An Alternate Narrative
“We now know what happened at Dealey Plaza to a
fairly good degree of certainty. The motives were piling up – the Bay of
Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the two-track backchannel to Cuba –
the motives were piling up to the point they had to assassinate him. I think
it’s now pretty obvious, with the information we have today, that the mechanism
of it came out of the allegiance between the CIA and the Mafia. They already
had an assassination apparatus set up for killing Castro, and they just switched
targets and they killed JFK instead."
- Former FBI
agent William W. Turner at Dallas COPA 2003
Keeping the CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro from the
Warren Commission was one of the major deficits of their report and calls into
question the primary conclusion that the assassination of President Kennedy was
the work of a lone deranged gunman Lee Harvey Oswald.
It doesn’t matter whether the Cuban-connected Oswald
was a lone shooter or a patsy since the CIA plots to kill Castro throw a major
wrench into the deranged lone nut scenario, and adds a political motive to the
murder.
Besides the CIA-Mafia plots that began during
the Eisenhower administration there were other CIA plans to kill Castro that
came later in the game and have a much more serious bearing on what happened at
Dealey Plaza, especially the Valkyrie plot.
In his new and important book "The
Devil's. Chessboard" David Talbot mentions the role Allen Dulles and
his agent-mistress Mary Bancroft played in the July 20, 1944 plot to kill
Hitler - code named Valkyrie. [1]
As Talbot points out, and Dulles suspected would
become fodder for conspiracy theorists, Mary Bancroft was a close personal
friend of the mother of Michael Paine, the chief patron and sponsor of Oswald
and his family.
Besides that two degree of separation between Oswald
and Dulles and Bancroft, the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler is mentioned a
half-dozen times in the course of the assassination narrative, and while the
significance of this has yet to be fully drawn out, the recurring Valkyrie
theme that runs through the JFK assassination story certainly merits further
scrutiny.
As mentioned in my review of "Devil's Chessboard" [2]
when it comes to killing Castro 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.
OSWALD AND VOLKMAR SCHMIDT
Phillip Shenon devotes a whole book “A Cruel and Terrible Act” [3] to
the subject of a Mexico City Twist Party where Oswald was supposedly encouraged
to kill JFK by some Cuban Communist diplomats. It's a party that Oswald could
not have possibly attended as I have talked with two other Americans who were
also reported present at the party and write about in my review of Shenon’s
book – "A Cruel and Terrible
Twist." [4]
But there was another party that was attended by
Oswald where he was encouraged to commit political assassination - that of
General Walker, which he is also accused of attempting to do.
It was at a February 1963 gathering at Volkmar
Schmidt's Dallas home, a party that George deMohrenschildts set up specifically
for Oswald to meet Michael Paine. DeMohrenschilts later said he wanted Oswald
and Paine to meet because of their mutual interest in political ideology.
Michael Paine's father Lyman Paine was a founder of the Trotskyite communist
party in America and Oswald subscribed to their magazine The Militant. While
Michael Paine wasn’t at the party, his wife Ruth was and she met Marina and
they became famously friends up until the assassination. It was at that party
when Schmidt says he talked privately with Oswald for over two hours and first
brought up the subject of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler.
In a phone conversation with Schmidt [5] he 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 coup when Schmidt mentioned the
plot to kill Hitler to Oswald.
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 an oil geologist, as was his friend George deMohrenschilts. Schmidt
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. [6]
Schmidt told me that when he learned that Oswald had been accused of taking a
shot at Walker and killing 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 said, "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, embarrass
Kennedy...I may have triggered it. Actually, a few days after I talked with
him, he bought his weapons."
OSWALDS TO NEW ORLEANS
Shortly after the Walker incident Oswald packed up
all his family belongings 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.
And that he did. While reconnecting with his mother's sister, his aunt Muriel
and uncle Dutz Murret he got a job at Reily Coffee and an apartment on Magazine
Street.
Ruth Paine then drove Marina, the daughter and the Oswald's belongings,
including the rifle, to New Orleans, where they settled in. [7]
After an interesting and eventful summer in the Crescent City, the Oswalds
considered returning to Texas when 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. [8]
RUTH FORBES PAINE YOUNG – MARY BANCROFT AND ALLEN
DULLES
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. Before driving to the suburban Philadelphia farm
of her husband's mother, another one of the places Ruth Paine visited was the
Forbes family Naushon Island off Massachusetts.
