Umbrella Man
A few years ago JFK researcher Russ Baker wrote a piece on his website called "JFK Umbrella Man--More Doubts," as a follow-up to a previous article he entitled "NY Times' Umbrella Man Exposed." Baker is a well educated journalist, whose book, Family of Secrets (Bloomsbury Press 2008), attempted to reveal the secret background of the life of George H. W. Bush and his son George W. Bush (Presidents 41 and 43).
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| Photo, as enlarged, of "umbrella man" |
Baker does not take anything published in the mainstream media at face value. He questions all facts presented, researching for himself the sources behind a reporter's story. He is often critical of the conclusions the reporter arrives at given the "facts" laid out.
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| You Tube video |
Such was the case when he viewed the Errol Morris' "umbrella man" video that showed up in the opinion section of the New York Times website on November 21, 2011, the day prior to the 48th anniversary of the John F. Kennedy assassination.
Baker delved into who Louis Steven Witt, the man who testified before the HSCA hearing on September 22, 1978, was:
Baker delved into who Louis Steven Witt, the man who testified before the HSCA hearing on September 22, 1978, was:
Here are some things you should know about the man who came forward to identify himself as Umbrella Man and tell this ludicrous Neville Chamberlain story:
- His account of his activities that day don’t track with what Umbrella Man actually did, raising questions as to whether this man who volunteered to testify to the assassination inquiry is even the real umbrella-bearer, or someone whose purpose was to end inquiries into the matter.
- The man who came forward, Louie Steven Witt, was a young man at the time of Kennedy’s death. How many young men in Dallas in 1963 even knew what Neville Chamberlain had done a quarter-century before?
- In 1963, Witt was an insurance salesman for the Rio Grande National Life Insurance company, which anchored the eponymous Rio Grande Building in downtown Dallas. It’s an interesting building. Among the other outfits housed in the building was the Office of Immigration and Naturalization—a place Lee Harvey Oswald visited repeatedly upon his return from Russia, ostensibly to deal with matters concerning the immigration status of his Russian-born wife, Marina. Another occupant of the Rio Grande Building was the US Secret Service, so notably lax in its protection of Kennedy that day, breaking every rule of security on every level.
- A major client of Rio Grande was the US military, to which it provided insurance.
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| Compare this photo with those shown at WhoWhatWhy of umbrella man. |
Witt had actually been born in October 1924, making him 18 years old in 1942, the year he joined the military in Omaha, Texas, a farm town located a mere 15 miles from where D. Harold Byrd in 1936 formed a business with three other partners.
In Baker's original story about Witt, Baker wrote:
Rio Grande National Life Insurance Company
In Baker's original story about Witt, Baker wrote:
In 1963, Witt was an insurance salesman for the Rio Grande National Life Insurance company, which anchored the eponymous Rio Grande Building in downtown Dallas. It’s an interesting building. Among the other outfits housed in the building was the Office of Immigration and Naturalization—a place Lee Harvey Oswald visited repeatedly upon his return from Russia, ostensibly to deal with matters concerning the immigration status of his Russian-born wife, Marina. Another occupant of the Rio Grande Building was the US Secret Service, so notably lax in its protection of Kennedy that day, breaking every rule of security on every level.
A major client of Rio Grande was the US military, to which it provided insurance.
It’s worth considering the roles of military-connected figures on the day of the assassination. These include Dallas Military Intelligence unit chief Jack Crichton operating secretly from an underground communications bunker; Crichton’s providing a translator who twisted Marina Oswald’s statement to police in a way that implicated her husband; and members of military intelligence forcing their way into the pilot car [see below] of Kennedy’s motorcade, which inexplicably ground to a halt in front of the Texas School Book Depository (where Lee Harvey Oswald’s employer, a high official with the local military-connected American Legion, managed to find a “job” for Oswald at a time when his company was otherwise seasonally laying off staff.) Oh, and it’s worth contemplating JFK’s titanic, if under-reported, struggle with top Pentagon officials over how the US should interact with Russia, Cuba, and the rest of the world.
Rio Grande National Life Insurance Company
The Rio Grande insurance building on N. Field at Elm was 18 stories high, and the insurance company was housed in the top three floors. The entire 9th floor was leased to the U.S. government agencies Baker mentioned. Rio Grande's chairman, president and three vice presidents (father and four brothers) had the last name Baxter. All other vice presidents appear to have been their assistants.
