Permindex and Double-Chek Agents and Activities

After a question was posed by a reader of this blog, I noticed a draft which I failed to post earlier. It relates to research done a few years ago pertaining to what prompted the publication of the Torbitt Document in 1969.

What did "Torbitt" Know?

David Copeland's Manuscript

David Copeland (writing under the pseudonym of William Torbitt) wrote in Chapter VI of the Torbitt Document, entitled "Permindex and Double-Chek Agents and their Activities") that Double-Chek Corporation, 

a Florida corporation organized and operated by the CIA and the American counterpart of Permindex and Centro Mondiale Comerciale, was taken over by Division Five of the FBI and was used as one of the principal funding agencies for President Kennedy's death planners.

In other words, Copeland, through information he gleaned from various underground sources while his first wife was employed at Consolidated Vultee Aircraft in Fort Worth, compared Double Chek's organization to that of Permindex and CMC--all CIA proprietaries which he thought were "taken over" by J. Edgar Hoover in order to pay the assassins of President Kennedy.

The Italian Centro Mondiale Commerciale (translated "world trade center") was a creature of the national security authority Americans set up to comply with requirements of various international pacts at the conclusion of World War II to fight further Soviet expansion. These mutual security agreements set the stage for "stay behind" military forces which continued to police Europe in order to prevent Stalin's military from taking advantage of the devastation. At the same time, other funds were funneled into companies designed to strengthen the ability of the locals to defend themselves. Presumably the CMC was a front company into which American money was funneled for either or both of such purposes.

Not until 1973 was the existence of Double-Check as a CIA proprietary company confirmed by the Church Committee Report.

From Church Committee Reports, page 263

In describing the Defense Industrial Security Command, Copeland seemed to rely on the gun-running activities in which David Ferrie and Jack Ruby had often been engaged, but he also used information supplied by criminal defendants he had represented. After mentioning the allegations made by Donald P. Norton connecting Ferrie to Oswald, as well as statements made by Jules Rocco Kimble about Ferrie's contacts in Montreal, he stated that Walter Sheridan "was the liaison man with Bobby Kennedy for Joe Carroll of the Defense Intelligence Agency."

One of the agents employed by Hoover's Espionage Section [also referred to as Division 5 or the Domestic Intelligence section] was W. Marvin Gheesling, who took Lee Oswald off the FLASH warning only one day before alarms would have been set off while he was in contact with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. [See page 178 of James Douglas, JFK and the Unspeakable.]


Mexican Assassins in Texas in 1952
 
David Copeland aka William Torbitt wrote the following, concerning the assassination cabal housed somewhere in Mexico:

The Free Cuba Committee, anti-Communist Russian Solidarists, A.C.C.C. and Division Five of the FBI obtained the team of world's best Mexican riflemen through the offices of Double-Chek Corporation, an American based subsidiary of Permindex, the FBI and CIA funded Swiss corporation, and Centro Mondiale Comerciale, also known as World Trade Center Corporation, another FBI and CIA funded corporation which moved from Rome to Johannesburg, South Africa in 1962. Both of these corporations had been used by J. Edgar Hoover to fund the 1961 and 1962 assassination attempts on General DeGaulle.

The existence of the espionage section of the FBI's nest of professional assassins in Mexico began under the supervision of Albert Osborne in 1943. It was Hoover's brain child and he has kept a close management on the unit of twenty-five to thirty expert riflemen and continues to do so in 1969. He has allowed the Defense Intelligence Agency to use these men but they remain as his charges. In 1952 two of the professionals, Mario (El Turko) Sapet and Alfredo Cervantes, took a private contract to assassinate Jake Floyd, a District Judge in Alice, Texas, and a bitter enemy of George Parr of Duval County. These men were allowed to take such private employment but [the FBI's] Division Five never knew anything concerning such unauthorized killings.

At about dusk on September 8, 1952, Sapet and Cervantes positioned themselves in a field adjacent to the rear of Floyd's house and when Buddy Floyd, Jake's 19 year old son, who resembled his father, started out of the house to the garage, Cervantes mistakenly shot Buddy through the head, killing him. Cervantes, Sapet and Nago Alaniz, George Parr's personal lawyer, were indicted for the assassination and for conspiracy to murder. Sapet was caught before he could cross the Mexican border and was given a 99 year sentence. Cervantes crossed back into Mexico where he found his Division Five assassination group, and, although Mexican authorities arrested him, political pressure was brought to bear and Alfredo has remained a free man in Mexico despite sixteen years of constant effort to extradite him by Sam Burris, the Alice District Attorney. Burris and Bill Allcorn, Special Assistant Attorney General of Texas, were unable to convict Nago Alaniz, but one of the conspirators gave Bill Allcorn pertinent information. The accomplice told Allcorn that there were twenty-five to thirty professional assassins kept in Mexico by the espionage section of the U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigation; that these men were used to commit political assassinations all over North, South and Central America, the East European countries and in Russia; that these men were the absolute world's most accurate riflemen; they they sometimes took private contracts to kill in the United States; that the contact man for employment of the riflemen was a man named Bowen posing as an American Council of Christian Churches' missionary in Mexico; that you could reach Bowen through the owner of the St. Anthony's Hotel in Laredo, Texas.