As described by yachtsman Walter Cronkite, “Just off
Woods Hole is Hadley Harbor on Naushon Island, a favorite anchorage or cruising
boats. At the end of a narrow twisting passage through huge rocks, it is a
scene of bucolic bliss. The Forbes family (of whom publisher-adventurer-balloonist-sailor
Malcolm Forbes is one) owns the island, and great mansions grace its hilltops
like castles on a Scottish moor.”
“The harbor shore itself, besides the grassy shelf
on which horses, cows, and sheep graze, is lined with the support mechanism for
an island population – a slip from which the Forbes’ small private ferry runs
over to Woods Hole, and a boatyard which cares for the fleet of pleasure craft.
The gracious Forbes not only permit anchorage in their harbor, but they even
have set aside one of their small islands on which visiting yachtsmen are
invited to stretch their legs. Hadley’s quiet a welcome refuge on those many
days when strong winds whip up the comparatively shallow waters of Buzzard’s
Bay and justify its notoriety as perhaps the Atlantic Coast’s roughest sailing
round.” [9]
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. [10 ]
Michael Paine and Ruth Hyde had met and were married in Philadelphia, and after
apprenticing as a helicopter designer with his step-father-in-law, Arthur Young
arranged for Michael Paine to get a job at Bell Helicopter in Texas. So it was
in care of Arthur Young that Marina wrote to Ruth Hyde Paine agreeing to the
new arrangements - Marina 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 and her close
association with Mary Bancroft, Allen Dulles's agent and mistress who was
intimately involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler. [11]
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 in the
OSS with Allen Dulles.
While with Dulles, the top OSS chef in Europe, Bancroft met Hans Bernd
Gisevius, a Nazi officer who was deeply involved in the Valkyrie plot to kill
Hitler.
THE VALKYRIE PLOT TO KILL HITLER
Years in the making the Valkyrie assassination and
coup plan stemmed mainly from disgruntled military officers and fell to Claus
Von Stauffenberg to carry out on July 20, 1944, leaving a briefcase bomb under
a map table next to Hitler in the Wolfsschanze Wolf's Lair bunker in Bavaria.
In drawing up the Valkyrie plan Von Stauffenberg broke it into two parts -
Phase One would be the order to have the home national army seize all key
government and communication buildings in response to a revolt by the foreign
slave labor, the part of the plan that would be approved by Hitler himself.
Phase Two, the secret part, was the assassination of Hitler.
The control of the radio and media centers was an instrumental part of the
plan, as Von Stauffenberg put it, "the conspiracy alone must speak."
A third part of the plan was a psychological warfare twist to blame the
assassination on the SS and Gestapo, whose leaders would be rounded up by the
real coup planners, the military generals.
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, as 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
following Gisevius’ testimony against the Nazi leadership at Nuremberg, which
sent them to the gallows, Dulles brought Gisevius 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 children 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. An episode on the ex-Nazi
living with all those kids would certainly be entertaining. And as Talbot
notes, Braden also interviewed Allen Dulles for the Kennedy Presidential
Library. [12]
So after visiting Michael's mother, Mary Bancroft's good friend in
Philadelphia, where she got Marina's letter, Ruth Paine 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. [13]
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
of New Orleans and went to Mexico City to visit the Cuban and Soviet embassies.
THE JOINT CHIEFS ARE BRIEFED ON THE VALKYRIE PLAN
The same September 25th day in Washington DC CIA officer Desmond Fitzgerald
briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who were temporarily chaired by Air Force
Chief Gen. Curtis LeMay while Gen. Taylor was on a special mission to 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. Victor H. "Brute" Krulak, Special Assistant for Counter
Insurgency Activities, whose aide Colonel Walter M. Higgins, Jr. 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. [14]
As Higgins wrote in his memo on FitzGerald’s
briefing: “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.”
September 23-25, 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.
