution about Goldwater and the attacks made on him by both the far right and far left. The Nazi like National States Rights Party labeled him a kosher conservative due to his Jewish heritage. Goldwater had opposed civil rights programs, but he saw it as a constitutional issue rather than as a way to enforce segregation, Edwards writes. In 1964 Goldwater carried much of the South. It proved to be a seminal event for this solidly Democratic area of the nation. Since Butler's organization's emphasis was on free trade and anti-communism and not on race, INCA's political leanings and refusal to defend segregation proved to be somewhat ahead of its time with regard to the region it originated in. But Lee Edwards and Ed Butler had other things in common besides ideology. Both had promotional skills. Edwards developed his in the service of Barry Goldwater, and Butler in the service of INCA. By the late 1960s both were now promoting the Information Council of the Americas as Lee Edwards became an advisor to the group. Butler himself in many debates chastised both the extreme left and extreme right. He had debated Frank Colin head of the American Nazi Party at one point for the same reasons he took on the New Left.
In fighting against extremism of both the left and right, and in his book Revolution is My Profession, Ed Butler expressed his plan of action. Butler's anti-communism was practically rather than ideologically based. On page 171 he describes "Model Making...as the deliberate construction and elevation of a model attitude, act, fad, concept, or personality for political purposes. He goes on to write, "By capturing or creating peer leaders in entertainment, sports, political and cultural figures with whom people can identify (especially youth) one can control the opinion climate in America as clearly as steering a car." Butler went on to use his nemesis, Kennedy assassination author Mark Lane and others as an example of this in defining books used to exonerate Oswald. Revolution is My Profession goes on to say, "In this age of instant idea via mass telecommunications, simply saying it is (or isn't) so, can make it so (or not so).
In talking about his new profession of Conflict Management (which is basically a offshoot of public relations), INCA, and the coming war against communism and the media Butler describes the use of "Truth Tapes" which his organization made and used Cuban refugees such as Juanita Castro (sister of Fidel Castro) to serve as the voice on the tape recordings. These tapes were sent to over 15 Latin American countries and over 100 broadcast stations. Juanita Castro and Paul Bethel of the Free Cuba Committee in Miami, Florida both were advisors to INCA. Butler and Dr. Ochsner saw the importance of propaganda early in the organizations inception and gave INCA credit in keeping leftist Salvador Allende out of power in Chile's 1964 presidential elections.
Butler's obsession with the media is apparent in his book, when he writes, "The media are the delivery system for mental missiles. The messages are the warheads, The vehicles are the rockets." His experiences in Latin American propaganda show when he writes in the book, "Conflict Managers must learn to relate, to articulate for large numbers of people. As a spokesman for the SQUARE movement, I have learned no one can create fads or trends, but can identify and anticipate latent convictions and viewpoints, help verbalize them and give them form, content and substance." Butler applied this knowledge and used it when in Los Angeles with graphic symbols and other stimuli in his magazine as a way to counteract the New Left and hippie visual imagery at the time. He referred to the New Left as the anti-establishment and the hippies as the non-establishment. He saw both as being in need of Conflict Management. His INCA information service depicted hippie types in derogatory situations.
In a 1973 New Orleans newspaper article, Ed Butler took credit for breaking the defunct SDS, and claimed a victory against tyranny. But this article proved to be one of the few jubilant moments for the Information Council of the Americas as the 1970s got under way. INCA's magnanimous California contributor Patrick Frawley incurred financial difficulties and his past generous support was lost. Also Dudley Swim, another generous California contributor died. In 1972 Butler closed the California operation, and moved back to New Orleans, but met with financial difficulties there also. Other things of Ed Butler's own doing lost ground for INCA in the early 1970s. Butler and Ochsner's weak explanation for the Watergate scandal placed the blame on the Communists. It proved to be a pathetic time for the organization in this narrow thinking analysis as anti-Castro exile compatriots and conservative fellow travelers Frank Sturgis, E. Howard Hunt, Eugenio Martinez, G. Gordon Liddy and Bernard Barker all were arrested, tried and convicted of the break-in of Democratic headquarters.
INCA continued until 1981, its final demise attributed to the death of an aged Dr. Alton Ochsner that year. His son Dr. Alton Ochsner, Jr. helped start another organization similar to INCA. The Caribbean Commission was formed in 1982 by the younger Ochsner and several influential New Orleanians. While INCA had directed its energies on the Cuban Revolution, the CC concentrated on Nicaragua.
INCA proved to make a definitive statement with regard to anti-communism in its time. Ed Butler in September, 1980, late in the organization's history, interviewed president-to-be Ronald Reagan. Several years later in June, 1982 Reagan addressed the British Parliament. He surprised his supporters and infuriated his enemies by returning to the idea of the Cold War as a conflict between value systems. Reagan said, "The struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets, but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated..." Reagan went on in the speech, "At the same time, we see totalitarian forces in the world who seek subversion and conflict around the globe to further their barbarous assault on the human spirit. What, then, is our course? Must civilization perish in a hail of fiery atoms? Must freedom wither in a quiet, deadening accommodation with totalitarian evil?" Reagan presided over the disintegration of communism. INCA founder Ed Butler like his president was a communicator. The reference to Reagan infuriating his enemies by taking on an idea of calling the Cold War a conflict of value systems, and where communications and not bombs were the key to winning the struggle was one not foreign to Ed Butler. His own style preceeded the likes of other communications wizards such as Lee Atwater and Ralph Reed. While his own propaganda organization was wrought with covert activities, some of which we do not know everything about yet, he and INCA still proved to be politically effective. An American History magazine article showed some of the possible intelligence links of Butler to the CIA directly and through the International Trade Mart and Cuban Student Directorate members such as his Cuban exile colleague Carlos Bringuier. Butler's own ties to INCA, the trade mart and possibly to the CIA was peripheral to the Garrison investigation of Kennedy's death, and the congressional intelligence inquiries that followed. These CIA links may or may not be true, but if so would put another interesting footnote in the history of the Information Council of the Americas.


