The Mafia and Irishmen at Dealey Plaza Part 2

THE MAFIA AND IRISHMENat DEALEY PLAZA

Skinny D'Amato advising JFK during the 1960 campaign

By Billkelly3@gmail.com

Martin Scorsese’s new and popular movie “The Irishman,” and Charles Brandt's book it is based on, “I Heard You Paint Houses,” have numerous references to the Kennedys and the assassination of President Kennedy, and falsely implies that the mob or mafia were responsible for the murder.

They say lines like, “They killed a President, they can kill a Union President.”

While they were certainly involved in the conspiracy, especially in the silencing of the accused assassin, and the protection of the real assassins, the mob or the Mafia certainly were not responsible for the Dealey Plaza Operation that resulted in the death of the president.

Now this is something I know quite a lot about.

The idea that the Mafia or mobsters were behind the assassination is not a new one, but has been propagated by G. Robert Blakey, his assistant Gary Cornwall, Dan Moldea, David Kaiser, Thom Waldron and others, but like those who try to pin the tail on any such acronym organization or person, be it the CIA, KGB, LBJ or the Maf-i-a, assembling all the evidence that supports your theory and ignoring the rest is not the way to solve this crime or any crime.

As for the Mob and the Mafia, I have been down every alley that leads in their direction and for the most part, struck out, though the Mafia were certainly in the game and major players, especially in the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Castro that are essential in understanding what occurred at Dealey Plaza.

First off you have to understand that the Mob and the Mafia are not the same entities, as the Mob could be any group of gangsters engaged in usually illegal enterprises, - the rackets, while the Mafia is a very specific Italian ethic group that became highly organized and influential from the 1930s until relatively recently.

They frequently say with some authority that Old Man Joe Kennedy, JFK's dad, was a bootlegger during prohibition, but as I said in the TV documentary "History of Booze in America," Joe Kennedy wasn't a bootlegger who smuggled booze into the USA and sold it illegally, he owned the liquor companies - especially the Canadian whiskeys and Caribbean rums, and sold it legally to the bootleggers, who smuggled it and sold it illegally. But they knew each other and were in a sense business partners. 

JFK Statute at Kennedy Plaza on the Atlantic City Boardwalk 

I wrote an extensive article on the April 1929 convention of Mafia mobsters in Atlantic City that resulted in the formation of the “Commission,” the board of directors of organized crime that set the rules and arbitrated disputes.

JFKCountercoup2: 1929 Atlantic City Organized Crime Convention

In the mid-fifties through the early sixties the Commission consisted of the leaders of the Mafia families in the major cities – the five New York families (Gambino, Genovese, Bonanno, et al….), Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia, Carlos Marcello of New Orleans, Santo Traficante of Tampa and Havana, Russell Bufalino of Northeast Pennsylvania and Sam Giancana of Chicago, who also controlled everything west of Chicago including L.A., Vegas and Dallas, Texas.

Russell Bufalino was the only mafia boss who did not control a major city – but his influence was large, as he is featured in “The Irishman” (and portrayed by Joe Pesci.)

Bufalano didn’t take no shit from nobody. As Sheeran put it, “Russell himself had no great use for Frank Sinatra. Russell wouldn’t put up with Sinatra’s loudmouth wise guy routine. Frank Sinatra behaved himself around Russell Bufalino. One night at the 500 Club in Atlantic City I heard Russell tell Sinatra: ‘Sit down or I’ll rip your tongue out and stick it up your ass.’ If he had a drink in him Sinatra was an asshole….”

Okay, that brings it all onto my turf. Being from South Jersey I knew a lot of the places that are mentioned in the book and the movie – especially the Latin Casino, where they had the testimonial to Sheeran, which was about two miles from my house and a half mile from my high school, and the 500 Club. 

Now the Five – Skinny D’Amato’s 500 Club in Atlantic City, was where Jerry Lewis met Dean Martin, and Sinatra helped make famous. When Sam Giancana and Sinatra bought interest in the Cal-Neva Lodge casino in Northern Nevada, taking part of Old Man Joe Kennedy’s former interest, they brought in Skinny D’Amato to run the casino, a patently honest broker.

While Sam Giancana has been credited with delivering Illinois to JFK in the 1960 election, even more significant was JFK's primary election victory in West Virginia, where Skinny D'Amato assisted by delivering cash to the local sheriffs who ran the election, as he knew them from their annual convention in Atlantic City. 

Skinny’s band leader – Pete Miller had a son, Peter Miller, who became a big time New York literary agent, and included Vincent Bugliosi as one of his clients



JFKcountercoup: JFK and Atlantic City

Sinatra was tight with JFK and was made head of his inaugural ball committee to arrange for the entertainment, and with the pull of Atlantic City political boss H. “Hap” Farley, the Democratic National Committee selected Atlantic City to host the 1964 Democratic National Convention, which would ostensibly renominate JFK for the presidency. That didn’t work out.

Now, as mentioned in “The Irishman,” Frank Sinatra and Sam Giancana had a girlfriend – Judyth Campbell (Extner), who they introduced to JFK, and they became an item, not only for sexual encounters but in passing notes and packages back and forth between JFK and Giancana.

Now for the JFK assassination connection that has never been run down – the FBI set up a stake out at Judyth Campbell’s apartment, and observed two young men break into it when she wasn’t home. Their automobile license plate traced them to I. B. Hale, a former high level FBI agent and security director at General Dynamics. The two young men were his twin sons – both of whom attended Arlington, Texas high school with the accused assassin, shortly before he enlisted in the Marines.

Believe it or not, one of the sons went on to shoot and  kill the daughter of Texas Governor John Connally.

And it is their mother – I.B. Hale’s wife – Virginia, who worked at the Texas Employment Commission and obtained jobs for the accused assassin – at Leslie Welding and Jaggers/Chiles/Stoval graphics arts firm. Oswald was not fired from Leslie Welding, but quit voluntarily and took the job at J/C/S, where in October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he added arrows and captions to U-2 photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba.

Of course the FBI did not do anything about the breaking and entering – black bag job of the President’s mistress that the Hale twins pulled on Judyth Campbell’s apartment – when she was having simultaniously amorous affairs with Giancana the Chicago mob boss and the President of the United States.

Then there’s Jim Braden and John Martino, both of whom operated in my territory for awhile.

JIM BRADEN

When Eugene Hale Brading officially changed his name to Jim Braden, shortly before visiting Texas with some other pals on oil business, he didn’t expect to be taken into custody as a suspicious person at the scene of the murder of the president, or for TV editor Peter Noyes to uncover that fact and write the book “Legacy of Doubt.”

When I picked up a copy of that blue pulp paperback from a drugstore rack, I took particular notice that Brading had been arrested in Camden, New Jersey in 1948, but according to Noyes the Camden police refuse to respond to his requests, and they were under the control of the mob.

Since my father was a Camden policeman, then a Lieutenant, I showed him the book and reference and shortly thereafter he handed me Jim Braden’s original arrest report, saying that it was located in a dark, damp corner of the city hall basement and the secretaries didn’t want to get dirty getting it for Noyes.

JFKcountercoup: Case Study No. 3 - Jim Braden

JFKcountercoup: New Jim Braden Documents Released

Jim Braden 1948 Camden, NJ Mug Shot | JFKCountercoup

Braden’s Camden Arrest Report | JFKCountercoup

Eugene Hale Brading (Jim Braden)

When Philadelphia attorney Richard Sprague was appointed chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), a newspaper article mentioned that he had his staff read Peter Noyes’ book, so I took a photo-copy of Braden’s Camden arrest report and dropped it off at Sprague’s Philadelphia office.

