Joachim Joesten on one Warren Report Lie - The Munich Report on Walker Shooting

Bill Kelly Notes: Unknown to Joachim Joesten when he wrote this, the chapter of the Warren Commission Report on responses to Rumors and Speculations was written by Department of Defense Pentagon historian Alfred Goldberg. More on Goldberg here:

 http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/09/alfred-goldberg-and-rudolph-winnacker.html

 http://history.defense.gov/Multimedia/Biographies/ArticleView/tabid/8347/Article/571273/alfred-goldberg.aspx

Chapter 4 – “The Truth About the Kennedy Assassination” by Joachim Joesten

WHOEVER LIES ONCE…. In appendix XII the Warren Report deals with criticism which had surfaced previously and called it: “Speculations and Rumors”. In this article specifically, the report assumes a rather pontifical tone which made the findings of the commission appear above any doubt. In each case a “commission finding” is being held against certain speculations by discrediting a certain rumor with some contemptuous words.

By scrupulous insight, one will find that these so-called commission “findings” lack any real proof or partly are in direct opposition to the main report. And partly they are demonstrably untrue.
Following is a drastic example which will show how the Warren Commission knowingly and deliberately lied, when refuting one of those alleged rumors. Let us first quote the paragraph of the Warren Report:

“Speculation. – The Dallas Police suspected Oswald and Ruby to be involved in the attack on General Walker and intended to arrest the two men, when the FBI stepped in and requested the Police, upon the request of the Justice Minister Robert F. Kennedy, to refrain from arrest for reasons of state security.”

“Commission finding. On November 29, 1063 (actually on November 25 or 26 printed) this statement appeared in the German weekly DEUTSCHE NATIONALIZEITUNG UND SOLDATENZEITUNG, which is published in Munich. This statement was later picked up by the NATIONAL ENQUIRER and published on May 17, 1964. The Commission was later informed by a dependable source that the statement was a ficticious fabrication of the paper’s editor.”

First it should be stated that from the above paragraph no clear result can be found – and that was obviously the intention – whether the “fabrication” of the editor came from the German or the American paper. But that is not of importance right now. It is, however, more important that the Commission probably thought that nobody ever would go so far as to verify the true connection. But, if one would do that, it would become very obvious and very fast so, that in this case neither the German nor the American paper, but the Warren Commission was lying.

Let us now first look at what the NATIONAL ENQUIRER had to say. In the May 17, 1964 edition the paper wrote the following headline on page one:

Insiders in Washington are perplexed about the report concerning a fantastic letter. “CONNECTION BETWEEN RUBY AND OSWALD”
 
In official circles consternation is rampant: Due to a letter from the American Ministry of Justice the arrest was thwarted. The report inside the paper fills two and a half printed pages. The most important paragraphs read as follows:
 
Washington: The hottest story circulating here states that the American Ministry of Justice thwarted the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby seven months prior to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Oswald and the man who killed him, Jack Ruby, were both partners and suspected to have committed the crime seven months prior to the death of the President.
 
The unbelievable details of this story are so explosive that officials refuse any comment. However, what is being circulated among highest government officials reads as follows: 

1.    The Justice Ministry intentionally prevented the arrest of Oswald and Ruby prior to the Kennedy assassination.
2.    The Dallas Police suspected Oswald to be the assassin and Ruby the ‘paymaster’ in a conspiracy against the life of the former General Major Edwin A. Walker – seven months prior to the President’s assassination.
3.    That the American CIA used Ruby to recruit commandos to attack Castro’s Cuba. In order that this explosive information would not become public knowledge, the CIA asked the Ministry of Justice to prevent the Dallas Police from arresting Ruby and Oswald.”

A strictly confidential document – a letter, signed by a high official of the Ministry of Justice was delivered to the Chief of Police in Dallas, Jesse E. Curry, in which the Police was requested NOT to arrest Oswald and Ruby for the attempted assassination plot against Walker.

After a sniper shot on General Walker in Dallas on April 10, 1963, but missed, the Dallas Police suspected Oswald to be the sniper and Ruby the paymaster.

The Police was ready to arrest both, but because of the request from the Justice Ministry, this was prevented. Ruby and Oswald remained untouched. And seven months later, on November 22nd last year, Oswald killed the President of the United States.

The confidential document, a copy of which is supposed to be in the hands of the Commission appointed by the President to investigate the murder, exposes a net of intrigues which included the FBI together with the Justice Ministry and CIA.

It is politically so explosive that the Warren Commission did not show the document even to one of their own, i.e. Senator Richard Russell. It was feared that Senator Russell, who headed the fight of the Southern States for the Civil Rights Law, would use this document as a weapon against the Justice Ministry and its Chief, Justice Minister Robert F. Kennedy, a champion of the Civil Rights Law.

The document in question contradicts the FBI report about the assassination of President Kennedy and the follow-up murder of Oswald. A high FBI official was summoned by an official of the Justice Ministry, who was aware of the dangerous situation in Dallas, to instruct the Dallas Police not to arrest Oswald and Ruby.

The FBI official first refused, stating that interference into a pending investigation is considered a crime. The FBI official said he would only follow the instruction if he received an official directive from the Justice Ministry.

Upon receipt of the signed instruction, the FBI official called the Dallas Police insisting that Oswald and Ruby be left alone. But the Dallas Police insisted also on an official, signed instruction. Upon this request, the Justice Ministry sent a letter to the Dallas Police Chief Curry instructing him to leave Oswald and Ruby alone.

