Divine Skein – A
Dissection of the Intelligence Network that Conducted the Covert Operations
that Resulted in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
- The Divine Skein – the assassination of JFK
- An
Assassin’s Tour of Dallas – Warts and All. Wes Wise tour of
- The Collins Radio Connection – the Rosetta Stone.
- The Braden File
- Bottlefed
By Oswald’s NANA –
- Maurice
Bishop and David Atlee Phillips –
- The
Catherwood Foundation – Private Fund serves as conduit and cover for
- The Cuban Aid Relief –
- Julio Fernandez
- Foreknowledge and Black Prop Ops – Assassination and Psychological Warfare
- ONI – Office of Naval Intelligence – smallest, oldest and most secretive
- CIAir
–
[NI – Not included here, but will
be added when scanned or retyped]
Forward – JFK – The Third Decade after the Assassination - 1993
1) THE DIVINE SKEIM –
not just a conspiracy, a covert operation.
THE DIVINE SKEIM
The assassination of President Kennedy was a Watershed event
in modern American history, the ramifications of which have yet to be fully
realized.
The details of the crime, the ballistics, acoustics, autopsy and medical evidence are covered elsewhere. This report concerns the covert intelligence operations that resulted in the death of the President, and the black propaganda operations that continue to this day to manipulate the news and the judicial system to shield those responsible.
The details of the crime, the ballistics, acoustics, autopsy and medical evidence are covered elsewhere. This report concerns the covert intelligence operations that resulted in the death of the President, and the black propaganda operations that continue to this day to manipulate the news and the judicial system to shield those responsible.
The time and the place – 12:30
pm , Houston Dealey Plaza Dallas , Texas Friday, November 22, 1963 ,
are firmly etched in our national subconscious, and the picture of that square
acre of time and place are constantly played back in the media and in our
minds.
If Dealey Plaza
Although there are many theories as to what transpired at
Dealey Plaza that day, the events, as they actually occurred, only happened one
way, and it is the job of the social scientists, the independent researcher,
journalists, teachers and historians to determine that truth as closely as
possible.
Some people might consider this crime ancient history even
though it is still such a current event that indictments can still be brought
down by a grand jury for crimes related to the assassination - destruction of
evidence, obstruction of justice, perjury, homicide and conspiracy, if not
treason.
Besides the issues of justice and historical perspective, it
is important to know for oneself as well as for our mutual national security,
whether the murder of the president was an unplanned, spontaneous psychological
act of a homicidal maniac or a very well planned and executed coup d’etat.
John F. Kennedy was either killed by a deranged lone-nut, as
the Warren Report has concluded, or he was the victim of a conspiracy by a
clandestine action team of covert agents, as much of the evidence suggests. The
truth must either be one way or the other, and cannot be both.
If the assassination of JFK was the work of one deranged,
lone-nut, the lessons to be learned from the tragedy are far less significant
than what we can learn from it if Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. If the
President was not killed by a lone-nut, the ramifications extend from our own
curious need to know into the realms of justice and our national security
today.
While the Secret Service and national security apparatus
have taken the lone-nut contingency into protective consideration, the covert
conspiracy must be unraveled and understood in order to prevent it from
happening again.
Those who believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone on his own
perverted psycho impulses can close the book on the case and go home, and let
the psychologist take over, while those who want to pursue the truth behind the
conspiracy that killed the president can continue. While the quest does seem
like falling into a rabbit hole and bumping into the wilderness of mirrors, you
can find the way with an understanding of the history and techniques of
intelligence networks.
Not for the sake of argument, but for the sake of analysis,
a competent homicide investigator would proceed first by assuming that JFK was
killed as an act of elimination, and it was not only a conspiracy, but a more
distinctly defined covert intelligence operation.
Although anyone with the training and knowledge can conduct
such clandestine operations, because of the extensive cover-up that occurred
after the fact, the plot to murder the President must have had its origin in
the very heart of the United States
But because a covert operation, by its very name and nature
is meant to be concealed, you must look through a special spectrum to see it.
This crystal ball, as my associate John Judge describes it, is similar to an
onion, with layers of meaning that can be peeled off, and only understood if
you are trained and educated in the crafts, techniques, means, methods and
history of such special covert intelligence operations.
Allen Dulles, author of "The Craft of Intelligence," once said that the biographical
method of study is a good way to approach any subject, and Lee Harvey Oswald is
one of the first individuals you have to come to know to understand the
assassination of JFK.
While a homicide investigator on the street may not have the
historical background or training, let alone the resources to identify and
investigate state supported intelligence operations, basic instincts will tell
you something and give you a clue. Every homicide investigation begins with a
body, and leads to a suspect, who can usually be identified as one who had the
means, motive and opportunity to commit the crime.
Oswald had the means, the U.S. Marine Corps training,
experience and the tools to kill. Having worked in a building at the scene of
the crime must make JFK the first assassination victim to ever go to the scene
of his murder, rather than be stalked by assassins. And indeed, the idea the
assassin actually worked at the scene of the crime, and the presidential motorcade
route was designed to pass his window is certainly suspicious, if not evidence
of high-level conspiracy itself.
The problem with Oswald as the assassin is that he had no
motive. He actually liked JFK. Not even the Warren Commission would try to
apply a motive to Oswald, who they concluded killed JFK alone.
The more you learn about Oswald the more you realize he is
not the most important character in the assassination drama, but a pawn in the
game of bloodthirsty power politics.
Although Oswald may have been a loner, he was seldom alone
and not deranged. He was definitely an agent, but for whom has yet to be
determined.
Allen Dulles took a book with him to the first meeting of the
Warren Commission, a book about American assassins and how they, historically,
all appear to be psychologically deranged lone-nuts, which he recommended the
other commissioners read. If he was more interested in determining the truth
about the assassination he would have them read his own book, "The Craft of Intelligence," in
which he promotes Sun Tzu’s ancient manual "The Art of War."
In the chapter "The Employment of Secret Agents,"
Sun Tzu says, "Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general
conquer the enemy wherever they move, and their achievements surpass those of
ordinary men, is foreknowledge."
"What is called foreknowledge cannot be elicited from
spirits, nor from the gods, nor by analogy with past events, nor from
calculations. It must be obtained from men who know the situation."
"Now there are five sorts of agents to be employed.
These are: native, inside, double, expendable and living." A native agent
is one of the nationality of the enemy. An inside agent is one who lives and works
in the enemy’s camp. A double agent is an enemy agent who works for both sides.
An expendable agent is one that can be cut loose after achieving his goal,
while a living agent is one that can get into the enemy camp and return with
information."
Sun Tzu writes: "When these five types of agents are
all working simultaneously and none knows their message of operation, they are
called ‘The Devine Skein," and are the treasure of the sovereign."
And even today in the world of satellite and communication intelligence,
human intelligence is still an indispensable method of determining motives and
anticipated action, and the nature of the clandestine network in action is
still the most reliable means of learning the intentions of other people and
governments.
In the case of the assassination of President Kennedy, individuals had foreknowledge of the event because of their affiliation with such a network, and such foreknowledge itself is evidence that there was a conspiracy behind the assassination.
In this regard, little has changed. The same type of agents
are classified and utilized today as they were in Sun Tsu’s day, as well as at Dealey
Plaza
Thus, if the assassination of JFK was the work of a covert
action team, the men who pulled the triggers probably didn’t know who they were
working for, and did it because they were well trained, paid professional
marksmen and killers.
Those who maintain Oswald was the lone-assassin also portrays
him as a low life loser, who couldn’t hold a job, beat his wife and hated
authority and society, while actually, if he was the lone-gunman, was, if
nothing else, and as Sam Giancana more correctly described him, a great
marksman and assassin.
Born in New Orleans Japan San Diego Soviet Union . Returning
a few years later with a Russian wife and daughter, Oswald lived in Texas New
Orleans Dallas
Without knowing anything else about Oswald, every
intelligence analyst worth their salt would proceed by assuming that Oswald,
the alleged assassin of the President, was a covert operative and part of a
foreign or domestic state-supported intelligence network.
Oswald was a covert operative and clandestine agent, trained
in what Allen Dulles calls "the crafts of intelligence" – foreign
language, electronics, communications, codes, ciphers and tradecraft – avoiding
surveillance, microdot photography and the writing of clear, concise reports.
In Sun Tzu’s terms, Oswald served as both an inside and
double agent, in Russia
But Oswald was not a very good gunman. Rather, as the
evidence indicates, Oswald was just what he claimed to be, a patsy, and fall
guy – framed for a crime he didn’t commit, and killed as the expendable agent.
It is not the technicians, the gunman or hit men who killed
JFK, rather it was the covert operators at the top of the clandestine pyramid
who arranged for the assassination of the President. The intelligence officers,
the knights, bishops and rooks, to use their own analogy, were the kingpins who
pulled the chains of puppets and pawns like Oswald.
Sun Tzu calls the men at the top "the wise general and the
sovereign," and the network of agents "the Devine Skein," giving
it a sort of deity, or god-like connotation, since only the patriarch at the
top knows all that is going on during the game. He is like a God, looking down
on the mortals below and controlling their destiny at his whim.
But actually, crimes committed by men can be solved by men,
and now over 40 years after the fact, ordinary people can look down, peak
through the glass onion, and see The Big Picture. It’s a moving picture that
leaves Dealey Plaza
The names of the real assassins will never become as famous
as Lee Harvey Oswald, but I am convinced that we will come to know them. Will it
even matter, especially if they are all dead? Probably not. We look through the
glass onion not to name the guilty, but to see today’s circumstances in the
proper perspective. If Oswald was just crazy, nothing else would make sense.
But when you see the Devine Skein through the glass onion, what happened at Dealey
Plaza
William Manchester, who failed to find a conspiracy in
writing "The Death of the President,"
wrote, "…if you put the murdered President of the United States on one
side of the scale and that wretched waif Oswald on the other side, it doesn’t
balance. You want to add something weightier to Oswald. It would invest the
President’s death with meaning, endowing him with martyrdom. He would have died
for something. A conspiracy would, of course, do the job nicely. Unfortunately,
there is no evidence whatever that there was one."
But the evidence is there if you know what to look for. It
isn’t a conspiracy theory, but rather a covert understanding of events.
We might not have the piece of the puzzle with a
"smoking gun," (though there are many "smoking documents"
found at the National Archives), but the overwhelming circumstantial evidence
fits very nicely with the covert history of current events.
When Oswald’s criminal personality profile is seen as a
covert intelligence operative, part of a network and a player in the Great
Game, the psychological makeup of that "wretched waif" is of little
consequence, while the Devine Skein quite nicely balances out the scales of
history and understanding, if not justice.
And because they set it up so they remain anonymous no-name
figures in the shadows doesn’t mean we can’t figure out who put together what
happened at Dealey Plaza
The tools of the social scientist are limited. We can read
and interview. In the end we must judge for ourselves what is real and what is
not. A homicide detective once emphasized that even if you know who the murder
is, you still need to acquire the evidence necessary to convict him in a court
of law.
But the journalist, historian and intelligence analysis do
not have to meet those same standards to know the truth. The majority of the
American people have always known, almost assumed there was a conspiracy, even
if they couldn’t see through the glass onion clearly. They know in their hearts
that something was wrong with the official version of events, and that there is
more to the assassination than one lone-nut, that "wretched waif"
Oswald.
At one of the last meetings of the Warren Commission, Allen
Dulles argued against the publication of the Commission’s records and
documents, preferring them to be kept classified and locked away. Finally he
relented, saying, "Okay, go ahead and publish the stuff, the people won’t
read it anyway."
More and more people are now reading those records, and
deciding for themselves who killed Kennedy, and someday they may even do
something about it.
John Judge says that the people who killed JFK were merely
telling us, "We killed the son of a bitch and you can’t do anything about
it."
Even though you may not be able to do something about it, in
order to learn the truth you have to jump into the rabbit’s hole, get into the
"House of Mirrors" and figure out how the magic trick was done.
You can’t get caught up the details of the ballistics,
trajectories, acoustics, autopsies and caskets. Forget the "single-bullet
theory," and quit arguing about the details.
Whatever happened at Dealey
Plaza
In order to see the Transparent Conspiracy through the glass
onion, you have to follow the leads out of Dealey
Plaza
2) Wes Wise Tour of
Dallas – Warts and All –
The Assassins Tour of
Dallas
On November 22,
1963 Dallas TV and radio news reporter Wes Wise waited in vain for
President John F. Kennedy to arrive at the Dallas Trade Mart. There was to be a
luncheon with special guests, where gifts would be given to the Kennedys for
them and their children, but Kennedy never made lunch, having been ambushed and
gunned down in Dealey Plaza
Two days later Wes Wise was assigned to film the accused
assassin Lee Harvey Oswald as he was being transferred to the Dallas
County Dallas
City Hall
Thwarted on two assignments during the most excruciating
weekend in his life, Wise kept an interest in the case from the time he was
pounding the streets as a beat reporters through his promotion to TV anchor and
later as mayor of Dallas
The day after the assassination Wise was assigned to trace
Oswald’s movements from the TSBD to the Texas Theater in Oak Cliff where he was
captured. It was an assignment he is still, in a sense, pursing. Of all the
reporters in Dallas
I first read about Wes Wise in the published reports of the
House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). It was listed under the
heading “Oswald-Tippit Associates,” and labeled “The Wise Allegation,’ although
Wes Wise never made any allegations. He just followed his reporter’s instincts,
which led him into a labyrinth of intrigue involving a fleeing suspect and a
’57 Plymouth
So when I was in Dallas
We began at the once and forever Texas School Book
Depository, which now houses the Sixth Floor Museum that overlooks Dealey
Plaza, the scene of the crime.
THE TEXAS SCHOOL DEALEY PLAZA
People come here from all over the world to see the place
where John F. Kennedy was murdered. At any time of the day or night you will
find people walking around, pointing up to the sixth floor corner window of the
TSBD and walking behind the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll. It is a daily
ritual that is acted out over and over, every day and every night.
