Friday, February 18, 2022

West Side Story with a JFK Twist

 West Side Story w/ a Twist


Richard Beymer and Natalie Wood 

The recent Steven Spielberg film revival of West Side Story also presents the opportunity to address the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald attended a Twist Party in Mexico City where he was encouraged by Cuban embassy personnel to kill the President.

The original Broadway play, 1961 movie and a recent revival of West Side Story all feature music by classical composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. While Bernstein said he didn’t vote for Kennedy, Bernstein introduced seven year old Chinese cellist Yo-Yo Ma at a 1962 concert at the White House, and Kennedy and Bernstein became friends.

Two days after the assassination Bernstein conducted Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 Resurrection in a televised tribute to the slain president.

In 1980 Bernstein was booed and hissed on stage when he said, “We don’t dare confront the implications. I think we’ve all agreed there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, and we just don’t want to know the complete truth. It involves such powerful forces in what we call high places that if we do know, everything might fall apart. We don’t dare confront the implications.”

Some of the implications regarding the complete truth involve another aspect of West Side Story, as it becomes entwined with the allegation that Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of the President, attended a Twist Party in Mexico City hosted by Silvia Duran, the Mexican national who worked at the Cuban embassy.

While Oswald ostensibly dealt with Duran when he attempted to get a visa to Cuba, she has continually denied meeting with Oswald outside the embassy, even though there are a number of questionable reports that she did so. All of these reports attempt to portray Oswald as being influenced by pro-Castro Cuban Communists and encouraged by them to kill the President.

One report has Silvia Duran taking Oswald to a fancy Mexico City restaurant where he is introduced to the Cuban ambassador to Mexico who encourages Oswald to kill the President.

Another report that resurfaces ever so often, most recently by former New York Times reporter Phil Shenon in his book A Cruel and Shocking Act – The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination (MacMillan, 2013), has Oswald attending a Twist Party hosted by Duran where Cuban embassy officials were allegedly overheard talking to Oswald about killing Kennedy.

For those who missed the Sixties, Chubby Checker’s hit song The Twist sparked a new dance craze that Duran and others used to host house parties.

At the party in question, besides Duran and the Cuban embassy officials, there was Duran’s cousin, Mexican poet and writer Elena Garro de Paz, communist writer Emilio Carballido, Jose De Jesus Clark Flores, Oswald and  “two American Gringo beat nicks.”

For most people the story originates with Viola June Cobb, an American who was fluent in Spanish and translated Castro's History Will Absolve Me speech as well as Guatemalan president Juan Jose Arevalo's story The Shark and the Sardines, which she had printed and copies of which were given out by Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans, along with his Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets. 

When Fidel Castro went to New York to address the United Nations Cobb visited him at his hotel and gave him copies of the translations and he hired her to be a translator at his headquarters at the Havana Hilton. 

After Batista fled Cuba on New Year's eve 1959, the DRE - Cuban Student Directorate, based at the University of Havana, took over Batista's city hall and Dr. Rolando Cubella (aka AMLASH), one of the DRE founders, sat at Batista's desk and smoked his cigars. When Castro arrived in Havana and learned of this, he took up the suggestion of the General Manager of the Havana Hilton, Frank Maryan "Brandy" Brandstetter, to take up residence in the penthouse of the newly built Hilton. Brandstetter was from Dallas and a Colonel in Jack Crichton's U.S. Army Reserve intelligence unit, but reported directly to Col. Rose at ACSI (Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence) at the Pentagon. 

[For more on Brandy see: Havana Hilton by Render and Reiser /  JFKcountercoup: Brandy's Band of Bros at Dealey Plaza  /  JFKcountercoup: Col. Frank M. Brandstetter  ]

June Cobb was also on the CIA's payroll at $200 a month, and after leaving Castro's entourage, she moved to Mexico where she moved in with Elena Garro de Paz as a housemate. There she learned of Duran's Twist Party with Oswald, and reported it to the CIA and a US State Department official at the Mexican Embassy Charles Thomas. Thomas duly reported the story of the Twist Party to his superiors, and much of Shenon's book has to do with Thomas, how he lost his job ostensibly because of the Twist Party story and eventually committed suicide. 

