West Side Story w/ a Twist
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.
[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/
https://www.maryferrell.org/
JFKcountercoup: Twisting With Oswald in Mexco City
https://jfkcountercoup.
Oswald in Mexico City: Shenon and the Twist Party > JFK Facts
JFKCountercoup2: Father Bradley Pierce RIP