From Pacifist to Assassination Planner in One Easy Step

If we can believe what lifelong spy E. Howard Hunt told his son a short time before his death, he and his friend and colleague Frank Sturgis aka Frank Fiorini had been in contact with a covert operative (contract killer)  named David Morales in Miami in 1963. The story Morales told was that Chief of Western Hemisphere for the CIA, Bill Harvey, had chosen him for a team tasked with the murder of the President. Harvey had told Morales he had been selected by Cord Meyer, Jr., Chief of Covert Action for the CIA, and that Meyer was also working with a Texan named David Atlee Phillips and a Cuban named Antonio Veciano. Following is an excerpt from Saint John Hunt's book, Bond of Secrecy, as well as miscellaneous research relating to the names he mentioned.

Excerpt from 

BOND OF SECRECY 

by SAINT JOHN HUNT

© 2008 Saint John Hunt,
All Rights Reserved

 pages 52- 54

"Now let's understand that what I tell you must be kept in secrecy and you'll never reveal any of this without my approval. Understood?"

I nodded in agreement and then I wheeled him back to his bedroom. After making him as comfortable as I could, this is what he told me.

In 1963 my father and Frank Sturgis met with David Morales, a contract killer for the CIA at a safe house in Miami. Morales explained that he had been picked by Bill Harvey, a rogue and unstable CIA agent with a long history of black ops for a secret "off the board" assignment.

The Chain of Command, according to E. Howard Hunt 

It was Morales' understanding that this project was coming down through a chain of command which started with LBJ, [who was] then the vice President. Intrigued, my father listened on.

Harvey told Morales that he'd been brought in by Cord Meyer, a CIA agent with international connections, who in turn was working with David Phillips and Antonio Veciana. Phillips was CIA station chief in Mexico City and deeply involved in the dangerous world of the Cuban underground. Veciana was the Cuban founder of the violent anti-Castro Alpha 66 group; bent on overthrowing Castro by any means necessary. All these men shared a common ground; a hatred for Kennedy who they felt was dangerous for this country's politicalfuture, and had abandoned them in their time of need.

Cord Meyer had his own reason to hate Kennedy; his wife Mary was one of Kennedy's many mistresses and the gossip surrounding them infuriated Cord who swore revenge. (Later Mary Meyer would be mysteriously murdered and her personal diary stolen. It's interesting to note that James Angleton, chief spook of  counter intelligence was known to have broken in to her apartment and stolen the diary. The rumor was that Mary Meyer had kept detailed notes about Kennedy and perhaps had information about his death. We'll never know.)

Of the men mentioned thus far, my father knew Cord Meyer, David Phillips, Frank Sturgis and Bill Harvey. He'd never met nor heard of Morales until that night and claims he's never heard of Antonio Veciana. This seems unlikely because Alpha 66 was the leading anti-Castro faction in the Cuban underground.

David Atlee Phillips worked with my father closely and was actually recruited into the CIA by him when Phillips worked as a journalist in Santiago, Chile. When Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Russian Consulate in Mexico City in the summer of '63, it was Phillips who was station chief there. Although Phillips denied ever meeting Oswald, Antonio Veciana gave evidence that he had met with Oswald and his case officer, a man known to him only as Maurice Bishop, in Mexico City. Although unwilling to identify Phillips as Bishop, Veciana did provide a detailed description of Bishop to a sketch artist and the resulting drawing looked very much like Phillips.

I sat by my father's bedside and asked "what happened then?"

"Well, I asked them what this assignment was." Sturgis looked at Morales and then at my father and calmly said "killing that son of a bitch Kennedy!" My father said he was stunned but I don't think he would have been that surprised; getting rid of Kennedy was a common topic of conversation among the Cuban exiles. The truth of the matter is that Kennedy was hated by much of the military-industrial complex. He was viewed as soft on communism and many factions of the government, the exiles, the Mafia, and just about everyone else was looking to get Kennedy out. My father then simply asked "You guys seem to have enough people, what is it that you need me for?"

