Welcome to the fifth installment in my examination of the
assassination of JFK.
Over the course of the first two parts of this series I considered the
strange individuals and happenings in the two areas of the country --
Dallas/Fort Worth (examined in
part one) and
New Orleans (
part two) --that
Oswald resided in leading up to the assassination. In the
third installment I pulled things back a bit and considered the potential plotters behind the assassination. In the
most recent installment I considered the curious links the JFK assassination and plotters had to the
Project Artichoke.
And with that out of the way let us now consider the purpose of this
installment: Here I am going to focus in on the bizarre secrets
societies surrounding the JFK assassination, for they are legion. Of
course, conspiracy culture is littered with references to secret
societies implicated in the Kennedy assassination, the most common of
which being the
Freemasons.
James Shelby Downard and hardline traditionalist Catholic
Michael A. Hoffman II famously argued that the Kennedy assassination is a re-enactment of the ancient "
Killing of the Divine King" rite that Sir
James George Frazer based the legendary mythology study
The Golden Bough around.
The Internet is of course littered with accounts of the Killing of the
King and Masonic involvement in the assassination and as such I will not
concern myself with it here. For those of you who have somehow not
stumbled upon the Dowanardian interruption of the assassination a copy
of the essay "King Kill 33" in which this concept was first addressed at
length can be found
here. The famed cryptozoologist
Loren Coleman recently published an excellent outline of the Masonic implications of the Kennedy assassination as well, which can be found
here.
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| the legendary James Shelby Downard |
With the Masons now accounted for let us move along to another longtime whipping boy of the conspiratorial right:
Skull and Bones.
Founded in 1832 by
William Huntington Russell and
Alphonso Taft (whose son, fellow Bonesman
William Howard Taft, would become the twenty-seventh president of the United States and, later, a
Supreme Court Justice),
Skull and Bones claimed to be the first American chapter of a
mysterious of German secret society that has never been revealed.
Conspiracy theorists have long alleged that there is a link between
Skull and Bones and the infamous
Bavarian Illuminati, but most credible accounts of the Illuminati indicate that it had been defunct decades before the founding of Skull and Bones.
It is interesting to note, however, that the order's symbol --the skull
and crossbones --was used frequently by various German paramilitary
organizations as earlier as the eighteenth century. The symbol, called
the
totenkopf, was first used by the
Prussian army via a Hussar regiment during the
War of the Austrian Succession. Prussian and
Brunswick armies continued to use the
totenkopf up until the end of the
First World War in 1918.
 |
| a Prussian Hussar displaying the totenkopf on his uniform |
Afterwards and throughout the interwar period the
totenkopf was used by the
Freikorps, paramilitary units comprised primarily of World War I veterans who combated communist forces (sometimes in full scale
pitched battles) throughout Germany during the
Weimar Republic days. When the Nazi regime came to power, the
totenkopf was infamously adopted by the
SS to be the order's insignia. Bizarrely, the
totenkopf was also adopted by several
White Russian
regiments as well. As we have seen through out this series and earlier
ones, White Russians seem to appear frequently amongst far right circles
from the early to mid-twentieth century (and sometimes beyond). But so
much for the
totenkopf.
 |
| a Freikorps member displaying the totenkopf (above) and one of the death's head rings (bottom) all SS men were given upon being initiated into the order |
As was examined in the third installment of this series, several of the
major participants in the assassination plot (in both the upper and
lower levels) seem to have also been involved in drug trafficking,
especially heroin. Skull and Bones has of course been linked to the
opium trade as a result of the order's co-founder, the above-mentioned
William Huntington Russell. Russell came from a wealthy family that was
reputed to have been deeply involved in the opium trade. This business
was managed through
Russell & Company, the largest American trading house in China for much of the second half of the nineteenth century.
"Russell & Co. was the largest American opium smuggler, and the
third largest in the world, behind the British Dent firm and the largest
smuggler of all, the Scottish merchants Jardine-Matheson. For many
years. Russell a& Co and Jardine-Matheson worked together and were
known as the 'Combination.' They virtually controlled the trade,
manipulating market forces towards maximizing profits.
"Russell & Co. was started in 1824 by Samuel Russell, of Middletown,
Connecticut. In 1828 it 'absorbed' the T. H. Perkins opium concern of
Boston and became America's dominant force in China. Russell &
Co. was very much family affair, with uncles, cousins, brothers, fathers
and sons dominating the firm and its allied banks and fronts.
"The Russell was family steeped in Yale College history. The Rev. Nodiah
Russell was a Yale founder. And in 1832, General William Huntington
Russell, Samuel Russell's cousin, founded one of the US' most famous
secret societies: the Order of Skull and Bones, along with Alphonso
Taft., Taft's son, future President William Howard Taft (S &
B 1878), would play many roles in the creation of international
narcotics controls and the US Drug War."
(Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, "Black Market Bones," Kris Millegan, pg. 153)
 |
| William Huntington Russell |
William Huntington Russell would later go on, along with fellow Bonesman
Daniel Coit Gilman, to establish the
Russell Trust Association
for Skull and Bones. Because of his family's extensive dealings in the
opium trade (as well as the dealings of other notable New England
families who also ended up in Skull and Bones) it has been presumed that
opium money was used to establish the trust, an assertion certainly not
without merit. What's more, over a century later certain powerful
Bonesmen would continue to be implicated in drug trafficking.
Before moving alone to the Bonesmen involved in the Kennedy assassination, there's a curious synchronicity concerning
Dealey Plaza
that warrants mentioning. Dealey Plaza is of course the location where
JFK was assassinated. According to the Masonic interpretation of the
assassination put forth by James Shelby Downard and Michael A. Hoffman,
the latitude line upon which the killing occurred is significant because
Dallas is located at the
thirty-third parallel north. Thirty-three is the number of the highest grade that can be attained in
Scottish Rite Freemasonry
and is generally alleged to be highly significant to Masonry. For this
reason, some have alleged that many sinister acts are deliberately
committed on or near the thirty-third parallel north, as noted before
here.
While this is an interesting observation, there is one problem: Dallas
is not located at the thirty-third parallel. Rather, it is upon the
thirty-second,
which may well be even more significant. As conspiracy buffs are well
aware, the number 322 is highly significant to Skull and Bones
(sometimes the Order is known simply as Chapter 322). The significance
of this number has long puzzled conspiracy researchers.