On September 23, JFK signed National Security Action Memo 261 approving
"Project Four Leaves," assigning the "highest national priority
category for development and production" a military communications
"in response to a recommendation from the Secretary of Defense," an
order that remains classified. [15]
THE CONSERVATION TOUR
JFK then he left September 25 on a "Conservation Tour" with his
Secretary of Interior, the first stop in northeast Pennsylvania to visit Mary
Pinchot Meyer's mother in Milford, Pennsylvania. Mary Pinchot had met JFK
thru his schoolmate William Attwood, who would later become an intermediary
between JFK and Castro. Mary had married Cord Meyer, an ex-Marine who founded
the World Federalists – an international organization in support of a strong
United Nations, one that included Philadelphia college student Priscilla
Johnson, Michael's mom Ruth Forbes Paine Young and Walter Cronkite. Cord Meyer
joined the CIA in 1951 and became one of Dulles' top assistants, replacing Tom
Braden as chief of the International Organizations Division. [17]
While Mary Meyer had separated from Cord Meyer, she maintained her friendship
with JFK and she accompanied him on the first leg of the Conservation Tour that
took JFK to her mother's house in Pennsylvania. JFK then moved on to Wisconsin
and the Mid-West during which the details of the president's November trip to
Texas were officially announced to the press. [18]
D. H. BYRD’S TSBD AND AFRICAN SAFARI
When Oswald returned to Texas from Mexico in early
October he stayed at the YMCA before taking out a room at the Beckley Street
rooming house, at both places using the same O. H. Lee alias he used to sign in
at the hotel in Mexico City.
By mid-October Ruth Paine had made a phone call and helped arrange for Oswald
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 a Texas oil man who was on the board
of directors of LTV and good friends with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis
LeMay. [19]
At the time of the assassination, when Oswald was
allegedly shooting at Kennedy from his building, Byrd was on an African Safari
with a German Barron Werner von Alvensleben, who used a high powered Mannlicher
rifle to hunt. [20]
His father was an assassination expert and an avid
supporter of the Valkyrie plot. The father was sentenced to prison and
concentration camps with those who were arrested for their participation in the
plot. He also wrote a manifesto supporting the plot after it failed. [21]
So besides Volkmar Schmidt using the Valkyrie plot
to instigate Oswald to shoot Walker, Michael Paine’s mother was a close
personal friend of a key participant in the Valkyrie plot – Mary Bancroft,
Allen Dulles’ mistress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were briefed on the CIA’s
adaption of the Valkyrie plot to use against Castro, and the owner of the TSBD
building from which shots were fired was at the time on a safari in Africa with
a German Barron who used a Mannlicher rifle to hunt with and was the son of an
assassination expert who wrote a manifesto in support of the Valkyrie plot and
served time in prison with some of its participants.
VALKYRIE IN CUBA
Based mainly on the Higgins Memo reference of the
Desmond Fitzgerald briefing the JCS 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. [22]
But we don’t have to wait until we get those records as we can see for
ourselves from other records 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 reviewed and analyzed elsewhere. [23]
Among the differences in the Valkyrie plan and the post-Mafia CIA plans 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 to be used against Castro,
besides using the military, the murder of Castro and the takeover of the Cuban
government in a coup was the control of the media and the Northwoods style
psych-war media campaign to blame the assassination on communists. [24]
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,
and some like John Rosselli even claimed that one of the teams sent in by the
CIA by boat was captured by the Cubans and turned and sent back to kill JFK.
[25]
But others like Bill Turner claim it was more likely
that one of the CIA plans to kill Castro was redirected to kill JFK instead,
and that’s what former CIA officer David Atlee Phillips privately surmised.
[26]
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 [27] - discussions after the
fact, and the Pathfinder plan to shoot Castro when he visited a north shore
resort he was known to frequent. [28]
Both required accurate high powered rifles with scopes, similar to the ones
they offered to Cubela and 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. [29]
One important aspect of the Valkyrie plan was a psych war operation to blame
the assassination of Hitler on the SS and Gestapo, and monitor and control the
media so "only the conspiracy speaks," just as the Dealey Plaza
operation included blaming the assassination on Castro and a psych war campaign
using CIA media assets that continues today.
Besides the assassination 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. [30]
If this part of the Valkyrie plan was adapted for use against Castro it should
be noted that 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. [31]
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 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, which was
subsequently superseded by the Phase Two promotion of the deranged lone
assassin being responsible for the act. [32]
DES FITZGERALD BETS AGAINST CASTRO
As the CIA officer responsible for covert operations against Cuba, Des
FitzGerald was the person who briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the CIA's
"detailed" study of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler. FitzGerald was
also the case officer for Rolando Cubela (AMLASH), one of the military officers
they were recruiting to kill Castro.
So it is interesting that FitzGerald, like the
military officers in the fictional "Seven Days in May" used a bet and
a gamble on the Preakness stakes as a way of communicating their willingness to
go along with the coup plans.
In “The
Very Best Men” – Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA" Evan
Thomas writes: “….Halpern, FitzGerald’s assistant, regarded him (Cubela)
as an assassin and claims that FitzGerald did as well.”
Sam Halpern: “Des was really more interested in
starting a coup, and he hoped that Cubela could organize other army officers.