People realize that something significant happened here, and
Dealey Plaza Dealey Plaza Mecca
“It’s the number one tourist attraction in Dallas, and may
be the most popular in Texas, as I don’t think the Alamo even surpasses it as
far as public interest,” says Wise, as we sit in his car on Elm Street, sort of
a dead end alley that runs in front of the TSBD. An historical marker on the
side of the building tells the story. You can see the scar on the bronze plaque
where it was amended, on a more recent date, to qualify Lee Harvey Oswald as
the “alleged” assassin. Things just don’t seem as definitive as they once did.
“I remember Eddie Barker, the KLRD (now KDFW) news director
saying this corner will never be the same again,” reflects Wise, “and I kind of
agree with him, but didn’t realize quite how much so.”
A hot dog vendor is set up next to the curb; a young man
hawks a newspaper, “The Dealey Plaza Times,” catering to the tourists.
“The assassination of this man had such a tremendous impact
on us,” Wise continues. “At the ten year mark people said that would be the
end, and we could all forget about it. But here we are now, nearly 30 years
later, and if anything, there is much more interest in all of this.”
The Sixth Floor exhibit, a multi-media museum, attracts bus
loads of school children, and travelers can’t pass through downtown Dallas Dealey
Plaza
Although it is controversial for not including conspiracy
theories, and only parroting the official version of events, Wise says “The
exhibit captures the impact the assassination had on us, as well as the Kennedy
mystique, and much of that sort of history.”
The new generation just learning about the assassination of
JFK might know the place, the time and the date – 12:30 pm, Friday, November
22, 1963, Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, but to really understand the
significance of JFK’s murder you have to put it into an historical context. “I
think the background of Dallas at the time is important, and the Sixth Floor
exhibit is fair with it, although it doesn’t show Dallas, warts and all,”
reflects Wise, who proceeds to drive east on Elm a few blocks before he pulls
over to the corner of the Greyhound Bus station.
THE GREYHOUND BUS
STATION
The way most people figured it is that Oswald left the TSBD
shortly after the assassination, within minutes, and walked about seven blocks
east from Dealey Plaza Dealey
Plaza
“To get some perspective,” Wise explained, “the School Book
Depository is two blocks west and two blocks north.”
Sitting at the curb facing the northeast, the direction
Oswald headed immediately after the assassination, I observed, further on down
the street, a large skyscraper with the words “Southland” on it, asked Wise
about it and jotted the name down in my notes.
Later that very day I met with former Congressional investigator
Gaeton Fonzi, and asked him in which building lobby in Dallas did Antonio
Vechina meet with his CIA case officer
“Maurice Bishop” and find him meeting with Oswald? Fonzi said, “The Southland Building,” thus
presenting another possible destination for the fleeing Oswald, though one that
he apparently had a change of mind about before getting there.
Oswald got on a bus heading back towards the scene of the
crime, and got off at this location. “Now this area was just packed with people
who were standing along the sidewalks, it was about eight or ten people deep, a
very friendly, pro-Kennedy crowd. When the bus got caught in a traffic jam, he
got off right here near this corner, or just beyond it.”
The bus driver later identified Oswald, as did another
passenger, Mrs. Bledsoe, Oswald’s former landlady. He took a bus transfer
ticket and got off the buss, and within minutes, the bus was boarded and
searched by policeman.
Oswald then got in a cab. The cab driver said that Oswald
flagged him down, then offered the cab to a little old lady, hardly the actions
of an assassin fleeing the scene of a crime.
“He apparently did several things that were uncharacteristic
of a person who was uptight or upset,” notes Wise.
The cab took Oswald back through Dealey
Plaza
Wise pulls over to the curb across the street from the TSBD.
Wise pulls over to the curb across the street from the TSBD.
“On the day after the assassination I talked my way up to
the 6th floor with a camera and filmed the scene,” Wise recalls.
“Going up to the 6th floor was really an eerie experience at the
time because it was dark, dank and dusty, and people were still going around
investigating the evidence.”
“Taking my way up there was typical of the way it was then,
compared to the way it is now,” Wise explains. Now tourists must get passed two
uniformed security guards and a metal detector to visit the Sixth
Floor Museum
“I had been on TV for years, prime time, as sports anchor,
and since most policemen are sports fans, practically anyplace I went in Dallas
Back on the street, Wise said that he called in to his
office on the 2 way radio to say he was going out to Oak Cliff to where the cab
driver took Oswald on the previous day. “I was in a marked KLRD News car and
parked adjacent to the curb just across the street from the Depository. My
assignment, from KRLD news director Eddie Barker, was to trace Oswald’s steps
as closely as we knew, his movements after the assassination, as best we
could.”
“As I was putting up the microphone of the radio I sort of
caught a glimpse of this guy out of the corner of my eye. I could see a man in
a suit and hat, and it was exactly the same suit and hat he had on the next
day. It was Jack Ruby. And he says, ‘Oh, wasn’t this awful, Wes? Jackie is
going to have to come back and testify while those poor kids…I can’t imagine
it.’”
Wise described to him how he had been stationed at the Trade
Mart, waiting for Kennedy’s arrival, and what a sad scene that was when people
learned what had happened. “I told him about these saddles from Neiman-Marcus
that were gifts for Carolyn and John John, gifts that they never received. And
when I told this to Jack, visible tears came to his eyes.”
“Let me tell you what,” Wise says emphatically, “in Dallas,
and I’m sure all over the country, but especially here, people were messing up
(and crying openly), and sometimes, more than messing up, male and female, kids
and adults, almost constantly during those three days. It was a tremendous
emotional experience. Of course, for a newsman, it was unusual because you
can’t let emotions get away with you, and we were working 15 hours a day. But
when you stopped, and you went back home and you were alone with your wife, boy
it was the most draining experience in the world.”
“I talked to Ruby for ten to twelve minutes, and I’ve often
wished I had that microphone on and recorded that conversation I had with Ruby,
but of course, he was such a nuisance, my impulse was, “Oh, Jack, come on, you
know I’ve got work to do.”
Pulling around the corner onto Houston
Street County
Jail Union train station, the Dallas Morning
News building is across the street. Ruby was here at the time of the
assassination, possibly sitting in an advertising office with a window
overlooking Dealey Plaza
“The name of Dealey is synonymous with the Dallas Morning
News,” says Wise, who stops in front of the building. On the side, carved in
huge letters, it reads: “Build the news upon the rock of truth and
righteousness. Conduct it always upon the lines of fairness and integrity.
Acknowledge the right of the people to get from newspapers both sides of every
important question.”
Then Wise drives a mile over the Trinity River
across the Jefferson Street Viaduct to Oak Cliff.
“Oak Cliff is unbelievable,” Wise says. “Dallas Dallas Neeley
Street
Then there’s the Dobb’s House restaurant, where both Oswald
and Tippit had breakfast at the counter at the same time on Thursday morning,
and Austin’s barbeque, where Tippit moonlighted as a bouncer for one of Ruby’s
partners, and the Hallandale street house where the Cubans lived, and Red Bird
airport, for small, private planes, and the Texas Theater where Oswald was
captured. Oak Cliff is a virtual hornet’s nest of assassination hot spots.
“And what I always thought was fascinating and still
mysterious to me to this day,” Wise says, “is the proximity of Ruby’s
apartment.”
“Let’s put it this way,” he says. “The direction that Oswald
was going was in the general direction of Ruby’s apartment. And I have no
reason to believe Oswald was in cahoots with Ruby. I just think it’s an amazing
coincidence for a city of this size. Well, he wasn’t on his way to the movies.”
The cab took Oswald into Oak Cliff, five blocks past his
rooming house that he walked back to. Now people surmise he did this to throw
off the police or the cab driver, if anybody was tailing him or trying to trace
him, and it also gave him the opportunity to approach his place from a
different direction and case it out, to see if there was any activity there
before he arrived.
OAK CLIFF
“Oak Cliff is still part of Dallas
“To me, the proximity of all these places in this huge city
boggles my mind today, because for all of that to be confined in such a small
location is amazing. The reason I know what I know is because I was here as a
reporter, I’ve followed it since then, and I’m still interested in it as a former
newsman. I’m asked about it all the time. It is still a fascinating thing to
me.”
OSWALD’S ROOMING
HOUSE – 1026
N. BECKLEY STREET
“Now here’s the rooming – 1026 North Beckley .
This is the first time I’ve ever been here when there hasn’t been a sign out
front saying there’s a room for rent. The rooming house cleaning lady said a
police car (with two policemen in it) stopped out front while Oswald was in
there changing. It honked its horn and then took off. Well I have never figured
that one out,” says Wise.
The cleaning lady saw Oswald standing at the bus stop out
front apparently waiting for a bus that would have taken him back to center
city. Instead, the Warren Commission
surmised that Oswald began walking away from center city.
Riding downBeckley 10th
Street
Riding down
That Mrs. Paine was teaching Oswald to drive around that
time is an important point that comes in play. There is still much dispute over
whether Oswald could have covered as much ground as he did, between the time of
the assassination and when he was captured at the Texas Theater. All of this
took place within an hour following the assassination. “And that’s why my
discovery is so pertinent to all of this,” Wise surmises.
“Now I’m going over to 10th an Patton streets
where Tippit was killed. This sis not the exact route that Oswald took, because
he probably took a short cut.”
10th &
PATTON STREETS – OAK CLIFF
“Now again, the neighborhood has always been like this,
quite residential, but its probably more run down today,” says Wise. “This is
the corner of Tenth and Patton. The shooting took place here, by this tree,
where Tippit pulled over. He called Oswald over, then got out of the car, which
I understand is bad police practice for some reason, and Oswald shot him.
Somebody heard him say, ‘Poor damn cop,’ or ‘Poor dumb cop.’”
Wise also came up with another witness to the Tippit
shooting years later. Jack Tatum was driving a half a block away and saw the
shooting in his rear view mirror. He saw Tippit fall to the ground and the
gunman shoot him again when he was on the ground. Tatum then thought, “My God,
what’s going on in this city?” He took off and never told anybody, until years
later.
“The proximity of al this to Ruby’s apartment is something I
don’t think has gotten much attention,” Wise says, emphasizing the point.
“Oswald was going in the general direction of Ruby’s apartment because there’s
no way to get there in a straight line. See how close it is? It’s kind of remarkable.”
It’s about five or six blocks from the boarding house to
where Tippit is shot and six more blocks to Ruby’s apartment, just across the
Thornton Freeway.
After Tippit was
shot, the Warren Report claims that Oswald switched directions again.
“The Warren Commission claims that Oswald walked out of this
alley, took off his jacket and left it under a car at the side of the building
that is just across the street from the Hughes Funeral Home, where Tippit was
laid out. There were so many police cars speeding along this street that a
funeral procession had to be delayed for 20 minutes until the action died
down.”
At the Hughes Funeral Home, we turn right onto Jefferson .
“This is the main street of Oak Cliff,” Wise explains. “Now we’ve gone a long ways
here – ten or twelve blocks. The other distance, between the rooming house and
the Tippit murder scene was only five or six blocks, but now we’ve gone ten or
twelve blocks. And he was walking. Now you have to put it into the context of
the fact that radios were blaring out the fact that the suspect was in Oak
Cliff.”
Oswald was mistakenly identified as being in the library (on
the north side of Jefferson ), where he was known to
spend time, and a Church, which were both quickly surrounded by police.
Along a row of stores is the vestibule of what then was a
shoe store where Oswald supposedly ducked in when a police car went by. The
shoe store clerk thought that suspicious and watched this man go into the
theater without buying a ticket. The ticket girl was standing out on the curb
watching all of the police cars go by.
Also along here is the Top Ten record shop where Tippit ran
in and made a quick call on the pay phone shortly before he was killed. It has
never been established who he was calling.
TEXAS THEATER
Pulling up to the curb Wise says, “Here’s the Texas Theater
and the box office, which he walked passed without buying a ticket. The theater
looks pretty much the same, although it was redone to accommodate Oliver
Stone.”
“A World War II double feature was in progress, there were
some kids in the balcony who were playing hooky from school, and fewer than a
dozen patrons in the audience. At about 1:45
the ticket booth girl called the police to say that a man had entered the
theater without buying a ticket, and within a few minutes no fewer than 15
police officers, two FBI agents and an assistant district attorney arrived at
the theater. Some officers went to the stage with Johnny Brewer, the shoe
salesman who saw a man acting suspiciously in the vestibule of his store. The
houselights went up, but the film kept playing.”
“Brewer pointed out a man in the back of the theater as the
officers came down the isle. Oswald was confronted, he stood up and got into a
scuffle with officer McDonald, who wrestled a gun away from Oswald and punched
him. ‘I’m not resisting arrest, I am not resisting arrest,’ Oswald screamed as
he was dragged from the theater. Another patron was taken into a police car at
the rear of the theater.”
“’I think we have our man on both counts,’ one of the
arresting officers said as they pout Oswald into a patrol car.”
From the Texas Theater they took Oswald to Dallas
City Hall
CAROUSEL CLUB – 1313 ½ COMMERCE STREET
On the way to City Hall you pass 1313
½ Commerce Street Bell
Plaza
“There was a liquor store on the corner here at Commerce and
Akard Streets and the Carousel Club was on the second floor,” Wise recalls. “I
would take people out to dinner at the Pyramid Room at the Fairmount Hotel, one
of the best places to eat, and then I’d take them to the Carousel Club. It’s
just my nature to do this. I would take them from one end of the social
spectrum to the other, and people would get a kick out of that.”
“You would go up these sleazy looking stairs. Most people
would think you would have to knock twice and ask for Joe, but it wasn’t quite
like that. You walked in and there was a type of box office where you paid an
admission, a nominal fee, today it would be $4 or $5, then it was only $1 or
$2. At the time, Ruby wouldn’t charge those of us in the press a cover. That
was back in the days when it was perfectly acceptable for the press to get free
admittance to a place like that. But I always bought my own drinks.”