"Well," Frank said, "you're somebody we all look up to…we know how you feel about the man (Kennedy), are you with us?" My father looked around the room for a minute and said "Look, if Bill Harvey has anything to do with this, you can count me out. The man is an alcoholic and a psycho."

"You're right Eduardo", laughed Frank, "but that SOB has the balls to do it." The meeting ended; my father thought it nothing more than the usual 'death to Kennedy' ranting.

The next day when my father and I were alone in the house, we discussed ways that we could divulge certain information to Giamarco and Costner without giving anything away. My father came up with a good solution: put it in code. With that plan in mind, my father provided me with a hand written diagram outlining the chain of command, a list of people who were involved, and a descriptive time line of the events that led to the 'big event'. This was the name we used to refer to JFK's murder. He provided a code for each name such as 'Nu' for LBJ, 'Beta' for Cord Meyer and so forth.

He also wrote a few pages of background material on Sturgis, Phillips, and Cord Meyer. The reason for this was that he wanted me to type out a descriptive outline in code form and fax it to Giamarco. Hopefully it would be enough to initiate a formal agreement and a good faith payment. My father wanted $150,000. to be deposited in an account. In view of the fact that Costner and Giamarco had been dangling a multi-million dollar figure for a documentary, a book, and DVD sales and rentals, I didn't think that $150,000 was too much. I had to wait until Laura was out of the house to type it up and fax it off.

Shooter fired from grassy knoll.

Before I returned to California I had one more conversation about JFK with my father. He related to me that Oswald had in fact fired on the President that day but there was also another man, a French assassin, firing from the famous grassy knoll. The man's' name sounded something like Sarte or Satre and he had probably been recruited for the job by Cord Meyer who had connections to the Corsican underworld. In his own diagram, my father outlined 'French con. Man…grassy knoll'.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why was Cord Meyer, Jr. interested in stopping publication of Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (Harper and Row, 1972) before it came out in 1972?

See footnote 4 to chapter 13, Henrik Kruger's Great Heroin Coup:

Prior to the publication of this book [Politics of Heroin by McCoy] on 20 August 1972, Cord Meyer, Jr., a CIA covert operations division leader, visited Harper and Row to demand the galleys. The publisher refused, subject to receipt of an official CIA request. When that came, the proofs were delivered over McCoy's objections. The agency returned them with corrections, but the publisher rejected them, and the book was published unaltered.

~~~~~
Brief history Cord Meyer
 
From a summary made  from snips taken from John Simkin's Spartacus website:

Allen W. Dulles made contact with Cord Meyer in 1951. He accepted the invitation to join the CIA. Cord was a graduate of Yale, and a darling of the East Coast elite in power at the time. Dulles told Meyer he wanted him to work on a project that was so secret that he could not be told about it until he officially joined the organization. Meyer was to work under Frank Wisner, director of the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC). This became the espionage and counter-intelligence branch of the CIA.

Wisner was told to create an organization that concentrated on "propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."

click to enlarge

But by August, 1953, Joseph McCarthy had accused Cord Meyer of being a communist!

By 1954, Cord Meyer became disillusioned with life in the CIA. It would not be the last time. In November, 1954, Meyer replaced Thomas Braden as head of International Organizations Division. Meyer began spending a lot of time in Europe. One of Meyer's tasks was to supervise Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, the United States government broadcasts to Eastern Europe.

According to Nina Burleigh (A Very Private Woman) Meyer was "overseeing a vast 'black' budget of millions of dollars channeled through phony foundations to a global network of associations and labor groups that on their surface appeared to be progressive".

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Young Man on a Crusade in 1948

Time Magazine - OPINION:
"In a Drawing Room," Feb. 16, 1948 

Cord Meyer, 1948

Cord Meyer Jr., 27, is a pale young man with a preoccupied smile and wavy brown hair. His paleness and his preoccupation are the marks of war: he was very nearly killed on Guam. He lost an eye and had his face shattered when a Jap grenade exploded in his foxhole.* Since his discharge from the Marines, Cord Meyer has been a young man on a crusade. He is the president of United World Federalists, which seeks to save the world through a limited federation before an atomic war destroys it.

He has been talking night & day, at colleges, over the radio, to public audiences, to anyone and everyone who will listen. He has written a book (Peace or Anarchy) which, while not exactly a bestseller, has gone into five printings of 13,000 copies.

Last week he spoke in the graceful drawing room of Manhattan's English Speaking Union.
The middle-aged audience listened to him attentively, then engaged him in spirited debate. Cord Meyer is quick on his feet, sure of his position, talks fast, and is convinced that there is no time to lose.

The Plan. 

Cord Meyer is the son of a wealthy New York real estate man and onetime diplomat. Before World War II, he was a top honor student at Yale and editor of the Yale Lit. After he was wounded and sent home from the Pacific, he married Mary Pinchot, the comely niece of Pennsylvania's late Governor Gifford Pinchot. He had got started on his crusade when he served as "veteran aide" to Delegate Harold Stassen at the San Francisco Conference. There he saw the United Nations born. He deplored the veto, which left U.N. virtually powerless to prevent aggression.

The Hope. 

He sees no hope in U.N. as it is now, calling it "a weak league of sovereign, armed states preparing for war." As his ideas took shape, he framed a program. He wants: 1) an agreement among all nations to surrender their arms to U.N., retaining only a force big enough to keep internal order; 2) a U.N. police force to defend all nations from aggression; and 3) an Assembly acting as the world's chief legislative body, with a Security Council acting as a Cabinet.

He is not proposing a One-World government and world constitution; that would take too much time — more time, he thinks, than the world has. He is young enough to feel that his elders are timid, and mature enough to know that the present uneasy peace cannot last. And he is being heard. He disregards cynics. He thinks of himself as a practical realist and considers optimism foolish but hope necessary. "If this hope is naive," he says, "then it is naive to hope."

^{* His twin brother was killed on Okinawa.}

~~~
CREATING A NEW WORLD ORDER IN 1950

Time Magazine - THE CONGRESS:
"World Architects," Monday, Feb. 27, 1950 

Will Clayton of Houston, TX

For a fortnight the members of the special Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee had sat with furrowed brows, listening intently to eight different proposals for taking apart and reassembling the world. By last week their files were stacked with thick mimeographed statements and their heads whirled from the barrage of testimony.

"Stalin is winning the cold war," warned white-thatched Will Clayton, onetime Under Secretary of State. "Even if we should be so fortunate as to
escape another shooting war there will hardly be any occasion for great rejoicing if we find ourselves . . . isolated politically and eco nomically, our friends picked off one by one and added to Russia's satellites . . ."


Sincerity & Good Will.

Clayton was speaking for the Atlantic Union Committee, headed by former Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts. Atlantic Union was a lineal descendant of Union Now, founded and expounded by Clarence Streit, longtime crusader for a union of free peoples. Its blueprint envisioned a political, military and economic federation of the original seven North Atlantic Treaty [NATO] nations (U.S., Canada, Britain, France, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg).

Others were working towards much the same goal by somewhat different paths:

• ex-marine Cord Meyer Jr., whose United World Federalists was designed to transform the U.N. itself into a world government; 
• Hamilton Fish Armstrong, editor of Foreign Affairs, who urged the "faithful members" of U.N. to bypass the Soviet veto and go on about their pressing business; 
• Ely Culbertson, high priest of contract bridge, who wanted an international land, sea and air force (drawn principally from small nations) to prevent aggression.

No one doubted the sincerity or good will of any of the planners. All were bold and imaginative. They had in common a mingled sense of urgency and high ideals. But their congressional audience listened with increasing skepticism.

Pertinent Questions. 

