Following the ACSI Colonels Around the Board - DP CI-O Phase 2

The Dealey Plaza Counter-Intelligence Operation - Phase Two - The ACSI Colonels 

Following the ACSI Colonels Around the Board 

THE HOME GUARD - US Army Reserves 

Colonels are the highest ranking military officers on the battlefield, take their orders directly from the Generals and manage to get into the thick of things.

Of all the intelligence networks and agencies with operations in Dallas, Dealey Plaza and the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at the time of the assassination, ASCI – the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence US Army Reserves officers are the most prolific.

One of the five aspects of the July 20, 1944 Valkyie Plan to kill Hitler that was to be adapted for use against Castro and re-directed to JFK in Dallas is the use of the Home Guard.  These five strategic aspects of the plot to kill Hitler fit like a glove over the Dealey Plaza Operation. After using standard covert intelligence operational procedures, getting the intended victim to approve the operation, blaming it on communists and controlling the media, one of the key aspects of Valkrie was to use the “Home Guard” as the “boots on the ground” soldiers assigned to carry out the mission.

What they called the Home Guard in Germany are the US Army Reserves and National Guard in America. These are the civilian staffed part time soldiers - “weekend warriors” who are often called to action in times of local emergencies and national crisis, such as earthquakes, political demonstrations and race riots (Chicago, Memphis, etc) and wars.  But unlike the CIA, they are authorized to operate domestically, and they do.

As our hypothesis acknowledges that the assassination can be classified as a covert intelligence operation, rather than just a conspiracy, we can limit the suspects by identifying the intelligence networks that were operating in Dallas at the time of the murder, In addition, we have assumed by way of another hypothesis that the network responsible for the assassination had something to do with Cuba, exactly what the 2018 Microsoft computerized analysis of the most recently released JFK Assassination records determined, and something we already knew.

HAVANA – 1959

So let us begin in Havana, Cuba, in 1958 and early 1959 when Fidel Castro took over, and the US Army attaché at the American Embassy in Havana was Colonel Samuel Goodhue Kail, where he served from June 3, 1958 until January 4, 1961.

Also working out of the US Embassy in Havana at the time were CIA officer David Morales, and State Department official Wayne Smith, both of whom would become entwined in assassination affairs.

Smith was part of an Havana amateur theater group that also included aspiring actor David Atlee Phillips, of Fort Worth, Texas, a former CIA agent recruited when he was editor of a South American newspaper. 

Phillips was working as a civilian undercover CIA contract agent posing as a public relations and advertising professional. He instructed one of his recruits, bank administrator Antonio Veciana to contact Sam Kail at the embassy, and Veciana’s government files indicate that he was run, not by the CIA, but US Army Intelligence.

On January 1, 1959 David Atlee Phillips and Colonel Frank M. “Brandy” Brandstetter both claimed to be the first to notify the CIA HQ in Washington DC that Cuban dictator F. Batista had flown the coup and left Cuba on a plane full of cash.

Brandstetter, from Dallas, was the manager of the newly built and first class Havana Hilton hotel, where anti-Batsta activist Manual Ray was the chief engineer, who would become heavily involved in anti-Castro activities as well. And one of the Hilton guests, at the time, was the head of French Intelligence in the Western Hemisphere. 

With Batista gone, members of the Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE), who were anti-Batista activists at the University of Havana, took over his office, as one of the DRE founders Dr. Rolando Cubella (AMLASH), sat in Batista’s chair at his desk and smoked his cigars.

A few days later, when Fidel Castro rode into Havana in an open jeep, instead of taking over Batista’s office, he accepted an invitation from Brandstetter to set up his HQ and live in the Penthouse of the Havana Hilton, where another CIA spy served as his personal secretary and translator.

Colonel Frank Brandstetter was a Colonel in intelligence of US Army Reserve, and being from Dallas, he was officially attached to the 488^th Army Intelligence unit, founded in 1956 and run by Colonel. Jack Crichton. But rather than report to Crichton, according to his autobiography, Brandy reported directly to Washington, where his primary contact was Dorothie Matlack and her immediate superior Lt. Colonel William B. Rose, chief of the Army Intelligence Branch Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI), U.S. Army Reserves.