The Ministry declared that the arrest of Oswald and Ruby would not be in the interest of the country’s security. Behind this request, however, was the CIA which was very much involved with Ruby, and probably also with Oswald.

Agents of the CIA had used Ruby to recruit commandos in the Dallas area which were to be used against the Castro regime. They did not want to risk this information to become public knowledge.

It is also suspected that Oswald himself acted as double agent for the communists as well as the CIA.
So far the shortened version of the special report of the NATIONAL ENQUIRER.

Let us now summarize the important points:

The Dallas Police suspected the two CIA agents Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby to have committed the attempted assassination of General Walker, and want to arrest them. Now the Justice Ministry, upon request of the CIA, prevent the arrest.

Since serious doubts existed at various agencies against such interference in an ongoing investigation, all involved parties tried to secure their interests towards all sides.

In the follow-up exchange of letters, two secret documents were produced: First a letter from the Ministry of Justice to the FBI, and second, a letter of similar content, which was addressed to the Police Chief of Dallas, Curry, by the Ministry of Justice, which contained the reasons or the non-involvement in the case against Oswald and Ruby. Only after receipt of this letter, the Police Chief Curry refrained from having the two men arrested.

As I was familiar with the special report of the NATIONAL ENQUIRER, I became suspicious when I read the Warren Report. How, I was asking myself, can an unimportant paper in Munich, written in German, know so much about internal proceedings between American authorities?

As I was sure that something was very wrong, I went to find the edition of November 29, 1963 of the German NATIONAL UND SOLDATEN ZEITUNG to find the source of the ‘hoax’ which the Warren Commission alleged to have found – and which could not be found in the German Edition (see photo on page 105).

And, oh wonder, I found the source, which the NATIONAL ENQUIRER alleged to have used for its ficticious fabrication. It turned out to be a small article down on the first page titled: “The strange story of the Oswald case” which reads as follows:

“The assassin of President Kennedy also tried to assassinate US General Walker in early summer of last year in his office. However, the bullet went just over his head, and he lived. Oswald was arrested, but a further investigation was thwarted upon request of the U.S. Justice Minister Robert F. Kennedy. Otherwise, Oswald would have faced many years in prison, and would not have been able to assassinate John F. Kennedy.”

If one compares these two press releases, one will find that they are as different as a pebble and a rock. The tiny article in the German paper does not contain certain information nor does it mention the connection between Ruby, Curry, CIA and FBI. And their statement that Oswald was arrested, is not true!

However, the NATIONAL ENQUIRER contains detailed and precise information. Ruby’s part as recruiter for the CIA is exactly described. They quote secret documents and the discord between the various officials is outlined in detail. The reason why the Dallas Police received exact instructions from the upper level was thoroughly illustrated.

How can anyone seriously believe that the American newspaper got all this information from an insignificant German publication? The Warren Commission did, and again demonstrated how carelessly they treated the truth.

Instead of pursuing a serious investigation, they worked the cheap tricks. The uninformed and easily tricked American people are told the inconvenient truth is nothing but a foreign invention, served by second-hand sources. The people are to believe, and they did too: “You see, first there is this little foreign newspaper sucking some idiotic ideas out of their fingers, and then our own press buys it! And they publish the same nonsense. All lies, nothing but printed lies!”

In reality, the report in the NATIONAL ENQUIRER contains the stamp of authenticity.

Even if this paper is known for being nosy and not necessarily a witness of the truth of the first degree: Here it received its information no doubt from the best source. And this source was not the insignificant Munich “Nazi” paper, but probably the Police Chief of Dallas, Jesse E. Curry.

Only the sender – or receiver – of the above mentioned secret document, which contained the instruction not to arrest, because of state security, could have caused such indiscretion. It must be viewed as ‘unlikely’ that an FBI official could have told anyone, and it is, therefore, as good as certain that the NATIONAL ENQUIRER got its information from Curry, who was, by the way, just at that period in time, involved in a controversy with the FBI.

This appears to be also the reason why the Warren Commission preferred not to directly contradict the embarrassing revelations, but to dement them by way of circumventing them as “fabrication” of the DNZ (German paper). The latter in question exists! The Commission has a copy on file. But they had to fear, by further denying the truth that a renewed publication could occur which would be even more embarrassing. Therefore the maneuver by way of the Munich newspaper.

That is how the assassination of President Kennedy was “investigated”. These are the methods used to deceive the American people. Naturally, all in the best interest of the country.  The “security of the country” was at stake.

The monstrosity of this episode, however, is the fact that, by the intervention in the proceedings against Oswald and Ruby in April 1963, Robert Kennedy was indirectly responsible for the death of his brother, even if unintentionally, and also the disclosure that not only the alleged Kennedy assassin but also his murderer were agents of the CIA.

And now let us examine the strange and intricate ways which lead Oswald from his first secret mission to the assassination in Dallas.

-    Joachim Joesten – From “The Truth About the Kennedy Assassination”

Valkyrie at Dealey Plaza Re-visited

Valkyrie at Dealey Plaza Re-visited - Bill Kelly




David Talbot's new book "The Devil's. Chessboard" mentions the role Allen Dulles and his agent-mistress Mary Bancroft played in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.

The significance of this has yet to be fully drawn out but the recurring Valkyrie theme that runs through the JFK assassination narrative certainly merits further scrutiny.