Sprague had previously attained notority as a no-non-sense district attorney who had successfully 

prosecuted a United Mine Workers (UMW) union rival (Jock Yablonski) for the murder of the Union President (Tony Boyle) in Pennsylvania, the subject of a book that I understand is currently being researched and written by former HSCA attorney Robert Tannenbaum.

Sprague thought he could conduct a real homicide investigation that was leaning towards some sensitive CIA personalities, but he was replaced by G. Robert Blakey, then the head of the Cornell Institute of Organized Crime who wrote the RICO – Racketeer Influence Corruption Act that put many a mobster behind bars. 

Blakey took over from Sprague and redirected the investigation towards organized crime, issued a final report saying there was evidence of conspiracy, locked the HSCA records away for 50 years and wrote a book blaming the Mafia for the murder of the president.

While Blakey was writing his book, one of his assistants – Michael Ewing called me on the phone at the Jersey Shore asking about Jim Braden’s 1948 Camden arrest report. I told him I gave it to Sprague, and Ewing said that Sprague took all of his files with him. I said I was glad he did since Blakey locked the rest of the HSCA records away for 50 years, and at least Sprague had it.

I then shared the report with Blakey, as I had done with Peter Noyes, Bill Turner, Phil Melanson and others I had been working with over the years.

I was pretty much astonished to learn that the HSCA had subpoened Jim Braden and he testified in Executive Session for two days, a transcript of which was sealed until the JFK Act was passed in 1992.

Braden, as his 1948 arrest report attests, was a small time swindler, con artist who dabbled in the oil business and was best known for targeting rich widows, being thrown out of Dallas by Sheriff Bill Decker and with a friend (Victor Pierra) as being “The Honeymooners,” for their antics. Among which was swindling Mrs. Little, the widow of a founder of Magnolia Oil Company. And it was at a party at the home of three Magnolia Oil employees where Ruth Paine met Marina Oswald and the accused assassin was encouraged to kill General Walker, as Hitler should have been killed.

As Braden was taken into custody by a Dallas Sheriff’s deputy after leaving the elevator of the Dal-Tex building shortly after the assassination, - the elevator operator believing he was suspicious, Braden explained how he innocently got there.

While his oil buddies from California visited the offices of H.L. Hunt, he had gone to the parole office, though the parole officer disagrees on the particulars. Walking to Dealey Plaza, and learning of the assassination, he tried to find a telephone, and was directed to the second floor of the Dal-Tex building where he called his mother to tell her about the shooting.

Braden and his oil buddies from California had stayed the previous night at the Cabana Hotel, where Jack Ruby visited his friend Larry Meyers at the same time.

When Braden returned to the hotel he found that his partners had suddenly left for Houston on a private plane, and he followed them there using a commercial flight. According to his HSCA testimony, that the wanted made public, Braden said he then went to New Orleans where he spent the summer of ’63, working out of the offices of oil geologist Vernon Main, Jr. in the Pierre Marquette office building.

It just so happens that Main's office was on the same floor, just down the hall from the law offices of Carlos Marcello’s attorney G. Ray Gill, who employed as an investigator David Ferrie, the Civil Air Patrol Captain of the accused assassin.

Despite being accused of being a shooter from the Dal-Tex building, Jim Braden has never exhibited any act of violence in any of his crimes, and was a white collar con artists who never shot anyone. He played golf.

I tried to track down Jim Braden to interview him further, as I believe him, but never got to meet him.

Then there’s John Martino.

JOHN MARTINO

John Martino is mentioned in early government files on Angelo Bruno, the “Docile Don” of the Philadelphia mafia family, whose base was in South Philly but whose influence extended west to Pittsburgh and east to Atlantic City. Frowning on drugs, Bruno specialized in gambling, and had interests in some Havana casinios. Martino is listed as one of the numerous bookmakers who took bets on sporting events in the Atlantic City area.

Foreknowledge & JFK Assassination | JFKCountercoup

JFKcountercoup: JFK and Atlantic City

John Martinos Confessions

William Pawley, the Kennedy Assassination, and Watergate TILT and the “Phase Three” Story of Clare Boothe Luce | COPA

As he later explained Martino went on to become a casino security expert working for Lansky’s Florida casino and for Santo Traficante in Havana, where he worked with Jack Ruby’s pal Louis McWillie.

When Castro came to power Martino returned stateside and actively worked against Castro, primarily in the Bayo-Pawley affair, and shared an apartment for awhile with John Rosselli, a significant connection.

Inexplictly returning to Cuba Martino was arrested as an American spy and sentenced to the Isle of Pines prison where he met Sylvia Odio’s father, who was incarcerated for his role in a plot to kill Castro that also involved Antonio Veciana. As he mentions in his book, “I Was Castro’s Prisoner,” Martino knew the date of the Bay of Pigs invasion weeks before it occurred, so it wasn’t a state secret.

Released with the Bay of Pigs prisoners, Martino collaborated with Nate Wheil in writing about his experiences in Cuba, but they had a falling out after the publication when Martino decided to take a nationwide book tour affiliated with the John Birch Society (JBS).

At a stop in a Dallas auditorium, Martino shared the stage with Father Walter McChann, patron of the Cuban exiles in Dallas, and supported by the Catholic Welfare Society that was funded by the CIA’s Catherwood Foundation.

In Dallas Martino mentioned Amador Odio with his daughters in the audience, which might have also included JBS supporter General Edwin Walker.

After having amorous affairs with some of his parishoners, including Sylvia Odio, McChann left the priesthood and after the assassination relocated to New Orleans, attending a Catholic college there and associating with one of Carlos Bringuier’s friends, who attended the court hearing with Oswald and Bringuier.

On the day of the assassination John Martino, at home in Florida, expressed foreknoweldge of the assassination and some of it’s details, probably obtained from his friend John Rosselli.

When Anthony Summers was in Florida interviewing John Martino’s widow and son, I was in Atlantic City interviewing Martino’s elderly sister and brother, both of whom were open and accomdating. She gave me a record album of Martino reading excerpts of his book, and hooked me up with Nate Wheil, who I also interviewed over the phone.

The book “The Irishman” is based on has high praise for Dan Moldea, who along with G. Robert Blakey, David Kaiser, Thom Waldren and others, promote the idea that the mob and Mafia were behind the assassination.

Modea shared an American University stage with John Judge on the subject of Media and Politics, with a special emphasis on the impact of Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK.” Moldea made his routine pitch blaming the Mafia, but Judge Judge rebuttled with a strong counterpoint, making note of the facts that the mob/Mafia didn’t control the evidence, the Zapruder film or the autopsy, and were “Sleps,” or waterboys for the CIA.

For those who promote any particular person or group – LBJ, CIA, FBI, Mafia – it wasn’t any one of them but all of them, as if it was a full fledged coup d’etat then every agency of government had to be either invited, involved or compromised, much like the Murder on the Orient Express.

Certainly the Mafia was involved – they hated JFK like J. Edgar Hover, General LeMay and LBJ did, but what occurred at Dealey Plaza was not the work of any renegade outfit – it was a well planned and expertly executed covert intelligence operation that included various elements of government and society, but can be more clearly defined by identifying those who pulled it off, and got away with it.

And that’s what we are doing.