Another Colonel who comes into play who was stationed at the Havana Embassy in 1959 is Colonel Erickson Nichols, the US Air Force attaché who Frank Sturgis reported to and was case officer for Sturgis’ associate Diaz Lanz, head of the Cuban Air Force, before they both defected and escaped to Florida.

Both Sturgis and Lanz helped get rid of Batista and supported Castro but then felt betrayed by his communist leanings, and eventually left Cuba for the United States. When Sturgis was arrested with the Watergate burglars years later, the CIA admitted it had employed E. Howard Hunt, James McCord and Eugenio Martinez as officers, agents and operatives, but not Frank Forini Sturgis, the former US Marine from Philadelphia. And his government files indicate that Sturgis was run, not by the CIA, but by the Air Force Intelligence, reporting at first to Col. Erickson Nichols at the US Embassy in Havana.

One of the covert operations that David Atlee Phillips and Col. Sam Kail were involved with was an assassination attempt against Castro that utilized Antonio Veciana’s team and assets, who included the father and mother of Syliva Odio, who Oswald would ostensibly visit in Dallas in late September 1963 on his way to Mexico City. Veciana had to sneak out of the country when the mission failed, and both Odios would serve time in Castro’s prisons for their involvement in the plot.

And after the US Embassy in Havana was closed, Colonel Kail returned to Washington where he worked under Colonel Rose with Dorothie Matlack out of the ACSI office at the Pentagon.

After defecting to the Soviet Union right out of the Marines, Oswald returned to Texas with his Russian wife Marina. In Texas they were assisted by a group of former White Russian oil men in Dallas, including George deMohrenschildt, George Bouhe and Paul Raigorodsky, all friends, business associates of Jack Crichton. 

On the day deMohrenschildt visited Oswald for the first time, arriving unannounced, he was accompanied by Colonel Lawrence Orlov, another Russian emerge, who just happened to play hand ball with J. Walton Moore, the CIA’s resident Domestic Contacts Division officer in Dallas. Moore was close friends and dinner companion of deMohrenschildt, and debriefed him and other oil men whenever they returned home from abroad.

In February 1963 deMohrenschildt arranged a house party for the Osawlds to meet Ruth and Michael Paine at the home of three employees of Magnolia Oil, including Volkmar Schmidt. Schmidt was a German immigrant and oil engineer who talked at length with Oswald while his wife Marina became fast friends with Ruth Hyde Paine. Schmidt said he used a “reverse psychology technique” on Oswald, saying that General Walker should be killed as Hitler should have been killed, specifically mentioning the failed July 10, 1944 attack on Hitler. Shortly thereafter Oswald ordered a rifle and on April 10, 1963 he is accused of taking a shot at Walker that missed, and Schmidt later acknowledged he felt somewhat responsible for encouraging Oswald to try to kill Walker. 

Later in April, 1963, after he obtained a lucrative oil job in Haiti, deMohrenschildt visited Oswald and Marina for the last time. And as he knew someone had taken a pot shot at General Walker a few days before, when he saw Oswald’s rifle in a closet, he joked, “How did you miss Walker?”

Either Oswald or Marina gave deMohrenschildt a copy of the backyard photo of Oswald with the rifle and pistol and holding two communist publications – a photo that Marina inscribed on the back – “Hunter of Fascists! – Ha, Ha.”

A few days later, on his way to Haiti, deMohrenschildt stopped in New York City where he met two CIA agents at a private club and at the offices of John Train, who ran CIA propriety companies. One of the CIA agents deMohrenschildt reported to was Thomas J. Devine, a former partner in the Zapata Oil company with George H. W. Bush.

Then, before going to Haiti, deMohrenschilt stopped in Washington D.C. where he met with with ACSI agents Colonel Sam Kail and Dorothie Matlack and Colonel Howard Burris, a US Air Force officer, Texas native and Vice President LBJ’s military aide.

Did deMohrenschildt tell the CIA in New York or the military intelligence agents in Washington the most significant piece of intelligence he possessed – that Oswald had a rifle and was suspected of taking the shot at Walker? According to Matlack they talked about a hemp deal and a Haitian friend of deMohrenschildt (Clemard Joseph Charles) who wanted to oust dictator Papa Doc and take over the government of Haiti.