But in coups, he understood, people die. The way to start a coup is to knock
off the top man. Des felt it was a long shot, but it might work. We were
desperate. Des was willing to try anything.”
Evan Thomas writes: “FitzGerald did not think it was
such a long shot that he was unwilling to make a small bet, giving reasonable
odds. Just six days before he formally signed off on a high-powered rifle for
AMLASH (Cubela), he accepted a little wager from Michael Forrestal, an official
on the National Security Council staff who was a member of the Georgetown crowd
(his father, James V. Forrestal, had been the first secretary of defense). A
memo in FitzGerald’s personal files records a $50 bet with Forrestal on ‘the
fate of Fidel Castro during the period 1 August 1964 and 1 October 1964.
(Apparently, Fitzgerald saw a window of vulnerability for the Cuban leader that
was roughly coincidental with the 1964 U.S. presidential election campaign.)”
“Mr. Forrestal offers two-to-one odds ($100 to $50)
against Fidel’s falling (or being pushed) between the dates 1 August and 1
October 1964. In the event that such a thing should occur prior to 1 August
1964 the wager herein cancelled. Mr. FitzGerald accepts the wager on the above
terms.”
Memo is dated November 13, 1963, “One day after
FitzGerald briefed Kennedy on the progress of the Cuban operation and one day
before the Special Group approved his plan of continued covert operations
against the Castro Regime.”
Thomas: “Nine days later the assassination of John
F. Kennedy dramatically increased the odds that FitzGerald would lose his bet.”
According to Thomas, “On November 22, 1963, Des
FitzGerald had just finished hosting a lunch for an old friend of the CIA, a
foreign diplomat, at the City Tavern Club in Georgetown, when he was summoned
from the private dining room by the maître d’. FitzGerald returned ‘as white as
a host,’ recalled Sam Halpern. Normally erect and purposeful, FitzGerald was
walking slowly, with his head down. ‘The President has been shot,’ he said.”
“The lunch immediately broke up. On the way out the
door Halpern anxiously said, ‘I hope this has nothing to do with Cubans.’
FitzGerald mumbled, ‘Yea, well, we’ll see.’ In the fifteen minute car ride back
to Langley, FitzGerald just stared straight ahead. He was well aware that in
Paris, at almost the moment Kennedy was shot in Dallas, one of his case
officers had been handing a poison pen to a Cuban agent to kill Castro. It was
at the very least a grim coincidence. FitzGerald knew that, in September, Castro
threatened to retaliate against attempts to kill him. ‘United States leaders
should think that if they are aiding in terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban
leaders, they themselves will not be safe,’ the Cuban leader had publicly
declared.”
“The warning that Cubela might be a ‘dangle,’ that
he might be secretly working for Castro, took on an ominous new meaning. Now
FitzGerald had to wonder: Had Castro killed Kennedy before Kennedy could kill
him?” [33]
Or, as WillIam Turner suggested, was one of the plans
to kill Castro turned on Kennedy at Dealey Plaza?
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
detailed study and proposed adaption of the Valkyrie plot to be used against
Castro is one that should be given close examination.
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.”
3) Shenon, Phil – “A Cruel and Shocking
Act” (Picador, 2015)
4) Kelly, William. Review of Phil Shenon’s “Cruel
and Shocking Act.”
5) 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.”
6) Magnolia Oil. Jim Braden, who was arrested as a
suspect at Dealey Plaza, and his associate Victor Pierre were evicted from
Dallas by Sheriff Bill Decker and branded the “Honeymooners” for trying to
swindle the heiress of a founder of Magnolia Oil. Volkmar Schmidt lived with
two others who worked for Magnolia Oil, including the son of a Radio Free
Europe administrator.
7) Warren Report, p. 730. Ruth Paine
drove Oswald’s family and belongings to New Orleans and back to Texas in late
September. Also see Ruth Paine’s Summer Vacation report by Carol Hewett,
Barbara Lamonica and Steve Jones, 1995 COPA Conference presentation.
8) Ford, Gerald, with John
Stiles “Portrait of the Assassin” Re: Marina’s letter to Ruth Paine
in care of Arthur Young, Paoli, Pa. (BK: This is the only published reference I
know of that mentions this letter).
9) Cronkite, Walter. “North by
Northwest” (Tabletop book) Also note that Woods Hole nautical acoustics
lab was a very busy place on April 10, 1963 when Oswald was supposedly taking a
shot at General Walker, the USS Thresher submarine went down. Later a group
Justice for the Crew of the Thresher (JFCOTT) reportedly threatened JFK.