There was at least one real Irishman at Dealey Plaza – Will Greer the driver of Lincoln, a Protestant who hailed for Northern Ireland, who didn’t care much for Catholics or JFK, and counter to everything he was trained to so, put on the breaks after the first shot and didn’t let up until JFK’s head was blown open.

Bill Kelly

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The Irishman at Dealey Plaza

The Irishman At Dealey Plaza

After reading the book – “The Irishman” on the plane to Dallas last November 21, and seeing the movie on Netflex when I returned, I was taken by the references to the assassination and the similarities to Oliver Stone’s “JFK.”

Both books are based on first person experiences – Jim Garrison’s “On the Trail of the Assassins,” and Frank Sheehan’s story as told to Charles Brandt – “I Hear You Paint Houses,” a mob euphemism for killing.  

And both books have been made into Major Motion Pictures that have re-stirred the debate over the murdered president.

A key character in both dramas – David Ferrie, is played by – Joe Pecci in “JFK,” whose role in the assassination drama was to serve as the accused assassin’s Captain in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol (CAP) before he enlisted in the Marines and defected to the USSR.

Now the CAP is important in the assassination story, not only for David Ferrie’s leadership of Oswald’s CAP squadron, but because it was founded in 1941 by D. H. Byrd, the owner of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) at the time of the assassination, from where shots were fired, but also because of the documents leaked to the press from the Pennsylvania chapter of the CAP that indicated the CAP cadets were being trained in Counter-Intelligence procedures and were being groomed to infiltrate communist organizations, something Oswald was trained to do and did.

Another original founder of the CAP with Byrd was Cord Meyer, Sr., the father of Cord Meyer, Jr., the head of the CIA’s International Organizations Division and husband to Mary Pinchot Meyer, a point that comes into play later in the game.

“The Irishman” is ostensibly about the story of Philadelphia Teamster Frank Sheeran and his role in the murder of Teamster Union boss Jimmy Hoffa, played by Al Pachino in the movie, but it’s more about the underworld associations of these people and how they entwine with that of President Kennedy and his brother Robert, who went to war with both Hoffa and the Mafia.

Hoffa, like J. Edgar Hoover and Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay all hated JFK – with a passion, but as former CIA officer Rolf M. Larsson asked, what makes a man who hates a killer? That’s a big step, not only in having the hate and wanting to do it, but having the capability to do it and get away with it. 

As portrayed in the book and the movie, Sheeran (Robert DiNero) is introduced into the Mafia underworld by Russell Bufalino (Joe Pecci), only Mafia boss serving on the national Commission who was not a big city boss like those of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Tampa and New Orleans.

Unlike David Ferrie, his flamboyant character in Stone’s “JFK,” Pecci is now an older and wiser wiseguy, whose territory includes all of Northeast Pennsylvania and stretches into Upstate New York and Northern New Jersey, open territory for all five of the New York Mafia crime families.  These mob bosses formed what they called the “Commission” in Atlantic City in April 1929, shortly after the St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago. The Commission was the final arbitrator in disputes among the mobsters.

In November 1957, shortly after the murder of New York boss Albert Anastasia, Sheeran says he drove Buffalino to a house in Upstate New York and dropped him off. The next day the local police took many of those who participated in a major mob meeting into custody, proving once and for all that there was an organized criminal enterprise that J. Edgar Hoover had previously denied existed.

In the book the first mention of assassination related items is (p. 133) when Sheeran is quoted as staying with Hoffa in a Chicago Hotel – the Edgewater Beach, where the Teamsters kept a suite of rooms on the 18^th floor.

“I got to meet a lot of important people. Sam ‘Momo’ Giancana would come by the Edgewater….Later on when Jimmy got to know my work himself, I stayed in the room whenever something was going on. Once in a while Giancana would have a guy with him named Jack Ruby from Dallas. I met Ruby a few times….Ruby was with Giancana and a man named Red Dorfman. One time we all went out to eat and Ruby had a blond with him that he brought up from Dallas for Giancana. There is no doubt whatsoever that Jimmy Hoffa didn’t just meet Jack Ruby, he knew Jack Ruby, and not just from Giancana, but from Red Dorfman, too.”

Jack Ruby was from Chicago, involved in the mob controlled Waste Handlers Union, knew Red Dorfman, was sent to Dallas to represent the Chicago mob there, and called Dorfman on the phone the week before the assassination. But you don't have to be Jimmy Hoffa's hit man, anybody can know that. 

Then (p. 144) Sheeran and Brandt get into the nitty gritty of the matter. In Florida, Sheeran says, “I met Carlos Marcello’s pilot there, too, a guy named David Ferrie. They later said he was gay, but if he was he didn’t make a pass at me. He still had his hair when I met him. They say he went a little nutty later on and carried a makeup kit around with him. You cold tell he hated Castro with a passion, and he was very close to the anti-Castro Cubans in Florida.”

“One morning a couple of weeks after the meeting in at the Gold Coast where I met Dave Ferrie, I was back in Philly at the local and got a call from Jimmy Hoffa, who told me to go check on that thing we talked about. That meant I should go to the pay phone I used to use and to wait for a phone call. I got over to the pay phone and when it ran I heard Jimmy’s voice say, ‘Is that you?’ I told him, ‘Yea.’”

“He said ‘I talked to your friend and he told me to tell you. Get your hands on a safe rig tomorrow and go down to the Harry C. Campbell concrete plant on Eastern Avenue outside of Baltimore. You can’t miss it. Bring somebody to help you drive. You’re going over the road. And don’t forget to call your friend.”

“….We pulled into the Campbell plant. I’ve been down there lately to find it and it’s got a new name, Bensal. It’s more built up, with more buildings, but the old stone buildings are still there. In 1961 when we drove in it had a little landing strip. The landing strip had a small plane on it, and Carlos Marcello’s pilot who I had just met at the Gold Coast, Dave Ferrie, got out of the plane and came over to my rig and directed us t back up next to some Army trucks. We backed up and all of a sudden this gang of soldiers came out of a building and began unloading military uniforms and weapons and ammunition from their army trucks and loading it all onto our truck.”

“Dave Ferrie told me that the war material being loaded was from the Maryland National Guard. He gave me paperwork on the load in case we got stopped. He told me to take it to the dog track in Orange Grove, Florida, outside of Jacksonville. He said I’d be met there by a guy with big ears named Hunt.”

“At the outset of the 1975 (Congressional) hearings, in a shocking move, the CIA admitted to the Church Committee the mob’s involvement and assistance in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the existence of the mob-CIA plot to kill Castro.”

“While the Church Committee was conducting its closed hearings, Time magazine reported in its June 9, 1975, issue that Russell Bufalino and Sam ‘Momo’ Giancana were the crime bosses behind the mob’s ties to the CIA and to the anti-Castro invasion and to the assassination plot to poison Castro.”

Now that’s the first I’ve heard of Bufalino being involved with the CIA in the Cuban operations.

In the book (p.182) Sheeran is quoted as saying, “One morning, a few days to a week before November 22, 1963, I got a call from Jimmy to go to the pay phone….I drove up to Russell’s and when he answered the door all he told me to do was, ‘Go see our friends in Brooklyn. They’ve got something for you to take to Baltimore…”

“I turned around and drove to Monte’s Restaurant in Brooklyn. It was a hangout for Genovese people. It’s the oldest Italian restaurant in New York City…..Tony Pro got up from his table and went to the back and returned with a duffel bag. He handed it to me and told me, ‘Go down to Campbell’s Cement in Baltimore where you went that time with the truck. Our friend’s pilot will be there. He’s waiting for this.”