Albert Alexander Osborne, alias John Howard Bowen, alias J.H. Owen, a charter member and employee of the A.C.C.C. [American Council of Christian Churches], met Lee Harvey Oswald and accompanied him to Mexico City in late September of 1963. Osborne or Bowen in 1942 organized and operated a Nazi black shirt group called the "Campfire Council" in the country near Knoxville, Tennessee. The "Campfire Council" was sponsored by the espionage cover group, the "American Council of Christian Churches." Osborne so vehemently opposed the United States war with Nazi Germany that during 1942, he tore down an American flag and stomped it into the ground. The neighbors complained of the pro-Nazi activities of Bowen and his young Fascists even though the rural area in Tennessee where they were located was very sparsely populated. More than six witnesses on the bus trip from Laredo to Mexico City placed Osborne with Lee Oswald in his company as a definite traveling companion. The two stayed together during the entire trip and sat together on the bus.

On February 8, l964, Osborne was interviewed by the FBI and lied to them about his name among other things. He gave them the name John Howard Bowen and gave them the following statement: Bowen advised that he has been in the Russellville, Alabama area, speaking at various rural Baptist Churches, and has been residing at the residence of Wylie Uptain, Rural Route, Russellville, Alabama. He stated that he intended leaving the Russellville, Alabama area, February 11, 1964, enroute back to Laredo, Texas by way of New Orleans, Louisiana.

Bowen stated to the best of his knowledge he was born at Chester, Pennsylvania on January 12, 1885, and his father's name was James A. Bowen, and his mother was Emily Bowen. He did not know his parents, but he was reared in an orphanage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His grandmother, Sarah Hall, participated to a limited extent in giving him guidance and shelter during the early years of his life. His grandmother and relatives are all deceased, and he has no known relatives of any kind. . . . Bowen stated he considers himself an itinerant gardener and preacher. He was formerly a member of the First Baptist Church at Knoxville, Tennessee, and more recently was a member of the First Baptist Church at Laredo, Texas. He has visited and worshiped at the latter church intermittently for the past twenty years. . . . He considers his home to be the St. Anthony Hotel, Laredo, Texas, and he is well known there by the manager, Oscar Ferrina. He has been residing at the hotel intermittently for the past twenty years, and has made trips to Mexico for the past twenty years as an itinerant preacher. . . .

On February 20, 1964, Osborne was interviewed by FBI agents in Laredo, Texas and repeated the falsehoods told in the earlier statement. Then on March 5, 1964, he told FBI agents at Nashville, Tennessee the amazing story which follows. Please remember that this is the man who was such a dedicated Nazi that during World War II, he tore down the American flag and stomped it into the ground in protest against the United States war with Hitler's Nazi Germany. A part of the amazing statement follows:

Albert Osborne, whose permanent address is 920 Salinas, Box 308, Laredo, Texas, was interviewed at his temporary place of residence at the Central YMCA, Nashville, Tennessee, where is registered under the name of John H. Bowen. (Box 308 is the address of the St. Anthony Hotel in Laredo).

At the outset of the interview, Osborne denied his true identity and claimed that his name was John H. Bowen; however he later admitted that his correct name is Albert Osborne and he furnished the following background information concerning himself. Osborne indicated that he was born November 12, 1888 at Grimsby, England, to James Osborne and Emile Cole Osborne, both of whom are deceased. He identified his brothers as Walter Osborne, Grimsby, England; Arthur Osborne, Grimsby, England; William Osborne, deceased, and Frank Osborne, deceased. . . . .

Osborne admitted that he had been untruthful in three previous interviews concerning his own identity and had furnished false information concerning John H. Bowen, whom he had previously indicated was an acquaintance for whom he, Osborne, had been frequently mistaken. . . . . Osborne was advised that his photograph had been positively identified by other English speaking people on the Red Arrow Bus from Laredo, Texas to Mexico City on September 26, 27, 1963. Osborne again denied that he was on a bus with any other English speaking people and that he himself spoke no English to anyone on the bus.

Rev. W. L. Hluchan; click to enlarge.

Osborne's associates said he had lived in Central Mexico since about 1942. One close associate said Osborne had a mission in Texmelucan, State of Puebla, Mexico, and "his mission consisted have no home or ties." Rev. Walter Laddie Hluchan of Eagle Pass, Texas, [see newspaper excerpt, right] said, "Osborne has for many years given religious instruction to Mexican boys who resided at his residence." Oscar Ferrino, owner of the St. Anthony Hotel, Laredo, Texas, said Osborne "is operating a school for approximately 25 to 30 boys" in Pueblo, Mexico. Ferrino has known and taken mail and messages for Osborne since 1942. When not in Mexico supervising his "missionaries," Osborne traveled regularly to Austin, Dallas and Tyler, Texas. In Dallas he visited one Cortez and H.L. Hunt. Cortez was reported to be one of the assassins in the 26 volumes published by the Warren Commission. The same volumes connect a Saunders from Tyler Texas in the plot with Cortez.

