A poem about Vietnam by Oswald LeWinter

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Regarding my own question whether Oswald LeWinter actually served in Vietnam, I found a reference in
http://cryptome.org/fayed-v-usa.htm

22. In his book October Surprise (1991), Professor Gary Sick describes LeWinter as an "intelligence operative", who was a "graduate of University of California at Berkeley and had a master's degree in English literature from San Francisco State." "He spoke German and English, but he had also acquired a working knowledge of Hebrew, Persian, and French, and some Urdu." Sick stated LeWinter "had served with U.S. forces in Vietnam and also claimed long experience with various U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies."

[Peter Lemkin]

Regarding my own question whether Oswald LeWinter actually served in Vietnam, I found a reference in
http://cryptome.org/fayed-v-usa.htm

22. In his book October Surprise (1991), Professor Gary Sick describes LeWinter as an "intelligence operative", who was a "graduate of University of California at Berkeley and had a master's degree in English literature from San Francisco State." "He spoke German and English, but he had also acquired a working knowledge of Hebrew, Persian, and French, and some Urdu." Sick stated LeWinter "had served with U.S. forces in Vietnam and also claimed long experience with various U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies."

While the CIA and its cut-outs were all over Vietnam, my hunch is that LeWinter may well have been connected with the Ted Shackley 'bunch' in and around Vietnam....can't prove it...just a 'feelin''. Would be interesting to know what exactly he was doing and connected to/with in Vietnam.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

An interesting (in other than obvious ways) literary magazine is Ygdrasil (http://www.synapse.net/kgerken/), especially the June 2003 issue (http://www.synapse.net/kgerken/Y-0306.HTM), featuring material about and poems of LeWinter.

I noted that on the home page it says

Klaus Gerken, EDITOR and Founder
kgerken@synapse.net

Heather Ferguson, Production Editor

Mois Benarroch, European Editor -- specializing in Hebrew and Spanish submissions
Mois Benarroch

Michael Collings, Contributing Editor

Oswald Le Winter, Contributing Editor

Michael Parker, Site Banner Design 2011

I quote from the introduction of the 2003 issue:

Kenneth Rosen


FORGING REALITY, THE POETRY OF OSWALD LE WINTER


Oswald LeWinter is an American poet living in Portugal. He was born in
Vienna, Austria, separated from his family and shipped by boat to America
to escape the holocaust of the Third Reich. In the United States he lived
in a Philadelphia orphanage for Jewish refugees and did not see his parents
again until he was ten and they had immigrated. He was educated at U. Cal.,
Berkeley, where he lettered in track and was an all-star football player,
declining an opportunity to try-out with the San Francisco professional
football team in order to become a U.S. Ranger and serve in Korea. Eventually
LeWinter completed his advanced degrees at Columbia University, and acquired
a doctorate in psychology in Germany. LeWinter worked on many continents
for many years, primarily in disinformation and disruption, for American
Central Intelligence. Most recently he was for three years in Vienna,
place of his birth, as an involuntary guest of the Austrian government,
for seeking to provide the aggrieved Egyptian billionaire Mohamed El Fayed
with documents illustrating Buckingham Palace and British intelligence
services' involvement with the death of his son Dodi El Fayed and Dodi's
fiancee Princess Diana, in return for money. Mohamed El Fayed subsequently
and unsuccessfully sued the American government under the Freedom of
Information Act for the same papers he declined to purchase from retired
General LeWinter, explaining in court that LeWinter's papers were forgeries
of genuine documents.

[Jan Klimkowski]

While the CIA and its cut-outs were all over Vietnam, my hunch is that LeWinter may well have been connected with the Ted Shackley 'bunch' in and around Vietnam....can't prove it...just a 'feelin''. Would be interesting to know what exactly he was doing and connected to/with in Vietnam.

Peter - I suspect that this is a very fruitful hunch.....

[Carsten Wiethoff]

While the CIA and its cut-outs were all over Vietnam, my hunch is that LeWinter may well have been connected with the Ted Shackley 'bunch' in and around Vietnam....can't prove it...just a 'feelin''. Would be interesting to know what exactly he was doing and connected to/with in Vietnam.

In one of the more unlikely places (a sailboat forum) I found a 'biography' of LeWinter most likely translated from another language (Portuguese?) that says the following:

He joined the U.S. Army in 1950 as second lieutenant in the Battalion of the Airborne Rangers. He fought in Korea, was wounded and taken prisoner by the Chinese and spent eleven months as a prisoner of war.

He traveled through Asia while in license for combat wounds.

In 1954 he joined the Information Service of the Army and joined the staff of General Ed Landsdale in the Philippines and Vietnam until 1955.