“Dallas
“Nobody was really close to Jack Ruby, but of those of us
who did know him, it was very difficult for us to imagine him in any
sophisticated conspiratorial type of thing. He wasn’t that smart, he just
wasn’t that bright. People come back and say that’s the guy you would get to be
a patsy or scapegoat, and that’s true. I don’t deny that, but it’s difficult
for us to take that.”
“Certainly the Carousel Club wasn’t the place to go, but it
was a place to go especially if you were in town for a convention. You’re in
town and you say, ‘What the hell, let’s go over there to that sleazy looking
place.’”
Just down the street and around the corner from the site of
the Carousel Club is the old City Hall and Dallas Police Jail.
“The old jail was on the top floor,” Wise explains. “It’s a
very little, dinky place. It’s a holding tank until they can move prisoners to
the county jail.”
That’s what they were doing when Ruby jumped out of the
shadows and killed Oswald. They were just building the new City Hall when Wise
was in office, and this is where he served as mayor from 1971 until 1976.
“I have heard some of the things that indicate Ruby may have
entered through the ramp that I used to go to work everyday, or he might have
gone up these steps and then down. He knew City Hall quite well, probably
better than I did at the time. There is a debate as to how he got in there, but
its all conjecture.”
“I think you have to have a picture of what it was like back
then. First of all, there was no thing as real security back in those days.
Today you have to sign in, get visitors passes and walk through metal
detectors. Back then security was not like that. In addition, you had the Good
Old Boys system between members of the press and the police. But we got quite a
lot of good news tips that way too.”
“The most popular theory is that there was a cop out here at
the top of the ramp who could have been directing traffic when Ruby slipped
down the ramp. I was waiting for Oswald at the County jail, but if I had been
here, I wouldn’t have been surprised at all to see Ruby. I’d have said, ‘Hi
Jack,’ and he would have said, ‘Hi Wes,’ and I wouldn’t have thought anything
of it. So the cop may have even recognized him and said, ‘Go ahead Jack, you’re
harmless.’”
“Down the ramp there’s the doors and elevator where Oswald
emerged. A car horn beeped, camera lights were on, flash bulbs lit up the
scene, crowded with cops and newsmen. And Ruby jumped out of the crowd and shot
Oswald in the stomach.”
EL CHICO RESTAURANT –
OAK CLIFF
People may focus on President Kennedy when they think about
the events of that weekend, but actually three people were killed – Kennedy,
J.D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald. The key to any one of those murders also
unlocks the mystery of the other two.
A week to ten day after the assassination, just as things
were starting to calm down, and people were getting back to their routines, TV
sports anchor Wes Wise was supposed to give a talk on sports at the El Chico
restaurant in Oak Cliff. The lunch and talk had been arranged weeks before,
shortly after Kennedy’s visit was first announced.
“This was the El Chico restaurant,” says Wise. “It’s still a
Mexican restaurant, but has a different name today. I was to give a speech on
sports, but the whole town was still taking about the assassination, and they
didn’t want me to talk about sports. It had been well known that I had
interviewed Mrs. Paine and Mrs. Tippit and that I had the story where I traced
all of Oswald’s steps, and it was pretty well known that I had talked to Ruby
at the depository on the day after the assassination, so the audience, instead
of talking sports, wanted my insights into the assassination.”
According to Wise, when the question and answer session
began, a guy puts up his hand and says, “We have a mechanic over here at my
garage, who says that he saw Lee Harvey Oswald sitting in a parked car right
here in this parking lot, during that period of time right after the
assassination, when radio stations were all saying that the suspect’s in Oak
Cliff.”
Although Wise said he wanted to talk to him, the man noted
the mechanic was a bit reluctant to talk.
As Wise puts it, “This is where my being a sports announcer
was very beneficial to me in the coverage of this story, because people recognize
me. So I went over there to this garage next door and met Mr. W. T. White, a
nice little old man in coveralls, a regular mechanic type looking guy.”
“White said that he and his wife were watching TV on the
night of the assassination when they brought Lee Harvey Oswald out at the
police station. White said to his wife, ‘That’s the man I saw in the car over
in the parking lot this afternoon.’”
“The car, he said, as parked against the far wall of the
parking lot, behind a billboard. The car, facing Davis
Street Plymouth
“Now (he later) got the color wrong, but he got the model
and the license plate number, which is an important part of the story.”
“You definitely identified him as Oswald?” Wise asked.
“There’s no doubt at all. I said that to my wife, that’s the man I saw in the
parking lot of the El Chico restaurant,” White responded.
White then showed Wise exactly where the car was parked and
where he was standing when he walked over towards the car to watch the police
cars going by at a pretty high rate of speed. He thought the guy looked
suspicious, as if he were hiding or something. White said he walked closer and
got a good look at him, but when the guy made some sort of motion in the car,
he turned around and walked back towards the garage. He then took down the
license plate number, and you can see the license plate number on my car
clearly.”
Incredulous, Wise asked White, “You took down the license
number of the car? And he said, “Yea, I have it right here.”
“He reached into his shirt pocket and took out a piece of
paper with the license number on it and I thought, ‘God, what have I fallen
into?’”
White was still reluctant, and said, “Look, I don’t want to
get into any trouble. We don’t know what this thing is all about.”
Wise said he had to use his best salesmanship. “Mr White, we’re talking about the President of the
So White handed Wise the piece of paper with the license
number on it, and Wise copied the number and gave it to the FBI.
Considering the possibility it could develop into a big
story, Wise told the FBI, “I said to them, ‘Look, we realize that if this turns
out to be a big story, it’s everybody’s story. But we want first crack at it
because we are giving you the information.’”
And the FBI agreed to that and said they would check into
it. They found that a ’57 Plymouth Texas 4309 Colgate
Street , Garland , Texas
According to Wise, “The FBI went out and checked it out, and
what was really amazing to me was the car is right there in the driveway – a
’57 Plymouth
“They knock on the door and Mrs. Mather comes out. They ask
Mrs. Mather where her husband was at the time of the assassination. She said he
was working at Collins Radio, in nearby Richardson ,
Texas 2
pm , it was at the Tippit residence. They were very close friends of
J.D. Tippit, and his wife had called and said that her husband had been shot
and killed, and would they please come over.”
“Now, to me, that coincidence is just mind boggling.”
“When the FBI came back to us, they played down all of this.
They played it Down, Down. We asked them if they looked into it closely, but
let’s put it this way – we would have thought that they would have looked into
it more closely, and much more deeply than they did. The Warren Commission
didn’t even interview me on this, although the House Select Committee on
Assassinations did interview me, and quite extensively. They were extremely
interested in it.”
When Mather sat down to dinner with Wes Wise and two CBS
News editors, he was too nervous to eat. They asked him questions and tried to figure
out what they too considered to be an amazing coincidence – the accused
assassin of the President and a policeman, being seen in a car that belonged to
a good friend of the policeman within an hour of the murder.
Mather was interviewed by the Wise, the FBI, HSCA
investigators, CBS News and researcher Larry Harris, but no one could get
anything substantial out of him.
The HSCA investigator, Jack Moriarty, was an experienced big
city homicide detective, but was faithful to the security oath he signed while
working for the HSCA. He did say however, that he was just following the leads
wherever they went, then submitted reports to Washington New
Orleans Miami
The HSCA issued a subpoena for Mather to testify under oath,
giving him immunity from prosecution, but they never acted on it.
The late Larry Harris knew more about the Tippit murder than anyone, even getting a job as a mailman just to get the neighborhood better. When Harris talked to him Mather said, “Look, I’ve talked with the FBI, to the police and the House Select Committee investigators, and I’ve told them everything. I just can’t explain it.”
According to Wise, “we tried to draw Mather out¸ but
couldn’t do it. All Mather would say was, ‘put yourself in my shoes. I just
can’t explain it.’”
But no one bothered to check out Mather’s alibi and go out
and look more closely at Collins Radio Company of Richardson ,
Texas
3) THE COLLINS RADIO
CONNECTIONS
(to the
Assassination of President Kennedy)
By William E. Kelly – Revised from report originally
published in Backchannels magazine and presented at the national conference of
the Coalition On Political Assassination (COPA), October 10, 1994 .
If the assassination of President Kennedy was the result of
not only a conspiracy, but a covert action and coup d’etat, as many people
believe, there should be evidence of this from both the scene of the crime(s)
as well as from the highest echelons of power among those who took over the
government. This would be especially so if the assassination was not the
actions of a lone-nut or a foreign attack by Cuban or Soviet intelligence service
sponsors, but an internal manipulation of policy and control, an inside job.
As Edward Luttwack describes in
his "How-To" book Coup
d’etat – A Practical Handbook (Alfred A. Knopf, 1968, p. 117),
"Control over the flow of information emanating from the political center
will be our most important weapon in establishing… authority after the coup.
The seizure of the main means of mass communication will thus be a task of
crucial importance."
At the scene(s) of the crime, eyewitness testimony is always
suspect. Homicide detectives prefer more solid leads that provide documented
evidence that can be introduced in court, such as fingerprints, telephone and
automobile license records.
There are a number of automobile license records of
significance in regards to the assassination of President Kennedy, including
the tampered photo among the possessions of Lee Harvey Oswald of the license on
1957 Chevy in General Walker’s driveway, plus the license numbers of cars seen
in Dealey Plaza photos immediately before and after the assassination.
Most significant however, is the Texas Dallas
White walked across the street to get closer and exchanged
glances with the man, who quickly drove away. White wrote down the license tag
PP4537 on a piece of paper and forgot about it until later that day when he saw
Lee Harvey Oswald on television and recognized him as the man he saw acting
suspiciously in the Plymouth earlier that afternoon.
A few weeks later, when Dallas Plymouth
White told Wise that nobody knew who or what was really
behind the assassination of President Kennedy and he really didn’t want to get
involved, but he handed over the paper to Wise, who passed it on to the police
and FBI.
A quick check of the Texas Garland ,
Texas Garland Plymouth Richardson , Texas
Instead of going out to Collins Radio to interview Mather
however, the FBI went first to Mr. White, who Wes Wise had promised wouldn’t be
involved, and took additional statements from him, changing his story for the
official reports and exchanging the two tone Plymouth Dallas
Documents later released under the JFK Act indicate that
Mather was questioned by HSCA investigators and claimed that he worked on
electronics at Collins, his specific job being the installation of the radio
equipment aboard Air Force Two – the Vice President’s plane.
That this lead was not properly investigated, and remains
uninvestigated today, is because such an inquiry actually does lead to the
heart of the plot to murder not only Dallas
The significance of the Collins Radio connections becomes
apparent with a quick review of the published record, and that:
1. On November 1,
1963 the New York Times published a photograph of the ship
the Rex, which Fidel Castro identified as the boat that dropped off a team
of assassins in Cuba Palm
Beach , Florida Cuba U.S. Nicaragua CIA
front company Sea Ship Inc., with the Rex then being leased to the Collins
Radio Company of Richardson , Texas
2. Founded by Arthur Collins, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Collins
Radio first made news headlines when young Collins was an amateur radio buff
with the only (home made) radio receiver who could pick up the radio
transmissions of Navy Commander Richard E. Byrd from his polar exploration
expedition. [Richard Byrd is the cousin of the founder of the Civil Air Patrol
and owner of the Texas School Book Depository building].
3. Collins Radio became a major defense contractor during
World War II, and following the war, participated in Operation Paperclip,
hiring Dr. Alex Lipisch, the former Nazi scientist who developed the Delta I
glider and ME 163 Komet jet fighter. For Collins, Lipisch was assigned to the
boat development program that worked with General Dynamics in attempting to
build and refine a sleek, swift speedboat – the V20 - that could be used for
Cuban infiltration missions like the Rex mission. It was later used in Vietnam
4. David Ferrie’s telephone records reflect that in the
weeks before the assassination he made frequent calls from the New
Orleans Dallas , Texas
5. In the week before the assassination, a reservation was
made at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club for a large party of Collins Radio employees.
6. The Dallas
7. When Lee Harvey Oswald returned to Texas from Soviet
Russia, George DeMohrenschildt introduced him to retired Navy Admiral Chester
Bruton, an executive at Collins Radio, with the idea of Oswald getting a job
there, as he had worked in a radio factory in Minsk, USSR. Oswald and Marina
visited Bruton with DeMohrenschilt.
8. At the time of the assassination Adml. Bruton was working
on a top-secret nuclear submarine communications project for Collins, with the
Navy’s nuclear sub radar and communications HQ being based at Woods Hole, Massachusetts
9. In 1963 Collins Radio began receiving large military
contracts including one for the construction of a microwave communications
network in Southeast Asia , specifically Vietnam
10. After Oswald was murdered while in Dallas
11. In Miami Florida
12. Collins Radio supplied and maintained the equipment used
by the Voice of America, all manned NASA space flights, the Strategic Air
Command (SAC), as well as all equipment used for the CIA ’s
Guatemalan and Cuban operations. Most significantly, Collins Radio was
responsible for installing and maintaining all radio equipment aboard Air Force
One, Air Force Two and the Cabinet’s plane.
13. According to the Collins Radio Annual Report to
stockholders for 1963-64, Collins Radio not only installed and maintained the
radios aboard most military and executive branch planes, they also operated the
station known as "Liberty" at their Cedar Rapids, Iowa headquarters,
which served as a relay station for all radio communications between the White
House, the Pentagon, Air Force One, Air Force Two, the Cabinet plane and
Andrews AFB in Washington.
14. Additional items learned since this was written.
(Collins X,Y,Z)
[This "Liberty 11/22/63 .
"Air Force One, the Presidential airplane, was placed in service in 1962
using communications equipment developed and manufactured by Collins. The
aircraft…was modified to meet special requirements…In 1962, the station many
remember as "Liberty" was opened and operated from the new
communications building….(in Cedar Rapids, Iowa)…Collins had a contract with
the Air Force to serve as either the primary communications station or as a
backup whenever Air Force One, the presidential aircraft, and other aircraft in
the VIP fleet carried cabinet members or
high ranking military officers. Over the airwaves the station’s call word was ‘Liberty
In his book The
Making of a President – 1964, Theodore H. White wrote: "There is a
tape recording in the archives o the government which best recaptures the sound
of the hours as it waited for leadership. It is a recording of all the
conversations in the air, monitored by the Signal Corps Midwestern center
‘Liberty,’ between Air Force One in Dallas, the Cabinet plane over the Pacific,
and the Joint Chiefs’ Communications Center in Washington….On the flight the
party learned that there was no conspiracy, learned the identity of Oswald and
his arrest; and the President’s mind turned to the duties of consoling the
stricken and guiding the quick."
