AARC v. CIA Re: The CIA's Detailed Study of the Hitler Plot

AARC v. CIA Re: The CIA’s detailed study of the Hitler Plot to be used against Castro.



Valkyrie was the code name given to the German military plot to kill Hitler that resulted in the July 20, 1944 bombing at Hitler's "Wolf's Lair" headquarters near Rastenburg in that failed to kill him. A September 25, 1963 memo of the meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff reports that the CIA was engaged in a "detailed study" of this plot for possible use against Fidel Castro. In August 2012 Jim Lesar and the Assassinations Archives and Research Center (AARC) filed a Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) for the CIA records on this study, a case that remains unresolved in court today.

AARC director Jim Lesar recently presented his oral argument on the significance and public interest in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case of Jeff Morley v. the CIA regarding the files of CIA officer George Joannedes (1). It should be noted that Lesar and the AARC also involved in three other related civil cases.

These cases include the decades-old request by the late Carl Oglesby for the US Army files on Nazi general Reinhard Gehlen , David Talbot's request for CIA officer William Harvey's travel records (2), and the six year old request for the CIA’s “detailed study” of the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler that was to be used against Castro.(3)

As Jim Lesar notes on the record I was one of the first to call attention to the relevant document – what I call “Smoking Document (#1), I was also requested to submit to a legal deposition in the case. (4)

The document, known as the “Higgins Memo,” because it was written by Col. Walter Higgins, was released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) under the JFK Act of 1992 (5) and can be located in the records posted by Rex Bradford at the Mary Ferrell web site among the Joint Chiefs of Staff's papers. (6)

This document is Colonel Walter Higgins’ notes of the September 25, 1963 meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when they were briefed on the CIA’s covert operations against Cuba by Desmond FitzGerald.

Higgins was a chief aide to U.S. Marine General Victor H. Krulak, then Special Assistant for Counter Insurgency Activities (SACIA) and responsible for US military assistance to the CIA in the conduct of its covert operations, especially against Cuba. (7)

There are a number of other interesting and significant items mentioned in the Higgins memo that still warrant further research, such as the “Pendulum system” and the letter from McGeorge Bundy that was so secret it had to be silently read and then returned to Roswell Gilpatrick, “who did not want written communication by SACSA, but to put this out orally.” (8) We still don’t know what the Pendulum system was or what was in the secret communication from Gilpatrick and Bundy over fifty years later.

The key item that is being contested in court is the report in the “propaganda field,” in which Higgins quoted FitzGearld as saying that he, “,,,felt that there had been great success in getting closer to the military personnel who might break with Castro, and stated that there were at least ten high-level military personnel who are talking with CIA but as yet are not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence has not yet developed. He considers it as a parallel in history; i.e., the plot to kill Hitler; and this plot is being studied in detail to develop an approach.”

The fact that “this plot (was) being studied in detail to develop an approach,” prospectively to be used against Castro unambiguously indicates that the military plot against Hitler was “studied in detail,” and something must have been written down, but the CIA at first contended that they could find no relevant records in the CIA files about the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler. Later they backtracked and offered one, a propaganda advisory on the twentieth anniversary of the bomb plot, a July 1964 report that recommended how to use the story of the Hitler plot to counter communist propaganda. (9)

James Lesar, Esq. and Dan Alcorn, Esq. were the authors of the legal briefs, and Alcorn has provided additional research contributions that are still being developed. 

In his written argument to the court Jim Lesar contended that the CIA's search for relevant records was inadequate for a number of reasons, including:

“First, CIA has provided contradictory information as to the results of its search, initially claiming it found no records, then withdrawing that letter as it was sent in error, then resending that letter, and finally conducting another search once litigation was initiated that found responsive records….” (10)

Lesar wrote that, “…it is illogical and contrary to history that the CIA has only one record related to the 1944 plot to kill Adolf Hitler, which CIA director (and Warren Commissioner) Allen Dulles was in contact with at the time. The Fact that the one document produced in this case, the Propagandist’s Guide, relates to the twentieth anniversary of the plot to kill Hitler supports the importance of the event. Even an anniversary was important enough to receive written discussion in CIA records, yet we are to believe that a detailed study of the event to develop an avenue to deal with Fidel Castro was not important enough to create records? Nor was any record created about this event in the history of the CIA other than a document related to the twentieth anniversary. Such a result is illogical and contrary to history.”

