The JFK Assassination: A Strange and Terrible Saga Part IV
Welcome to my fourth installment in my examination of the Kennedy assassination. Over the course of the first two installments I examined Oswald's time, upon returning to the United States after his alleged defection to the Soviet Union, in Dallas/Fort Worth (part one) and New Orleans (part two) with a special emphasis on the synchronicity and high strangeness surrounding his time in these two areas. In the third installment I pulled things back a bit and considered the cabal that likely conspired against Kennedy.
Now that I've established the plotters and the web that they spun in the months leading up to the assassination I can now begin focusing on the truly bizarre angles of the assassination, most notably its long reputed ties to mind control as well as secret societies and bizarre, fringe churches.
I shall begin whether the former. In recent years this notion has gained some traction and not without reason: Accounts vary widely concerning Oswald's views and personalities as well as his increasingly erratic behavior in the months leading up to the assassination, all of which some have argued are evidence of dissociative identity disorder. Frank Camper, an individual who served in Vietnam as part of the elite Special Operations Group, in his book The MK/ULTRA Secret even went so far as to allege that the A.J. (Alex) Hidell alias Oswald is reputed to have used was in fact an alternative personality.
Recluse does not find this line of thinking especially compelling. Whether or not the CIA's behavioral modification experiments could go so far as to induce an alternative personality is, in and of itself, highly debatable. But beyond this, Oswald's behavior would hardly be out of keeping for a deep cover operative (as several scholarly accounts have argued), who frequently have to live at least three separate lives if not more. This, combined with the long reputed use of doubles imitating Oswald and what surely would been an incredible degree of stress from his involvement in the assassination cabal (Oswald's involvement in some capacity is of course highly controversial, but compelling evidence has emerged that Oswald was trying to infiltrate the plotters over the years) provide a more compelling explanation for his seemingly erratic behavior than a multiple personality in this researcher's opinion.
Even more compelling, however, is the fact that over the course of his life Oswald lived around at least separate three locations that are now known to be sites of various experiments conducted by the CIA and Pentagon under the auspices of the notorious MK-ULTRA as well the little addressed (but possibly far more insidious) Project Artichoke.
Such a taboo subject is not new to the JFK assassination field however. The possibility of mind control was first broached several years after the assassination via the publication of a book known as Were We Controlled?, reputedly by a mysterious figure known as Lincoln Lawrence.
"In 1967, a writer named Lincoln Lawrence published a book which asked the question: Was Lee Harvey Oswald a robot-assassin programmed by a sophisticated technique known as RHIC-EDOM? The letter stood for Radio Hypnotic Intra-Cerebral Control-Electronic Dissolution of Memory.
"Lawrence speculated that Oswald had been behavior-controlled and prepared during his 'defection' to the Soviet Union as s sleeper agent programmed to return to the United States and murder on cue. It was the Manchurian Candidate theme, with one exception. Lawrence insisted that the Russians had not masterminded the RHIC-EDOM plan. It had been masterminded, he thought, by an international cartel of commodities merchants who sought to make millions by driving the market down with the assassination of a president – any president.
"Lawrence wrote, 'Lee Harvey Oswald was to be utilized as... (And now you must clear your brain and put aside your preconceived notions of what espionage and sabotage are today)... an RHIC controlled person... somewhat like a mechanical toy. An RHIC controlled person can be processed (as Oswald was in Minsk), allowed to travel to any country... and be put to use even years later by the application of RHIC controls. In short, like the toy, he can in a sense be "wound up" and made to perform acts without any possibility of the controller being detected.
"'Under RHIC, a "sleeper" can be used years later with no realization that the "sleeper" is even being controlled! He can be made to perform acts that he will have no memory of ever having carried out. In a manipulated kind of kamikaze operation where the life of the "sleeper" is dispensable, RHIC processing makes him particularly valuable because if he is detected and caught before he performs the act specified... nothing he says will implicate the group or government which processed and controlled him.'
"Mr. Lawrence used as evidence the official Russian records that Oswald had been admitted to the hospital in Minsk at 10 AM on March 30, 1961. The records state that he was admitted with complaints about suppuration from the right ear and a weakening in hearing. Lawrence said that this was a cover-up for 'the real reason for Oswald's stay – but there was one slight oversight. He was hospitalized for eleven days for an "adenoid" operation. Eleven days for an adenoid removal is, of course, preposterous. In austere Soviet Russia it was particularly ridiculous!'
"What really happened, according to Lawrence, was the during the operation a small electrode was implanted inside Oswald's mastoid sinus. The electrode responded to a radio signal, which would make audible, inside Oswald head, certain electronic commands to which he had already been posthypnotically conditioned to respond. (The autopsy report in Dallas noted that there was a small scar on the mastoid sinus behind Oswald's ear.)
"In 1967 the idea sounded utterly preposterous. Mr. Lawrence's book, Were We Controlled?, found only a minuscule audience. Lawrence, on the other hand, may have had much more evidence than he was allowed to present. His credentials indicated that he had been 'working in liaisons with the department of defense.'"
(Operation Mind Control, Walter Bowart, pgs. 261-262)
Needless to say, little has come to light in recent decades to bolster Lawrence's dubious claims (though the possibility that radio signals and/or electronic frequencies may be used as means of mind control is not as remotely as preposterous as some accounts floating around on the Internet). Still, the notion of Minsk as being some kind of brainwashing center or school for assassins has proven to be surprisingly enduring in the JFK assassination research community.
And to be sure, there were some curious happenstances during Oswald's time in the Soviet Union, most notably his alleged suicide attempt. Reports of it vary widely, but stranger still is the fact that noted American journalist Aline Mosby, who famously interviewed Oswald upon his arrival in the USSR and who published several articles based on these encounters, never mentioned the suicide attempt despite having met with Oswald around the time of its occurrence.
"There are many discrepancies in the reports about this incident. According to one hospital report, the slash in Oswald's arm was only about 2 inches long and not that deep: 'The injury did not reach the tendons.'
"Oswald was given a psychiatric examination at the hospital on his third day there. It reads, 'A few days ago [the patient] arrived in the Soviet Union in order to apply for our citizenship. Today he was to have left the Soviet Union. In order to postpone his departure he inflicted the injury upon himself. The patient apparently understands the questions asked in Russian. Sometimes he answers correctly, but immediately states that he does not understand what he was asked.
"'According to the interpreter, there were no mentally sick people in his family. He had no skull trauma, never before had he attempts to commit suicide. He tried to commit suicide in order not to leave for America. He claims he regrets his action. After recovery he intends to return to his homeland. It was not possible to get more information from the patient.'
"Given that Aline Mosby was allegedly first alerted to the presence of Oswald in Russia by State Department officials, it seems that she should have known something about the attempted suicide. If he had slashed his wrist, it seems hard to imagine that Oswald did not at least have some bandages on it when she met him. This reasonably leads one to think that perhaps Oswald's alleged suicide did not take place, and that he was hospitalized by the Soviets for a few days for other reasons. Amazingly, and without explanation, many books on Oswald fail to even mention or discuss his 'suicide' attempt, an alleged occurrence that should have been considered significant. It has been suggested that some writers ignore his alleged incident because it undermines arguments and theories that Oswald was an American government agent or that he had no role in the Dallas assassination. (Of course, arguing that he had no role whatsoever makes it difficult to explain why Oswald would claim to be a 'patsy.')
"What was the real nature of Oswald's alleged suicide attempt? Was it merely a ploy for attention and an effort to gain approval to remain in Russia, or was it an elaborate ruse designed for Oswald to be admitted to the hospital for other reasons? Oswald remained at the hospital for five days before he was released, and then allowed to remain and work in Russia.
"Lastly, it is intriguing to note that the CIA, following Oswald's death, was most curious to learn of his autopsy report revealed any signs of a scar on his left wrist. On February 17, 1964, CIA Director for Plans, Richard Helms, wrote to J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director, and inquired about Oswald's suicide attempt. Helms noted that a December 2, 1963 interview with Oswald's wife, Marina, produced the remark that she 'never knew Oswald to speak of or attempts suicide, that she did not think he was capable of suicide and that she did not believe that he has ever attempted suicide.' In addition, Marina had told FBI interviewers 'she recalled seeing a scar on the inner left wrist of Oswald after they were married. This scar she said was completely healed and she asked him about this and he evaded answering her.
"Helms told Hoover that the CIA felt that Marina Oswald's recollections were 'not adequate and that independent corroborative evidence on [Oswald's attempted suicide] should be obtained if it is possible to do so.' Helms then requested of Hoover: 'We would appreciate receiving any other information, such as statements of observations by police or others, including the undertakers, copies of any reports, such as autopsy or other, which may contain information to this point.'
"Helms continued, 'The best evidence of a scar, or scars, on the left wrist would of course be direct examination by a competent authority, and we recommended that this be done and that a photograph of the inner and outer surface of the left wrist be made if there has been no other evidence acceptable to the [Warren] Commission that he did in fact attempt suicide by cutting his wrist.'"
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pgs. 56-58)
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| Aline Mosby |
"I heard rumors that something was given to Oswald days or weeks before he went to the Texas School Book Depository. I also heard he was brainwashed, like Manchurian Candidate. I heard that when he was in Russia, they started to brainwash him over there. The Russians messed with them, twisted his brains. This affected him for a long time. Then somebody in this country continued to screw around with him. I don't believe it was the CIA. But whoever made the [assassination[ plans, he was reintroduced to brainwashing and they gave him something, I don't know what it was. After he got arrested, they claim he would jibber and jabber before he was shot."