According to the analysis of E. Martin Schotz and Vincent
Salandria (in History Will Not Absolve Us,
1996), "And yet the White House had informed President Johnson and the
other occupants of Air Force One, all of them witnesses to the hail of bullets
which had poured down on Dealey Plaza, that as of the afternoon of the
assassination there was to be no conspiracy and that Oswald was to be the lone
assassin. If White’s report were correct this would mean that federal officials
in Washington were marrying the government to the cover-up of Oswald as the
lone assassin virtually instantaneously. This could have occurred only if those
federal authorities had had foreknowledge that the evidence would implicate
Oswald and that he would have ‘no confederates.’ An innocent government could
not have reacted in such a fashion internally."
Unfortunately, there is no longer "a tape recording in
the archives of the government," as the original, unedited, multiple tape
recordings of the AF1 radio transmissions cannot be located despite an Act of
Congress, the request of the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) and
numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. Our government seems to have
simply lost the recordings, with no records being kept of their whereabouts or
destruction, if in fact they were destroyed.
The Final Report of the ARRB (p. 116) notes:
"6. White House Communications Agency."WHCA was,
and is, responsible for maintaining both secure (encrypted) and unsecured
(open) telephone, radio and telex communications between the President and the
government of the United States November 22, 1963 , WHCA was
responsible for communications between and among Air Force One and Two, the
White House Situation Room, the mobile White House, and with the Secret Service
in the motorcade."
"The Review Board sought to locate any audio recordings
of voice communications to or from Air Force One on the day of the
assassination, including communications between Air Force one and Andrews Air
Force Base during the return flight from Dallas Washington D.C.
"Given that the LBJ Library released the tapes in the
1970s, the paper trail is now sketch and quite cold. The LBJ Library staff is
fairly confident that the tapes originated with the White House Communications
Agency (WHCA). The LBJ Library staff told the Review Board staff that it
received the tapes from the White House as part of the original shipment of
President Johnson’s papers in 1968 or 1969. According to the LBJ Library’s
documentation, the accession card reads: "WHCA?" and is dated 1975.
The Review Board staff could not locate any records indicating who performed
the editing, or when, or where."
"The Review Board’s repeated written and oral inquiries
of the White House Communications Agency did not bear fruit. The WHCA could not
produce any records that illuminated the provenance of the edited tapes."
At the time I delivered my report on "The Collins Radio
Connections" to the National COPA Conference in Washington Virginia CIA
in the operation of the Rex in Cuba in1963.
Also, in the October, 1998 issue of John F. Kennedy,
Jr.’s George Magazine, - David
Wise reported on how the NRO had "lost" $6 billion in U.S. taxpayer’s
money, and specifically mentioned the fiasco surrounding the construction of
the HQ building, or which Collins/Rockwell served as a cover company.
[William E. Kelly is a freelance journalist whose research
into the assassination of President Kennedy is partially sponsored by the Fund
For Constitutional Government Investigative Journalism Project.
THE BRADEN FILE – Syndicate Courier and con man caught in
dragnet at the scene.
Jim Braden
VOLUNTARY STATEMENT. Not Under Arrest Form No. 86
SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT
COUNTY OF DALLAS, TEXAS
Before me, the undersigned authority, on this the 22 day of November A.D. 1963 personally appeared Jim Braden, Address 621 S. Barrington Drive Apt 6 Los Angeles Calf. Office
I am here on business (oil business) and was walking down
/s/ Jim Braden
Subscribed and sworn to before me on this the 22nd day of Nov A. D. 1963
/s/ Evelyn Cox
Notary Public, Dallas County, Texas
"Legacy of Doubt" by Peter Noyes was published in 1973 (Pinnacle Books, Oct. 1973) in a pulp paperback with a cover that screamed “A JOURNALISTIC BOMBSHELL! –Startling new evidence about the JFK and RFK deaths!”
Noyes, a veteran CBS TV producer and journalist wrote, “The assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in
Noyes book reads like an old fashioned Sam Spade detective novel, complete with gangsters, dames and cops on the take, as he describes meeting former FBI agent Bill Turner, who unsuccessfully tries to get Noyes and CBS to air his bootleg copy of the Zapruder film. On his way out the door, Turner throws Noyes a bone – check out this guy – Jim Braden, who reportedly lived in
Noyes went to the official records and discovered that on
When Noyes asked then LAPD Chief of Detectives Bob Houghton about Eugene Hale Brading, and he asked the FBI (File #799431), they learned that EH Brading was a member of the La Costa Country Club and was in the vicinity of the Ambassador Hotel when RFK was murdered, besides being at Dealey Plaza.
As Noyes reports in his book, “Houghton,… eventually satisfied himself after several thousand man-hours of investigation that Eugene Hale Brading was not connected with the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy. Shortly after Houghton began working on the RFK case, he signed a contract with Random House to write a book about the assassination called ‘Special Unit Senator.’ That was the name Houghton had given the investigating task force looking into Robert Kennedy’s murder. In the police department, the task force was better known as the
“The
“But Byrne always insisted to me that he was never given the
From various sources, Noyes pieced together some basic background: “Eugene Hale Brading was one of three sons born to Charles and Millie Brading, a relatively poor but hard-working couple from the plains of
“Brading was only nineteen when hew as first sentenced to prison in Kansas for burglary in 1934…paroled…in 1938, (he) proceeded to moved to a much faster paced environment in Miami, Florida, where he quickly became associated with the hoodlum element. On
“Intelligence information indicted that Brading was slowly weaving his way into the mob’s hierarchy and that he was a man who was going places. In 1948 while using the alias of Harry Eugene Bradley, he was arrested in
On reading that last passage, I gave Noyes’ book to my father, then a Lieutenant in the
The next day my father handed me the 1948 Camden PD arrest file on “Harry Eugene Bradley” also known as Eugene Hale Brading, including a front and side mug shot, details of the arrest and a three page rap sheet of previous arrests, and an attachment from the FBI requesting they be notified of any information about this individual.
Like he would be at
Curious, I looked up Dominic Mattia in the phone book and found he lived in a new development in nearby
I was in my early 20s at the time and it was one of my first forays into the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy.
Making copies of Jim Braden’s
I knew Jim Braden’s testimony before the HSCA would be important, mainly because of his movements, residency at the Cabana Hotel and sharing an office in New Orleans on the same floor in the same building (Pere Marquette) as G. Ray Gill. Since Jim Garrison obtained the phone records of Gill’s office, and knew about some phone calls that established a pattern of evidence, I mistakenly believed that it would be properly investigated.
After Richard Sprague was forced out of the HSCA and G. Robert Blakely was appointed chief counsel, I thought Blakely’s academic background in the study of organized crime at Cornell, and his development of the RICO Act as a prosecution tool, that the Braden angle would be investigated.
When Braden was finally called to testify before the HSCA, he did so in executive session, for two days, even though, as a reading of his testimony shows, he wanted his story to be told so he could be publicly exonerated. Instead, when the HSCA concluded its business, it published a series of reports and exhibits, like the Warren Commission, but then sealed the rest of its records for 50 years as Congressional Records.
According to House Rule 36, all Congressional Records are sealed for 50 years, and Congress, unlike the
After the HSCA folded up its tent and sealed its records, I got a phone call from Michael Ewing, who worked with Blakely at the HSCA and was co-authoring a book with Blakely on how JFK was killed by the mob. I respected
I explained I had given a copy to Sprague and the HSCA, but
Although Blakley said that he was content to “Rest on the judgment of historians in 50 years,” others were not, and the JFK Act was passed in 1992 that ordered the release to the public of all government records related to the assassination of President Kennedy. The HSCA records of their investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which included evidence of conspiracy, continues to be withheld from the public.
In his testimony before the HSCA, Braden made it quite clear that he wanted his story to be told in public, but his DC attorney at the time does not know what became of him.
When I was in
If Jim Braden is still alive, he would be in his upper 80s, probably living near a golf course, possibly near
It would be greatly appreciated if anyone could put me in contact with Jim Braden, aka Edgar Eugene Brading, aka Harry Eugene Bradley, as I am anxious to get his story out.
THE BRADEN
When Jim Braden checked into the Cabana Hotel in
On
Shortly before
Both Ruby and Larry Meyers were from
Since Jim Braden used a credit card to pay for his drinks, it was later determined that Braden and his associates had a few drinks at the same Bon Vivant bar room, though he later claimed not to know Ruby or either of the Meyers brothers.
Jim Braden was there on oil business, Larry Meyers was mixing business and pleasure, Ed Meyers was there for the convention, and Ruby was just being his flamboyant self.
The next day, while Larry Meyers played golf, Ed Meyers went to his convention, Jean Aase went shopping with one of Ruby’s dancers, Betty McDonald, but Braden would miss the meeting his associates had with H.L. Hunt. Instead, Braden was taken into custody as a suspect in the murder of President John F. Kennedy.
Larry Meyers had a few conversations with his friend from the old neighborhood, Jack Ruby, who then proceeded to stalk, shoot and kill Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin, while the suspect was in the custody of the
Ed Meyers and his wife, who had been to
Braden was never questioned by the Warren Commission or other investigations until the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) took his testimony over two days, and then locked it away for 50 years.
Jim Braden’s actions before and after the assassination are indeed suspicious, and even Braden, as he expressed in his HSCA testimony, was himself anxious to clear the record and his name.
In 1970,
Seven years later Peter Noyes, the television producer, tried to locate Braden as a potential witness, and tried to obtain his then current address by contacting the California Division of Motor Vehicles, who told Noyes that six weeks before the assassination, in September, 1963, Eugene Hale Brading legally changed his name to Jim Braden and had requested a new drivers license bearing that name.
The Los Angeles Police Department then told Noyes that Eugene Hale Brading, now also known as Jim Braden, had numerous arrests and was associated with organized crime activities. Born in
Once, in
Contacting Braden’s parole officer, Noyes found that Braden had stayed at the Cabana Hotel in
While Braden was not at the meeting, his associates did sign the register at Hunt’s building and kept the appointment.
Not just such circumstantial evidence, which could be coincidence or happenstance, Noyes also found that Braden’s movements were suspicious because they matched some third-party records, specifically some telephone records.
After Braden made his statement in
Both the Pinkerton Detective Agency and attorney G. Wray Gill also had offices on the 17th floor of the Pierre Marquette building. In 1963 Gill represented
In 1968 New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison obtained the telephone records of Gill’s office in connection with his investigation of David Ferrie, and Ferrie’s suspected involvement in a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. Gill furnished Garrison with his office phone records, complaining that Ferrie made many of the calls, some unauthorized.
A former Eastern airlines pilot and soldier of fortune, David Ferrie reportedly flew Marcello back into the
The Warran Commission investigators examined Jack Ruby’s phone records and some of his associates, including Larry Meyers, among whose phone records Jim Garrison discovered a phone number in
It was assumed by Garrison and others that Ferrie made the call from Gill’s office on the 17th floor of the Pierre Marquette in New Orleans to the Chicago number used by Jean Aase (aka West), the women who accompanied Larry Meyers to Dallas from Chicago on the weekend of the assassination.
The phone number Chicago Whitehall 4 – 4970, was listed as Jean Aase’s address, 20 East Delaware Avenue, a hotel-apartment building owned by a Russian family and managed by Les Barker, a friend and business partner of Larry Meyers.
The call to that number from Gill’s office in
A few weeks after that call, in October 1963, Les Barker introduced Larry Meyers to Jean Aase, who lived in one of the hotel room apartments. Originally from Minnesotta, Aase was referred to by Meyers as “Miss West,” and characterized as “a party girl, playgirl, a dumb but accommodating broad and semi-professional hooker.”
Three days before the assassination Meyers and Aase flew to
Jim Braden and his associates from
The Warren Report reads: “On
By the end of the weekend the President was dead, Braden had been taken into custody and Ruby had killed the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Braden then left
Robert F. Kennedy, in his book The Enemy Within, explained how such third-party telephone records are important evidence in gaining organized crime conspiracy convictions. “We find out who is in touch with whom and on what dates,” Kennedy wrote. “Say that A calls B; we get B’s calls; find that two minutes after he hung up from talking to A, he called C. Then we find from canceled checks, money going from A to C. Gangsters in
Peter Noyes, the California television producer who first uncovered Jim Braden’s name change and criminal records, wrote a book published in paperback, A Legacy of Doubt (Pinnacle Press, 1973), which details Braden’s background, associations with organized crime and possible involvement in the assassination. Shortly after Kennedy’s murder, in 1964, Braden became a charter member in the La Costa Country Club, near
From Braden’s rap sheet of previous arrests, Noyes developed a profile of Braden, and knew that he had been arrested in
Since my father was a Lieutenant in the Camden Police Department at the time (1973), I showed him this reference in Noyes’ book, and shortly thereafter he handed me the original 1948 Camden arrest report [C.P.D. # 5648 - 9837] for Harry Eugene Bradley, as a material witness in the gambling case of Dominic Mattia.