Indeed, on the July 1954 tenth anniversary, a Washington newspaper reported that the CIA director Allen Dulles had an anniversary dinner with former Nazi officer Hans Bernd Gisevious, who Dulles and his agent and paramour Mary Bancroft, assisted in escaping from Germany with forged documents. At the very least this newspaper item, or other documents related to Dulles and Gisevious should be in the CIA files, as the CIA arranged for Gisevious to come to America after he testified at Nuremberg.

Hans Bernd Gisevious testifying at Nurenberg trials, sending Nazis to the gallows. 

Since the CIA has not disclosed any records of this in their files consider this one from the public record.

The Associated Press headline read: “Key Man in Plot to Kill Hitler Dines Here with Allen Dulles.” (11)

Allen Dulles 

The story reads: “Two men whose countries were at war against each other 10 years ago met here last night to relive in memory the roles they played in the attempt to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944. They were Allen Dulles, chief of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Dr. Hans Bernd Gisevious, one of the few German conspirators who escaped death when the plot failed. Mr. Dulles invited Dr. Gisevious to dinner for ‘a sort of anniversary party’ recalling one of the most amazing intrigues of World War II.”

“The story began when Mr. Dulles went to Switzerland late in 1942 to organize an American espionage center. In Berne he met Dr. Gisevious, who then was German Vice Consul and actually a member of the Nazi intelligence organization, the Abwehr. Dr. Gisevius was anti-Nazi and convinced, as were many of his countrymen, that Hitler was leading the nation to destruction. He put Mr. Dulles in touch with the anti-Nazi underground and the two men secretly worked together in encouraging the plot that finally was climaxed by the attempt on Hitler’s life.”

“Through Dr. Gisevius, Mr. Dulles was able to keep his government advised of the activities of the German underground which reached high into the German military.”

“Hitler survived the bomb that exploded in his secret headquarters in East Prussia and ordered a blood purge of the conspirators. Dr. Gisevius, then in Germany, hid from Hitler’s agents until Mr. Dulles managed to smuggle forged identification papers to him. Then as, ‘Dr. Hoffman,’ Dr. Gisevius eluded the Gestapo and made his way to Switzerland…”

As I mention in my declaration to the court, one of the direct connections between the 1944 plot to kill Hitler and the assassination of JFK is the fact that Allen Dulles’ assistant and paramour Mary Bancroft was the OSS contact with Gisevius and she went on to translate Gisevius' histories of the Third Reich. (12)

    Mary Bancroft 

Mary Bancroft was also the best friend and traveling companion of Ruth Forbes Paine Young, Michael Paine’s mother, who Michael Paine’s wife visited before picking up Marina and the rifle in New Orleans and taking them to Texas while Oswald went to Mexico City. (13)



Paine's station wagon used to transport the rifle to and from New Oreans and Ruth and Michael Paine

As both Dulles and Bancroft were working for the OSS at the time of the July 20, 1944 assassination and coup attempt against Hitler, perhaps it is not only in the CIA records where they should look for the CIA’s “detailed study” of the Hitler plot, but also in the OSS archives. (14)

In his response to the court Lesar said, “In addition to the explicit references in the Higgins memo, AARC has provided references to the Church Committee investigation and an unrebutted declaration from author William E. Kelly, Jr. as to his findings as to show where the plot to kill Hitler appears in the circumstances surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy." (15)

Some but not all of the dozen or so associations between the Hitler Plot and the JFK Assassination are mentioned in the Kelly Declaration supplied to the court. Further elaboration on them and other developments in this case will appear in another article.

The CIA's contention that there are no other records of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler among the CIA files is preposterous, especially in view of the documents that a "detailed study" was undertaken 
and reported to the Joint Chiefs. 