(On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Dick Russell, pg. 277)All of this tends to indicate that the possibility that something very strange was done to Oswald while in the Soviet Union should not be discounted out of hand. There are certainly some peculiarities there, but not quite to the extent of those surrounding Oswald in this country and while serving in the Marines.
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| Oswald while in the Marines |
"Shortly after Oswald's thirteenth birthday, with both his siblings already in the armed services, he and his mother moved to New York. Often choosing to stay away from school, Oswald soon faced truancy charges. For three weeks in the spring of 1953, he was remanded to the city's Youth House for psychiatric observation. Dr. Renatus Hartogs, the chief psychiatrist there, later said he found Oswald's personality so intriguing that he chose him as a seminar subject.
"As Hartogs would summarize for the Warren Commission, he had seen and Oswald a 'cold, detached outer attitude' that viewed his life in a 'nonparticipating fashion.' Hartogs had also noted Oswald's 'vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power.' His diagnoses had been 'personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies.'
"Hartogs' testimony was crucial to the Warren Commission's developing a pattern of aberrant behavior in Oswald more than ten years before the Kennedy assassination..."
(ibid, pg. 252)Dr. Hartogs' diagnosis of young Oswald was quite a feat, especially when one considered that he likely spent no more than a half hour with LHO once (officially) in 1953, ten years before the assassination. Apparently this time made quite an impression on Hartogs, despite the fact that his notes from that time aren't especially troubled concerning LHO. And yet, he indicated to the Warren Commission that he felt Oswald was a threat to public safety even back then.
"Moments later, the Commission asked Dr. Hartog's if he could 'recall: What recommendation you made to the court in respect to Oswald?'
"Hartogs answered, 'If I can recall correctly, I recommended that this youngster should be committed to an institution.... I found him to have definite traits of dangerousness. In other words, this child had a potential for explosive, aggressive, assaultive acting out....' [Emphasis added.]
"This diagnoses and recommendation probably does not shock many readers; however, the point here is that Dr. Hartogs' actual report to the court, filed just days after examining Oswald, contained none of this seemingly prophetic language. Indeed, the closest Hartogs came to such a diagnosis in his report was:
This 13-year-old, well-built boy, has superior mental resources and functions only slightly below his capacity level in spite of chronic truancy from school – which brought him into Youth House. No finding of neurological impairment or psychotic mental changes could be made.
Lee has to be diagnosed as 'personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies.' Lee has to be seen as an emotionally, quite disturbed youngster who suffers under the impact of really existing emotional isolation and deprivation: lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a self-involved and conflicted mother.... We arrived therefore at the recommendation that he should be placed on probation under the condition that he seek help and guidance through contact with a child guidance clinic, where he should be treated preferably by a male psychiatrist who could substitute, to a certain degree at least, for the lack of a father figure.
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pgs. 20-21)
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| young Oswald |
"... He turned out to have been involved in a landmark court case, Roy v. Hartogs, in 1971. He was accused, found guilty and barred from psychiatric practice for having seduced one who is patience, Julie Roy, into a bizarre sexual relationship. This became the subject of a 1976 book, Betrayal, co-authored by the alleged victim with Lucy Freeman; ironically, Freeman had previously assisted Hartogs in writing his 1965 psychology study of Oswald and Ruby called The Two Assassins.
"At Hartogs' trial, the subject of Oswald came up briefly while he was on the witness stand. 'Now, doctor, as part of your expertise, did you have occasion in 1953 to examine Lee Harvey Oswald?' the opening attorney asked. After Hartogs responded 'Yes,' his attorney objected, saying 'I don't see the relevance to this.' The judge sustained the objection and a luncheon recess was called.
"Hartogs' credentials appeared in the court record. He had earned his doctorate in psychology at the University of Frankfurt-am-Maine in Germany and came to America in 1940. Late in the decade, he obtained his medical degree, internship and psychiatric residency in Montréal. In New York, he been a senior psychiatrist at Sing Sing and for the probation department. His time at Youth House was absent from his curricula vitae.
"Hartogs testified that he was the author of eight books. Among them was one titled Principles of Suggestion and Auto-suggestion. This was clearly a reference to a tract about hypnosis.
"I contacted Milton Kline, who said he'd known Hartogs in the 1950s. 'He was more than just a child psychiatrist, but was involved in some kind of government consultation,' Kline added. After recalling how Hartogs had lost his license following his court conviction, Kline continued: 'He didn't continue to practice psychiatry, but he set up shop as a hypnotist in New York, on East Seventy-eighth Street just off Lexington Avenue. I remember he placed quarter-page ads in the newspaper, and sent my institute a letter asking if we could use his services. We declined. That's when I became aware that Hartogs must have known a great deal about hypnosis. There is no question in my mind that he was perfectly skilled at it, because he was seeing patients for years.
"'There is more than meets the eye about Dr. Hartogs,' Kline said.
"I dialed information and found a telephone number for Hartogs, who at the time was in his late eighties and still living in New York. I told him I was curious about his book on 'suggestion and auto-suggestion,' but he denied having authored it. 'I've written all kinds of books, but not that. Maybe it was written by somebody else who probably used my name,' he said, and continued: 'I'm a Freudian psychoanalyst, not a hypnotherapist. I cannot offer you anything in terms of hypnosis or suggestion. Cross it off your list. What I know about hypnosis and suggestion is outdated, I don't read anything about it anymore.'
"I was also curious about Hartogs' background in the late 1940s in Montréal, when he worked as a psychologist at the Allen Memorial Institute. For that was the place where Dr. D. Ewen Cameron was known to have performed experiments on psychiatric patients under a contract to the CIA, utilizing hypnosis, drugs including LSD, and sensory deprivation. 'I knew Dr. Cameron, sure,' said Hartog. 'He was a nice man. I don't know what happened to him after I left Montréal and came to New York.'
"When I brought up Oswald's name, Hartogs brushed the subject aside – 'I think he did it on his own' – and indicated that our conversation was over.
"I could find no record of the book, Principles of Suggestion and Auto-suggestion, in the Boston Public Library's national database.
"Not long after this, I spoke to Dr. Kline again. 'I did get a little more information on Hartogs,' he told me. 'He worked extensively with hypnosis and may have been involved with Dr. Sidney Malitz, who was a professor of psychiatry at the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) in the 1950s. Malitz had a number of government contracts, particularly CIA, working with hallucinogenic drugs and personality changes. He was varying from research protocols to work with private patients using some of his drugs. I'm told that Hartogs worked with him for many years, and that he [Hartogs] was a very slippery character.'
"NYSPI was part of the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital at 168th and Broadway, not that far from Oswald's Bronx apartment on 179th Street. Between 1953 and 1957, it is now known, the Army Chemical Corps funded the NYSPI to the tune of about $140,000, a considerable portion of that money having originated with the CIA. Hospital doctors injected mescaline and LSD into patients who had entered the institute voluntarily for treatment of mental problems. Late in 1953, the NYSPI investigators formed a private corporation, the Research Foundation for Mental Hygiene, Inc., which received at least four lucrative additional contracts for experiments on psychiatric patients. Dr. James Cattell, a former NYSPI team member, testified before Congress in the 1970s that the purpose of the drug test was to create an 'exaggerated mental state (schizophrenia)....'"
(On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Dick Russell, pgs. 252-254)
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| the book Hartogs wrote on Oswald and Jack Ruby |
"Dr. Malitz worked under eugenicist Dr. Paul Hoch, NYSPI Research Director. Hoch, a German who came to the U.S. with generous assistance from the Dulles family, was appointed by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller as New York's Commissioner of Mental Health. In the early 1950s, Hoch was very much involved in experiments at the Bordentown Reformatory. As early as 1948, Hoch cited his Bordentown involvement in a book he edited, Failures in Psychiatric Treatment. Through Dr. Hoch, Malitz was involved in a number of convert contracts with the CIA and U.S. Army to perform experiments with psychosurgery, electroconvulsive therapy, LSD, mescaline, and other drugs. Kline told writer Russell that Hartogs worked alongside Malitz on some of these experiments.
"Apparently, however, what both Kline and Russell did not know, or perhaps what Kline chose not to reveal to Russell, was that at least three of the covert contracts Dr. Malitz worked under were with Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division, the unit that Frank Olson headed up at that time. These contracts, carried out under the auspices of the CIA's project MK/NAOMI, according to former Fort Detrick scientists, involved experiments on unwitting hospital patients and, as I would later learn, children and teenagers.
"Dr. Sidney Malitz also worked with a number of additional physicians who conducted an elaborate number of experiments involving children during the same years that Lee Harvey Oswald was in New York and afterwards. The CIA, U.S. Army through Fort Detrick and Edgewood Arsenal, and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) funded many of these contracts. Chief among these physicians were: Drs. Bernard Wilkens, Harold Esecover, and Harold A. Abramson."
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pgs. 34-35)
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| what was Bordentown Reformatory is now the East Jersey State Prison |
"Not a great deal is known about experimental activities conducted in New York on children because the CIA, in 1973, destroyed all its files related to such experiments under the rationale that 'the public would be too outraged over such activities would not appreciate the Agency's objectives behind such work,' but what is known is shocking. Experiments appear to have initially started in New York City, at Bellevue Hospital from early 1940 to 1956. There, Dr. Lauretta Bender, a highly respected child neuropsychiatrist, experimented extensively with electroshock therapy on children who had been diagnosed, some incorrectly, with 'autistic schizophrenia.'