The skepticism was reinforced by Assistant Secretary of State John D. Hickerson, who brought up some painfully realistic facts. He raised a pertinent question: "Just how far are we willing to go in compromising our way of life and our institutions?" Was the U.S. willing to agree to common citizenship, a common currency and taxes, a common standard of living within any federation? Who, he asked, could be sure that other nations would agree that the laws and institutions of the U.S. should be the basis for world government? Said Hickerson: "How far would the American people be prepared to go in altering our form of government? Are they prepared to have the representatives of the American people a minority in the parliament of such a union?"

The U.S., added Hickerson, was already moving as rapidly as practicable toward closer world relations through the Atlantic pact, ECA and the U.N. "The establishment at this time of such a federation," said Hickerson, "far from providing additional strength, could be a source of weakness and greater internal divisions."

The Senators seemed to agree. By week's end they were beginning to feel like bewildered home builders who had listened to too many architects. They limited witnesses sternly to five minutes and indicated that they would settle for a resolution pledging renewed U.S. support to the aims and ideals of U.N.—which, after all, was only five years old.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 The White Russian--A Powerful Cocktail

From: THE JFK CASE: The Twelve Who Built The Oswald Legend
(Part 6: White Russians Keep An Eye On Oswald In Dallas) By Bill Simpich

The Dallas-Fort Worth community of Soviet and Eastern European emigres - referred to as "White Russians" - took Oswald and his family under their wing upon their arrival from the USSR in May 1962. Consider the importance of White Russian defectors as spies. A re-defector like Lee Harvey Oswald was even more exotic. The ability of a defector to report what is happening behind enemy lines is the ultimate counterintelligence prize.

The White Russian community settled on using George de Mohrenschildt as Oswald's mentor, one of the few liberals in the community who enjoyed spending time with the man. This chapter will focus on de Mohrenschildt's intelligence connections with Radio Free Europe, key RFE officials Allen Dulles and Cord Meyer, and CI chief James Angleton....

Solidarists were being used by CIA in early 1963.

The Dallas White Russian community was tightly aligned with an anti-Soviet movement known by its Russian initials of "NTS" (National Alliance of Russian Solidarists). NTS was founded in 1930 by "second generation" White Russian emigres. At that time, most of them were living in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Yugoslavia is where Mr. and Mrs. Igor Voshinin met and married in early 1940 - they moved to Dallas, were active in NTS, and knew Oswald. During this era, "Solidarism" was a quasi-fascist ideology that saw corporations as an ideal and Benito Mussolini as a model of leadership.

In the 1940s, NTS was thoroughly enmeshed with Hitler's war effort. After Germany attacked the USSR during World War II, NTS was allowed to set up a Berlin headquarters and encouraged to proselytize in Soviet territories under German control among both POWs and civilians. When the tides of war shifted, NTS swung back into alliance with the Americans.

After World War II, the CIA included NTS within the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty organization. Radio Free Europe focused on the East European Soviet satellites, while Radio Liberty focused on the USSR itself. A House report described Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Liberty as "the best known CIA proprietaries". These were pet projects of International Organizations chief Cord Meyer, who headed these radios from 1954 to 1971. Meyer consulted directly and frequently to CIA director Allen Dulles before making any controversial decisions. As described earlier in this series, CI chief Jim Angleton and Cord Meyer were the best of friends. Meyer described Angleton as his hero. They were also Legend Makers #1 and #2 for Lee Harvey Oswald, as they had very special relationships with the people who either befriended or studied Oswald.

After meeting with Meyer, Radio Liberty decreed that anyone adhering to NTS' "organizational discipline" would not be allowed to work at RL. NTS infiltrated and dominated groups that challenged its supremacy. NTS members tried to sabotage the installations and intimidate the exile staffs. Meyer saw it as part of his responsibility to "try to provide the radio with the counter-intelligence protection against this continuing intimidation...it was a never ending task".

