Witnesses
I've Interviewed
WHAT I’VE DONE - WITNESSES I'VE
INTERVIEWED – SO FAR
As I have decided to devote much of my
time of this year (2021) to completing my life long study of the assassination
of President Kennedy, I thought it would be prudent to outline some of the
things I have done. One of the things I’ve done is to specialize in tracking down and interviewing
obscure witnesses and even a few suspects in the case.
So I’ve compiled a list of those I
have talked to, and links to some of the articles I wrote about them before
setting my sights on what needs to be done to wrap this case up to a legal and
moral certainty, as we can if only the effort is made.
As a Research Committee Coordinator
for CAPA – Citizens Against Political Assassinations, and a member of the
Steering Committee for the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC), I am in
the unique position of being able to put the necessary information together and
will attempt to do so.
I remember that Friday in November,
the day of the assassination, being told of it by the principle - a nun over
the St. Joseph’s grammar school intercom and being left out of school early.
The weather was mild so I was at home in my backyard swinging on the weeping
willow tree when the phone rang and I ran in the house to answer the kitchen
wall phone. It was my father, a Camden, NJ policeman who instructed me to stay
in the yard and not go out, as the president was shot “and we don’t know what
this is all about.” I just couldn’t understand how the death of the president
could affect me, a kid playing in my back yard.
Six years later, as a freshman at the
University of Dayton in Ohio, I met John Judge. He gave me a copy of New
Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s interview in Playboy magazine, which
inspired me to read a few books and then, I discovered, there in our school
library was a copy of the encyclopedia sized 24 volumes of Warren Commission supporting
testimony and documents that I began to read through.
After you read books, and research
documents, the next step is to contact and interview witnesses, though it is
often difficult to get them to talk, especially about a subject as sensitive as
the President’s murder.
Anthony Summers once told me the Irish
word for being able to obtain the confidence of strangers, and while I can’t
remember the Irish word, I know there is a very fine line between those who can
get people to believe and open up, and disbelieve and clam up.
The following is a list of some of the
most important witnesses – and a few suspects – I have tracked down and talked
to, and most of them I believe confided in me honestly.
MRS. MARGARET HOVER and JULIO
FERNANDEZ
John Judge took me up to the law
research library at the University of Dayton and introduced me to the 26
volumes of Warren Commission records. As I was taking a class in Latin American
history with Dr. Bruce Taylor, and doing a paper on the Bay of Pigs, I
immediately noticed the numerous Cuban connections to the assassination and
began to focus on those documents, one of which concerned a Mrs. Margaret
Hoover of Martinsburg, Pa., who was investigated by the Pennsylvania State
Police and FBI because she claimed to have seen a paper with the names of Lee
Oswald and Ruby before the assassination.
She said she found the papers in her
backyard, and thinking Lee and Ruby were women her recently separated husband
was seeing, showed them to her daughter who confirmed the names. Then she said,
she realized the papers came from her neighbor’s yard, where he was burning his
trash, and with that, the investigation led to the neighbor – Julio
Fernandez, a Cuban refuge and former newspaper publisher who was teaching
Spanish at the local high school. Fernandez said he was burning his trash, but
was not a communist and had nothing to do with the assassination.
There are various levels of people who
study the assassination – those who read about it in books and magazines, those
researchers who read the original records at the Archives, and investigators -
those who reach out to phone or knock on the door of witnesses to ask them
questions.
It was in late 1969 or early 1970 when
I obtained the phone number of Mrs. Hoover and called her on the phone from Dayton.
She acknowledged everything in the reports I had read, and added a few
interesting details – shortly after the assassination and the police inquiry he
left town suddenly, some say to Rye, New York. In addition, Fernandez had a
wife and son, the son an art student at Penn State University. The police
report noted that an AMTRACK train ticket, that Mrs. Hoover had found and kept,
indicated someone had traveled from Philadelphia to Miami in the summer of
1963. Fernandez said that was his son, who attended a conference of exiled
Cuban journalists at the University of Miami (JMWAVE). Mrs. Hoover also said
that a few years after the assassination and the departure of Fernandez, two
men in black suits came knocking at her door asking if she knew anything else about
Fernandez, so others were on this trail too.