Lesar stated that: “The documentary record of the Higgins Memorandum evidences the likelihood of more of documentary record than the CIA has provided to date. The Higgins memo records a briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military by the CIA’s head of Cuban activities during a period in which the US relationship with Cuba was one of the highest priority items of the US foreign policy. The CIA’s detailed study of the 1944 plot to kill Hitler in order to develop an approach to Fidel Castro (emphasis added) was therefore one of the most important activities of the US government at the time. Yet the CIA has failed to produce any such records or explain the failure to do so.”

Lesar requested a discovery be conducted to learn exactly what areas of the CIA archives the search included, suggested other places they should look, and in noticing that the CIA’s chief historian David Robarge assisted in this search, asked the court that Robarge be deposed under oath to answer questions as to his knowledge of these records. (16)

Lesar wrote, “the CIA withholds the crucial information that would document its search and results by withholding the contents of five documents that record the search process…AARC must be allowed to take discovery in these searchers and errors, including the deposition of CIA chief historian David Robarge.” (17)

Robarge, Lesar notes, wrote a biography of John McCone, CIA Director at the time of the assassination, and he was consulted in the course of the search for these records, and even searched his own records for any that were responsive to the request. (18)

Lesar also called the court’s attention to President Trump’s propensity to want to release records, especially CIA and assassination records saying, “President Trump has recently utilized the public interest provision of Executive Order 13526 to release Top Secret classified information in other contexts, in particular release of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee report on compliance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.” (19)

“FOIA requires CIA to pursue these compelling leads and information,” Lesar said, “and does not require the AARC to prove (what) CIA has in its possession but cannot find.”

In conclusion Lesar wrote, “Further AARC prays the Court for an order compelling CIA to release to plaontiff the material withheld improperly under exemption claims as set forth above.” 

Amen.

1)     Morley v. CIA re: Joannides 15-year lawsuit over mysterious CIA agent drags as last of JFK files awaitsrelease /  https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/recordings/recordings2018.nsf/E731A4F982B8F5DE8525825500571425/$file/17-5114.mp3

2)     Carl Oglesy v. US Army re: Gehlen http://aarclibrary.org/the-secret-treaty-of-fort-hunt-an-article-by-carl-oglesby/ and Talbot Talbot Response to Govt Motion for Summary Judgment: Memorandom,

3)     AARC v. CIA – Re: Detailed Study of Hitler Plot to be adapted against Castro – Filed August 25, 2012. It should be noted that DC attorney Dan Alcorn has contributed greatly to developing the research and writing the legal briefs on this case. http://aarclibrary.org/aarc-files-cross-motion-for-summary-judgement-in-lawsuit-against-cia/    / http://aarclibrary.org/doc-26-reply-in-support-of-aarcs-cmsj-opp-to-cias-msj-180220/

4)     Kelly Declaration - http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/01/kelly-declaration-aarc-v-cia-re.html

5)     JFK Act of 1992 - https:/m/www.archives.gov/research/jfk

6)     Higgins Memo - Mary Ferrell – JCS Records - https://www.dropbox.com/s/sa33xligmx1inlb/JCS mtg 9-25-63 Hitler plot.pdf?dl=0

7)     Krulak, Victor  – https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10296 - relPageId=3&tab=page

8)     Pendelum, McGeorge Bundy and Roswell Gilpatrick –  Note last two items. https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10296 - relPageId=3&tab=page . 

“     After the JCS meeting Admiral Riley called Colonel Higgins into his office and read a letter from Mr. McGeorge Bundy which discussed secrecy measures necessary related to Cuba CIA operations. Admiral Riley directed Colonel Higgins to have the nature of this letter put out through SACSA control to SACSA contact points to insure an adequate system for secrecy within the military services. Admiral Riley stated he was returning the letter to Mr. Gilpatric as he did not want written communication by SACSA, but to put this out orally. This was transmitted to Colonel Wyman who will take the action to prepare an appropriate memorandum for the record to be filed with General Ingelido in accordance with further direction by Admiral Riley.”