Albert Osborne was in Clay Shaw's office at 124 Camp Street, New Orleans on October 10, 1963. [Note: This is the same day the alarm would have gone off about Lee Oswald's contacts with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City, had not the FLASH being discontinued by the FBI agent, W. Marvin Gheesling.]

Later the same day he was in the office of Maurice Brooks Gatlin, the FBI transporter and Guy Bannister, the FBI Section Five Southern Manager, at their office at 544 Camp Street, New Orleans. From there, Osborne went directly into Mexico City where on the 17th or 18th of September, 1963, he was [had previously been?] seen by a Mexican detective with the man posing as Oswald. A Cuban Negro delivered a large sum of money to the man posing as Oswald as a partial payment for his part in the assassination. Osborne, alias John Howard Bowen, was discovered to have another person working with him who also used the alias John Howard Bowen. The second person also travelling as Bowen was Fred Lee Chrismon [sic; Crisman], another agent for the munitions makers police agency, the Defense Industrial Security Command.

Chrismon [sic] also posed as a missionary and also used other aliases. Among the cognomens for Chrismon [sic] were Fred Lee, Jon Gould and Jon Gold. Osborne and Chrismon [sic] also bore a marked resemblance and appeared to be about the same age. Chrismon [sic] was a Syrian immigrant and had been closely associated with Osborne since the 1920's. Chrismon [sic], Osborne and their riflemen charges in Mexico were based at Clint Murchison's huge ranch when not posing as missionaries in other areas of Mexico.

In addition to the misspelling of Crisman's name, the so-called Torbitt Document above also was incorrect in stating that he was a Syrian immigrant. Frederick Lee Crisman was born in Tacoma, Washington, and both his father (a WWI veteran) and mother (the former Eva Pitcher) were born in Iowa. His paternal grandfather, Frederick M. Crisman was born in Pennsylvania in 1849. 

While residing in Laredo, John Howard Bowen, was reported in 1944 to be organizing the "Campfire Baseball League" comprised of players ages 16 and under. Bowen urged "captains, coaches and managers" to attend a meeting "between the Red Cross building and the Colonial Hotel on Hidalgo Street." 

More than a year later, the following item appeared in that same paper:

Missionary Returns

John Howard Bowen has returned after a several weeks visit to cities in the north and east. While away he enjoyed his favorite sport of skiing. He was a former missionary in India and Arabia, and while away visited in New York, Washington, D. C., Nashville, and the estwhile [sic] "Secret City" Oak Ridge Tenn. He spoke in the chapel at Oak Ridge where 75,000 families are housed, as well in other cities he visited. [Laredo Times, Jan. 31, 1946]

A few weeks after his return, on Feb. 17, 1946, the following letter appeared on the editorial page of the Laredo Times:

The Editor
Laredo Times

I have travelled around the world twice. I have crossed the seas on North German Lloyds, Orient Lines, P and O Steamers, Cunard Lines and the French Lines. I have rode in all manners of vehicles, house-boats, sampans, junks, and canoes. I have travelled in all kinds of wheels vehicles tongas, ekkas, drokas, bashes, wheelbarrows and jinrikhas. The jinrikisha, is a large baby carriage which is pulled by a man. Its name means "manpulled-car" hence, it is the original pullman car. I have travelled, on elephants, buffaloes, camels, Mexican burros, mules, horses and afoot. I have swam the rivers Jordon, in Palestine, Ganges, in India, Nile, in Egypt, and the Congo, in Africa, as well as the rivers of America. I have walked with pilgrims on the road to the holy city of Benares, in India, with the Sikhs to the Golden Temple, with Mohammedans on the trackless wastes r of the Arabian desert to Mecca, and the Blue Mosque, in Cairo, in Egypt, and accompanied David Solemon Cohen, the Clerk of the City of Jerusalem, to the Temple there. I have taught school in India, Arabia, and Africa, and in all my observations and travels, I have never seen a better spirit of cooperation and brotherhood, than was manifested at the Brotherhood banquet at the Plaza Hotel on Friday night.

Here ten Protestant congregations, and two Jewish congregations gathered in the finest spirit of brotherhood, and it is indeed a credit to the City of Laredo, to have religious leaders who believe like the great Jewish Apostle to the Gentiles, that "From one forefather He (God) has created every nation of mankind, and made them live on the face of the earth". There can be no longer any desert solitudes. The races have become people.


"The blood of the people! Changeless tide
Through century, creed and race
Stilll one, as the sweet salt sea is one
Though tempered by sun and place
"One love, one hope, one duty theirs!
No matter the time or kin.
There is no separate heart-beat
In all the races of men."