...De Mohrenschildt had an extremely deep background with the intelligence community, going back for more than twenty years. His handler appears to have been Thomas Schreyer, identified as "the acting chief" of the Cord Meyer's International Organizations Division [IOD] back in 1956. This means that Schreyer worked very closely with Cord Meyer. [IOD merged in October 1962 with covert action staff.] In April 1963, the Domestic Operations Division asked for traces on de Mohrenschildt, with Schreyer's name provided as the source for any follow-up....

The CIA admitted before the assassination that de Mohrenschildt was "of interest" to them. CIA Dallas resident agent J. Walton Moore stayed in touch with de Mohrenschildt, which will be discussed later in this series. Covert action chief Richard Helms acknowledged that de Mohrenschildt and his wife provided useful foreign intelligence in 1957. His brother Dimitri von Mohrenschildt, described by the CIA as being "employed in a confidential capacity by the U.S. government," is said to have been one of the founders of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. A lengthy CIA-created list entitled "Companies and People Known to be Associated with de Mohrenschildt" includes only one political group: "Dallas Committee Radio Free Europe." De Mohenschildt's wife in Philadelphia, Phyllis Washington, also worked for Radio Free Europe in the early fifties.


The Radio Free Europe connection is an important link between Cord Meyer and George de Mohrenschildt. George couldn't get OSS credentials during World War II because of security disapproval. He was subjected to five separate investigations by intelligence during the 1940s and 50s. Officers like Meyer and Schreyer, however, understood the nature of his relationship with people such as the Jacqueline Bouvier family and the White Russian community. A CIA memo notes that George knew the families of the Kennedys and the Oswalds better than anyone else.

One of George's contacts exposes his hidden CIA connections. In 1954, a young oil lawyer named Herbert Itkin wrangled a meeting in Philadelphia with Allen Dulles, the first chief of Radio Free Europe and future CIA chief. Dulles set him up with a meeting with de Mohrenschildt, who told Itkin he was "from that man in Philadelphia" and that his name was Philip Harbin. William Gaudet verified at an HSCA deposition that he knew George under his alias as Philip Harbin. De Mohrenschildt's beloved and soon-to-be new wife, Jeanne, was from Harbin, China. Angleton testified that Dulles was a very close friend of his own family. Angleton had both an Itkin file and a "Mike/Portio/Haiti" file (Itkin's code name was Portio). Itkin claimed he met "Harbin" in 1954, while CIA general counsel Larry Houston claimed that he could not find any Itkin files prior to 1964 after thousands of hours of search. This was probably because Angleton's personal Itkin and Portio files were kept apart from the CIA records system, and were only discovered after Angleton was fired in 1974. All indications are that de Mohrenschildt was provided to Dulles by Angleton.

Working under the Harbin alias, de Mohrenschildt worked with Itkin in oil matters as a nonpaid, voluntary agent between 1954 to 1960, before Itkin moved on to work with another agent. Itkin's skills enabled US Attorney Bob Morgenthau to win convictions against New York political boss Carmine DeSapio and city commissioner James Marcus. Morgenthau's office described Itkin as "probably the most important informer the FBI ever had outside the espionage field. He never lied to us. His information was always accurate."

By May 1963, Itkin became the attorney for the Haitian government-in-exile. CIA documents show that Itkin's handler in 1963 was Mario Brod, who was recruited in Italy by James Angleton during World War II and had operational involvements in Haiti. Before his brother was killed, Bobby Kennedy himself was relying on mob tips from Itkin. In 1966, Itkin was reportedly researching under his code name "Portio," while Angleton held onto his private "Mike/Portio/Haiti" file. In 1968, CIRA (CI research and analysis chief) Ray Rocca swore that the "CI Staff definitely never was in contact" with Itkin. By 1971, CIRA's bird-dog investigator Paul Hartman was asking to review Itkin's CIA file, no doubt to educate himself on some fine points....

A report by the House Select Committee on Assassinations described Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Liberty as "the best known CIA proprietaries": Narration by G. Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel, HSCA Appendix Volumes/ HSCA Report, Volume IV, p. 3.
Cord Meyer was the division chief in charge of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty from 1954 until 1971: Puddington, p. 24.