It was years later when I learned
about Clare Booth Luce and her support for some JMWAVE Cuban commandos –
including Julio Fernandez, who called her on the night of the assassination
saying he had an audio tape and documents concerning Oswald, the accused
assassin. And then US Ranger Capt. Bradley Ayers wrote about training the
Cubans – including Julio Fernandez, a team leader.
When the Assassination Records Review
Board (ARRB) requested CIA records on Julio Fernandez, they supplied a list of
over a dozen Cubans named Julio Fernandez they had files on, but neither the
journalist, his son or the JMWAVE Cuban team leader were among them. I believe
Julio Fernandez, Jr. is still alive in Florida.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/julio-fernandez.html
KEN KESEY
The University of Dayton Student
Council had a significant budget, which the radical Student president Kevin
Keefe used to bring in some top level guest speakers – including Mae Brussell,
Margaret Meade and Ken Kesey. As the head of the Merry Pranksters Kesey had
experimented with LSD before it was made illegal, and after writing “One Flew
Over the Cookoos Nest” and another well received novel, bought a bus – named
“Further,” and traveled cross-country to meet Timothy Leary, another LSD
advocate, as documented in Tom Wolf’s “Electric Coolaide Acid Test.” After his
talk before a few hundred interested students, Kesey went to John Judge’s
apartment where we talked for hours. He told me how Kurt Douglas gave him
$10,000 for the film rights to “Cookoos Nest,” a deal written out on a bar
napkin, but then when the movie was such a big hit with Jack Nicholson in the
lead role, he had to sue Douglas to get the writer’s royalties, and indeed the
movie would not have been so good if it wasn’t for the great story. Kesey also
told me that he was first turned on to LSD by a CIA backed professor during a
collegiate “study” that paid him to be a guinea pig. And besides students, they
also hired prisoners and soldiers to be part of the LSD tests, the results of
which we will probably never know.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2016/12/into-rabbits-hole-with-john-judge.html
DON NORTON
Around 1970 John Judge arranged for Mae
Brussell of Carmel, California to visit Dayton and give a lecture on her
research on the assassination. After her well attended talk in the main
ballroom of the John F. Kennedy Student Union, I helped carry her books to
John’s car in the parking lot. As we approached the car in the dark lot a man
stepped out of the darkness and said hello to Mae, startling us a little. He
said hi to Mae, and said “I’m Don Norton.”
Mae smiled and shook his hand and
thanked him for the checks he had sent her to support her research – “That’s my
conscience money,” he said.
While I didn’t go with Mae, John and
Don back to John’s apartment, I later learned that Norton had met Oswald, and
was considered one of his doubles, or impersonators. I read some records that
said he was a former gay soldier who played piano in an officer’s club and was
recruited by military intelligence to inform them if any military officers were
gay. Norton got involved in the Garrison investigation and in Canada, gave an
interview that was published about his experiences.
There are two others named Don Norton
– one a fisherman also suspected of being an Oswald impersonator, and another
Don Norton who wrote a book on the history of a major defense contractor.
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2014/04/john-judge-mae-brussell-and-don-norton.html
MAE BRUSSEL
Mae was one of the first house wife to
pay attention to the assassination of President Kennedy, and became one of the
most knowledgeable of researchers who had a weekly radio talk show out of her
hometown of Carmel, California. She accumulated a large collection of books,
newspaper articles and documents that she wanted to form the basis of the Mae
Brussel Research Center. Before she passed away she instructed John Judge to
set up such a center, and I drove Judge’s U-haul truck to Carmel where we
rented a house and began to assemble the research center. Not long afterwards
however, Mae’s daughter took over and put all of her mother’s work in storage,
where I believe it remains today.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2014/04/
PENN JONES
In the mid to late 1970s the New York
University Law School held a major conference on the Kennedy assassination that
featured all of the major critics – including Sylvia Meagher, Mae Brussell,
Penn Jones, Fletcher Prouty and Ralph Schoeman, all of whom I met through John
Judge. Penn Jones was then the publisher of the Midlothian, Texas Mirror
newspaper, which chronicled all of the JFK assassination witnesses who died
suspiciously. While I admire Penn, and his work, there are enough witnesses who
were victims of certifiable homicides to work on rather than debating whether
or not someone was murdered or not. I also recall John Judge saying that Penn
had separated from his wife, and she sold off his 24 volumes of Warren
Commission exhibits and testimony one at a time at a garage sale. John said he
didn’t want that to happen to his research collection, but it did.