John Howard Bowen                                         

Box 635 Laredo, Texas                                      

Poem from World Service of the Methodist Episcopal Church

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

THE DAILY GLEANER, Kingston, Jamaica - December 14, 1949

Mr. William G. (Bill) Gaudet, head of Latin American Reports, Inc. in New Orleans, arrived in the island on Friday afternoon last on the first leg of a complete Latin American tour. He left on Saturday afternoon for Port au Prince, Haiti.

Bill Gaudet of The Latin American Report

January 24, 1967

Credit U.S. Diplomats With
Ending Nicaraguan Uprising

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP)—U S. diplomats were credited today with ending a 20-hour uprising against the Nicaraguan government, an uprising that killed 21 and wounded more than 100 Nicaraguans. Through U.S. Embassy mediation, the rebellion ended Monday night when the rebels freed 117 foreign hostages, including 89 North Americans held in the Grand Hotel, which had been turned into a fortress. The rebels surrendered their arms and were allowed to go free.

Waved Bedsheet

The American role was dramatized when Bill Gaudet, publisher of a New Orleans monthly, the Latin American Report, followed by two American nuns ran out of the hotel waving a bedsheet as a white flag. The nuns were Jeanne Dienan of St. Paul, Minn., and Mary Martha Meyer of Los Angeles of the Sisters of St. Joseph, who were attending a nurses' convention. Gaudet said he told rebel leaders in the hotel he was going out to try to get the shooting stopped, then grabbed the sheet and yelled: "Who will go with me?" The nuns volunteered, and the three made a dash to a corner where there were National Guard officers.

Taken to Embassy

After Gaudet asked the guards to hold their fire he and the nuns were taken to the U.S. Embassy. The rebels against the Somoza family, which has ruled Nicaragua for more than 30 years, had holed up in the hotel. National Guardsmen with tanks surrounded the hotel while insurgent leaders negotiated with representatives of President Lorenzo Guerrero in the presence of U.S. diplomats. A cheer went up from a crowd outside as the first U.S. hostages emerged from the hotel. They included uniformed but unarmed members of the U.S. military mission. An American flag appeared over the second-floor balcony.
The hostages included a number of North American tourists and businessmen staying at the hotel. They were given shelter in the homes of U.S. diplomats and U.S. residents in Managua. Inside the hotel, soldiers sorted out a small arsenal of rebel weapons, including 10 rifles and 25 pistols of ancient make, a quantity of ammunition, knives and saws.

 The short-lived revolt erupted Sunday after a political rally conducted by Fernando Aguero, Conservative party candidate for president against Gen Anastasio Somoza Jr., standardbearer of the Liberal party and an heir to Latin America's oldest political dynasty.

The "Latin American Report" was allegedly published by Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba Inc., of Washington, D.C., and Miami, Fla. Bill Gaudet, from New Orleans and a graduate of Tulane,  had been a journalist for several years prior to WWII for the International News Service when his name began to appear in connection with the monthly paper. Paul Bethel, an attache in Havana for three years before Castro's takeover, ran the Citizens Committee for a Free Cuba and had some involvement in the Latin American Report in the 1960s.

Getting Back on Track

A little update is in order, just so you don't think the windmills that Quixotic Joust has been chasing, besides flapping their arms, are jumping around as well. There is, in fact, some method to our madness.

The phase of research now being pursued began with the intention of determining who the Morris D. Jaffe connected to LBJ really was and what he was up to. During that initial effort, QJ found that Jaffe owned a uranium company with headquarters in Dallas. While investigating that tidbit, QJ discovered that D. Harold Byrd also owned a uranium company operating in Utah, which was sold to Canadians with strong ties to Israel at a time when Israel was building its own nuclear weapon. That fact led to connections between one of the associates of the Byrd uranium company's buyers, Bryan Newkirk, and Permindex associate and Bobby Kennedy nemesis Roy Cohn.

Since Roy Cohn was mentioned significantly in the Torbitt Document, QJ then determined to learn more about its author, David Copeland, writing under the alias of Torbitt. That research was interesting but seemingly a dead end, requiring QJ to backtrack a few steps and pick up a new trail. That brings us up to date and explains the reason for this new tack.

Hopefully, that at least partially explains the reason for QJ's fascination with the fictional book by Chinle Miller shown below, recently read by this writer on Kindle. Uranium Daughter was recently featured and proved to be an excellent read, as well as providing insight into the American lands within the uranium boom of the 1950's. But more history is in order and available, thanks to Raye C. Ringholz:

***

Raye C. Ringholz in Utah History Encyclopedia

Prior to World War I, radium mining dwindled but a new bonanza was identified in the tailings dumps of the mines. When it was determined that the discarded vanadium added to molten steel would greatly increase the tensile strength and elasticity of the metal, Utah's vanadium industry flourished. One of the dominant figures in the resultant boom was Howard Balsley of Moab, who sold carnotite ores to Vitro Chemical Corporation of Pittsburgh for medicaments and luminous paint.