10) 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
from when I sat with him for hours in his library.)
11) Bancroft, Mary. “Autobiography of a
Spy” (Wm. Morrow, 1983) p. 55, for Ruth Paine Forbes’ association with
Mary Bancroft. (p. 202-240) for the roles Dulles, Bancroft and Gisevius played
in the July 20, 1944 Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler.
12) Braden, Tom. Talbot,
David."Devil's Chessboard" (p. 369, p.547 JFK Library
interview), p. 553 (Rockefeller financial support for covert
ops). Bancroft, Mary. “Autobiography of a Spy” (Wm. Morrow,
1983)
14) Higgins Memo: http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2014/04/higgins-memo-numbered-w-bullet-points.htm
- 13. "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."
15) 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
18) Texas Trip officially announced. “President
Kennedy’s trip to Dallas was first announced to the public in September 1963.”
– Associated Press Timeline.
Dallas Morning News 1-9-64; 1-19-64; “Time Out
From Safaris”
21) Metacas, Eric. "Bonhoeffer – Pastor,
Martyr, Prophet, Spy"(Thomas Nelson Pub. 2010 p. 502)
Among those there (in prison) were "....the nearly seventy year old Count
Werner Von Alvensleben, who in 1934 had refused to take the infamous oath of
allegiance to Hitler, and who had been persona non grata with the Nazis ever
since." (p. 507) At Buchenwald "Count Von Alvensleben was in cell
number four...was typical of many arrested after the July 20 plot in that he
had done nothing more than be on friendly terms with some of the plotters.
Thousands had been arrested for this crime. Anyone related by blood was guilty
of Sippenhaft (liability of kin), whereby relatives of the accused were
arrested and punished: wives, parents, and children too. Some small children
were taken away from their parents, never to be seen again."
22) Lesar, Jim. AARC FOIA Request to CIA for records
related to the study of the Hitler plot as mentioned in the Higgin’s report of
Desmond FitzGerald’s briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, September, 1963.
23) Waldron, Lamar. Series of books on JFK of how
CIA plot to kill Castro was hijacked by mobsters – “Ultimate Sacrafice,”
“Legacy of Secrecy” and “The Hidden History of the JFK
Assassination.” Also note: “John Rosselli said it was also his theory
that Castro was behind the assassination…He said he knew that a team had been
sent to kill Castro, had been captured and tortured, and turned to kill
Kennedy.” – Bayard Stockton in "Flawed Patriot – The Rise and Fall of CIA
Legend Bill Harvey" (Potomac Books, 2006)
24) Psych War aspect to the plan. Dan Hardway:
“You have to look at the JFK assassination as an operational plan….with
disinformation. (If) the assassination was a mob hit, it wasn’t a mob hit like
the ones they had done previously. They used a different MO in JFK, they used a
patsy, and they used disinformation, both of these techniques they had learned
from the Agency.”
Peter Dale Scott: on Managed Oswald
Stories: “In the days after the murders in Dallas, the U.S. Was flooded
with dubious stories, most of them swiftly discredited, linking Oswald to
either a Cuban or Soviet conspiracy. Those which most preoccupied the FBI and
CIA all came out of Mexico. These stories exhibited certain common
characteristics. 1. They all came from either directly from an
intelligence source, or from someone in the hands of an intelligence agency.
Nearly always the agency involved was the Mexican DFS or secret police. The
DFS, along with the Nicaraguan intelligence service, which was also a source,
were under CIA tutelage. 2. The Stories changed over time, to support either a
pro-conspiratorial hypothesis (“Phase One”) or a rebuttal of this (“Phase
Two”). 3. The Warren Commission was led to believe that the“Phase
One”stories were without basis. In fact a number of unresolved anomalies
suggest that behind them was some deeper truth, still not revealed. 4. As
just noted, the two main sources, Silvia Duran and Gilberto Alvarado, gave
varying stories while detained by the DFS. Of the two, Duran was actually
tortured, and Alvarado reportedly threatened with torture… In retrospect, these
stories should not have been taken seriously. In fact the CIA was able to rely
on them, not as a source of truth, but as a source of coercive influence over
the rest of the government. It will help us to understand what was going on if
we refer to the stories, not as ‘information’ or even as ‘allegations,’ but as
MANAGED STORIES."
