H. L.
Hunt – Motive & Opportunity - Book Review
This review was previously posted at the CAPA-US.org web site.
“H. L.
Hunt – Motive & Opportunity – the Means by which H.L. Hunt Influenced the
assassinations of JFK, King, Bobby & Hoffa” by John Curington, as told
to Mitchel Whittington, with a foreword by Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D. (23 House
Publishing, SANA 299-8084 www.23house.com)
John
Curington, based on his personal knowledge, believes that H. L. Hunt was
involved in and should be considered a suspect in the assassinations of
President Kennedy, RFK, MLK and Jimmy Hoffa. Dr. Wecht concurs in his
foreword. “This book was interesting for many reasons,” Dr. Wecht
writes, “not the least of which is that he doesn’t put forward any particular
conspiracy theories, as many books on the subject do. Instead, he merely tells
his own story and allows the reader to extrapolate what might have happened.
This is an incredibly important story because, as John said to me, he is
the last man standing from that era.”
Whether
a suspect or witness, Hunt was certainly involved in the circumstances of
President Kennedy’s death, and while Curington provides motive and opportunity
for Hunt to be involved in the other murders, especially as a bag man financing
various aspects of the operations that led to their deaths, I will only deal
with Hunt’s connections to the murder of the President.
As Wecht says,
“In each case, research reveals more questions than answers. In the case of
John F. Kennedy, the strange circumstances start almost with the
moment of death.” While Curington has intimate personal knowledge of
Hunt and his businesses, and Whitington appears to be a good writer
and reporter, they apparently are not aware of the numerous associations Hunt
had with the JFK assassination, especially those that have already been
half-heartedly reported on. Curington could or should be able to easily
fill in the gaps pertaining to these associations.
In his
favor is the fact that the best witnesses haven’t read the vast published
record on the assassination and aren’t aware of the significance of what
they know. For starters, Joe Rossi said that he was looking for Jack
Ruby on the afternoon of November 20, two days before the assassination, and
tracked him down at Hunt’s office, while another report had Ruby at Hunt’s Mt.
Vernon home on Saturday afternoon, the day after the assassination.
The
Warren Report says that on the morning before the assassination Jack Ruby drove
a young college graduate, Connie Trammell, to Hunt’s office in the
Mercantile Bank building, where she had a job interview with Hunt’s son Lamar
while Ruby got a money order to pay his Carousel Club rent at the bank.
Trammell, in an anniversary newspaper article, is quoted extensively, and
she says that meeting took place on the day of the assassination, not the day
before. But her job application clearly says it is the 21st, so dates and times
do get a little muddy fifty years after they occur.
On the
morning of the assassination, while Jim Braden visited the Dallas Parole
Office, and was then taken into custody as a suspicious
person at the scene of the assassination in the
Dal-Tex building, his two associates, who shared a room with
Braden at the Cabana Hotel, visited Hunt to discuss oil business, and were
probably with Hunt at the time of the assassination. They then suddenly split
town, leaving Braden behind.
Curington says
he was with Hunt when the motorcade passed their seventh floor window and
John Connally looked up and waved to them. But he does not
discuss how Hunt or one of his sons paid for the full-page ad in the Dallas
Morning News calling JFK a Traitor.
After
the assassination, Hunt had one of his top aides, Paul Rothermel,
investigate the assassination, and he reportedly compiled a large file that is
not in the public domain, and he is quoted in a number of books. Rothermel told
Dick Russell that Hunt had him buy one of the first copies of the Zapruder
film, and he claimed he did.
While
Curington mentions Rothermel as one of Hunt’s top guys, there is no mention of
Ruby’s girl Connie Trammell, Jim Braden and his pals, the Hunt payment of the
full-page ad, or what became of Hunt’s files on the assassination, as compiled
by Rothermel. Then Rose Cheramie was found dead in the middle of the road in
front of Rothermel’s property near Big Sandy, Texas. None of these important
issues are mentioned or dealt with by Curington.
Curington does
make some important revelations, including the origin of the “Dear Mr.
Hunt” letter and the close association Hunt had with General
Walker. Curington says that Hunt furnished Walker with background for
his speeches, and he sometimes accompanied Hunt to Walker’s home,
where someone took a shot at Walker on April 10, 1963. According
to Curington, Walker told him and Hunt that Oswald was a suspect in the
shooting BEFORE the assassination. “Clearly, the police and possibly even the
FBI had Oswald on the radar, at least for that shooting,” says Curington.
And if that’s true, it radically alters the official version of events.
Just as
significant is Curington’s allegation that the “Dear Mr. Hunt” letter was found
in the Hunt company files and therefore was not a Soviet disinformation ploy
to implicate E. Howard Hunt in the assassination, as Soviet KGB
archivist Valary Mitrokin told the British MI5. As
Curington puts it: “Let me say again that I’m not interested in addressing all
of the conspiracy theories surrounding the JFK assassination that involved – or
clear – H. L. Hunt. But there has been a lot of discussion and speculation over
the years about a letter that Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly wrote to Mr. Hunt,
and because that theoretically involves him directly, I thought that I would
mention it.
