Possible Discovery of an Automobile
Used In the JFK Conspiracy
Copyright © 1993 by Richard Bartholomew
Introduction
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| Dr. Gordon Wing driving Rambler |
Introduction
Ten minutes after President Kennedy was shot, Marvin Robinson, Helen Forrest and Dallas Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig, independently of each other, reportedly saw two men leaving Dealey Plaza in a light-colored Rambler station wagon. One of them entered the car on Elm Street after running from the direction of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD). Craig and Forrest described this man as being identical to Lee Harvey Oswald.
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| Photograph of subject automobile, years after research was done. |
block east and two blocks south of the TSBD. 1
The Warren Commission had Robinson's and Craig's reports of November 23, 1963. It also had Craig's statement to the FBI from the day before; as well as Carr's statements to the FBI and Craig's testimony. The Commission, however, apparently never knew about Mrs. Forrest and did not publish Robinson's statement.2 It chose not to believe that Craig took part in Oswald's interrogation or that Craig identified Oswald as the man who entered the station wagon. Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz, Oswald's interrogator, denied to the Commission that Craig was present. Fritz thus never had to deal with Craig's allegation that Oswald admitted to Fritz that he had indeed left Dealey Plaza in a station wagon belonging to Ruth Paine.3
Despite the Robinson statement that corroborated Craig and which the Commission had; and despite other corroborating evidence such as newspaper photographs showing Craig's presence on Elm Street and at the open door of the interrogation room with Fritz during Oswald's questioning, the Commission chose to believe the contradictory and unsupported testimony of taxi driver William Whaley.4
Whaley told the Warren Commission about two witnesses who saw Oswald enter his cab. But there is no indication that the Commission ever attempted to locate, through the simple process of examining the cab company's records, the only two people who could corroborate Whaley.5
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| [From Oswald 201 File, Vol 3, Folder 9A, Part 1 ] |
The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) apparently attempted but failed. It reported, "Robinson did not testify before the Warren Commission, and he has not been located by the committee." Despite this attempt, however, the House Committee, like the Warren Commission, avoided the entire matter in its report, choosing instead to repeat the Commission's conclusion that "shortly after the assassination, Oswald boarded a bus, but when the bus got caught in a traffic jam, he disembarked and took a taxicab to his rooming house."
In this, as in many other areas of its investigation, the House Committee had it both ways by concluding that
"The Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President."Thus leading to the conclusion, voiced in 1980 by DeLloyd J. Guth and David R. Wrone [in their book, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical and Legal Bibliography, 1963-1979]:
"...after careful study of the HSCA's Final Report, that this most recent official version does not satisfy the need for a thorough inquiry into what happened that day in Dallas."7Hypothetically, if the getaway car continued to exist for the past thirty years, given the muddied trails, suspicious deaths, and failed investigations, any persons who secretly knew of the car's role in the assassination and also knew that it still existed, could safely assume it would never be identified. If one such person decided to reveal the car's secrets, however, how would he do it? Could he do it without being silenced himself? Could he do it in a way that would survive his own death?
On May 29, 1989, a Rambler station wagon was noticed on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin (UT) which fit the description of the getaway car reportedly seen by Craig, Robinson, Forrest, and Carr on November 22, 1963.8 A
cursory examination of the car revealed apparent associations between it and persons whose lives were intertwined with Lyndon Johnson's political machinery, the military-industrial-intelligence complex in the U.S., right-wing politics,
and Latin American politics.
Connections between odd characteristics of the car itself and information found elsewhere on the UT campus could be interpreted as a trail of clues in the form of coded messages connecting this Rambler, its owner at the time, and its previous owner to the JFK assassination.9 These clues appear to have been deliberately planted due to specific interrelationships in their content and the encoding technique used.
Physical, anecdotal, and documentary evidence has revealed a mosaic of relationships extending from the car's owners to individuals who have been and are currently subjects of interest to researchers of the conspiratorial aspects of the assassination of President Kennedy.
As Dennis Ford writes in the November 1992 issue of The Third Decade, "Discovering the fate of the Rambler will go a long way toward solving this case....Whoever took or drove the car that afternoon is obviously a conspirator."10
This paper reports on a cursory investigation and proposes a more in-depth investigation. It argues that the UT Rambler represents a possible unique opportunity to determine the fate of this alleged getaway car by investigating new leads, current clues, and fresh trails; an opportunity that should not be overlooked. There is no intention here to implicate innocent persons in the assassination of President Kennedy. Rather, this is a presentation of circumstances which appear to support the proposed investigation.
This paper presumes, as advised by the United States Constitution, that every person referred to herein is innocent. It also presumes, as advised by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, that, "The more outré and grotesque an incident is, the more carefully it deserves to be examined...."11
El Turista y los Compañeros
When first noticed, the Rambler station wagon at UT was only of interest because it was similar to the car Craig described. There was no incentive to look any closer because the odds were greatly against its being that car. Another person who had seen the car on campus mentioned the existence of the 1964 Mexican tourist sticker on its window. The inference was that if it was the getaway car it would likely have been driven to Mexico as soon as possible after the assassination and, if not destroyed, remain there during the ensuing investigation. This was judged a coincidence, however, and it seemed an easy task to find a simple fact about the car that would conclusively eliminate it from suspicion. That has not proved to be so easy.
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| Location of Batts Hall at Un. of TX Austin |
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| Magazines displayed in Rambler |
The car was photographed a year later in exactly the same condition as when it was first seen. This was done because every time it was observed up to that time nothing about the car had changed, not even the identity, number, location or arrangement of the magazines;12 despite the car's daily use. By chance, the day it was photographed, the car's driver was also captured on film driving the Rambler. [See top of screen.]
This lack of change remained through the entire two-year period of observation ending in mid-1991. It was beginning to seem that there might be some significance to the display of these particular magazines in this particular Rambler station wagon with its 1964 turista sticker. In any event photography was the best safeguard against the car's disappearance before it could be studied further.
On November 9, 1990, a request was made to the Texas State Department of Highways and Public Transportation, Division of Motor Vehicles in Austin, for an ownership history of the Rambler. The first question to be answered was whether or not Ruth or Michael Paine had ever owned it. Unfortunately the clerk at the Division of Motor Vehicles said all of the state's ownership records prior to title numbers beginning with the digits 85 were routinely destroyed, which included those for this car.13 Fortunately the same man had owned this car for the past twenty-seven years and his title showed up in the current computer record. A Title and Registration Verification was obtained for two dollars.
It was typed like this:
NDX 239845 LIC 711TQC EXPIRES MAY/91 EWT 2800 GWT 0000 $40.80
TITLE 33883954 ISSUED 05/07/65 ODOMETER N/A 59 RAMBLER SW D713121 REG CLASS O1
PREVIOUS OWNER CB SMITH MOTORS AUSTIN TEX
OWNER GEORGE GORDON WING, 2101 ROBINHOOD TRL, AUSTIN,TX 78703
LIEN 04/13/65 UNIVERSITY FEDERAL CREDIT UNION, PO BOX 8090 U T STATION, AUSTIN TEX
PLATE AGE: 2.
The possibility remains that the Paines owned the car prior to C.B. Smith because its ownership history during its first four years is yet to be established despite several attempts through various means. Just because Oswald was under the impression that the car belonged to Ruth Paine in 1963 does not mean that it did. Bert Sugar and Sybil Leek apparently had information that Paine borrowed such a car.14 [emphasis added] Nevertheless the identities of the two known owners have proven to be of potential importance to the events of November 22, 1963.
Cecil Bernard Smith, the previous owner, personally knew Lyndon Johnson. He was a major land owner in Austin who opened Austin's first Volkswagen dealership at [West] Sixth Street and Lamar Boulevard. He was a native of Texas and a star athlete in college. He donated money to Johnson's political campaigns and to UT.
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| University of Texas, Austin, Cactus yearbook, 1927 |
During the 1980s C.B. Smith donated land to the university to endow five chairs in Mexican and Latin American Studies.15 As a result of his generosity he served on various boards and commissions at UT.16 Among the local citizens, however, C.B. Smith had a reputation for being an extreme right-winger who hated hippies.17
George Gordon Wing, the owner of the car from April 1963 until his death in December 1991, was a Ph.D. and associate professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Department.18 Considering what he taught, it is not unusual that he bought his
car from C.B. Smith, a major donor to Mexican and Latin American Studies.
However it must be noted, in addition to the Spanish and Latin American milieu surrounding Oswald in 1963, that [Roger] Craig reportedly saw a "husky looking Latin" driving the car.19 Both Smith and Wing will be discussed further in this paper.
In December 1990 other intriguing connections came to light. They centered once again around the Spanish and Portuguese Department and former UT President Harry Huntt Ransom, another of Lyndon Johnson's friends [who sat on Gov. John Connally's "Committee of 25" with George R. Brown and John Erik Jonsson in 1963].
Ransom had risen quickly through the UT ranks from assistant dean of the graduate school in 1951 to Chancellor of The University of Texas System by 1961. After a student career that included membership in Phi Beta Kappa, Ransom began his professional career at UT in 1935 as an instructor of English. He became an assistant professor after receiving his Ph.D. from Yale in 1938.
By 1960 he had also created and was serving as editor of The Texas Quarterly, "the preeminent literary journal of Texas." This journal was highly regarded internationally as well and when Ransom died in April 1976, replacing him as editor was considered a formidable responsibility. It could not be entrusted to just anyone. The job ended up in the hands of Ransom's close associate Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth, Ph.D. and professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Department. They were reportedly close friends.
Another indication of the closeness of their relationship is the fact that since Ransom's death Gonzalez-Gerth has been a constant companion to his widow, Hazel Harrod Ransom.
Thus within and around the Spanish and Portuguese Department a circle of close associations began to emerge among Lyndon Johnson, Harry Ransom, C.B. Smith, Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth, and George Wing. These associations were all the more interesting considering Ransom's service in Air Force intelligence during World War II.20
UT, CIA, and JFK
At first, speculation about vague intelligence connections to the UT Rambler stemmed from the presumption of possible relationships between UT and U.S. intelligence agencies. It has been documented that the CIA has a long history of
recruiting from, or using as cover, the foreign language departments of major universities. According to former student activist Amy Chen Mills,
"With ample facilities for experimentation and an abundance of physical sites, college campuses are ideal for carrying out much larger and more insidious CIA programs. U.S. universities have housed some CIA activities that go beyond research and into active covert operations."21By 1988, UT, along with the University of Miami, George Washington University, Jacksonville University, the Rochester Institute of Technology and Georgetown University were among as many as ten schools where the CIA had placed officers through its recently initiated "Officer in Residence" program.21 Given the massive CIA station on the campus of the University of Miami in the days of operations Zapata and Mongoose, it is not unreasonable to assume that the CIA recruited personnel from the University of Texas Spanish and Portuguese Department for those operations.