"What is the significance of the '322' in Chapter 322? William Russell
imported the society from Germany and so it has been argued the 322
stands for '32 (from 1832), the second chapter, of this
German organization. Possibly a chapter 320 and a chapter 321 may exist
somewhere and 323 is the designation of a room within the Skull and
Bones temple at Yale.
"Another interpretation is that the Order is descended from a Greek
fraternal society dating back to Demosthenes in 322 B.C. This has
perhaps some credibility because Bones records are dated by adding 322
to the current year, i.e. records originating in 1950 are dated Anno -
Demostheni 2272."
(America's Secret Establishment, Anthony C. Sutton, pg. 6)
The number 32 in and of itself is sometimes thought to be used as a
stand in for 322, possibly because the Order was founded in 1832, as
noted above. So perhaps the assassination occurring at the third-second
parallel north had a more precise meaning that the long revered Masonic
interpretation. But moving along.
As to the Kennedy assassination, families linked to Skull and Bones appear throughout. This is most notable in the case of
Michael Paine, the
Bell Helicopter employee who befriended, along with his wife
Ruth, the Oswalds in the Dallas/Forth Worth area upon their return to the United States from the Soviet Union. As noted in the
first installment of this series, Michael Paine was related to three prominent New England families: the
Paines, the
Forbes, and the
Cabots. Both the Paine and Forbes families have their ranks represented in Skull and Bones.
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| Ruth and Michael Paine |
Another figure that lurks in the backdrop of the assassination with ties to Skull and Bones is Colonel
Wickliffe Preston Draper. Draper is most well known today as the founder of the
Pioneer Fund,
a nonprofit organization that became the chief sponsor of
eugenics-based research in the post-World War II era. Draper, the
offspring of wealthy New England and Antebellum South dynasties, was
also a major backer of the
Liberty Lobby,
Holocaust revisionism, and the anti-desegregation movement in the America South in the post-
Brown v. Board of Education era. It is possibly that through the latter Draper may have had ties to
Guy Banister, the New Orleans-based private detective long linked to the assassination. As noted in the
second installment
of this series, Banister was a member of the State Sovereignty
Committee, an anti-desegregation organization chiefly funded by Draper.
Banister may also have had links to Draper via his ties to Senator
James Eastland, who distributed money for a fund established by Draper. At least two of Draper's relations, Arthur Joy Draper and
William Henry Draper III, were members of Skull and Bones.
 |
| Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper |
Probably the most commonly linked Bonesman to the assassination was
George H.W. Bush,
the eventual forty-first president of these United States. Along the
way Bush also played the part of an oil tycoon, the director of the
CIA and the vice-President. Many researchers believe that Bush I's ties
to the
US intelligence community
began well before he assumed the directorship of the CIA. There have
long been rumblings of Bush I's dealings in the illegal drug trade as
well, especially during the 1980s.
"... It is significant to note that Bush is the only figure in public
life who has been a key player in the drug wars of three
administrations.
"In 1971 Bush was first brought into the anti-drug war by Richard Nixon,
who appointed him to the White House Cabinet Committee on International
Narcotics Control. This 'war' proved useful for Nixon as a cover for
the White House plumbers and the other hijinks that ended in Watergate.
It was also useful for the CIA, which tucked its agents under deep cover
in the Drug Enforcement Agency and thus tasted the forbidden fruit of
domestic operations – like assassination plots and wide-scale electronic
eavesdropping. And there were the CIA-favored drug traffickers who
enjoyed a certain immunity as long as they did the agency's bidding...
"Thus began the second phase of George Bush's war on drugs. Once in
office President Reagan began his holy war against the Sandinistas. He
put Vice President Bush in charge of the War on Drugs and the
War on Terrorism, and the cowboys enjoyed a magnificent restoration.
Under Bush's dual commands the CIA's airlines began to fly again; the
Miami station, once the biggest spy post in the world during the
anti-Castro plots of the sixties, was retrofitted; Noriega was put back
on the payroll; and in the name of helping the Contras, the ineffable
exceptions to the crackdown on drug traffickers were made. The war
on drugs again provided cover for the pursuit of certain foreign policy
goals.
"The CIA's history of cooperating with drug-dealing nations for Cold War
purposes has been described as early as 1972, in Alfred McCoy's classic
study, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, which
detailed the agency's role in the heroin kingdoms of the Golden Triangle
– Laos, Burma, and Thailand. In a more contemporary example, on May 13,
1990, the Washington Post front-paged a story detailing the
Bush administration's failure to act on persistent reports of drug
trafficking among U.S.-backed factions in the Afghan civil war. 'The
U.S. government has for several years received, but declined to
investigate, reports of heroin trafficking by some Afghan guerrillas and
Pakistani military officers with whom it cooperates in the war against
Soviet influence in Afghanistan,' the Post story began.
"Flashback to May 15, 1984, when the Veep George Bush was visiting
Pakistan, the first ranking U.S. official to come to Islamabad since
Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq took power at the barrel of a gun in 1977.
General Zia's gratitude knew few bounds and the Vice President was
treated like royalty. At a magnificent state banquet George Bush rose to
acknowledge the applause of the beribboned Pakistani generals, and
speaking as America's had narc praised the Zia government's
antinarcotics efforts as a 'personal' satisfaction. The general beamed
in self-congratulation. When Bush left Pakistan three days later, he
announced an extraordinary outpouring from the U.S. treasury – $3.2
billion in new U.S. military aid, and another $2 billion for the
Pakistani army, which was the arms pipeline to the CIA-supplied Afghan
rebels...
"At this time Pakistan was providing as much as 70 percent of the
high-great heroin entering the world market. The dope came courtesy of
an elite Pakistani military unit, which managed the truck convoys
carrying the CIA's arms to Afghanistan. (The trucking company, owned by
the Pakistani army, was the largest transportation business in the
country.) The trucks deliver their cargoes of weapons and returned from
Afghanistan laden with poppy; fabulous profits were spread throughout
the military hierarchy all the way to General Zia himself...