Robert Wylie Baxter, of Harlingen, had been one of three incorporators of the company in 1928. By 1930 he had moved to Dallas but retained the name that connected the business to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. In 1939, he traded the original building in Harlingen for one in Dallas. Then in 1948 the company purchased the lot on Field and Elm to build a new building. By then the sons were out of college and the military, with families of their own. The three eldest were employed by Rio Grande, while Murphy soon moved to Midland to pursue a career as an oilman. Bill, the youngest, became a rancher in Tioga.
In Dallas the senior Baxter was also associated with other businessmen as a sponsor of presidential candidates. In August of 1960 an AP wire story alleged that Baxter had been named in 1958--along with Harry W. Bass Jr. and Toddie Lee Wynne, Jr., son of one of the powerful Wynne brothers--as sponsors of an appreciation dinner for Senator Lyndon Johnson, which later turned into a committee supporting LBJ for President during the primary, before he lost the convention vote to John Kennedy. After JFK was nominated, the Dallas men then threw their support to the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, joining others who were already active in Republican politics. They rejected Kennedy, the article said, because he planned to lower the oil-depletion allowance.
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| Dallas directory, 1963 |
Thornton, who headed the Mercantile National Bank, had also been a Dallas mayor. Both Stewart and Fulgham were officers of the Dallas Bank which in 1973 became First International Bancshares, Inc. This bank would later place George H. W. Bush in charge of its London subsidiary when newly elected President Jimmy Carter refused to keep Bush on as Director of the CIA.
By 1982, Fulgham was a member of the board of directors of the Bush-connected corporation, Dresser Industries, as well as being executive director of Merrill Lynch Capital, Inc., when he criticized the sanctions imposed by the Reagan administration against a subsidiary, Dresser France, the company furnishing parts for a pipeline being built from Siberia to furnish natural gas to Europe.
We know the 4th U.S. Army Intelligence Corps was located in Room 912 and that Immigration & Naturalization Service occupied most of the 14th floor of the Rio Grande Building.
Murphy Baxter was engaged as early as 1953 in the oil industry in Midland, Texas, and his office that year was in the V & J Tower at 114 N. Big Spring. That building (now a parking lot) was directly across the street from where the Bush-Overbey oil company was located within the Midland National Bank, which fronted on W. Texas Avenue at the corner of N. Big Spring (see inset). Undoubtedly the two oilmen would have bumped into each other during the years they were both in Midland. A few years later both Baxter and Bush would relocate to Houston.
In October 1967 Murphy H. Baxter filed a lawsuit in Dallas County's 116th District Court against his father and oldest brother, as Rio Grande's two highest executives, alleging they had begun a campaign to market life insurance to military personnel, ignoring commonsense business practices, and resulting in the loss of millions of dollars to him as an 11% shareholder of the company. A month after the lawsuit was filed, Rio Grande agreed to merge into Kentucky Central insurance of Lexington, Kentucky. The merger became effective on January 1, 1968, absorbing all that was left of the Texas insurance company and abandoning the name. The same month as Witt's testimony Kentucky Central was fighting a takeover engineered by American General insurance company in Houston, originally organized by Gus Wortham, a member of what has been called the "Suite 8-F Crowd," one member of which was George R. Brown, who had financially supported Lyndon's Johnson's presidential bid in 1960, when he came in second to John F. Kennedy. American General in 1978 was headed by Andrew Delaney, who had worked with the company's top executives since 1953.
By the time Louie Steven Witt testified in September 1978, one might assume there was nobody left to pressure him to make up an absurd story such as he told to Josiah "Tink" Thompson--that he was protesting Neville Chamberlain's 1938 appeasement policy.
In October 1967 Murphy H. Baxter filed a lawsuit in Dallas County's 116th District Court against his father and oldest brother, as Rio Grande's two highest executives, alleging they had begun a campaign to market life insurance to military personnel, ignoring commonsense business practices, and resulting in the loss of millions of dollars to him as an 11% shareholder of the company. A month after the lawsuit was filed, Rio Grande agreed to merge into Kentucky Central insurance of Lexington, Kentucky. The merger became effective on January 1, 1968, absorbing all that was left of the Texas insurance company and abandoning the name. The same month as Witt's testimony Kentucky Central was fighting a takeover engineered by American General insurance company in Houston, originally organized by Gus Wortham, a member of what has been called the "Suite 8-F Crowd," one member of which was George R. Brown, who had financially supported Lyndon's Johnson's presidential bid in 1960, when he came in second to John F. Kennedy. American General in 1978 was headed by Andrew Delaney, who had worked with the company's top executives since 1953.