It wasn't until twenty-five years later, as a result of the atomic age and subsequent arms race of the Cold War, that uranium, previously considered a waste product of the vanadium mines, came into demand as a key element for nuclear weaponry. In the beginning, almost 90 percent of the United States' uranium supply was imported from the Belgian Congo and Canada. But scanty amounts being filtered from abandoned radium and vanadium dumps on the Colorado Plateau gave promise of an untapped domestic source. The Manhattan Project of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, charged with development of an atom bomb to end the war, instituted a covert program to mine uranium from the vanadium dumps and sent geologists to scour the region in search of new lodes.

With the end of World War II, the Atomic Energy Commission replaced the Manhattan Project and launched the first federally-sponsored mineral rush in history. The AEC constructed roads into the back country, promised $10,000 bonuses for new lodes of high-grade ore, guaranteed minimum prices and paid up to $50 per ton on 0.3 percent ore, constructed mills, helped with haulage expenses and posted geologic data on promising areas tracked by federal geologists using airborne scinillometers and other sophisticated radiation detection instruments.

The Four Corners area, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet, suddenly teemed with prospectors in the greatest ore search since the gold fever days of the previous century. Amateurs and experts, alike, followed AEC guidelines and used radiation detectors called Geiger counters to test promising sandstone formations for uranium deposits. Concentrating on exposed outcroppings along canyon rims, they searched primarily for the grayish Salt Wash member of the Morrison formation. When a likely claim was located, they used diamond drills to core test holes to determine if mineable ore was present.

I've begun to suspect that the author, Chinle Miller, was a pseudonym used by someone who knows more about the history than she feels free to state as fact, much as David Copeland was afraid to use his real name when talking about Division Five, the enforcement unit from the FBI which worked to control uranium products as early as the 1930's when the Tennessee Valley Authority was created. Oversight originally fell under the auspices of the Army Corps of Engineers and only after the Manhattan Project ushered in the atomic age on Japan did the Feds create the above-top-secret Atomic Energy Commission, then connected to J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. All these details led me to inquire about the beginnings of this uranium boom in the Four Corners area in the 1950s, and about Charles Augustus Steen, the Uranium King.

Steen aka Utex sells to Atlas in 1962.

 Steen did well for a time, but then the AEC turned off the spigot, and the Steen family plummeted.

Click to englarge

This is a lot of information to absorb at one sitting. Stay tuned for the next installment.

Update on David Copeland

After catching a brief glimpse into the life of the Torbitt Document's alleged author, David G. Copeland in a previous post, we now turn to the document itself, written under an alias as early as 1970, describing the "cabal" which worked together to kill President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

In the "About the Author" section of the Torbitt Document, Copeland told us that he prosecuted criminal cases during 1949, 1950, and part of 1951, but the only details he furnished were that this occurred:

"in the southwestern part of the United States ...  where professional Mexican assassins have been used to commit political murder. He has also participated in the trial of cases in the southwest involving gunrunning activities through Mexico to Cuba, both before Castro was successful and after Castro succeeded and became the subject of overthrow by gunrunners from the southwest."

To the above, he added:

Close relatives of the gambling syndicate members have used the legal services of Torbitt in complicated cases involving tracing of financial dealings of organized crime in Texas and their foreign connecting links."

Certain other tidbits of information we have learned without help from his book. For example, a son, Kippie, born in Waco during his first marriage, died before his third birthday in 1953. Between then and January 1960, when he married Jayne Baker, a divorce occurred.

About Copeland, however, through newspapers we learn that in 1962 as head of the campaign for liberal candidate Don H. Yarborough (no relation to the U.S. Senator, Ralph Yarborough), he organized a group called Texans for a Two-Party Texas following the primary elections, attempting to force conservative Democrats into the Republican Party. This group would unwittingly make it possible for George H.W. Bush to be elected as a Congressman in Texas.


Copeland knew, or thought he knew, facts proving that LBJ and Governor John B. Connally had been involved in the murder of President Kennedy, and he campaigned repeatedly after 1963 for their more liberal opponents, in 1968 calling LBJ's war on poverty a political gimmick.

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

The cogent questions, phrased in Watergate-ese, are: What did Copeland know, and how did he know it? Was he told by an insider, or did he simply make conclusions based on a combination of stories he heard and his own research?

We know from our research into his background that Copeland was married to Aline, a teacher, while living in Fort Worth (Tarrant County) in 1946, according to this page from the City Directory that year:

Click image to enlarge.

He was a student, perhaps in law school at Texas Wesleyan School of Law, which was located a few blocks from their residence. Seven miles to the west was the bomber-making plant where Aline had worked during the war before obtaining her teaching position at the junior high school. Nevertheless, he says in his self-published manuscript that he had a law degree from the University of Texas at Austin. The manuscript also claimed to be "an enlargement of a working paper furnished to Torbitt by two agents -- one with the Customs Department and the other with the Narcotics Bureau. This is wholly at odds with what Jim Marrs claimed in his book about who Copeland's federal sources were.

