David Harold Byrd

D. H. BYRD 

                                         Lee Harvey Oswald in his Civil Air Patrol Uniform 

Texas oil millionaire David Harold D. H. 'Dry Hole" Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository building, was on an African safari big game hunting at the time of the assassination.

A relatively unknown character in most books and stories about the assassination, Byrd is none the less a significant figure who played multiple roles in various aspects of the assassination story.

 For starters he was a financial supporter of the polar explorations of his cousin Admiral Richard Byrd and has a mountain named after him in the Antarctica.

While most of us would assume that military operations are fully funded by the government, three of the CIA's JMWAVE boat crews were partially supported financially by three patriotic American millionaires - William Pawley, Clare Booth Luce and John Rosselli.

So D.H. Byrd, in a similar way, helped his cousin in his explorations,  that included his radio broadcasts from such remote regions, could only picked up by a Cedar Rapids, Iowa, teenager Arthur Collins.

Art Collins, on a radio he built himself in his garage was the only one who could receive the remote polar broadcasts from Admiral Byrd, and he dutifully passed on the information to the Navy. Collins went on to establish his own radio company that with the advent of WWII, became a major defense contractor that eventually supplied and serviced all sideband radios used by USAF, Strategic Air Command (SAC) and the Executive Air fleet, including Air Force One.

While Collins Radio had its headquarters in Collins hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, like other major defense contractors, it opened a factory in Richardson, Texas, near Dallas, for strategic security reasons, so it would be out of the range of Soviet long range ballistic missiles.

As an early aviation pioneer Byrd owned an early aviation company that merged with some of his associates to form Ling, Temco,Voight – LTV.

Byrd married into one of the richest families in Texas (Caruth), and after her death, married a close, pesonal friend of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Byrd was one of those who in September 1941, shortly before Pearl Harbor, formed the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) along with Cord Meyer, Sr., another early aviation pioneer whose son also became entwined in various aspects of the assassination drama.

For the 1952 Annual Report of the CAP, that includes photos and descriptions of D. H. Byrd and Cord Meyer, Sr. – go to: https://www.gocivilairpatrol.com/media/cms/1952_8D184B3F628D7.pdf

Among its members the CAP in New Orleans counted Lee Harvey Oswald, the man accused of assassinating the president from Byrd's building.

As reported in a Pennsylvania newspaper article (Thanks to Greg Parker for pointing this article out), the CAP had plans to send young cadets to a special counter-intelligence spy school at Fort Holabird, Maryland. [York, Pennsylvania, Gazette]

 "It declared that these recruits would be taught the Russian language, Russian military tactics, Russian politics, and all characteristics of the Russian people." The article called it a plan for loyalty police. 

Sound familiar? 

For more on this story go to:

http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2017/06/civil-air-patrol-plan-for-loyalty-police.html?m=1

And if you thought that it was a one time affair, think again, as more recently it was reported that the CIA partnered with the CAP to provide it with the latest technology, enabling the CAP cadets to detect citizens who grew marijuana in their backyard so they can be reported and busted.

https://www.auxbeacon.org/cia-partners-with-the-civil-air-patrol-with-spy-technology/

Byrd purchased the building that housed the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) but left it vacant for many years before leasing it to a food market before the TSBD took over.

If the assassination was a well planned and successfully executed covert intelligence operation then nothing was left to chance and the operators had complete control over the situation and surroundings.

Just as the CIA's JMWAVE NIPIC technicians supplied Carl Jenkins and the Pathfinder sniper teams with U2 and aerial photos, ground photos, blueprints of the duPont estate and maps of the Veradero area, where Fidel Castro was to be shot as he rode by in an open jeep, if what happened at Dealey Plaza was a similar operation, the same pre-planned procedures were used.

The staging area for the shooting of Castro in Veradero, as Felix Rodriguez recounts in his book, was so planned out in advance the gun sight on his sleek German rifle was preset. And one of the planned staging areas in Veradero was to be an apartment associated with Dr. Rolando Cubella (aka AMLASH), who recently pased away, and will be the subject of my next post.

So if the Dealey Plaza shooting was a similar operation then the situation was as controlled as it was in Veradero, and the TSBD building was the staging area, and Byrd was the proprietor.

At the time of the assassination Bryd was on a big game hunting safari in Mozambique, at Safariland, owned by German Werner Von Alvensleben. As Volkmar Schmidt explained to me, "von" is a German designated of royalty.

Byrd was accompanied by Tom May, a Dallas school book publisher, and their weapon of choice was a Mannlicher Schonauer, a more powerful and precise rifle than the Mannlicher Carcano found in the TSBD.

Byrd apparently made annual hunting trips to Africa, but this one was photographly documented by von Alvenensleben's nephew Christian von Alvenensleben, a professional photographer.

While he wanted to capture beautiful animals in their natural habitat on film, he was horrified at the wanton slaughter of the animals for photos and trophies, but he took pictures.

Some 60 of his photos were published in a book and are available on line. 

https://www.booklooker.de/B%C3%BCcher/Angebote/titel=Die+Spur+des+Leoparden

alvensleben.com

One photo of a dead elephant is inscribed "Shot by Col. Byrd."

The Colonel comes from his role in the CAP.

Another caption identified Byrd in a photo that is clearly not him, but he was most certainly there.

Byrd's host, von Alvenensleben, is the son of a German who is identified in an OSS document as an "assassination specialist," who authored a pamphlet supporting the German military's attempted assassination and coup against Hitler on July 20, 1944, code named Valkyrie.

On September 24, 1963, CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on their covert operations against Cuba, mentioning the fact that the CIA was studying in detail that German military plot to kill Hitler to be used against Castro. The man they chose to lead that plot was Dr. Rolando Cubella.

The Valkyrie plot to kill Castro is a recurring theme in the JFK assassination story, and von Alvenenslabens association with it is only part of that story.

Another African safari hunting partner of Byrd was U.S. General James Harold Doolittle, famous for bombing of Tokyo early in World War II.

In a FOIA request and civil suit brought by the Assassination Archives and Research Center, the CIA records on Byrd and Alversleben have been requested, as well as the records on Eisenhowers’ Doolittle Commission report on CIA covert operations, that included William Pawley as one of the three commissioners and recommended continued use of covert operations to counter the Soviet and communist menace.

Von Alversleben returned to Dallas as a guest of Byrd, who showed him his Trophy Room, where he proudly exposed the heads of dead animals he killed, and added a window he had removed from the sixth floor of the TSBD building as a additional trophy for his trophy room.