"In all, it has been reported in several medical journals, as well as in at least two medical text written by Dr. Bender, that she administered electroconvulsive therapy to about 100 children ranging in age from 3 years old to 13 years, with additional reports indicating the total may be twice that number. One source reports that, inconclusive of Dr. Bender's work, electroconvulsive treatment was used on more than 500 children at Bellevue Hospital from 1942 to 1956, and then at Creedmoor State Hospital Children's Service from 1956 to 1969.
"Here it is interesting to note, Dr. Lauretta Bender is perhaps best known today for her development of the Bender-Gestalt Visual Motor Test, a neuropsychological examination still widely used today. In her electroshock experiments on children throughout the 1950s, Dr. Bender frequently used her Bender-Gestalt test, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Monroe Silent Reading Test, and Human Figure Drawings as diagnostic tools in her work with children.
"Interesting to note, is that Dr. Bender's work at Bellevue Hospital involving children followed earlier 'depatterning' electroconvulsive experiments conducted at the hospital, then turned 'annihilation' therapy. This so-called therapy began in the mid-1940s and followed earlier efforts using insulin and Metrazol shock therapy practiced on well over 500 adult patients and an undetermined number of children at several New York hospitals. In January 1937, Dr. Bender as part of a large contingent of Bellevue Hospital physicians, including Drs. Joseph Wortis and Karl Bowman, accompanied by Dr. Harold E. Himwich from Albany Medical College, attended a joint meeting of the New York Neurological Society and the psychiatric branch of the New York Academy of Medicine. The gathering featured a virtual who's-who of practitioners of insulin and Metrazol shock therapy, supposed cures for mental illness that, following sound discrediting of both techniques triggered a stampede towards electroshock therapy as a credible technique.
"Also attending this joint meeting as a presenter was Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, who, according to historian Dr. David Healy, 'in March 1936 introduced insulin coma at Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts.' Cameron, who would eventually had up infamous MK/ULTRA Subproject 68 in Montreal, also conducted extensive experiments at Worcester Hospital with seizure-inducing drug called Metrazol, as did physicians at Bellevue Hospital and the U.S. Army's Edgewood Arsenal, where Dr. Harold E. Himwich served as research director. It is unknown how many, if any, children were subjects in these experiments, but funding for Cameron's Worcester activities was provided by the Child Neurology Research, which was part of the Friedsam Foundation.
"In 1952 and 1953, CIA Project ARTICHOKE administrators in the Agency's Security Research Service (SRS) expressed strong interest in the use of 'depatterning' shock therapy, as well as Metrazol shock therapy, in their efforts towards developing enhanced interrogation techniques. In 1952, SRS physicians conducted several experiments with depatterning therapy on subjects to were patients at Veterans Administration medical facilities in the United States and in Panama at Fort Amador. Additional experiments at these locations were conducted with Metrazol therapy.
"In at least three experiments, conducted at unnamed VA hospitals in Pennsylvania and Ohio, patients, who were former American POWs in Korea, were repeatedly shocked with Metrazol to see if physicians could render them without any memories of their activities in Korea. The results of these experiments are unknown, but CIA scientist within the Technical Service Division picked up where SRS left off when Agency psychologists enthusiastically read Dr. Ewen Cameron's medical paper on 'psyche driving and depatterning shock therapy,' in 1955, and decided to fund Cameron's work at the Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry at McGill University, Montréal, Québec through the Society for the Investigation for Human Ecology. (CIA records revealed that the U.S. Air Force in August 1969 was considering co-sponsoring Cameron's research. Additionally, CIA officials decided in about 1951 that Metrazol shock therapy was better used and more effective in coercive interrogation sessions...)
"In April 1953, at Youth House, young Lee Harvey Oswald was administered all of the neurological examinations mentioned above by various psychologists and staff. Some of these tests were possibly administered to Oswald at Bellevue Hospital, but the FBI, in 1964, was unable to confirm this. (The Bender-Gestalt Test was a significant topic of discussion in the 1969 trial of accused Robert F. Kennedy murderer, Sirhan Sirhan.)
"Dr. Bender – who had two children, a son and daughter, and three grandchildren at the time of her death in 1987 – was a confident and dog had two children, a son and daughter, and three grandchildren at the time of her death in 1987 – was a confident and dogmatic woman, who bristled a criticism, and often times refused to acknowledge reality even when it stood starkly before her.
"Despite publicly claiming good results with electroshock treatment, privately Bender said she was seriously disappointed in the aftereffects and results shown by the subject children. Indeed, the condition of some of the children appeared to have only worsened. One six-year-old boy, after being shocked several times, went from being a shy, withdrawn child to acting increasingly aggressive and violent. Another child, a seven-year-old girl, following five electroshock sessions administered by Dr. Bender, had become nearly catatonic.
"Years later, another of Bender's young patients who became overly aggressive after an astounding 20 electroshock treatments, now grown, was convicted in court as a 'multiple murderer.' Others, in adulthood, reportedly were in and out of trouble and prison for committing batteries of petty and violent crimes.
"A 1954 scientific study of about 50 of Bender's young electroshock patients, conducted by two psychologist, found that nearly all were worse off after the 'therapy,' and that some have become suicidal after treatment. One of the children studied in 1954 was the son of well-known writer Jacqueline Susann, author of the best-selling novel Valley of the Dolls. Susann's son, Guy, was diagnosed with autism shortly after birth and, when he was three years old, Dr. Bender convinced Susann and her husband that Guy could be successfully treated with electroshock therapy. Guy returned home from Dr. Bender's care a nearly lifeless child. Susann later told people that Bender had destroyed her son. Guy, born in 1946, has been confined to private institutions since his treatment.
"To their credit, some of Dr. Bender's colleagues considered her use of electroshock on children 'scandalous,' but few colleagues spoke out against her, a situation still today common among those in the medical profession. In July 2010, a very prominent New York physician, who was still a proponent of electroshock therapy in patient care, told this author, 'Nobody back in the days that Lauretta was doing all her work had a clue that the government, the CIA, army, or whoever, was involved in any of this work.... that these were experiments of some sort.... For what purpose, I have no idea. I clearly had no knowledge of that, but I don't think it would have altered much at all in the way of open criticism of her work. In fact, and I hate to say this, it might have served to put a complete damper on any criticism at all.'
"Said Dr. Leon Eisenberg, a widely respected physician and true pioneer in the study of autistic children, in 1998: '[Lauretta Bender] claimed that some of these children recovered because of her shock treatment. I once wrote a paper in which I referred to several studies by [Dr. E.R.] Clardy. He was at Rockwin State Hospital – the back-up to Bellevue – and he described the arrival of these children. He considered them psychotic and perhaps worse off than before the treatment.'
"(Additionally, this writer could find no instance where any of Bender's colleagues spoke out against her decidedly racist viewpoints. Dr. Bender made it quite clear that she felt that African-Americans were best characterized by their 'capacity for laziness' and 'ability to dance,' both features, Bender claimed, of the 'specific brain impulses' of African-Americans.)"
(ibid, pgs. 36-40)
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| Dr. Lauretta Bender |
This was not, however, to be the last time young Oswald lived around a known site of CIA and US military medical experiments. The next occurrence happened during Oswald's teenage years in New Orleans. Oswald was of course born in New Orleans (in October 1939), but he left there in 1944 and did not return until 1954. Shortly after LHO's return some very strange things began happening at Tulane University.
"In September 1975, Charles D. Ablard, General Counsel for the Army, would deliver this testimony before a Senate committee: 'We have learned of a 1955 contract with Tulane University, which involved the administration of LSD, mescaline, and other drugs to mental patients who had therefore had electrodes implanted in their brains as a part of their medical treatment....' The project was the brainchild of Dr. Robert Heath, then chairman of the Tulane Medical School's Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, and whose specialty was electrical stimulation of the brain. Heath once stated that the real solution to mental problems would be found in 'controlled manipulation of the pleasure response and... manipulation of memory by biological means.' Heath acknowledged having taken part in one CIA research project in 1957, testing a purported brainwashing drug on several monkeys.'
"At some point during his teenage years in New Orleans, Oswald began exhibiting a fascination with communism. He checked out Marx's Das Kapital from the local library and tried to persuade friends to join the Communist Party with him 'to take advantage of the social functions.' He said he was looking to find a cell of sympathetic Marxists and wrote for information about the 'Youth League' of the Socialist Party. His favorite TV program was I Led Three Lives, based on the true story of Herbert Philbrick, who penetrated the Communist Party as an FBI informant."
(On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Dick Russell, pg. 255)
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| Robert Heath |
"In her 2005 book, A Farewell to Justice, Joan Mellen, a professor of English and creative writing at Temple University, Philadelphia, writes that Lee Harvey Oswald visited the East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson, Louisiana ostensibly seeking employment. While there, Oswald, allegedly purely by chance, encountered Dr. Frank Silva, a psychiatrist, who served the hospital as director of medical services and also oversaw training for medical residents for work at Tulane University Hospital. Silva, whose given name was Francisco A. Silva Clarens, was born in Cuba 1929. He graduated from the University of Havana Medical School in 1955. He then came to the United States and attended Tulane University of Medicine, where he graduated in 1958. From 1959 to 1972, Dr. Silva was an associate professor of clinical psychiatry at the Tulane School of Medicine, and worked as medical services director at the state hospital.
