Phillip Shenon's "A Cruel and Shocking Twist"

A Cruel and Shocking Twist

Phillip Shenon's book A Cruel and Shocking Act (2013 Macmillan)
Audio version by Robert Petkoff.

Review by Bill Kelly

As a serious and respected journalist Phillip Shenon deserves a listen when he says the whole truth about the assassination of President Kennedy has yet to be told, that much of the evidence and many of the official records have been destroyed, and there are still some unquestioned witnesses who have been ignored or intimidated into silence.

Among the destroyed evidence, some incinerated, some flushed down toilets, others simply gone missing, include original autopsy notes and photos, Oswald's note to the FBI, backyard pictures, JFK's brain, Jackie's pink pill box hat - all gone.  And Shenon doesn’t mention the missing Air Force One radio tapes, the Secret Service radio tapes, “Mary's box” of evidence lost by the Dallas PD, the ONI investigative reports on Oswald, the USMC report that concluded Oswald was not capable of committing the assassination alone, and private interviews with Oswald's USMC buddies – all gone missing.

So we are left with what Shenon calls a "Duel Curse," too little direct evidence has survived, yet thanks to the JFK Act - too much has been released - millions of pages of government documents, too much for any one person to read it all, yet Shenon doesn't mention that there are still so many records being withheld for reasons of national security that the National Archives can't even tell us how many.

Shenon says that no one person can read it all, but he himself reads the Prologue to the audio version of his book in which he tells us how he came to this story - while sitting at a desk of the New York Times Washington DC office when he got a phone call from a former Warren Commission attorney who wanted the truth to be told - "the best detective story you have never heard."

So you know right off the bat where this book is coming from.

The former Warren Commission staff attorney, who prefers to remain anonymous in fear of the wrath of his still living former Commission colleagues, now claims he is outraged by what "they did not see" and have learned over the years, critical and crucial facts that should have been provided the president's commission, especially the CIA plots to kill Castro, and Shenon calls attention to the mysterious and bizarre escapades in Mexico City.

This is the book that I thought Max Holland was writing as an apologist for the Warren Commission, but rather than the Commission getting it right, Shenon sees their failures as a reason to revisit the case, though he puts on blinders that keeps him from including anything except the facts that support the possibility the assassination plan was "hatched or encouraged" by Cuban Communists in Mexico City.

These blinders effectively shield Shenon from other aspects of the same story that point to a different conclusion, one that Oswald's mother and her lawyer Mark Lane make - the idea that Oswald was not the lone assassin, but an intelligence operative and designated patsy. But it is not the crazy concoction of a looney mother and her lawyer as Shenon makes them out to be, but it is a serious consideration that others, including George deMohrenschildet, Gaeton Fonzi, Sen. Richard Schweiker, Peter Dale Scott, John Newman and other more responsible analysts have also made.

Central to Shenon's thesis is a Mexico City Twist Party, which he learned about from some of the recently released records of State Department mid-level diplomat Charles William Thomas, whose suicide is said to be related to the failure of the government to act on the information he provided about the Twist Party and its possible association to the assassination.

Others have been down this alley before, as the Twist Party has been the subject of previous analysis, though you wouldn't know it from Shenon's book.

On the day after the assassination the wife of the CIA's Mexico City Station Chief Win Scott was the first to hear about and mention the Twist Party and it was brought up again by others, including CIA agent June Cobb, and the story was investigated and included in other published works - Anthony Summers Not In Your Lifetime, Peter Dale Scott’s Deep Politics, John Newman's Oswald and the CIA, Jeff Morley's Our Man in Mexico and Gus Russo's Brothers in Arms.

All of the reports about the Twist Party can be traced back to one particular source - Elena Garro Paz, who recognized the accused assassin of President Kennedy - Lee Harvey Oswald, as having been in attendance at a Twist Party in Mexico City, a party that was hosted by the brother-in-law of Sylvia Duran, who was also in attendance at the party with another Cuban embassy officer, both of whom dealt with Oswald when he visited the embassy in an attempt to get a visa to Cuba.

Others at this party include Elena Garro Paz's daughter Elena, a communist writer Emilio Carballido, a General Jose Jeus Clark Flores, a red haired Latin negro and two American gringo beatniks, one of whom was a tall blond and the other a movie actor.

It was at this party that the communist Carballido and the Cuban embassy officials were allegedly overheard talking to Oswald about killing Kennedy, and where Shenon says the plan to kill the President was possibly "hatched or encouraged" by the communists there.

On the day after the day after the assassination - November 23, 1963, Elena Garro Paz - the primary source of the story, was whisked away to the Hotel Vermont by a Mexican security officer – Manuel Calvillo, who kept her incomunicato for a week “for her own protection,” while at the same time, Sylvia Duran was twice arrested and violently interrogated by Mexican security officers until she confessed to having a sexual affair with Oswald.