RALPH SCHOEMAN
At the NYU conference Ralph held up a
number of documents he obtained from the archives and said they were proof that
one of the Cuban guys Oswald was arrested with in New Orleans was a Puerto
Rican union organizer and mob connected gangster. I asked him and he gave me
copies of his documents, and when I got home I wrote one of my first
requests for JFK assassination records from Marion Johnson – the curator of the
JFK records at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The
records I obtained on the Cuban arrested with Oswald – Minguel Cruz – indicated
that he was only 17 years old in 1963, while the documents on the Union
organizer with the same name indicated he was much older, and therefore a
different person. I called Schoeman on the phone and he asked me to come visit
him so I drove from my Ocean City, NJ home to Princeton where I shared my new
documents with him and he acknowledged he was wrong about Minguel Cruz. But
more recently Donald Trump accused Texas Senator Cruz’s father of being
involved with Oswald in New Orleans. While Minguel Cruz is not related to
Senator Cruz, he is probably still alive and is an important witness. And it
was decades later when I met and began to work with Ralph Schoeman’s wife Joan
Mellen.
FLETCHER PROUTY
It was at the NYU conference where I
entered a large science class room and sat at a desk with a few dozen others as
Col. Fletcher Prouty stood at a podium in front of a blackboard where he had
written some basic covert intelligence procedures – use of codes, ciphers,
cut-outs, etc., saying that you will never understand what happened at Dealey
Plaza until you learn the crafts and techniques of intelligence, as the
assassination was a covert intelligence operation. John Judge was a close
friend of Prouty, so when Prouty was identified as the mysterious “Mr. X”
portrayed by Donald Sutherland in Oliver Stone’s film “JFK,” Judge arranged for
Prouty to be interviewed live on the Diane Ream show over the NPR station at
American University. Judge used to say that where he started his research on
the Kennedy assassination at the bottom, Prouty started at the top at the
Pentagon, and they met at the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Fletcher_Prouty
RALPH COX
Another good friend of Prouty was
Ralph Cox, a former US Navy pilot during WWII who after the war purchased a
dozen Air Force Cargo planes as surplus and started the US Overseas Airlines
out of Wildwood, NJ. A major player in the air cargo business for over a
decade, active during the Berlin airlift and in the creation of the state of
Isreal, US Overseas airlines suddenly lost all of the government contracts to a
number of new airlines that Cox later learned were wholly owned subsidiaries of
the CIA, and he sued the CIA over it.
https://jfkcountercoup.wordpress.com/2008/01/02/ciair/
DAVID ATLEE PHILLIPS
I always had the highest respect for
Gaeton Fonzi and followed his career closely and became friends before the end,
though I was disappointed he never tried to interview David Atlee Phillips
outside of his Congressional inquiry. One day on a whim I looked up Phillips’
phone number and found it listed in Bethesda, Md. I called him off the cuff and
he talked to me for about a half hour, denying he was “Maurice Bishop” or that
he knew Oswald. This conversation took place shortly after the publication of a
long article in Washingtonian Magazine by Fonzi, that instigated a libel suit
by Phillips. “Do you know where I worked at the time?” Philllips asked. At
Washingtonian, where he had an office just down the hall from Fonzi, who never
bothered to try to talk to him. In any case I believe Phillips knew Oswald, but
like Oswald, Phillips was also hung out to dry by the CIA and Veciana, while
the real truth remains buried, though we are still digging.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/10/david-atlee-phillips.html
JOHN MARTINO’S SISTER AND BROTHER
While Anthony Summers was in Florida
interviewing John Martino’s widow and son, establishing Martino’s foreknowledge
of the assassination, I was at an old house on the beachblock of Ventnor, NJ,
interviewing Martino’s elderly sister and brother. They gave me a 33/1/3 RPM
record of John Martino reading portions of his book – “I Was Castro’s
Prisoner,” that he wrote with Nathanial Wheil.