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| Austin, TX Oct. 2, 1963 |
Very likely present to hear Martino was John Birch Society and Austin Anti-Communist League member Jack Nichols Payton, a friend and campaign-organizer of General Edwin Walker.23 Just prior to this, in September, Martino had addressed an anti-Castro meeting in Dallas. According to author Anthony Summers, "While there he mentioned that he knew Amador Odio, a wealthy Cuban then imprisoned by Castro, and that he knew one of Odio's daughters was living in exile in Dallas. This of course was Silvia Odio, the witness whose meeting with 'Oswald' remains the firmest evidence of a deliberate attempt to frame the alleged assassin."24 Evidence of Martino's Austin visit was discovered by chance while looking through local newspapers for researcher David Lifton in 1990.
The visit was of interest because of a previous discovery in 1989: pages about John Martino had been cut out of the only UT copy of Anthony Summers' book, Conspiracy; including source notes. These were the only pages removed. Like the car itself (and by 1990, because of the car), these incidents involving Mafia associate and CIA agent Martino were a minor
curiosity. Of similar interest in the same newspaper was an announcement that William F. Buckley, Jr. would be speaking on campus in December 1963. Later however these curiosities would become integral to an understanding of other discoveries on the UT campus.
Like the university he led, Harry Ransom was no stranger to clandestine activities. Dr. Ransom, born on November 22, 1908, enlisted as a second lieutenant in the Air Corps in 1942. He was the director of the Air Force Editorial Office from 1944-46. He attained the rank of major and received the Legion of Merit in 1947 for work in "editorial intelligence." In 1945, Ransom authored "Notes for an Epitaph: Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe" (Air Force Reprint, 32 pp.). That same year he wrote "Tactical Air Operations," with James Gould Cozzens and Brigadier General Frederic Smith (Air Force Reprint, 30 pp.).
In 1946 Ransom wrote "Historical Procedures in the AAF" (Air Force Reprint, 10 pp.) and "Educational Plans of 500,000 AAF Veterans" (Higher Education, United States Office of Education.). In 1962, Dr. Ransom, while Chancellor of The
University of Texas System, was elected chairman of the Advisory Panel on ROTC, Department of the Air Force, which advised the Secretary of the Air Force on ROTC programs.25
It must be noted here that John Stockwell, the highest-ranking CIA officer to quit and expose the truth of CIA operations to Congress, and who was an ROTC graduate of UT in the late 1950s, expressed his belief, when asked by [Austin American-Statesman staff] reporter Earl Golz in 1991, that CIA associations did exist at UT within the ROTC program, the Spanish and Portuguese Department, the Institute of Latin American Studies, and with Harry Ransom.26 In his book, The Praetorian Guard, Stockwell describes his years at UT:
At the University of Texas, I got into the elite Plan II special reading program and obtained a Naval ROTC scholarship, graduating with what the university billed as its best possible liberal arts degree. Then I took the Marine Corps option and made my way into the elite parachute-and-UDT trained 2nd Force Reconnaissance Company. Only years later did I realize that I had obtained the best half-education available. They taught me the classics; we studied philosophy and history with award-winning professors (including John Silber27 of Boston University). But my generation didn't question. We scribbled furiously in our notebooks, trying to capture the professor's exact words so we could regurgitate them faithfully back to him (there were no women professors in my program at that time) in the examinations. Throughout my school years, I never had a conversation with a liberal, much less a radical critic of the system, or even a serious questioner. There was one professor, Clarence Ayers, who occasionally made a suggestive comment, but he was under constant pressure from the Texas legislature, not to mention the university's regents.28When asked about CIA recruiting on college campuses, Philip Agee, one of the first CIA officers to resign and tell the truth about the CIA, specifically named the Air Force and Army ROTC programs as prime sources of recruits.29 Also, a student in the Spanish and Portuguese Department was asked if he had ever heard any rumors of CIA involvement in UT's [Harvard-inspired and Rockefeller-funded] Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) [which received conditional grant monies in 1941 from the federal government]. His response was that he had heard more than just rumors of CIA people and programs there.30 This paper will deal further with ILAS.
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| Ransom's c.v. |
John W.F. "Jack" Dulles is the eldest son of former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and the nephew of former Director of Central Intelligence and Warren Commissioner Allen Dulles. He has worked at UT for many years and is considered one of the world's top experts on Brazil, a Portuguese speaking country. His office is in the Harry H. Ransom Humanities Research Center, which also houses a replica of his father's office.32 John Wheat, a former student of Wing's who has worked with Dulles, said Dulles did not have the usual academic career credentials. His interest in Northern Mexico and Brazil came from his work in the Dulles family's Hannah Mining Company. Dulles was simply made an adjunct professor and given a research position at UT.33
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| Jack Dulles |
Walt Rostow, former Kennedy State Department counsel and President Johnson's national security advisor, had been one of President Kennedy's inner circle of advisors. He is currently the Rex G. Baker, Jr. Professor Emeritus of Political Economy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. His wife Elspeth is the Stiles Professor in American Studies.35
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| Rostow with LBJ |
We now see within and around UT's Spanish and Portuguese Department a circle of associations that has expanded to include not only Lyndon Johnson, Harry Ransom, C.B. Smith, Miguel Gonzalez-Gerth, and George Wing, but Walt Rostow and at least two members of the Dulles family.38
Relatively little attention has been paid to Walt Rostow in the literature of the Kennedy assassination. It seems, however, that he has several connections relevant to November 22, 1963. He and his friend McGeorge Bundy may have urged their long-time friend, Richard Bissell to establish the "Executive Action" assassination capability known as ZR/RIFLE.39 Bissell told the Senate Church Committee on CIA assassination plots, "There is little doubt in my mind that Project RIFLE was discussed with Rostow and possibly Bundy."40
Rostow was one of the six.41
It was these same two members of Kennedy's inner circle who advised him, on February 11, 1961, to abolish the Operations Coordination Board of the National Security Council -- the chief reason for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, according to Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon.42 Prior to the invasion, on April 12, Rostow was urging Kennedy to intervene militarily in Laos as well as Cuba.43
And on April 20, after the failure at the Bay of Pigs, along with Admiral Arleigh Burke, the Air Force, and Richard Nixon, Rostow was still pushing for a military intervention in Laos. That same day Kennedy, who still had doubts about it, ordered U.S. advisors in Laos to put on their uniforms.44 Rostow later spearheaded U.S. intervention in Vietnam and was instrumental in initiating the stepped-up arms race of the 1960s.
The things that Rostow supported -- reduced oversight of covert operations, military intervention in Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam, policies that led to nuclear proliferation, and possibly CIA assassinations -- Kennedy later attempted to reverse. It is possible that Rostow and Bundy were not as loyal to Kennedy as he may have thought. This disloyalty is all the more believable when considering a few more significant Rostow connections to Kennedy's assassination (aside from Rostow's long friendship with Bissell and Cabell). These connections concern his relationships with
- C.D. Jackson, the publisher of Life magazine who bought and suppressed the Zapruder film,
- Harold R. Isaacs, a research associate at MIT's Center for International Studies (CENIS) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and
- Air Force Major General Edward G. Lansdale.
C.D. Jackson, former president of the CIA's National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), and friend of Allen Dulles, had worked closely with Walt Rostow. Among other things they co-authored Eisenhower's "Chance for Peace" address of April
16, 1953, which was "the opening gun of the post-Stalin phase of the Cold War."
It is noteworthy here that the NCFE's most important operation was Radio Free Europe.45 Jackson's connection, through Radio Free Europe, Henry Luce, and Allen Dulles, to the Paines and therefore possibly to Oswald and the Rambler will be
discussed further in this paper.
In 1951 Rostow "helped launch" CENIS46 with backing from his former OSS buddies now in the CIA [with $1 million coming from the Ford Foundation in 1952]. It is a think tank and well known CIA front that defended communist ideology while admitting to its industry benefactors that it was actually fighting communism.47 For ten years at CENIS, Rostow worked closely with Isaacs.
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| CD 942 excerpt |
Warren Commission Document 942 says that it had been alleged that Marilyn Dorothea Murret (Oswald's cousin) was linked in some manner with the apparatus of Professor Harold Isaacs. And Warren Commission Document 1080 (CD 1080), an FBI report entitled "Marilyn Dorothea Murret," is entirely about Isaacs' background and contains no mention of Murret. This document describes Isaacs as a disillusioned leftist intellectual who had become a professional anti-communist -- which also reveals the true nature of the secret goals of CENIS. This report had been classified by the Warren Commission as a withheld file open only to the federal government and the Commission. It would probably still be secret if an assassination researcher had not discovered it misfiled in the National Archives in the mid-1970s.48
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| Marilyn Murret, her mother, and cousin, LHO |
The FBI prepared a report on Murret also dated May 7, outlining her extensive travels around the world beginning in 1959, and also drew up a report on Isaacs dated May 22, entitled "Re: Marilyn Dorothea Murret," although no connection between the two was established. The first page of the six-page background report was erroneously titled "Marilyn Dorothea Murret," which created suspicion when it was found in the files at the National Archives some years later.49
The second source linking Isaacs' name to the assassination was Richard Giesbrecht, a Winnipeg resident who reported to the FBI that on February 12, 1964, he overheard a conversation in the Horizon Room of the Winnipeg International Airport among two men talking about the assassination. Based on what he heard he believed they were in some way involved. They were discussing how much Oswald knew about the assassination and were concerned about how much he might have told his wife.