In a 24 page CIA report to the Rockefeller Commission, Elena Garro de Paz is quoted as saying, “At the party she saw three Gringos, not drinking, not mixing or more or less just standing around together like bumps on a log. They were so obviously out of place that she asked someone in the Cuban Embassy about them and was told that ‘they were just passing through.’” One of the Gringos was said to be Oswald, while one of the other two was an American film actor who Duran would not name. 

On the day of the assassination Elena Garro de Paz was whisked away to a hotel by Mexican security officer Manuel Calvillo, “for her own protection.” Duran was twice arrested and violently interrogated by Mexican security offices until she confessed to having a sexual affair with Oswald.

In his book Shenon says that Duran acknowledge knowing the two American Gringos, one of whom was an American film actor, but she wouldn’t reveal his name because he was still alive and she wanted to protect him.

Although Shenon, with all his resources, editors, publisher, secretaries and researches couldn’t learn their identities, there are a number of CIA documents, primarily telephone wire tap reports that identify the American film actor as Richard Beymer, who starred as the lead in the first West Side Story movie opposite Natalie Wood.

Besides Natalie Wood Beymer was also associated with actress Sharon Tate, who also died under suspicious circumstances. 

It was not difficult to locate Beymer living in the Midwest, and he answered the phone when I called. Yes, he confirmed he went to Mexico in the fall of 1963 with a friend, Bradley Pierce, a New York City bar owner, who had become a Catholic priest. While they went to attend an Acapulco film festival that featured West Side Story, they also went to Mexico City where they applied for visas to Cuba.

But no, he did not recall attending a Twist Party, though that was something they would have done as they were two foot lose, single Americans looking for a good time below the border.

And no, he did not recall meeting or knowing Silvia Duran, though I think he was lying about that as one of the CIA wire taps, shortly after the assassination, reveals that he asked for her personally, and inquired as to whether she was all right, apparently knowing she was arrested and violently interrogated by Mexican authorities.

And no, he did not recall meeting or knowing Lee Harvey Oswald, someone he would have remembered as the accused assassin of the President.

Bradley Pierce, Father Bradley Pierce, was also easily located at a seminary in New England, and he too recalled visiting Mexico with Richard Beymer, attending the Acapulco film festival and applying for visas to Cuba.

                                                                  Bradley Pierce 

[For more on Bradley Pierce: JFKCountercoup2: Father Bradley Pierce RIP /https://patch.com/connecticut/northhaven/obituary-rev-bradley-pierce-82-formerly-north-haven ]

I mentioned to Father Bradley that he must have lived an interesting life as the owner of a big city bar frequented by rock musicians and movie stars, and then becoming a Catholic Priest. Yes, he acknowledged, he had lived a fascinating life, having spent time with Sister Terresa in the slums of Calcutta, India before entering the seminary rather late in life.

But no, he did not recall attending a Twist Party, though he too thought that would have been something on their itinerary, and no, he did not recall meeting Lee Harvey Oswald, though he did recall the assassination in detail.

In fact, he said, they were in Mexico at the time of the assassination, learning of it as they got off their hotel elevator and entered the lobby.

And since they were only in Mexico for a few weeks, they could not have been there in late September and early October when the historic Oswald was allegedly in Mexico City, so they did not attend a Twist Party with Silvia Duran when Oswald was there, if he ever was.

But don’t think this is the end of the story, as the idea that the accused assassin of the President was in cahoots with Castro Cuban Commies is a theme that is continually resurrected whenever we get close to the truth, and we will certainly here more of it in the future. It is part of an on going psychological warfare ploy, a certified black propaganda disinformation campaign, what the CIA calls an “active measure,” that was essentially a part of the plan to kill the president. What Peter Dale Scott calls the “Phase One” cover story, with the deranged lone nut case being the “Phase Two” cover story that is also routinely brought out whenever the truth is near.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=1134154

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=8967#relPageId=2

JFKcountercoup: Twisting With Oswald in Mexco City

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/03/leonard-bernstein-and-jfk-we-dont-dare.html?m=1

Oswald in Mexico City:  Shenon and the Twist Party > JFK Facts


Father Bradley Pierce RIP 
JFKCountercoup2: Father Bradley Pierce RIP