As I mention in my review of  "Devil's Chessboard" [http://JFKCountercoup.blogspot.com], [1] when it comes to killing Castro the CIA-Mafia plots get the most attention while the Valkyrie plot has been ignored despite its numerous direct ties to what happened at Dealey Plaza, beginning with Lee Harvey Oswald and Volkmar Schmidt.

It was at a party at Schmidt's Dallas home in February 1963 that George deMohrenschildts set up specifically for Oswald to meet Michael Paine when Schmidt says he talked privately with Oswald and first brought up the subject of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.

In a phone conversation Schmidt told me that while talking with Oswald he used a reverse psychology technique he learned from a German doctor who knew some of those involved in the Valkyrie plot, and Schmidt actually mentioned the Valkyrie plot to Oswald.[2]

While discussing right-wing general Walker, Schmidt said he compared Walker to Hitler and asked if Hitler had been assassinated how different the world would be? Schmidt implied Walker should be killed before he became another Hitler.

Born in Germany and raised in his formative years by the German doctor, Schmidt was - like George  deMohrenschilts, an oil geologist. Schmidt was was recruited in Germany by Magnolia Oil company of Dallas - the company that used the red Pegasus sign as its logo and later merged with major conglomerates.

Schmidt told me that when he learned that Oswald had taken a shot at Walker and killed JFK he felt terribly guilty, especially every time he drove through Dealey Plaza, as he believed he was responsible for planting the assassination seed in Oswald's mind.

Schmidt told me that he felt responsible saying, "naturally it was a terrible responsibility, and for years when I drove past the underpass I literally had to cry because, you know. But I exonerate myself completely because I had the best intent, embarrassed Kennedy...I may have triggered it. Actually, a few days after I talked with him, he bought his weapons."

Shortly after the Walker incident Oswald packed up all his family belongings, including the rifle said to have been used to shoot at Walker, and was about to suddenly and unexpectedly move his family to his home town of New Orleans. But Mrs. Paine, who was driving them to the bus station, suggested Marina and the daughter should stay with her in Texas while Oswald went on alone to New Orleans, find a job and apartment and then she would drive them there when he was settled in.[3]

And that he did, getting a job at Riely Coffee and an apartment on Magazine Street while reconnecting with his mother's sister aunt Muriel and uncle Dutz Murret.

Ruth Paine then drove Marina, the daughter and the Oswald's belongings, including the rifle, to New Orleans.

After an interesting and eventful summer in the Crescent City, the Oswalds considered returning to Texas. Ruth Paine wrote to the pregnant Marina and invited her to come and live with her in Texas until she had the baby. If she agreed, Ruth Paine wrote, Marina should write her a letter in care of Arthur Young, Paoli, Pennsylvania, where she would be visiting her husband's mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young. [4]

Ruth Paine was on a summer station wagon vacation with her kids driving to Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C.  and Ohio visiting friends and family. Ruth wrote to Marina saying if she agreed to move in with her in the return letter she would pick Marina up in New Orleans and take her to Texas while Oswald went to look for work in Philadelphia.

One of the places Ruth Paine visited on the trip was the Forbes family Island off Massachusetts before driving to the suburban Philadelphia farm of her husband Michael's mother.[5]

An eccentric heiress and humanitarian member of Cord Meyer's World Federalists - Ruth Forbes Paine had married the equally eccentric Arthur Young, genius inventor of the Bell Helicopter 47A - the MASH helicopter with glass bubble and girders.[6]

Arthur Young got his son-in-law Michael Paine a job at Bell Helicopter in Texas,  and it was in care of Arthur Young that Marina wrote to Ruth Hyde Paine agreeing to the new arrangements - she would go to Texas to have the baby and wait for Ruth Paine to pick her up in New Orleans.

Most significant however is Michael's mom Ruth Forbes Paine Young's association with Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles's agent and mistress who was intimately involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.[7]

In the late 1930s Ruth Forbes Paine traveled with Mary Bancroft on a steamship to Europe when Bancroft met a Swiss businessman who she would marry, putting her in position, when the Second World War broke out, to meet and work with Allen Dulles.

While working with Dulles, the top OSS chef in Europe, Bancroft met Hans B. Gisevius, a Nazi officer who was involved in the Valkyrie plot.

Years in the making the Valkyrie assassination and coup plan stemmed mainly from disgruntled military officers and it fell to Claus Von Stauffenberg to carry out, leaving a briefcase bomb under a map table next to Hitler in the Wolfsschanze Eagles Lair bunker in Bavaria.

Dulles and Gisevius had opposed the use of a bomb, preferring a pistol up close or a sniper in a motorcade ambush as more likely to succeed and their fears proved true. Gisevius  supported the coup but was against the bomb plot. He told Von Stauffenberg "I just I have the feeling we'll never succeed. I'm not speaking through fear. But I have a feeling very few of us will be alive this time next year, regardless of what happens with your bomb.">The bomb failed to kill Hitler and hundreds, some say thousands were subsequently rounded up and executed, but Gisevius escaped with the assistance of Bancroft and Dulles, who provided him with fake credentials.