“General Wheeler, Chief of Staff of the Army, called and questioned us concerning SACSA's access for the knowledge of such operations as mentioned in the McGeorge Bundy letter. I advised him that our Pendulum system was in being but that I would look into it in greater detail to determine that it met the letter as well as the spirit of the memorandum. I stated I believed this was so but had not had reason to do it until this date and therefore did not give him a positive answer at that time.”

9)     CIA propaganda advisory 1964 - http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/03/cias-propagandists-guide-to-valkyrie.html

10)  No other responsive records – It is logically impossible that the CIA has no documents in all of its archives that relate to the July 20, 1944 Valkyrie Plot to kill Hitler, an incident that directly involved former CIA director Allen Dulles, who celebrated the 10^th anniversary over dinner with Has Bernd Gisevious, one of the few plotters who survived the resulting purge, testified against the Nazis at Nurenberg and came to America to work for Dresser Industries in Dallas.

11)  Dulles and Gisevius dine on July 20, 1954 – Washington Star, July 21, 1954. The full AP report is published above.

12)  Bancroft, Mary. Autobiography of a Spy (William Morrow, 1983) Bancroft writes that she was accompanied by Ruth Forbes Paine (Young) on a steamship trip to Europe when she met her husband, a Swiss businessman, which put her in position to assist Dulles during the war. She was the intermediary between Gisevius and Dulles, assisted in Gisevius’ escape from Germany and translated his histories of the Third Reich.

13)  Ford, Gerald. Portrait of the Assassin. (Simon and Schuster, 1965). In this book Ford mentions a letter Ruth Hyde Paine wrote to Marina Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, inviting the pregnant Marina to move in and live with her in Texas until the baby was born. If she agreed, Marina was instructed to write to her in care of “Arthur Young, Paoli, Pa.,” the husband of Michael Paine’s mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young. She apparently agreed because Ruth H. Paine picked up Marina, the daughter and their belongings (including the rifle) on September 24, 1963, a date coinciding with the CIA briefing of the JCS, and took them to Texas while Oswald went to Mexico.

14)  OSS Archives –  https://www.archives.gov/iwg/declassified-records/rg-226-oss . Among the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Archives is a document that reflects the fact that two OSS officers were to be sent to China on a mission together – G. Walton Moore – the CIA Domestic Contacts Division officer who was George deMohrenschildt’s contact, and Charles Ford – the CIA officer who was said to be assigned to be the cut-out liaison between RFK and the mobsters – John Rosselli and Sam Giancana.

15)  Kelly’s Declaration - http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/01/kelly-declaration-aarc-v-cia-re.html

16)  Discovery of CIA search methods and records of the search are included in five records not released, that Lesar requested.

17)  Request for deposition of CIA chief historian Robarge - http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/10/declassified-cia-report-concluded-director-mccone-led-cover-up-kennedy.html

18)  Robarge biography of McCone and DCI McCone and the Assassination of President Kennedy from National Security Archive. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB493/docs/intell_ebb_026.PDF

19)  President Trump – “President Trump has recently utilized the public interest provision of Executive Order 13526 to release Top Secret classified information in other contexts, in particular release of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee report on compliance with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”  http://aarclibrary.org/update-doc-26-2-aarc-foia-suit-on-cias-1963-study-of-plots-to-assassinate-adolf-hitler/

20. If you want to support James Lesar and the ASRC you can do so at their web site.

You can also support Mary Ferrell at Maryferrell. Org

You can support Bill Kelly`s research by joining CAPA-HQ.org.

CIA's Propagandists Guide to the Valkyrie Plot - July 1964

The CIA's Propagandists Guide to the Valkyrie Plot - 20th Anniversary - July 1964 

Von Stauffenberg (Left) and Hitler 

At first the CIA responded to the August 25, 2012 Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) FOIA request for all CIA records pertaining to the CIA's "detailed study" of the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler to be adapted for use against Castro, as it us described in the Higgins Memo of the September 25 meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by saying that they found no responsive records, 

Then, after six fruitless years of looking among their files for any mention of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler without success, the CIA backtracked and admitted they found this one document - a 1964 psychological warfare report that lists dozens of dates and opportunities to counter Communist propaganda with propaganda of their own, including the utilization of the 20th anniversary of the July 1944 attempt to kill Hitler that was betrayed by Communists. 