"Pakistan's role in transporting raw opium gum from Afghanistan and then
processing it into heroin was well known in the European intelligence
community; it was well known to the American Drug Enforcement Agency and
to the CIA. Certainly former CIA Director Bush knew about it – as head
of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System he was privy to
worldwide narcotics intelligence."
(Deadly Secrets, Warren Hinckle & William Turner, pgs. xxxiii-xxxvi)
Then of course there was the whole
Iran-Contra thing.
"According to the report issued by Kerry Senate Foreign Relations
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations...
there were 'obvious and widespread' drug trafficking by Contra suppliers
going on in the war zones of northern Costa Rica. The Kerry
subcommittee found that these drugs-for-guns activities were being
covered up by CIA operatives and other players in the resupply network.
"And there are indications plenty of Contra drug dealing in
[Oliver] North's diaries. For instance, there is the entry on July 12,
1985: '$14M[illion] to finance came from drugs.' But North was able to
contain reports of Contra drug money because Bush's Task Force on
Combating Terrorism gave North the mandate and the equipment to pursue a
wide range of domestic intelligence operations against opponents of the
administration's Central America policy. Bush's staff brought CIA
experts in propaganda and disinformation into his anti-terrorism loop,
using them to confuse the American people about the situation in Central
America – the line was put out that the Sandinistas were dealing drugs –
and to bypass both Congress and the Constitution in the Contras
resupply effort. North also coordinated fund-raising efforts to defeat
anti-Contra congressmen up for re-election, and even sicced the FBI on
disaffected Contra suppliers, such as Jack Terrel, who was attempting to
tell about Contra drug trafficking."
(ibid, pgs. xli-xlii)
As for the Kennedy assassination, Bush I, like many individuals we've encountered throughout this series, had links to the
Bay of Pigs debacle. Bush's involvement in Cuba seems to have begun when his oil company,
Zapata Offshore, became involved in Caribbean oil wells.
"George Bush made his first real money through offshore oil drilling in
the Caribbean in the late 1950s, and Castro's revolution could hardly
have been constructed as anything but bad news for the freebooting oil
fraternity – as it was for the CIA. At the time of the Bay of Pigs
invasion in 1961, Bush had rigs positioned thirty miles north of Cuba
near Cay Sal, coincidently an island the CIA used as a service station
for covert operations."
(ibid, pg. xxix)
Evidence seems to indicate that Bush was actively engaged in supplying the Bay of Pigs invasion force.
"Zapata Offshore served as a conduit through which CIA disbursed money
for operations. Sources in CIA's Directorate of Operations, told Wall Street Journal
reporter Anthony Kimery that Bush 'personally served as conduit through
which the Agency disbursed money for contracted services.' As a
'part-time purchasing front for CIA,' Zapata provided supplies for the
Bay of Pigs operation, leasing cargo vessels and shipping CIA cargo
disguised as oil drilling equipment."
(Our Man in Haiti, Joan Mellen, pg. 91)
This would put Bush in the same crowd as the
anti-Castro Cubans and their CIA and military handlers who, as noted in the
third installment, likely played a key role in the assassination. Even stranger, however, is the possible relationship between Bush I and
George de Mohrenschildt,
the White Russian petroleum geologist who befriended the Oswalds in
Dallas after they arrived from the Soviet Union. At the very least Bush
had attended
Andover
with Edward Hooker, Bush's roommate and de Mohrenschildt's step-nephew,
but there are indications that the relationship went beyond this.
Indeed, de Mohrenschildt wrote Bush I on at least two occasions.
The first stemmed from his adventures in Haiti in the 1960s where de
Mohrenschildt was officially working for the Caribbean nation surveying
oil and geological resources but was suspected of working for the CIA
towards the aim of overthrowing
Papa Doc.
Things didn't work out and de Mohrenschildt eventually departed Haiti,
but he would attempt to recoup funds from the $285,000 the Haitian
government had awarded him several years afterwards. Bush was one
individual he turned to for assistance in this endeavor.
"Then, in June, de Mohrenschildt contacted his old acquaintance, George
H. W. Bush... Bush was now U.S. Representative to the United Nations
for President Nixon.
"Icy in his dealings with others, Bush forwarded de
Mohrenschildt's letter to David A. Ross in the Haitian Affairs section
of the Office of Caribbean Affairs. Ross knew what was required. Your
contract with Duvalier was a 'private matter,' Ross wrote de
Mohrenschildt. 'You should address your grievance in the appropriate
court of competent jurisdiction.'"
(Our Man in Haiti, Joan Mellen, pg. 266)
 |
| Papa Doc |
The above-mentioned letter was written in 1971. Shortly thereafter de
Mohrenschildt began to have a nervous breakdown that lead to his divorce
from his third wife, Jeanne, in 1973 after a brutal period of physical
abuse. From there de Mohrenschildt overdosed on drugs and slit his
wrists, eventually ending with him committing himself to Dallas'
Parkland Hospital (yes, the hospital Kennedy died at) in April 1976. There he received nine
shock treatments
and insisted to his hospital roommate that the CIA was harassing him.
Upon being released from the hospital he once again turned to George
H.W. Bush.
"Out of the hospital on September 5, 1976, de Mohrenschildt wrote again
to George H. W. Bush, who had now assumed the office of Director of
Central Intelligence under President Gerald Ford. Vigilantes were
pursuing him, de Mohrenschildt said in a sloppy, handwritten letter. He
was being followed. His telephone was bugged.
"As he had in Port-au-Prince at the time of the Kennedy assassination,
de Mohrenschildt blamed the FBI, although the reality was that it was
CIA that had more recently been pursuing him. Invoking his misfortune of
having known Lee Harvey Oswald, he described himself to Bush as an
'elderly man who is being punished.'
"'Could you do something to remove this net around us?' de
Mohrenschildt begged Bush. 'This will be my last request for help and I
will not annoy you anymore.'
"'I do know this man DeMohrenschildt,' Bush wrote in a memo to his
staff. 'He was an uncle to my Andover roommate, and knew Oswald before
the assassination of President Kennedy.' Bush, as Hoover had said in
1963, had been briefed. A close friend and collaborator of CIA's
WUBRINY/1, Thomas J. Devine, Bush was well aware that de
Mohrenschildt had 'got involved in some controversial dealings in
Haiti.'