After the war Bancroft translated Gisevius' account of the Third Reich and after Gisevius testified against the Nazi leadership at Nuremberg, Dulles brought him to Washington as a CIA consultant. In Washington Dulles arranged for the ex-Nazi officer to stay with his deputy Tom Braden, who lived with his wife and their eight kids in a big house next to RFK's Hickory Hill. Braden would write a book Eight Is Enough that would be made into a popular family TV show and pattern for The Brady Bunch, and an episode on the ex-Nazi living with all those kids would certainly be entertaining. As Talbot notes, Braden also interviewed Allen Dulles for the Kennedy Library. [9]

So after visiting Michael's mother, Mary Bancroft's good friend in Philadelphia, where Ruth Paine got Marina's letter, she drove to DC and visited her sister, who worked at the CIA, and then went on to Ohio to see her father before picking up Marina in New Orleans. [10]

Arriving in New Orleans in late September Ruth Paine stayed the night and the next day took Marina, the daughter and the Oswald's belongings including the rifle and drove them to Texas. Early the following morning Oswald slipped out  town and went to Mexico City to visit the Cuban and Soviet embassies.

The same September 25th day in Washington DC CIA officer Desmond Fitzgerald briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  temporarily chaired by Air Force Chief Gen. Curtis LeMay while Gen. Taylor was in Vietnam.

Fitzgerald reported to the Joint Chiefs on the CIA's Cuban covert operations with emphasis on how the military could support them, an assignment given USMC Gen. Krulak, whose aide Colonel Higgins was in attendance. Higgins' memo of the meeting, released under the JFK Act, includes the bullet point that Fitzgerald mentioned the CIA was studying the Valkyrie plot and adapting it to use against Castro.[11]

September 24-25, 1963 was a busy time on the Devil's Chessboard as there were many moves by key players besides Ruth Paine moving Marina and the rifle to Texas, Oswald leaving for Mexico and Fitzgerald briefing the Joint Chiefs.

JFK signed National Security Action Memo approving "Project Four Leaves," a military communications order that remains classified. [12]

JFK then he left on a "Conservation Tour," first stop in northeast Pennsylvania to visit Mary Pinchot Meyer's mother in Milford, Pennsylvania. Mary Pinchot had met JFK thru his college schoolmate William Attwood, who would later become an intermediary between JFK and Castro, before she married Cord Meyer.  Meyer was an ex-Marine who founded the World Federalists in support of a strong United Nations, an organization that included Philadelphia college student Priscilla Johnson and Ruth Forbes Paine Young, Michael's mom and Mary Bancroft's good friend. [13]

Cord Meyer joined the CIA in 1951 and became one of Dulles' top deputies, eventually replacing Tom Braden as chief of the International Organizations Division.

While Mary Meyer had separated from Cord Meyer, she maintained her friendship with JFK and she accompanied him on the first leg of the September Conservation Tour that took JFK to her mother's house. Then JFK moved on to the Mid-West during which the details of the president's November trip to Texas were announced.

When Oswald returned to Texas from Mexico Ruth Paine helped arrange for him to get a job at the Texas School Book Depository, a building owned by D.H. Byrd, a founder of the Civil Air Patrol in Texas, an organization Oswald was affiliated with in New Orleans.

Byrd was good friends with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay, and at the time of the assassination, when Oswald was allegedly shooting at president Kennedy from his building, Byrd was on an African Safari with a German Barron whose father (same name), according to one OSS document source, was an assassination expert after WWI and the son an avid supporter of the Valkyrie plot who wrote a manifesto on the plot after it failed. [14]

There are a half dozen references to the Valkyrie plot in the natural course of the JFK assassination narrative, which requires further, more in-depth analysis as it relates to what happened at Dealey Plaza.

Washington attorney Jim Lesar, director of the Assassinations Archive and Research Center, filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the CIA documents related to the CIA study of the Valkyrie plot that was to be used against Castro, as mentioned in the Higgins Memo.

Until we get these records however, we can see for our selves how the CIA tried to adapt the Valkyrie plan to be used against Castro, as they did try to recruit some disenchanted Cuban military officers who were close to Castro including Rolando Cubella (AMLASH) and Gen. Almeida, both of whom have been extensively reviewed and analyzed elsewhere.

Among the differences in the Valkyrie plan and the post-Mafia plots to kill Castro we find that the idea of using a bomb was discarded in favor of a sniper attack on Castro while he was riding in an open Jeep, a common situation.

Other aspects of the Valkyrie plan that were adopted besides the murder of Castro and the take over of the Cuban government was the Northwoods style psych-war media campaign to blame the assassination on communists.

When news of the CIA's plans to kill Castro were made public it was at first suggested that Castro retaliated and killed JFK before the CIA could kill him, but others claimed it was more likely that one of the CIA plans to kill Castro was redirected to kill JFK instead. If that was the case then it must have been a CIA plan that utilized a sniper attack on an open car motorcade, one of a number the CIA had on the shelf ready to go, waiting for the right situation to present itself.

Among the CIA plans to kill Castro that utilized snipers attacking an open car in a motorcade were the Hemingway House affair - discussions after the fact, and the Pathfinder plan to shoot Castro when he visited a north shore resort he was known to frequent.

Both required accurate high powered rifles with scopes, similar to the ones they attempted to infiltrate into Cuba on October 31, 1963 when the CIA raider ship The Rex deposited anti-Castro commandos with high powered rifles with scopes who were captured and paraded on Cuban TV the next day.  The story made the front page of the November 1, 1963 New York Times, and the names of the captured commandos are mentioned in Red Friday, the book written by Carlos Bringuier, the DRE Cuban Oswald was arrested with in New Orleans. [15]

One important aspect of the Valkyrie plan was a psych war operation to blame the assassination of Hitler on the SS, and monitor and control the media reports, just as the Dealey Plaza operation included blaming the assassination on Castro, a psych war campaign using media assets that continues today.