It is very interesting that the very first item is a reference to an article on South America by Hal "the Spook" Hendrix, an asset of David Atlee Philips, who called Seth Kantor in Dallas from Florida on the day of the assassination to give him deep background information on Lee Harvey Oswald, who had not yet been officially accused of the assassination. 

The July 20, 1964 - 20th anniversary of the German military plot to kill Hitler is viewed as a good opportunity to show how the Soviet Communists supported Hitler and betrayed some of those who were involved in the plot, arranging for the Gestapo to arrest them a few weeks before the attempt. 

This is the relevant extract from this document: 

CIA's Propagandist’s Guide to Communist Dissensions

4 May 1964

Briefly Noted

780. 20 July 1964: Twentieth Anniversary of the Anti-Hitler Plot*

Approved for Release: 2017/08/17 CO2573160  

BACKGROUND: [Note. The Communists were never  anti-Fascist in the sense of being against oppressive totalitarianism. They were and are against everything, including free democratic ideologies, that might thwart their imposition of their own brand of totalitarianism. They indifferently support anything or attack anything in maneuvering toward their own goal of eventual domination. It would be difficult to present evidence proving conclusively that the Communists, as a tactic to insure their own takeover in Germany after her defeat in WW II, intentionally informed the Gestapo of the conspiracy against Hitler in June 1944. It would be simpler to prove that the German Communist, due to their own lack of security precautions, were penetrated by the Gestapo. However, established writers have made statements in their published works which at least implicate the Communists in exposing this last plot to kill Hitler. These statements can be used to seriously damage the self-image the Communists try to create of being the saviors of those threatened by Fascism.]

“Fascist resurgence  and Nazi revanchism” is a dead horse which Communists propagandists have flogged ad nauseam since World War II. Twentieth anniversary of the attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20^th offers good occasion for a public reminder that Hitler and fascism could never have come to power without the support of Stalin and the German Communist Party, acting under the direction of Moscow. Different writers have suggested that the Communists actually saved Hitler in 1944 by deliberately betraying the assassination plot to the Gestapo. (See unclassified attachment). The failure of the assassination attempt led to the near obliteration of what moral fiber remained in Germany officialdom, while causing incalculable and needless additional human suffering.

Numerous eminent or high ranking personages in Nazi Germany were convinced that Hitler must be killed and were fully prepared to do so personally. Elaborate plots and active attempts were thwarted by mischance or the fantastic security measures surrounding Hitler’s person. Spurred to new efforts by the success of the Allied invasion in mid-1944, a conspiratorial group centered around Dr. Karl Friedrich Goerdler began to take desperate measures to assassinate Hitler and depose his Nazi retinue. 

This conspiracy included all of the numerous anti-Nazi elements in German except the illegal German Communist Party (KPD), the remnants of which had been driven underground. On 22 June 1944 the conspirators reluctantly broke a long-standing resolve by taking into their confidence two surviving members of the KPD, hoping that the latter could at least be counted on to cooperate against the Nazis. Two Social Democrats among the conspirators Reichwein and Leber, met with KPD representatives Saefkow and Jacob, who brought with them a third man introduced as “Rambow.” Rambow turned out to be a Gestapo informer, and REichwein and Leber were arrested by the Gestapo on July 4^th and 5^th. 

This forced the precipitate action, and Count Claus von Stauffenberge was nominated to personally plant a brief-case bomb under the staff conference table during the 20 July visit by Hitler to his Rastenburg field Headquarters in East Prussia. Owing perhaps to the haste of the preparations, Hitler survived the blast without serious injury. His revenge was a fratricidal purge which involved 7,000 arrests and 5,000 deaths, eliminating the potential for any further anti-Nazi movement within Germany. 