"The East Louisiana State Hospital, a state-operated mental institution, was founded in 1847, as the Louisiana State Insane Asylum. The facility was intended to primarily serve the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas, but was placed in Jackson to escape the problem of disease-carrying mosquitoes that plagued the low-ground urban area. Initially, the hospital maintained about 170 psychiatric beds, but over the years grew to more than 600. In 1963, the same year, Oswald visited the facility, renowned photographer, Richard Avedon, took a large series of photographs of the hospital's patients, which vividly depict the harsh, overcrowded, and seemingly primitive warehousing of its human population. The hospital is about 125 miles from New Orleans, where Oswald had been living, and is located less than a mile from the center of the small town Jackson, population about 4,000. Unsurprisingly, the hospital serves as a major employer for the town.
"Mellen writes that when Oswald first entered the hospital's main building, 'Wearing a T-shirt, obstreperous and calling attention to himself,' he 'falls into conversation with some hospital attendants' he encounters in a hallway. Mellen states, 'His subject is Cuba and what it would take to bring Fidel Castro down. His voice is loud.'
"As Oswald speaks, Mellen recounts, Dr. Frank Silva walked by and heard Oswald's comments about Cuba. 'One of the attendants, who is from Texas, calls Dr. Silva over,' Mellen writes. 'Dr. Silva is from Cuba,' the attendant informed Oswald.
"Oswald turns his attention to Dr. Silva, states Mellen, and bragged to the psychiatrist 'about how proficient he is with guns, how he served in the Marines, how he will go to Cuba.'
"'I'm involved with getting rid of Fidel Castro,' Oswald tells Dr. Silva. 'I'm using my skills as a Marine,' Oswald tells Silva, according to Mellen.
" Dr. Silva, well-trained in listening and analyzing skills, takes in all that Oswald is saying, and according to Mellen's book, 'concludes that this disrespectful, impolite man (who never introduces himself by name) ranting about killing Fidel Castro has no idea what he's talking about. He is a troubled man making a spectacle of himself while applying for a job at a mental hospital.'
"Dr. Silva politely bids the bragging man good day and goes about his daily rounds, and Lee Harvey Oswald goes on and applies for employment as intended.
"The Oswald sighting at the East Louisiana State Hospital seems cut and dry, but as with most things concerning Oswald, the facts surrounding the visit dwell in an otherworldly realm of ambiguity and interconnectedness, an alternative universe clouded by high strangeness where everything has multi-dimensions of meaning and truth.
"What Professor Joan Mellen does not mention in her book is that Dr. Frank Silva is also a highly-skilled research psychiatrist who co-authored at least two widely read medical papers with Dr. Robert G. Heath of the Tulane Medical School... The first paper Silva co-authored with Dr. Heath is entitled, 'Administration of Taraxein in Humans,' published in May 1959 in the medical journal, Diseases of the Nervous System.
"The second paper Silva co-authored with Heath is entitled, 'Comparative Effects of the Administration of Taraxein, d-LSD, Mescaline, and Psilocybin to Human Volunteers. It was published in 1960 in the journal, Comprehensive Psychiatry.
"This seven-page paper – which, when it was presented in June 1960 at a meeting of the Society of Biological Psychiatry in Miami Beach, Florida was accompanied by 'a 16-mm sound movie film, depicting brief excerpts of the reactions of the [experiment] subjects to each of four compounds' – concerned conducting experiments with LSD and other hallucinogens on 'four volunteer subjects: one psychiatrist; and three prisoners at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola [Louisiana].' The medical paper states: 'Three of the subject received taraxein, d-LSD, Mescaline, and Psilocybin. One such subject received taraxein and, Mescaline, and Psilocybin.
"The paper also reveals that the prison subjects, at the time of the experiments, were 'housed in a special Tulane University Research Unit at the East Louisiana State Hospital, Jackson, Louisiana.
"What the paper does not specifically reveal is that the 'one psychiatrist' who participated in the experiments as an actual subject was Dr. Frank Silva, then a psychiatrist at the state hospital. According to Silva and Heath's 1960 paper, Dr. Silva, identified as 'VOLUNTEER 1 (F. S.)' was given an injection of taraxein, and within about ten minutes, he 'was experiencing symptoms which he, as a psychiatrist, associated with the disease, schizophrenia.' When he was given LSD [150 micrograms], assumably a day or more later, within about thirty minutes his 'pupils were dilated' and he 'commented that he was hungry and cold.' According to the paper, he 'described the situation as humorous and giggled in a silly manner.' The paper states that Silva 'reported visual distortion: e.g. people seem taller than their actual height; doors appeared oval instead of rectangular.' Under Mescaline [administered orally in the amount of 750 milligrams] experienced some mild visual distortion and found 'listening to music was enjoyable.' Under Psilocybin [10 milligrams], Silva reported his experience as quite similar to 'the feeling one has with a great amount of alcohol.'
"According to the assiduous assassination researcher Bill Davey, writing in the essential James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease edited volume, The Assassinations, Dr. Alfred T. Butterworth, who arrived at East Louisiana State Hospital after Oswald's visit to the facility, also took part in the LSD experiments at the prison in Angola. Dr. Butterworth, who served as the state hospital's clinical director, had previously worked with the CIA's Dr. Sidney Gottlieb at Fort Detrick under Project MK/NAOMI, as well as with Drs. Harris Isbell and Abraham Wikler at the NIMH Kentucky Addiction Farm. Butterworth, who was interviewed by DiEugenio in August 1994, revealed that his 'specialty' in his early years at the State Hospital was 'instructing other doctors in the use of LSD for the treatment of mental disorders.' Butterworth also told DiEugenio 'the use of psychedelic drugs was apparently so pervasive at Jackson that the doctors nicknamed one of the departments the "Magic Mushroom."' Butterworth, however, apparently told DiEugenio nothing about other CIA-physicians dispatched to the Angola prison by the CIA-funded Human Ecology Fund to experiment with psychochemicals administered to prisoners in situations of solitary confinement and sensory deprivation.
"Writer Bill Davey also briefly reveals in the same DiEugenio edited volume that in 1968, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison 'interviewed a witness' who attended a party at Dr. [Robert G.] Heath's New Orleans home. 'At the party Dr. Silva introduced [the unnamed witness] to New Orleans anti-Castro activist Sergio Arcacha Smith, Davey writes.
"Arcacha Smith was closely connected to David Ferrie, who emerged as a prime suspect in JFK's murder in District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation..."
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pgs. 73-76)
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| the East Louisiana State Hospital |
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| David Ferrie |
"Records reflected already that Rose had been interred in the Jackson East Louisiana State Hospital for being 'criminally insane' in 1961. However, her second stay in the hospital, the day before JFK's assassination, is not recorded by the FBI or Louisiana State Police.
"According to documentation from the State of Louisiana Department of Public Safety, Division of State Police, Bureau of Investigation in Baton Rouge, Rose had been received by the Jackson East Louisiana State Hospital on 7-13-61. The charge: 'Criminally Insane,' according to Louisiana State Police record #256375 and FBI record #2-347-922."
(A Rose By Many Names, Todd C. Elliot, pg. 44)
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| Sally Kirkland as Rose Cherami in Oliver Stone's JFK |
"... Worth noting here is that there are credible reports the Rose may have been confined twice of the Jackson facility. Also, Rose was once a patient in 1956-1957, at St. Elizabeth's in Washington D.C., during the same years that the CIA, through its Human Ecology Fund, operated a 'behavior modification' project at the Washington facility involving CIA physicians Drs. John Gittinger and Louis Jolyon West..."
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pg. 93)She found herself at yet another facility implicated in CIA medical experiments shortly before her death in 1965 as well.
"Unfortunately, Rose's story only worsens. In late April 1964, Rose was committed to yet another mental institution, this one in Norman, Oklahoma, were reportedly she had been committed at least twice before. No researcher, to date, has explained what Rose was doing in Oklahoma, but neither has anyone yet been able to explain why Lee Harvey Oswald had '1318 1/2 Garfield Ave., Norman, OK' written in his address book...
"According to CIA documents, it turns out, most likely just by coincidence, that the Oklahoma facility where Rose was confined, Central State Mental Hospital,was being covertly used by the CIA's Project MK/ULTRA, the Agency's behavior-modification or mind-control program, at the same time that Rose was confined there. CIA psychologist and Oklahoma native John Gittinger, who oversaw the MK/ULTRA contract with Dr. Ewen Cameron in Montréal, Canada, worked with the Agency's Technical Services Section and also monitored the CIA's subproject with the Oklahoma facility, at the same time as Rose's confinement there. Additionally, Dr. Louis Jolyon West, M.D., professor of psychiatry and head of the psychology department at the University of Oklahoma and a CIA consultant, most likely also saw Rose while she was confined in Oklahoma, but this remains to be verified. What is certain and well documented is that Dr. West, also a longtime CIA consultant and contractor, did professionally visit Lee Harvey Oswald's killer Jack Ruby on April 27, 1964 in Dallas, at the same time that Rose was confined. Of course, Dr. West never revealed to Ruby that he had strong ties to the CIA. Not long after Rose was released from the Oklahoma facility, she was back in the Texas, where she met her ultimate fate."
(ibid, pgs. 116-117)
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| Rose |
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| Hall |
"... Following basic training, Oswald the station in 1957 and 1958 in Japan at Atsugi naval airbase. The Atsugi base, covering some 1,300 acres and located 37 miles from downtown Tokyo, had been used for kamikaze flights during World War II. After the war, it was taken over by the U.S. Navy, and a section of the base, including huge underground chambers, became a vast, 50-acre CIA field installation.