Including front and side view mug shot, the report notes he is a White, Mail, 6 foot 1 inch in height, 175 pounds, of medium build, hazel eyes and brown hair. His date and place of birth is noted as
A small card details that on May 5, 1948, Harry Bradley, of 24 Benson St., Camden, N.J. an American, White, Mail, Salesman, age 33, not married, can read, condition-sober, was arrested by Detectives Conley, Bobiak and Trout as material witness in the case of Dominic Mattia, at 3:40 PM in the 4th Ward, and was lodged in Cell No. 2-N, as received by Sgt. Stanton. He was later released by “
The FBI Record SB # 381026 is two pages long, listing the 14 times Eugene Hale Bradley (aka Eugene H. Brading) was arrested and fingerprinted before May 1948. The first was on
There is also a note: “#4287-N USN,
The
In the clipping morgue of the Camden Courier Post newspaper I located a small news report of the 1948 gambling arrest, and another larger story from many years later that mentioned Dominic Mattia’s involvement in a bankruptcy scheme. I obtained Mattia’s address from the public phone directory and visited him at his suburban
Mattia told me that he had been arrested for gambling with some friends and that Braden just happened to be in the store where they were raided at the time. “I remember the him,” Mattia said, “but I only knew the guy for one day. He was a drifter. It was just a coincidence that he was there at the time. He then left town and I never saw him again.”
It seems that Jim Braden has a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In his book Noyes also notes that Jim Braden was in
In 1977 Congress officially reopened the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy by convening the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). When former Philadelphia prosecutor Richard Sprague was appointed chief counsel of the committee, I hand delivered a photo copy of the Braden file from the Camden PD to Sprague’s law office in Philadelphia, just across the Delaware River from Camden.
Sprague, who had successfully prosecuted the political assassination of a United Mine Workers union official, was not buying the lone-nut scenario for Kennedy’s murder and was quoted in the papers as saying, “I am not interested in whether Oswald was fed at his mother’s breast, my approach to motive is more direct.”
When it became apparent that Sprague was going to conduct a serious homicide investigation he was directly removed from his post in a political move that also led to the resignation of the HSCA chairman Rep. Henry Gonzalas (D. Tex.), also a witness to the assassination.
The Second Chief Counsel to the HSCA, G. Robert Blakey, was a former lawyer in RFK’s Justice Department, had founded the Cornell University Institute on Organized Crime and authored much of the RICO statutes that gave the government gang busting powers to attack organized crime.
Blakey cut back on the HSCA staff and scope of the investigation, failed to review any significant leads that implicated the intelligence agencies, relied on inconclusive scientific evidence and shifted the inquiry towards organized crime.
As an expert witness on organized crime, Blakey had previously testified in court in
After two years of conducting hearings and interviews, including two days of secret, closed door testimony of Jim Braden, Blakey’s HSCA issued a report that concluded there is evidence of conspiracy in the assassination, and disbanded.
Blakely insured that the HSCA records, including Braden’s testimony, would be sealed from the public by classifying it as “Congressional Material,” which under rule #36, ensures that the records were locked away for 50 years, or until 2029. While all other branches of government must comply with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Congress exempted itself from the law, and Blakey was quoted as saying he’s okay with that and, “I’ll rest on the judgment of historians in 50 years.”
Six months after the release of the HSCA “Final Report,” I received a telephone call from G. Robert Blakey’s assistant Michael Ewing, who was working with Blakey on a book about the assassination. I knew
I told him that I had given Sprague a copy when he first took the job, but
I said that I was glad he didn’t because if I had given Sprague the original record, and he had passed it on, Blakey would have locked it away for 50 years so nobody would have it.
When I asked Ewing why he was interested in the Braden file now, after the committee had concluded its investigation, issued its report and disbanded, and failed to even mention Braden in its Final Report, Ewing replied that, “The most important evidence was not published in the report or publicly released and is locked away.”
“We expect the Justice Department to officially reopen the case,” Ewing said, “and we didn’t want to tip our hand by releasing the most incriminating evidence.”
This contradicts the statements of Rep. Lewis Stokes, the third chairman of the HSCA, who said that they did not lock away any evidence of conspiracy.
While Blakey did not want the records of the HSCA released to the public, he did use material he obtained there to write, with former Life magazine editor Richard Billings, a book The Plot To Kill The President (Times Books, 1981), which concludes President Kennedy was killed by an organized crime conspiracy involving the Mafia.
The plot to kill President Kennedy was most certainly an organized crime, and did include members of the mob, the Mafia didn’t engage in a psychological warfare campaign to blame the assassination on Fidel Castro, thwart the Secret Service, control the Dallas Police investigation, cover up the criminal and conspiratorial aspects of the crime, prevent a forensic autopsy of the victims and lock up the most significant evidence for 50 years.
The JFK ACT of 1992 released most of the HSCA records, including Jim Braden’s two days of executive testimony, a transcript of which was obtained and shared by Peter Noyes.
Jim Braden appeared anxious to testify in Executive Session before the JFK Sub-Committee of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). He finally got the opportunity on
Representatives Dodd and Pithian were also present, as well as Michael Ewing, Gary Cornwall, Richard Billings and a half-dozen other staff members. The room was cleared of unauthorized personnel and the proceedings were recorded by a stenographer. Mr. Braden was represented by DC attorney Kenneth M. Trombly.
The recordings of what transpired at that session, and another subsequent sworn deposition with Mr. Braden, were then locked away at the National Archives for 50 years from the termination of the committee in 1979. The second chief counsel to the committee, G. Robert Blakey, when asked about the secrecy, replied, “I’ll rest on the judgment of historians in 50 years.”
The American people did not however, and after intense pressure was placed on Congress, the JFK Assassinations Records Review Act was passed in 1993, which called for the release of all official records related to the assassination of President Kennedy. Among these records were the transcripts of the testimony that should have been public knowledge in 1978.
In 1978 Braden said his address was
Among the accusations Braden had to explain was how he came to officially change his name shortly before he was taken into custody as a suspicious person at the scene of the murder of President Kennedy.
At that time, Braden was on parole and working in
He was on parole for violation of the Mail Fraud Act and the National Stolen Property Act. Braden explained, “This concerned a check that was transported from
In September of 1963 Braden said that he requested permission from his
According to a letter to Braden dated
All the best plans sometimes go astray, and it just wasn’t going to play out that way. Braden recalls arriving in
At
Braden recalled his interlude with Sheriff Bill Decker when he briefly lived in
On
“I ate breakfast and went over to see my probation officer,” Braden explained. He did not recall making or receiving any telephone calls while at the Cabana, nor did he see Mr. Hunt, as expected. Braden went to see his parole officer while the others went to see Hunt.
Walking to the federal parole office, Braden said, “…the street that the President’s motorcade was coming down was completely lined with people. I walked across the street and stood in front of the Tiches Department Store. There was a little ledge higher than the street. I stood on that. I watched the motorcade as it went by me…. I saw it in the papers, heard it on TV. It was well known he was going to be there.” But he said he did not intentionally plan his visit downtown so that he could see the President’s motorcade.
Braden made a sketch of downtown
“While I arrived, I cannot recall what floor the Probation Department is on, but as I arrived a the door the Chief Probation Officer, Mr. Roger Carroll had his keys out and was going to open the door, his receptionist standing there and me – this was the three of us. And he opened the door and I went in, signed the registry and went into his office and we sat there and discussed the motorcade momentarily and the President….I advised him I was leaving and going to Houston. We passed the time of day. He said good bye and I left.” They did not discuss whether or not Braden had seen Hunt.
Braden was asked about his interview years later with Los Angeles Detective Manuel Guterres, who attempted to obtain a photograph of Braden from his ex-wife, Mrs. Bauman of Palm Springs, California. (No one asks if she was also related to Braden’s associate Duane Bauman.) Guterres wanted to know how Braden came to be in Dealey Plaza when JFK was killed and was in LA when RFK was murdered. At the time RFK was killed, Braden said, “I was in bed with my wife (at the Century Plaza Hotel) at the time. We were watching television and saw Bobby Kennedy shot.”
When Guterries asked him where he was when President Kennedy was shot, Braden replied, “I was in the United States Probation Office checking in with Mr. Flowers…As I recall there wasn’t any Mr. Flowers….I had…forgotten Mr. Roger Carroll’s name. It could have been an honest mistake. I did not intentionally do it.”
So after visiting Mr. Carroll at the Probation office, Braden said, “I walked out, started down the street. I stopped, as I recall and got a sandwich, I believe at a little restaurant there. When I left there I was walking, I was looking for a taxi cab and these people were running up the street towards me…I distinctly recall this fellow had a camera over his shoulder saying, “My God, they have shot the President.”
Walking further on he came across Dallas Police cars with their doors open, and he could hear the police radio, “They were telling on the radio, everybody get to that building….I walked along the edge of what I later learned was the Texas School Book Depository Building. I recall the railroad tracks ran off this way and up to the edge of the building where all the people were there with the officers completely circling the building I was looking across the street. [The Sheriff’s report, Braden’s 11/22/63 statement is entered into the records as JFK Exhibit No. 112].
Braden continued, “I walked up alongside this building which is now known as the Dal-Tex Building. I was peeking around the corner, I asked somebody what is happening. They said they have somebody up there who shot the President and these officers had their guns up there pointing to this building….As I proceeded along – there were crowds of people on the sidewalk and I asked one of the ladies who was walking along in my direction, I said, ‘Is there a telephone in the area?’ She said, ‘ There is one in my building on the third floor’ and we passed through this walkway to a freight elevator.”
Asked whom he wanted to call, Braden said, “My family in
“I just took this man up and down in the elevator,” Braden quoted the elevator operator as saying. “With this, the officer says, “Well, we have to check out everything.” With this the officer takes me and we walk out in the center of this area here where there were all these vacant areas where all these policeman were surrounding the building. I definitely recall at the time that I looked over and I could see men coming out. They had a gun on a string or a rope or something. Whatever time that was, I don’t know…about thirty minutes (after he left the
When the Sheriff’s Deputies asked him for identification Braden first showed them some credit cards. “I pulled out the first thing that was in my wallet. I had my driver’s license too…We went over to the Sheriff’s Office…There we walked into this room where there were many other people sitting around. I sat down,….told two detectives what happened….Then I saw for…say three or four hours. Two Secret Service agents asked me how I was to get home. They asked if I signed a statement…With this I went to a girl who had a typewriter in the desk. She typed it out as I spoke and I signed it…As I understand it they told me they were Secret Service Agents. That is how I knew that…It was pretty hectic time in the Sheriff’s office, people running in and out of there all the time.” The two Secret Service Agents then gave him a ride back to the Cabana Motor Hotel, where he found his associates had already checked out, so he caught a commercial flight to Houston to catch up with them.
As for Braden’s early life, he told the HSCA he was born in Kansas, left home at nineteen, spent time in a reformatory. His parents moved to California during WWII. He bought them a house in Santa Barbara in 1960, and calls home every Sunday.
His mother once asked him, “Is it true, son, what these people say about you, about all this bad notoriety that came out?”
“Even my own mother questioned me, and that hurt,” Braden said, acknowledging that he never did call her that day.
As for Braden’s associates, “I saw them the next day in Houston at the Sheraton-Lincoln Hotel. We all gathered there. They asked what happened and I didn’t tell them anything because it was embarrassing to me.”
Braden reiterates that they all flew to Dallas from LA on Nowlin’s plane and not by commercial airline (a fact disputed by Brown). Braden flew by commercial airline to Houston while the others left earlier on Nowlin’s plane (possibly out of Redbird AP). From Houston they flew to West Texas, possibly San Angelo to meet an oil speculator named Charlie W., last name unknown. They never went to Opelousas, La., as planned, and returned to Los Angeles. Braden went on to New Orleans.
Braden’s excuse for getting caught in the Dealey Plaza dragnet: “When the event came up of Mr. Kennedy’s assassination, I had a curiosity which apparently I shouldn’t have had and I became involved.”
Braden said that he later returned to Dallas some years after the assassination, and “married a young women from Dallas, Texas (Jeanne Dicentis) and I was in Dallas society after that.” He also admitted having, “laid out my whole story to Hugh Hainesworth, who was with the Dallas Times Herald….He was in the plaza when the president was shot. If anybody he would know anything that transpired there. I would have to say that he would know more than anybody else.”
Braden said that he went to Cuba in 1937-38 and lived in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, under U.S. Parole supervision. At the time he lived in New Orleans he was married to Mrs. Mildred Bauman of Palm Springs, California, “and was living off the considerable income from my oil production.”
In New Orleans he lived in an apartment complex on Saint Charles Avenue, past the Pontchartrain Hotel to be closer to his oil wells, and companies, the Empire Oil and Royalty Corporation, of Lafayette, Louisiana. His attorney was Duncan Smith. His closest friend and associate in New Orleans was Vernon Main, Jr., and oil geologist who kept an office in Room 1701 in the Pierre Marquette building, where Braden frequently visited.
A Dec. 23, 1977 letter to the probation office requesting dates Braden was under parole supervision in New Orleans was entered into the record [Exhibits 114, 115, 116]. Braden testified that he did not know G. Ray Gill or recognize photo [Exhibit No. 71]. He did not know Col. Blueford Balter or William Monteleon, although he was entertained at the Monteleon Hotel nightclub, possibly in June, 1963. Braden did not know Mike or William McLaney, nor did he visit a hunting cabin on Lake Ponchartrain. Nor did he know David Ferrie, Carlos Marchelloo, Lawrence Meyers, Jean Aase/West, and while a social Baptist, he has “not gone to church in awhile.”
Braden did not recall using the alias Edgar Eugene Bradley, even though his arrest record [JFK Exhibit 117] indicated he used the name Harry Eugene Bradley when arrested in Camden, N.J. on March 5, 1948.
Braden was not familiar with Jeannette Porforto, aka Jada, although Candy Barr “rang a bell.” Nor did he recognize a photo of Guy Bannister, did not know Nofio Pecora, and only recognized Clay Shaw’s photos from the newspapers. He did not know Harold Tannenbaum, Jack Martin or “the United Cuban Catholic Missionary Friends or Forces.”
Braden had been a member of the Petroleum Club of LA, “until the book came out and I resigned.” He once had dinner at the Dallas Petroleum Club with his wife Jean Dicentis and the former President of the Republic Bank and his wife (circa 1967). Braden said he may have met Jim Garrison once, “on a street corner or something, said hello to him.”