By the time Louie Steven Witt testified in September 1978, one might assume there was nobody left to pressure him to make up an absurd story such as he told to Josiah "Tink" Thompson--that he was protesting Neville Chamberlain's 1938 appeasement policy. In 1975 his directory listing showed him to be records supervisor at the the Oak Cliff Savings & Loan, when he stepped forward to take credit for standing in front of the TSBD, holding a black umbrella, as the shots were fired that killed Kennedy. Oak Hill Savings in 1972 had been absorbed, through mergers and acquisitions, into First Texas Financial Corporation, and one year after Witt's testimony, it no longer employed him.
Jack Crichton and Dallas Military Intelligence
If the intent of Witt's testimony was to mislead the HSCA investigation, one possible clue to that motive might have been the fact that in 1950, while still single, Louie Witt had been employed as a "parts layout man" for an aircraft manufacturer, renting a room southwest of downtown Dallas, less than 8 miles from North American Aviation's aircraft factory. As the linked article states: "Chance-Vought, one of the four divisions of United Aircraft, Incorporated, took over the North American plant in May 1949 to produce and experiment with jet aircraft. The Texas Engineering and Manufacturing Company was organized to utilize the facilities of what by then had become one of the world's largest centers of aircraft production.... After the North American facility (later Ling-Temco-Vought), the Fort Worth General Dynamics or 'Convair' plant was completed in 1941. This firm, noted for bomber production and its controversial TFX contract, ranked first in the nation in the export of defense weapons in 1965."
Daniel Hopsicker and I had a chapter in Gangster Planet devoted to the same area that, according to TSHA "had become one of the world's largest centers of aircraft production." If memory serves, we called the chapter "Busting Out All Over."
Jack Crichton
After discussion of the umbrella man, Russ Baker jumped to the subject of Jack Crichton,
who in 1963 was chief of the 488th Army Reserve intelligence unit in Dallas, relying to some extent on the previous work of Peter Dale Scott. Scott himself, who revised some of his own views of the role of military intelligence after reading Baker's book, had years earlier sat in an interview of sorts held by the man in charge of the HSCA investigation (Robert Blakey) in September 1977 as part of a group of acknowledged JFK assassination experts--known as the "Critics Conference." Scott had by that time already written much about Jack Alston Crichton, chief of the 488th reserve unit of military intelligence, which answered to the 4th Army commander based at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. As we stated earlier, however, the 4th Army Intelligence Corps also had an office in the Rio Grande office building in Dallas, the same building where Louie Steven Witt worked.
Scott knew that half of the 100 members of the intelligence unit had careers within the Dallas Police Department (DPD). In a paper presented in 2010 at COPA he spelled out numerous false flag scenarios that had taken place in Dallas, which he had testified about at the Critics' Conference. He mentioned as an example an army cable sent by Assistant Chief Don Stringfellow of the Intelligence Section of DPD, whose superior officer was Captain W.P. Gannaway, a member of Army Intelligence Reserve. A warrant officer of the 112th Intelligence Group, Ed Coyle, testified to the Assassinations Records Review Board in 1996 that all the officers in the DPD’s Intelligence Section were in army intelligence.
Scott knew that half of the 100 members of the intelligence unit had careers within the Dallas Police Department (DPD). In a paper presented in 2010 at COPA he spelled out numerous false flag scenarios that had taken place in Dallas, which he had testified about at the Critics' Conference. He mentioned as an example an army cable sent by Assistant Chief Don Stringfellow of the Intelligence Section of DPD, whose superior officer was Captain W.P. Gannaway, a member of Army Intelligence Reserve. A warrant officer of the 112th Intelligence Group, Ed Coyle, testified to the Assassinations Records Review Board in 1996 that all the officers in the DPD’s Intelligence Section were in army intelligence.
Scott had concluded that "they were almost certainly in the 488th Army Intelligence
Reserve unit of Dallas: Jack Crichton, the head of the 488th, revealed
in an oral history that there were “about a hundred men in that unit and
about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department,” citing his previous books, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, 276 and Deep Politics II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico, and Cuba, 78.