"The December 1, 1953, memo was in response to Kirkpatrick's query about locations where the CIA kept supplies of the relatively new wonder drug, LSD. The same responding memo reads, 'In summary, LSD material over which CIA has or had distributive responsibility is located in four places: (a) Dr. [Willis] Gibbons' safe [Gibbons was one of Sidney Gottlieb's superiors], (b) Manila, (c) Atsugi, and (d) that in the possession of George White. Exact amounts in each location are not yet available. '
"The memo, of course, does not mention Lee Harvey Oswald, or anyone else at the Atsugi base or in the Philippines. However, readers can easily imagine that these brief lines about locations, not long after their public release 1976, would achieve interpretive elasticity to the point they would connect with Oswald. Eventually, it would be absurdly reported that Atsugi stored 'over 100,000 dosages of LSD,' an amount the Agency never came close to possessing, simply because at the time there was not that much LSD in the world. Worse yet, several books and articles were claim that Atsugi, at the time Oswald was there, had become a Far East center for the CIA's MK/ULTRA project, and that the center was routinely creating Manchurian Candidates through the use of LSD and other drugs. Some of these claims were carried to extreme and very creative lengths, yet none offered any supportive documentation.
"However, it is important to note here that documents and several civil case legal dispositions unearthed by this writer during his investigation of Frank Olson's death, clearly revealed that CIA officials, including Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, did travel during the mid-to-late 1950s to Japan for the purposes of conducting enhanced interrogations that included the use of LSD and other drugs. Additionally, and perhaps far more germane to possibilities concerning Oswald, several prominent American physicians under covert contracts with the CIA's ARTICHOKE program, operated under the Agency's Security Research Service, traveled frequently to Japan's Atsugi base. Indeed, one very prominent physician (who cannot be identified here because of possible legal implications) made over 15 trips to Atsugi, all related to the administration of LSD to unidentified subject. However, it is known, through the same documents, that some of the subjects were U.S. servicemen. Indeed, one partial CIA document, dated 1957, the same time that Oswald was at Atsugi, placed several ARTICHOKE physicians and technicians at the Naval base to conduct enhanced interrogations on several foreign nationals."
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pgs. 72-73)
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| Atsugi |
Thornley would of course go on to write two books about Oswald, one fiction (The Idle Warriors), the other not (Oswald). While Warriors would remain unpublished until 1991 Oswald came out in 1965, after Thornley's testimony before the Warren Commission. The Warren Commission did, however, subpoenaed a copy of Warriors and were those aware of Thornley's early portrayal of Oswald.
In general Thornley would play a major role in depicting Oswald as a fanatical Marxist in the eyes of the public shortly after the assassination. Reportedly he first became fixated upon writing The Idle Warriors shortly before leaving for Atsugi. Thornley seems to have become especially fixated upon the book and Oswald in general despite only knowing LHO for a short time during their respective stay at El Toro.
Of course, Thornley latter claimed that he was the victim of mind control experiments. Some of his claims in this regard were especially outlandish, such as he and Oswald being part of a Nazi breeding experiment. But the possibility that Thornley something was done to the Thornley, especially during this juncture in his life, is not outside the realm of possibility in this researcher's opinion. Thornley's interest in Oswald seems to have roughly coincided with Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union, an act compelling evidence has emerged indicating that it was under the auspices of the CIA (as noted in part three). If Oswald was indeed meant to be some type of Manchurian defector a thinly-veiled biography of Oswald depicting him as a fanatical Marxist and written by one of his old Marine buddies would have surely had PR value in this regard.
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| Thornley |
“….Taylor just died last week. He was a very important witness who died a week before Helms was to testify. Rufus Taylor, Annapolis graduate, studied in Japan from 1938 to 1941, was a native of St. Louise, Missouri, and was with General Macarthur after the war in Japan. Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence for the entire Pacific fleet, he was in Japan from 1941 to 1959 and in Navy Intelligence at the time that Lee Oswald was over there in 1959 in the Philippines, at the Atsugi Air bases and was involved with the U2. Oswald served in the Marines with top secret security clearance at the time that Rufus was Pacific Intelligence Chief. Oswald went to the Soviet Union and Rufus went to Washington, D.C. Oswald said, 'I'm going to give away radar secrets.' Rufus then became the Director for Foreign Intelligence in the Soviet Union. Rufus was the Director of Navy Intelligence in 1963 up until the time Kennedy was killed - from 1963 to 1966. During 1967 through 1969, Rufus became the Deputy Director of the CIA--the number two post under Helms….When Richard Helms, former CIA chief, was questioned about Oswald's intelligence work, he said, ‘Why ask me? Call Navy Intelligence.’”
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| Admiral Rufus Taylor |
At this point it is time to take a step back and consider the subtle thread running through Oswald's various potential encounters with CIA medical experiments: Project Artichoke. Project Artichoke was not only linked to various locations Oswald encountered, but it also seems to have been the CIA's most extreme attempt to discover a from of "narco-hypnosis" capable of effecting a subject's mind to the extent of inducing total amnesia or even controlling the subject's actions. It was an ambitious project, to put it mildly, that was begun in late 1951.
"Project Artichoke was an ultra-secret program initiated in August 1951 upon the approval of CIA director Walter Bedell Smith and the Agency's Scientific Intelligence Director, Dr. H. Marshall Chadwell. The code name 'Artichoke' was selected with sardonic humor from the street appendage given to New York gangster Ciro Terranova, who was referred to as the 'Artichoke King'... Following a brief period of bureaucratic intra-Agency infighting over which CIA department would have jurisdiction over Artichoke, it was decided that the project would be overseen and directed by the Agency's Security Research Service (SRS), a component of the Office of Security headed by former Army Brigadier General Paul F. Gaynor, who had extensive expertise in wartime interrogations...
"Here it is important to note that the Artichoke Project originated from the CIA's short-lived Project Bluebird, which operated for about two years, 1949 to the summer of 1951, and primarily concentrated its efforts on former American POWs returned from the Korean War. The servicemen were placed as patients in several Army hospitals, including Valley Forge Hospital in Pennsylvania and the Walter Reed facility in Washington, D.C. There, former POWs were subjected to various 'behavioral modification' programs involving the use of experimental drugs, hypnosis, and special interrogation methods, all for what the CIA deemed 'offensive objectives.' Joining the CIA Project Bluebird as formal partners were the Army, Navy and Air Force. The FBI declined to participate in Bluebird.
"Reads one April 1951 Bluebird Project report:
The Navy's research efforts in regards to Bluebird objectives had actually begun in 1947, at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. There, according to the Navy's Bluebird designees, J. H. Alberti and Lt. Cmdr. Hardenburg, extensive experiments have been conducted using both drugs and medical aids (polygraph machines, surgical means, hypnotism). Besides Bethesda hospital, the Office of Naval Research conducted a project in partnership with the University of Indiana, which in essence [was] a search for valid indications of deception other than the mechanical indicators now being used.
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pgs. 168-169)
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| gangster Ciro Terranova, said to be the inspiration for the name of Project Artichoke |
Some of the first Bluebird experiments were conducted in Japan.
"Three months after the Director prove BLUEBIRD, the first team traveled to Japan to try out behavioral techniques on human subjects – probably suspected double agents. The three men arrived in Tokyo in July 1950, about a month after the start of the Korean War. No one needed to impress upon them the importance of their mission. The Security Office ordered them to conceal their true purpose from even the US military authorities with whom they worked in Japan, using the cover that they would be performing 'intensive polygraph' work. In stifling, debilitating heat and humidity, they tried out combinations of the depressant sodium amytal with the stimulant benzedrine on each of four subjects, the last two of whom also received a second stimulant, picrotoxin. They also tried to induce amnesia. The team considered the test successful, but the CIA documents available on the trip give only the sketchiest outline of what happened. Then around October 1950, the BLUEBIRD team used 'advanced' techniques on 25 subjects, apparently North Korean prisoners of war."
(The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate", John Marks, pg. 25)
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| a declassified record discussing Project Bluebird |
While Albarelli places the start date of Bluebird as some time in 1949 John Marks, in his classic (if somewhat dated) The Search of the "Manchurian Candidate", cites the approval date for the project as April 20, 1950. April 20th is the birthdate of Adolf Hitler and Der Fuhrer would have been sixty-one on that day had he survived the war. It's also interesting to note that the CIA Director who approved Bluebird was Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, who upon his retirement from the Navy in 1957 joined the board of directors of the National Investigative Committee on Aerial Phenomenon (NICAP). NICAP, as all die hard X-Files fans know, was one of the first organizations dedicated to studying and raising awareness of the UFO phenomenon.
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| Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter |
Let us now return to Bluebird's successor, Project Artichoke:
"In 1951, just weeks before Bluebird was renamed Artichoke, officials within the CIA's Security Office – working in tandem with cleared scienctists from Camp Detrick's Special Operations Division, who in turn worked closely with a select group of scientists from Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland – began a series of ultra-secret experiments with LSD, mescaline, peyote, anda synthesized substances (sometimes nicknamed 'Smasher'), which combined an 'LSD-like drug with pharmaceutical amphetamines and other enhancers.' Former Fort Detrick scientist, Dr. Gerald Yonetz, described the substance: 'It was like a rocket ship to Mars.'