“When I got there, Carlo’s pilot, Dave Ferrie, was there with another guy I knew from Monte’s who was with Genovese….He said, ‘You got something for us?’….I didn’t even get out of the car. I gave him the keys. He opened the trunk, took the bag, we said good-bye, and away I went home.”

Then they pick up on this (p. 270) after November 22, 1963. According to Sheeran, Hoffa said: “That’s just the tip of the iceberg, the top of the iceberg. Let me tell you – Dallas, id you hear that word tonight? 

\Remember that package you took to Baltimore? I didn’t know it then, but it turns out it was high-powered rifles for the Kennedy hit in Dallas. The stupid bastards lost their own rifles in the trunk of a Thunderbird that crashed when their driver got drunk. That pilot for Carlos was involved in delivering the replacements that you brought down. Those fuckers used both of us on that deal. We were patsies. What do you think of that? They had fake cops and real cops involved in it. Jack Ruby’s cops were supposed to take care of Oswald, but Ruby bungled it. That’s why he had to go in and finish the job on Oswald. If he didn’t take care of Oswald, what do you think they would have done to him – put Ruby on a meat hook. Don’t kid yourselfSanto and Carlos and Giancana and some of their element, they were all in on Kennedy. Every single one of the same cast of characters that were in on the Bay of Pigs. They even had a plot to kill Castro with Momo and Rosselli. I’ve got enough to hang everybody. And every last bit of it comes out if anything unnatural happens to me. They will all pay. All those who fucked me will pay.”

Now there was a white Thunderbird in Oak Cliff around the time of the assassination, but I don't believe for one minute a drunk driver lost the rifles - the Dealey Plaza Operation was a first class, well planned and executed covert intelligence operation that would not depend on a drunk driver delivering the rifles. 

And that’s it. 

The first trip to the cement plant in Baltimore in 1961 sounds suspiciously like the Houma Bunker raid where Ferrie’s crew took explosives and weapons from as depicted in the movie “JFK.” And the second trip to the cement plant delivering a duffel bag of rifles sounds very much like Robert Morrow’s story of buying a number of Manclicher Carcanos in Baltimore for use in the assassination.

Now there are some clues that can be checked out – Campbell’s Cement company in Baltimore, but the one I am most interested in is the possibility that Russell Bufalino is somehow connected to the Pinochet family, as they both hail from the same neck of the woods and are very powerful politically. 

Mary Pinochet, the daughter of a former Pennsylvania governor, was introduced to John Kennedy while he was a student by his school mate – William Attwood, who at the time of the assassination was the President’s point man in the ostensibly secret back channel negotiations with Castro. Mary had married Cord Meyer, Jr., the CIA officer who worked closely with Allen Dulles, and whose father formed the Civil Air Patrol with D. H. Byrd. After separating from Meyer, Mary once again became amorous lover with President Kennedy.

On September 15, 1963, the day Mrs. Paine took Marina and the rifle to Texas and Oswald left New Orleans for Mexico, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were briefed by the CIA on their Covert Ops agasnt Cuba, Mary Pinchot Meyer accompanied the President on the first leg of his Conservation Tour, stopping to visit Mary’s mother who had donated land for preservation to the national park service.

For any researcher with the time and inclination to look into it, any association between the Bufalino and Pinochet families would be interesting and fit into this story.

In any case, while it appears Sheeran was a hit man for the Teamsters and the mob, and probably killed Hoffa as he describes, the Mafia certainly didn’t kill President Kennedy, though John Rosselli was involved with the CIA at their JMWAVE station in Florida and was directly involved with the anti-Castro Cuban commandos that were sent in to Cuba with high powered rifles and a plan to shoot Castro in the head as he drove by in an open jeep. That was the plan that was likely redirected to JFK in Dallas. 

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Dueling Mrs. Paine JFK Documentaries

Dueling JFK Documentaries

Since one of the most important JFK assassination witnesses - Ruth Hyde Paine, was not questioned by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in the 1970s or the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) in the 1990s, there are a lot of outstanding questions that Mrs Paine could answer about a things we have learned since 1964.

Former HSCA attorney and Philadelphia prosecutor Richard Sprague had an investigative policy of questioning the most significant witnesses last, so he knew the right questions to ask, and while that may be the case with Mrs. Paine, I don't think she has been asked the right questions.

Although we haven't heard from her in a long time, she came out of the woodwork in November 2019  to attend the premier of  Todd Kwait's documentary film "Truth Is Our Only Client" at the Texas Theater in Oak Cliff, where Lee Harvey Oswald was famously arrested. She apparently is a main character in that film.

And then she returned on the week of the assassination to tour her old Irving, Texas ranch house where she used to live, and the accused assassin kept the alleged assassination rifle, a house that is now a museum. She also participated in a special program at the Sixth Floor Museum at the old Texas School Book Depository (TSBD). .

Kwait's primary interest appears to be music, but he says he personally bankrolled, produced and edited this film at the urging of former Warren Commission lawyers, especially Burt Griffin, who was responsible for investigating Jack Ruby and how he came to murder Oswald while he was in police custody.

Kwait says he started off with an open mind towards conspiracy but in the end came to believe what the Warren Report concluded - that Oswald acted alone, and those who have seen his film tend to agree with that assessment, so in the end, if truth is the only client, then the client was poorly served.

While Kwait promised me a review copy of his film sometime after November 22, when his preview showings would be over, he reneged on that promise and now says his distributor won't allow him.

He did however, offer to have CAPA present a screening in Washington D.C, New York or Pittsburgh sometime in the near future, and I will hold him to that.

When Mrs. Paine came to Dallas for the film's premier at the Texas Theater she did an interview with a local California newspaper and participated in the Q and A after the film, that included questions from the audience, some of them interesting, with equally interesting response.

The Kwait film also includes talking head interviews with others - including Griffin, Priscilla Johnson McMillan, and am official CIA historian (David Robarge) among others, all of whom I have questions for as well.

Mrs. Paine then returned to Dallas for a series of assassination anniversary week events at the Sixth Floor Museum where she was ostensibly interviewed by Steven Fagan for their oral history program. I sent Fagen a list of my 20 questions for Ruth Paine, if I ever get a chance to ask her, though I don't know if he got them or asked them.

I did almost have a close encounter with her, as when I got to Dallas I had a meal at the New York Deli next door to the Marriott hotel where I was informed Mrs. Paine had breakfast twenty four hours earlier - even sitting in the same booth.

Many years ago, when I was in Philadelphia working with John Judge at a Quaker center, Mrs. Paine called and pledged a donation to the Quakers center over the phone, a call that John Judge took and I thought was a missed opportunity to question her.

When she meets new inquisitors, Mrs. Paine gives them a copy of a letter ostensibly written by Oswald to Marina instructing her what to do if he is killed or captured after the Walker shooting, asking them what they make of it. She implies, as the Warren Commission did, that since Oswald took a shot at Walker he also killed JFK, even though that is not the case. I answer Mrs. Paine's question with one of my own - did she know that at the house party when she first met Marina, Lee was in another room talking with Volkmar Schmidt who suggested to Oswald that Walkler should be killed as Hitler should have been - and Marina signed a copy of one of the photos she took of Oswald in their backyard with the rifle and pistol with the notation:  "Hunter of Fascists, Ha Ha."?

Did Mrs. Paine know that? I don't think so, but she's never been asked.

Mrs. Paine is very cooperative and open to being questioned by reporters and researches, and was interviewed on camera three times by Max Good, who is also polishing off a documentary film - The Assassination and Mrs. Paine - that primarily features her, but also includes interviews with many others - including Gary Aguilar, Jim DiEugenio, Vince Salandria and even Max Holland.