After he saw deMohrenschildt for the last time Oswald took a bus to New Orleans, his hometown, got a job and an apartment. Then Ruth Paine drove Marina, the baby and the Oswald’s belongings, including the rifle, to New Orleans, where the Oswalds stayed for the fateful and eventful summer of 1963.

At that time Col. Fletcher Prouty was a Air Force officer serving as liaison to the CIA with a desk at the Pentagon, just down the hall from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Marine Corps General “Brute” Krulak, then assigned to lead a special joint service unit that was responsible for all military assistance to the CIA in the course of their covert intelligence operations, especially those against Cuba.

On September 25, 1963, shortly after Mrs. Paine picked up Mariana and their belongings, including the rifle, and took them to Texas, while Oswald ostensibly went to Mexico City, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were briefed on CIA covert Cuban operations by Desmond FitzGerald. But because the Chief of Staff  General Maxwell Taylor was on a special mission to Vietnam, the meeting was chaired by General Curtis LeMay, Chief of Staff of the Air Force.

Because the briefing would include the CIA’s request for military assistance during maritime commando raids against economic targets in Cuba, General Krulak’s assistant Colonel Walter Higgins attended. Higgins kept copious notes, that included a reference to the CIA’s “detailed study” of the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler that was being adapted for use against Castro.

Among Krulak’s military assistance to the CIA for covert operations was the assignment of two US Army Ranger Captains Edward Roderick and Bradley Ayers to the CIA’s JMWAVE station where they were given the task of training select Cuban commandos in maritime maneuvering, covert operational procedures, demolitions and firearms, as well as infiltrating and ex-filtrating procedures that were used during operations.

One of the anti-Castro Cuban commando teams, trained by Roderick and former Marine and CIA trainer Carl Jenkins, were called the Pathfinders, an elite group, some Bay of Pigs veterans who were trained at a remote base at Point Mary, off Key Largo.

Just as Life Magazine’s Clare Booth Luce adopted Bradley Ayers’ team that trained at Pirate’s Lair in the Everglades, the Point Mary team and their boat were partially financed and assisted by a rich American John Rosselli, the mafia mobster who was known around JMWAVE bases as “Colonel Rawlston.” Rosselli’s case officer William Harvey arranged with JMWAVE commander Ted Shackley for Rosselli’s team of Cuban commandos to receive a U-Haul trailer full of guns, arms and ammunition, though it isn’t known what they did with them.

After Harvey was fired by RFK as leader of the Task Force W – JMWAVE operations, for sending in the Pathfinder commandos during the Cuban Missile Crisis, without authorization, Harvey was replaced by Desmond FitzGerald, who briefed the Joint Chiefs on the September 25, meeting.

When Oswald returned to Texas in early October, ostensibly from Mexico City, he obtained a job at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) with a little help from Ruth Paine, who called ahead and recommended him. While he lived in a rooming house in Oak Cliff, he often visited his wife and growing family – another daughter was born that October. A few weeks before the assassination Ruth Paine wrote a letter to her father saying that Oswald was a good and loving father, with no hint that he was a homicidal maniac.

A week before the assassination, while Oswald was in Oak Cliff, Ruth and Marina received a phone call and visit from Colonel James “J.D.” Wilmeth, a local college professor and U.S. Army Reserve officer. Wilmeth just asked them questions and apparently was just evaluating their situation.

Colonel Jack Crichton, the founder and head of the 488^th Army Reserve Intelligence unit in Dallas said his unit included some one hundred active members, nearly half of which were Dallas Policeman, including many of those in the Special Services Bureau, headed by Captain Pat Gannaway, a Army Intelligence Reserve officer.

At the time of the assassination Crichton said he was attending a conference at the Adolophis Hotel, where he left to view the motorcade, and then returned to conference. With Crichton in Dallas, the Dallas Emergency Command and Communications Bunker, with the state of the art communications equipment was probably being manned by Crichton’s assistant, Colonel Boise B. Smith, who had served as a Dallas police officer since the 1930s.

Smith had replaced another Colonel, John V. Mayo, whose assistant was Colonel Charles W. MCoy. 