Besides the assassination, coup and psych-war aspects of the Valkyrie plot that could have been adapted to use against Castro and may have been redirected to JFK at Dealey Plaza, there was one other important part of the Valkyrie plan that could have been used - getting the victim to sign off on the operation.

Von Stauffenberg drew up the Valkyrie plan as a response to a possible revolt by slave laborers by mobilizing the home guard to quell the revolt and seize key government buildings and communications facilities.  Hitler approved and signed off on the plan without knowing the secret Phase that required his elimination. [16]

I don't know if this part of the Valkyrie plan was adapted for use against Castro, but the National Security Council and JFK did approve a number of violent covert operations against targets in Cuba, but JFK rejected the assassination plans. RFK however, did pressure Des Fitzgerald and others to step up their Cuban ops against Castro and RFK was personally introduced to some of the anti-Castro commandos who were being sent to Cuba to attack strategic installations and infiltrate rifle teams.[17]

The National Security Action memo authorizing a special military communications project Four Leaves could also be revealing once it is declassified.

The use of Phase One and Phase Two parts of the plan is another interesting parallel between Valkyrie and Dealey Plaza as they are the same terms used by Von Stauffenberg for Valkyrie and professor Peter Dale Scott to describe the official response to the assassination of JFK. According to Scott's analysis the original Phase One is the disinformation cover story to blame the assassination of JFK on Castro, that could have instigated a full scale US military attack on Cuba, that was subsequently superseded by the Phase Two promotion of the of the deranged lone assassin being responsible for the act.

In conclusion, if the CIA plans to kill Fidel Castro had anything to do with the assassination of JFK at Dealey Plaza then the CIA's proposed adaption of the Valkyrie plot to be used against Castro should be explored in detail.

Bill Kelly
bilkelly3@gmail.com 

Notes –  Valkyrie at Dealey Plaza Revisited - “The conspiracy alone must speak.”

1)      Talbot, David. “The Devil’s Chessboard” (HarperCollins, 2015) Re: Valkyrie, p. 134. “Dulles arranged for Mary….to work with the tall, imperious double agent Hans Bernd Gisevious….(who) became involved in the July 20, 1944 bomb plot against Hitler, barely fleeing with is life to Switzerland when it failed.”

2)      Kelly, William. January 1995 Telephone conversation with Volkmar Schmidt.

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html. Schmidt said that Dr. Wilhelm Keutemeyer of Heidelberg served as a foster father whose associates Frederick von Halen and Von Trott were directly involved in the Valkyrie plot. Schmidt: “….naturally it was a terrible responsibility, and for years when I drove past the underpass I literally had to cry because, you know. But I exonerate myself completely because I had the best intent, embarrassed Kennedy, and I certainly didn’t tell him to take a pot shot at him.”

3)      Warren Report, p. 730. Ruth Paine drove Oswald’s family and belongings to New Orleans and back to Texas in late September.

4)      Ford, Gerald, with John Stiles “Portrait of the Assassin” Re: Marina’s letter to Ruth Paine in care of Arthur Young, Paoli, Pa. (BK: The only place I have seen this letter).

5)      Bancroft, Mary. “Autobiography of a Spy” (Wm. Morrow, 1983) p. 55, for Ruth Paine Forbes’ association with Mary Bancroft.

6)      Young, Arthur. Inventor of the Bell Helicopter 47A. http://www.arthuryoung.com/about.html (BK: I also have an extensive three hour tape recorded interview with Young in his library.)

7)      Bancroft, Mary. “Autobiography of a Spy” (Wm. Morrow, 1983) p. 202-240 for the roles Dulles, Bancroft and Gisevius played in the July 20, 1944 Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler.

8)      Forman, James. “Code Name Valkyrie – Count Von Staufenberg and the plot to kill Hitler,” who quotes Gisevius: “I just have the feeling we’l never succeed. I’m not speaing through fear. But I have a feeling very few of us wil be alive this time next year, regardless of what happens with your bomb.”

9)      Braden, Tom.  Talbot, David."Devil's Chessboard" p. 369, p.547 (JFK Library interview), p. 553 (Rockefeller financial support for covert ops). 

10)  Ruth Paine’s Summer Vacation – Paper by Barbara Lamonica, Steve Jones and Carol Hewett, Esq. presented at 1995 COPA Conference, Washington D.C. and Steve Jones – The Confessions of Ruth Paine - DPQ  http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2015/10/steve-jones-confessions-of-ruth-paine.html   /

http://www.manuscriptservice.com/DPQ/dparchiv1.htm - RUTH

11)  Higgins Memo: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2014/04/higgins-memo-numbered-w-bullet-points.htm  - “He commented that there was nothing new in the propaganda field. However, he 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 are 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.”