When Good asked Holland why he wrote articles for the CIA's in-house publication - Holland honestly responds that he did it for the money.

While Kwait's film is apparently biased against conspiracy, Good had the audacity to ask Mrs. Paine some tough questions that sparked Burt Griffin to say Good should be ashamed of himself, but it is Griffin who should be ashamed of himself for not conducting a proper investigation in the first place. He never even talked to Jack Ruby, the subject he was assigned to investigate. .

Good wants to interview me about Michael Paine's mom Ruth Forbes Paine Young and her husband Arthur Young, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, who I met and interviewed years ago. But I'm glad I didn't until I saw the film, which Good showed at the CAPA conference in a private viewing after Saturday night's program.

The Japanese documentary film crew had leased the Board Room on the same floor the CAPA conference was held, so after they left Good set up his projector and showed his film to about twenty of us, including Bill Simpich and Gary Aguilar.

As Good is a young guy I thought it would be an amateur production and was prepared to leave to get a beer but it is very well done - even riveting - and I stayed till the end, as did everyone else, and I told Good that I would help him in any way he wanted.

So now we have two documentaries featuring Ruth Paine, one in which she puts forth the lame idea that she is an innocent victim of Oswald, who killed the President by himself and another film in which she is asked key questions and appears to try to honestly answer them.

The more Mrs. Paine talks the more we learn how Oswald was framed as the Patsy and Fall Guy in a crime he didn't commit. So I hope she keeps talking, and at least tries to honestly answer my twenty questions.

Mrs. Paine, who is often described as the one person who knew the accused assassin more than anyone else, promotes the idea Oswald killed the President all by himself, something she considers a spur of the moment decision, spontanioius combusion - a point some others agree with because, unlike the Walker shooting, Oswald didn't plan it out weeks in advance, survey the situation, take photos and drawing and keep a notebook that he later destroyed. There was none of that, yet, if was the lone assassin, he would have to be considered the world's greatest Lone Wolf Assassin who actually pulled it off, rather than the low life, wife beating loser who couldn't hold a job - as Mrs. Paine and his accusers portray him.

While I haven't seen Kwait's film yet, Mrs. Paine told Good that after she met Marina at the February 1963 party, she invited Marina to move in and live with her at her Irving home because her and Michael were separated, Marina was pregnant and it would be good for all if she stayed with Mrs. Paine until she had the baby. That was what Mrs. Paine calls "The Arrangement."

Earlier in the film Gerald Posner calls Mrs. Paine an innocent victim of the assassination, Priscilla Johnson McMillan says her association with the accused assassin was a great irony, but Jim DiEugenio cautions that "If someone would look closely at Mrs. Paine you might find an important key to the assassination."

And "The Arrangement" cuts to the heart of the "Key."

I first learned of the arrangement while reading former Warren Commissioner's book "Portrait of the Assassin," in which he publishes a letter Ruth Paine wrote to Marina in New Orleans making the pitch for Marina to move in with her. If Marina accepted, Mrs. Paine wrote, she should write to her C/O in care of Arthur Young - Paoli, Pennsylvania.

I could find this letter no where else among JFK assassination literature, and knew that Ford was criticized for using documents not available to the public, so I assume the letter was one of those documents only Ford and the Warren Commissioners had access to.

Who was Arthur Young? I asked. Why as I learned over the course of years, Arthur Young was the genius, eccentric inventor of the Bell Helicopter who married Michael Paine's mother - Ruth Forbes Paine Young.

A member of the exclusive Forbes family, Ruth Forbes married Michael Paine's father - Lyman Paine, a founder of the Trotyskite Communist Party in the USA and considered a rich, cocktail party communist who conflicted with the regular Communist Party USA that was controlled by the Soviets. In the backyard photo that Marina inscribed "Hunter of Fascists, Ha, Ha," Oswald can be seen holding not only the rifle suspected of being the weapon that killed the President, and the pistol allegedly used to kill Dallas Police officer J.D. Tippit, but two magazines - the Worker - the publication of the regular Communist Party, and the Militant - the publication of the Trotkysite Party.

So Michael' Paine's father was a founder of the Trotkysite Party in America, and Oswald subscribed to their publication and knew the history of the party and the fact that Leon Trotsky was assassinated by Soviet KGB agent Raymon Mercader in exile in Mexico City.

While she was married to Paine, Ruth Forbes was a close personal friend and traveling companion to Mary Bancroft, another rich socialite who met a Swiss businessman on a steam ship when she was traveling to Europe with Ruth Forbes, married him and relocated to Switzerland. There she met and became closely associated with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) officer stationed there, Allen Dulles. Bancroft became Dulles' secretary, chief assistant and amorous agent, especially in dealing with Nazi Gestapo officer Hans Bernard Gisivious. Gisiviious was involved deeply with the German military officer's plot to kill Hitler that culminated in the failed July 20, 1944 bombing at the Wolf's Lair headquarters. Dulles and Bancroft arranged for Gisivious to escape Germany and to testify against the Nazis at Nurenburg. Gisivious then migrated to American where he worked for the CIA and a major Dallas defense industry, as did many of the former Nazi  Operation Paperclip defectors.

The friendship between Ruth Forbes Paine Young and Mary Bancroft included Bancroft's visits to the Forbes family owned Nashau Island, off Massachusets, where Michael's wife Ruth Hyde Paine and Michael's mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young vacationed before joining Arthur Young in Paoli, Pennsylvania.

A Main Line railroad stop outside of Philadelphia, Paoli is a highbrow rich community and home to the CIA's front company the Catherwood Foundation, that comes into play elsewhere in the drama.

It was at Arthur Young's historic, rural farm outside of Philadelphia where "The Arrangment" was sealed, as Marina Oswald must have sent Mrs. Paine a letter there agreeing to the terms of the deal, and after leaving the Youngs at Paoli, Mrs. Paine drove her Chevy station wagon south, to D.C. where she met her sister, who worked for the CIA, and then south to New Orleans. There she stayed the night, then drove the pregnant Marina, their daughter and belongs - including the rifle - to Irving, Texas while Oswald ostensibly went to Mexico City.

Mrs. Paine contends she didn't know Oswald had a rifle, and Oswald packed the wagon in New Orleans and Michael unpacked it in Irving. For his part, Michael said that he didn't know about the rifle, and thought the pipe in the blanket that he moved around the garage was camping equipment.

While I don't think Kuait bothers to get into any of the details of "The Arrangement," Good shows an aerial photo of the Forbes Nashau Island, and asks Mrs. Paine about Michael's mother and Mary Bancroft, and implies that not only Michael's mom but SHE too knew Mary Bancroft, which would be two degrees of separation between her and Allen Dulles.

On the same day Mrs. Paine took Marina, the baby and Oswald's belongings - including the rifle, to Texas, and Oswald ostensibly left for Mexico, September 15, 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff met at the Pentagon for a special briefing by Desmond FitzGerald, head of the CIA's covert Cuban operations. At that meeting, FitzGerald said the CIA was engaged in a "detailed study" of the German military's July 20, 1963 plot to kill Hitler to be used against Fidel Castro. While FitzGerald acnowledged that there were a number of Cuban military officers who were disenchanted with the Castro government, there was not the confidence for them to talk to each other.

That was not a problem with the American military or the Joint Chiefs of Staff,who were united in their opposition to the Kennedy administration over the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and the back channel negotiations with Castro.