While Crichton says he was busy at the Adolphis at the time of the assassination, other 488^th Intelligence unit members were very active as the assassination situation developed.

The lead Pilot Car in the motorcade, responsible for riding a half mile ahead of the motorcade, checking for any possible dangers or disturbances, was driven by Army Reserve Captain George Lumpkin, and included two Dallas homicide detectives, federal advance man Jack Peuterbaugh, and in the middle of the back seat – Lt. Colonel George L. Whitmeyer, commanding officer of the US Army Reserves in the Northern District of Texas. 

The Secret Service had investigated and approved every other person who rode in the motorcade, except Whitmeyer, who was invited to go along for the ride by Captain Lumpkin. 

Lumpkin, Dallas Police officers Jack Revell and Assistant Chief Don Stringfellow all served in the Army Reserves under Crichton, and as police officers in Pat Gannaway’s Special Services Unit, which was responsible for vice, organized crime, gambling, mobsters and running undercover agents. 

The headquarters of the Special Services unit was not at City Hall, but at the Dallas Fair Grounds, where Crichton’s underground Emergency Command and Communications bunker was also located. Pat Gannaway, the head of the unit, was also a Army Reserve officer, as were most of his men.

As the driver of the lead car, Lumpkin reportedly did not make any stops along the motorcade route, except, some have said, at the corner of Houston and Elm, where the car slowed down enough to inform the traffic patrolman – and the Sixth Floor Sniper, sixty feet above him – that the motorcade was only minutes away.

After going to Parkland Hospital, Lumpkin returned in the Pilot Car to Dealey Plaza where he met the TSBD supervisor Roy Truly. Truly informed Lumpkin that an employee was missing. Despite the fact, according to the official version of events, Truly had seen Oswald in the second floor lunchroom within two minutes of the shooting, and gave him a pass, he was now suspicious of Oswald and called the TSBD office to get Oswald’s address, which listed Ruth Paine’s Irving home.

Truly and Lumpkin then took the note with Oswald’s name and address up to the Sixth Floor where Homicide Chief Will Fritz was holding up the recently found rifle. Lumpkin called Fritz aside and gave Fritz Oswald’s name and address. Fritz then walked across the street and visited Dallas Sheriff Bill Decker in his office where witness depositions were being taken. There are no records of what Fritz and sheriff Decker discussed shortly after Fritz left the TSBD and was informed about Oswald.

Fritz then went back to City Hall where at his office he ordered a few of his detectives to go out to see if Oswald was at the Irving address, and he was told, "no need to go to Irving Chief, there’s Oswald sitting right there," arrested as a suspect in the murder of J.D. Tiippit.

Shortly thereafter, Crichton arranged, through Lumpkin, for his friend Ilya Mamantov, a Russian oil engineer, to be the translator for Oswald’s Russian speaking wife Marina, and he did so, sometimes incorrectly. For instance Mamantov quoted Marina as saying Oswald had the rifle in the Soviet Union, possibly to promote the false communist connection.

Two other members of Crichton’s 488^th Army Intelligence unit became involved in dramatic fashions. Dallas Special Services Bureau detective and Army Reserve officer Jack Revell filed an official statement for the record to the effect that FBI Agent James Hosty told him that he knew Oswald, and that he was a communist, thus pitting the FBI and Dallas Police in an official turf war that would last for years. Revell later became an FBI agent himself.

Later that night, with Oswald behind bars, LBJ ordered the Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade NOT to charge Oswald with “furthering a communist conspiracy,” as David Atlee Phillips’ media asset Joe Gouldin was trying to get Wade’s assistant Bill Alexander to do.

Apparently Revell and his boss Ganaway didn’t get that LBJ memo about not pushing the communist conspiracy angle because after midnight they raided the home of one of a TSBD employee who belonged to a subversive organization (G.I. Forum), and continued to press the communist conspiracy button across the board.

Besides Joe Goulden, Captain W. P. Ganaway and Jack Revell promoting the communist conspiracy theory that night, another 488^th intelligence officer and Dallas policeman Don Stringfellow composed a message that was sent to the U.S. Strike Command at McDill Air Force Base in Florida, where President Kennedy had personally visited four days previous.