Bibliography for the INCA topic:

Michael Zatarain. David Duke: Evolution of a Klansman. Pelican Publishing Co. Gretna, La. 1990.

"David Duke: Evolution of a Klansman," Reviewed by Lance Hill. Journal of Southern History. No. 58. (Feb. 1992) pp. 176-177.

"The Emergence of David Duke and the Politics of Race," Reviewed by David J. Garrow. Georgia Historical Quarterly. No. 76. (Winter, 1992) pp. 1018-1019.

"Huey Long: Progressive Backlash?" Matthew J. Schott. Louisiana History. 1986 No. 27 (2): pp. 133-145.

"The Pine Island Situation: Petroleum, Politics, And Research Opportunities In Southern History. Brady M. Banta. Journal of Southern History. 1986 No. 52 (4) : pp. 589-610.

"Four Anti-Longites: A Tentative Assessment. Mark T. Carleton. Louisiana History. 1989 No. 30 (3) : pp. 249-262.

"Huey Long and the Communists." Edward F. Haas. Louisiana History. 1991. No. 32 (1) : pp. 29-46.

"Huey Long and Racism." Glen Jeansonne. Louisiana History. 1992. No. 33 (3) : pp. 265-282.

"Social Origins of Anti-Communism: The Information Council of the Americas." Arthur E. Carpenter. Louisiana History. 1989. No. 30 (2) : pp. 117-143.

Dan T. Carter. The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, The Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics. Louisiana State University Press. Baton Rouge and London. 1995.

Lee Edwards. Goldwater :The Man Who Made A Revolution. Regency Press. New York. 1995.

Rosemary James and Jack Wardlaw. Plot or Politics : The Garrison Case and its Cast. Pelican Publishing House. New Orleans, La. 1967.

Ed Butler. Revolution Is My Profession. Twin Circle, 1968.

Florida Legislative Investigative Committee (aka---The Johns Committee). Records From 1954-1965.

T. Harry Williams. Huey Long. Vintage Books, A Division of Random House. New York, 1981.

Richard Gid Powers. Not Without Honor: The History of American Anti-Communism. The Free Press. New York and others. 1995.

Alan Brinkley. Huey Long, Father Coughlin and the Great Depression. Vintage Books. New York, 1983.

Carol Flake. New Orleans: Behind the Mask of America's Most Exotic City. Grove Press, New York, 1994.

Carlos Bringuier. Red Friday. Chas. Hallberg and Company. Chicago, Ill. 1969.

"Declassified." by Roger S. Peterson. American History. Vol. XXXI No. 3. August, 1996.

Philip H. Melanson, PhD. Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and US Intelligence. Praeger Publishers. New York, 1990.

INCA. Political Ephemera. Tulane University Special Collections.

Papers of Dr. Alton Ochsner. Williams Center. New Orleans Historical Society.

James DiEugenio. Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case. Sherridan Square Press. New York, 1992.

The Warren Commission Report : Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of

President John F. Kennedy. Vol. I-XXVI.

Telephone Interview with Ed Butler. February 28, 1997.

"Counterrevolution," George Fox. Playboy. Vol. 17 No. 3.March, 1970.

"Castro's Foes, Backers Battle on Embargo." Tampa Times. March 1, 1961.

"Cigar Workers on the Spot." Tampa Times. March 3, 1961.

[Magda Hassan]

http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...=hopsicker

Sounds about right to me John. Here is a post of Daniel Hopsicker's fairly recent article touching on planes, airports, civil air patrol, the Texas School Book Depository, General Byrd and others.

[Magda Hassan]

John, I'd be interested on your thoughts on spare patsies and their legends. Like Vaughan Marlowe in LA and Gilberto Policarpo Lopez. There are probably more.

[John Bevilaqua]

I have not had enough time to research Marlowe and Lopez, sorry. Have not even finished TMWKTM yet. I just read books from the indexed references at the end into all the relevant pages.

[Jan Klimkowski]

3) Otto F. Otepka head of State Department Security (Passport Office) who knew Robert J. Morris, his attorney, Charles Willoughby and Edwin Walker

- The Oswald "defector" file
- Oswald's personal travel agent and Passport approver

John - what is the role of Otepka in Oswald's defection and subsequent return to America?

[John Bevilaqua]

This is just one person's current view, subject to further development as time permits. Otto was one of the ancient holdover McCarthyites in the Kennedy administration since he worked for the State Dept. Office of Security in the Passport Office. Otepka, a strong voice in The Liberty Lobby for years and JFK were essentially mortal enemies from day one and they basically hated each other. Like Robert Morris and others of their ilk they still felt that JFK had been hiring closet Commies just like Truman and Ike, but JFK more so than others.
Otepka tried to hang JFK out to dry by leaking classified documents regarding the Walt Rostow Senate approval hearings. I think he leaked them to J. Strom Thurmond and/or James Eastland. Needless to say JFK hit the roof and canned Otepka and people like Morris, Thrumond and James B. Utt jumped to his rescue by making a movie called "The Strange Ordeal of Otto Otepka" where they all played the roles of themselves. Tried to get a copy of that movie but I was referred to the "Sons of Liberty" by The Liberty Lobby receptionist. This is from memory now, but previous to this Otepka and his personal dragon lady: "Frances Knight" would have had to respond to every single inquiry about Oswald's trip to Albert Schweitzer College, Mexico City if indeed he went there and even beyond including giving someone permission at the Hoboken, NJ docks to let him back into the country.