After meeting with Meyer, Radio Liberty decreed that anyone adhering to NTS' "organizational discipline" would not be allowed to work at RL, because of NTS' history of infiltrating organizations and dominating them: Puddington, p. 162.

NTS had its headquarters near Berlin in Frankfurt: Memorandum by Thomas A. Parrott to the Special Group, 4/26/63, p. 3, Miscellaneous CIA Series / NARA Record Number: 104-10306-10024.

Meyer saw it as part of his responsibility to "try to provide the radio with the counter-intelligence protection against this continuing intimidation"...: Cord Meyer, Facing Reality, pp. 120-121.

Coffin looked back on the experience: "It was a fundamentally bad idea...we were quite naive about the use of American power.": Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes (New York, Doubleday: 2007), p. 47.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The pattern of using secret fund-raising organizations, ostensibly set up for charitable purposes, as cover for CIA activity is so prolific that we venture to say that this pattern has in effect replaced the U.S. Constitution with the model for how the American government works today. It was what Congressman Wright Patman from Texas warned us about before his death, a cry taken up by Congressman Henry B. Gonzales--both men elected from different districts in Texas. (See Final Report of Select Committee to Study Government Operations (1976), p. 185. under the heading "Cover is Blown: The Patman and Ramparts 'Flaps'."

While helping Catherine Austin Fitts, a friend who worked in the first George Bush presidency, discover how a business she created had been destroyed by some unknown force,  another part of the pattern was disclosed. As explained in the March 30, 2012 post at Cold Case Conspiracy Update Catherine Austin Fitts was fighting the same "financial model" of government action used in killing JFK:

The NEH [National Endowment for the Humanities] was set up in 1965 after President Lyndon Johnson apparently realized that his assassinated predecessor John Kennedy had appointed a close friend, William Walton, Chairman of the Fine Arts Commission, to assume a covert role in making a back channel contact with Nikita Kruschev of the Soviet Union. Citing David Talbot's book, Brothers, Peter Janney reveals in his own book, Mary's Mosaic, that within days of the assassination of JFK,

Bobby and Jackie [Kennedy] asked their close friend [Walton] to quickly reschedule his artistic mission to Russia. They wanted him to deliver a special, secret message to Georgi Bolshakov, formerly a KGB agent under journalistic cover in Washington, who [sic] the Kennedys had come to rely upon when they needed to communicate with Khrushchev directly during critical moments. Indeed, Bolshakov had once been referred to by Newsweek as the "Russian New Frontiersman" because he had become so close to Bobby.... Bobby and Jackie knew that through Bolshakov their message to the Soviets would be directly communicated to Nikita Khrushchev. They wanted "the Russian who [sic] they felt best understood John Kennedy to know their personal opinions of the changes in the U.S. government since the assassination."

After passage of a federal statute setting up the NEH in 1965, President Johnson named former president of Brown University, Barnaby C. Keeney, to be its first chairman. We learn from Martha Mitchell’s Encyclopedia Brunoniana:

In 1978 it was revealed that Keeney had worked for the Central Intelligence Agency while he was president of Brown. He admitted that he had advised the CIA in matters such as “setting up covert funding operations,” adding in explanation, “I suppose nowadays it is improper to attempt to serve your country ... but then I felt I was doing what I should.” In 1962 Keeney set up the Human Ecology Fund, which Alex Constantine describes in Virtual Government as "the financial hub of MK-ULTRA."