"From its inception, Project Artichoke needed a steady supply of experimental subjects. Wrote CIA SRS chief Paul Gaynor in a never-before-revealed February 1953 memo: 'It is imperative that we move forward more aggressively on identifying and securing a more reliable, ready group, or groups, of human research subjects for ongoing Artichoke experimentation. There can be no delay in this extremely important work. [Emphasis added]
"Other CIA reports revealed that the CIA's SRS was not sitting idly by while awaiting the recruitment of groups of human subjects. Teams of agency officials and contract physicians were traveling frequently to locations in Europe and the Far East, including Atsugi, Japan, where in the isolation of CIA and military safe houses and installations, enhanced interrogations and mind-control experiments were being conducted on defectors, double-agents, and kidnapped foreign agents. Reads a November 1956 Artichoke team report the could have easily been written today at Guantanamo, Cuba: 'The team physician administered a suppository containing a small amount of heroin to the subject so as to increase subject's pain threshold...'
"In September 1953, Artichoke Project director Morse Allen, Paul Gaynor's deputy and a former Naval intelligence officer and State Department employee, hand-carried a two-page memorandum to SRS chief Gaynor. The memo bears the subject: 'Artichoke Research Program. It reads in part:
[T]here are some four thousand (4,000) American military men who are serving court martial sentences in the federal prisons at the present time. These men are scattered throughout the federal institutions according to their age – some being at reformatories, others at prisons. It is administratively possible that the sentences of these men can be reduced by director of the Adjutant General's office. Therefore, if these men should be wanted for work on a dangerous research project, it might be possible to motivate their interest by promising that recommendations would be made to the Adjutant General's office to have their sentences appropriately reduced if they co-operated in the experimentation. Also, many offenses of military men were committed in circumstances which might tend to lessen the feeling of guilt on the part of the individual and such cases might reveal interesting information.
"Allen next suggested that federal prisons 'that have hospital setups with doctors on the permanent staff' be used for experiments. Wrote Allen: 'Such things as the size of the institution and current population have to be considered, but it is a fact that the federal prisons are not overcrowded, as is the case with many state prisons, thus it would be much easier to obtain working space in a federal institution.' Proposed Allen: 'Artichoke teams secretly working in the prisons could be passed off as coming from nearby universities or research institutions.' About a week later, Allen amended his proposal to include 'federal hospitals and institutions under the control of the [U.S.] Public Health Service.
"Paul Gaynor promptly approved Allen's recommendations, ordering that immediate efforts be made to implement them. Within a few weeks, progress reports concerning the conduct of experiments at three federal prisons, as well as extended work at a reformatory in Bordentown, New Jersey, were submitted to Gaynor and the Artichoke Committee. Experiments were also conducted at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., a Veterans Administration hospital in Detroit, Michigan, and at the Federal Narcotics Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. Experiments of the Narcotics Farm, somewhat romanticized in some current publications, were specifically targeted at African-American inmates, who were considered by the program's director to be inferior to white inmates at the facility.
"From 1951 to about 1963, when the Artichoke Program was revamped and renamed, a primary project objective, according to several Artichoke documents, centered on ' .... ascertaining whether effective and practical techniques exist, or could be developed, which could be utilized to render an individual subservient to an imposed will or control, thereby posing a potential threat to National Security.' [Emphasis added]
"The same documents explained that the CIA also wanted to put the same techniques to their own effective uses in the field offensively. Reads one document: 'We need to also explore the subtle means of making an individual say or do things he would normally not consider through the use of covertly administered drugs, 'Black psychiatry', hypnosis, and brain damaging processes. Dr. Chadwell feels these processes may be tried, but they are elaborate, impractical and unnecessary'..."
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli Jr., pgs. 169-171)
Another point that needs to be made about Project Artichoke is its relationship, or lack therefore of, to the far better known Project MKULTRA.
"Also, contrary to popular belief and numerous publications and articles, the MKULTRA series of projects – there were 144 in all – did not replace Project Artichoke. Instead, the two projects operated concurrently. In 1998 Sidney Gottlieb had described the relationship between the two projects, as stated earlier:
[TSS], represented either by myself or Bob Lashbrook, would routinely do MKULTRA briefings at Artichoke Conferences, at least until about 1958 or perhaps later. I'm not sure when Artichoke was phased out or replaced, but it never was placed under the MKULTRA umbrella or folded in as a subproject.
(A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., 283)This is especially significant when considering the above-mentioned MKULTRA director Sidney Gottlieb's long time denials that the project was especially concerned with mind control. Consider, for instance, his statements to journalist Dick Russell on the matter:
"I brought up a statement attributed to Dr. Milton Kline, a prominent New York hypnotherapist who once did some consultancy work for the CIA. It appeared in John Marks' book about the CIA's behavior experiments, The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate". Marks had postulated a 'programmed "patsy" whom a hypnotist could walk through a series of seemingly unrelated events,' being 'amnesic only for the fact the hypnotist ordered him to do these things.... The purpose of this exercise is to leave a circumstantial trail that will make the authorities think the patsy committed a particular crime.' Hypnosis expert Kline, according to Marks, 'says he could create a patsy in three months; an assassin would take him six.'
"Gottlieb sat quietly in his chair, then said: 'There are a couple of relevant things I think your after that I want to say about hypnosis. It was never, ever seriously researched by us. We were just keeping in touch with these people, sort of a light brush, in case our instincts were wrong. Now I will say there are people who want to be spies and do terrible things, and they're just looking for framework to do that...'"
(On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Dick Russell, pg. 243)
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| Sidney Gottlieb |
With this in mind, let us now turn our attention to two of the key figures behind Artichoke and their backgrounds, as they are most relevant to the topic of the JFK assassination. The first one I shall address, naturally, is Morse Allen, who was involved with project when it was still Bluebird.
"... Allen had spent most of his earlier career rooting out the domestic communist threat, starting in the late 1930s, when he had joined the Civil Service Commission and set up its first security files on communist. ('He knows their methods,' wrote a CIA colleague.) During World War II, Allen had served with Naval intelligence, first pursuing leftists in New York and then landing with the Marines at Okinawa. After the war, he went to the State Department, only to leave in the late 1940s because he felt the Department was whitewashing certain communist cases. He soon joined the CIA's Office of Security. A suspicious man by inclination and training, Allen took nothing at face value. Like all counterintelligence or security operators, his job was to show why things are not what they seem to be. He was always thinking ahead and behind, punching holes in surface realities. Allen had no academic training for behavioral research (although he did take a short course in hypnotism, a subject the fascinated him). He saw the BLUEBIRD job as one that called for studying every last method the communists might use against the United States and figure out ways to counter them."
(The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate", John Marks, pg. 26)
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| Allen is yet another figure in this saga connected to the ONI |
"In late 1998, when this author interviewed Dr. Sidney Gottlieb... the former Technical Services Division chief said, 'Yes, I have some trace memories of the project. I think he began before MK/ULTRA was approved... With an unrelated program Morse Allen initiated around [Dr. Andrija] Puharich's work. It was never a formally sanctioned TSD program, but we were interested and [Dr. Henry] Bortner stayed with it for a while... It was one of those projects that would be greatly misunderstood today.'"
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli Jr., pg. 43)The above-mentioned program was a project of Artichoke's involving "the training of small cadres of women for work for work as Agency and military couriers, as well as young girls and teenagers for mostly unknown objectives related to the CIA's interest in hypnosis, slight-of-hand, and telekinesis" (ibid, pg. 42). The reader has of course already encountered the above-mentioned Andrija Puharich in the first installment of this series. For our purposes here, in brief: Puharich was a close associate of Arthur Young, the stepfather/father-in-law to Michael and Ruth Paine, the couple the Oswalds befriended upon their return to the United States. The records of both Paines reveal strong indications of ties to the US intelligence community.
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| Ruth and Michael Paine |
Later on both Puharich and Young would have an enormous influence on the New Age movement. They would also claim to have participated in a bizarre séance in the early 1950s along with the offspring of several Boston Brahmin families (including Michael Paine's father, Ruth Forbes Paine/Young) in which the participants were contacted by a nonhuman intelligence claiming to be both the Grand Ennead of ancient Egypt as well as extraterrestrial beings. These entities are generally referred to as The Nine. More information can be found on Puharich and this bizarre episode here and here.
Its also interesting to note that Puharich conducted his own bizarre experiments on "exceptional" children, which he dubbed the "Space Kids," in the 1970s. One of his assistants in this endeavor for a time was Ira Einhorn, an environmental activist and counterculture mover and shaker who was convicted of murdering his longtime girlfriend Holly Maddux in absentia in 1993 (the actual murder likely occurred some time in 1977). But so much for Puharich.
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| Puharich |
"Gaynor was notorious among CIA officials for having his staff maintain a systematic file on every homosexual, and suspected homosexual, among the ranks of Federal employees, as well as those who worked and served on Washington's Capitol Hill. Gaynor's secret listing eventually grew to include the names of employees and elected officials at State government levels, and the siblings and relatives of those on Capitol Hill.
"In early January 1953, State Department employee John C. Montgomery, who handled considerable classified material, hanged himself in his Georgetown townhouse after learning of his addition to Gaynor's list. In 1954, U.S. Senator Lester C. Hunt (D-WY) killed himself in his senate office after he was threatened by Republicans, using information provided by Gaynor's staff, to publicly expose his son's homosexuality. By the early 1960s, according to one former Agency employee, 'It was pretty much routine to consult Gaynor's "fag file" when conducting background or clearance checks on individuals.'