According to Peter Whitmey, the men said Isaacs "was supposed to get rid of a 1958 Dodge (later reported as a Ford.)" And according to co-authors Michael Canfield and Alan J. Webberman, Giesbrecht said that
"when the first man asked the second how much Oswald knew, the second one said, 'We have a film that I have seen where Issacs [sic] is near Kennedy after the landing.' The first man then mentioned something about Issacs [sic], ending the query, 'Why should a person with such a good record such as Isaacs, become mixed up with a psycho?' In a November 1967 article in McCleans Magazine, Giesbrecht stated that the 'psycho' referred to was Oswald."50Peter Whitmey believes that, "It is abundantly clear that it [CD 1080] was classified in order to protect the good name of Professor Isaacs, who was a distinguished lecturer, researcher and writer, and a strong supporter of recognizing Red China during the 1960s." Whitmey further believes that the man being referred to in the Winnipeg airport "...is much more likely to have been Charles R. Isaacs, whose 1960 phone number was listed in Jack Ruby's notebook, and who was an airline service manager for American Airlines at Love Field." Whitmey confirmed that Charles Isaacs had known Ruby after locating and interviewing Charles' second ex-wife (of three) who had worked for Ruby "as a wardrobe designer for some time."51
While it is possible that the men in the airport were talking about Charles Isaacs, it is not "much more likely" that they were referring to Charles rather than Rostow's CENIS associate, Professor Harold R. Isaacs. If the men knew Charles well enough to know of links to Oswald, they must have known of his and his wife's close association with Ruby. Between the "distinguished" MIT Professor and the divorced Ruby friend, which one would most likely be talked about in terms of having "such a good record"? And of the two, which one would elicit the most incredulity over being "mixed up with a psycho"? On both counts it would more likely be the Professor. It must also be surmised that since Charles Isaacs had apparently moved to San Mateo, California by the time of the assassination, he would have about the same access to Love Field as anyone else, including Harold Isaacs.52
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| Recently released file |
Neither is it "abundantly clear" that the FBI reports of investigations into the alleged links between Isaacs and Murret were classified "to protect the good name of Professor Isaacs." The FBI, who had Paul Scott's allegations, Richard Giesbrecht's allegations, and Ruby's notebooks, apparently chose only to investigate the information from Paul Scott's "reliable sources."
We will see in this paper, how the FBI and CIA had a habit of cutting short investigations (and classifying reports) that threatened to reveal conspiratorial links. The investigation of Marilyn Murret not only threatened to lead to Isaacs' long-time associate Walt Rostow, who in turn had a long-time friendship with CIA assassination plotters, but to her father, Oswald's uncle and surrogate father, Charles "Dutz" Murret, who worked for New Orleans Mob boss Carlos Marcello, who
in turn was also closely tied to the same CIA/Mafia assassination plots. Such an investigation would certainly have come across a report by FBI agent John William Miller stating that CIA agent William George Gaudet told him of a purchase of paintings by Jack Ruby from Lorenzo Borenstein, a close relative of Leon Trotsky.54 Gaudet is the CIA agent who got the Mexican tourist card next to Oswald's in New Orleans in September 1963.55 He also told attorney Bernard Fensterwald in 1975: "She [Murret] may have worked for the agency in New Orleans."56
With regard to Harold Isaacs' "good name" deriving from his strong support for recognizing Red China during the 1960s, consider the following. At the LBJ Library's May 1990 symposium, LBJ: The Difference He Made, journalist Tom
Wicker, who was in the audience, became disturbed, during one panel discussion, that the conference was focused exclusively on domestic policy. He pointed out that the Johnson Administration has received practically no credit for being the first to develop serious arms control proposals to be taken to the Soviets.
Because of the timing of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, Johnson was unable to follow through on it. The proposals survived into the Nixon Administration and were fundamentally those which Nixon took into the SALT I
negotiations. Panelist Nicholas Katzenbach, the former deputy attorney general who right after the assassination was as concerned as J. Edgar Hoover about
"...having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin,"57 added a historical note similar to Wicker's that had always interested him....President Nixon got so much credit for opening the door to China, and that was something that LBJ wanted to do. And indeed we developed -- the first proposals that were made by President Nixon were developed for President Johnson."
And after the election, knowing Nixon was coming in, he had us go to President Nixon and say, "If you want me to start this process, I'll be happy to do it and take the political flack for doing it, which there will be from the right, but if you want to do it, I'll hold off and do nothing."
And Nixon said he wanted to do it. So we did hold off, and they went down, and it was fascinating to me because I had worked on it. They were word for word what we had developed at the end of the administration.58The two major achievements historically credited to an otherwise disgraced Republican administration were actually given to it by the previous Democratic administration. And the recognition of China, which Harold Isaacs had so strongly supported, was credited to Richard Nixon, Kennedy's chief political nemesis (especially on such things as arms control and détente with communist countries), through an under-the-table deal between Johnson and Nixon. This paper will explore the possible culpability of both former presidents in Kennedy's assassination stemming from apparent ties which Johnson and Nixon had to each other as well as to Ruby and Oswald.
Thus, considering that everything about Marilyn Murret seemed to lead to a CIA/Mafia conspiracy and a phony Trotskyite conspiracy (which, as we will see, may have led to the same persons), it would be a great irony indeed if the FBI, who reportedly destroyed evidence and threatened witnesses to hide conspiratorial leads, stopped further investigation of Murret solely out of politeness to Harold R. Isaacs. And although an investigation of Charles Isaacs may have led to the conspiracy through Ruby, it is hard to imagine how he could have provided a more direct route.
Aside from his association with Harold Isaacs, Rostow's history with CENIS is important because of its implications regarding UT, where Rostow has been employed since leaving the government in 1969. As mentioned before, there are apparently more than just rumors of CIA activities at UT's Institute of Latin American Studies, which works closely, no doubt, with the Spanish and Portuguese Department; and has benefited, no doubt, from the donations of C.B. Smith, who
had a life-long interest in Latin American politics and culture.59
Continuing in 1954 with the African-American Institute in cooperation with a U.S.-African mining company, and in 1956 with the Asia Foundation at Michigan State University, the CIA, from its earliest days, has been establishing academic foreign studies institutes as part of a larger effort to generate academic interest in a country and "spin-off" institutes that could subsequently be tapped by the CIA and other government agencies.60 UT's ILAS could very well be CIA established or a spin-off. On the other hand, ILAS's director, Richard Adams, is a harsh critic of the right-wing government in Guatemala. He is currently persona non grata to that government.61 ILAS could also be similar to CENIS in its chameleon-like ways. In fact, as we shall see, the idea of ILAS was introduced to Walt Rostow by George de Mohrenschildt, Oswald's CIA friend.
Given a few more bits of information, the possible connections between CENIS, ILAS, C.B. Smith, Wing and the Rambler begin to take on ominous overtones. The first bit is only a few steps away from Walt Rostow's office on the eighth floor
of the LBJ Library. According to assassination researcher Dick Russell:
"In 1966-67, from residences in Haiti and Dallas, de Mohrenschildt would correspond regularly with the Johnson White House. On file at the LBJ Memorial Library in Austin, Texas, the letters show high level interest in the baron's proposal for establishing an 'Institute of Latin American Resources.' Replied presidential assistant Arthur C. Perry:Russell does not tell us what "The Department's reply to Mr. de Mohrenschildt" was. It was dated the day before the memo to Rostow, January 13, 1967, from State Department Deputy Assistant Administrator Milton Barall to de Mohrenschildt:
'I feel that the President will be interested in having your views in this regard and I shall be pleased to bring them to his attention at the earliest opportunity.'...A State Department memorandum of January 14, 1967, from executive secretary Benjamin H. Read to Walt W. Rostow notes: 'The Department's reply to Mr. de Mohrenschildt should be considered a de minimus62 response to his letter of December 27 to the President. A lengthy file in the Office of Special Consular Services clearly indicates that de Mohrenschildt is an unstable and unreliable individual who would not hesitate to misuse or misrepresent even the slightest expression of interest.'"63
"...the United States Agency for International Development would not have an interest in supporting the creation of such an institute in Texas."Apart from the fact that the proposal was forwarded to the CIA-backed Agency for International Development, why would Rostow be bothered with a memo about this?
Despite the first expression of interest, the reply had already been sent and was final in its rejection of de Mohrenschildt's proposal. It is as if Rostow or someone else was contemplating a continued interest in the proposal and had to be warned of potential consequences.
What is also of concern here is that de Mohrenschildt's letter of December 27 proposed placing the institute at Southwest Texas State College, Lyndon Johnson's alma mater. ILAS is just such an institute that was later created at the University of Texas at Austin, in the same complex as the LBJ library and across a breezeway from Harry Ransom's posh new office. And again, the belief that CIA personnel and programs exist there was voiced to Earl Golz by John Stockwell in 1991. It is also worth noting that the golden age of collecting for UT's Latin American collection was during the reign of Harry Ransom. According to UT librarian and former Spanish student John Wheat, the Latin American collection was Ransom's favorite. Nettie Lee Benson, the collection's long-time head librarian, received major funding from and had direct access to Ransom at any time. And ILAS, as we have seen, very likely had financial support from C.B. Smith.