12)  Four Leaves http://whd.jfklibrary.org/Diary/  - White House Diary - For Monday September 23 1963 – SUBJECT: Assignment of Highest National Security Priority to Project FOUR LEAVES. In response to a recommendation by the Secretary of Defense, the president, under the authority granted by the Defense Production Act of 1950, today established the program listed below as being in the highest national security priority category for development and production. “President Kennedy assigns the highest national security priority to Project FOUR LEAVES to develop and produce a military communications system.” FOUR LEAVES McGeorge Bundy THE WHITE HOUSE DIARY SEPTEMBER 23 1963
http://www.jfklibrary.org/White%2BHouse%2B...eptember/23.htm

13)  Meyer, Cord. “Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA”

14)  Talbot, David. Re: LeMay and Byrd. “The Devil’s Chessboard” p. 512, 524, 539-40. “D.H. Byrd received scant attention after the Kennedy assassination, despite his buildings role in the crime. He Warren Commission never questioned him – even after the millionaire took the odd step of removing the eight-plane window from which Oswald allegedly fired his shots at Kenedy’s limousine and hanging it in his Dallas mansion. Byrd said he feared that souvenir hunters might steal Oswald’s so-called sniper’s perch from the book warehouse, but he displayed the infamous window in his own home like a trophy. …The owner of the Texas School Book Depository was closely associated with a number of passionate Kennedy adversaries, including Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief…who bestowed a glowing Air Force commendation on Byrd in May 1963…” Re:  D. H. Byrd on safari 11/22/63 with German Baron Werner von Alvensleben, WWII double-agent and son of “assassination expert.” See: Dallas Morning News December 1963 and 1945 OSS X2 Report  http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2015/10/oss-x-2-report-on-werner-von-alvensleben.html   "Hunting history is rife with the tales of derring-do with 6.5mm cartridges. W.D.M. Bell whacked many elephants and Werner von Alvensleben slew hundreds of buffalo with what they termed a “small-bore rifle,” namely, the 6.5×54 Mannlicher-Schönauer."  Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/12/gun-test-alexander-arms-6-5-grendel-hunter/#ixzz3qMkGtu2F and see "The Baron in Africa," which says that Von Alvensleben's favorite rifle was the 9.3 x 62 mm Manlicher-Schonauer.

15) New York Times, November 1, 1963 p. 1. Re: The Rex. 

16)  Forman, James. "Code Name Valkyrie - Count Von Stauffenberg and the plot to kill Hitler" http://hub-e.com/content/james-d-forman-fb2-ebook-get-code-name-valkyrie-count-von-stauffenberg-and-plot-kill-hitler. "The plan had a code name Valkyrie, and it would be developed at two levels with two sets of orders. Officially Valkyrie was a scheme to activate units of the Home Army to seize population centers in case of a rebellion by the foreign slave laborer sin Germany. Behind this facade the plan was to evolve into a complete takeover of the government by the Army. Phase One - plan for mobilizing the Reserve Army. Purpose: to crush mutiny of slave laborers.This part of the plan was submitted through channels and approved by Hitler himself. Phase Two - the second, secret plan: Item 1- Disposal of Hitler. Item 2 - Preparation of orders upon Hitler's death...Direct the Reserve Army to undertake the following - Occupy first the city of Berlin...Principle objectives: Imprisonment of key Nazi and SS officials, occupation of vital government buildings, railroad stations and other government centers, especially broadcast stations. Immediate command of the mass media, newspapers, wireless radio - cannot be over stressed. The conspiracy alone must speak. Orders from Hitler's East Prussian HQ must be entirely isolated and contained. The conspiracy alone must speak." For Peter Dale Scott's "Phase One" - "Phase Two" analysis see: Deep Politics series. 

17) Re: Pathfinder records - ARRB interviews with NPIC employes stationed at JMWAVE, where the CIA officers kept the Pathfinder documents filed separately from regular station files by keeping them in the NPIC section.

The Devil's Chessboard and the New Political Landscape

David Talbot’s “The Devil’s Chessboard – Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government” (Harper-Collins, NY, 2015)

A Preview of the New Political Landscape 

By Bill Kelly

David Talbot’s “The Devil’s Chessboard” turns the table on the traditional journalists and historians who have uniformly portrayed Allen Dulles as the pipe smoking gentleman spy who fought for America’s righteous causes through two world wars and the Cold War and helped calm America’s anxiety in the wake of the Kennedy assassination by honorably serving on the Warren Commission.

Not so fast. By focusing on the one man at the epicenter of both World War II and the Cold War as well as the assassination – Allen Welsh Dulles, Talbot puts his finger on the pulse of power, and without promoting any conspiracy theory in regards to the assassination, he sets the stage for rational discussion and historic acceptance of such theories, for certainly one of them must be true.

Rather than the crusading knight, in retrospect we can now see Dulles for what he actually was – a shrewd lawyer who looked after the interests of his family, friends and corporate clients, a man who harnessed the secrets of the black arts of espionage and helped establish the secret intelligence state that has pretty much run things since the end of World War II.

The game of chess and the chessboard is a fitting matrix model that can help make complex issues simple or easier to understand and some of the main characters – E. Howard Hunt and David Atlee Phillips considered themselves Knights and Bishops, major players in the Great Game that Dulles played, though Dulles himself was not so much a player on the board but one of the master gamers who moved the pieces around.

From representing German industrial giants before the war and promoting a separate peace with the Nazis against the president’s stated policy to instigating coups against democratically elected governments in Guatemala and Iran, Talbot portrays Allen Dulles as a man who not only made his own foreign policy, but was often at odds with the presidents he served – Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson.

With his brother John Foster Dulles as Eisenhower’s Secretary of State and serving as head of the then relatively unknown Central Intelligence Agency, Allen Dulles was a king maker in a strategic position to design and call the plays and make the moves that made American and world history for over a decade.

