Kelly Declaration AARC v. CIA Re: Detailed Study of Hitler Plot

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

____________________________________

ASSASSINATION ARCHIVES AND        :

RESEARCH CENTER                                 :

Plaintiff                                                         :

v.                                                                    :            Civil Action No. 17- 00160(TNM)                    

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY     :

 Defendant.                                                    :                                                            

  __________________________________  :          

Declaration of William E. Kelly, Jr.

     I hereby declare and state that:

1. I am a journalist, historian and author of two published regional history books, who has spent considerable time, since 1969, tracking down and interviewing JFK Assassination witnesses.

2.   In the course of my research in January 1995 I interviewed Volkmar Schmidt over the telephone, a conversation taped with his permission and subsequently transcribed and posted on the internet.

3.   In that interview Schmidt told me that he hosted a February 22, 1963 party at his Dallas residence for the expressed purpose of introducing Lee Harvey Oswald to Michael Paine.

4. While Michael Paine did not attend that party, his wife Ruth Hyde Paine did and met Oswald’s Russian wife Marina, and they became close friends until the day of the assassination.

5. At the same party Volkmar Schmidt said he had an extended 2-hour conversation with Lee Harvey Oswald in which he used a “reverse psychology” technique taught to him by his surrogate father, doctor Whilhelm Keutemeyer, professor of psychosomatic medicine at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. 

6.   Keutemeyer, Schmidt said, had two associates who were part of the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler, Herr Von Halen and dr. Adam von Trott zu Solz, both executed for their roles in the plot.

7. Schmidt admitted mentioning the July 20, 1944 plot to Oswald and suggested right wing General Edwin Walker should be killed, much like Hitler should have been.

8.   Not long after their conversation Oswald purchased a rifle through the mail using the alias “Hidel” traceable to him when he could have bought an untraceable weapon at any Dallas sporting goods of department store with no identification.

9.   Oswald is accused of taking a shot at Walker through a window at his home on April 10, 1963, a shot that missed, with the remains of the bullet in the Kennedy Collection at the National Archives. 

10.  Shortly after the Walker shooting Oswald relocated to his hometown of New Orleans where he got a job and an apartment while his wife Marina resided with Ruth Hyde Paine in Irving, Texas, before Ruth H. Paine drove Marina and the rifle to New Orleans.

11.  CIA Cuban Desk chief Desmond FitzGerald, looking for disenchanted Cuban military officers or anyone close to Castro, met with Dr. Rolando Cubella Secades (AMLASH) to encourage him to kill Castro, and another CIA case officer met with Cubella in Brazil on September 7, 1963.

12. On September 7, 1963 Fidel Castro visited the Brazilian embassy in Havana and denounced US backed commando raids and attempts to kill Cuban leaders, as reported in an Associated Press dispatch published on September 9, 1963, ostensibly read by Lee Harvey Oswald in the New Orleans newspaper. 

13.  In September 1963 Ruth Hyde Paine visited her relatives, including her husband Michael’s mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young - a close personal friend and traveling companion of Mary Bancroft.

14.  During World War 2 Mary Bancroft worked closely with Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer Allen Dulles in Switzerland and they were closely associated with Nazi military intelligence officer Hans Bernd Gisevius, a major participant in the failed July 20, 1944 plot, assisting him in his escape from Germany. 

15.  While visiting the Youngs in September 1963, Ruth Hyde Paine wrote to the pregnant Marina in New Orleans suggesting she return to Texas and live with her in Irving until the baby is born. For her response Marina was instructed to write to her in care of “Arthur Young – Paoli, Pa.”. 

16.  Marina accepted and on September 24, 1963 Ruth Paine left the Young’s farm and drove to New Orleans, picked up Marina and the rifle and drove them to Texas while Oswald went to Mexico City.

17.  The following day, September 25, 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chaired by Air Force Chief of Staff General LeMay (while General Taylor was in Vietnam), met at the Pentagon where they were briefed on CIA covert operations in Cuba by Desmond FitzGerald.

18.  A memo/ minutes of the meeting was written by Col. Walter M. Higgins, Jr., assistant to General Victor H. Krulack, who was SACSA – Special Assistant for Counterinsurgency and Special Activities. In his memo Higgins wrote that FitzGerald reported that the CIA was preparing a “detailed study” of the July 20, 1944 plot against Hitler to be adapted for use against Castro in Cuba. Higgins wrote that FitzGerald, “Felt that there had been great success in getting closer to the military personnel who might break with Castro, and stated that there were at least ten high-level military personnel who were talking with CIA but as yet are not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence has not yet developed. He considers it as a parallel in history: i.e., the plot to kill Hitler; and this plot is being studied in detail to develop an approach.” (emphasis added).

19.   In October 1963 Ruth Hyde Paine helped Oswald obtain a job at the Texas School Book Depository, a building owned by D. H. – David Harold Byrd, a close personal friend of Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay, who chaired the September 25, JCS meeting at the Pentagon. 

20.   On November 22, 1963 D. H. Byrd was in Africa on a safari with Werner von Alvensleben, a German hunter who wrote an essay in support of the July 20, 1944 coup plotters and whose father was identified in an OSS document as an “assassination specialist.” Werner von Alvensleben’s favorite rifle was a Mannlicher-Schonauer, the Greek version of the Mannlicher rifle allegedly used in the assassination of President Kennedy.  In December 1963 von Alvensleben visited Byrd in Dallas. 

21.   On November 22, 1963 at the time of the assassination, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were meeting with the German General Staff that included two former Nazi officers who were directly involved in the July 20, 1944 plot, including Gen. Hans Speidel and Gen. Adolf Heusinger.

22.   D. H. Byrd later told friends, including the president of the Dallas Morning News, that he had removed the southeast corner window of the Texas School Book Depository, from which he believed the shots that killed the president to have originated, and displayed it in his home with his animal trophies, “where it became the centerpiece of many social gatherings”.  

23.  The request for these records are not broad, but very precise, and they should be looked for among the records of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Asst. Army Sec. Joe Califano, Gen. Krulak’s papers, the files of Desmond Fitzgerald and Rolando Cubella, as well as any of those involved in planning for the covert operations in Cuba in 1963. When the CIA says that the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler “is being studied in detail to develop an approach,” to kill Castro, then it is impossible for there to be no documentary record of this “detailed” study.  And considering the numerous other associations between the July 20, 1944 plot within the JFK assassination narrative, its significance cannot be over stated.

      I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed on November 12, 2017.                 _____/s/ William E. Kelly, Jr. ____(Signature)