The close proximity to, and involvement in the creation and activities of ILAS of Rostow, de Mohrenschildt, Dulles, and Ransom, who were in just as close proximity to the CIA, is of further concern considering that the CIA had once been greatly angered by the head of Stanford's Institute of Hispanic American and Luso-Brazilian Studies. This institute was one of the first programs of inter-American studies in the U.S. It was started in 1944 by Professor Ronald Hilton, "a tough-minded liberal scholar."64
In October 1960, Dr. Hilton, editor of his institute's prestigious journal, the Hispanic American Report, learned of the CIA's plans to invade Cuba from Guatemala's leading newspaper, La Hora. He published a report that the purpose of the CIA's Retalhuleu training camp was "common knowledge." Hilton's report inspired a November 19 article in The Nation calling the invasion plans a "dangerous and hare-brained project" urging "all U.S. news media" to check the story out. The Nation made it as easy as possible by sending information about the CIA's plans to AP, UPI, and all major news media in New York, including virtually flooding the Times with copies of the reports. On November 20, more than a week after receiving the advance notice, the Times buried a story on page 32 essentially calling these reports "a lot of lies." In their Sunday edition, after the U.S. broke off relations with Cuba in January 1961, the New York Times reported that the final straw was Castro's propaganda offensive about an imminent invasion of Cuba. That same month, after the Los Angeles Times and the
St. Louis Post Dispatch confirmed American funding of the base, Time magazine, apparently hedging its bets, reported that a "Mr. B." of the CIA was in charge of the whole operation.65
Despite this whisper of vindication, Dr. Hilton was not popular in Washington or among Stanford's trustees who represented international corporations. After Stanford received a sizable grant from the Ford Foundation, Hilton was pressured not to offend the university's powerful fund raisers -- even if it was just an opinion expressed in an editorial. In 1962, after the CIA's top Cuban invasion planners had been fired and Cuba had become a major problem for the U.S., Ford gave a grant to a Stanford committee formed to plan an international studies program. Heading the committee was Dean Carl Spaeth, former assistant to Nelson Rockefeller in the State Department, and former director of the Ford Foundation's Division of Overseas Activities. After a year of "studies," without explanation to or input from Dr. Hilton, the Hispanic Institute was gutted and assigned mundane responsibilities. When asked how they could do such a thing, Stanford's administration told him: "The administration can do anything it pleases." Hilton resigned, his journal was suspended, and two weeks later the Ford Foundation gave Stanford $550,000 for Latin American studies to those who did not protest what had happened to Hilton and his independent, intellectually respected institute. According to Ramparts magazine, "This largesse was repeated on every campus where significant efforts on Latin America were taking place."66
Interestingly, these Hilton controversies were taking place while George Wing was a teaching assistant and earning his PhD. in Spanish at the University of California at Berkeley.67
Was de Mohrenschildt's proposal the genesis of UT's institute? Was C.B. Smith involved with de Mohrenschildt in this first proposal? The last of the de Mohrenschildt-to-LBJ letters, dated June 13, 1969, adds fuel to such speculation. It reads, "You possibly remember me and we do have a lot of mutual friends, Barbara and Howard Burris, George Brown and the late Herman Brown....This summer I am not teaching at U.T.A. [The University of Texas at Arlington] and we could drive any time to visit with you." Eighteen months earlier, C.B. Smith had been named a distinguished alumnus of U.T.A.68
The 1969 letter is of further interest with regard to JFK assassination connections to UT. Not only was de Mohrenschildt teaching at a school which was part of the "system" that Harry Ransom oversaw, and one which had given C.B. Smith one of its highest honors, he also shared two particularly interesting mutual friends with Lyndon Johnson: Barbara and Howard Burris. Howard Burris was Vice President Johnson's military representative and an Air Force intelligence officer. His connections to UT and the assassination will be discussed further in this paper.
By 1961 Rostow was also working closely with Edward G. Lansdale. Lansdale was an Air Force Major General at the time of his retirement on November 1, 1963. He had an advertising background and extensive counter-insurgency experience in
Southeast Asia. Lansdale is credited in many circles with coming up with the idea, single handed, that destroyed the Huk rebellion in the early fifties in the Philippines. The Huk were very superstitious. They believed in vampires. Lansdale got a few dead Huk bodies, put holes in their necks and hung them upside down.69
Like Rostow, Lansdale was a veteran of the OSS. He had served in Vietnam during the Eisenhower administration and had become a close personal friend of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem.70
His advertising background blended well with his expertise: psychological warfare; or psy-ops. There are now manuals on psy-ops and Lansdale is considered the father of that type of warfare. He was the model for the imperialistic "Colonel Hillindale" in the William Lederer/Eugene Burdick novel The Ugly American; the most celebrated American dark spy.71
During January through April of 1961, Lansdale's overriding motive was to be Ambassador to South Vietnam. Lansdale, by that time, was probably the only American advisor Diem trusted. Diem was very isolated by then. After his first White House meeting with Lansdale on Vietnam, Kennedy had decided to fire Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow. Kennedy would change his mind about this in a month or two.72
Following the firing of Durbrow, Kennedy appointed Frederick E. Nolting. So Lansdale sought to capture the apparatus to formulate, approve and implement Vietnam policy and be the key player in all three stages until a U.S. victory was achieved in Vietnam. It almost worked. The reason it did not, as far as military historian John Newman can tell, is because Dean Rusk threatened to resign if Lansdale got his way. Lansdale's letters from 1964 show that he found out from some of his contacts that Rusk had laid his job on the line.73
As the author of the book JFK and Vietnam, John M. Newman, explained:
"Lansdale's a loose cannon on deck. Kennedy liked him, at least initially for a while, but he had big problems. No doubt about it. In the Pentagon, the Pentagon brass didn't like him. Secretary of State Rusk did not like him. However he did have a big patron in Kennedy's inner circle....Walt Rostow! Walt Rostow, the Vietnam guy. And I was able to track this fairly successfully I think. If it weren't for Walt Rostow, Lansdale wouldn't have had a prayer with this crazy plan of his to try and capture this emerging Vietnam policy apparatus."74So in the first four months of the Kennedy Administration Lansdale sought the ambassadorship and then control of the emerging policy apparatus of Vietnam and failed at both. The only evidence of Rusk's motive is a document released in
1991 by the State Department. It is a document in which Rusk wrote about not trusting Lansdale. He was unsure of Lansdale's loyalties.75
Although he cannot document it, Newman is certain that Lansdale worked for the CIA while wearing an Air Force uniform. One indication of this in Lansdale's private letters and memoranda is that General Curtis Le May, the Air Chief of Staff, seemed to be unable to promote him. Allen Dulles had to be involved in getting Lansdale promoted from colonel to general. And a number of other patterns are apparent such as social events with Charles Cabell. Edward Lansdale and Charles Cabell were very close.76
The end result of these first few months, in essence, is that Lansdale was fired from any position on Vietnam policy. For Edward Lansdale that was a traumatic experience. Vietnam was his primary concern. South Vietnam was his creation. In
his book, Newman stopped writing about Lansdale at that point although there was a lot more to him. It involved Cuba and Operation Mongoose and other matters that were not the focus of his book.77
Lansdale had lost something that mattered a great deal to him. In his letters he wrote about going through the experience of being relieved of these responsibilities in Vietnam. Newman describes him as a man whose heart was broken "because he could not play any more in his favorite sandbox." By the end of 1961 Kennedy had put him in charge of Ronald Hilton. He was in charge of an enormous apparatus with tremendous resources, weapons and personnel. Newman, having read the NSC meeting minutes where Kennedy announced Lansdale was now going to be in charge of Mongoose, believes that Kennedy did not appreciate the way Lansdale related to being involved in Vietnam policy.78
With such extreme feelings about his predicament in 1961, Lansdale might have gone any number of ways to rectify his situation. What was he thinking? In what direction and how far would he go? Newman summarized the portion of his book in which he dealt with that question:
Lansdale was not a combat troops man, yet the very first piece of paper ever in the history of the Vietnam war where an American officer recommends a U.S. troop commitment to Vietnam, Lansdale was the one who authors it. It's right in that critical time frame right after the failure at the Bay of Pigs; right before the crucial decision Kennedy has to make on going into Laos. His Vietnam Task Force paper is coming in through the door. The night, the very night that the Joint Chiefs figure out that Kennedy is going to say no on Laos, Lansdale, late at night in the Pentagon, slips in this combat troop proposal in the Vietnam Task Force report. It's not like him. The way I interpret that -- and I may be in error -- the way I interpret that is he understands that the star rising on the horizon is U.S. intervention in Vietnam. And he understands that he has lost his position in the Kennedy administration which has a decidedly different approach. So he switches forces and he joins forces with those planning for intervention. And it was a good decision on his part, was it not? He was there when they arrived. He was on the team.79The Mongoose files of the Senate Church Committee reveal that they wanted to know when and who authorized assassination. The Kennedy Administration had supposedly gotten away from that. It was clear to the committee, however, that they had not. There were plans and resources being devoted to assassinate Castro. So the purpose of the questioning was to find out who, and when it was authorized.80
Lansdale testified that he did it all alone. When asked why, his answer was that during the missile crisis the Russians had changed the terms of reference by putting missiles in Cuba. So Lansdale decided all on his own that he was going to change things and get rid of Castro.
After reading a pre-galley copy of JFK and Vietnam, Daniel Ellsberg called Newman one night very excitedly. Ellsberg had worked with Lansdale and knew him extremely well. He said, "This is the first time I've ever thought that Lansdale might have been involved in the assassination." Ellsberg based this on Lansdale being removed from Vietnam planning and moved to Operation Mongoose.81
By February 1963 Lansdale had no position in Cuban policy and was focusing on Latin America. He was traveling to countries like Bolivia and elsewhere. The U.S. had a lot of personnel in South America under Kennedy. And a lot of them
ended up going to Vietnam. According to Newman there is a blind spot as to exactly what they were doing and how many people the U.S. had in Latin America.82
"I can tell you," Newman said, "that in the collateral research that I did, names that I came across, I found a correlation between -- I don't say this is definitive but I got a lot of hits -- the same names of the guys that were running around in Latin America, particularly in Cuban policy, end up in the Far East Division. Very strange coincidence. There were three -- it wasn't just one -- there were several. A neat nexus between the Southeast Asian guys and Cuban guys."83
Lansdale was also spending a lot of time at air bases and other areas in the southern United States; in Florida and in Alabama. Newman recalled from Lansdale's travel records that one of these other areas was some sort of a Cuban-exile camp. The record for that trip included a cover note to the person coordinating it telling him to keep quiet. Lansdale apparently wanted to make sure that no one knew that he was going there.84
There was also an honorary graduation certificate from the sniping school that the U.S. had in Panama. He went there, Newman recalled, in May or April 1963. He was made an honorary graduate there. Lansdale was going to various clandestine and special forces places in the spring and summer of 1963.85
One more event that Newman remembered from the spring 1963 period was that Lansdale was due to retire. And he was extended by Le May, arbitrarily, for another six months or so to November 1, 1963; with no job; no real responsibilities. Fletcher Prouty claims Lansdale was just at a desk by himself.86
In the summer of 1963 there were two interesting events concerning Vietnam. The U.S. had a problem with Diem. The regime would not compromise at all. It went in the opposite direction. Buddhists were killed. They began immolating themselves. The regime still would not relent. The political bottom completely fell out in Saigon.87
Newman said he came across an intriguing article in a local, small magazine from this period. It had a picture of Lansdale and a typical title like, "America's Most Celebrated Spy." It was about a Lansdale trip to Saigon. His travel records, however, indicate that he was not supposed to be in Saigon. This was around July-August 1963.88
The article reported an assassination attempt on Lansdale. The assassins missed and somebody killed the alleged assassin. Then he went to a meeting with Ambassador Lodge. According to Newman, "This is clearly impossible from the record because Lansdale has no authority or position to be involved in Vietnam policy. It would make sense in terms of going back and pleading with Diem and getting Lansdale to do it. Maybe Diem would listen to Lansdale. But I did find a record. He might have been in Saigon." Newman found evidence of a six- or seven-day break in Lansdale's normal activities.89
Among Lansdale's contacts in the last three to four months of Kennedy's life, Newman found "a lot of Spanish names. I found names that were reminiscent of CIA type folks."90
In 1963, Lansdale was Fletcher Prouty's boss. Prouty insists that he was sent to the South Pole by Lansdale to get him out of the way so that he would not witness the events of November 22, 1963. Presumably this was done because if Prouty had been there he would have figured out what was going on. Prouty has claimed that in the photograph of the three tramps walking across Dealey Plaza, the man in a suit with what looks like a wire coming out of his ear and going into his suit coat is Edward Lansdale -- that he recognized the back of his head and his gate. Among Lansdale's letters, John Newman and David Lifton found a slip of paper that has "The Texas Hotel" on it and a phone number in Denton. Lansdale's letters also reveal that he was headed in the direction of Dallas in November 1963.91
Lansdale wrote to a number of friends and associates beginning in September 1963, of his intention to go to Texas in November. There are as many as ten letters, according to Newman, where he described this upcoming trip to two people. One was his son. The other one was General "Hangin' Sam" Williams, an old buddy and McGarr's predecessor in Vietnam. He lived in San Antonio.92
The last piece of paper that Newman found placing Lansdale physically in Washington is dated November 14, 1963. It concerns running errands for his wife. After that there is no record of his whereabouts except for a box of incidentals, which had this piece of paper in it. It has on it "Texas Hotel" and "Denton" and a name and phone number. As Newman said, "That might be from 1949 or it might be 1968 and again it might be November 1963. Because the Texas Hotel is where Kennedy stayed the night before he died, and Denton, Texas is just north here of Dallas, it all fits in. But it certainly is not conclusive."93
Lansdale dropped out of sight at this point. He resurfaced back in Washington in the Food for Peace Program and was soon given a job by Johnson back in Vietnam. He had contacts who got him interviews in the White House. In fact he would be
on the ground in Vietnam when U.S. combat troops arrived.94
Lansdale was not the only one whose fortunes were changing now that Kennedy was dead. One of Lansdale's contacts in the White House, no doubt, was his sponsor and "big patron," Walt Rostow, who later resurfaced in a big way himself. According to Newman, "Kennedy got rid of him out of the White House after the first year; sent him packing over to the State Department."95 Back in the White House under Kennedy's successor, Rostow moved to solidify his position. As things heated up in Vietnam, "Johnson protected himself from contrary arguments and discussions by dismissing the doubters from his staff. First McGeorge Bundy left. Then George Ball. Then Bill Moyers. The emphasis shifted to Walt Rostow, who believed that Johnson was doing the right thing in Vietnam; soon Rostow became the man who screened what the President heard and saw.