This is only speculation right now, but given the fact of Otepka's status as a cause celebre and a McCarthyite and future martyr, Otepka had to know what Oswald was going to be used for in the very near future and allowed him free access in and out of the country at the drop of a hat. No other "true" defector would have been allowed back into the country without or with Otepka's say so under any circumstances.

Otepka was later hired back by the Nixon Administration with a raise and back pay, so you know he was one of "them". This leads me to believe that Otepka, from Catholic University, joined Morris from Fordham as yet another McCarthyite who knew a lot about Oswald's training as a programmed assassin and they knew already in June, 1962 that Oswald was ready for his appointed task, either as patsy, or hypnotized and programmed shooter, even though no one could have made the kill shot from the TSBD even if they had the ammo clip from AMF made by the Pattersons for the Navy Seals which converted an M-1 into essentially a semi-automatic rifle with a 5-6 shot clip capable of firing Manlicher-Carcano shells.

They also knew what Oswald was trying to do in Berlin which was probably to kill Yaroslaw Stetsko, a good friend of both Charles Willoughby and Spas T. Raiken and many others including Walker. Stetsko was a Ukrainian Fascist who led the Lvov pogrom slaughter in the Jewish Ghetto early in the War.

Bit of a stretch? Perhaps, but darn close to what happened. Remember Condon has Morris and Company trying to kill JFK in 1958 so the plot was sitting on go once again as Milteer once said. If Otepka leaked the derogatory information to James Eastland or Barry Goldwater or even J. Strom Thurmond, it would mean that this was the FIRST of many attempts to eliminate Kennedy by character assassination, the LAST being Operation Red Cross also a project of Eastland and Goldwater and probably Thurmond, too.

JFK would have been better off had these failed attempts at character assassination actually succeeded. As it was, these McCarthyites, MacArthurites, Malta Knights, Militia-ites and Mississippi-ites proceeded to step two: The Final Solution. And they were not fooling around either.

[John Bevilaqua]

Here is a class Black-is-White and White-is-Black negative template article by that fact twister and disinformationalist, Lisa Pease. In fact Otepka WAS a staunch McCarthyite and he did know a whole lot about Oswald, because his State Dept Security office HAD TO ACT on each and every move that defectors, including Oswlad, were making around the globe which required the use of their passports. There HAD TO BE A WATCH ORDER on Oswald, and either Frances Knight or Otto Otepka would be called to rule on every move that Oswald made which they could possibly void, cancel or refuse. And yet they NEVER DENIED OSWALD a single right of passage or even re-entry into the USA in their entire lifetimes. Now THAT is evidence of conspiracy and evidence of being involved in not only building the Oswald legend but they allowing him free passage as if he never had denounced his U.S. Citizenship or spent several years in the Soviet Union. Anyone who states anything to the contrary is quite simply a disinformation agent of those very right wingers and in gahoots with them quite likely.

The important thing here is that I was correct in that both James O. Eastland and Thomas Dodd from SISS were the ones holding the so-called Rostow secruity clearance hearings when Otepka illegally passed sensitive security info into Eastland and Dodd about Rostow. He was fired for that and the firing was upheld by the Civil Service review board who determined that what Otepka did was enough of a violation that they upheld his firing from his Civil Service job at the State Dept. Of course Pease defends and protect Otepka, who hired Robert J. Morris, Mr. McCarthyism, to defend him in his appeal to retain his old job at State. Nice try, Lisa. The facts support other conclusions however.

What Did Otto Otepka Know About Oswald and the CIA?

By Lisa Pease
Otto Otepka once told journalist Sarah McClendon that he knew who had killed JFK, but would say no more on the subject.1 What might he have been in a position to know?

As head of the State Department’s Office of Security (SY), Otto Otepka was responsible for issuing or denying security clearances for State Department personnel. He took his job very seriously. In 1958, Otepka was awarded for Meritorious Service by no less than John Foster Dulles. The award lauded Otepka’s “loyalty and devotion to duty” as well as his “sound judgment, creative work and unusual responsibilities”, adding that Otepka “reflected great credit upon himself and the Department and has served as an incentive to his colleagues.”2

Not a McCarthyite
Otepka has often been unfairly portrayed as a right-wing clone of Senator Joe McCarthy. But the record does not support this caricature. In fact, Otepka crossed swords with Joe McCarthy in 1953 over Wolf Ladejinksy, a State Department agricultural expert who had once been employed by a Soviet trade agency. Despite such an obvious affiliation, Otepka’s evaluation cleared Ladejinsky of McCarthy’s unfair charges. Otepka himself has stated,

I thought my whole record would prove I was not a McCarthyite. I had never approved of Senator McCarthy’s tactics. Everyone in the security field knew that.3

November 5, 1963, Otto Otepka was unceremoniously fired from State based on charges that were unfounded.

How did Otepka fall so far from grace? And could it have had anything to do with his investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald?

Otto Otepka’s troubles started in December of 1960. Otepka’s biographer William Gill clearly believes that Otepka’s problems stemmed originally from Otepka’s continued denial of a security clearance for the former OSS veteran Walt Rostow. Otepka had denied him clearance twice before, and in December of 1960, Dean Rusk, newly appointed Secretary of State, visited Otepka in person to ask what Rostow’s chances would be of getting cleared at that time. Otepka was unable to give Rusk any reason to believe Rostow would ever receive clearance, and Rusk subsequently placed Rostow in the White House as a member of Kennedy’s personal staff, specifically as McGeorge Bundy’s second in command on national security matters.