"'My staff has been unable to find any indication of interest in your
activities on the part of Federal authorities in recent years,' Bush
wrote to de Mohrenschildt in a supercilious rebuff. Bush closes by
hoping that his letter 'has been of some comfort to you.' Having
addressed de Mohrenschildt condescendingly by his given name, he signs
the letter 'George Bush.'
"Bush then turned the matter over to the appropriate CIA component. CIA
Counter Intelligence now contacted the FBI. CIA requested 'information
on the current activities and location of a Mr. George de Mohrenschildt,
who has attempted to get in touch with the Director, CIA.' Counter
Intelligence, perhaps the most arrogant of the Agency components, having
assumed the personality of its long-time chief, James Angleton,
requested that the matter be handled 'on a priority basis.'
(ibid, pgs. 268-269)
 |
| Baron de Mohrenschildt |
Then there's a mysterious document issued shortly after the death of JFK noting that
J. Edgar Hoover had debriefed a "George Bush" concerning the assassination.
"An older document, dated November 29, 1963, initiated by J. Edgar
Hoover, refers to Hoover's having debriefed 'Mr. George Bush of the
Central Intelligence Agency' on the Kennedy assassination. It was an
unusual Hoover locution, adding the name of the agency to which an
individual was connected. Certainly it was uncharacteristic of Hoover to
blow the cover of a CIA operative in an official document, but in this
case he did. At the very least, it suggested a strong dislike of George
H. W. Bush, if not outright personal hostility.
"Confronted by this inconvenient revelation of his connection to CIA,
one he had already denied, Bush lied, again. He claimed that Hoover was
referring to a 'George William Bush,' a CIA photographic analyst, and
not himself, George Herbert Walker Bush. So Bush inadvertently
revealed that he was a CIA insider, despite his denial to the contrary.
Had he not been, he would not have known, of course, the existence of
his CIA namesake.
"In the ensuing furor that erupted when the Hoover document became
public on September 21, 1988, George William Bush, a lowly CIA employee,
swore under oath before the United States District Court for the
District of Columbia that he had never been debriefed by Hoover anyone
else in the FBI.
"Reporters demanding an explanation from CIA were told by CIA's press
flack that he would 'neither confirm nor deny that Hoover was referring
to George H. W. Bush...'
(ibid, pgs. 89-90)
Naturally a potential reason for why Bush I would have had to be
debriefed by Hoover himself concerning the Kennedy assassination has
never put forth. Still, nothing has emerged to concretely placing Bush
in the plot despite his ties to Baron de Mohrenschildt.
A more tangible link between Skull and Bones and the assassination is the figure of Bonesman
Henry Luce, founder of
Time-Life magazine. Luce was a curious figure, to put it mildly. He was a staunch supporter Generalissimo
Chiang Kai-shek, going so far as to put the Generalissimo on the cover of
Time magazine no less than eleven times between the years 1927 and 1955. Chiang Kai-shek and his
Kuomintang party would go on to play a major role in the founding of the
World Anti-Communist League, an organization many figures who crop up in the assassination were affiliated with, as noted in parts
two and
three of this series.
 |
| the Generalissimo was also reputedly one of the largest heroin traffickers in the world for much of his lifetime |
Bizarrely Luce and his wife,
Clare Boothe Luce, would also become one of the earliest proponents of recreational
LSD use, at least for the right social classes.
"Henry Luce, president of Time-Life, was a busy man during the Cold War.
As the preeminent voice of Eisenhower, Dulles, and Pax Americana, he
encouraged his correspondents to collaborate with the CIA, and his
publishing empire served as a longtime propaganda asset for the
Agency. But Luce managed to find the time to experiment with LSD – not
for medical reasons, but simply to experience the drug and glean
whatever pleasures and insights it might afford. An avid fan of
psychedelics, he turned on a half-dozen times in the late 1950s and
early 1960s under the supervision of Dr. Sidney Cohen. On one occasion
the media magnet claimed he talked to God on the golf course and found
that the Old Boy was pretty much on top of things. During another trip
the tone-deaf publisher is said to have heard music so enchanting that
he walked into a cactus garden and began conducting a phantom orchestra.
"Dr. Cohen, attached professionally to UCLA and the Veterans Hospital in
Los Angeles, also turned on Henry's wife, Clare Boothe Luce, and a
number of other influential Americans. 'Oh, sure, we all took acid, it
was a creative group – my husband and I and Huxley and[Christopher]
Isherwood,' recalled Mrs. Luce, who was, by all accounts, the grande dame
of postwar American politics. (More recently, she served as a member of
President Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which oversees
covert operations conducted by the CIA.) LSD was fine by Mrs. Luce as
long as it remained strictly a drug for the doctors and their friends in
the ruling class. But she didn't like the idea that others might also
want to partake of the experience. 'We wouldn't want everyone doing too
much of a good thing,' she explained."
(Acid Dreams, Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain, pg. 71)
 |
| Henry Luce |
Life magazine would later one of the publication to most vigorously denounce LSD.
"... In March 1966 Life magazine ran a cover story entitled
'LSD: The Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug That Got Out of Control,'
which described the psychedelic experience as chemical Russian roulette
in which the player gambled with his sanity. Pictures of people on acid
cowering in corners, beyond communication, were used to underscore the
message that LSD 'could be a one-way trip to an asylum, prison, or
grave.' Life, whose publisher, Henry Luce, had one spoken
favorably of psychedelics, didn't pull any punches: 'A person ... can
become permanently deranged through a single terrifying LSD experience.
Hospitals report case after case where people arrive in a state of
mental disorganization, unable to distinguish their bodies from their
surroundings... it brings out the very worst in some people. LSD is
being dropped in girls' drinks. Terrifying parties are being given with a
surprise in the punch. The Humane Society is picking up disoriented
dogs...'"
(ibid, pgs. 150-151)
As for the Kennedy assassination, Luce is most commonly connected to it via the purchase of the notorious
Zapruder film by
Time-Life almost immediately after the assassination.