During the winter of 1944-45 what remained of the spiritual elite of Germany was behind bars. Those who remained alive in April 1945 were, so far as possible, shot out of hand by the S.S. least they survive the war and play the part that would naturally have been theirs in post-war Germany.

According to all logic of motive, betrayal of the anti-Hitler group to the Gestapo, was consistent with and typical of the anti-Hitler group to the Gestapo, was consistent with and typical of Moscow’s methods – before, during and after the war. While understanding and betraying its “allies” and “enemies” of the moment with fine impartially, Moscow managed to build for itself a popular image of heroic anti-Fascist struggle. The falsity of this image has been extensively documented,….This study affords a broad perspective of the grievous human tragedy which has been inflicted by Moscow throughout the length and breadth of Eurasia in times of peace as well as in war. 

Morley v. the CIA in DC Court

Morley v. the CIA - Still in Court

AARC Attorney Jim Lesar

Journalist and author Jefferson Morley through his attorney Jim Lesar argued before a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on March 19. 

The issue before the court was whether attorneys fees and costs should be awarded for Morley's long-running FOIA case seeking records from the CIA related to CIA officer George Joannides.  '

The judges actively engaged in questioning the attorneys throughout the thirty minute oral argument held at the U.S. Courthouse at 3rd and Constitution Ave. NW in Washington, D.C., including questions about how Morley's FOIA request sheds light on the circumstances of the assassination of President Kennedy.  

Morley's attorney Jim Lesar explained to the court that Joannides was the CIA liaison officer in 1963 to the Cuban exile student group DRE, who had contact with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination.  

Lesar told the court that DRE contacted Joannides in the hours after the Kennedy assassination seeking his permission to release a tape recording DRE had made of Oswald before the assassination.  Lesar told the court that Joannides responded to DRE that he would check with CIA headquarters, and DRE went ahead and released the tape recording the evening of November 22, 1963 and published a story that became the first published story attempting to link Oswald to Castro's Cuba.

The Court's decision in the case will be issued in a written opinion in the next weeks or months.

Jefferson Morley 


Audio of the oral argument is available on the court website at the following link:

https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/recordings/recordings.nsf/

USA TODAY covers the story:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/03/19/jfk-files-15-year-lawsuit-over-mysterious-cia-agent-drags-final-files-await-release/435989002/

For more see JFKFacts.org



CIA official George Joannides was the case officer for the DRE anti-Castro Cuban activists who were arrested with Oswald in New Orleans and backstopped the HSCA investigation of the DRE.

More on Michael Paine - and his Importance in the Assassination Story

Michael Paine at Dealey Plaza

Michael Paine 

There are a few basic facts about Michael Paine that are not being reported upon his death.

The first is that without him and his actions the assassination of President Kennedy could not and would not have happened.

The significant facts are:

1)     Michael Paine was kicked out of Harvard and attended Swarthmore College in Philadelphia where he lived on a farm with his mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young and her third husband, the eccentric inventor of the Bell Helicopter Arthur Young.

2)     It was while living in Philadelphia when he met Ruth Hyde at a folk dance and they became engaged and married in a Quaker ceremony at Media, Pennsylvania.

3)     It was the Media, Pa. FBI office that was broken into and records stolen that revealed the existence of COINTELPRO and CHAOS documents, operations that were designed to penetrate and disrupt anti-Vietnam war and civil rights protest groups.

4)     While the CIA is legally unable to conduct such domestic operations, the FBI worked closely with US Army Reserves Intelligence, who were.

5)     Michael Paine joined the US Army before beginning work at Bartol Research Foundation in Swarthmore and as an assistant to his step-father Arthur Young, whose Bell Helicotper 47B – the MASH helicopter, was the first commercially approved helicopter.

6)     Arthur Young arranged for Michael to work in research at Bell Helicopter, that opened a new plant in Texas, where Michael and Ruth Paine moved to work there. Young told me that Bell relocated their helicopter plant to Texas “for security reasons.”