Syliva Duran is clearly the principle player in this drama and in subsequent interviews with Anthony Summers, Gus Russo and now Shenon, she denies ever meeting Oswald outside of the Cuban embassy, and she has been consistent in her denials, although others have reported that she privately admitting otherwise.

According to the other reliable sources, Sylvia Duran met with Oswald outside of the embassy on two occasions, other than the Twist Party, once at a fancy restaurant where she is said to have introduced Oswald to the Cuban Ambassador to Mexico, and then she met Oswald for lunch at Sanborns, a popular restaurant near the American Embassy where Oswald was also known to frequent.

Enhancing her credibility however, is Duran's acknowledgement of having an affair with someone at the American embassy and with Carlos Lechuga, the former Cuban Ambassador to Mexico. While Shenon reports on the Duran-Lechuga affair, he neglects to mention the key fact that Lechuga was the chief Cuban intermediary in the secret JFK-William Atwood-Lisa Howard-Lechuga-Castro backchannel negotiations that were on-going at the time of the assassination (See the Chase memo), what Arthur Schlesinger said would have been sufficient motive for anti-Castro Cubans to kill JFK - if they knew about it, and they apparently did.

These same CIA backed anti-Castro Cubans were also engaged with Oswald in New Orleans, (and possibly in Florida and Dallas), and were part of the failed black propaganda disinformation campaign to blame the assassination of JFK on Castro and the Cuban Communists. And there is not one, but over a dozen examples of the clearly false attempts to do this, including the now infamous Twist Party. [See: Disinformation Link].

John Newman, as one of the best authorities on the released records concludes: "The anomalies in the story about Oswald's activities in Mexico City that proliferated in CIA channels do seem to fall into a pattern suggesting an extraordinary possibility: the story was invented....to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the assassination."

There are other case studies to support this contention, all of which have been explored elsewhere, but the Twist Party is a good example.

After Win Scott's wife, the government's files indicate that Clark Anderson was the second US embassy officer to officially call attention to the Twist Story, then June Cobb (Still secret report of October 5, 1964) and then CIA Covert Action officer Jim Flannery reported on it (October 12, 1964), so the story had made the rounds of the embassy before Charles W. Thomas first reported it on December 10, 1965. The Twist Party is also mentioned in the Lopez Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), and was followed up on by Summers, Newman, Russo and now Shenon.

Before we get to Charles Thomas, who brought Shenon into the story, something must be said for June Cobb, a voluptuous CIA operative and Mata Hari who slept her way into Castro's confidence and became his secretary and translator when he first came to power and set up his headquarters in the Havana Hilton. The hotel at the time was then managed by Col. Brandeister, a Military Intelligence officer who reported to the same Pentagon office as Col. Sam Kail, who was working out of the American embassy in Havana when Castro took power.

While working for Castro June Cobb translated a book, The Shark & the Sardine, which Lee Harvey Oswald checked out of the Dallas library on November 7, 1963, two weeks before the assassination. 

After leaving Castro Cobb went to Mexico City where she literally moved in with Elena Garro Paz, her sister Deba and teenage daughter Elena, all of whom attended the Twist Party, so it wasn't long before Cobb heard about it and reported it to the CIA in a memo that was still secret and withheld for reasons of national security when Newman first published his book Oswald and the CIA (though it might be available now). Since Newman has learned a lot more about June Cobb and mentioned her frequently in his presentation at the Bethesda conference in September, we can expect to read more about her in Newman's upcoming new book.

Whether true or not, the idea that the CIA files indicated that Sylvia Duran had sex with both Carlos Lechuga and Lee Harvey Oswald certainly merits a raised eyebrow, but not for the reasons Shenon gives - that it implicates the Cuban government with Oswald and thus the assassination. Actually the Duran-Oswald-Lechuga menage a tois and the Twist Party implicate the CIA and the anti-Castro Cubans in an apparently well planned and complex psych-war caper to implicate Castro and Cuban Communists in the assassination.

The problems with the Twist Party are many, as it is clear that the Durans hosted a number of such parties, the question being whether Lee Harvey Oswald - the historical accused assassin of President Kennedy, was in attendance at any of them - and if so, when was it?

Or is this a simple case of mistaken identity? Was it just an American who looked like Oswald?

Or was Oswald being intentionally impersonated, as he clearly was on other occasions?

Is the whole Twist Party story a ruse? Is it part of a planned and failed attempt to blame the assassination on Castro and Cuban Communists, as much of the evidence indicates?

One problem is the presence at the party of a red-haired Latin negro who was also seen twice with Oswald outside the Cuban embassy giving him money. One of these reports, by a Nicaraguan intelligence agent, had the wrong date, he later recanted and the story was proven false. This red-haired Latin negro who reportedly gave Oswald money outside the Cuban embassy has been positively identified as Oscar “Carlos” Morales Mesa. But one wonders why he hasn't been arrested as a collaborator with Oswald, the accused assassin? Why hasn't this guy been picked up off the street by Navy SEALS and delivered to the CIA and violently waterboarded as such terrorists are treated today?