Under Rostow's regime, the most optimistic news was packaged and sent to the President with covering notes which said such things as, 'This will give confirmation to the statement which the President so wisely made to the Congressional leadership yesterday.'"96 It was, most likely, only because Johnson had selected the man "who screened what the President heard and saw" that Johnson referred to Rostow as having "the most important job in the White House, aside from the President."
Johnson gave credit for one crucial decision to Walt's brother, however. Eugene Victor Debs Rostow gave Johnson the idea for the Warren Commission the day Oswald died.97
George de Mohrenschildt's mutual friends with Lyndon Johnson, Barbara and Howard Burris, represent such significant ties between the political, economic, cultural and academic elites in Texas and the assassination of President Kennedy
that they tax one's ability to call it a coincidence. The implications of their ties as they relate to the UT Rambler can be especially appreciated in their full context.
As previously mentioned, Howard Burris was Vice President Johnson's military representative and an Air Force intelligence officer. He is also much more.98
John Newman first learned of Howard Burris in the course of researching his book, JFK and Vietnam. Newman connected Burris with a pattern of gross deceptions involving battlefield statistics that took place in 1962. Kennedy and McNamara were being lied to while Johnson was being given the truth through a secret back-channel. The end point of that secret back-channel was Howard Burris. Burris would write the final memoranda that Johnson received concerning combat intelligence. Newman had discovered a foreign policy situation where the President and the Vice President were getting briefed in opposite terms. It is comparable to a hypothetical situation in which, during Operation Desert Storm, George Bush is lied to and Dan Quayle gets the truth about the status of the U.S. led coalition forces in the Persian Gulf.99
"I often get asked," Newman said, "about what was the exact back-channel. How did it function? How did it get there? And the best I can determine from ground zero in Vietnam all the way back to the Vice President's desk is a chain of Air Force intelligence officers all the way to Burris."100
In May 1961, during the Johnson trip to Vietnam, Burris was being rehearsed on how to control LBJ in the context of that trip. He was told what he could say or could not say to the vice president; which is amazing because ostensibly he works for the vice president. No one should be able to tell an Air Force colonel what he can and cannot tell to a vice president. The question is: Who is telling him? The answer is the boys in the woodwork.
There is another time period in Newman's book which deals with the back-channel to LBJ. Newman had long discussions with Burris about where he got this.
"And the answer was the boys in the woodwork. And the question was: Who are the boys in the woodwork? And the answer was: 'Well I'd rather not really say and bring all of that up. You, I know, you're one of them.' Alright, I'm military, I also have an intelligence background. Peter Dale Scott and I have been working very closely on a number of issues. He's writing a book as a matter of fact. He was assuming for a while that it was military. And I said, 'Peter, it may not be that. It may be Langley.' He said, 'Why do you say that?' Well there's one more piece. Burris told me that later on, 'McCone put a stop to what I was getting from him.' This was relating to the combat intelligence. McCone was directing CIA. And all of the clues I got out of this fellow on who his contacts were -- my own interpretation was that they were in fact CIA. I don't know that for sure."101Information about Burris originally began to surface with the book The Senator Must Die by Robert Morrow. Morrow wrote about two colonels whom he did not name. In 1977 a young man was hitchhiking in Baltimore who had a story he wanted to tell about his father's involvement in the Kennedy assassination. Robert Morrow happened to pick him up.102
The young man learned that Morrow had investigated aspects of the JFK assassination. He told Morrow a story about his father, a former Air Force intelligence officer, who was involved in the Kennedy assassination. The young man had witnessed his father, who was very close to Lyndon Johnson, taking money to Haiti during 1963. Not only did he see the money he heard the telephone conversations as well.103
Not really believing him, Morrow put the story out of his mind -- until the Colonel, the young man's father, went to his son's girlfriend and confessed. He said, "Everything my son told you (to the girlfriend and to Morrow) is true. Can you get me immunity from the House Select Committee?" This conversation took place in 1977.104
The Colonel admitted it. And this offer to testify if given immunity was given to Committee Chairman Louis Stokes in 1978. Assassination researcher Gus Russo reportedly saw the affidavit and spoke to the people involved. But when Robert Morrow gave the affidavit to the HSCA it ended there. The HSCA did not want to deal with it.105
The names of these colonels aren't given in the book. Morrow gives them the code names "Intellfirst" and "SIO" (First Intelligence Officer and Second Intelligence Officer). There are a few clues given in the book. He gives a couple of Air Force assignment clues in Europe; what they had done in the forties and fifties. They are at the top of the military intelligence ladder. They are connected to the CIA.106
Following Morrow's clues, Russo discovered their identities. He then located one of the colonels -- the one who wanted to go to the HSCA, "Intellfirst." Russo and Jim Marrs and another researcher went to meet "Intellfirst" at his home in Florida. He is eighty years old. They said they were researching the Johnson Administration and that they knew he was on Johnson's Inaugural Committee.107
"Intellfirst" bought their story and invited them in. They got his whole biography from him and his military record. Russo and Marrs did not bring up the subject of Kennedy but "Intellfirst" did and he talked about how he hates the Kennedys. He gave them his whole background.108
The first thing he wanted to talk about was his good friend Howard Burris. They were on the Inauguration Committee together. They worked for Air Force intelligence and the CIA. He said they were CIA all the time. They ran around the world. They were friends with Charles Cabell.109
"Intellfirst" was air attache in Hong Kong. He was in Rumania. He was in France. He retired from the military and worked for Martin Marietta in the early sixties selling defense contracts to his former Air Force superiors. And all the while his closest buddy was Howard Burris. That is the first name he mentioned to Russo and Marrs.110
When he worked for Martin Marietta he was the liaison to NATO. This was during the late fifties and early sixties when they bought the Jupiter missiles to put in Turkey. Kennedy had wanted the missiles removed from Turkey. The very people
who defied Kennedy's orders were this colonel's NATO clients -- the ones to whom he was selling the missiles. They were the ones who did not listen to Kennedy when he ordered them to keep these missiles out. They were all against Kennedy.111
When he was selling the missiles for Martin Marietta after he retired he had another buddy, a Colonel Anderson, who was with NATO in Europe. "Intellfirst" admitted that they were drinking champagne in Paris on the day Kennedy was assassinated. They were toasting Kennedy's death. He admitted all of this to Russo and Marrs. The girlfriend of the son of "Intellfirst" went to the HSCA with this story and it died there.112
Armed with this information Russo went back home to verify the colonel's history. Marrs did the same and they learned more about him. Russo then started reading about Howard Burris. He discovered Burris was Air Force intelligence. He is very close friends with Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms. He is from Texas and has oil money. Russo also learned that Howard Burris is in George de Mohrenschildt's address book four times. Next to one of the entries there is
a slash. It says, "Howard Burris / Haiti."113
"Intellfirst" is so high up in intelligence that reporters refer to him for special sound bites and for blurbs for articles on occasion. His name is not commonly known but people in the business have reason to have heard of him.114
The critical thing for Gus Russo was that "Intellfirst" admitted what his son said was true and offered to talk to Congress. And there are other coincidences like de Mohrenschildt's phone book. Not only was de Mohrenschildt writing to LBJ in the spring of 1963 and for years after, so was "Intellfirst." According to Russo there are many of his letters at the LBJ Library. They all knew each other. And they were all tied to this NATO network who was defying Kennedy.115
Russo went back to Florida to do more research into this and to look for the son. What he found instead was that the son had possibly been murdered. He was found on the streets of Florida City naked and curled up in the embryo position
as if he had been tossed aside. The official medical report said his blood alcohol level was one-point-one which is not high enough to kill a man who is six-foot-four; or even enough to cause him to pass out. It was speculated that he choked on his own vomit although there was no evidence of that. At age thirty-eight he apparently just died. He was cremated two days later by his father, "Intellfirst." Although they have a family plot in Virginia he cremated his only son who was telling everybody his father killed Kennedy.116
Colonel Howard Burris retired in 1964 and has remained in private business and civilian life. Some personal information was learned from his resume (obtained by researcher Larry Haapanen from the LBJ Library), and a record from researcher
Mary Ferrell's files. Burris was born near San Antonio on April 26, 1918 (Ferrell indicates April 18, 1926). He graduated from West Point in 1942. During World War II he commanded bomber units in England and France during two combat
tours from 1943 to 1945. Ferrell lists him as "Deputy Commanding Officer" of the 386th Bombardment Bomber Group Ninth Air Force. From 1945 to 1949, Burris was Headquarters Commandant for the Continental Air Command; was assigned to staff support at the United Nations; and was involved in a "Special Mission to Government of Mexico." From 1950 to 1952 he was aide to Air Force Secretary Finletter, and became the executive officer to Air Force Secretary Talbott in
1953. From 1954 to 1957 he was attache to the U.S. Embassy in Switzerland. From 1957 to 1960 he served as International Liaison Officer, Department of the Air Force and was assigned to a special mission to Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet
Union (1959). In 1961 he became Vice President Johnson's assistant for national security affairs. His foreign decorations were the Croix de Guerre (with Silver Star) from France; the Royal Order of the Sword from Sweden; and the Medal of
Merit from Brazil.117 According to the record from Mary Ferrell's files:
Colonel Burris was supposedly original case officer for Nosenko. When Nosenko defected, Burris was called back to Switzerland. He was intelligence officer who ran Nosenko in Switzerland in Jan. 1964.118
Other sources indicate that Burris was in business with Nosenko's case officer. In an article written in 1991, Robert Morrow referred to an Air Force colonel who sounds like Intellfirst and to his "counterpart" who is also a colonel. This counterpart, after retiring, set up a firm in Paris, France as a cover for intelligence operations. In this firm, Morrow writes, "The colonel's counterpart had a partner who just so happened to be the case officer of Yuri Noshenko [sic], the famous Russian defector who, in 1964, made overtures to our embassy in Geneva, Switzerland about Lee Harvey Oswald working for the Russians." Larry Haapanen, in a letter to this author, wrote, "As far as I know, the only person who would be so described as Nosenko's case officer would be Tenant Bagley, who is mentioned in various published accounts of the Nosenko affair."119
For the purposes of this paper, any involvement Burris may have had with Yuri Nosenko will sufficiently speak for itself. What will be emphasized here is the possible significance of Burris' involvement with European Theater bombing, the
Office of Secretary of the Air Force, and his time spent in Switzerland as it pertains to the Kennedy assassination and UT.