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKmartino.htm
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/10/atlantic-city-new-jersey.html
NATE WEYL
I eventually got Weyl’s phone number
and called him up cold, and was surprised at how open he was and willing to
talk, as he did later with John Simkin. Weyl was the ghost writer for Martino’s
book and while having a high opinion of Martino, he said they had a falling out
after the book was published and Martino took a book signing tour sponsored by
the John Birch Society. That was a tour that took Martino to Dallas in the fall
of 1963, allowing him to share a stage with Loretta Odio and Father Walter
Machann, who catered to the needs of the Cuban exiles in Dallas. But before the
month was out, Machann would leave the priesthood and retreat to New Orleans
where he would hook up with a friend of Odios, who happened to also be a friend
of Carlos Bringuier and was one of those who attended the court hearing that
resulted from the altercation between Oswald and Bringuier (and Minguel Cruz)
.https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKweyl.htm'
JAMES BOND
It was in the summer of 1976 when I
first read about the Catherwood Foundation – a CIA philanthropic front that
backed the anti-Castro Cuban group Cuban Aide Relief (CAR). Catherwood was
described as a Philadelphia millionaire who started his charity foundation by
buying a boat – The Vigilant – and using it for exploration and research
purposes – one voyage including James Bond – an American ornithologist (Bird
specialist) whose book “Birds of the West Indies” inspired Ian Fleming to
appropriate Bond’s name for his special agent 007. I met Bond and talked to him
a number of times, along with his wife Mary Wickham Bond. Bond, it turns out,
was at what would become known as the Bay of Pigs – a few months before the
invasion, scouting for birds.
http://jamesbondauthenticus.blogspot.com/2008/11/goldeneye-jamaica-1952-theft-of-james.html
HENRY PLEASANTS
Former classical music critic for the
Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, husband of Virginia Pleasants for Cello player
for the Philadelphia Orchestra, Pleasants enlisted in the OSS during the war
and served as a translator and debriefer, his most famous debriefing was former
Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, who would become chief of the West German
Intelligence Service, as the behest of Allen Dulles and the CIA. Like Cummings
Catherwood and James Bond, Pleasants was also character Ian Fleming made fun of
by casting him as Felix Leiter, 007’s recurring CIA sidekick.
http://jamesbondauthenticus.blogspot.com/2008/11/felix-leiter-henry-pleasants.html
VOLKMAR SCHMIDT
German oil geologist, who was working
in Canada when I talked with him at length over the phone, was one of the hosts
of a Dallas house party set up for Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife to meet
Michael Paine and his wife Ruth. While Michael Paine didn’t make the party,
Oswald talked for hours with Schmidt, who acknowledge to me that he used a
“reverse psychology” technique on Oswald taught to him by a German
psychologist. Schmidt said he talked to Oswald about General Walker, and
suggested that Walker was a fascist who should be assassinated before he got
too powerful, much like Hitler should have been killed, specifically mentioning
the July 20, 1944 failed attempt to kill Hilter. Schmidt said he felt guilty
for planting the seed in Oswald to shoot Walker, and he felt bad every time he
drove through Dealey Plaza.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html
BEVERLY OLIVER
I met Beverly Oliver in Dallas on the
set of Oliver Stone “JFK” when he was filming the final scene – an old black
man and young black boy visiting JFK’s grave, which they were able to film in
Dallas because of a duplicate of the building behind JFK’s grave, another faked
film sequence. I also read her book, and was impressed, not because she is the
Babuska Lady, or how Gary Shaw came to find her, but because of her story of
being with Jack Ruby on Thursday night – the night before the assassination.
With Ruby she visited the Cabana Lounge to meet Larry Meyer and then went to
dinner at Campisi’s Egyptian Lounge. Oliver also had a boyfriend who worked for
Kodak at their booth at the State Fairgrounds, who is an interesting character
worth investigating further.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/thursday-night-at-cabana-lounge.html
WES WISE
Wes was a former TV reporter and mayor
of Dallas (who drove a Volkswagon Bug), who was given one of the most important
leads in the Tippit murder. Wise was told about a man who resembled Oswald who
at the time of Tippit’s murder was driving around Oak Cliff in a 1957 Plymouth,
with a Texas license tag that was traced to Carl Mather – a close friend and
former neighbor of Tippit. Mather’s alibi was that he was at work at Collins
Radio – a major defense contractor who provided the radios for Air Force One,
Two and SAC bombers, and also provided the cover for the CIA raider ship the Rex.