He left active service, he returned to college and began teaching at various universities.


In 1964 he published a scholarly essay "Shakespeare in Europe" and was awarded the American Philosophical Fellowship. He traveled through Eastern Europe doing research on Shakespeare. An article, "Shakespeare in Poland," was published in The Shakespeare Encyclopedia.

In 1965 he joined the Central Intelligence Agency and was simultaneously placed on the List of Active Army Reserve. He served in the Army and the CIA until 1985. The last post in the CIA was the head of ITAC (Intelligence Threat Analysis Center) in NATO. The post he held when he retired from the army was that of Major General in 1983.

(from http://www.sailnet.com/forums/off-topic/...post870883)


As I said, it is amazing that wherever you look, you find LeWinter. I was unable to determine the origin of this text, but I think it may be from one of his books, published in Portuguese only. (http://www.wook.pt/ficha/democracia-e-se...a/id/66040)

Edit: Confirmed. http://bravamarildo.webnode.pt/os-segred...emocracia/

[Magda Hassan]

Just loving this thread Carsten even though I've nothing to contribute. He certainly is intruiging and you've found so many interesting obscure titbits on him. Carry on!

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Just loving this thread Carsten even though I've nothing to contribute. He certainly is intruiging and you've found so many interesting obscure titbits on him. Carry on!

Thanks Magda! Maybe with your skills you can try to find out if a unit called ITAC (Intelligence Threat Assessment Center) ever existed, since I am currently not able to confirm or deny it.
What I can confirm is that an international Rainer-Maria-Rilke prize existed and that Karl Krolow (the man who allegedly wrote one of the texts about LeWinter in 1997 reprinted in Ygdrasil 2003), a German poet did get it in 1975. He died in 1999.
http://www.suhrkamp.de/autoren/karl_krolow_2670.html (in German)
There are other authors associated with that prize over the years, and I did not find one yet, that I was unable to verify. On the other hand I did not find good references to Oswald LeWinter getting that prize in 1997, which could not come from LeWinter himself. Not that this is terribly important, but it would help to decide whether this little tidbit is disinformation or cover or whatever.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Okay, regarding this Rainer-Maria-Rilke prize I have exactly five persons: Karl Krolow (1975), Hilde Domin (1976), Ernst Meister (1977), Christoph Meckel (1978) and Nicolas Born (1979). All German. Nothing before or after. The chance that there is another such prize and that the same Karl Krolow who got the German version in 1975 would hold the Laudatio for LeWinter in 1997 is zilch.
That "He follows Yvan Goll, Giuseppe Ungaretti and the first recipient, Fernando Pessoa" is funny. Fernando Pessoa died in 1935, Yvan Goll in 1950 and Giuseppe Ungaretti in 1970.

Oswald LeWinter never got this prize. Assurance level 99.9%.

How big are the chances that he ever was in Vietnam?
:thumbsdown:

[Magda Hassan]

Okay, regarding this Rainer-Maria-Rilke prize I have exactly five persons: Karl Krolow (1975), Hilde Domin (1976), Ernst Meister (1977), Christoph Meckel (1978) and Nicolas Born (1979). All German. Nothing before or after. The chance that there is another such prize and that the same Karl Krolow who got the German version in 1975 would hold the Laudatio for LeWinter in 1997 is zilch.
That "He follows Yvan Goll, Giuseppe Ungaretti and the first recipient, Fernando Pessoa" is funny. Fernando Pessoa died in 1935, Yvan Goll in 1950 and Giuseppe Ungaretti in 1970.

Oswald LeWinter never got this prize. Assurance level 99.9%.

How big are the chances that he ever was in Vietnam?
:thumbsdown:

Good sleuthing there Carsten The man who never was. And is here, there and everywhere. And nowhere.

[Carsten Wiethoff]

Good sleuthing there Carsten The man who never was. And is here, there and everywhere. And nowhere.

Magda, the astonishing thing about Oswald LeWinter is that there are certain parts of his biography that absolutely can be verified. So he is absolutely not a fictional person. One of the things I was able to verify (besides him being born in Vienna and transferred to the US at the age of eight) is that he holds definitely the German title of Doctor of Psychology from the University of Tübingen since 1989.
The title of his dissertation is (translated) "Love and Self-Love: an empirical study about the relation between Self-Love and the ability to love someone else."
I guess most people would have dissed that as another self-invented factoid (like his Rilke prize), but his dissertation is actually in the German National Library and can be seen in Frankfurt and Leipzig:
http://d-nb.info/891709711
And I still do not have the slightest idea about his true motivation to involve himself in so many bizzarre activities.