History of U.S. Military Intelligence
Historically, all military intelligence groups of today can track their origin to 1940. Mother Jones published an article by Adam Hochchild
in its first 2018 issue about Major General Ralph H. Van Deman, tracing
all military intelligence groups to an organizing meeting held a year and a
half before the Pearl Harbor attack, at which all intelligence gathering
was divided up by Van Deman and his protege, J. Edgar Hoover:
On May 31, 1940, Hoover gathered in his office high officials from the Army, Navy, and State Department to divide up intelligence-gathering territory. “This was like the pope dividing the unexplored world [between Spain and Portugal] in 1493,” says McCoy. “The FBI got counterintelligence at home—and operations in Latin America. Military intelligence, out of which the OSS and then the CIA evolved, got the rest of the world.”
Peter Dale Scott's COPA paper disclosed that Crichton commanded the 488th and that Deputy Police Chief George L. Lumpkin was also a deputy
commander of the 488th under Crichton. He drew a picture of Jack Crichton as "the kind of figure Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping
Point described as a “connector….people with a special gift for bringing
the world together.” He then listed a number of contacts among whom Crichton acted as a hub, such as:
- His superior in the Army Reserves, Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, who rode in the pilot car of the Kennedy motorcade in front of President Kennedy.
- DPD Deputy Chief George Lumpkin was also in the pilot car, which made an unexplained stop in front of the building leased by the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD).
- The Lessor/owner of the TSBD building was D.Harold “Dry Hole” Byrd, who was a director since 1961 of Dorchester Gas Producing, headed by Crichton.
- Lt. Col. Frank Brandstetter, a fellow 488th member, with whom Crichton seemingly conducted “a study of Soviet oil fields,” in the late 1950s. Hungarian by birth, Brandstetter worked in hotel management for eleven years in New York (in 1940 managing a small hotel, ironically, only three doors down from Jeffrey's Epstein's later home on E. 65th Street). He went from being a hotelier to serving in Army Intelligence, and was sent to England to the U.S. XVIII Airborne Corps Headquarters, where he asked to train with the 506th Airborne Infantry Regiment "Band of Brothers," and dropped with that unit into Normandy on D-Day. He founded the Las Brisas Resort in Acapulco while still on active duty for the Pentagon, but he most likely teamed up with Crichton in oil exploration in countries where he could help as a translator. (See Adorable Times blog and obituary).
- Ilya Mamantov, a Russian emigre who arrived with his parents from Latvia, and spent his career with Sun Oil Co., (owned by the Pew family of Pennsylvania), which got its start at Spindletop, where it also was engaged in building a distribution pipeline through Louisiana, when Crichton was growing up there before 1934. Crichton knew Mamatov well enough in 1963 to recommend him to translate for Marina Oswald.
Before joining the military, Crichton had graduated in 1937
from Texas A&M at College Station, Texas, with a B.S. in petroleum
engineering. His name was also listed in the Boston Globe in 1938 as a recipient of an M.S. in petroleum engineering from Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. Still single in 1938, he returned to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he found Norris McGowen, founder of United Gas Corp. was very active. In fact, Jack was hired to work for United's subsidiary Union Producing Co. at that time, not long before Union acquired the old Youree mansion on Fairfield Avenue in Shreveport to start construction of a seven-story headquarters for Crichton's employer. A few years later the 1525 Fairfield Avenue home office became the Louisiana State Office Building in Shreveport.
Jack's aunt, Jo Crichton Mercer, lived at 1022 Fairfield with her husband, William D. Mercer, less than a mile north of the new headquarters, and he lived with them in 1940 while working for United Gas. Jo and her son, John F. Mercer, were tax collectors for Caddo Parish.
Cold War Plans
President Truman transferred the activities of the Research and Analysis Branch and the Presentation Branch of the Office of Strategic Services to the State Department, effective as of October 1945. That transfer, according to Truman, represented "the beginning of the development of a coordinated system of foreign intelligence within the permanent framework of the Government. Consistent with the foregoing, the Executive order provides for the transfer of the remaining activities of the Office of Strategic Services to the War Department; for the abolition of the Office of Strategic Services; and for the continued orderly liquidation of some of the activities of the Office without interrupting other services of a military nature the need for which will continue for some time."
Therefore, from October 1, 1945 until the Central Intelligence Agency's creation by Truman's administration, former OSS operatives not released from service transferred over either to the State Department as civilians, or to the Department of War (renamed Defense), possibly as military officers. Since it has been asserted that Crichton was in OSS, he most likely went back into military intelligence until his discharge in 1946.
From there he went to work for Degolyer & MacNaughten's office in Dallas.