In response to a FOIA request for their "detailed study" of the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler to be adapted for use against Castro, the CIA claimed that it could find no records of such a study or anything whatsoever on the July 20, 1944 German military plot to kill Hitler.

If there was nothing put in writing - no existing documentation, such a detailed study must have been oral interviews with those still living who were involved, which should have included Allen Dulles, Mary Bancroft and Hans B. Gisivious.

So my key question to Mrs. Paine is whether she confided in Michael's mother - Ruth Forbes Paine Young or Arthur Young, while she was living at their Paoli, Pa. farm house, that the pregnant Marina Oswald had agreed to "the arrangement" to move in with her in Irving, Texas until she had the baby?

And if so, was Mary Bancroft and Allen Dulles also informed of such an arrangement?

Oswald himself agreed to the arrangement, returned to Dallas and took out room under the same alias he used in Mexico City - O. H. Lee, and obtained the job at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) through the efforts of Mrs. Paine.

Shortly thereafter Oswald's second daughter was born, and Oswald was once again a proud father, and Mrs. Paine wrote a letter to her father in Ohio that Oswald was a good father.

At the same time the assassination occurred, Michael Paine was in the Bell Helicopter cafeteria with another worker talking about political assassinations - an ESP experience that Arthur Young - the inventor of the Bell Helicopter would have appreciated, as he was an avid believer in ESP. When I met Michael's mother and Arthur Young at their rural Philadelphia farmhouse she was too old and infirm to talk, but Arthur Young did my Astrology chart as we talked for hours.

As Mrs. Paine now says - "I was not a sitter for Oswald for the CIA and certainly don't feel I was manipulated in any way or encouraged to do anything in particular.....If you believe in astrology you can believe other forces were at work. If you are just going to look at the facts of the case, there is not evidence for conspiracy."

"For me one of the things I thought was very strongly and important was to answer questions, especially for those interested in the truth. The Warren Commission was interested in the truth, but I have less and less patience for those who are looking for a conspiracy."

Well you don't have to look far if you are looking for a conspiracy. As Warren Commission attorney said, if they knew about the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro they would have conducted a different investigation. As the key figure in the CIA-Mafia plots John Rosseli said, he supported a team of assassins out of the CIA's JMWAVE station who were sent into Cuba to kill Castro. As former CIA officer Rolf M. Larsson has said, if there was a CIA plot to kill the President it originated at JMWAVE.

The focus on Oswald, the focus on Mrs. Paine is part of a psychological warfare black propaganda diversion operation, that so far has been successful, as the JMWAVE commandos who were paid and trained to kill Castro are suspected of redirecting their fire to JFK in Dallas.

As for Mrs. Paine, we now have two dueling documentaries - Todd Kwait's "Truth is Our Only Client" and Max Good's "Mrs. Paine and the Assassination."

In the spring in Washington D.C.,  possibly in mid-March during Sunshine Week - CAPA may host a JFK Film Festival that will include both films as well as the new "Destiny Betrayed" documentary that Oliver Stone and Jim DiEugenio are preparing for release around the same time.



MORE TO COME - this is a work in progress, stay tuned.

The JFK Assassination Records - What's Released and What's Withheld?

The JFK Assassination Records: What’s Released and What’s Withheld

By William Kelly (billkelly3@gmail.com)

[BK NOTES: The video of the CAPA Dallas 2019 is being edited. This is a summary based on my notes. I was originally scheduled to talk for an hour, but relinquished a half hour to Washington journalist Jefferson Morley (JFKFacts.org), who has been working with Rex Bradford (of MaryFerrell.org) on determining the numbers of records released and still being withheld.]

I’m going to try to relate my experience with the JFK Assassination records by giving some basic historical background and explain what's been released and us still being withheld using two metaphoric analogies that, while not based on fact, are somewhat closer to the truth than the explanations given by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), - one that I call “Oliver Stone’s Mercedes,” and the other the parable of the blind men and the elephant.

While most people who are interested in the assassination today because they got their start by watching Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK,” my interest was sparked, as was Jim DiEugenio’s and other second generation researchers, by the interview with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in Playboy Magazine, an issue that John Judge handed to me when I was a 17 year old freshman at the University of Dayton (Ohio) in the fall of 1969.

That led me on the odyssey that we are still traveling, one that I believe we are on a cross roads, and need to correct our direction.

John and I lobbied Congress for the official investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy, and supported the creation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), that we believe would get to the bottom of things, but boy were we wrong.

My Congressman, William Hughes, voted for the FOIA and HSCA, and hand delivered the final reports of the HSCA to me, volumes that I read over the summer.

When the controversial committee finally disbanded the second chief counsel G. Robert Blakey declared their files “Congressional Records,” as they were, and sealed them for a half century, saying, “I’ll rest on the judgement of historians in fifty years.”

Well I wasn’t about to do that, so John Judge and I started a non-profit group the Committee for an Open Archives (COA) specifically to release the HSCA records. One afternoon we visited the old National Archives building on Pennsylvania Ave. where I met Marion Johnson, the first official curator of the Warren Commission and JFK assassination records. I had corresponded with Mr. Johnson on a number of occasions, requesting records that he dutiful and quickly responded to, so I was glad to meet him in person

I asked Mr. Johnson why Congressional records were sealed for fifty years, why not thirty-five or seventy-five? He said that fifty years was the estimated time it took for the persons named in the records to die. 

So we can't track them down and confirm the information. 

When I asked Mr. Johnson how we could go about accessing the HSCA records he said that since Congress exempted itself from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), we would need an act of Congress to release the records, something that we naively thought could be done.

After years of knocking on the doors of Congressmen who expressed no interest in our cause, we learned that Oliver Stone was making a movie that would become “JFK.”

Sitting in the Senate cafeteria one of our cohorts Congressional investigator Kevin Walsh mentioned the movie “Executive Action,” and how at the end of the movie they mentioned the mysterious deaths and the London Times actuary, and he suggested that if Oliver Stone would put a trailer at the end of his movie mentioning the still sealed HSCA files, it might spark people to complain to their congressman about the continued secrecy.

When Oliver Stone was in D.C. John Judge and I met him at his hotel room, he said to ask him for anything but money, as all his money was tied up in the film. We asked him about putting a trailer on the film mentioning the still sealed HSCA records, and he said someone had already asked him about that and he was considering it. As we were leaving Stone handed me a brown paper bag full of red and white JFK-Free the Files buttons that I distributed liberally. 

And in the end Oliver Stone did it, he added the little rider at the end of his movie and it worked, beyond all imagination. G. Robert Blakey and the other lawyers Congress brought in to draw up the law decided that they weren’t going to just release the HSCA records, but were going to call for the release of ALL of the government records on the assassination, something we never thought of asking for.

And because of the public outpouring of support following the release of Stone’s movie, Congress passed the JFK Act of 1992 unanimously, - when does Congress do anything unanimously?

But before President George Herbert Walker Bush reluctantly signed the JFK Act of 1992 into law he attached a rider that included the stipulation that when all of the remaining sealed records were to be released – 25 years after his signing the act into law, the President of the United States, and only the President – whoever he or she may be at that time - Oct. 26, 2017, that president would have the power to continue withholding records the release of which would threatened national security.

While former ARRB chairman Federal Judge John Tunheim said at a CAPA National Press Club Press Conference that there was no reason to continue withholding any assassination records after that date, the Archivist of the United States David Ferriero was required to write his recommendations to the President, a document that itself is still classified. And while we don’t know what the AOTUS recommended, we know that after repeatedly tweeting that he was going to abide by the law and take credit for the release of all of the remaining JFK assassination records, at the very last moment President Trump changed his mind.