Dulles’ downfall – the Bay of Pigs, was a major blunder, conceived during the Eisenhower administration and carried out shortly after Kennedy took office. While JFK approved the relocation of the invasion beach, refused to permit a second and necessary air strike, and took responsibility for the failure of the operation, he privately blamed Dulles for conceiving, approving and convincing him such a harebrained scheme would work.

Talbot correctly assumes the contemporary consensus that the Bay of Pigs operation was designed to fail and force the president to order a large scale American military intervention, as LBJ would do in the Dominican Republic shortly after assuming office, but JFK balked and refused to do what the CIA and military leaders assumed he would.

A genuine story teller with a narrative flair, Talbot begins with Allen Dulles walking around his Georgetown neighborhood past Dumbarton Oaks with the editor of Harpers Magazine, trying to explain his side of the Bay of Pigs debacle. Dulles would write an article on the subject for Harpers that was never published but Talbot found it among Dulles’ papers.

In reading this book I found that Talbot presents many of the basic facts but leaves a lot of supporting details out, details that will eventually come out and fill some of the missing pieces of the puzzle, such as the fact that the Harvard Research Center at Dumbarton Oaks was run for many years by a Harvard Russian associate who just happened to be present in the American Embassy office in Moscow when former Marine Lee Harvey Oswald presented his passport and announced his “defection.”

On the Devil’s Chessboard Oswald is a mere pawn whose movements were closely monitored by the CIA as well as the Soviets, but Talbot doesn’t give him credit for the dastardly deed most mainstream historians attribute to him - killing JFK all by himself. Rather, Talbot portrays Oswald as a political pawn in Dulles’ orbit and caught up in the intelligence network web that was responsible for the Dealey Plaza operation and implies that he was framed for the crime.

In a real game of chess, it is highly unlikely if not impossible for a pawn to take out a King, but that’s exactly what Oswald is supposed to have done, and he was certainly maneuvered into position to do so.

“In the months leading up to the Kennedy assassination, Oswald was moved here and there with the calculation of a master chess player,” writes Talbot, noting that “He staged public scenes in New Orleans and Mexico City that called attention to himself as a hotheaded militant, as he had done at the embassy in Moscow. There were invisible wires attached to Oswald – and some of the more intriguing ones led to Allen Dulles.”

In all of the two thousand and some books that have been written about the assassination few call attention to certain key facts that Talbot draws out, such as JFK’s bitter enemy Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay was a close personal friend of D. H. Byrd. Byrd was the owner of the Texas School Book Depository, from where Oswald is supposed to have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. 

Talbot also calls attention to the fact that Dulles’ mistress and agent Mary Bancroft was a close friend and overseas traveling companion of Michael Paine’s mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young.

While Talbot doesn’t mention Ruth Forbes Paine Young by name, he refers to her as “Ruth Paine’s mother-in-law,” reporting that: “It was another striking ‘coincidence’ in the endlessly enigmatic Oswald story. The housewife who took the Oswald’s under her wing had married into a family whose foibles and weaknesses were well known to Dulles and his mistress. Ruth Paine was aware of her mother-in-law’s connection to Bancroft and Dulles. Her mother-in-law, in fact, had told her that she invited the couple to enjoy a get-away on the family island. But with typical obstinacy, Ruth refused to see any particular significance to this Dulles link to her family.”

“Dulles himself,” writes Talbot, “acknowledged that the flat-out weirdness of these curious facts and, in his own characteristic fashion, simply laughed it off. The conspiracy-minded would have a field day, he chuckled, if they knew that he had visited Dallas three weeks before the assassination and that he had a personal connection to the women whom he identified as Marina Oswald’s ‘landlady.’”

As Talbot points out, Ruth and Michael Paine were more than Marina Oswald’s “landlady,” who charged no rent, they were Oswald’s benefactors and sponsors, giving him rides, providing food and clothing for his family and obtaining him the job at the Byrd’s Texas School Book Depository, from where shots were said to have been fired at the president.

“In their immaculate innocence, the Paines played right into the hands of those who were manipulating Oswald,” Talbot concludes.

That the mother of the accused assassin’s chief sponsor was a close personal friend and traveling companion of Allen Dulles’ mistress and agent is not six degrees of separation but two, and not a coincidence any more than the fact that the mistress – Mary Bancroft, was Dulles’ intermediary with Hans Bernd Gisevius, the Nazi officer and principle agent in the July 1944 Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler. Talbot mentions this, but doesn’t include the fact that in late September 1963 CIA officer Desmond Fitzgerald briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the CIA’s attempt to adapt aspects of the Valkyrie plot to use against Castro in Cuba.

There was a lot of movement on the chessboard that September day as the CIA briefed the Joint Chiefs, temporarily chaired by Gen. LeMay, JFK signed a National Security Action Memo authorizing “Project Four Leaves,” a military communication order that is still classified, and left on a Conservation Tour of the mid-west, when the details of the November visit to Texas were officially announced. It was the same September day that Lee Harvey Oswald slipped out of New Orleans for Mexico City.

The day before, the Oswald’s main benefactor Ruth Paine, had picked up the pregnant Marina, her daughter and their belongings, including the rifle said to have been used to kill JFK, and drove them to Texas after staying at the Naushon island off Massachusetts that Mary Bancroft had invited them to visit and then stayed with her husband’s mother – Mary Bancrofts’s good friend in Philadelphia.

