Patterns and 3 Time Hits

 Patterns and 3x Time Hits – by William Kelly

As an independent researcher focusing on the JFK assassination, at some point I recognized that whatever you believe happened at Dealey Plaza, it was a covert intelligence operation, with psychological warrior attributes and designed to deceive.

How do you begin to determine what happened in such circumstances?

Well, for one you being to read up on such covert intelligence operations, learn their lingo, so you can understand what they are saying and doing and learn the history of past operations.

For another, as American University professor Mrs. Max Holland has suggested, you “look for patterns.”

In reviewing almost every book and document about the assassination that I come across, I have found a few patterns, and developed a research technique that I have shared and will share again – what I call Three Time Hits – 3x Hits.

That is, when I come across a name, place, date or subject in three different divergent areas of the story, I begin a file on that as a unique subject file, and then focus on it and add to that file whatever I can find, and I have found it very use full and successful.

The first item that called my attention to the possibilities of developing this idea into a real research technique was Collins Radio. When I obtained a copy of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) Final Report and supporting volumes of records, I found a number of items that referred to Collins Radio.

Among the supporting volumes is a copy of Lee Harvey Oswald’s best friend in Texas George deMohrenschildt’s manuscript “I’m a Patsy!”

It includes a reference to deMohrenschildt occasionally taking Oswald’s wife Marina to the home of his friend, retired US Navy Admiral Chester Brouton, a former submarine commander. There they sat by Bruton’s pool and had lunch, sometimes cooked on the backyard barbeque that deMornschilits claimed he built. One day Oswald himself showed up and was invited in for lunch, over which deMornschildts asked Bruton to consider giving Oswald a job at the company where Bruton was a high level executive – Collins Radio, of Richardson, Texas. Bruton was working there on developing new communication devices for nuclear submarines.

After all, deMohrenschildt failed to mention, Oswald had worked in a radio factor in Minsk, USSR. But Oswald detested military top brass, and “lifers,” and Bruton was both, so they didn’t get along very well over lunch, and Bruton got the message, so the job opportunity fell by the wayside.

When I first recognized the importance of Bruton and Collins Radio, I found his phone number in the public directory and called him. His daughter answered the phone and said her father had died, and she was there to arrange his effects. 

 I forgot about that incident until I read another chapter in the HSCA volumes called the Wes Wise Allegation, although Wise doesn’t make any allegations, he just followed his reporter’s instincts.

Wes Wise, then a popular TV reporter and later mayor of Dallas, had developed a new witness to the murder of Dallas policeman JD Tippit, an elderly Mr. White, auto mechanic, who saw a suspicious looking car parked behind an Oak Cliff restaurant, a few blocks from the site of the murer of Tippit.

Mr. White didn’t come forward himself, but his boss, the owner of the garage did, when Wes Wise was asked to give a talk about his experiences covering the assattination at the very restaurant Mr. White had seen the suspicious car. Wise then talked to Mr. White, and he identified it as a two toned blue and white 1957 Plymouth. When he walked closer, he got a good look at the driver, who he later identified as the accused assassin of President Kennedy – Lee Harvey Oswald and wrote down the license plate of the car on a piece of paper he later reluctantly gave to Wes Wise.  Mr. White said he didn’t want to get involved and Wise promised him he wouldn’t.

Wise had the FBI trace the license plate number to its owner – Carl Mather, and when the FBI went out to Mather’s house, they saw the Plymouth with the license plate in the driveway, and knocked on the door. Mrs. Mather said the car belonged to her husband, who at the time of the assassination was at work – at Collins Radio.

Where was the car on November 22 , 1963? It was with her husband at Collins Radio, until the afternoon when he returned early from work and they went to visit the home of Mrs. Tippit, the widow of the slane policeman, who was a close personal friend and former neighbor.

Instead of interviewing Mather the FBI harrassed Mr. White, and changed the car from a 57 Plymouth, that Mather owned and White had seen, to a red Ford Falcon.

I then recalled a mention in William Turner’s book on anti-Castro Cuban activities – “The Fish Is Red,” that references a New York Times article. On November 1, 1963 the New York Times front page contained a picture of the CIA raider shop The Rex, which was docked in Palm Beach, Florida, a few blocks from the President’s residence.

According to Fidel Castro, the Rex was used in a terrorist raid against Cuba, depositing commandos who were armed with high-powered rifles with scopes and captured. They were paraded on Cuban TV and confessed that they were trained by the CIA and were sent to Cuba to assassinate Cuban leaders. The New York Times reporter ran a check on The Rex and found that it was owned by the Somoza family of Nicaragaua, sold to the Belcher Oil company of Florida, and leased to the Collins Radio Company of Ricardson, Texas for research purposes.

So now I had three apparently unrelated references to Collins Radio – deMornschildt introducing Osawld to Collins executive Admiral Bruton and requesting he give Oswald a job, the presence of Carl Mather’s car at the scene of the murder of his friend JD Tippit, and his alibi of being at work at Collins Radio, and Collins being a cover for the CIA raider ship Rex.

I then began my file on Collins Radio, which has since developed extensively.

At the time I  began to focus some attention on Collins Radio in the late 1970s, the company had merged with Rockwell International to form Rockwell-Collins, so I wrote to them and requested copies of their company reports to stockholders for 1962-63-64, that was provided and proved quite interesting.