Walt Whitman Rostow was the brother of Eugene Rostow. In Professor Don Gibson’s article about the creation of the Warren Commission, (Probe, May-June 1996) Gibson revealed Eugene Rostow’s primary role in the formation of that body. Eugene’s call was made less than two and a half hours after Oswald was killed. Walt Rostow also shared something in common with the CIA’s legendary Counterintelligence Chief, James Angleton. He did not believe in the Sino-Soviet split.4 Rostow was no communist, but in fact a hawkish Cold Warrior.

Walt Rostow was one of Kennedy’s “counterinsurgency” experts. “He made counterinsurgency seem profound, reasonable, and eminently just,” said author Gerald Colby in his book Thy Will Be Done. Walt Rostow—like Dean Rusk, Roswell Gilpatrick, Edward Lansdale, Paul Nitze, Harland Cleveland, Roger Hilsman, Lincoln Gordon, Adolf Berle, McGeorge Bundy and Henry Kissinger—came to work in the Kennedy administration directly from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s Special Studies Project. This group had been hand-chosen by Nelson Rockefeller to assist him when he himself was seeking the Presidency. Author Colby called this “Nelson’s Secret Victory”, pointing out that while Kennedy knew many powerful people, they were mostly politicians, not men with experience in foreign affairs. The Rockefeller family network, and Nelson’s group in particular, provided a large assortment of bright, qualified men. However, with such a homogenous group surrounding him, Colby noted, “there was no one to advise the young president on the wisdom and efficacy of such covert operations as the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA’s secret war in Indochina, Project Eagle, or Lumumba’s murder.”5

Otepka’s biographer doesn’t seem to understand the distinction between Kennedy and this group. He insinuates that Bobby was behind Walt Rostow’s rise and Otepka’s fall. Bobby was originally the true believer in counterinsurgency as a means for conducting limited warfare and thus saving a greater number of lives than in outright war, which at that point in time seemed to mean nuclear war. But Bobby became disenchanted himself with both Rusk and Rostow and their type of counterinsurgency. Colby includes the text of one of Bobby’s speeches as released to the press, in which was written, “Victory in a revolutionary war is not won by escalation, but by de-escalation.” Kennedy did not actually speak these words when the speech was delivered, but the words were widely quoted by the press.6

Investigating Oswald
Was the denial of clearance for Rostow the trigger for Otepka’s eventual downfall? Or could it have been a letter that went out a few weeks earlier? In a letter dated October 25, 1960, Hugh Cummings of State’s Intelligence and Research Bureau wrote a letter to Richard Bissell at CIA, requesting information on defectors to the Soviet Union. Number eight on the list of eighteen names was Lee Harvey Oswald. In the book Spooks, Jim Hougan writes that,

According to Otepka, the study on defectors was initiated by him because neither the CIA nor military intelligence agencies would inform the State Department which defectors to the Soviet Union were double agents working for the United States.7

Although Otepka remained in the dark, within the CIA there seemed to be fewer questions as to for whom Oswald worked.

When State’s request came to CIA, Bissell turned the request over to two places: James Angleton’s Counterintelligence (CI) staff, and Sheffield Edwards’ Office of Security (OS) staff. In OS, Robert Bannerman, himself a former SY official and a colleague of Otepka’s, told his people to coordinate their response with CI. Evidently, Bannerman knew that Angleton’s CI staff, as opposed to the Soviet Russia Division (SR), would have the answers State needed. Paul Gaynor, of OS’s Security Research Staff (SRS), also seemed to have special knowledge that Angleton would be the appropriate person to handle this request. He passed Bannerman’s request for a coordinated response for State to Marguerite Stevens of SRS.

John Newman, in Oswald and the CIA, describes the unusual nature of Gaynor’s framing of this request:

This request, as Gaynor relayed it to Stevens, however, was worded in a peculiar way, as if to dissuade her from doing research on seven people. Bannerman specified that he wanted information on American defectors other than Bernon F. Mitchell and William H. Martin, and five other defectors regarding whom Mr. Otepka of the State Department Security Office already has information. One of the “five other defectors” that Stevens was not supposed to look into was Lee Harvey Oswald.8 [Newman’s emphasis]

Readers of Probe will remember from the last issue how CIA told the Headquarters offices of the FBI, State and INS that the CIA had already given information (re Oswald’s Mexico City trip) to the field offices of the same entities, which proved to be a lie. Is this a similar lie? Did Otepka have the information already? No, according to Otepka. In addition, we know now that Angleton’s CI/SIG chief, Birch D. O’Neal, prepared his own response regarding these “defectors”. And 10th on the list was Oswald. And more importantly, Oswald’s particular entry was marked SECRET.9 And again, as described in the last Probe, SIG—the Special Investigations Group—contained Angleton’s private handful of his most closed-mouth associates.

It’s significant that both Bannerman and Gaynor knew that the appropriate area for responding to inquiries about Oswald was Angleton’s CI staff. It’s interesting too how Gaynor relayed a response to a subordinate, Marguerite Stevens, in a manner that did not indicate to her that someone else in CIA had information on Oswald.

Another significant element in CI/SIG’s response was that it included a known lie. Oswald was listed as having “renounced” his citizenship.10 Although Oswald had attempted renunciation, he had not followed through and was still considered by both governments a citizen of the United States. Newman muses of this assertion, “Was CI/SIG truly incompetent or spinning some counterintelligence yarn?”11 The latter seems more likely, in light of other events.

The Opening of Oswald’s 201 File
Late November, 1960, Angleton’s staff sent Bissell their proposed response to State, which Bissell signed and forwarded. Yet we are to believe that, despite this obvious flurry of attention, just a few days later, on December 9, 1960, CI/SIG’s Ann Egerter opened a 201 file in the name of Lee Henry Oswald. Newman has stated that he thinks this name might have been the result of a simple mistake. While this response seems strained for a file that was restricted, as this one was, this explanation is even more weak in light of the recent attention focused on one Lee Harvey Oswald preceding the opening of this file. In fact, Egerter herself directly related the opening of the file to State’s request for information when deposed by the HSCA. Does this make any sense? It seems more like Egerter was trying to hide the CIA’s knowledge of Oswald, than preparing to divulge more of it.