7)     In 1959 they moved to 2525 West Fifth Street in Irving, Texas, were the rifle  said to be used to kill the president was stored in a blanket in the garage. 



Ruth Hyde and Michael Paine 

8)     When Lee Harvey Oswald returned home from the USSR with his Russian wife and young daughter, they were patronized by a group of Russians who associated with the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, a parish funded in part by the CIA’s Catherwood Foundation of Philadelphia, and assisted primarily by oil geologist George deMohrenschildt, who has been described as their intelligence babysitter. 

9)     Before deMohrenschildt relocated to Haiti for work, he hosted a February 1963 party at the home of three Magnolia Oil engineers for the expressed purpose of introducing Oswald to Michael Paine. While Paine did not attend the party, his wife Marina met Michael’s wife Ruth Hyde Paine and they became fast friends until the day of the assassination, after which they never spoke to each other again.

10)  At the same party Oswald met one of the Magnolia Oil company hosts Volkmar Schmidt, a German who said he used “reverse psychology techniques” on Oswald that were taught to him by his surrogate father Professor Keutmeyer of Heidelberg, Germany, suggesting that right wing retired General Walker be assassinated, as Hitler should have been.

11)  Schmidt specifically mentioned the July 20, 1944 bomb plot to kill Hitler that Keutmeyer was involved in via two direct participants.

12)  Michael Paine’s mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young was best friends with Mary Bancroft, the OSS paramour of Allen Dulles in Switzerland and principle agent involved in the July 20^th plot to kill Hitler. They knew of the plot before it failed and afterwards assisted one of the principle plotters Hans Bernd Gisivious to escape, one of the few participants who was not executed.

13)  Shortly after someone took a shot at Walker and missed, a crime attributed to Oswald, he relocated to his hometown of New Orleans, and Michael’s wife drove Marina and the rifle to New Orleans, and then returned with them a few months later while Oswald went to Mexico. Michael Paine packed and unpacked the station wagon on both occasions, and placed the rifle in a blanket in his garage in Irving. Paine later said he thought the rifle in the blanket was camping equipment.

14)  The rifle remained in Paine’s garage until the morning of the assassination, and Oswald’s brother Robert, a former Marine sharpshooter, wrote in his book that “If Lee did not practice with that rifle in the days and weeks prior to the assassination, he did not take the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally.”

15)  A few weeks prior to the assassination Michael Paine and another employee of Bell took Oswald to a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and afterwards, the other employee went to Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club and Oswald joined the ACLU.

16)  At the very moment of the assassination Paine was in the Bell Hell cafeteria eating lunch with Frank Krystinik who said Paine was discussing “the character of assassins.”

17)  At Bell Paine worked under former Nazi General Walter Dornberger, who was brought into the USA by the CIA under Project Paperclip. The phone at Bell were tapped and a report leaked that shortly after the assassination Michael Paine and Ruth Paine talked on the phone saying, Oswald killed the president but was not responsible, and that “We both know who is responsible.”

18)  While Michael Paine claimed he didn’t know Oswald had a rifle, even though he moved it around on three or four occasions, he later acknowledge that he saw the backyard photo of Oswald holding the rifle, pistol and two Communist publications that he subscribed to, including the Trotskyite paper that included articles on anti-Castro Cuban CIA JMWAVE attacks on Cuba.

19)  Michael Paine’s father was one of the founders of the Trotskyite Party in the USA, an offshoot of the official Kremlin backed Communist Party.

20)  When Leon Trotsky broke away from the official Communist Party in Russia, he sought aslym in Mexico City, where he was assassinated by Ramon Mercader, a KGB trained assassin, as documented in a book by Issac Don Levine.

21)  After the assassination Issac Don Levine obtained the rights to Marina Oswald’s story, later written by Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who knew Oswald in Moscow when she worked for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), a news organized owned by former OSS officer Ivor Bryce and included Ian Fleming, of 007 fame.

22)  While Ruth and Michael Paine were extensively questioned by the Warren Commission, they were not questioned by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) or the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), despite repeated requests to do so.