As Talbot notes, “Bancroft reminded Dulles that she had known Michael’s mother ‘extremely well’ for over forty years and had spent summers with her on Naushon Island,” so Bancroft recognized the significance of their relationship and conveyed it to Dulles, who laughed it off.

Unlke John Wilkes Booth’s landlady, who was executed, and those who assist assassins and terrorists today, who are violently interrogated and vigorously prosecuted, Ruth and Michael Paine were treated with kid’s gloves by the Warren Commissioners, who were never informed that Michael’s mom was a friend and agent of the former head of the CIA and Warren Commissioner Dulles.

This book will spark and put to rest many debates, such as the fable that RFK asked LBJ to appoint Dulles and John J. McCloy to the Warren Commission, whether the CIA engaged in a cover-up of the truth behind the assassination and the veracity of some of the sources of information. To his credit, Talbot resurrects Col. Fletcher Prouty, who worked in the Pentagon at the time of the assassination, and weathered attempts to discredit him for his beliefs, and David Lifton, a conspiracy theorist who had an interesting man to man conversation with Dulles about the assassination at a public event.

At the time of the Bay of Pigs Allen Dulles was on a trip to South America. At the time of the assassination, D. H. Byrd, the owner of the Texas School Book Depository, was on a safari in Africa with a German Barron whose father was an assassination expert and supporter of the Valkyrie plot.

In the two months before the assassination Dulles met with top CIA officials including Desmond Fitzgerald, the CIA officer who briefed the Joint Chiefs on the adaption of the Valkyrie Plot, David Atlee Philips, the "Mr. Bishop" who met with Oswald before he went to Mexico City, Cord Meyer, James J. Angleton and Thomas Karamessines, all bishops, knights and rooks who made key moves and played major roles in the assassination drama.

Other previous biographies of Dulles say that at the time of the assassination he was in New York at the venerable Council on Foreign Relations, but Talbot places him back in D.C. at his Georgetown home and then moving to the CIA’s special facility near Quantico, Virginia known as “The Farm,” where he monitored the unfolding assassination drama. 

After the failure of the Valkyrie plot Dulles and Bancroft assisted Hans B. Gisevious in getting out of the country by providing fake credentials, and after the war, Bancroft translated Gisevious’ manuscript to English while Dulles brought him to Washington as a CIA consultant. In Washington Gisevious lived at the home of one of Dulles’ chief assistants Tom Braden, who interviewed Dulles for the JFK Library.

As Talbot writes, “While serving on the Warren Commission, Dulles told Braden, he had the opportunity to examine the assassination in exquisite detail. He talked about the events of that day as if he were inspecting the intricate meshing of synchronicities that had to occur in order for Kennedy to die that day. His description made it sound like the operation of a lifetime.”

“If the employees of the Book Depository had eaten their lunch in a little different place,” said Dulles, “if somebody had been at one place where he might easily have been instead of another at one particular time – the ‘ifs’ just stand out all over it. And if any one of these ‘ifs’ been changed, it might have been prevented…It was so tantalizing to go over the record [of events], as we did, trying to find out every fact connected with the assassination, and then to say if any one of the chess pieces that were entered into the game had been moved differently, at any one time, the whole thing might have been different.”

Indeed, instead of an accident of history, in which a deranged lone gunman kills the President seemingly on a whim, it has become increasingly apparent that regardless of the role Oswald played - patsy or pawn, what occurred at Dealey Plaza was a well planned and executed covert intelligence operation that was timed to the second. And without endorsing any particular conspiracy theory, The Devil’s Chessboard sets the stage for what really happened to be understood and generally believed.

While this book is important on many levels, it is the first to call attention to the significance of the Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler and its numerous connections to Dealey Plaza so now we can look forward to the development of more information on this subject as Washington D.C. attorney Jim Lesar has already filed an FOIA request for the records related to the CIA’s adaption of the Valkyrie plot to get rid of Castro.

The associations between the CIA plots to kill Castro and the assassination of JFK, known to Dulles but kept from the other Warren Commissioners, have previously focused almost exclusively on the CIA-Mafia plots, and it has been surmised that one of those plots to kill Castro was redirected to kill JFK. The Valkyrie plot is now in the forefront of assassination plans that were on the CIA’s drawing board, and as we learn more about it, and how it was adapted to be used against Castro, we can also see how it was possibly redirected against JFK at Dallas.

One of the key elements of the German military’s Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler was to blame the assassination on the SS, just as there was and still is today a functioning psych war campaign to blame the Dealey Plaza operation on Oswald and Castro.

As we await the CIA’s response to Lesar’s FOIA request for the Valkyrie Plot documents, Lesar has suggested that Talbot’s book might “change the political landscape” of Washington if not America, and in exposing new facts, presenting a more honest portrait of Dulles and a new perspective of the Cold War, David Talbot flips the game board table and opens the door to a more honest and accurate assessment of what happened at Dealey Plaza so we can accept the probability that the President was killed not by a deranged loner but by his powerful political enemies.

Without endorsing any particular conspiracy theory the “new political landscape” allows for the assassination of the President to be viewed more honestly and elevates the discussions and debates to a new level, one that requires the national security state to give up its assassination secrets so that what happened at Dealey Plaza can be more fully understood. 

Bill Kelly 

billkelly@gmail.com 

The Devil's Chessboard - David Talbot - Hardcover

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government: David Talbot: 9780062276162: Amazon.com: Books

JFKfactsAllen Dulles plays 'The Devil's Chessboard' in David Talbot's new book - JFKfacts