A letter
surfaced during the investigation into the Kennedy assassination that simply
read: ‘Nov. 8, 1963 Dear Mr. Hunt, I would like
information concerdning [sic] my position. I am asking only for
information. I am suggesting that we discuss the matter fully before any steps
are taken by me or anyone else. Thank You, Lee Harvey Oswald.’ The letter
showed up in our interoffice mail system after the assassination, and that in
and of itself wasn’t peculiar….and since it did, in fact, involve Mr. Hunt, and
did in fact, suggest a meeting with Oswald, we elected to turn it over to the
FBI and never saw it again. In private Mr. Hunt did raise the question as to
whether Lee Harvey Oswald could be a Life-Line listener, something that I think
might have been a concern for him.”
While
the Soviet leaders privately concluded that President Kennedy was killed by a
domestic security network, a conspiracy that involved rich American oil men
like Hunt, KGB archivist and defector to the
British Valary Mitrokin said that the KGB manufactured the “Dear
Mr. Hunt” letter to implicate Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt.
If Curington is correct, and the letter, as the HSCA handwriting
experts agreed, was written by the historic Lee Harvey Oswald, then the Mitrokin allegation
is false, as the letter concerns H. L. Hunt the oilman and not the CIA officer.
Curington
also says that Hunt sent him to the Dallas jail on Saturday to check out the
security surrounding Oswald, and after sharing an elevator ride with Oswald and
his captors, Curington reported back to Hunt that security was extremely lax.
Curington also thinks Hunt’s association with Dallas mob boss
Joe Civello had something to do with Ruby shooting Oswald.
While
Curington does give a lot of ink to Hunt’s Life -Line radio program, that was
broadcast nationwide
and
mercilessly attacked JFK – calling his supporters “the mistaken,” he fails
to mention that Warren Carroll was the major producer of Life-Line. And it just
so happens that Warren Carroll is a former CIA propaganda specialist who wrote
the “On Heroism” program that was printed out in a leaflet found on the front
seat of Ruby’s car after he shot Oswald. Did Hunt and Carroll’s propaganda
influence Ruby?
Another
tidbit Curington provides, not knowing its significance, is that Hunt had a
Life-Line booth set up at the Texas State Fairgrounds, a hotbed of conspiracy
antics, as that’s where Ruby’s friends ran a tent show film “How Hollywood
Makes Movies,” that he got his Chicago friend Larry Meyers to invest in. It’s also
where Ruby recruited roustabout and former Army sniper
Larry Crafard and stripper Joyce McDonald. The Fairgrounds is also
where the Dallas Police Department’s Special Services Unit kept their branch
office, so their undercover informants didn’t have to report to City Hall. It’s
also the location of Jack Crichton’s underground Emergency Communications
center, and home of Crichton’s special US Army Intelligence unit. Was
Hunt’s Life-Line booth set up in proximity to any of these other shenanigans
going on nearby?
In any
case, while Curington is convincing in establishing his role as one
of Hunt’s top guys, he doesn’t address all of the key issues of
the assassination that involve Hunt, information that he should be
able to provide. Perhaps he is unaware of these issues, or he wasn’t asked the
right questions, something that can and should be rectified.
In his
favor, Curington does establish two important facts that could be further
explored. For one, he explains how Hunt gave his two sons two professional football
teams – The Dallas Cowboys and the Dallas Texans – which he owned
(with Clint Murchison). Since both teams couldn’t survive in Dallas, one had to
go. Hunt had Curington check it out and tell him what the best location would
be for the second team. Curington says he looked at a map of all of
the professional football teams, found that Kansas City was the top media
market without a team, and that’s where the Texans became the Chiefs. The deal
was sealed by a coin toss, resulting in Lamar’s team going to
Kansas.
It turns
out that the lawyer for Hunt’s partner with the
Cowboys, Clint Murcheson, had an office (Henry Baer-Wynne,
McKenzie, Jaffe, Tinsley) in the Southland Building, and that same attorney was
chosen by Robert Oswald to represent him and Marina when they appeared before
the Warren Commission.
That may
have something to do with Curington’s confirmation that a few days after the
assassination Marina Oswald was delivered to Hunt’s office in a black limo with
US government tags. According to Curington, Hunt had the building entirely
cleared of his employees before she arrived, and she only stayed for some
twenty minutes, but there was no doubt it was her.
Perhaps
it had something to do with their mutual lawyer – whose office just happened to
be in the same building where Oswald visited for a job interview
with deMohrenshcildt’s friend, Sam Ballen, as well as the lobby
where Oswald met with Antonio Veciana and David A. Phillips.
In any
case, Curington has established his bona fides as a Hunt Oil
insider, and he is one of the few “last witnesses standing,” but he doesn’t
address some of the major issues of the JFK case involving Hunt that can and
should be answered, even at this late date. Maybe he can still
answer some of them if he is asked the right questions, and can come up with
more documentation, perhaps as a witness at CAPA’s event in Dallas in November?
William
Kelly / billkelly3@gmail.com
August,
2018
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