Walt Rostow's primary duty, as an economist in the London-based economic subdivision within the prestigious Research and Analysis Branch of the OSS, was target selection for the massive strategic bombing campaign against Germany.
These economists, who called themselves the Enemy Objectives Unit (EOU), spawned a renegade group that included Rostow. They differed greatly with the others in the EOU and with their commanders over targeting strategy. Known as the "oily boys" because of their preference for petroleum, oil and lubricant (POL) targets over rail system targets, they planned and launched a covert psychological war known as "Operation Octopus" against their own commanders to force the acceptance of POL targeting.120 The operation was a success and began a pattern of renegade behavior throughout Rostow's career as well as a long friendship between Rostow and fellow oily boy, future Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Charles P. Cabell, Jr.121
As with Burris, Switzerland was a very special place for Walt Rostow. In 1947 he married Elspeth Vaughn Davies, a Barnard College girl he met in pre-war Geneva.122 That same year he became assistant to the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe (ECE), a U.N. agency located in Geneva Switzerland. In 1949 he left the ECE and was replaced there by his brother Eugene. It was Eugene Victor Debs Rostow to whom President Johnson credited the idea of appointing the Warren Commission.123
Switzerland was also a special place for Allen Dulles. From December 1942 until the end of the war he was head of U.S. intelligence in Switzerland. That same month he began a long love affair and professional relationship with Mary Bancroft, who was a life-long friend of Michael Paine's parents.124 Michael's wife is Ruth Paine, to whom Lee Oswald and Roger Craig said the Dealey Plaza Rambler belonged. This paper will further explore the Bancroft-Paine-Dulles relationship in the context of the Dealey Plaza Rambler and the UT Rambler.
As we have already seen, Harry Ransom had a special relationship with Air Force intelligence and the European Theater125 and with the Office of Secretary of the Air Force. It is quite probable that Ransom not only knew Rostow at Yale but, during the war, provided him with editorial intelligence reports on the results of POL bombing missions undertaken by Howard Burris.
Currently Burris owns several corporations, one of which has to do with high-speed rail technology.126 He has oil leases on two continents including leases in Iran.127
His son, Howard Lay Burris, Jr. was married for a while to Princess Shahrazad Pahlbod, the niece of the late Shah of Iran -- attesting to the closeness of his father's relationship with former CIA director and former ambassador to Iran Richard Helms, who himself was a life-long friend of the late Shah. When they divorced in 1982 it was reported that "Everybody's still pally, in the Royal Manner."128
The Shah of Iran, Muhammad Reza Pahlevi, took Iran's government back from the Iranian Nationalist Movement led by Muhammad Mussadegh in a CIA coup called Operation Ajax. "The operation was essentially formulated by the Dulles
brothers, working together, on June 25, 1953, at a meeting in John Foster Dulles' office in the State Department." It was done by arranging the disappearance of Mussadegh's powerful political supporters and hiring paid demonstrators to march against Mussadegh; orchestrated by Richard Helms.129
Chosen by the CIA to run the country for the Shah was General Fazlollah Zahedi, a suspected pro-Nazi. Mussadegh's main threat was to the profits of U.S. and British oil companies in Iran.130
According to Robert Morrow, "The business of putting the Shah back in power and the oil wells back into the hands of the western powers was handed over to the CIA and Kermit "Kim" Roosevelt, who headed its Middle East section. Roosevelt
was to be Richard Helm's original case officer.
"Helms' career advanced rapidly. He was brought into the CIA fold to take over the Office of Strategic Operations (OSO). In those days the OSO was the group responsible for perfecting the Agency's direct espionage and other esoteric activities such as assassination. One of OSO's first assignments was to overthrow Mohammed Mossadeq....Howard Burris, Jr. currently presides over long-held family business interests in Austin. Howard Burris, Sr. purchased "property from Governor Beauford Jester, who died in office in 1949. The governor had planned to build a homesite on the
"After Mossadeq fell from grace, Roosevelt made an enemy of OSO chief Helms. He started to feel sorry for the deposed leader after he had done a three-year stint in prison. Roosevelt arranged for Mossadeq's release with a comfortable
pension! However, Mossadeq died soon afterward, a death engineered by Helms."131
ranch." This land is now owned by Jester Land Management (JLM) and has become the exclusive Jester residential development in northwest Austin. Howard Burris, Jr., president of Burris and Company, bought the assets of JLM in February 1988 from his father's firm, Jester Development Company.132
Colonel Burris' wife, Barbara J. Burris, is the daughter of Governor Jester.133 In a news story that appeared the day after Kennedy was assassinated Texans were reminded of the late Governor's posthumous link to the assassination: Under the
headline, "Gov. Connally Keeps Power" it explained, "No similar circumstance has occurred in Texas history. The only time a lieutenant governor succeeded to the governorship was on the death of Gov. Beauford A. [sic] Jester July 11, 1949. Allan Shivers, then lieutenant governor, automatically moved up to the governor's office."134
Carl J. Eckhardt adds, "Governor Jester was the first Texas governor to die in office. He died on July 11, 1949 [at age fifty-six] while aboard a train bound for Galveston. He was interred in Oakwood Cemetery in Corsicana, Texas."135 Few families can claim to have been as close to the deaths of two U.S. chief executives as the Burris family. And since, as John Newman and Gus Russo have shown, they possibly benefited from the death of President Kennedy, two questions are raised: How did Alan Shivers come to be lieutenant governor? And how did Governor Jester die? These questions become more important given the fact, as John Newman has reported, Burris revealed, "Johnson knew -- was sure [in 1963] -- he was going to be dropped from the ticket."136
In the February 9, 1993 PBS Frontline broadcast, "The Secret File on J. Edgar Hoover", eyewitness Evelyn Lincoln revealed for the first time the reason Kennedy put LBJ on the ticket at the 1960 convention: J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson blackmailed Kennedy into doing it by threatening to reveal his sexual activities.
During the Dallas filming of the movie JFK, an aeronautical engineer named Ron Ellison came to the Assassination Information Center and said he had known LBJ's nephew Sam Johnson, Jr. Ellison claimed that during a meeting with Sam at a Houston hotel in October 1962, he (Ellison) criticized LBJ's political savvy for becoming vice president. Sam's response was that the reason LBJ did it was because JFK will die in office.137
Having been forced to take LBJ as vice president, the only recourse Kennedy may have had in removing him from the 1964 ticket, was to expose Johnson's dirty dealings with the likes of Bobby Baker and Billy Sol Estes.138 Such exposure
would prevent Johnson from assuming power even by force -- the probability of which Kennedy was well aware considering he wanted the movie Seven Days in May made "as a warning to the nation."139
A closer look at Governor Jester's daughter sheds more light on these questions. A Nexus search for the name Barbara Burris140 revealed a Barbara J. Burris who was press secretary to Representative Dante Fascell (D, FL) of Miami. She is
also a fund raiser and supporter of the Cuban American National Foundation run by Jose S. Sorzano. The chairman of the foundation is Jorge L. Mas Canosa.141
There is also a Barbara J. Burris who was a childhood friend of famed concert pianist Van Cliburn and very involved in the Van Cliburn competition in Fort Worth. Another "early booster and close friend" of Van Cliburn's was wealthy Dallas oil man David Harold Byrd,142 the owner of the Texas School Book Depository Building.143 The significance of this to UT and the JFK assassination will be explored further in this paper.
Beyond this paper, however, another matter begs to be investigated. Given the relationship between Barbara J. Burris and Brigade 2506 veteran Jorge Mas Canosa, the question arises anew concerning the origin of the name Barbara J. for the infamous Bay of Pigs troopship. As with the Burris name, perhaps the Jester name is also well known in clandestine histories.