The Fort Worth Bomber Plant

In attempting to discover who the two agents were, we have gone back through Copeland's life to review where he was at certain times in order to determine with whom he was in contact. For example, the plant where Aline Copeland worked while her husband was a student would become an important tool leading up to the NASA space program.

Tarrant Field Airdrome originated in 1941 and became Fort Worth Army Air Field on January 2, 1942. The site of the base was originally selected in 1941 as a Consolidated Vultee factory for the production of B-24 bombers. A separate contract was let for a landing field, Tarrant Field, to be built to support the aircraft factory. The construction of an air force base on the east side of Tarrant Field was authorized after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and Tarrant Field Airdrome was assigned to the Army Air Forces Flying Training Command in July 1942.

The base became one of the first B-24 transition schools to begin operation. After more than 4,000 students were trained in B-24s at the base, its mission was changed to B-24 transition because of the nearness to the Consolidated factory. In 1945 the mission was changed from B-24 to B-29 aircraft training. The base was assigned to the newly formed Strategic Air Command in March of 1946.

Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation was formed by a merger of Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, founded by Reuben H. Fleet in 1923 in Buffalo, New York, and Vultee Aircraft, a California airplane builder. [The timeline of corporations is set out at the Aerospace Legacy Foundation website.] In Texas it operated a mile-long facility, known locally as the Bomber Plant, built in 1942 on 563 acres on the west side of what is now Carswell Air Force Base at Fort Worth. The company used the site to fulfill contracts for planes it had no room to build at its San Diego factory and produced more than 3,000 B-24s, as well as C-87 cargo planes there.

Vultee Aircraft, based in Downey, California, had acquired the assets of Consolidated Aircraft Corporation, which had been dissolved in bankruptcy, and became Consolidated Vultee Aircraft, commonly known as Convair for short. Between 1942 and 1948 the Vultee Field division of Convair was awarded government contracts that gave it a step ahead in designing long-range missile weapons systems for the military. Project MX-774 would study a subsonic, jet engine cruise missile and a rocket-powered supersonic ballistic missile.

Vultee's engineers in California focused on the ballistic missile concept, taking data about the German V-2 rocket with plans to build a guided missile that would carry power equipment allowing it to travel outside the atmosphere of the earth--described as a "streamlined" version of the German V-2. The Downey/San Diego plant, which was designated North American Aviation by 1949, was headquarters for the Fort Worth plant, where Copeland's first wife Aline had been employed during the war years. A 1952 classified document, released in 2009, indicates that beginning in December 1948 the North American Aviation plant in Downey had been working on a project to construct a low power research reactor "to produce plutonium at low cost." In some of the reports of the file, reference was made to a thorium converter reactor, graphite-moderated reactors and the Hanford Cooperative Program. Persons in charge on various reports included G. M. Inman, T. Fahrner, E. E. Motta, R. L. Stoker, C. Malmstrom, H. P. Yockey, R.L. Carter, W.E. Parkins, C. Starr and others, many if not all part of the Manhattan Project headed by Robert Oppenheimer.

We do know that Aline Copeland returned to Waco before her second marriage and that she was apparently working at James Connally AFB, a bombardier and navigator flight training center between 1951 and 1962--the most likely place for Aline to have met and marry an Air Force officer who had been a prisoner of war in Germany during WWII.  An officer by that same name was Communications Officer for the 601st Aircraft Control and Warning Squadron at the radar work site, "Gunpost," in Rothwesten, Germany in 1959. Nothing could be found on where Aline and Campbell met, or on whether that Major Campbell was in fact married to an exceptionally attractive German woman named Erika Horn, mentioned at the 601st ACWS website.

If anyone has any other information about how all these details came together, please comment below.

David Copeland--the Man Behind the Torbitt Mask

According to Jim Marrs, William Torbitt, writer of the underground manuscript known as the Torbitt Document, or Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal, was an attorney in Waco, Texas, whose real name was David Copeland and who, Marrs claims, told him in an interview that the information written under the alias had been given him by two federal employees, one with the Secret Service and the other with the FBI. We have also heard that Copeland was a prosecutor of criminals and may have learned details from men he represented who were connected to organized crime or hired as assassins. But was all this cover to protect the real source of the information?

The following research into who David Copeland, alias William Torbitt, was shows us that:

B-24 Bomber made in Fort Worth, TX

• His first wife designed B-24 bombers in Fort Worth for Convair. It was this very plant where she worked during World War II, while she was married to Copeland, where Max Clark headed the security at the time he told George De Mohrenschildt that returned defector, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a "harmless lunatic."
• After his divorce from Wife No. 1, she married a former prisoner of war who had been held in Germany before war's end and then advanced to the rank of Lt. Col. in the Air Force during the cold war, stationed in German outposts.

Fashion Logo

• Wife No. 2 became a fashion designer/manufacturer for children's apparel and was often in Dallas, the center of the Texas cotton textile mart, which employed a number of "White Russians" known to have been somehow connected, if only collaterally, with the Kennedy assassination--people who were discussed in the Torbitt Document.