"By November 25, 1963, Life magazine was said to purchased the
original copy, negotiating through the Passman/Jones law firm to pay
Zapruder at least $150,000 for all rights. The man who made the deal was
Life's publisher, C. D. Jackson, who said he was so horrified
by what he saw all that he decided the film must be permanently locked
away from public view. It was revealed years later that Jackson, who
died in 1964, had been Time-Life founder Henry Luce's personal emissary to the CIA – approving specific arrangements to provide CIA employees with Time-Life cover.
"In its December 6, 1963, issue, Life sought to explain away
the view of some of the Dallas doctors that a small wound observed in
the president's throat was an entrance wound. The Life article
said: 'But the 8mm [Zapruder] film shows the President turning his body
far around to the right as he waves to someone in the crowd. His throat
is exposed – towards the sniper's nest – just before he clutches it.'
"That account was patently false, since the film clearly showed that the
president had never made such a term. But, at the time, nobody outside Time-Life or the government had seen the film. Only after Jim Garrison won a lawsuit to obtain a copy – which Time-Life
fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – was the Zapruder movie
finally shown at the Clay Shaw trial. It aired for the first time on
national TV in 1975."
(The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, pgs. 583-584)
In many accounts this is the end of Luce's involvement in the
assassination and yet he and his wife seem to have had ties to
individuals and organizations long linked to the assassination plot on
every level. For instance, Luce was a long time friend and former lover
of
Mary Bancroft. Bancroft, as noted in
part one, had also been
Allen Dulles' mistress for some twenty years and also carried out assignments for the spymaster.
What's more, Luce seems to have been a major financial patron of
Alpha 66, arguably the most militant of the anti-Castro Cuban groups. As noted
part three
of this series, Alpha 66 was closely linked to both the assassination
as well as organized crime. Reportedly Luce's financial contributions to
the organization were quite considerable.
"... Alpha 66 was violently anti-Kennedy in 1963. With the active support of Henry Luce and Time-Life,
which is said to spent a quarter of a million dollars, Alpha 66 made a
point of attacking Russian targets in Cuba, in an attempt to shatter the
growing convergence of U.S. and Soviet policies in the Caribbean after
the nuclear scare of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. When the President
appealed separately to Luce and to the exiles to cease their attacks,
both rebuffed him..."
(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 254-255)
Clare Boothe Luce was also actively involved with the anti-Castro underground. She, along with
William Pawley (a key figure in establishing
Civil Air Transport/
Air America,
the notorious CIA-backed airline long linked to drug trafficking; as
well as a member of the powerful, far right think tank the
American Security Council, as noted before
here), was one of the key backers of the student group Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE). As noted in
part two, it was DRE member
Carlos Bringuier that Oswald had his notorious confrontation with in New Orleans while the former Marine was handing out
Fair Play For Cuba Committee leaflets.
"... the DRE was subsidized by Pawley and his friend Clare Boothe Luce
... and the DRE head office in Miami had received a report from DRE
delegate Carlos Bringuier on his meetings with Oswald, along with one of
Oswald's FPCC leaflets and a tape recording of the Oswald-Bringuier
radio debate ..."
(ibid, pg. 120)
Later Clare Boothe Luce and the DRE would become deeply involved in an attempt to depict Oswald as a Cuban/Russian agent.
"The DRE led the charge towards a Castro-used-Oswald scenario. Jose
Lanusa, the DRE's Miami chief, contacted Clare Boothe Luce and Daniel
James about Oswald on November 22, 1963. Luce, the wife of Time-Life
publisher Henry Luce, and free-lance writer James were both board
members of the Committee to Free Cuba, which had been established in May
1963. James promptly called the FBI. 'LANUSA described OSWALD
definitely a communist and a supporter of FIDEL CASTRO,' an FBI report
states. '... LANUSA also advised him that FIDEL CASTRO, in early
September at a function at the Brazilian Embassy in Havana, remarked
that if the United States causes him difficulty he has facilities to
"knock off United States leaders."'
"Luce, a former Congresswoman and U.S. ambassador to Italy, waited
longer to come forward. Then, during the Garrison and House
Assassination Committee investigations, she made a point of passing
along a story that originated with the DRE. Luce said she had gotten a
phone call the night of the assassination and been told that the DRE had
'penetrated' Oswald's organization after he came around offering his
services as a potential Castro assassin. DRE members had worked their
way inside the 'Communist cell,' where Oswald was tape-recorded bragging
about being 'the greatest shot in the world with telescopic rifle.'
Luce said she had instructed the exiles to turn everything over to the
FBI. The House Assassination Committee spent many fruitless hours
looking to track down Luce's leads."
(The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, pg. 403)
 |
| Clare Booth Luce |
Nor was Mrs. Luce the only individual with ties to Skull and Bones who
would vigorously champion the cause of Oswald-as-a-communist agent.
Bonesman
James Jesus Angleton, the figure upon whom the
Matt Damon character in
The Good Shepherd is based, would go to great lengths attempting to establish links to Oswald and the communists as well.
As noted in the
third installment
of this series, Angleton was likely one of the key plotters in the
assassination and the individual who "managed" the CIA throughout the
plot. Indeed, evidence has emerged indicating that Angleton may even
have been the one who sent Oswald to the Soviet Union as part of a false
defector operation he oversaw (as addressed in the third installment).
His Counterintelligence (CI) staff began keeping records on Oswald
shortly after his defection, years before he returned to the United
States.
Angleton was a close friend of Allen Dulles and one of the most powerful
figures in the history of the CIA (he was also deeply involved in the
Agency's drug trafficking, as noted before
here and
here). Thus, some eyebrows were raised when he began proclaiming communist plots shortly after the assassination unfolded.
"The falsified 'Lee Harvey Oswald' cables of October 1963, which became
part of a CI/SIG file on 'Lee Harvey Oswald' going back to 1960, were
supervised by officers of the small Angleton-FBI veterans clique in CI.
One can imagine that this clique had used their falsified file on
Lee Harvey Oswald as part of the CI/SIG's search for a KGB penetration
agent, or 'mole,' within the CIA's ranks. This search became
particularly active in 1963, the year of falsified cable traffic about
Oswald.