Late in the afternoon of the day they were scheduled to be released – Oct. 26, 2017, President Trump’s then Chief of Staff – General John Kelly, USMC and the CIA persuaded him to continue withholding many records for reasons of national security. And he did so.

Now, over two years later, and with the federal government, military and intelligence agencies in turmoil, it appears impossible to get Congress to do their duty and have the House Oversight Committee hold open public oversight hearings on the JFK Act, as required by the law.

When it was suggested getting one person - the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee to schedule a hearing would be an easy thing to do, especially since only the chairman has the power to do so, that wasn’t done before the chairman – Rep. I. Cummings (D. Md.) passed away. The new chairman is Carolyn Maloney (D. NY) whose district includes lower Manhattan.

When I suggested that we just ask the Chairman to hold JFK Act oversight hearings I was vocally shouted down at conference call board meetings of both CAPA and the TRC – by Dr. Wecht, Larry Schnapf (a Maloney constituent), Dan Stopper, Libby, Jeff Morley and Andrew Kreig, all of whom argued that “Congress was not going to do anything.”

Only Mike Nurko spoke up in favor saying that if we don’t do anything, nothing will happen, but if we at least try, and write them a letter and ask, it could happen, but most certainly won’t if we don’t. Thank you Michael.

The last Congressional Oversight Hearing of the JFK Act was held over twenty years ago, the year the ARRB was slated to be disbanded, long before they were done their work because of Bill Clinton’s procrastination in appointing the board and financing them. At this hearing we heard from LBJ’s assistant Jack Valante, the head of a national film association, whose rage against Oliver Stone’s “JFK” was tempered only by his acknowledgement that all of the records should be released.

When Stone got the microphone he complained that the JFK Act only included JFK assassination records and not the HSCA records on their investigation of the Martin Luther King assassination. “What do I have to do,” Stone asked, “make a movie about King’s murder before you release them?”

A Congressman asked Stone what he expected to find in the assassination records, as it was so long ago.

Stone replied that he looked at the government’s JFK assassination records like a 1963 Mercedes Benz automobile left in a Harlem ghetto for twenty years. It would be jacked up, the tires and chrome stripped, the battery and radio taken, - but you would still recognize it as a Mercedes.

And today, with the records that were released, we can recognize what happened as a coup.

There may not be any “smoking guns” among the government records released under the JFK Act, but there are many “smoking documents,” and I’ll give you a few examples.

When the HSCA interviewed Warren Commission attorney Sam Stern – who is still alive and practicing in Washington D.C., he was asked what would have happened if the Warren Commission had known about the “Hosty note,” the FBI destroyed and the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Stern said that if the Warren Commission were aware of either of those aspects of the case, they would have conducted a completly different investigation.

Among the records released under the JFK Act is the Higgins Memo, the minutes of a September 25, 1963 meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon written by Colonel Higgins, aide to US Marine General “Brute” Krulak, then responsible for the military’s assistance to the CIA’s covert operations against Cuba. Desmond FitzGerald, the CIA officer responsible Cuban operations briefed the joint chiefs and mentioned that among the psychological operations they were conducting a “detailed study” of the German military plan to kill Hitler and take over the Nazi government that resulted in the failed July 20, 1944 bomb attack on Hitler that he survived.

When Washington D.C. FOIA attorney Jim Lesar - the head of the Assassinations Archives and Research Center (AARC) requested the CIA’s “detailed study” FitzGerald referred to, they said they have no record of such a study, or any record whatsoever of the July 20, 1944 Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler. This case has been appealed and is still an active case, though more records are not expected to be forthcoming.

In focusing on the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro I dismiss the early plots and only look at the ones where they were planning – that’s plan not plot – they were planning on killing Castro by shooting him in the head with a high powered rifle as he road by in an open jeep.

In 1975, at the time of the Church Committee investigations, 8 – that’s eight CIA National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) technicians came forward as whistle blowers, notifying their boss – Dino Brugioni – that they knew of a CIA plan to kill Castro with a high powered rifle as he drove to Veradero Beach, where Castro had a vacation home he frequently visited. These NPIC technicians provided maps, photos and even aerial satellite photos of the area to be used in the operation.

The plan was called Pathfinder, and was associated with CIA maritime infiltration and exfiltration trainer Carl Jenkins, facts they knew because the Pathfinder file was kept in their section of the JMWAVE station rather than in the Operational File, where it belonged.

We only know this because the NPIC report and the CIA’s response was misfiled but found in Frank Strugis’ CIA Security file.

Then when the ARRB requested the NPIC records related to the assassination, a former NPIC secretary said that shortly after the assassination Attorney General Robert Kennedy called and ordered the NPIC assassination records boxed and sent to the Smithsonian Institute rather than the National Archives, where they belonged. But the ARRB did not follow up on that and never requested the Smithsonian to look for those records.

So we have three instances of the NPIC records related to the assassination – possibly including the Pathfinder file, being intentionally misfiled – at JMWAVE in the NPIC section of the station, the NPIC memo in Frank Sturgis’ CIA Security file, and at the Smithsonian instead of the NARA.

While I am focusing my current research on the Valkyrie and Pathfinder plans to kill Castro – that I believe were redirected to JFK in Dallas, other researchers are focusing on their own interests in the case, including John Newman, Malcolm Blunt, Dick Russell, Bill Simpich, Jim DiEugenio, David Lifton, Russ Baker and others, which brings me to the second metaphoric analogy.

My uncle Stephen Hayes, after working at the Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper for many years, entered the seminary and became a Catholic priest. Knowing of my interest and work on the JFK assassination records, he wrote a homely that he shared with me that compares our work to the parable of the Blind Men and the Elephant, in which the blind me describe different parts of the elephant in different ways, but were still describing the same beast.

And I believe what we are describing is not a Mercedes but a coup – a cop d’etat.

Now, despite being shouted down by those who don’t believe Congress will do anything, I believe that getting Congressional Oversight Hearings is one of the easiest things we can legally do, and it is the one thing that we all agree on. Even the most stout defenders of the Warren Commission report, as well as the most sill conspiracy theorist, we all to a man agree that the JFK Act should be enforced, all of the records should be released in full, and as Mike Nurko suggests, it is something that we must at least try to do or it definitely won’t happen.

So whether I do it alone or with others, I am going to ask the new chairwomen of the House Oversight Committee to do her duty and schedule an open public hearing on the JFK Act, to determine what became of the missing records, who destroyed records and why, and what records remain withheld. 

Please Support JFKCountercoup if you can: https://www.gofundme.com/f/supportjfkcountercoup

CAPA Dallas 2019 After Action Report

Dallas CAPA 2019 AAR

When I had the honor of being the first speaker and opening the 2018 JFK Lancer Conference I said it would be my "Last Hurrah," as I thought then, and do now, that the action should shift to Washington D.C., where the evidence and records are at the Archives and where Congress should be required to conduct oversight of the JFK Act of 1992.

But I've been wrong before, and I went back to Dallas for the 2019 CAPA Conference, that I had voted for and helped organize as a CAPA board member and co-director of the Research Committee. And as I write this I can say with some authority that I believe CAPA will return again next November, as the 22nd falls on a Sunday and CAPA can once again hold a two day event before the Grassy Knoll Memorial service, and it will be after the election so that won't be a distraction and we'll know who will be able to keep withholding the records or releasing them.