Braden said he first met Mr. Victor Perrera around 1949. They had interest in two oil wells in Matagora County, Texas, with Perrera’s interests under the name of Velco Products. Braden did not know of Delco Oil Products, was never associated with World Oil Company, formed in
Morgan Brown hired him out of the penitentiary. Braden did known Earl Scheib, who Perrera worked for, and whom he knew socially through Brown. He did not know Scheib’s associate Robert Barney Barker.
A letter from Braden to Ed Davis, LAPD [JFK Exhibit No. 120] is quoted, “Of the many misrepresentations made by agents and officers of the LAPD as reflected in the book [By Noyes] are and were my associations with James Fratianno, Charles Rhodes, Stephen Sambor, Harry Meltzer, Joe, George and Fred Issica and Meyer Lansky.
JIM BRADEN DEPOSITION
Jim Braden returned for a second appearance before the Select Committee on Assassinations on
Having taken the testimony of Morgan Brown since Braden gave his earlier testimony, the committee counsel tried to clear up some discrepancies, such as Braden saying he flew with Brown in a private plane from LA to Dallas, while Brown recalls flying a commercial airline. Brown also recalled the Cabana Motel being booked solid that Thursday night, so Brown recalled staying with his sister while Braden stayed at a motel near the airport.
According to Braden, “Morgan Brown was the one who I think more or less engineered this trip and that he knew, this is his hometown from years back, and he knew everybody in the oil business there. He was seeking oil deals as I was, as I recall.” Braden did not remember going to the Cipango Club, a private club, for dinner.
The Hunt offices were located in the Merchantile Building, 1704 Main Street. Braden did not recall Jimmy Kemp, who brown visited in an office in the same building. Titches Department Strore [Braden Photo No. 1, the Dallas Federal Building Braden Photo No. 2].
Braden reiterated the fact that he checked in with a parole officer, “I definitely spoke to Mr. Carroll….I am absolutely positive and absolutely positive of the approximate time that I was in his office” – 12:30 pm on November 22, 1963, though committee counsel notes, “Mr. Carroll at this time is not able to recall whether or not you came in that day or whether or not you saw him that day.”
Braden asked, “Now, what does Miss Sands have to say about it? She was the receptionist for him at the time and she was there at the door when he was at the door unlocking the door to go in,” Braden said as they discussed the circumstances of the motorcade, “how handsome the President was and how he looked and the circumstances of the motorcade.”
Braden comes across as a completely innocent person who, by coincidence and happenstance became involved in the assassination and who has been slandered by journalists who have taken advantage of his criminal past.
Then he mentioned two items that completely contradict that portrait. Braden said that he received a death threat in August, 1976, shortly after the murder of John Rosselli. Braden said that he was in Atlanta, Georgia, “in the Hyatt House…sitting in the lobby one day, my name was paged and I asked for a phone and some guy said, ‘You are next,’ and hung up. What he meant by it I don’t know. But this is the time they found a body down there in Florida and whether it was a joke or not, I don’t know…I don’t know if I am being followed or not. I only know one thing, from what I read in the magazines and newspapers and all, there were 18 that started out and there are only two left, - and that is (Loren) Hall and Braden…we are the only two left. I feel that I am physically endangered over this assassination matter.”
The second significant item he mentioned concerned an attempt to get his parole supervision lifted through contacts with J. Edgar Hover at the Del Mar racetrack.
Braden said Leon Snyder, “was going to come to
Braden said he did not know Gordon McClendon, although he did know Merve Adelson, from the La Costa Country Club. “Around 1963 or 1964 when they started building it, I was invited to join by a professional golfer from Palm Springs,…Eddie Sullesa [Phonetic spelling], from Inland Country Club…He moved over to La Costa and I visited him there one day while they were building the clubhouse and he said, ‘you ought to join this,’ and I said, ‘I will,’ and so I did…And for the record, the cost, I think, was $100 to join and the dues were $17.50 a month.”
Braden said he was a member, “up until the time of the book (Legacy of Doubt) releases had come down and they took my name off the board and I was no longer a member. It was 1873 when the book came out.”
Braden may have known a man named “Rosanova” and Chicago mob point man in Las Vegas, Anthony Splitro, and he admitted to possibly meeting Allen Dorfman once, but claimed he never met or knew Murry Chotiner, the American Volunteer Group, Paul Roverman (sic Rothermel) of Hunt Security, or Robert DePUgh, who served time, as did Braden, at Leavenworth. He did not know Reverend Wesley Swift, was not familiar with the Defense Industrial Security Command of the Redstone Arsenal, Michael McKowan or members of the John Birch Society.
In his closing statement, Braden said, “I am going to request again that Mr. Roger Carroll, Chief Probation officer in Dallas be pinned down as to why he made statements to the press that were not true…He knew the day before exactly when I was in his office and the following day, then he didn’t happen to remember… And why is he covering up and why is the Chief U.S. Probation officer stonewalling and covering this matter up? None of them want to be involved, but they want to involve me immediately. Authors and journalists involved me and that is how I became involved in this. Whatever this Committee can do to straighten the matter out and to get at the truth of it, I would appreciate because I want my name cleared and I want the stigma removed from my name and my family’s name.”
“I have waited a long time and spent a lot of money on it and I am still trying to clear my name and I haven’t read one sentence anyplace in any newspaper where it says I didn’t do it or didn’t have any reason to do it or the statements made in these publications are false.”
In a prepared statement entered into the record, Braden wrote: “Let the record show that Peter Noyes…and Earl Golz, by their publications…dug my grave and completely ruined my life….(by)...creating the charges I was connected in a sinister conspiracy to assassinate former President John F. Kennedy…and completed my execution and burial….Mr. Carroll and Ms. Sands…have not voluntarily come forward with the truth and they refuse to tell the facts regarding my whereabouts when Kennedy was shot….I have written over 150 letters to U.S. Congressmen and urged them to vote for the resolution which established this very House Select Committee on Assassinations in order for the American people to learn the truth regarding the assassination of former President Kennedy, and for confidence to be restored in the Government by the American people.”
“This House Select Committee must put to rest many of the issues, theories and speculations as possible, dreamed and stated by authors and journalists in their incorrect and libelous publications.”
So even though Braden maintained his innocence, and that it was just a coincidence that he was taken into custody as a suspicious person at the scene of the President, his association with Magnolia Oil Company, his living in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, his association with Vernon Main, Jr., his brush with J. Edgar Hover and Clyde Tolson at the Del Mar race track, and the threat to this life shortly after the murder of John Rosselli are all indications that there is more to the Jim Braden file than what has been accumulated and released so far.
A telephone call (Oct. 23, 1993) to his 1978 DC attorney Kenneth Trombly, Trombly said that he had no idea where Braden is today.
7. The Catherwood
Foundation – Private Fund serves as conduit for CIA cash and cover.
Catherwood Fund Catherwood, Cummins. 1910-. Financier,
philanthropist. Formerly co-owner, Evening Public Ledger; director, Bryn Mawr
Trust Co. President, Mineral Production Corp. President, Catherwood Foundation.
Trustee, Academy of Music Philadelphia Museum Philadelphia
CATHERWOOD FOUNDATION
From the clipping files of the now defunct Philadelphia
Evening Bulletin [now located at the Urban Archives, Paley Library, Temple
University in Philadelphia], it was reported on November 28, 1947 edition that,
"A petition for a non-profit corporation to be known as the Catherwood
Foundation was filed in common pleas court today…to establish a fund, or funds,
the income from which will be used exclusively for religious, scientific,
literary and educational purposes."
With an address in Bryn Marr, Pennsylvania, [14 Elliott
Ave., Suite 10, Bryn Marr, 19010 / (215) 525-3720] on the Philadelphia Main
Line suburban train route, the Catherwood Foundation was originally directed by
Cummins Catherwood, his wife Mrs. Ellen Cowen Catherwood, his sister, Mrs.
Charles G. Chaplin, Othelia Aarnolt, William Hamilton and I.F. Dixon-Wainright.
Independently wealthy from a family inheritance that was
accumulated in the munitions industry during the industrial revolution, Cummins
Catherwood married the former Ellen Cowen Coats and lived in an estate they
called "Baja Sumantaga," an East Indian word that means,
"welcome weary traveler." Along with his family, Catherwood was
quoted as saying that golf, sailing, bridge, skiing and travel were his
unchanging interests."
During World War II Catherwood went on a special air mission
to Germany
The main feature of the Catherwood Foundation is the
Catherwood Fund, ostensibly a philanthropic fund; it also served as a conduit
for the funding of covert CIA operations
during the Cold War.
Catherwood’s sister, Mrs. Charles G. Chaplin, one of the
Fund’s directors, knew Peter Fleming, the British MI6 agent and brother of Ian
Fleming, author of the 007 James Bond novels. Peter was an amateur
ornithologist and is said to have been one of the models for Fleming’s
fictional hero, whose name was appropriated from James Bond, the renowned Philadelphia West Indies ."
Ian Fleming must have also known or knew about Catherwood,
as he based one of his villains – Milton Krest of the "Hildebrand
Rarity" [From: "For Your Eyes Only"] on Catherwood’s unique
profile. Fleming quotes "Krest" explaining the Foundation system to James
Bond while they are aboard Krest’s yacht fishing for rare species. "Ya
see, fellers, it’s like this. In the states we have this foundation system for
lucky guys that got plenty of dough and don’t happen to want to pay it into
Uncle Sam’s Treasury. You make a Foundation – like this one, the Krest
Foundation – for charitable purposes – charitable to anyone, to kids, sick
folk, the cause of science – you just give the money away to anyone or anything
except yourself and your dependents and you escape tax on it."
"So I put a matter of ten million dollars into the
Krest Foundation, and since I happened to like yachting and seeing the world, I
built this yacht with two million of the money and told the Smithsonian that I
would go to any part of the world and collect specimens for them. So that makes
me a scientific expedition, see?"
In 1948 Catherwood had a yacht built in New
England to his personal specifications, "The Vigilant,"
and sailed frequently to the Caribbean with friends,
associates and on occasion, with some scientists who collected specimens for
the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and the Smithsonian. On one
particular Vigilant expedition in 1948, Catherwood was accompanied by
ornithologist James Bond, who collected rare bird species on the various out
islands they visited.
But Catherwood’s fund was not just a tax loophole, as
Fleming implied, but rather, it also served as a secret conduit for funding
covert CIA operations. David Wise and Thomas
Ross, in their groundbreaking book "The Invisible Government,"
(Vintage, 1977, p. 247n), exposed the CIA ’s
network of Blue Blood benefactors when they reported that, "…conduits for
the CIA money included the Cathewood
Foundation."
Since then, other writers, such as Joseph B. Smith
("Portrait of a Cold Warrior"), have mentioned the CIA
use of the Catherwood Foundation as a front for CIA
activities as well. The activities of the Catherwood Foundation created a web
of intrigue that extended behind the Iron Curtain into Russia Cuba Philippines Vietnam
Although the full extent of these activities have yet to be
publicly explored, and much of it is still classified and kept from the public
record, the Soviets knew about the secret relationship between the CIA
and the philanthropic foundations from the very beginning.
Created by the National Security Act of 1947, an outline of
the charter of the CIA was written by Ian
Fleming when he visited Washington
The British MI6 liaison with the CIA
and FBI in Washington after the war was Harold Adrian "Kim" Philby,
the notorious KGB double-agent who wrote his memoirs from Russia, "My
Silent War" (Grove Press), in which he describes the meetings he attended
with Frank Wisner, the head of the CIA ’s
Office of Policy Coordination, responsible for Covert Operations and Dirty
Tricks.
According to Philby, "Wisner expiated on one of his
favorite themes – the need to camouflage the source of secret funds supplied to
apparently respectable bodies in which we were interested…"
Philby quoted Wisner as saying, "…It is essential to
secure the overt cooperation of people with conspicuous access to wealth in
their own right."
Cummins Catherwood was one of those people, and his
Catherwood Foundation was one of those respectable bodies.
In July, 1956 Catherwood, like the fictional Milton Krest,
went "looking for new fish" off the Bahamian reefs. In May 1958
Catherwood announced that he had given financial aid to projects in the mental
health field at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital. He also gave money to
the Granary Fund of Boston, which was directed by George H. Kidder, who is
listed in "Who’s Who" as "with General Counsel, CIA ,
1952-1954," as well as being on the board of directors of Collins Radio, Cedar
Rapids , Iowa
In his book, "Portrait
of a Cold Warrior," Joe Smith wrote: "…former ambassador to the
Philippines Myron Cowen joined Cummins Catherwood in persuading a few staunch
friends of the Philippines, such as Gen. Leland S. Hobes, ex-Joint Military
Advisory Group chief; Charles V. Griffiths, the publishers, and Gen. Hugh Casey
of the board of Schenley Distillers, to set up the Committee for Philippine
Action in Development, Reconstruction and Education. Somehow, this just
happened to form the acronym COMPADRE – the one word that held more meaning
than any other for a Filipino. Gabe Kaplin was resident director of COMPADRE,
on the spot to carry out all sorts of good works, backed by a bankroll the size
of which Filipinos could only guess."
The Catherwoods enjoyed traveling as well. In March 1957,
Mrs. Catherwood toured North Africa with the former
first lady, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt as guests of the Sultan of Morocco. In
June 1960, Catherwood and his wife traveled to Helsini ,
Finland Oswald
Route USSR Moscow Akron ,
Ohio Leningrad
As Main Line Blue Blood personages, the Catherwoods frequently
made the society pages. On March 27,
1970 the Catherwoods attended the wedding of the season, between
Princess Jane Obolensky of Grosse Point , Michigan
One of Catherwood’s corporations, Visions, had offices in New
York , England Central America , providing Latin American publishers
with a Spanish language news and feature wire service. On December 26, 1977 the New York Times reported
that, "Another major foreign news organization that CIA
officials said they once subsidized was Vision, the weekly news magazine that
is distributed throughout Europe and Latin
America . However, none of those associated with the founding of
Vision or its management over the years said they ever had any indications that
the CIA had put money into the
magazine." Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza bought into Visions after
the CIA connections became known.