"Gaynor's veiled and more despicable activities also extended to racist matters, a fixation he seemed to share with many of the CIA's early leaders, as well as with some of the Pentagon's early ranking officials. According to one former CIA official, Gaynor was once informally cautioned by Allen Dulles concerning his overt support of former Congressman Hamilton Fish III, a strident Nazi sympathizer, and for associating, along with fellow CIA official Morse Allen, with John B. Trevor Jr., an ardent racist, anti-Semite, pro-Nazi, who called for amnesty for Nazi war criminals. Before the CIA was formed, Gaynor was also associated with Trevor's father, John B. Trevor Sr., a Harvard-educated attorney who worked with Army intelligence and who once strongly advocated arming a group of citizens with 6,000 rifles and machine guns to put down an anticipated Jewish uprising in Manhattan that only took shape in Trevor's twisted mind.
"In 1997, former CIA Technical Services chief, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, who had been born into a Jewish family, said, 'Throughout the 1950s, and for some time beyond, the Agency was less than a welcoming place for Jews and racial minorities. Those who were actually ever hired or involved in operations learned rather quickly to keep their heads down when certain matters were discussed or rallied round.'
"Here it should be emphasized that inevitably lurking within, near, and around all of the CIA's early mind-control experiments was a strong element of racism that generally manifested itself through the Agency's principle objective of establishing control over the perceived 'weaker' and 'less intelligent' segments of society. That the CIA's initial mind control activities show a close kinship with many prominent characters within the racist and anti-immigration eugenics movement is no coincidence. Thus comprised was the central leadership of the CIA's Project Artichoke."
Regular readers of this blog should have raised eyebrows when noting the friendship both Morse Allen and Paul Gaynor had with John Trevor Jr. The Trevor Jr. was the head of the American Coalition of Patriot Societies, an organization founded by his father (who, as noted above, was a military intelligence officer) in the 1920s. The ACPS had been one the first super patriot groups to craft intelligence network geared toward monitoring "subversives." Trevor would continue his father's work and much more via the ACPS well into the second half of the twentieth century.
"Upon his father's death in 1956, Trevor Jr. took control of the coalition. Despite its own indictment for sedition during the war, the organization was concerned about a long list of 'subversive' institutions and activities. In regular resolutions, which were read into the Congressional Record and used in attempts to influence national legislation, the coalition expressed its opposition not only to any attempt to 'undermine' the immigration laws by admitting more 'aliens' or relaxing requirements for deportation, but also to arms negotiations, membership in the United Nations and its very presence on 'American territory,' diplomatic relations with the USSR, NATO-sponsored conventions to promote 'greater political and economic cooperation,' display of the Panamanian flag in the Canal Zone, fluoridation of public water supplies, the National Council of Churches, and the World Federation of Mental Health, whose purpose was the destruction of 'our form of government and our American Way of Life.' One of the coalition's official spokespersons who presented its resolution to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs was General Pedro Del Valle..."
(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William Tucker, pgs. 61-62)
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| General Pedro del Valle |
In the 1950s both Trevors would become involved with the founding of the American Security Council (ASC), a powerful far right lobby group that served as the "voice" of the military-industrial complex as well as managing a vast intelligence apparatus involved in industrial security. Much more information on the ASC can be found here, here, here and here.
Trevor would eventually become a member of the ASC's board of directors while the ACPS would remain on the ASC's Coalition for Peace Through Strength for decades. As noted before here, Charles Willoughby was also involved with the ASC. Paul Gaynor may also have had ties to the ASC as well via his association with Lee Pennington, a former FBI agent who became involved with industrial security first with the American Legion and later with the ASC.
Its also interesting to note that Trevor Jr. was the longtime secretary of the Pioneer Fund, the notorious non-profit organization responsible for much of the post-WWII research involving eugenics in the United States. The Pioneer Fund was founded by Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper, a former military intelligence officer who was the long time financial patron of Trevor Jr. As noted in part two of this series, New Orleans private detective Guy Banister had indirect links to Draper via the State Sovereignty Commission (an organization chiefly funded by Draper) and Senator James Eastland, of whose Senate Internal Security Sub-Committee Banister was involved with and who (Eastman) disrupted money for another of Draper's funds.
Draper was involved with numerous far right and racist projects, including the Holocaust revision movement (of which he was one of the chief financial patrons of) as well as the Liberty Lobby. Draper was the offspring of prominent families from both New England and the Antebellum South and had a generous trust fund managed by the Morgan Guaranty Trust as well as ownership of the Draper Corporation. One of his relations, William Draper III, was a Skull and Bonesman and close friend of George H.W. Bush. Much more information on Draper can be found here.
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| Draper |
"... William B. Reily, an avid anti-Communist, owned the Reily Coffee Company and was closely connected to McCarthyite and rabid anti-Communist Edward Scannell Butler, who were both close to CIA assistant director Charles Cabell, CIA SRS chief Paul Gaynor, and Agency ARTICHOKE official Morse Allen. Readers may recall that alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald also worked as a maintenance man for the Reily Coffee Company in the summer of 1963."
(A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli Jr., pg. 428)As noted before in the second installment of this series, both William B. Reily and Edward Butler were involved with the Information Council of the Americas (INCA), Reily as a financial supporter and Butler as the Executive Director of the organization. Oswald would famously debate Marxism and Cuba with Butler and anti-Castro Cuban Carlos Bringuier on the Bill Stuckey Radio Show (a program affiliated with the INCA) in August of 1963.
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| Butler |
Cabell was appointed as Deputy Director of the CIA in 1953. He was a major proponent of the U-2 spy plane, but was involved in host of questionable activities. When the Bay of Pigs became a debacle Cabell got the axe along with CIA Director Allen Dulles. "Incidentally," Cabell's brother, Earle, was mayor of Dallas, Texas at the time of the Kennedy assassination.
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| General Charles Cabell |
That being said, this research is not especially convinced that Oswald was working under the influence of the Artichoke treatment or some like procedure, though he may well have been subjected to it. On the whole, Oswald's behavior seems to complex to fit the almost trance-like behavior often associated with cases in which narco-hypnosis may have been employed. Beyond this, the swiftness with which Oswald was dispatched of once he was in custody seems to indicate that someone was worried about what he might eventually say. Amnesia was another mental state the Artichoke treatment (and various other behavioral modification projects sponsored by the CIA and Pentagon) sought to invoke.
Several of the figures surrounding Oswald are more compelling in this regards. As noted above, Kerry Thornley seems to have developed a curious fixation on the notion of Oswald as a fanatical Marxist at times when such a proclamation (i.e. during Oswald's defection and later in the midst of the Warren Commission investigation) was highly beneficial to elements within the US intelligence community. In this research's opinion, the possibility that some type of hypnotic suggestion was used on Thornley in regards to creating a certain perception of Oswald cannot be discounted. Even Thornley himself came to suspect something of this nature, though this researcher finds most of his claims in this regard (noted in part two) rather outlandish, to put it mildly. But more than a few of Thornley acquaintances over the years came to believe that something had been done to Thornley either during his time in the military or New Orleans (or in both).
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| a young Thornley |
The Internet is of course littered with accounts of mind controlled sex slaves engaged in prostitution rings dealing with high end clientele. This researcher does not discount the possibility that Cherami was subjected to the Artichoke treatment or some other such procedure but in this case he suspects that it would have been as a means of inducing amnesia. In general, Recluse does not find the idea of mind controlled sex slaves especially compelling --If Cherami is any indication, it is far easy to kill women engaged in VIP prostitution rather than subject them to some elaborate behavioral modification attempt if they decide to speak out.
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| Rose Cherami during better days |
"Ruby, a known associate of both the police and the mob, was ubiquitous in the post-assassination scene. When D.A. Henry Wade informed reporters that Oswald belonged to the Free Cuba Committee, an anti-Castro organization, it was Ruby who corrected the statement to be Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
"Ruby's roommate, George Senator, observed that the way he talked seemed very strange on the morning of Sunday, November 24. 'He was even mumbling, which I didn't understand,' Senator would tell the Warren Commission. 'His lips were going. What he was jabbering, I don't know. Watching Ruby get dressed, Senator felt that 'he sure had a moody and very faraway look to me. It was a look that I had never seen before on him.'
"One of Ruby's strippers, Karen Carlin, spoke to her boss that morning on the phone. 'I had to keep saying, "Jack, Jack, are you there?" and he would say, "Yes".'"
"Shortly before eleven o'clock that morning, Ruby left his apartment, casually joined a crowd of policemen and reporters in the basement, and as the accused assassin was led into the piercing glare of TV lights towards a waiting car, cried out 'Oswald!' and pumped a single deadly bullet into his abdomen.
"Taken to the same jail cell vacated by Oswald early that morning, Ruby asked the police: 'What happened?' From that point on, he exhibited an inability to recall his shooting of Oswald with any clarity. Don Roy Archer, the detective charged with placing Ruby in jail, would remember:
"'His behavior to begin with, was very hyper. He was sweating profusely. I could see his heart beating. We had stripped him down for security purposes. He asked me for one of my cigarettes. I gave him a cigarette. Finally, after about two hours had elapsed the head of the Secret Service came up and conferred with him and told me that Oswald had died.
"'This should have shocked [Ruby] because it would mean the death penalty. I returned and said, "Jack, it looks like it's going to be the electric chair for you." Instead of being shocked, he became calm, he quit sweating, his heart slowed down. I asked if he wanted a cigarette. He advised me he didn't smoke. I was just astonished at this complete difference of behavior from what I had expected. I would say his life had depended on him getting Oswald.'