"It is certain however that the effect of the falsified Oswald
documentation, consciously or accidentally, was to incriminate him
falsely as an apparent KGB assassin. One day after the assassination,
the CIA Counterintelligence staff speculated on the sinister
implications of Oswald's alleged contact with Kostikov; and it continued
to do so for years after. For Kostikov was not just a known KGB agent;
he was suspected by Counterintelligence officials in the FBI and CIA of
working for the KGB's Department Thirteen, which according to a
contemporary CIA memo was 'responsible for sabotage and assassination.'
This falsified picture of Oswald as a potential KGB assassin, though
never used by the Warren Commission against him, almost certainly
contributed to the Warren Commission's determination to close the case
as the work of a lone assassin. The alleged
Oswald-Kostikov-Department Thirteen connection must have seemed
particularly ominous after the Commission was informed by Richard Helms
that
The Thirteenth Department headquarters, according to very reliable
information, conducts interviews or, as appropriate, file reviews on
every former military defector to the USSR to study and to determine the
possibility of utilizing the defector in his country of origin.
"CIA and FBI officials have since said that their respective agencies
made mistakes in their handling of the Oswald case prior to Kennedy's
murder. Yet the Counterintelligence staffs of CIA and FBI, who were
responsible for the alleged mistakes, were also given responsibility for
investigating the Kennedy assassination afterwards. The CI/SIG in
particular, which had misrepresented Oswald within the CIA, was given
responsibility for liaison on the assassination with the CI staff in the
FBI, who were given secret FBI reprimands for having failed to put
Oswald on the FBI's Security Index."
(Deep Politics II, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 5-6)
 |
| Angleton |
The Counterintelligence shenanigans would continue throughout the
Warren Commission
with a special emphasis on depicting Oswald as a communist agent, a
prospect that surely terrified more than a few members of the Commission
who had recently dodged World War III developing over the
Cuban Missile Crisis.
WWIII would have surely been inevitable if Oswald was a Cuban or Soviet
agent, and Angleton ensured that this possibility was never far from
the Commission's mind.
"Angleton and his Counterintelligence Staff, however, were picked in the
CIA to handle the Kennedy assassination... Within the CIA, a quite
parallel investigation warp, analogous to that in the FBI. There too the
investigation of a possible foreign conspiracy, originally lodged with
Latin American experts in the Western Hemisphere Division (WH), had
after two weeks been snatched away by CIA Counterintelligence Chief
James Angleton, William Sullivan's counterpart in the CIA... Angleton's
pretext for doing so was a cable from Win Scott, linking Kostikov to
WH's agent Rolando Cubela.
"In the CIA, as in the FBI, there are signs that some hidden agenda
dictated pre-assassination handling of the Oswald file. Years later
Angleton recalled that he and his office had been given the assignment
of liaison with the Warren Commission because they 'knew the mechanisms
of the KGB [and] of the Cuban DGI.' He spontaneously 'raised the specter
of the KGB's [and Kostikov's] Department 13,' whose specialties were
defined in a 1964 CIA report from his staff to the Warren Commission as
'abduction and murder.' Both Angleton and his deputy Ray Rocca are known
to have argued, along with Mexico City Ambassador Thomas Mann, that
Communists might have been responsible for Kennedy's murder. Given the
CIA anxiety in 1993 about Departments 13's capability for murder, why
then did the CIA suppress all reference to the sinister Kostikov when
notifying the FBI, on October 10, 1963, of the 'Oswald' contact with the
Soviet Embassy in Mexico City?
"... One has to wonder about the CIA station's handling of the
'phase one' Kostikov story as well. Was the cable about 'Cubella' a
plant, to give Angleton leverage over his colleagues, and gain control
the case? In any event, the JFK assassination investigation was soon
dominated by two Hoover allies: by Angleton (a 'phase one' believer) on
the CIA side, and on the FBI side by his very close associate Sullivan, a
'phase two' believer, but also Win Scott's former chief from the days
of the wartime FBI SIS service, and an Angleton crony above all.
"A third interested party to this coterie appears to have been Allen
Dulles. Now no longer in the CIA but on the Warren Commission, he
remained very close to Angleton and his counterintelligence set..."
(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 66-67)
 |
| Win Scott, the Mexico City Station Chief and Angleton crony |
The above references to "phase one" and "phase two" were terms the esteemed
Peter Dale Scott
applied to the cover-up following the assassination, phase one being
the appearance of Oswald as a communist agent and phase two (and the one
to receive official endorsement) as a "lone nut." Scott and many other
researchers believe that the phase one explanation of Oswald was used as
means of encouraging forces outside the assassination plot from looking
to deeply into the murder less they trigger a nuclear World War.
By most accounts Angleton's close friend Allen Dulles dominated the
Warren Commission and ensured it avoided any serious attempts at
investigating the assassination by elements that weren't totally
deterred by the nuclear card.
"One reason for the Commission's ignorance about the Oswald file – and
the subsequent importance of Mexico City – is that Helms actually
pointed Angleton to be the main liaisons to the Commission. Unlike his
predecessor in that spot, John Whitten, Angleton tried to accent
Oswald's Russian period for the Commission. Whitten wanted to highlight
the Cuban connection. It appears Helms did not wish that dangers grand
to be explored. He therefore brought in Angleton to be the CIA's chief
interface for the Commission. Since Angleton and Dulles were close
colleagues from the 1940s, Dulles tipped off his friend as to what
queries they would get about Oswald from the Commission. Since there
had been a rumor that Oswald was an FBI agent, Dulles informed Angleton
in advance as to what the Commission queries would likely be about
Oswald's possible intelligence ties. Then Angleton and William Sullivan
of the FBI rehearsed and unified the responses to deny any intelligence
connection to the alleged assassin. This was an important part of the
cover up since it curtailed any inquiry into the question of whether or
not agent Oswald was completing a mission in Mexico that he began in New
Orleans. That is, was he further discrediting the FPCC by associating
with communist foreign consulates and trying to gain transport Cuba?
What made this even more crucial is the fact that there was an
'operational interest' in Oswald held by handful of officers in the
Special Affairs Staff (SAS) of the CIA just weeks before the Kennedy
assassination. This group was involved with what was left of the Kennedy
campaign against Cuba, which was not very much. But as far as the
Warren Commission inquiry into Mexico City goes, we have established two
key points: 1.) Slawson was much too trusting of the Agency, and 2.)