Since Beauford Jester's appointment to the Board of Regents in 1929 the name Jester has been well known on the UT campus. According to Carl J. Eckhardt, "Beauford H. Jester spearheaded the building drive which resulted in the construction of Hogg Auditorium, Gregory Gymnasium, the Texas Union, and the Main Building.144...At the time of the dedication of the Jester Center on the campus of The University of Texas, The Austin American-Statesman published the
following statement: 'Beauford Halbert Jester built a lot of buildings for the University of Texas, and now the University has built one for him. The Beauford Jester Center, UT's version of the resident college that was three years and $18
million in the making, was dedicated Saturday.'"145
Aside from having the wrong friends, Harry Ransom may have had a more direct connection to the JFK assassination. It came to light in a small circuitous story with possibly large implications. The story was a favorite of David Price's and Tom Cunningham's as an example of how "it's a small world." One detail of the story was that Harry Ransom was such a regular guest at Dallas' Adolphus Hotel he got to know a bellman there well enough to grant the bellman a special request. The bellman asked Ransom to help get his son enrolled at UT and get him a job there to help pay his tuition. Ransom was more than happy to comply.
The son, Barry Benton, left UT in 1975 and became a teacher of this paper's author at Dallas' Richland College in 1976. The job Ransom had arranged years earlier for Benton was in David Price's and Tom Cunningham's University Publications office where this author eventually worked after leaving Benton's classes at Richland in 1976 to attend UT.146
What is important here is that the Adolphus, according to assassination figure Jim Hicks, was the "communications center for the assassination."147 It was across the street from Jack Ruby's Carousel Club where "Lyndon Johnson's friends" were known to frequent. Warren Commission attorneys Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin, were interested in a man named Breck Wall who
"was an entertainer at the Adolphus Hotel, Dallas, at the time of President Kennedy's assassination.Hubert and Griffin requested further investigation of Mr. Wall but their request was apparently ignored by the Commission.148
Ruby called him in Galveston at 11:47 p.m. Saturday, November 23, 1963. He also visited Ruby at the county jail."
We now begin to see a very powerful group involved with UT, the CIA and JFK, all known to each other; all with shared backgrounds and futures; shared past and future interests; anti-Kennedy people who very likely shared their grievances
with each other; and all of whom have past or future, professional or personal ties to Texas, its university system, and its most notorious crime: Johnson, Dulles, Cabell, Helms, Lansdale, Burris, Rostow, Ransom, Byrd, de Mohrenschildt, and "Intellfirst." As we shall see, their ominous and dark interrelationships become even more apparent.
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Citations
1. House Select Committee on Assassinations, Vol. XII, pp. 8-9, 18, (hereafter as 12 HSCA 8-9, 18) cited in Dennis Ford, "A Conspiracy Model and a Conspirator: Predictions and Possible Refutations," The Third Decade, (Vol. 9, No. 1, Nov. 1992), p. 25; Michael L. Kurtz, Crime of The Century, (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1982),p. 132; Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas, (NY: Bernard Geis, 1967; Berkeley, 1976), pp. 303-06, 404-05.
2. Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, (NY: Carroll & Graf, 1989), p. 331.
3. Warren Commission Report pp. 160-61 (hereafter as WCR 160-61); Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment, (NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966) pp. 173-74; Roger Craig, When They Kill a President, (unpublished manuscript, 1971), pp. 14, 18; Two Men in Dallas: John Kennedy and Roger Craig. 60 minutes, videotape. Narrated by Mark Lane. Alpa Productions, 1977.
4. Jesse E. Curry, Retired Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry reveals his JFK Assassination File, (American Poster and Printing, 1969), p. 72. Note: Craig never changed his story throughout his life, though apparently others did. This paper's author accepts Craig's own statements about the Rambler as credible and reliable. (See Two Men in Dallas, videotape.)
5. Kurtz, Crime of the Century, pp. 132-33; Robert Groden with Harrison Livingstone, High Treason, (NY: Conservatory Press, 1989) p. 162.
6. Marrs, Crossfire, pp. 332, 560.
7. 12 HSCA 18; U.S. Congress, House, The Final Assassinations Report: Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, (NY: Bantam, 1979), p. 56; DeLloyd J. Guth and David R. Wrone, The Assassination of
John F. Kennedy: A Comprehensive Historical and Legal Bibliography, 1963-1979, (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1980), p. xxxiv.
8. The car's current whereabouts is known to its researchers but will not be disclosed publicly in order to protect the car from potential vandals, thieves, and publicity seekers.
9. This evidence will be presented at length in this paper.
10. Ford, p. 28.
11. As attributed to the character Sherlock Holmes in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (Orlando Park, The Sherlock Holmes Encyclopedia, (Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press, 1981), p. 84.
12. There was a third magazine lying beneath the top two which is yet to be positively identified from the photographs.
13. This was verified by Steve Palmer (Highway Dept.) and Ken Hitchcock (Motor Vehicles Dept.) in late 1991 and again in early 1993.
14. Bert R. Sugar with Sybil Leek, The Assassination Chain, (NY: Corwin Books,1976), p. 113.
15. Interview: Nov. 13, 1990, David Price, Director of University Publications. Note: Price said to this author he was told this by Ross Shipman, retired oil and gas industry lobbyist and C.B. Smith's next door neighbor. Smith was in a
nursing home by this time but his second wife, Austin artist Jean Andrews, still lived next door to Shipman.
16. Interview: Nov. 13, 1990, Mary Ellen Oliver, University Of Texas at Austin Visitor Center.
17. Interview: Nov. 13, 1990, Steve Bittick, University Publications staff; Jeff Kanipe, UT McDonald Observatory staff. Note: Bittick and Kanipe recalled Smith's reputation as native Austinites only; they did not know C.B. Smith personally.
18. C.B. Smith Motors Warranty Guarantee No. 64413A issued Apr., 26, 1963 to George Gordon Wing; The University of Texas at Austin, Official Directory, Students, Faculty, Staff, 1990-91, p. 561. Note: Office: Room 304, Batts Hall, phone: 471-8673, and room 112, Batts Hall, phone: 471-4936; Home: 2102 Robinhood Trail, Austin, Tx., 78703.
19. Craig, When They Kill a President, p. 9.
20. Carl J. Eckhardt, One Hundred Faithful to The University of Texas at Austin (self published after 1976), p. 80; Interview: Dec. 7, 1990, David Price and Thomas G. Cunningham, Assistant Director of University Publications. Note: Price
often told this author that Ransom was fond enough of former UT art student Price to give him a job in the Office of Coordinator of University Publications in 1960, where he began working closely with Ransom designing and printing The Texas Quarterly. In 1969 Ransom appointed Price director of the department where he remained until his death in July 1991. Cunningham often told this author that had been a Specialist Fourth-Class in the U.S. Army Counter Intelligence Corps in Korea in the late 1950s after receiving training at Ft. Holabird, Maryland. Before joining David Price at UT Publications, Cunningham said he had worked at Chance Vought Aircraft near Dallas, Tx. (See Maxine Price letter to the editor, Austin American-Statesman, May 12, 1993, p. A18.)
21. Ami Chen Mills, CIA Off Campus, (Chicago, IL: Bill of Rights Foundation,1990), pp. 22, 23.
22. Marj Wightman, "Cuban Revolt Devours Own, Ex-Prisoner Says," Austin American, Oct. 2, 1963, p. 29, col. 6.
23. Warren Commission Exhibit (CE) 2094, Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, Vol. 24, p. 528 (hereafter as CE 2094, 24 H 528), cited in Peter Dale Scott, The Dallas Conspiracy, (unpublished manuscript, 1971), ch. III, p. 15n.
24. Anthony Summers, Conspiracy, (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1980), pp. 450-52.
25. 26. John Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard, (South End Press, Boston, MA: 1991), p. 32; Interview: May 29, 1991, Earl Golz.
27. Silber was fired as dean of UT's College of Arts and Sciences in 1970. In a surprise resignation, C.B. Smith left his position as chairman of the Arts and Sciences Foundation, a major private fund-raising organization at UT. "Several members of the foundation committee, composed of 27 widely-known and mostly wealthy Texans, were known to be opposed to the dismissal of former A&S Dean John R. Silber and the division of the college into three separate units." (See
Sandra Goertz, "A&S Foundation Chairman Steps Down as Panel Head," The Daily Texan, Sept. 30, 1970.)
28. Stockwell, The Praetorian Guard, pp. 32-33.
29. Interview: Apr. 27, 1991, Philip Agee.
30. This student, who wishes to remain anonymous, was interviewed in late April 1991 by John Garcia, one of the primary researchers for this paper.
31. Interview: Mar. 22, 1991, David Price.
32. Interview: Mar. 22, 1991, David Price.
33. Interview: Jun. 29, 1993, John Wheat.
34. Interview: Feb. 25, 1993, a source who requested anonymity. Note: This source had personally known Ellen Dulles when they were both students at the UT Spanish and Portuguese Department.
35. The University of Texas at Austin, Official Directory, Students, Faculty, Staff, 1990-91, p. 518.
36. Peter Wyden, Bay of Pigs, (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1979), p.266. Note: At the time of the assassination Charles' brother Earle Cabell was mayor of Dallas. The Cabell family owned the Minit Mart chain of curbside convenience stores which had been bought by Dallas oil man Clint Murchison when another Cabell brother, Ben, became mayor. Murchison sold them to Joe C. Thompson who turned them into 7-Eleven. (See Jane Wolfe, The Murchisons: The Rise and Fall of a Texas Dynasty,
[NY: St. Martin's, 1989], pp. 172-73.)
37. William J. Gill, The Ordeal of Otto Otepka, (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969), p. 92.
38. According to John Wheat, a former student of Dr. Wing's, another daughter,Edith Dulles, was a student in UT's Spanish and Portuguese Department. (Interview: Jun. 29, 1993, John Wheat.)
39. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders (NY: W.W. Norton, 1974), p. 181-187, cited in John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA, (NY: Simon & Schuster, Touchstone ed., 1987), p. 358.
40. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, p. 184.
41. Summers, Conspiracy, pp. 425-426.
42. Trumbull Higgins, The Perfect Failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs, (NY: Norton, 1987), pp. 85, 86.
43. Higgins, The Perfect Failure, p. 121; ; Edward B. Claflin, ed., JFK Wants to Know: Memos from the President's Office, 1961-1963, (NY: William Morrow, 1991), p. 58.
44. Higgins, The Perfect Failure, p. 151.
45. Blanche Wiesen Cook, "C.D. Jackson: Cold War Propagandist," CovertAction Information Bulletin, No. 35, Fall 1990, pp. 33, 36.