"Ruby's first attorney, Joe Tanahill, told biographer Seth Kantor that 'Ruby could have been used by others. It wouldn't have been any problem to reach in and get Ruby to do something like this, through the power of suggestion, through innuendo, without Ruby even realizing it.
"An unsigned psychiatric report dated December 27, 1963, stated: 'There seems to be no feeling of guilt whatever on the patient's part about the slating of Oswald. He seems to fill that it was some agent outside of himself that carried out the act.'
"Before the fifty-two-year-old Ruby was convicted of murder on March 14, 1964, a number of psychiatrist offered their expert diagnosis of his medical condition. In his report, Dr. Walter Bromberg stated that Ruby seemed 'pre-set to be a fighter, to attack,' and added: 'definitely there is a block to his thinking, which is not part of his original mental endowment.'
"Dr. Roy Schafer of Yale testified at the trial that Ruby 'appears to feel not altogether in control of his body actions, as if they occur independently of his conscious will at times.'
"A leading criminal psychologist, Dr. Manfred Guttmacher, testified that he believed Ruby's brain had been 'damaged,' but he could not figure out exactly how. At the time of the shooting, Guttmacher believed, Ruby had suffered a 'functional psychosis.' Asked by Assistant D.A. Alexander, whether, by that, he meant 'a psychotic condition for which there is no known organic cause,' Guttmacher responded, 'Yes.'
"On April 29, 1964, Dr. Louis J. (Jolly) West came to the Dallas County Jail to examine Ruby. This took place in a private interview room where, according to West, Ruby appeared 'pale, tremulous, agitated and depressed.' His opinion was that 'at this time Mr. Ruby is obviously psychotic.' He had sunk into a paranoid state, manifested by delusions, visual and auditory hallucinations, and suicidal impulses. West urged his immediate hospitalization, making him eligible for treatment for a mental disorder, and another doctor soon put Ruby on 'happy pills.'
"The next day, another doctor named Robert Stubblefield, chief of the Psychiatric Department at Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, also came to see Ruby. Although he testified that Ruby was sane enough to stand trial, Stubblefield later advised the court that Ruby seemed 'currently severely emotionally disturbed, with major paranoid and depressive features.'
"After that, during Ruby's testimony before the Warren Commission on June 7, 1964, he rambled continually, apparently unable to follow any logical time sequence concerning his movements in the nearly 48 hours between the assassination and his murder of Oswald. At one point, Ruby, said, '... and it seems as you get further into something, even though you know what you did, it operates against you. Somehow, brain washes you that you are weak in what you want to tell the truth about and what to say which is the truth.'"
(On the Trail of JFK Assassins, Dick Russell, pgs. 269-271)
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| Ruby |
"On June 7, 1964, Jack Ruby was questioned jail in Dallas, Texas, by Earl Warren and Gerald Ford. In that session Ruby continuously pleaded for a lie-detector test, or for sodium pentothal. He desperately wanted to prove his honesty so that Warren and the commission would know he was telling the truth.
"Said Ruby: 'I would like to be able to get a lie-detector test or truth serum of what motivated me to do what I did at that particular time, and it seems as you get further into something, even though you know what you did, it operates against you somehow, brainwashes you, that you are weak in what you want to tell the truth about, and what you want to say which is the truth...'
"He pleaded with Warren to be taken to Washington where he could be questioned in safety. Possibly either his control agent was in the room, or Ruby felt that he was, for again and again he hinted to Warren that he had something quite important say but could not say it at that moment in Dallas.
"'Gentlemen, unless you get me to Washington you can't get a fair shake out of me. If you understand my way of talking, you have to bring me to Washington to get the tests. Do I sound dramatic? Off the beam?'
"'No, you're speaking very, very rationally,' Warren replied, 'and I'm really surprised you can remember as much as you have remembered up to the present time. You have given it to us in great detail.'
"Again Ruby pleaded with Warren, 'Unless you can get me to Washington, and I am not a crackpot, I have all my senses – I don't want to evade any crimes I'm guilty of.' Then Ruby asked that the sheriff and the law enforcement officers leave the room, and after they were gone he said, 'Gentlemen, if you want to hear any further testimony, you will have to get me to Washington soon, because it has something to do with you, Chief Warren. Do I sound sober enough to tell you this?'
"'Yes, go right ahead,' Warren said.
"'I would like to talk to you in private,' Ruby told him.
"Warren seemed to miss the importance of Ruby's statement..."
(Operation Mind Control, Walter Bowart, pgs. 197-198)
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| Earl Warren |
Several individuals surrounding Ruby seem to have been involved in the CIA's behavioral modification programs, most notably during his incarceration for murdering Oswald.
"Still unknown to the public at the time, West had been a longtime participant in the CIA's MKULTRA program. A CIA memo on 'Interrogation Techniques,' dated January 14, 1953, reported; 'If the services of Major Louis J. West, USAF (MC), a trained hypnotist, can be obtained... a well-balance interrogation research center could be established in an especially selected location.'
"After supervising studies of returning POWs from the Korean War for the Air Force to determine whether they had been 'brainwashed,' West became chief of psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma (1954-69). There, CIA Subproject, 43, was under West aegis between 1955 and 1957, where he was 'cleared through TOP-SECRET,' according to Agency files. Included among West's experiments was one with hypnotic suggestion indicating 'that more control can be exerted over the autonomic nervous system than has been previously supposed.'
"During the early 1960s, West conducted animal research using LSD. Indeed, Aldous Huxley reported that West was the doctor who first introduced him to the hallucinogenic drug, at a time when West was simultaneously doing research with hypnosis and mescaline. In 1961, Huxley said West informed him that he was now experimenting with sensory deprivation and had some of the best facilities available.
"Reportedly, Dr. Stubblefield, the man who visited Ruby the day after West in the spring of 1964, had also been associated with LSD research in the CIA's MK/ULTRA program."
(On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Dick Russell, pgs. 271-272)
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| Major Louis J. West |
Ruby also seems to have had contact with one individual, a stage magician, prior to the assassination and his murder of Oswald who was involved in the CIA's behavior modification experiments.
"Ronald Dante: some readers may recall that Dante was also known as 'Dr. Dante,' a well known hypnotist and stage performer, whom Jack Ruby met with in New York City, prior to the assassination, in August 1963. Ruby apparently, according to Warren Commission documents and reports, knew Dr. Dante well. Dante was also known as Ronald Pellar, possibly his real name, although he employed numerous aliases, including Philip Harris, Earl James Clevenger, Harold Ritchie, and Harold James Hood. A 1956 CIA SRS-OS memorandum reveals that the Agency in May of that year discussed requesting that CIA-contractor Dr. Louis West interview Ronald Pellar in order to assess his potential usefulness in matters related to Project Artichoke. Asked about his possible relationship to the CIA in 2006, an 87-year-old Pellar said, 'I've lived this long fairly well and hope to survive another decade or more, so no comment on that.' In the mid-1970s, Pellar was convicted of attempting to murder a rival hypnotist, Michael Dean, a well-known California hypnotist Pellar had known for over 15 years. Pellar served about four years in prison for trying to hire a hit-man to kill Dean. People who knew Pellar well claimed that he was an extraordinary hypnotist who could induce a subject to do anything while in a trance. After being released from prison, Pellar continued to perform and to teach hypnotism, and also created what he said was the very first 'permanent-makeup business in the world.' Said Pellar, 'I made over $14 million doing permanent makeup.' Pellar claimed that he was born in 1920 in Malaysia and, after his parents were murdered when he was 5 years old, grew up in a Chicago orphanage, until he was 11 years old, when he walked away from the orphanage and soon learned hypnotism. He also organized a number business ventures. A number of Pellar's former associates claim that he visited Jack Ruby in prison on at least two occasions, but this author was unable to verify this. The Warren Commission reported Ruby's contacts with 'Dr. Dante' in 1963, but apparently made no attempts to discover Dante's real name or any information about him."
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pg. 450n)
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| Dante/Pellar |
The answer may be that neither – the Syndicate or the Hunt family – were actually involved in the plot to murder Kennedy. Researcher Joan Mellen makes an especially compelling case for the innocence of the Hunt family in relation to the Kennedy assassination in her essay "H.L. Hunt & Sons and CIA" (which can be found as an addendum to her Our Man in Haiti).
However, it is likely that both the Syndicate or the Hunts were associated with people who had been involved in the assassination and were in a position to reveal this involvement. This is especially likely in the case of Hunt Oil "agent" Charles Willoughby, who (possibly along with Paul Rothermel) was likely being used by the CIA (or another branch of US intelligence) to "watch over" the vast Hunt oil empire for his masters. Robert Maheu performed a similar service for the US intelligence community in relation to the business empire of Howard Hughes, who long denied being aware of the CIA's extensive use of his holdings. While the Hunt family were surely more mentally stable than Hughes, their empire was equally vast and would have provided adequate cover for any number of nefarious activities Willoughby may have devised. Further, the use of Ruby could also drawn attention to their dealings with organized crime, an allegation that would have been especially damaging to Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt.
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| H.L. Hunt, founder of the Hunt dynasty |
And it is here that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I shall turn my attention to the extreme high weirdness surrounding the assassination in relation to the bizarre secret societies and cults that appear throughout the tragedy. Stay tuned.
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