 The curious reader wants to know:

Who was David Copeland?

David Copeland's Family

David Goddard Copeland died in 1981. We can piece together his life from various studies and notices that appear online. His parents James P. Copeland and Sarah "Sallie" Goddard married in 1909 in Belfalls, a small farming community in Falls County, east of Temple, Texas. He  died in 1967 in Kerrville, Texas, not far from LBJ's ranch in Johnson City. Sallie had been born in 1886 in Bosque County near Waco and was the youngest daughter of Dr. Andrew Goddard, from Chattanooga, Tenn., who came to Texas after being a prisoner during the Civil war. In Alabama he married Nancy Parker and brought her to Cedar Bayou, Texas near present-day Baytown, where he taught school. Together they reared fifteen children. After two of their children died from whooping cough, the Goddards relocated to the Bosque River area west of Waco. In 1880 Dr. Goddard was elected president of the Sunday School Institute of Waco Association, and according to the 1897 history of that organization, he and his wife were 

"members of Dr. [B. H.] Carroll's church. Their residence is No. 1904 South Seventh street."  

Dr. Goddard was a medical doctor but in later years wrote an astronomy column for the newspaper in Waco. He also was county surveyor, in which he was succeeded by his son Joe Goddard. 

A Waco news article in 1955 reported on a family reunion held at the home of David Copeland's mother -- 425 University Avenue--close to the Baylor campus. David, already an attorney, and his wife Jayne then lived at 4217 Erath in Waco, some miles west of Baylor. David was a criminal defense attorney whose name sometimes appeared in the Waco paper owned by LBJ's close supporter Charles Marsh. She and the Goddard family were also the subject of a feature article written by Helen Baldwin that appeared in 1964.

Copeland was campaign manager for Democratic nominee for state attorney general, Tom Moore from Waco, who was supported by former U.S. Senator Tom Connally, also from Waco.

When Copeland ran for a place on the Texas Supreme Court in 1964, he was described as "a former Waco assistant district attorney, campaigner for Houston attorney Don Yarborough and a member of the Texas Association of Plaintiffs Attorneys." Four years later he opposed the favorite-son status of former governor John Connally, while leading the Texas campaign of anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy.

David Copeland's First Wife, Aline

Copeland was married first to Aline Buehrer, who died in 2010:

Aline Doris Campbell August 26, 1920 - October 22, 2010 Aline Doris Campbell of Alamo, formerly of Waco, passed away Friday, October 22, 2010 at St. Catherine Center. Graveside services will be 11:00 a.m, Nov. 13, at Waco Memorial Park. Aline was born August 26, 1920 in Brenham, Texas, the only child of Fred and Flora Buehrer. She graduated from Brenham High School in 1938. She attended Baylor University and graduated in 1942 with a Bachelor of Music Degree. To support the War effort, she worked in the design department of Consolidated Aircraft in Fort Worth, which produced the B-24 bombers. Following the war, she was a Registered Music Therapist at the VA Regional Medical Center in Waco and Director of Morale, Welfare and Recreation programs at James Connally AFB, Waco. She was preceded in death by her parents, Fred and Flora Buehrer of Brenham; her beloved son, David G. (Kippie) Copeland, Jr.; her late husband, Lawson D. Campbell; and her first husband, David G. Copeland. She is survived by her first cousin, Franklin Raschke and wife, Genevieve, of San Antonio; niece, Kathy Copeland Papke of Austin; nephew, Randy Copeland of Houston; cousin, John Toland and wife, Deborah, of Tucson, AZ; cousin, Nancy Fontaine Woods of Braddford, England; and cousin, John Barrett of Austin. Memorials may be made to the Wounded Warriors Project.

Aline's grandfathers were Swiss and German, though both men married Americans.


The history of the Consolidated Aircraft plant is described as follows:

Air Force Plant 4 was opened in 1941. It was operated by the Fort Worth Division of Consolidated Aircraft Company (later Convair) for assembly of the B-24 bomber. In 1942, during World War II, Air Force Plant 4 became operational when Consolidated Aircraft began manufacturing the B-24 Liberator bomber. Over 3,000 B-24s were constructed in the first 2 years of operation. Later, the plant produced 124 B-32s, the successor to the B-24. Later, the plant began producing aircraft components, as well as delivering completed aircraft.
Many innovative aircraft were produced at AFP 4, including the first intercontinental bomber (B-361, the first supersonic bomber (B-58), and the first swing-wing aircraft (F-111). In 1953, General Dynamics took over operation of the manufacturing facility. Since then, Air Force Plant 4 has produced the B-36, B-58, F-111 and F-16 aircraft. Between 1947 and 1954, 383 B-36s were built, and afterwards the Mach-2-capable B-58. By 1966, the plant had expanded to 4.7 million square feet, and by 1968 it had expanded further to 6.5 million square feet, to accommodate production of the F-111.