The Rex was exposed by a New York Times page one story on November 1, 1963,
after some Pathfinder commandos were captured after they attempted to
infiltrate Cuba with high powered rifles – “that weren’t going to be used to
hunt rabbits.” I recorded a two hour plus audio interview with Wes Wise as he
drove me around the assassination hot spots in Dallas.
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/05/wes-wise-tour-of-dallas-hot-spots.html
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2019/02/wes-wise-carl-mather-documents.html
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/02/james-douglas-wes-wise.html
CHAUNCEY HOLT
I met Holt during my cross-country
train trip at his home in San Diego, high in the hills where he too talked at
length as I audio recorded him, and later posted a transcript on line. While
many of the leads he gave me panned out, and I confirmed, I don’t believe he
was one of the tramps, as he is a self-acknowledge con artist. He’s also a very
fine artist – and took me to his studio and gave me a copy of a drawing he did
of Oswald’s execution. Holt told me that Warren Commission attorney Joe Ball –
was a close associate of a northern California lawyer named Twombly, who
directed him – Holt in many of his covert activities.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/12/chauncey-holts-execution-of-oswald.html
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKholt.htm
ADELE EDISEN
After reading her story in the Third
Decade Magazine – that she wrote under an alias, I checked out her allegation
that she first met Dr./Col. Jose Rivera (USAR) at an Atlantic City medical
convention, and confirmed that convention did indeed take place at AC
Convention Hall, where the JFK statute is now located on the boardwalk. From there
I confirmed almost everything she said, and through Dick Russell, even got a
picture of Rivera at Fort Ditrick, Md. I also confirmed that Rivera’s military
unit – ASCI – Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence was engaged in early
MKULTRA research at Ditrick, Not Cuban, Rivera was born in Lima, Peru. His
longest military assignment was in New Orleans, where he taught at Loyola. The
only thing I couldn’t confirm was Edisen’s call to Oswald at his New Orleans
residence the first week he arrived there in April 1963. Edisen said Rivera
gave her the phone number weeks before Oswald himself knew he would be living
there, so how did Rivera know that number? I came to know Adele personally over
the years, met her in Dallas, believe her, and was sorry to hear she passed
away.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/12/new-oswald-witness-goes-public.html
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/12/dr-jose-rivera-at-ft-detrick.html
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/arrb/index65.htm
https://kennedysandking.com/obituaries/adele-edison-passes-away-at-88
WAYNE SMITH
Wayne Smith was a senior state
department diplomat stationed at the US Embassy in Havana when Castro took over
in 1959. Smith said that he worked closely with David Morales and knew Colonel
Samuel Kail, the Army attaché, as well as David Atlee Phillips, who while not
working out of the embassy, was in Smith’s amateur theater group who produced
plays. I met Smith at one of the first COPA conferences in Washington, and he
asked me to attend the summit in Rio between JFK researchers and the Cuban
intelligence officers. Though I didn’t make that meeting, my associates John Judge
and Antony Summers did. Smith was later used to falsely identify Morales and
another JMWAVE officer Gordon Campbell, as the persons in a film from the
Ambassador Hotel on the day RFK was killed. I believe Wayne Smith is still
alive.
https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKsmithW.htm
BRADLEY AYERS
After reading his book “The War that
Never Was” many years ago, I finally got to talk to former US. Army Ranger
Captain Ayers a number of times on the telephone. Ayers also wrote “The Zenith
Secret,” about his time training anti-Castro Cuban commandos at JMWAVE. Ayers
and Captain Edward Roderick were assigned by General Brute Krulak to train the
Cubans under CIA operational control. The leader of the team Ayers trained was
Julio Fernandez, the same name as the Cuban I was originally searching for.
Ayers’ first book was published by Bobbs-Merrell, an company from Indiana that
had an office in the Texas School Book Depository and hired William Harvey
after Harvey left the CIA. And while the CIA didn’t vet Ayers’ book, Harvey
did, excising the name of Gordon Campbell as well as making other editings.