26) Phillips, David Atlee: “I was one of the
two case officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald. After working to establish his
Marxist bona fides, we gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba. I
helped him when he came to Mexico City to obtain a visa, and when he returned
to Dallas to wait for it I saw him twice there. We rehearsed the plan many
times: In Havana Oswald was to assassinate Castro with a sniper's rifle from
the upper floor window of a building on the route where Castro often drove in an
open jeep. Whether Oswald was a double-agent or a psycho I'm not sure, and I
don't know why he killed Kennedy. But I do know he used precisely the plan we
had devised against Castro. Thus the CIA did not anticipate the President's
assassination but it was responsible for it. I share that guilt.” From
unpublished novel.
28) Pathfinder Documents. Dupont Estate. 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.
ARRB Memo: (a) A folder, stored in the Photo
Interpretation...Area at JMWAVE contained materials related to a plan to
assassinate Castro in the Bay of Pigs Resort area where he maintained a yacht
and was known to vacation. The plan, possibly with the code word
PATHFINDER...apparently had been disapproved and not under active consideration
at the time. Our people did not participate actively in the plan in any regard. (b)
While assigned to the Imagery Analysis Service, a number of our photo
interpreters supported Carl Jenkins of the DD/P concerning a plan to
assassinate Castro at the DuPont Veradero Estate, east of Havana. Castro was
known to frequent the estate and the plan was to use a high powered rifle in
the attempt. The photo interpreter support was restricted to providing
annotated photographs and line drawings of the estate. To our knowledge this
plan was never implemented
29) Bringuier, Carlos. "Red
Friday" (C. Hallberg, 1969)
30) 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 will be alive this time next year, regardless of what
happens with your bomb.”
Valkyrie II at Dealy Plaza
As a research technique, while reading the HSCA volumes, I began opening files
on subjects that came up repeatedly in diverse areas - more than twice - taking
Ian Fleming's adage - "First time is happenstance, second time is
coincidence, but a third time is enemy action."
That's how I got onto Collins Radio, Pan Am Bank of Miami, Southland Center,
International Rescue Committee and now Valkyrie.
In the course of my research the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler has come up five
times - in diverse areas and makes me think I may be on to something.
1) The first time the Valkyre plot came up was in a phone conversation I had
with Volkmar Schmidt, who acknowledged that in his February 1963 conversation
with Oswald at a party at his house, he mentioned the Valkyrie Plot and
suggested to Oswald that General Walker should be assassinated as Hitler should
have been. Schmidt said he personally knew some of the participants in the
Valkyrie plot.
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/volkmar-schmidt-interview.html
2) Then I read Mary Bancroft's "Autobiography of a Spy," in which she
details her role in Valkyrie - assisting Dr. Hans Bernt Gisevius escape and
then translating his memoirs.
http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2012/08/mary-bancroft-autobiography-of-spy.html
3) In late September 1963 Ruth Hyde Paine visited her husband Michael's mother
- Ruth Forbes Paine Young, who was Mary Bancroft's close friend and traveling
companion to Europe. After leaving the Young's residence near Philadelphia Ruth
Paine drove to New Orleans and picked up Marina and the rifle and drove them to
Texas while Oswald went to Mexico.
4) On the same day Oswald left New Orleans for Mexico, the CIA's Desmond
Fitzgerald briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff - Gen. LeMay presiding - on covert
ops against Cuba that needed military assistance - including a plan to adapt the
Valkyrie Plot to use against Castro.
(See Higgins Memo - http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2014/04/higgins-memo-numbered-w-bullet-points.html )
5) The 11/22/63 alibi for the owner of the TSBD - D. H. Byrd was that he was on
a hunting safari in Africa with a German "Baron" whose father was
reported by OSS X-2 to possibly be an "assassination expert" and
after World War II lived with one of the ministers selected for the new
government after Hitler's overthrow and was a valuable double agent for OSS in
Africa who co-authored a manifesto in support of the Valkyrie plotters.
Now my threshold for bingo was three but here we have five separate cases where
the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler comes up in the course of events surrounding
the assassination of JFK.
Also see: https://jfkcountercoup.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/valkyrie-at-dealey-plaza/
Now these are not six degrees of separation- they are two degrees - and they
are not happenstance or coincidence - but clearly enemy action.
Now I just got James Forman's book "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."
Another twist to the Valkyrie plan was a Psychwar aspect to blame the
assassination of Hitler on the Gestapo and SS as an excuse to round them up.
Forman says that while Dulles agent Gisevius supported the coup he 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."
And he was right.
But the adaption of Valkyrie as carried out at Dealey Plaza succeeded.