Newman raises an interesting issue by quoting a memo from the man who later took Angleton’s position, George T. Kalaris. Kalaris gave a different version of why the 201 file was opened at that time, which states flatly:

Lee Harvey Oswald’s 201 file was first opened as a result of his “defection” to the USSR on 31 Oct 1959 and renewed interest in Oswald brought about by his queries concerning possible reentry into the United States.12

One of Oswald’s own letters supports Kalaris’ assertion. Oswald wrote to the American Embassy in Moscow in early 1961:

Since I have not received a reply to my letter of December, 1960, I am writing again asking that you consider my request for the return of my American passport.13

Newman quotes from an ABC Nightline broadcast from 1991, in which ABC claims that the KGB had intercepted this letter and that the original still exists in Soviet files. Newman further points out that only some extraordinary source or method could have relayed this information to the CIA so quickly for them to open the 201 file by December 9th. Even if Oswald wrote on December 1st, how did the CIA, continents away, learn the contents of a letter in the cold war Soviet Union within eight days? And more importantly, what would that indicate about the level of interest the CIA really had in Oswald, to be monitoring him so closely? In addition, Newman points out that,

Throughout Oswald’s stay in the Soviet Union, an Agency element which appears regularly on cover sheets for Oswald documents is CI/OPS, which means “Counterintelligence Operations.” If Oswald was a dangle, this might suggest that it was a counterintelligence operation run by Angleton.

Whatever the truth of the opening of the 201 file and the true purpose of Oswald’s trip to the Soviet Union, Otepka’s request for information sparked a chain of communications to Angleton’s unit, which then lied about Oswald in response. And Otepka’s life irrevocably changed. From December 1960, whether due to his refusal to clear Rostow, his poking into Oswald, or some other reason, Otepka started being taken off any “sensitive” security cases. It seemed Otepka’s reputation for meticulous attention to detail and thoroughness was making him a problem in SY. Why? Who was threatened by a man doing a good job?

Downward Spiral
An incredible, three year campaign unfolded against Otepka. Because of his stellar record, no one dared fire him. But all kinds of efforts were spent trying to make him want to quit, starting with his removal from the most sensitive cases in December, 1960. The first public attack began when stories appeared in the press that State—and specifically Otepka’s security area—would be undergoing a “reduction in force.”14

Shortly thereafter, Otepka was called before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), of which Senator James Eastland was Chair and Senator Thomas Dodd a vocal member. Otepka had gotten to know Jay Sourwine, the subcommittee’s Chief Counsel. Informally, Otepka had shared some of his concerns for what he saw as a loosening of the clearance procedures with Sourwine. Sourwine and the subcommittee quickly began, with Dodd presiding, to hold what came to be known as the Otepka hearings. In the subcommittee’s subsequent report, the members concluded that the release of the news stories was meant to cause Otepka’s voluntary resignation.

Since this effort failed, other steps had to be taken. Otepka’s superior in SY tried to entice Otepka into taking a position in a different division. But Otepka refused, and none too soon, since that division was dissolved a mere two months later.15 Next, Otepka was shifted into a position that was essentially a demotion. Still, Otepka hung on, trying to do the job he felt needed to be done.

Otepka had found that Rusk had appointed a number of officials to State under a blanket waiver that effectively backdated security clearances for the new officials. Otepka tried to raise his concern with his superiors, and urged them to go to SISS. But SY just wanted Otepka to look the other way.

In 1962, John Francis Reilly took control of SY. From the very beginning, he too seemed to be on a mission to get rid of Otepka. Otepka’s biographer relates this encounter, just weeks into Reilly’s term:

Smiling broadly, [Reilly] asked, “Where’s your rabbit’s foot?” Mystified, Otepka raised his eyebrows in question. Reilly laughed and, maintaining his air of benevolent affability, he explained that Otepka had just been selected to attend the National War College. This was an honor usually reserved for Foreign Service officers marked for higher things. Being human, Otepka was naturally pleased. Reilly seemed genuinely delighted that such good fortune had befallen a member of his staff and just for a moment, Otepka was taken in. He accepted the appointment with thanks, and perhaps with a sense of relief that he could escape, at least temporarily, from the strained atmosphere that prevailed in SY. Reilly shrewdly asked him to put his acceptance in writing.

That same day, May 7, Otepka wrote Reilly a memorandum formally expressing his willingness to attend the War College for ten months beginning in August. However, he could not resist adding, tongue in cheek, that the appointment had come as something of a surprise to him because the State Department had repeatedly assured him, the Congress, and the public that he would be kept in a responsible position in the Office of Security. Reilly returned this memo with the request that Otepka delete his comments on the Department’s premises. Otepka complied.16

Reilly, however, overplayed his hand. His overdone praise made Otepka a bit uneasy, and he decided to do a little checking on his own. What he found was that his appointment had not been entered with the regular nominations, but was entered as a last minute emergency-type nomination. Otepka then asked Reilly if by accepting, he would still be able to return to his post at State. Reilly admitted he would have to fill Otepka’s spot, and there would be no place to which Otepka could return. With that, Otepka rejected this “honor” and chose to remain in place.