Another problem is the identity of the two American beat nicks, who were at the Party and then seen walking down the street with Oswald the next morning, one of whom was an American movie actor who Shenon's sources refused to identify because he is alive in the USA today and they want to protect him.

Well CIA records reflect the fact that the American movie actor is Richard Beymer, of West Side Story fame, who played opposite Natalie Wood in the movie version of the Broadway musical that was scored by Leonard Bernstein, a friend and admirer of President Kennedy who said of the assassination: "We don't want to know the truth."

I quickly located Beymer in the mid-west and got him on the phone. He had not been previously questioned about this before, and was unaware that he was the subject of CIA files on the assassination of the president.

Beymer acknowledged that he went to Mexico in the fall of 1963 with a friend who owned a nightclub in New York City. They went to Mexico City and tried to get a visa to Cuba, and government files indicate they contacted Sylvia Duran, just as Oswald had done.

Beymer gave me the name of his old friend, fellow beat nick and traveling companion, now a Catholic priest in upstate New York, and I quickly located and talked with him on the phone as well.

Both men politely answered all my questions, but neither recalled attending a Twist Party with Duran or Oswald, although since they were both young, single Americans in Mexico looking for a good time, attending a Twist Party "was something we would have done," said Beymer.

From Mexico City they went to Acapulco to attend a film festival, and they were there on November 22, 1963 when they learned of the assassination as they got off the elevator in the hotel lobby.

Since they were in Mexico for only a few weeks, and were there on November 22nd, it is unlikely they were there in late September when Oswald was there.

Some participants have referred to the Twist Party as having taken place a few weeks before the assassination, when Beymer and his friend could have been there, but the historical Oswald could not have been. Duran estimated three possible dates for the party, but Oswald was in Mexico on only one of them.

Shenon comes to the Twist Party with Charles W. Thomas, the State Department officer who committed suicide when he was wrongfully released from his job, and he fails to mention the other sources for the Twist Party story.

Shenon begins his book with the story of Charles Thomas, and uses the Twist Party as a the key moment when Oswald is introduced to the cell of Cuban Communists who “encourage” him to kill the President.

"And what about Charles Thomas?" Newman asks.

Before going to Mexico City, Newman notes, "His previous assignment had been to Haiti; from Jan. 8, '61 to the 'summer' of '63. DeMohrenschildt arrived there on June 2, 1963 - and it seems likely that both men were there at the same time."

"In another interesting coincidence," Newman writes, "Thomas became involved in deMohrenschildt's business dealings with the Haitian government."
Shenon thinks is noteworthy that Manuel Calvillo, the Mexican security official who wisked Paz into a week’s seclusion after the assassination, “was also working for the CIA.”  Shenon writes, “CIA records identified Calvillo as an ‘unwitting’ agent of the CIA, suggesting that he did not know that his handler worked for the agency. Investigators for the HSCA, working with the Mexican government, were unable to track down Calvillo in Mexico. He has since died.”
Well Shenon should be interested to know that the same thing can be said of Charles Thomas.

Newman: "In Mexico City in 1965 however, Charles Thomas was a CIA Covert Action operative, and a key player in the development of the Oswald-Duran story. That story gained credibility in CIA channels in a way that leaves open an unsavory possibility: the story has been invented...to falsely implicate the Cuban government in the assassination."

So Shenon, in writing about the Twist Party and making it a central part of his thesis, leaves out a lot of the previous analysis and fails to follow up on the ignored witnesses who are eager to talk.

While he is correct in that there are a lot of destroyed and missing evidence and records, there are many millions of recently released documents, and you don't have to read them all, just be familiar with the published works of those who have read many of them - Summers, Newman, Russo and Peter Dale Scott.

Shenon is correct in calling attention to the significance of the Twist Party story, but he is wrong to suggest that the only thing it could mean is that the Cuban Communists helped "plan" or "encouraged" Oswald to kill the President, when in fact it is one of a dozen case studies of the black propaganda effort that was launched to falsely blame Castro and Cuban Communists for the assassination.



Bill Kelly Notes: I will be adding footnotes and additional notes and links to this as soon as I am able.

Also, some other errata in Shenon's book:

- the backyard photos were not taken in New Orleans but in Oak Cliff, Dallas.

- the Lifeline radio programs were found in Jack Ruby's car on the day he killed Oswald - not the day of the assassination, and btw - the author of the articles in those programs was a former CIA propaganda expert.

- Joe Goulden, who Shenon mentions making up the FBI informant number with Hugh Aynesworth, was also trying to get the Dallas assistant DA to charge Oswald with a "Communist Conspiracy," something that LBJ personally squashed on the night of the assassination.

-Greer, the Secret Service driver, was indeed born in Ireland, but Northern Ireland, and didn't have an affinity with the Irish Catholic president as he was affiliated with the pro-British political associations. A Cruel and Shocking Twist

















More to Come on this.

Bill Kelly