We have a lot on our plate, as John Judge would say, and will put out a January news report that could go monthly and be distributed to only CAPA members and associates, MLK Day, Sunshine Week in DC in Mid-March, and possibly a Congressional Briefing on the JFK Act as a preliminary to a real JFK Act hearing before the House Oversight Committee.

We may have blown our best chance of having JFK Act oversight with the death of former Oversight Committee chairman I. Cummings, the new chairwomen - Carolyn Maloney of New York City, may listen to us, especially if we put President Trump's obstruction of the Act as a motivator.

Then we have the real Texas Court of Inquiry on the board, as well as a cooperative effort between CAPA and the Truth and Recon Com. Living Witness interview project that will be put into high gear this year.

So a 2020 conference November 20-22, 2020 makes sense, as it will be a wrap up of the year's work as well as a post-election analysis of what needs to be done in 2021 - as our work will surely not be done by then.

To those who say that such academic conferences are a waste of time and only rehash books and movies and theories, I take note of the fact that there was a major university conference on Guatemala shortly before Operation SUCCESS and the 1954 coup, and two similar conference shortly before the Bay of Pigs. And the one I am most interested in, if anyone has the time and inclination to look into it, was the conference of exiled Cuban journalists at the University of Miami in the summer of 1963 that I think was a build up to the assassination black propaganda effort to blame the Dealey Plaza operation on Castro.

The first JFK assassination conference I attended with John Judge was sometime in the late 1970s at NYU Law School in New York City where I met Penn Jones, Mae Brussell and Fletcher Prouty, who gave a lecture on covert intelligence operational procedures - something he said you have to know before you can begin to understand the assassination of JFK, a statement that still stands today.

The second JFK conference I attended was in Dallas and organized by Gary Shaw and called ASK, and I believe there were two ASK conference is Dallas. It was at one of them that about a dozen researchers, including myself and Bill Turner, held a COPA organizational meeting at the now defunct West End Cafe. We agreed to meet again  in Washington D.C., and did so at the Capital Hill Quaker meeting hall over a two day period. That's where the Committee for an Open Archives (John Judge and myself), Jim Lesar's Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) and Jim DiEugenio's west coast group formed the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA).

COPA's first major conference was at a hotel in China Town, while the second and third national conferences were held at the D.C. Omini and Sheriton hotels, the latter ironically, was where Earl Warren lived when he was in DC. All were well attended and were focused on obtaining records from the JFK Act.

COPA then held dozens of regional conferences, mainly an annual affair in Dallas but also smaller conferences in L.A., and Memphis.

It was at the second COPA DC national conference when Debra Conway and professor George M. Evica called me over to their table and asked me what I thought of them forming another group - to educate the next generation of researchers, which became JFK Lancer, and would compete with COPA at duel Dallas conferences for over a decade.

After Penn Jones died John Judge had assumed the responsibility of holding the annual 12:30 pm, 11/22 moment of silence, and as he was secretary and director of COPA, after he died his estate combined the assets of COPA and the Hidden History Museum, dissolved COPA and hid the museum in the backwaters of Pennsylvania.

At that point a number of former COPA members got together and formed CAPA - Citizens Against Political Assassination, a non-profit group of individuals rather than organizations.

It took a few years of weekly COPA board conference calls to get organized, and the first big event was a press conference held at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. and arranged by Andrew Kreig that included former Assassination Records and Review Board (ARRB) chairman Judge John Tunheim, AARC director Jim Lesear and Washington journalist Jefferson Morley.

The next November the CAPA legal committee put together a Mock Trail of Lee Harvey Oswald at the South Texas College of Law, and last year held a reunion of five Parkland doctors at the Old Red Courthouse at Dealey Plaza, where Dr. Robert McLellen was presented with the first CAPA "Profiles in Courage Award" shortly before he died.

It was while the CAPA board was in Dallas last November when Debra Conway of JFK Lancer informed us she was no longer going to hold conferences when CAPA decided to step in and continue that tradition, even though Judyth Vary Baker was going to hold her own, as she had done the previous six years. She also obtained the permit for the Grassy Knoll event.

As CAPA chairman Dr. Cyril Wecht had addressed the JVB conference in 2018, he agreed to do it again this year, even if it was competing with the CAPA conference, and it would appear that he was endorsing her and those who had previously shared the stage with her - including Jim Fetzer and Roger Stone and other such malconents.

While Wecht described Fetzer as an asshole and Roger Stone as a no-good Republican dirty-trickster, he also said in true Braveheart fashion, "When I'm in the middle of a fight, I don't look around the battlefield to see whose fighting on my side."

Nor does he consider his presentation at JVB's conference an endorsement of her or her story. "I don't give a shit if she fucked him or not. That's not my business."

He also took note of the fact that Lancer drew a hundred registrants, CAPA had 200 while JVB had about 300, so if anything, she knows how to draw a crowd.

There were many protests of Dr. Wecht's visit to the JVB conferences, complaints that culminated in the resignation of the head of the Legal Committee and others, and since the Legal Committee was communicating with the conference program team - for awhile it seemed like the whole thing would fall apart. It didn't because of CAPA Secretary Glenda deVaney and treasurer Mike Nurko, who made it all fall together.

The legal committee, despite their objections and resignations, and the original program chairs, all showed up and worked well together, helping to make the conference a success, and I believe they will come around and realize what we are doing is not about JVB, or Dr. Wecht, or even Oswald, the Patsy. It's about learning the full truth of what happened at Dealey Plaza when the President was killed.

The CAPA conference was a big success as it drew twice the number of registrants expected - a full house as well as a sold out banquet that featured Oliver Stone, who Dr. Wecht presented with CAPA's second "Profiles in Courage" Award for his movie "JFK,' and pushing the JFK Act of 1992 through Congress.

As I have already posted two daily reports direct from Dallas, and Dick Russell's statement from the Memorial Service, I will shortly post detailed reports on my own presentation, Jeff Morley, John Newman and Rolf M. Larson presentations, as well as those by Bill Simpich and Russ Baker, that I think deserve special attention, I am also writing reviews of "The Dutchman and the Barron" and the book and movie "The Irishman," with special emphasis of the JFK assassination references.

And I can assure you that if CAPA does hold a conference in Dallas in November 2020, it will not be a typical conference of researchers, writers and film makers giving their reports and opinions, but rather, like all of our events so far, will reach deeply into the living witness program, the legal venues being considered (Texas Court of Inquiry - Dallas Grand Jury - Congressional Oversight Hearings) as well as inviting students, teachers and local authorities to view the proceedings, that should make waves.

The video of the 2019 Dallas CAPA will be posted at CAPA-HQ.org ASAP, as I know many of you would like to see what went on.

When I work for the Army, after every exercise or mission the OC - observer - control officer calls those involved together in a huddle and go over what happened, pointing out the good and the bad, so they learn something from it and don't repeat their mistakes on the battlefield.

We have learned a lot in the past few years, are correcting out mistakes and I believe we are headed in the right direction.

While there were a number of glitches, they will be addressed and avoided next year, and I still believe that the major action will shift from Dallas to DC in the coming year.

And many thanks to those who helped me get to Dallas and continue this important work. I thought I would devote another year to this cause, and then throw in the towel and call it a game, or "inject," as the Army puts an end to a mission or exercise. But now I am committed to yet another year of this, and I hope you will also recognize the importance of this mission and support me when you can.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/supportjfkcountercoup

Stay Tuned, as there's more to come.