Less than a week after Otepka’s refusal, Reilly placed his first spy, Fred Traband, in Otepka’s office. More would follow. Reilly also brought in a National Security Agency (NSA) alumnus, David Belisle, to work with Otepka. Belisle brought with him a new “short form” procedure to rush through people’s security clearances. Otepka was appalled, but powerless. Belisle took away Otepka’s card-file index, the product of years of work. Otepka was removed from the FBI’s after-hours call list, which was another demotion. For a short time, Otepka was seriously thinking of quitting. Ironically, it was his buddy, Jay Sourwine, who talked him out of it. Ironically because it was this very relationship that most contributed to Otepka’s eventual downfall.

Sourwine started working on Otepka to get him to divulge what was really going on behind the scenes at State. But as usual, being a by-the-book person, Otepka insisted on following protocol. If Sourwine wanted him to testify before SISS, the subcommittee would have to formally request his testimony. And then, Otepka insisted on getting clearance from his superiors before testifying. Was Sourwine truly interested in helping Otepka, or was he part of a plot to entrap Otepka into saying something that would finally provide the justification for Otepka’s ouster?

In mid-February, 1963, Otepka was formally notified that his appearance was requested before SISS. Otepka testified to the subcommittee on four different occasions. At the very first hearing, Sourwine asked the question relating to the cause of Otepka’s appearance before the committee in the first place. He asked if Otepka had been subjected to any “reprisals” from State because of his previous testimony. But Otepka was wary of saying anything that could make his already uncomfortable situation at SY worse, and defended both State and their treatment of him. Otepka defended his own actions, but would not point an accusatory finger at anyone else. Sourwine continued to press the matter with more subtle questions, until he got Otepka to talk about a case where Otepka conceded to being pressured to put through two security clearances where he didn’t feel one was justified. Otepka’s refusal to clear the persons delayed the formation of the committee to which these people had been appointed for over a year. And in the end, through Otepka’s persistence, they were both dropped from the committee.17

One of Otepka’s biggest heresies, however, was disclosing to the Senate subcommittee that, despite the subcommittee’s earlier report and recommendations from the earlier Otepka hearings, State had continued to process under blanket waivers nearly 400 people in the roles of file clerks and secretaries. As author Gill put it, “it is often easier for an obscure clerk or a trusted secretary to waltz off the premises with a top-secret document than it would be for an official at the policy-making level who is afraid he is being watched.”18 This greatly alarmed the senators, but Otepka added one more piece of information. There was an effort underway to reinstate Alger Hiss to the State Department. Knowing what we know today, one might wish that effort had been successful. But at the time, all that was known was that Hiss had been convicted of perjury and had been accused of espionage.

High-Tech Harassment
Shortly after the third or fourth appearance, Otepka began noticing trouble on his phone line. Chatter could be heard sometimes, other times calls wouldn’t go through, and sometimes there would be an amplification effect. Otepka was being bugged. And not just though the phone. Listening devices were installed in his office. What could someone possibly fear that Otepka might be discussing to warrant such intense surveillance?

And then there was the night Otepka had been working late, stepped out for dinner, and then returned to work some more. Imagine his surprise when, around 10pm, David Belisle and another NSA spook entered his office, thinking he was gone for the night. Belisle made the flimsy excuse that he had been concerned by a cleaning woman he claimed to have seen entering Otepka’s office. But Otepka had been sitting there for some time, and called Belisle on this lie.19

When Otepka’s regular secretary fell sick, one Joyce Schmelzer was placed in his office with orders to spy on Otepka. One of her tasks was to gather the burn bag each night, mark it with a big red “X”, then call to alert another SY member that Otepka’s burn bag was on the way down. The trash was searched regularly for any incriminating information that could be used against Otepka.

For weeks, his house was under surveillance. His wife, tired of seeing the man in the car parked across the street every night, called the local police. After the police forced the man to identify himself (he worked for a private security firm), the man never reappeared.

Was Otepka keeping people with carefully constructed communist-like backgrounds from being placed, on behalf of intelligence agencies, in State for official cover? It would seem his offenses must have been extraordinary to warrant such high-level harassment. Was someone out to discredit Otepka in case he later spilled the beans on one particularly sensitive case?

Someone had even drilled a hole into his safe, and with a mirror determined the correct combination, and then plugged the hole again. What could someone possibly fear that Otepka might be discussing to warrant such intense surveillance? According to Otepka, the only sensitive material in the safe was his half-finished study of American defectors in the Soviet Union, with a yet to be completed determination on one Lee Harvey Oswald. When Hougan asked Otepka specifically if Otepka had been able to figure out if Oswald was an agent of the US or not, Otepka answered, “We had not made up our minds when my safe was drilled and we were thrown out of the office.”20

Amazingly, the people involved in harassing Otepka did little to cover their tracks. It was an open secret that Otepka was being tapped. And Otepka still had many friends in State, who told him who was responsible for many of these activities. Meanwhile, Reilly was trying to undermine Otepka’s support on SISS. He told all kinds of lies about what Otepka had done on various security cases and directly contradicted Otepka’s testimony before the subcommittee. Otepka was appalled. The Senate subcommittee was in quandry about who to believe—Otepka, or his SY superior. Sourwine told Otepka he would need something other than his word. He would need documents. Again, one should consider what followed in regards to the question of whether Sourwine was engaging in some form of entrapment.

Preparing the Defense
For ten days, Otepka gathered his evidence. He prepared a 39 page brief with 36 attachments to support his own testimony and directly refute that of Reilly’s. Of the attachemtns, 25 were unclassified; six were marked “Official Use Only”, three were marked “Limited Official Use”; and two were marked “Confidential.”21

Otepka was careful that none of what he divulged to the Senate subcommittee was information that in any way could compromise the national security of the United States. And even the two marked “Confidential” were mere transmittal memorandums for more sensitive attachments, and Otepka did not turn over the attachments.