Catherwood also sponsored the International Division of the
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In December 1960, Nicolas
Chatelain, the U.S. Paris Algeria
Among those aspiring foreign student journalists to receive
grants from the Catherwood Foundation was Leona Shluder, then 23 years old, of
Rio de Janerro, Brazil
The Catherwood Foundation also financially supported the
Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, including the Dallas
Another organization of interest that was funded in its
entity by the Catherwood Fund is the Cuban Aid Relif, established to assist
Cuban refugees, specifically professionals who had previously supported the
Castro revolution against Batista.
8.The Cuban Aid Relief – CIA front
group helps refuges from Cuba
CUBAN AID RELIEF
Of all the
activities financially supported by the CIA
conduit Catherwood Foundation, the Cuban Aid Relief (CAR )
is one of the most interesting.
In the waning days
of the Batista administration in Cuba Cuba
They created refugee
problems in some cities, particularly Miami , Florida Tampa New
Orleans Dallas Chicago , New York North
Jersey and Philadelphia
In Philadelphia CAR
"to provide assistance to Cuban exiles with no connection with the deposed
Batista regime, …and to make as wide use as possible for the professional men,
artists and businessmen who fled the Castro forces."
In 1961 the
directors of the CAR were Cummins Catherwood, former U.S. Ambassador to Cuba
Arthur Gardner, E. Wharton Shober of ATEC corporation, Harrison Wood and
Enrique Menocal, the only Cuban national among the directors.
With a sense of
history, they officially named the organization "The General Leonard Wood
Fund for Cuban Aid Relief," in honor of the U.S. Army surgeon who was the
first American governor of Cuba
Lt. Leonard Wood had organized the 1st Volunteer Cavalry
with Teddy Roosevelt. After the battleship Maine Havana Roosevelt
succeeded him as the leader of the regiment. Under Roosevelt ’s
command the 1st Volunteers achieved notoriety for its famous charge up San
Juan Hill , which was led by both Roosevelt and Wood, effectively
destroying the moral of the Spanish and making Roosevelt and Wood American
heroes.
After spending two
years as Governor of New York, Roosevelt ’s political opponents had his name placed in nomination
for Vice President under William McKinley, a ploy to get Roosevelt
out of the limelight of power. The plan worked when McKinley won the election,
but then backfired when he was shot and killed by a "glassy-eyed"
anarchist while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo , New York
One of the first
things Roosevelt did as President was to name General Leonard Wood the
first American Governor of Cuba III and Samuel P. Wise, who was writing a book on the career of General Wood.
Other members of the
CAR included Roland Taylor Ely of Princeton ,
N.J. CAR/
co-directors E. Wharton Shober and Enrique Menocal.
A boyhood friend of
Fidel Castro, Menocal had a unique position in the Cuban revolution. Menocal’s
family, like Castro’s, was well off. They owned huge sugar plantations in the
Cuban countryside. As successful businessmen, their parents were wealthy
aristocrats and part of Cuba
Both Castro and
Menocal attended the University of Havana Havana Cuba January 1, 1959 , Castro was still eight days away, so the leaders of the Student
Revolutionary Directorate (DRE ), including Dr. Rolando Cubella, took over Batista’s
offices and smoked his cigars until Castro arrived.
One of the first
things Castro did when he assumed power was to name Enrique Menocal the
director of the Cuban Sugar Institute. On October 17, 1960 however, Menocal, his wife and four children sought
refuge at the Brazilian embassy in Havana United States Philadelphia Bay
of Pigs .
Menocal said the
last time he saw Castro at a dinner party in Havana
Newspaper articles
indicate that the CAR also ran outreach programs in Florida Miami
Also in Florida CAR worked with the Pan-Am Society of America University of Florida
The Pan Am Society’s
liaison with the CAR , Miss Carmelita Manning, met often with CAR
other co-director E. Wharton Shober, and the two organizations co-sponsored a
seminar for exiled Cuban journalists at the University of Miami (See: JMWAVE)
in July, 1963.
At the time E.
Wharton Shober was director of the ATEK
corporation, which sold printing machinery and provided financial services to
anti-communist publishers in Latin and Central America . For his work with ATEK
in 1963 Shober received the President’s "E" Award from Asst. Sec. of
Commerce Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr., for excellence in Export, though it more
likely was for Espionage.
Shober, a nephew of
former Pennsylvania Governor George H. Earl, attended Princeton
before service in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II.
Before Shober, the
director of ATEK was Dr. Ralph Deshan, who left Philadelphia ATEK with his wife to raise beef cattle in Nicaragua
When Shober left ATEK
he became president of Hahneman Hospital Philadelphia
At Hahneman Shober
worked with New York Main Line heiress.
Philadelphia
Magazine described Shober as, "…the polo playing, perennially
controversial president of Hahneman Hospital, another fixture at the Main Line
balls and debuts, and good friends with Nicaraguan dictator Gen. Anastasio
Somoza, one of the godfathers of the Bay of Pigs invasion." In June 1972
Shober arranged for Somoza to receive an honorary degree from Hahneman medical
college, over the objections of faculty and students. Shober left Philadelphia Saudi Arabia
Besides Enrique Menocal, another Cuban exile who
was assisted by the Cuban Aid Relief was Dr. Julio Fernandez, who was relocated
to rural Martinsburg , Pa.
9. Julio Fernandez –
Cuban refuge gets tangled in web when nosey neighbor rats.
JULIO FERNANDEZ
On the night of President Kennedy’s assassination, Clare
Booth Luce, the wife of Time-Life publisher Henry Luce, received a telephone
call from Julio Fernandez, a crew member of an anti-Castro Cuban attack boat
that she financially co-sponsored with William Pawley.
Pawley, a Miami Havana Brazil Peru Cuba
According to a Congressional Report, "Pawley envisioned
them as Cuban ‘Flying Tigers’ flying in and out of Cuba New York
She referred to them as "my boys," but until the
night of the assassination, hadn’t seen or heard from them since the October,
1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the raids were said to have been discontinued.
On the night of the assassination however, Julio Fernandez
called Luce on the telephone and told her he had some information on Lee Harvey
Oswald, the President’s alleged assassin. Luce claimed Fernandez told her that
Oswald had approached the anti-Cuban group that Fernandez belonged to and
offered his services as a potential assassin.
"The Cubans however, didn’t trust Oswald," the
report continues, "and suspected him of being a communist, and decided to
keep tabs on him. They eventually penetrated Oswald’s ‘cell’ and tape recorded
his talks, including his bragging that he could shoot anyone, even the
Secretary of the Navy."
Fernandez told Luce that Oswald came into some money, went
to Mexico City Dallas New Orleans
Luce later said that she advised Fernandez to contact the
FBI immediately, and didn’t think about the incident again until the Garrison
investigation in 1967. She then recontacted Fernandez, and he told her that one
of the members of his group has since been suddenly deported and that another
had been murdered. He himself, wanted nothing more to do with the Kennedy
assassination.
When Congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi tried to track
down Fernandez, Luce said that "Julio Fernandez" may have been the
Cuban’s "war name," like those used by Sylvia Odio’s visitors,
"Angelo" and "Leopoldo," and the Congressional report
concludes, "no such individual was every found."
But there is a Julio Fernandez, a suspicious suspect
investigated by the Pennsylvania State Police and the FBI and whose records are
published among the exhibits of the Warren Commission. This Julio Fernandez was
a Cuban professional who may have known about an association between Jack Ruby
and Lee Oswald before the assassination.
On November 27,
1963 , Corporal Theodore Lezar was stationed at the Hollidaysburg,
Pa. State Police barracks when Robert Steele, of Altoona ,
Pa.
Steele, the brother of Mrs. Margaret Hover, of Martinsburg ,
Pa.
The envelope was from the Seaboard Airline Railroad Company
of Miami , Florida Miami 12:40 pm on September 29, 1963 , arriving in Washington
D.C.
The back of the trailer advertisement contained the names
"Ruby" "Lee Oswald" and the "Silver Slipper," as
well as some drawings of a window, some other names and a six-digit number.
When the State Police interviewed Mrs. Margaret Hover at her
home she confirmed what her brother had told them, saying that at first she
thought the items belonged to her estranged husband, who was in the trailer
business and she showed them to her daughter, remarking that "Ruby"
and "Lee" were probably women her recently divorced husband was
seeing.
She then realized however, that the items came from her
neighbor’s yard, where similar items were being burned in a trashcan.
The FBI then got involved and interviewed Mrs. Hover’s
daughter, who also confirmed the fact that her mother found the items and
showed them to her, and indeed the names "Ruby" and "Lee
Oswald" were written on the back of the advertisement.
Of course, this is the FBI at work, so instead of going over
to the neighbor’s house right away, they talk to the daughter’s husband, who
told them his wife tends to exaggerate, was on tranquilizers and believed
everything her mother told her, effectively discrediting her.
Mrs. Hover then produced the envelope and train ticket, but
could not locate the trailer advertisement with the names on the back.
Interviewed again, the daughter continued to maintain the names were there and
wouldn’t back down under FBI pressure.
So, Special Agents of the FBI J. Edward Kern and Richard
Randleman of the Pittsburgh , Pa.
Mrs. Hover’s neighbor, Dr. Julio Fernandez, explained to the
FBI that he was a Cuban refugee and former editor and publisher of La Nacion
newspaper in Cuba
Fernandez said that his brother-in-law, Antonio Larraz, had
been a Captain of Police under Batista, but the Batista government was
oppressive. Fernandez emphasized to the FBI that he was not a communist and was
not on welfare, but working as a Spanish language teacher at the local high
school and was trying to build a better life for himself in the United
States
In addition, Fernandez told the FBI that his sister-in-law,
Aurora Fernandez was the mayor of a small rural town in Cuba Miami
Although Fernandez didn’t know anything about the trailer
advertisement with the names on the back, nor did he know Lee Oswald or Jack
Ruby, he did acknowledge that his son Julio Fernandez, Jr., had used the train
ticket to travel from Miami Washington
The official investigation ended there, but I called Mrs.
Hover on the telephone in the early 1970s after reading the reports published
in the Warren Commission, when she still lived at 105
South Walnut St. , Martinsburg , Pa. Penn State Rye ,
New York
In addition, Mrs. Hover said that years after the FBI
interviewed here two men in suits came around asking more questions about the
incident, indicating that there was still some investigation of Fernandez years
after the FBI lost interest, yet before Fonzi began looking for him.
JULIO FERNANDEZ AT
POINT MARY
Bradley E. Ayres, in his book The Zenith Secret, identifies Julio Fernandez as a team leader from
the Point Mary safe-house and Karl, a CIA
case officer, as being director of the Elliot Key Project. Shortly after the
assassination, Clare Booth Luce said she received a phone call from Julio
Fernandez, one of the leaders of the anti-Castro Cuban boats she financially
supported.
Also shortly after the assassination a Julio Fernandez, Sr.
was investigated by Pennsylvania State Police and the FBI after a Martinsburgh,
Pa.
Fernandez told the police that he was a Cuban exile, former
Cuban newspaper publisher, who was teaching Spanish at the local high school.
His son, Julio, Jr., an art student at nearby Penn State University, used the
train ticket that summer to attend a conference of Cuban exile journalists at
the University of Miami, a conference that lasted five weeks.
Shortly thereafter Fernandez packed up and left town, later
pursued fruitlessly by HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi.
Fernandez, Jr. however, was enrolled at Penn
State
If in fact, the anti-Castro Cuban commando operations run by
the CIA were indeed infiltrated thoroughly
by pro-Castro Cuban G2 intelligence, and shared such information with their
Soviet allies at the KGB, does Blunt’s sudden and surprising visit to the
obscure Pennsylvania art school have a connection with at least one particular
student there – Julio Fernandez, Jr.?
And is this Julio Fernandez or his father of the same name,
identical with the Julio Fernandez of the Point Mary safe-house and lived near
who worked with Bradley Ayers at JMWAVE?
And is this the same Julio Fernandez supported by Clare
Booth Luce, who called her on the night of the assassination?
According to Royce Bierma, Dr. Julio Fernandez, who was born
on January 3, 1909 , died on August 2, 1992 in Miami ,
Florida
10..Foreknowledge and
Black Prop Ops – Assassination and Psychological Warfare.
FOREKNOWLEDGE AND JFK ASSASSINATION
Sun Tzu said: "Now the reason the enlightened Prince
and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their
achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge."
"What is called foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits nor from gods. Nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be obtained from men who know the enemy situation." – The Art of War – Chapter XII – Employment of Secret Agents.
"What is called foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits nor from gods. Nor by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be obtained from men who know the enemy situation." – The Art of War – Chapter XII – Employment of Secret Agents.
One of the hallmarks and "fingerprints of
intelligence" that makes the assassination of President Kennedy a covert
intelligence operation is the foreknowledge certain people had of the event,
and expressing it to others before it occurred.
- Bray – See: Bray v. Bendix trial transcripts re: JEFCOTT.
- Cambridge , England
- Cheramie, Rose – Jack Ruby associate. See: Louisiana
State
- Dinkin, Eugene B. – American soldier in Germany AOL
and tried to inform American ambassador. See : Russell, Dick, TMWKTM.
- Grace, William – "Shortly before the assassination an
executive of the Grace Lines was found unconscious in the street. Taken to a
hospital, he mumbled that the president was to be shot. He had an appointment
with Army Intelligence agents before he was found." – (Paris
- Martinez Russia Mexico
- Martino, John – To his wife, on the morning of the assassination
(See: Summers, Vanity Fair, SWHT), also Larry Hancock’s "Someone Would
Have Talked."
- Milteer, Joseph - (RIP Feb. 28, 1974) Alias Samuel Steven
Story. See: William Agusta Somerset – Agent 88 - undercover conversations. NO,
April 63.
- Odio, Syliva – See: Fonzi, Gaeton (HSCA; The Last
Investigation)/ Russell, Dick (TMWKTM).
- Oxnard , California
- Paine, Michael – Was talking about political assassination
as JFK was being killed.
- Philbrick, Herbert – See: Jean Hill. Philbrick expressed
foreknowledge of the assassination.