46. Some sources describe Rostow simply as a staff member of CENIS while others have him co-founding it with economist and former CIA Office of National Estimates Director Max F. Millikan. David Wise in his book The Invisible Government, reported that Rostow founded CENIS on his own and was joined by Millikan in 1952.
47. Gill, The Ordeal of Otto Otepka, pp. 94-98; David Wise with Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government, (NY: Bantam Books, 1965), p. 260.
48. Michael Canfield with Alan J. Weberman, Coup d'état in America, (NY: The Third Press, 1975), p. 21; Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much (NY: Carroll & Graf, 1992), p. 120.
49. Peter R. Whitmey, Letter to the Editor, The Third Decade, (Vol. 9, No. 5, Jul. 1993), pp. 13-14.
50. Canfield with Weberman, Coup d'état in America, p. 22; Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, p. 121; Whitmey, pp. 13-14.
51. Whitmey, pp. 13-14.
52. Whitmey, p. 13.
53. Whitmey, p. 13; Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, p. 121.
54. Peter Dale Scott, Crime and Cover-Up: the CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection, (Berkeley, CA: Westworks, 1977), p. 54, n. 34; republished in Santa Barbara, CA: Open Archive Press, 1993.
55. Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, p. 30.
56. Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, pp. 120-21. See also: Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., Coincidence or Conspiracy, (NY: Zebra, 1977), pp. 38, 217-218, 228-230, 470.
57. Church Committee, Alleged Assassination Plots, p. 33, cited in Bernard Fensterwald, Jr., Coincidence or Conspiracy, (NY: Zebra, 1977), p. 251.
58. The University of Texas at Austin with The Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, LBJ: The Difference He Made, 25th Anniversary Symposium, May 3-5, 1990, unpublished complete transcript, (Austin, TX: Kennedy Reporting Service, 1990),
pp. 321-25.
59. The University of Texas at Arlington, "C.B. Smith, Sr., October 24, 1967," (Galleys of biography prepared for annual homecoming ceremonies honoring outstanding alumni), photocopy from Austin American-Statesman files.
60. Ken Lawrence, "Academics: An Overview," Dirty Work II: The CIA in Africa, eds. Ellen Ray, et. al., (Secaucus NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1980) p. 80, cited in Mills, CIA Off Campus, pp. 17, 18.
61. Interview: Mar. 1991, John Garcia.
62. Part of a Latin phrase meaning "unconcerned with this trivial matter."
63. "De Mohrenschildt -- LBJ White House letters: December 27, 1966, and January 6, 1967" respectively, cited in Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much, pp. 271, 759.
64. Warren Hinckle with William Turner, The Fish is Red (NY: Harper & Row, 1981), pp. 67-69; republished as Deadly Secrets, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992; David Horowitz, Ramparts magazine, Oct. 1969, pp. 39-40.
65. Hinckle with Turner, The Fish is Red, pp. 67-69.
66. David Horowitz, Ramparts, Oct. 1969, pp. 39-40.
67. George Gordon Wing, Octavio Paz: Poetry, Politics, and the Myth of the Mexican, doctoral dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, Mar. 3, 1961, p. 3; Biographical information obtained from UT's Spanish and Portuguese Department.
68. The University of Texas at Arlington, "C.B. Smith, Sr., October 24, 1967."
69. Unpublished Transcript: John M. Newman with Gus Russo, "Unscheduled Workshop on Major General Edward G. Lansdale, Colonel Howard L. Burris and Air Force Intelligence Connections to the Kennedy Assassination," Second Annual
Assassination Symposium on John F. Kennedy, Hyatt Regency Hotel at Reunion Square, Dallas, Tx., Oct. 24, 1992, p. 1.
70. John M. Newman, JFK and Vietnam, (NY: Warner Books, 1992), p. 3.
71. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 1.
72. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 3.
73. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 3.
74. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 14.
75. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 3.
76. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 3-4.
77. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 4.
78. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 4.
79. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 13-14.
80. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 5.
81. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 4-5.
82. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 5.
83. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 27.
84. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 8.
85. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 8.
86. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 8.
87. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 8.
88. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 9.
89. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 9-10.
90. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 10.
91. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 2; Stone, JFK: The Book of the Film, pp. 182-183.
92. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 11; Stone, JFK: The Book of the Film, p. 183.
93. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 11-12.
94. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 12.
95. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 32; David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest, (NY: Penguin, 1972), pp. 159-99; Edward B. Claflin, ed., JFK Wants to Know: Memos from the President's Office, 1961-1963, (NY: William
Morrow, 1991), p. 58; Cecil B. Currey, Edward Lansdale: The Unquiet American (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988), p. 395, 14n.
96. Doris Kearns, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (NY: Harper & Row, 1976), p. 320.
97. "Scholar Who's No. 2 at the White House," Business Week, Feb. 25, 1967, cited in Gill, The Ordeal of Otto Otepka, p. 21; Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969, (NY: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971), p. 26.
98. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 1, 14.
99. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 15.
100. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 26.
101. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 24-25.
102. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 15-16.
103. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 16.
104. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 16.
105. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 16.
106. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 16-17
107. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 17.
108. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 17-19.
109. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 17-19.
110. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 17-19.
111. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 17-19.
112. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 17-19.
113. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 19.
114. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 21.
115. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 21.
116. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 21-22.
117. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, pp. 32-33; Biographic Data, Howard Lay Burris, LBJ Library; Mary Ferrell Database record, "Howard Lay Burris," obtained by this author from Gordon Winslow.
118. Mary Ferrell Database record, "Howard Lay Burris,".
119. Robert Morrow, "The Kennedy Cover Up Continued," EastSide Weekend newsmagazine, Apr. 25-May 1, 1991, pp. 1-3; Larry Haapanen, Letter to Richard Bartholomew, Jul. 27, 1993.
120. Barry M. Katz, Foreign Intelligence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1989), p. 97-115, 120.
121. Walt W. Rostow, Pre-invasion Bombing Strategy: General Eisenhower's Decision of March 25, 1944, (Austin, TX: The University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 32, 45.
122. Gill, p. 92.
123. Gill, pp. 92-98; Johnson, The Vantage Point, p. 26.
124. Mary Bancroft, Autobiography of a Spy (NY: William Morrow, 1983), pp. 54, 128-31.
125. Harry Huntt Ransom, "Notes for an Epitaph: Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe" (Air Force Reprint, 32 pp.), cited in "Bibliography of Harry Huntt Ransom," p.1.
126. A Texas grassroots organization called DERAIL is currently fighting powerful interests which has included John Connally and Ben Barnes. These special interests would use the idea of high-speed rail to create a boondoggle to enrich themselves at taxpayers' expense.
127. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 33.
128. Style section, The Washington Post, Mar. 17, 1982; Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, Faces in a Mirror, (NY: Prentice Hall, 1989), cited in Robert Morrow, The Senator Must Die, (Santa Monica, CA: Roundtable, 1988), p. 11n.
129. Morrow, The Senator Must Die, p. 10.
130. Ranelagh, The Agency, p. 261-62.
131. Morrow, The Senator Must Die, p. 10.
132. John MacDougall, "Not Jester Estates", Austin Business Journal, Jun. 26, 1989.
133. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 33.
134. San Antonio Express News, Nov. 23, 1963, p. 16A, col. 4.
135. Eckhardt, One Hundred Faithful..., p. 51.
136. Unpublished Transcript: Newman with Russo, p. 33.
137. Interview: Sept. 20, 1991. Daryl Howard, Assassination Information Center.
138. Kirk Wilson, Texas Unsolved Mysteries, (NY: Carroll & Graf, 1990), p. 99.
139. Arthur Schlesinger, The Imperial Presidency, pp. 198, 417, cited in Robert Sam Anson, They've Killed the President, (NY: Bantam, 1975), p. 280.
140. In January 1993, while going through old notes, this paper's author noticed a coincidence involving an incident that meant nothing at the time it occurred. A resume that came to UT Publications on April 16, 1991, long before this author
had ever heard of the name Burris, included the reference, "Barbara Burris/de la Burdé Partnerships-Strategic Land Investments. Roger de la Burdé, Investor/Collector, Windsor, Powhatan, VA 23139. (804) 379-3674." A quick search
of Nexis led to the belief that this Barbara Burris was either the wife or a daughter of Colonel Howard Burris. Nexis also revealed that Roger de la Burdé was murdered in March 1992. Charged with the crime was his girlfriend, Beverly Ann Monroe. The resume was that of a woman in her early thirties who had relatives in Austin and was checking the job market there. No notation of her name was made by this author, however.
141. "Jorge Mas still says that the man he hates most after Fidel Castro is John F. Kennedy." For more on Mas Canosa, his links to Operation 40 veterans Felix Rodriguez and Luis Posada, and his relationship with Dante Fascell, see "Who is Jorge Mas Canosa?", Esquire, Jan. 1993, pp. 86-89, 119-122. Its author is former HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi. Operation 40 was under the CIA's ZR/RIFLE assassination project umbrella.
142. David Harold Byrd, I'm an Endangered Species (Houston, TX: Pacesetter, 1978), p. 39.
143. Conover Hunt, The Sixth Floor: John F. Kennedy and the Memory of a Nation (Dallas TX: Dallas County Historical Foundation, 1989), p. 5. Note: Another Byrd property, Temco, Inc., played a role in the murder of Henry Marshall which has political overtones involving LBJ (See section on Byrd in this paper).
144. Most people know the Main Building as the infamous "Deadly Tower" from which Charles Whitman shot and killed sixteen people in August 1966. Ron Ellison (mentioned earlier in this paper) claimed that the full truth about the Whitman
shooting was suppressed by LBJ and his friends. He also claimed Whitman had been in a building overlooking Dealey Plaza shortly before the UT incident. Whitman researcher John Slate, however, says that his gasoline receipts do not place him
in Dallas prior to the tower shooting.
145. Eckhardt, One Hundred Faithful..., p. 51.
146. This paper's author first realized this coincidental story along with Price and Cunningham soon after becoming employed by them in 1981.
147. Jim Hicks affidavit to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, cited in Gary Shaw with Larry Harris, Cover-Up, (Cleburn, TX: Self Published, 1976) p. 118, cited in Groden with Livingstone, High Treason, p. 213, photo with caption
14 pp. after p. 180.
148. Beverly Oliver recollections, cited in Oliver Stone with Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film (NY: Applause Books, 1992), p. 120; HSCA, JFK Exhibit F-591, p. 8.