The piece d’resistance in this affair was the manipulation of evidence taken from Otepka’s own safe. Sensitive documents were “found” in his burn bag one night, with the classification tags illegally clipped off. Otepka claimed, and the State Department never denied, that the evidence seems to support the contention that the documents were planted in his bags for the sole purpose of discrediting him. The day after these documents turned up, SISS called several SY members to the Hill to discuss the bugging of Otepka. The first man called was the spy Reilly had planted in Otepka’s office from the beginning, Fred Traband. Traband was so unnerved at being called, however, that, while denying knowledge of the tapping, he told the story behind the burn bag operation. The next man, Terry Shea, not only acknowledged the burn bag story, but added that Reilly had personally searched Otepka’s files and safe. The rest continued to deny any participation in or knowledge of the tapping of Otepka.

House of Cards
On June 27, 1963, Reilly unceremoniously shunted Otepka out of his office into a new, make-work position reviewing and updating policy manuals. Otepka was ordered to turn over the combination to his safe (which still held the unfinished Oswald study) and was sent to another office on another floor. He was denied access to his former records. Many of Otepka’s staff were purged from their positions at this time as well. On his new office wall, Otepka hung these words from Prime Minister Churchill:

Never give in. Never, never, never, never! Never yield in any way, great or small, large or petty, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force and the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.22

Adrift without direction, Otepka took some time off, and then made the mistake of stopping by his old office for a look. Belisle heard about this and admonished Otepka to stay away. Otepka’s wife was surprised, when calling her husband at his office, to hear “Mr. Otepka is no longer here.” And Otepka’s phone was rigged so that he could receive no incoming calls himself. His buzzer was disabled. When a call for Otepka came in, a phone would ring in another location, where a secretary would have to answer the call, and then walk to his door, knock, and tell him to pick up the line, before he could receive the call. This also ensured no privacy, since anyone could be listening on the other end of his calls. One of the men involved in tapping Otepka, Elmer Hill, had his wiretap lab across from Otepka’s office.23

Domestic Espionage?
At the end of July, the other shoe dropped. Otepka was informed by the FBI that he was being formally charged with espionage. Years later, it was discovered this move was ordered by Rusk himself, and the order hand-delivered by Reilly to the Department of Justice. This, for turning documents over to a Senate subcommittee. He was also charged with having clipped security classifications from documents, something Otepka did not do.

In our last issue of Probe, we told of another whistleblower, Richard Nuccio, and how he was punished for giving information to the congressional body legitimately designated to receive such. Peter Kornbluh, writing for the Washington Post, quoted a 1912 law which stated that “the right of employees…to furnish information to either House or Congress, or to a committee or member thereof, may not be interfered with or denied.” Otepka himself cited this same law to the FBI in defense of his own actions.

Meanwhile, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee was going to bat for Otepka. They hauled before them what the committee later called the “lying trio” of Reilly, Belisle and Hill.24 All three were found to have committed perjury when they denied knowledge of the tap on Otepka.

The Long Shadow of Walter Sheridan
In an interesting and relevant side story, the tapes made from the bugging of Otepka’s office were passed to a man that was unidentified in the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee’s hearings. Jim Hougan, while researching a strange case of bugging on Capitol Hill, found a man, Sidney Goldberg, who claims that the man in the corridor was none other than Walter Sheridan.25 Walter Sheridan was the former NSA and FBI man who did so much to sabotage Jim Garrison during his investigation into Kennedy’s assassination. According to a source of Goldberg’s, Hougan wrote that Sheridan “disposed over the personnel and currency of whole units of the Central Intelligence Agency.”26 In addition, the same source claimed that Sheridan was behind the preservation of Belisle’s job with State when Belisle’s role in the bugging of Otepka was revealed. Belisle was not fired, but was transferred to Bonn, Germany. Sheridan denied having any role in these events. But is Sheridan to be believed, in light of the lies he put forth during the Garrison investigation?

Despite the support of the committee, Otepka was on the way out. He was met at work on September 22, 1963, with a note saying “You are hereby notified that it is proposed to remove you from your appointment with the Department of State….”27 Otepka was outraged at the charges:

“I was not particularly disturbed by the charges regarding my association with Jay Sourwine or the data I’d furnished him for the subcommittee,” Otepka later recalled. “But I was shocked and angered to find that the State Department had resorted to a cheap, gangland frame-up to place me under charges for crimes it knew I had never committed.”28

One would think that finally, Otepka’s ordeal would be over. One would be wrong. He had been fired from his career position at State. Yet even after this, Otepka was warned that his home phone was probably tapped! And just a few days later, the man who had originally divulged who was behind the tapping of Otepka, Stanley Holden, suffered a mysterious “accident.” Holden was a good friend of Otepka’s, and had himself been under surveillance. His face and tongue had been so badly cut that stitches were required. His own explanation of being hit in the face by a heavy spring did not seem to explain his wounds, and the rumor went around that he had been beaten up by those who didn’t like him talking.

In a last ditch effort to preserve Otepka at State, the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee wrote a brief letter, signed by every subcommittee member, which strongly urged Rusk to reconsider the decision to force Otepka out of State. But Otepka’s fate had already been sealed. On November 5, 1963, Otepka was finally formally ousted from the State Department. Just seventeen days later, Kennedy would be assassinated. And the killing would be pinned on the man Otepka was trying to investigate when he was removed from his office.