- Rivera, Jose, Dr. (Col. USAR) – See: Adele Edisen (ARRB).
Rivera not only expressed foreknowledge of JFK’s assassination, but also of his
son Patrick’s premature death and that LHO
would move into the apartment on Magazine Street ,
New Orleans LHO
knew.
- Underhill, G. Garrett – See: Turner, William, Ramparts.
CIAIR
Dr. Ralph Cox and
USOA vs. CIAIR – Weak Link in the Covert Action Chain
When Dr. Ralph Cox left the military after serving as a Navy
flyer during World War II he didn’t return to his Pittsburgh dental practice
but instead bought some government surplus airplanes and began the United
States Overseas Airlines, based in Rio Grand, near Wildwood, New Jersey.
In 1947 there were hundreds of similar, small, independent
airlines like Cox’s USOA, mainly servicing remote areas that were considered
unprofitable routes for the large scheduled airlines.
By 1962 USOA was one of the largest, most reliable, safe and
financially stable supplemental air carrier in the country, operating six DC6s
and 12 DC4s, most of which were clear of any debt.
A few years later the planes were grounded and the company
bankrupt, mainly because their long-held and properly serviced Military Air
Transport (MAT ) government contracts were
suddenly and mysteriously diverted to a few, newer, smaller and untested
airlines, including Southern Air Transport (SAT ).
Although Cox suspected political schennigans were somehow
involved at the time, it is now well known that SAT
was a wholly owned subsidiary of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ),
and the other airlines who received the diverted contracts had secret
intelligence connections.
"The CIA put us out
of business," said Cox, who has been running a camp ground at the Jersey
Shore Cape
May County International
Airport
When the CIA ’s
connections to Southern Air Transport were first revealed in 1975 by Victor
Marchetti and John Marks in their book The CIA
and the Cult of Intelligence, both Cox and Richard Newman, of California Air
Charter both separately sued the CIA and the
Civil Newman failed to get monetary restitution and Cox’s case was thrown out
of court on a technicality, both men wanted to get back into the air and fly
again.
At his home Cox sifts through reams of files he claims
supports his case while he explains how, even before the CIA
buried them, the CAB tried to suppress the small independent airlines to the
benefit of the major carriers. This was done not only to the detriment of the
industry, but also hurt the pockets of the general public and even endangered
the nation’s security, as well as eliminating their jobs and livelihoods.
"We were a good, solid airline, and not a fly-by-night
operation," Cox asserts. "We owned all our own equipment and planes
and had good, dependable employees."
Newspapers and magazine clips of the period show that USOA
developed one of the first flight simulators to train pilots, successfully
serviced remote points that were unprofitable to the major carriers – like Alaska Okinawa , pioneered group charters and was the frits
airline to employ native stewardesses, breaking a once stringent segregation
barrier.
USOA, along with other small, independent carriers, were
branded "Non-Scheduled Airlines" by the Civil Aviation Board (CAB)
and nicknamed "non-skeds." They were the little guys in the same
business as TWA , United, Eastern and Delta.
They’re the ones who provided emergency airlift relief and support to Berlin ,
Israel Congo Korea South Vietnam
Although the CAB has been disbanded and the industry
"deregulated," the non-skeds are still out of action. They not only
lost their business, but their wings, and they want to fly again.
The non-skeds’ case against the CIA
became a newsworthy issue in the 1980s because of the SAT
involvement in the Iran-Contra affair. In fact the whole secret operation came
unwound when the Sandinistas shot down a SAT
Contra supply plane in Nicaragua
Baggage handler Eugene Hasenfus survived the crash and was
captured. In his pocket was the name and phone number of Feliz Rodrigez, the
Cuban Bay of Pigs Brigade veteran and personal friend of George W. H. Bush.
This was not the first time a CIA
operation was blown by an airman who survived being shot down over enemy
territory. In 1958 Allen Pope was shot down and captured while working on Gen.
Ed Lansdale’s "Indonesian Operation."
Pope was a Civil Air Transport (CAT )
pilot who, once he was released from the Indonesia SAT . Alex
E. Carson, the attorney for SAT at the time,
was also the lawyer for Double-Check Corporation and CARAMAR – the Caribbean
Marine Aero Corporation, the CIA front
companies that hired the Alabama Air National Guard pilots to fly during the Bay
of Pigs , some of whom were killed during the invasion. Secret CIA
operations in Indonesia Cuba Nicaragua
One of the most significant players in the Iran-Contra deal
was Al Schwimmer of the Israel Aircraft Industry, who first proposed the United
States Iran
Adolph "Al" Schwimmer, an American born Israeli citizen
and close advisor to former Israel Iran Israel
According to Cox, Schwimmer used to operate out of the Burbank ,
California Israel Israel U.S.
"When the Israelis learned about LeMay ’s
threat," relates Cox, "pointing to a Life magazine article and photo,
"they appropriated the plane, painted El Air markings over the USOA
insignia and used it to begin their national airline." Cox said he was
later paid the insured value of the plane, but not for the time it was used by
Schwimmer.
Stewart Steven, in his book The Spymasters of Israel,
reports that, "….Al Schwimmer, the remarkable American Jew who, in 1947,
became one of the founding fathers of the Israel Air Force by purchasing old
aircraft in the United States and cannibalizing them to produce serviceable
planes for Israel. Since then, Schwimmer had risen to become president and
chief executive of Israel Aircraft Industries, which he started from nothing
and which now employs 15,000 people."
Steven also details Schwimmer’s role in the 1968 covert
operation that led to Israel
According to the President’s Tower Commission Report on the Iran-Contra affair, Schwimmer was initially responsible for suggesting the arms for hostages deal with the Iranians, and for leasing the cargo aircraft that was used to ferryU.S. Iran
According to the President’s Tower Commission Report on the Iran-Contra affair, Schwimmer was initially responsible for suggesting the arms for hostages deal with the Iranians, and for leasing the cargo aircraft that was used to ferry
A private, commercial air cargo plane had to be leased
because, as one insider put it, "jaws would drop if a plane with Israel U.S. Iran
But when it came time to transfer the arms, Schwimmer’s
lease for the planes had expired, and retired General Secord was called to
acquire new planes, and he resorted to the old CIA
standby – Southern Air Transport – SAT .
While Air America CIA ’s Far Eastern routes, Southern
Air Transport took care of the Latin American routes. The CIA
also owned Air Asia, Intermountain Aviation and several other air charter
companies.
The whole Iran-Contra connection began to come unraveled
when the SAT plane was shot down by
Sandinistas in Nicaragua CIA maintained that it no longer owned SAT ,
agency attorneys and corporate managers with intelligence connections
maintained control over the airline. "I don’t care what they say,"
said Cox, "I believe SAT is still
controlled by the CIA ."
"At first we had to fight the CAB," Cox relates,
"but they were a political entity, and we could deal with them, but how do
you fight the CIA ? We had to fight the
federal government every step of the way."
The CIA has acknowledged
that it owned SAT from 1962 until 1973.
The CAB, by over-regulation, had forced the Non-Skeds to
rely on Military Air Transport (MAT )
contracts to survive, contracts that were safely and successfully fulfilled for
many years.
But suddenly millions of dollars in MAT
contracts were cut off and given to the small, relatively unknown Southern Air
Transport.
"Although we had a spotless record, without one
passenger ever getting so much as a scratch, they grounded our planes,"
explained Cox, "and the military was banned from using the types of planes
we had. So all of a sudden, we had ten planes rotting on the runways."
The independent airlines that ferried U.S. Israel Belgian Congo in 1960 and Berlin
On September 24,
1964 , $250 million in MAT
contracts were diverted from some 30 independent airlines, including USOA, and
given to SAT and five other CIA
linked carriers. USOA filed for bankruptcy.
"We didn’t know what happened until ten years
later," said Cox bitterly. As a conservative, Republican, anti-Communist
veteran, Dr. Ralph Cox didn’t suspect secret government collusion at first, and
really didn’t learn the specifics until 1974, when Marchetti and Marks wrote
about the CIA links to the airline industry
in their book.
"There was dirty works at the crossroads all the way
through," said Cox, "but we didn’t know it. We naively thought that
we were dealing with the federal government, like the Post Office, a neutral,
unbiased entity. Well, we’ll never believe that again."
The CIA didn’t even
underbid the other airlines. "In some cases, they even charged more,"
Cox said.
According to a congressional aide who looked into the matter
for then Congressman William Hughes, "This whole story is kind of
intriguing. It’s the kind of thing you expect to find in a cloak and dagger
mystery novel. But actually it had quite an impact on Cape
May County
By the mid-1950s the approximately 500 supplemental airlines
had been widdled down to 150 Non-Skeds, and in 1962, the 30 airlines that had
shared the $250 million in MATS contracts were suddenly shut out and the
contracts given to six small, relatively new air carriers. Two of them, Air
American and Southern Air Transport, were wholly owned subsidiaries of the CIA .
Although he didn’t know the CIA
was involved, Cox did notice that Southern Air Transport and the five other
airlines that received the MAT contracts
were all represented by Coates Lear or connected to Lear’s National Air
Carriers Association (NACA).
Since Cox’s USOA had serviced a U.S. Navy contract that was
picked up by the Air Force, Cox knew that Lear worked out of the D.C. law
office of Zuckert, Scoutt & Rasenberger.
Mr. Eugene Zuckert, a senior partner in the firm, was the
Secretary of the Air Force, and Coates Lear was his law partner. Both Lear and
Zuckert served as presidents of the NACA. Gerald Scoutt later replaced Ed Daley
as Chairman of the Board of World Airways.
Lear was attorney of record for World Airways, Capitol
Airlines, ARCO and a major stockholder of Overseas National Airlines, all
companies that received the MATS contracts. (The other airline that received
MATS contracts was Los Angeles Air Services, which became Trans-International,
which was under Ted Burwell, another CIA
connected officer).
Because of its destructive, below cost military contracts,
ONA reported a minus net worth of nearly $4 million in 1960, and used a number
of DC7s that American Airlines had made available to General Leasing Corporation,
a subsidiary of the Convair Division of General Dynamics.
Continental Airlines hired Pierre Salinger as a corporate
officer. Salinger possibly knew of the CIA
connections to the airlines because of his position as President Kennedy’s
assistant.
Continental also obtained government contracts, including
lucrative troop transport contracts delivering soldiers to Vietnam Nevada CIA
China hand who had worked for CAT for 17
years.
Recognizing Lear’s influence in the awarding of the MATS
contracts, Cox went to Lear and asked him to help arrange for the USOA to
continue receiving the MATS contracts in order to stay in business. Lear told
Cox, "the boys won’t let you in," as if it was some elite private
club for members only. Cox called the CIA
connected airlines "MATS Mistresses."
In 1962 Cox testified before a Congressional committee that
the new policies, "…practically eliminated independent supplemental air
carriers, even though Congress has always held them to be a vital part of our
economy and our national security."
The too-few of Ed Daley’s World Airways planes were sent to
evacuate Saigon and Da Nang
Eventually Congress decided to investigate these matters,
but when Robert Roussoulet was scheduled to testify before a Congressional committee
in 1976, he mysteriously failed to appear, and never did testify.
One CIA director
eventually asked the simple question, "How many planes does the CIA
own?" But the answer came back that they really didn’t know. In fact, one
of the CIA airlines had more employees
(30,000) than the CIA itself.
On February 5, 1963
the CIA airlines were formally organized
under the umbrella of EXCOMAIR – the Executive Committee for Air Proprietary
Operations. EXCOMAIR was, "to provide general policy guidance for the
management of air propriety projects and review recommendations for approval of
air proprietary project actions." Lawrence Houston was appointed chairman
of the committee.
In the fall of 1963 Coats Lear was killed by a shotgun blast
to the head. Although some suggested it was suicide, others believe he was
murdered.
Lear was a law partner in Eugene Zucker’s firm, and Zuckert,
as Secretary of the Air Force, was involved in the awarding of contracts.
Ed Driscol, the man who handled the administration of many
of the MATS contracts at the Pentagon, became Executive Director of the Civil
Aeronautics Board after the death of Lear. Later, Driscol became VP at World
Airways, one of the companies he funneled MATS contracts to from the Pentagon
and CAB.
Driscol was the Director of Transportation under Joseph
Imire, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force and John H. Rubel, the Asst.
Secretary of Defense. With CAB chairman Alan S. Boyd, they effectively ended
the competitive bidding for MATS contracts and arbitrarily awarded them to
their favorite airlines connected to the CIA
and/or Lear & Zuckert.
Ruble, Imire and Driscol all resigned shortly before the
death of Lear. While Driscol went on to the CAB and World Airways, Ruble and
Imire became Vice President of Litton Industries, a major defense contractor.
Another explanation for Lear’s death is provided by Amos
Heacock, another independent airline owner put out of business by the CIA ,
who believes that is a connection between Lear’s demise and the assassination of
President Kennedy shortly thereafter.
Heacock believes Lear’s law partner, Eugene Zuckert, as
Secretary of the Air Force, had something to do with the scheduling of the
President’s visit to Texas
According to this theory, Zuckert, as Secretary of the Air
Force, obtained foreknowledge of the assassination, information that was also
picked up by Lear. This either drove Lear crazy enough to kill himself, or made
him unstable and a threat tothose planning to kill the President, so Lear also
had to die.
Zuckert, a graduate of Yale
University Pittsburgh Pittsburgh New York
One of the most important decisions Zuckert made as Air
Force Secretary concerned the F-111 jet fighter contract. Although every
independent study recommended that the contract be awarded to Boeing, which
designed both a less expensive and better performing aircraft, the contract
went to General Dynamics.
This decision was made by four men – Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara, Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatrick, Secretary of
the Navy Fred Korth and Air Force Secretary Eugene Zuckert.
Gilpatrick was a former Wall Street law firm of Cravath,
Swaine & Moore, and had previously represented General Dynamics, while
Korth was president of Continental National Bank of Ft.
Worth , Texas
[William Kelly’s research is supported in part by a grant
from the Fund For Constitutional Government Investigative Journalism Project.]