Like Wayne Smith, Ayers was show the video of the Ambassador Hotel on the night
RFK was killed and he too falsely identified two of the men as David Morales
and Gordon Campbell. Ayers recently died, but his books say a lot. Ayers was
talking with the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) when they were
interviewing Gene Wheaton, and Ayers warned the ARRB that Wheaton was going to
give them disinformation – though Wheaton himself didn’t know it.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/09/brad-ayers-us-ranger-trained-cubans-at.html
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-resurrection-of-bradley-ayers.html
BILL TURNER
The late Bill Turner, former FBI agent
and original JFK assassination investigator, was in Dallas on the day after the
assassination, and continued his inquiry until he died. His articles in
Ramparts and books – “The Fish is Red” and “Rearview Mirror” documents his work
on the case, especially the New Orleans angles and JMWAVE, where he was the
first to mention the name of Gordon Campbell – the JMWAVE maritime operations
chief. It was Turner, at a COPA conference in Dallas who said, “We now have a
good idea as to what happened at Dealey Plaza. The motives were piling up – Bay
of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, backchannel negations with Castro, and there was
already a mechanism in place to kill Castro that was turned around and
redirected to JFK in Dallas.” Thus focusing on the JMWAVE commandos who were
paid by the CIA and trained to kill Castro – the Pathfinders.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2016/01/william-weyand-turner-1927-2015.html
ARTHUR YOUNG
After reading two of his books – one
on the history of the Bell Helicopter and the other on his philosophy of
process, I visited Arthur Young at his home in Brandywine, just outside
Philadelphia. The inventor of the Bell Helicopter is a very interesting guy,
who did my horoscope as we talked – on the record as I recorded it on an audio
cassette. As a genius inventor who argued with Einstein at Princeton, Young set
about to solve the problems of vertical flight, and after nearly two decades,
succeeded in developing the first commercially approved helicopter -–the Bell
47B – the MASH helicopter with glass cockpit and girders – that is now hanging
in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. As an eccentric muse who dabbled
in astrology, ESP and Remote Viewing, Young hooked up with an equally eccentric
women – Ruth Forbes Paine – an independently wealthy Forbes family heiress who
was previously married to Lyman Paine – a founder of the American Trotskyite
Party and father of Michael Paine – the chief benefactor of Lee Harvey Oswald
the accused assassin. It was Arthur Young who arranged for his stepson Michael
to work at the Bell Helicopter factory in Dallas, where he moved with his
Quaker wife Ruth Hyde Paine, who he met at a Philadelphia folk dance. It isn’t
Arthur Young who is the real key to this case – but rather his wife, Michael’s
mom.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-last-interview-with-arthur.html
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/12/arthur-young-with-model-helicopter.html
RUTH FORBES PAINE YOUNG
Ruth Forbes Paine Young was present
when I met Arthur Young at their colonial era farmhouse in Brandywine, and I
did meet her, but she was suffering from an advanced case of altimizers
disease, so I didn’t ask her any questions, and she just sat there and smiled.