Notes
1. Sarah McClendon, Mr. President, Mr. President! (Santa Monica: General Publishing Group, 1996) p. 82

2. William J. Gill, The Ordeal of Otto Otepka (New Rochelle: Arlington House, 1969), p. 56

3. Gill, p. 232

4. Gerald Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 1995), p. 553

5. Colby and Dennett, p. 343

6. Colby and Dennett, pp. 542-543.

7. Jim Hougan, Spooks (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1978) p. 371

8. John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), p. 172

9. Newman, p. 172

10. Newman, p. 172

11. Newman, p. 173

12. Newman, p. 176

13. Newman, p. 177

14. Gill, p. 117

15. Gill, p. 123

16. Gill, pp. 161-162

17. Gill, p. 235

18. Gill, p. 238

19. Gill, p. 243

20. Hougan, p. 371

21. Gill, p. 254

22. Gill, p. 280

23. Gill, p. 285

24. Gill, p. 289

25. Hougan, p. 128. Hougan wrote of a wiretap that was discovered that ran from Capitol Hill to the Esso building, terminating not in the basement, where most lines terminate, but on the top floor behind a locked door to which the phone company didn’t even have access. The floor was leased to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons, and the room was marked as a “restricted area”. Goldberg had a source that claimed Walter Sheridan was the ultimate recipient of this tap. In addition, Bernard Fensterwald appears in this story. When he heard that Goldberg was on the trail of the tap, he walked into Goldberg’s office and offered to help. Fensterwald convinced Goldberg to sign a statement that wasn’t true under the guise that this would help him. The situation became a nightmare for Goldberg. Fensterwald also played a role in protecting the tap. The tap was brought to the attention of Senator Long’s Ad-Prac committee by Bernie Spindel, a famed wiretapper himself. Spindel claimed government agents were constantly working on the tap. Fensterwald then committed a “blunder”: he requested information on the cable from the telephone company. This had the effect of sending a warning to whoever was bugging the hill. Because such requests took several days to process, the buggers had plenty of time to remove the tap that was under investigation. Why would Fensterwald, a sophisticated lawyer who sat on a committee specifically involved with wiretapping issues, make such an obvious mistake?

26. Hougan, p. 128

27. Gill, p. 291

28. Gill, p. 293

[John Bevilaqua]

WACL, ABN, JBS, MSC and SISS... Five Peas in a Pod.

By far the most important person in the whole ABN orbit was Yaroslaw Stetsko also spelled several different ways. His ABN is given credit by Jon and Scott Anderson for being the "other half" which merged with the Asian People's Anti-Communist League to form WACL. And lest we
forget, it was actually me who made the discovery about ABN and DNZ, Gerhard Frey, Theodor Oberlander, Yaroslaw Stetsko and their relationship to the U.S. organizations like CUSA, not Dick Russell. It all began when I discovered a copy of the ABN Journal with names like Willoughby, Walker and Stetsko on the masthead of the Foreign Intelligence Digest. Even Spas T. Raikin showed up as the leader of some of their conferences where Raikin introduced Stetsko from the podium after he obviously organized these meetings. Raikin tried to trivialize or minimize his contributions to the ABN and to WACL but I was not buying it at all. And I was the only person to call up Spas T. Raikin to quiz him on these relationships.

You have to examine the role of Bogdhan Stashinsky in murdering 2 of Stetsko's closest friends to fully understand ABN, WACL and the JFK hit. Stephan Bandera and Dr. Lev Rebet are the persons snuffed by Stashinsky who was also from Minsk, Belorussia. It is highly likely that the time
Oswald spent in West Berlin on the way to the S.S. Maasdam and Hoboken, where Raikin was waiting for him, was spent looking for either Stetsko or one of his associates from ABN in order to kill them using The Stashinsky Gun. Both Bandera and Rebet were killed in West Berlin by Stashinsky in fact in 1957 and 1959. This scenario is the only one which explains how Raikin could have known exactly which boat Oswald was on and when he was going to arrive in Hoboken, NJ. At that point Otto Otepka approved Oswald's re-entry into the USA even though the defector file of LHO was sitting on Otepka's desk. Otepka had to know about Oswald and his programming as an assassin through Willoughby and Morris who later served as Otepka's lawyer after he was fired from the State Dept. after the Walt Rostow security clearance hearings when Otepka leaked classified documents to... none other than Senators James O. Eastland and Thomas Dodd. After the JFK hit, Dodd went to West Berlin to interview Stashinsky who was still in prison for these two murders. Dodd was censured by the Senate for spending taxpayer money for this junket as sort of a warning about sticking his nose in someone else's business, mainly Eastland.

[Jan Klimkowski]

If Otepka did initiate the October 1960 request to CIA and MI for details of which defectors to the USSR were double agents or, in other words, "false defectors", then it would be important to establish a motive for such behaviour. On the face of it, a man in Otepka's position would surely not have expected truthful and honest answers to his questions. And he would also presumably not have expected CIA or MI, let alone someone as inherently paranoid as Angleton, to identify double agents to him.

The defection of Oswald to the USSR, and his untroubled return, with KBG-affiliated bride, to the USA prove, beyond any doubt, that Oswald had handlers with the power to allow a "traitor" and "national security threat" to waltz straight back into America.

For me, this leads to the following fundamental questions about Lee Harvey Oswald:

Who was handling Oswald at the time of his defection?

Who was handling Oswald during his and his KGB-affliated wife's miraculously easy, and therefore greased, return to such as the White Russian community in the US and the Paines?

Was the group that assassinated Kennedy the same as that which was handling him during his defection and return?

Or did another group plotting to assassinate JFK learn the identity of Oswald's handlers?

If the latter, did this group learn that Oswald's defection and return had been handled by an element of American intelligence - eg CIA, ONI, MI? And did this group therefore deliberately add to Oswald's intelligence legend and select him as the patsy for the assassination of Kennedy? A patsy whose background would have to be covered up by his original handlers to save their, and their institution's, very existence?

Plus the wildcard.

Was Oswald an MK-ULTRA test subject in Atsugi?

In fact, was Oswald an MK-ULTRA test subject from childhood, as per an interpretation of the Harvey and Lee hypothesis?