Angleton and Dulles were determined to keep clues about any preexisting
relationship to Oswald and the CIA concealed."
(Destiny Betrayed, James DiEugenio, pgs. 347-348)
 |
| Allen Dulles |
"Incidentally," Dulles also happened to belong to a notorious secret society.
"How [Warren] Broglie was first introduced to the world of intelligence
work is unknown, but there is evidence that he came into contact with
OSS official Allen Dulles sometime during the Second World War in Basle,
Switzerland. Additionally, both men, as well as Conrad Hilton, and
several other high-ranking CIA officials, were directors and the Knights
of Malta, a long-standing Roman Catholic lay order founded at the time
of the Crusades, that today counts among its members some of the richest
and most influential men in the world, including many former and
current high-ranking CIA officials."
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli Jr., pg. 384)
The above-mentioned Warren Broglie made a curious appearance in Oswald's
saga as well, which shall be addressed in just a moment. For the time
being, let us briefly consider the
Sovereign Military Order of Malta
(SMOM), more commonly referred to as the Knights of Malta. While
the SMOM frequently appears in conspiracy literature it is typically
with precious few details and those often revolve around it being an
extension of Freemasonry. But researcher John J. Robinson, whose
Born in Blood is generally considered the most compelling account linking Freemasonry to the Medieval
Knights Templar, took a much different view. He believed that one of the three "Juwes" mentioned in the
Masonic myth of the murder of Grand Master Hiram Abiff was the
Knights Hospitallers (who eventually became the SMOM) and argued that this was evidence of a long standing rivalry between the two orders.
"As we search British history to find an unfinished temple as a basis
for an exclusively British secret society, we find just one answer, in
the religious order that often called itself by that simple name alone:
the Temple. Jacques de Molay and his predecessor signed documents over
the title Magister Templi, Master of the Temple. And that
temple, taking its name from the Temple of Solomon, certainly was left
unfinished upon the murder of its masters, who also had been tortured to
reveal their secrets by three assassins that ultimately destroyed them.
Not Jubela, Jubelo, and Jubelum, but Philip the Fair of France, Pope
Clement V, and the order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of
Jerusalem. Many who have read only the Catholic Church's summary of the
Templar suppression may object, stating that only the king of France
could be considered the 'assassin' of the Knights Templar, having done
all the dirty work and having coerced a weak pope to help him. True,
that is the church as usual version to this very day, but the historical
facts speak somewhat to the contrary...
"When Edward II of England declined to tortured the Templars, the pope
could have thrown the problem backed Edward's father-in-law, the king of
France: No one forced Clement V to dispatch ten church torture
specialist to London. The pope could have lived with the acquittal of
the Templars on Cyprus: No one forced him to demand a new trial, or to
dispatch a torture team with the power to draw upon the local
the Dominicans and Franciscans if extra help was required. Nor did the
king of France prevail in his desire that one of his family be made the
head of the combined Hospitaller/Templar order, with full access to the
combined wealth. And if Clement V had been merely a timorous puppet
Pope with Phillip pulling the strings, as church historians would have
us believe, the kings of France would have been the new owners of the
Templar properties in France, not the Hospitallers. The pope was much
tougher, or at least much more obstinate, then we have been led to
believe, and it would appear that he had contrived a plan of his own in
concert with the Hospitallers.
"That order has managed to escape any criticism in the matter of the
Templar suppression, but apparently only because it had kept a low
profile throughout, probably for the very good reason that its role and
its reward have been worked out in advance. It is well known that
the papacy was in favor of the union of the Templars and the
Hospitallers and had already determined that Foulques de Villaret,
master of the Hospitallers, would be the Grand Master of the combined
orders. The Templars, at their headquarters on Cyprus, had heard of the
serious intent to combine the orders and had taken the time to prepare a
written tribunal. The Hospitallers, at their own headquarters on the
same island, must have received the same information, yet they prepared
no rebuttal, written or verbal. In fact, de Villaret managed to stay
away from the meeting in France altogether, with no recorded papal
criticism for his absence. That was undoubtedly because his presence
wasn't needed and because there was no point in chancing a confrontation
between the two orders, especially since the pope was already dedicated
to looking after the interests of the Hospitallers. Not only did the
Hospitallers offer no objection to the concept of the merger, but they
made no attempt whatever to speak up for their brother warrior-monks as
they were arrested and tortured. They simply stayed out of it and bided
their time, until Clement V, much to the anger of King Philip, declared
that all of the confiscated Templar property would go to the Knights
Hospitaller and that all released Templars could be taken into the
Hospitaller order, thereby achieving de facto the union he had
been planning all along, with full Hospitaller approval and cooperation.
If one looks for motive, the Hospitaller order was the major
beneficiary of the suppression of the Templars, as had probably been
the plan from the beginning. The pope and the Hospitallers together
thwarted the aims of Philip of France, and there should be no doubt that
the Hospitallers rank as one of the three assassins of the Order of the
Temple."
(Born in Blood, John J. Robinson, pgs. 271-273)
 |
| Foulques de Villaret |
At this point let us pause in our consideration of the Knights of
Malta and once again consider one of theories put forth concerning the
meaning of the alias, Clay (sometimes Clem) Bertrand, used by
Clay Shaw (who was portrayed by
Tommy Lee Jones in
Oliver Stone's
JFK), the man
Jim Garrison tried for the murder of JFK in the late 1960s:
"The reason Shaw would pick this particular name is very likely because
it derives from Pope Clement V, whose surname was Bertrand D'Agout. (It
would also explain why in some instances, he used the first name Clem.)
This pope had sheltered homosexuals in the fourteenth century. His
legacy lived on in the cloistered homosexual community. So much so that
their developed a Clement Bertrand Society which helped homosexuals with
legal problems. That Shaw/Bertrand sent the gay Latins to Dean Andrew
suggests that Shaw was aware of this bit of history."
(Destiny Betrayed, James DiEugenio, pg. 211)
Was Shaw also aware that this was the pope who suppressed the Templars
and gave their holdings to the Knights of Malta? More than a few
websites across the Internet allege that Shaw himself was a member of
the Knights of Malta, but I have been unable to reliably confirm this.
 |
| Clay Shaw |
But certainly there were several key Knights of Malta surrounding
the assassination and the cover up. In addition to Dulles there was also
Angleton himself, as well as John McCone,
Director of the CIA at the time of the assassination (though he does
not seem to have been involved). The ties between the SMOM and the CIA
were longstanding, if little addressed.