The Human Ecology Fund had been originally created as the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology by Harold Wolff. As explained by the author of this last linked essay:

Though largely unexamined, the extent of covert CIA funding of American-funded social science research during the 1950s and 1960s was extraordinary. This unexamined state of affairs is all the more problematic considering that over three decades ago, the US Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities [the "Church Committee"] found that

[t]he CIA’s intrusion into the foundation field in the 1960s can only be described as massive. Excluding grants from the ‘Big Three’ – Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie – of the 700 grants over $10,000 given by 164 other foundations during the period 1963-1966, at least 108 involved partial or complete CIA funding. More importantly, CIA funding was involved in nearly half the grants the non-‘Big Three’ foundations made during this period in the field of international activities. In the same period more than one-third of the grants awarded by non-‘Big Three’ in the physical, life and social sciences also involved CIA funds.

Bona fide foundations, rather than those controlled by the CIA, were considered the best and most plausible kind of funding cover for certain kinds of operations. A 1966 CIA study explained the use of legitimate foundations was the most effective way of concealing the CIA’s hand as well as [falsely] reassuring members of funding organizations that the organization was in fact supported by private funds. The Agency study contended that this technique was ‘particularly effective for democratically run membership organizations, which need to assure their own unwitting members and collaborators, as well as their hostile critics, that they have genuine, respectable, private sources of income.’ (US Senate 1976: 182-183) [All emphasis added by QJ]

The Chief of the Covert Action Staff at the time President Kennedy was murdered was none other than Cord Meyer, Jr. We find in top secret sanitized documents released in 1998 that Meyer was reporting to the President's PFIAB, chaired by Dr. James Rhyne Killian, former president of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Killian was appointed in 1956  by President Eisenhower and served until April 1963. That same month Clark Clifford moved up from being a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board to replace Killian as chairman. When President Kennedy took office in January 1961, Clark Clifford had been appointed his special counsel--the same position, incidentally, which John Dean was given in Richard Nixon's White House.

James R. Killian

 Killian only two months before his resignation had become a director at AT&T, formerly known as Bell Labs before its merger with Western Electric. It will be remembered that Ruth Paine's father, William Avery Hyde, educated as a chemical engineer, had worked in New York City at Bell Labs before the company moved many of its operations to Murray Hill, New Jersey.

After Ruth was born in 1932, at some point prior to 1935, the Hyde family had moved to Malboro Township in Monmouth County, New Jersey, approximately 40 miles from AT&T/Bell Lab's new office in Murray Hill. Bell Labs acquired the site, called the Deal Test Site, which is bounded by three major township roads, Deal Road, Whalepond Road, and Dow Avenue, in New Jersey from Western Electric in 1927. Western Electric had used part of the land since 1919. In 1979 this land, which by then totaled 208 acres, was proposed to be converted to a municipal park in the center of Ocean Township, New Jersey. The city had purchased the land five years earlier, according to Robin Goldstein's article at page 14 of the pdf. Bell Labs had sold it in 1953 to two Jersey city businessmen--George Fangmann and Walter Scott--who then leased the site to the federal government during the Korean War and during USSR's space race. The lease was not renewed after July 1, 1972.

Yet, the chemical engineer reported his occupation as insurance salesman in 1940.


James R. Killian was "so very important in setting up the national security system during the Eisenhower administration. Key player in setting up the Institute for Defense Analyses, the President's Science Advisory Committee, DARPA, a Princeton-located think tank for the NSA, MITRE and the NRO. He was a MITRE trustee and a board member of the Office of Defense Mobilization. He could also be found at MIT and Tulane and was a close associate of Vannevar Bush."

Killian's replacement as chairman of PFIAB was Clark Clifford (1906-1998). Special Counsel to the President, 1946-1950; Senior Partner, Clifford & Miller, 1950-1968; President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board member, 1961-1968, Chairman, 1963-1968; Secretary of Defense, March 1968-January 1969; Senior Partner, Clifford & Warnke, 1969-1991. 

"Clifford recalled that for him the two most valuable members of PFIAB were scientists Dr. Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid Land camera, and Dr. William Baker, who brought to the PFIAB the most recent scientific knowledge and discoveries bearing on the technical acquisition of intelligence information. (Counsel to the President: A Memoir, New York: Random House, 1991, pages 350 ff.)"