As a Forbes, she has a cottage on the Forbes family island off Woods Hole,
Massachusetts, and stressed her eccentricity by marrying Lyman Paine, who was
not just a communist but a Trotyskite – follower of Trotsky, who was exiled by
the Soviet Communists to Mexico City where he was assassinated by a Soviet
agent – as described in the book by Issac Don Levine. The thing about Ruth
Forbes is her close association with Mary Bancroft – the equally eccentric
granddaughter of the founder of Barrons and the New York Stock Exchange. While
on a steamship to Europe with Ruth Forbes, Mary Bancroft met a Swiss
businessman who she married, which put her in a position to meet Allen Dulles
in Berne, where she became Dulles’ secretary and principle agent in developing
Nazi officer Hans Bernd Gisivious. Gisivious was a main participant in the July
20, 1944 Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler that failed. With the assistance of
Dulles and Bancroft Gisivious escaped Berlin to Berne, and after the war
relocated to Dallas where he worked for a major defense contractor.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/10/valkyrie-at-dealey-plaza-re-visited.html
MRS.MARY DORMAN
When the Clifton copy of the Air Force
One radio transmission recordings from 11/22/63 were released, I immediately
compared it to the copy I had transcribed, and noticed some important aspects
that were edited out of the copy of the tape I had received from the LBJ
Library years earlier and transcribed. On the new tape, a man identifies
himself as “Colonel Dorman – General LeMay’s aid” who wanted to get an
important message to LeMay, who was flying back to DC from Canada, where he was
said to be on a fishing vacation. While we don’t know what the message was, I
identified Dorman and found he was from near Trenton, where I also was living
at the time, and found a phone number for him. While Dorman had died in combat
in Vietnam, his widow answered the phone and acknowledged that she was the wife
of Colonel Dorman, General LeMay’s aide. She said that on the day JFK was
killed she was working in the White House on the historic restoration project
begun by Mrs. Kennnedy. She worked for a man named “Castro,” who when informed
of JFK’s death, closed all the curtains and told them to leave. Mrs. Dorman
said she went to a chapel to pray, and then went home. She said she lived on
General’s Row alongside Arlington Cemetery.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/02/col-george-stanton-dorman.html
MRS. DORMAN’S SON
I also talked on the phone with Mrs.
Dorman’s son, who was about ten years old at the time of the assassination who
recalls climbing a tree in Arlington Cemetery and watching the burial of JFK
from a high perch. He also said that his father once took him on a tour of
General LeMay’s private command and control plane – nicknamed “Speckled Trout,”
that was an airborne command post.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/02/jfk-general-lemay.html
MAJOR HAROLD R. PATTERSON – AKA
“STRANGER”
Also on the Clifton tape is an excerpt
edited out of the LBJ Library version of the tape, in which Pierre Salinger –
the President’s Press Secretary – aboard the Cabinet Plane over the Pacific,
receives a radio call from the Situation Room in the White House to return to
DC immediately. Salinger took the message to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, the
senior officer aboard, who wanted to know who was giving this instruction.
Salinger said it was from an officer who identified himself as “STRANGER” in
the White House Situation Room. Rusk said they couldn’t take orders from
someone named “STRANGER” and wanted to know who it was. Salinger went to the
pilot and requested the code book, but when the pilot opened the plane’s safe,
the code book was missing! So Salinger went back on the radio to the Situation
Room and requested the full identify of “STRANGER.” After a little while, the
Situation Room responded saying “STRANGER” was Major Patterson, who Salinger
knew and could vouch for. As I now had his name, I looked Patterson up and
found him in Virginia and called him on the phone. He acknowledged being in the
Situation Room at the time of the assassination, working for the White House
Communications Agency (WHCA). He also acknowledged talking with Salinger and
the fact that the code book aboard the Cabinet Plane was missing. We talked for
a little while and he was quite honest and open with me, but when Jefferson
Morley called him a few days later he clammed up, and wouldn’t talk, as someone
must have got to him.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/05/stranger-missing-code-books.html
RICHARD BULLOCK
Former USMC Richard Bullock was
stationed at Atsugi, Japan with Oswald and knew him well. I met Bullock at an
Elks barbeque, and talked with him on other occasions as well. Bullock said he
often played football with Oswald in their “skivvies” when off duty. Oswald he
said, while officially a radar operator, usually worked out of the
communications shack. Bullock also didn’t recognize the guy killed by Jack Ruby
as the same guy he served with. Bullock is still alive.
https://jfkcountercoup.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/which-oswald-was-at-atsugi/
STEVE KENAN
When Anthony Summers interviewed a
Mexican attorney who told him about meeting Oswald at Sanborn’s Restaurant in
Mexico City in 1963, he said Oswald took off for the Cuban consulate on the
back of a motorcycle with another American, a Philadelphia college
student. After searching for this man on the motorcycle for years with
others, we gave up, but I posted an article about it on line and received an
email from “Mony” – a German girl whose mother met Steve Kenan, a Philadelphia
college student who rode a motorcycle. With her additional information, we
located Kenan in the Southwest, and notified Anthony Summers, who contacted
Kenan and talked with him on the phone. I also found Kenan’s articles about
visiting Cuba in the Temple University student newspaper – which included a
photo of Kenan and Castro together! Kenan said that he was indeed in Mexico
City, and wrote an article about his adventures in Motorcycle Magazine (that I
acquired). But – he believed he left before September 1963, so he wasn’t there
when Oswald was there, and didn’t remember giving him a ride from Sanborn’s
restaurant, although he was there too. It is also suspected that Kenan could be
the mysterious LICOZY-3 – a student from Philadelphia and CIA asset.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2011/08/man-on-motorcycle-in-mexico-city.html
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-man-on-motorcyle-in-mexico-city.html
https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php?id=LICOZY-3
RICHARD BEYMER
When Phil Shenon’s book came out that
focuses on Oswald’s presence at a “Twist Party” in Mexico City hosted by Sylvia
Duran – the Cuban embassy receptionist Oswald dealt with, he tries to make the
case for Cuban embassy personal encouraging Oswald to kill JFK at that party.