OSS (the predecessor organization to the CIA) founder
William "Wild Bill" Donovan, whose OSS clique would dominate the CIA for decades, was a member of the Order. As I noted before
here, SMOM member
William Casey, as Director of the CIA during the
Reagan administration, involved the Order in the private aid network dedicated to arming the
Contras.
There have long been allegations that George H.W. Bush himself was also a
member of the SMOM. I have not been able to reliably confirm this
though Wikipedia (for what it's worth) claims that Bush I was brought
into the
pro Merito Melitensi,
a branch of the SMOM described as a "knightly order of merit." Henry
Luce is also widely reported to be an SMOM member as well but I was not
able to conifirm this either. Clare Boothe Luce, however,
was most certainly a Dame of Malta (the female branch of the SMOM).
But as far as the Kennedy assassination is concerned, the appearance of
the above-mentioned SMOM member Warren Broglie is especially curious.
Naturally Broglie cropped up in one of the strangest and most contested
Oswald episodes leading up to the assassination: His trip to Mexico.
"... the Hotel Luma. The manager of... hotel... was Warren Broglie, a
Swiss whom Arthur Greenstein recalled as being fluent in four languages.
Broglie was also in charge of hotels in Acapulco and along the Yucatán
and Baja peninsulas. One of these was owned by the reclusive billionaire
Daniel K. Ludwig, another by American oilman J. Paul Getty. But the
modest Luma served for twenty years as Broglie's 'home base' because so
much of his business was transacted in Mexico City...
"Broglie's bartender and relief headwaiter at the Luma was Franz
Waehauf. Of German heritage, he had served in the German military's
merchant marine during World War II, afterwards ending up in Mexico.
Though he never gained Mexican citizenship, Waehauf stayed on. By 1962
he had been working at the Luma for more than a decade."
(The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, pgs. 238-239)
Waehauf has been widely linked to Czech intelligence, which at the time was aligned to the
Soviet Union. Curiously
Francis Parker Yockey,
a key figure in the post-WWII fascist underground, would also do some
work for Czech intelligence in the 1950s. Frequently the fascist
underground maintained contacts with the intelligence services of both
the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies.
Conversely, Waehauf's boss, Broglie, had ties to various US intelligence
agencies.
"... Broglie, a Swiss-national, had been a confidential informer and
willing asset to the CIA (as well as to the Narcotics Bureau and FBI)
for about ten years. Broglie was also quite close friends with Winston
Scott as he was also with Scott's third wife, Janet Graham Leddy Scott.
Indeed, Broglie was a special, head-table guest, along with David Atlee
Phillips, another of his close friends, at Janet Scott's lavish 1963
birthday party reportedly held in a private room at the Hotel Luma..."
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pg. 406)
As noted above, Winston Scott was the CIA Station Chief during Oswald's
trip and was likely involved in the "phase one" deception (possibly
unwittingly) of Oswald as a communist agent on some level. He was also a
close friend of James Angleton. David Atlee Phillips, as noted in the
third installment
of this series, is widely believed to have played a major role in the
assassination. He was the handler of the militant anti-Castro Cuban
group Alpha 66 and some researchers also believe for Oswald, who may
traveled to Mexico to meet with him.
Robert Buick, an American bullfighter living in Mexico City at the time,
frequented the Hotel Luma in 1963. In late September of that year he
would claim to see Lee Harvey Oswald (using the alias Alex Hidell) there
on at least two occasions and engaged in curious conversations with
Broglie and Waehauf. He recounted the following to journalist Dick
Russell:
"So Buick watched Alex Hidell from a distance, watched as he huddled in
conversations with bartender Waehauf and sometimes hotel town
manager Broglie. 'As I recall, "Alex" wasn't in a hotel very long. I saw
him once fleetingly, either leaving the bar or the lobby going out the
front door. I saw them twice in the bar. There was times where him,
Waehauf and Broglie, all three of them, were completely out of sight.
They never all left together or came back together, but then all of a
sudden one would come in. Five minutes would pass, and another shows
up. Ten minutes later, the third one comes back in the bar. Sometimes as
much as an hour would go by when none of them were around. So what is
the conjecture there? Probably meeting in one of the vacant motel rooms,
who knows?...'
"Buick claimed he did overhear snatches of conversations in the Luma bar
concerning an assassination attempt against President Kennedy. 'And I
related this to those gentlemen I would meet in the park. It wasn't so
much what I heard at one specific moment, you understand? And it wasn't
something that was directly stated, but more implied. Only in retrospect
that it all come together for me...'
(The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, pg. 378)
 |
| Robert Clayton Buick |
Those gentlemen in the park Buick makes reference to were apparently
agents of some branch of US intelligence who asked Buick to keep an eye
out for suspicious individuals he encountered in Mexico City, or so he
claims. Buick was later convicted of robbing several banks in 1966.
Another individual, military intelligence officer
Richard Case Nagell,
who came forward with information concerning the assassination was
arrest for a bank "robbery" in Texas shortly before the assassination.
While what role, if any, SMOM member Broglie had in the assassination is
highly debatable his appearance in Mexico City, along with the German
Waehauf, is most curious. SMOM member Allen Dulles would have contact
with the Nazi regime during his stay in Switzerland for the OSS. Later
on he and fellow SMOM member James Jesus Angleton would play a key role
in organizing former Nazi and
Quisling forces into an anti-communist network in Europe after WWII, as noted before
here and
here. Was SMOM member Broglie, who may have first encountered Dulles in Switzerland during WWII, a part of this network?
Besides the SMOM this anti-communist network, which would eventually
crystallize under the banner of the World Anti-Communist League (which
had direct links to the assassination, as noted in
part two and
three
of this series), had ties to another bizarre and even more obscure
secret society linked to the Medieval Knights Hospitallers. In the next
installment of this series we shall consider this Order and its ties to
the Kennedy assassination as well as the bizarre churches also linked.
Stay tuned.
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