I learned a great deal from those reports, and other open public sources that reinforced my growning belief that Collins Radio was a major institutional player in the assassination, whether or not Art Collins himself was aware of it.

It turns out that Arthur Collins was a Cedar Rapids, Iowa teenager who had built his own short wave radio in his parent’s garage, the only radio able to receive the broadcast reports from polar explorer US Navy Admiral Byrd. Collins dutifully transmitted to Washington, where he would eventually establish his company as a major defense contractor.

 Admiral Byrd was a cousin of wealthy Dallas oil man D. H. Byrd, who helped  finance Admiral Bryd’s explorations, and was also the owner of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at the time of the assassination.  Byrd was also a founder, in 1941, of the Civil Air Patrol, with Cord Meyer, Sr., the father of CIA official Cord Meyer, Jr., husband of Mary Pinchot Meyer.

Because of his success with intercepting Admiral Byrd’s radio transmission, Art Collins founded a company - Collins Radio that received military contracts that were very lucurative during World War II.

Collins Radios also became popular among the civilian population who became known as HAM radios operator, among them US Air Force General Curtis LeMay. LeMay was an amateur radio buff as well as commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), and his developing and close friendship with Collins and use of Collins Radios led to the post-WWII adoption of Collins Radio for use by the entire Strategic Air Command nuclear bomber fleet as well as the Executive Air Fleet that included Air Force One and the CIA’s Voice of America broadcast equipment.

As the Collins Radio annual reports for 1962-63-64 clearly state, Collins not only sold and provided the radios used by SAC bombers and Executive aircraft – including AF1 – but also actively serviced them, utilizing their “Radio Liberty” relay station located at the company headquaters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

In his book The Making of a President – 1964, Theodore H. White wrote: "There is a tape recording in the archives o the government which best recaptures the sound of the hours as it waited for leadership. It is a recording of all the conversations in the air, monitored by the Signal Corps Midwestern center ‘Liberty,’ between Air Force One in Dallas, the Cabinet plane over the Pacific, and the Joint Chiefs’ Communications Center in Washington….On the flight the party learned that there was no conspiracy, learned the identity of Oswald and his arrest; and the President’s mind turned to the duties of consoling the stricken and guiding the quick."

This "Liberty" station is misidentified on most transcripts of the edited version of the radio transmissions from Air Force One on 11/22/63. "Air Force One, the Presidential airplane, was placed in service in 1962 using communications equipment developed and manufactured by Collins. The aircraft…was modified to meet special requirements…In 1962, the station many remember as "Liberty" was opened and operated from the new communications building….(in Cedar Rapids, Iowa)…Collins had a contract with the Air Force to serve as either the primary communications station or as a backup whenever Air Force One, the presidential aircraft, and other aircraft in the VIP fleet carried cabinet members or high ranking military officers. Over the airwaves the station’s call word was ‘Liberty.’" – From Collins Radio – the First 50 Years.

On the existing Air Force One radio transmission tapes the “Liberty” station is heard dozens of times, transmitting or re-transmitting messages, though it is not mentioned at all in Max Holland’s book The Assassination Tapes.

I suspected Collins independently recorded the Air Force One radio transmissions on 11/22/63, and when I called them the first person to answer said they probably did have them, but then I got a cold shoulder and brushed off from other, more senior executives.

The Collins Radio yearly reports also indicate a few other key elements in the story – that they hired a former Nazi German scientist  under Project Paperclip – Dr. Alex Lipisch, who developed the Delta 1 glider and the ME 160 Komet, the first jet fighter. For Collins he was to develop a design for a new, sleek, shallow water motorized craft that the anti-Castro Cubans could use to attack Cuba, and was later developed by General Dynamics and used in Vietnam as a Swift Boat.

According to the yearly Collins Reports they also received a government grant to study the effects of Parallax, which was described as a distorting of vision of pilots that often led to crashes, and was the title of the Parallax View book by a former OSS officer describing OSS training practices that was made into a film featuring Warren Beaty.

My Collins Radio file got bigger as I learned that:

- In the week before the assassination, a reservation was made at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club for a large party of Collins Radio employees.

 

- David Ferrie’s telephone records reflect that in the weeks before the assassination he made frequent calls from the New Orleans law office of G. Ray Gill to the Belcher Oil Company of Dallas, Texas, the company that was the listed owner of the Rex.

 

- In 1963 Collins Radio began receiving large military contracts including one for the construction of a microwave communications network in Southeast Asia, specifically Vietnam.

- The Dallas P.D. Intelligence Division maintained a paid informant who worked at Collins Radio and reported on fellow employees who appeared suspicious or subversive, including one who was reported to subscribe to the leftist I.F. Stone Weekly.

- In Miami, Florida, a Cuban exile, and former executive of Collins Radio, was murdered, assassinated in a still unsolved homicide.

- The HSCA learned that Carl Mather’s job at Collins Radio included servicing the Executive Air fleet plane used by Vice President Lyndon Johnson.

- After Oswald was murdered while in Dallas police custody by Jack Ruby, his widow Marina P. Oswald married former Collins Radio employee Kenneth Porter.

In addion, after my success with Collins Radio, I also developed the 3 x hits technique to begin files on the Pan Am Bank of Miami, the Civil Air Patrol, Texas Employment Commission, the Defense Language Institute, New Orleans International Trade Mart, the International Rescue Committie, and others, some of which I post as examples at http://JFKCountercoup.blogspot.com .