He also says that there were two other American “gringos” at the party – who
Duran would not identify because one was a famous American film actor who was
still alive and she wanted to protect him. Well records recently released under
the JFK Act include a CIA report of a telephone conversation between an
American – Richard Beymer, and the Cubans, asking about Duran. Beymer was an
American film actor who starred in West Side Story and The Longest Day, and was
in Mexico at the time to attend a film festival. I tracked Beymer down and
talked with him on the phone, and he acknowledged being there at the time and
trying to get a visa to Cuba. He didn’t recall any Twist Party, though that was
something he would have done being a footloose American below the border. With
him he said, was Bradley Pierce, a former New York City bar owner, now a
Catholic priest.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/11/twisting-with-oswald-in-mexco-city.html
BRADLEY PIERCE
Father Bradley is now at a seminary in
New England, and acknowledged in a phone conversation, that he was indeed with
Richard Beymer in Mexico, but he too does not recall a “Twist Party,” or
meeting Oswald. They were there however, at the time of the assassination, as
Father Bradley recalls learning about the assassination as they got off an
elevator in a hotel lobby in Mexico. Since they were there for only a few
weeks, and were there on the day of the assassination, they were not there when
Oswald was there in late September – early October.
OBIT: https://patch.com/connecticut/northhaven/obituary-rev-bradley-pierce-82-formerly-north-haven
Just goes to show that we have to move
on interviewing the remaining living witnesses because they won’t live forever.
POLK COUNTY SHERIFF CHERRY
When JFK’s personal secretary Evelyn
Lincoln passed away, she left in her will two trunks of effects that she
ordered sent to her cousin – a Nebraska attorney who became a judge. The
attorney informed the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) that he gave
the trunks to Polk County Sheriff Cherry for safe keeping, but the ARRB never
followed up on this and the contents of the trunks remain unknown and out of
the JFK Collection at the NARA, where they belong. I contacted the current Polk
County, Nebraska attorney and he said that he checked the evidence locker and
the two trunks are no longer there. I then obtained the email and phone number
of former Polk County Sheriff Cherry – who acknowledge recalling the trunks and
knowing their disposition, but refused to tell me what became of them, unless I
get a subpoena and he has a witness present. With the TRC – it has been
suggested that RFK, Jr., the rightful heir to the trunks, should request to
know what became of them.
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/12/mrs-lincolns-trunks-nara-never-got-them.html
Harry Dean – FPFCC officer in Chicago,
Harry visited Cuba and was interogated by Cuban officials. He was also an
informant for the FBI and CIA in regards to his FPFCC and Cuban activities, and
suspects Lee Harvey served a similar role. He was personally associated with a
number of individuals who became involved in the JFK assassination story.
USAF Reserve officer Maj. Ralph Ganis,
who purchased at an internet auction, the private papers of Nazi commando
legend Otto Skorzeny, who escaped prosecution at Nurenberg and continued his
intelligence operations into the Cold War, working mainly out of Spain and
Ireland. His wife worked closely with him, and according to the private papers
purchased by Ganis, who I met at a JFK Conference in Dallas a few years ago,
his business interests extended into Texas, especially Dallas, where he became
entwined with a number of businesses and individuals involved in the
assassination drama, expecially, USA Reserve Colonel Jack Crichton.
https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-skorzeny-papers-evidence-for-plot.html
More to come on witnesses I’ve
interviewed – BK