Stringfellow’s message falsely reported Oswald had defected to Cuba, was a card carrying member of the communist party, had traveled to the USSR via Cuba, and later added the Fair Play for Cuba Committee connection, implicating Castro in the assassination and apparently attempting to get them to get the Air Force ready to strike Cuba.

So of all the federal intelligence agencies in Dallas, at Dealey Plaza and inside the Texas School Book Depository, ACSI is the most prevalent, with its agents, operatives and assets all over the place.

NEXT UP: The Dealey Plaza Counter-Intelligence Operation – Phase Three - Overlapping Networks 

NOTES AND LINKS: -         [ Col. Sam Kail – US Embassy Havana, ACSI USAR, who met with deMohrenschildt,Who's Who in the JFK Assassination: An A to Z Encyclopedia - Michael Benson - Google Books Col. Samuel Goodhue Kail -  (p 95) Military attache to Cuba June 3, 1958 - January 4, 1961 - case officer handled Antonio Veciana, associate of David Atlee Phillips.]

[  Lt. Col. George  L. Whitmeyer – (USA Reserve) – Commanding officer of the Nothern District of Texas – occupant of the Pilot Car in the Motorcade driven by Capt. Lumpkin of both Dallas Police Department and US Army Intelligence - http://spartacuseducational.com/JFK488mid.htm /

  http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/marysdb/showRec.do?mode=searchResult&id=10103 / http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3059]

 [ Col. James “J.D.” Wilmeth – U.S. Army - Arlington Texas officer who visited Marina at Ruth Paine’s house a few days before the assassination,  JFKCountercoup2: Col. J.D. Wilmeth Visits Marina / Col. J. D. Wilmeth - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum]

[- Col. John “Colonel” Roselli – Civilian made Mafia boss attached to CIA officer William Harvey during training of  Cubans at JMWAVE,  JFKcountercoup: The Second Plot - The Original Cover Story / The Kennedy Brothers: The Rise and Fall of Jack and Bobby - Richard D. Mahoney - Google Books /  Bradley Ayers]

 [ Col. Fletcher Prouty, DOD-CIA liaison officer at the Pentagon, friend of Gen. Krulak,  The Col. L. Fletcher Prouty Reference Site / General Charles "Chuck" C. Krulak / ]

[Col. Walter Higgins – Aide to Gen. Krulak and author of the Higgins Memo, considered by some to be the single most significant “Smoking Document” among the JFK assassination records.JFKcountercoup: JCS Memo FitzGerald Briefing 25 Sept. 1963  /   JFKcountercoup: Valkyrie At Dealey Plaza]

 [Col. Lawrence Orlov – Was with deMohrenschildt when they first sought out Oswald and vistited him, RIF 104-10431-10034 Russ Holmes Work File / Marina and Orlov - Google Groups]

[ Kail, Matlack and Col. Howard Burris USAF - Native Texan, LBJ's Military aide - met with deMohrenschilt in DC in late April 1963 (p 80)]

  [ Col. Erickson Nichols – the USAF embassy military officer who Frank Sturgis reported to at the US Embassy Havana;  JFKCountercoup2: Frank Sturgis - Run By US Military not CIA /  Warrior: Frank Sturgis---The CIA's #1 Assassin-Spy, Who Nearly Killed Castro ... - Jim Hunt, Bob Risch - Google Books  / FRANK STURGIS as an Agent of Cuban Government 1959]

[ Col. Frank M. “Brandy” Brandstetter – Texan manager of the Havana Hilton when Castro made it his early residence,  JFKcountercoup: Col. Frank M. Brandstetter / Brandy, Our Man in Acapulco: The Life and Times of Colonel Frank M. Brandstetter - Rodney P. Carlisle, Dominic J. Monetta - Google Books ]

[Col. Jack Crichton MI, USAR 488th MID, who ran the Command and Control center at the Civil Defense Shelter, Dallas State Fairgrounds, and arranged for investigative translators, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the ... - Russ Baker - Google Books  /  Deep Politics and the Death of JFK - Peter Dale Scott - Google Books]

[ Lt. Col. William B. Rose – chief of the Army Intelligence Reserve Branch Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence (ACSI USAR) – Pentagon, where most of the field reports end up, especially those of: JFKCountercoup2: ACSI - Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, USAR]