B-24 Bomber plant in Fort Worth

After Aline and David Copeland divorced, she married Lawson D. Campbell, who would retire from the Air Force as a lieutenant colonel and, upon his death in 2008, be buried at  Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery, San Antonio. He enlisted in the Air Force in 1942 and was held as a prisoner of war in Germany beginning in 1944 for almost a year. He was an Air Force communications officer, whose photo and one of his German wife, Erika Horn, are shown at a website dedicated to the 601st-615th Aircraft Warning Battalion stationed in Germany during the 1950's:

Captain Campbell, our next Communications Officer, was also revered by many who worked for him. At the 601st reunions there are always stories told about how he handled various situations. He was humorous, but could also be very firm.  Arthur Harman wrote:

"...a snapshot taken of, then, Major Lawson D. Campbell, around 1959 or, perhaps, 1960-61. It was taken in his office at Ramstein Germany where he commanded the local communications organization and facilities." ...

Erika Horn.  Later Erika Campbell
Long-time German National employee.  Officially, a civilian clerk/typist  Unofficially, the Commander's secretary
Wrote and spoke idiomatically perfect American English with no trace of a German or British accent
Married Capt. Lawson Campbell, 610st [sic] Communications Officer, in Kassel in 1959 and went to live with him in the States.

Jayne Copeland--David's Second Wife

Copeland's second wife, Jayne Baker Copeland, would get into the news when she started her own clothing manufacturing company several years before Kennedy's assassination.

David and Jayne Copeland divorced in 1978, three years before he died. In 1981 Jayne married Milton Douglas Solomon. Both are now deceased. According to Milton's obituary, he was 

"General Manager for Barber Boats and Motors in Dallas, Texas. Following a long and successful tenure at Barber Boats, Milton retired with his wife, Jayne Baker Solomon, to the city of his birth and his circle of cherished friends." 

The obituary for Jane's mother, Lillie Baker, stated:

"She partnered with her daughter and only child Jayne in the design and manufacturing of the Jayne Copeland line of children’s wear. She later opened and operated Lillie’s Bridal and Formals on South 8th Street where customers fondly regarded her as 'Miss Lillie.' She retired at age 80 after 25 years in the bridal business to devote her time to her great-grandchildren. Lillie is survived by her daughter Jayne Solomon and son-in-law Milton Solomon, grandchildren Kevin Copeland, Michael Copeland and Kasey Frederick. She leaves four adored great-grandchildren: Jessica Steakley, David Copeland, Kristin Copeland and Max Pfeiffer-Frederick, as well as brothers Robert, Eldridge, and Charles Blain."

From this information about Lillie's surviving siblings we learn that Lillie Mae Blain had married William Judson Baker, who died in 1950. Jayne's name was listed in Texas birth records as Evelyn Jane Baker. In 1930 the Waco directory listed W. Judson Baker and wife Lillie living with his parents, two brothers and two sisters, at 1912 Franklin Avenue. Judson and Lillie worked at an ice cream stand, which sold "frozen custard." Four years later the couple lived at 1000 S. 8th Street, and his parents lived on the same street a few blocks to the east, an address now within the Baylor campus. Before his in 1950 at age 40, Jayne's father, Judson Baker, was a used car dealer in Waco who had started a Christmas "fling," in 1946 by throwing dimes off the roof of his office to the scores of children below. In 1947 he switched to pennies, throwing 40,000 off his roof.

 
The Jayne Copeland line of clothing continues, as does the widespread fame of William Torbitt's document.

Desperately Seeking Truth

Researching history to find the truth about what REALLY happened is not unlike looking for a specific destination when all one has is its address, while traveling on a highway littered with flashing billboards, each offering diversions and false promises pointing the way to the same destination by a different route. Billboards, like most advertising, lie. I always have to remember my modus operandi--the true route to the destination is to follow the money.

I began my most research into Morris Douglas Jaffe after reading a blog by John Delane Williams, Why is Morris Jaffe Interesting? This phase of my research required me to 

• begin with assumptions Williams had made, compared with facts I uncovered about Jaffe's background. (The Fed Mart allegations)
• My next blog about this research revealed what I thought may have been a significant link between the Jaffe family in San Antonio and Lyndon Johnson's close friend and attorney from the Texas hill country, "Judge Moursund." (Old San Antonio)
• It was the next step in my research that led me to inquire into Jaffe's uranium exploration,  found in a blog post called "Other Uranium Explorers in Texas in the 1950's."

What I knew for sure at that point were the following details:

• Lyndon Johnson's San Antonio friend, Morris Douglas Jaffe, was involved for a time in uranium exploration;
• Another Morris D. Jaffe was a lawyer in Dallas.

My initial goal was to sort the two men out and determine which had a uranium company, what happened to it, and with whom he was connected or, perhaps, who was investing in his company. I also needed to know whether either of the two Morris Jaffes was, as  John Delane Williams alleged, the son-in-law of Sam Bloom, an advertising man who "was enlisted to handle public relations for Judge Joe Brown for the Jack Ruby trial." 

Williams also stated in the same post that 

"Mort Freedman was a brother-in-law to Sam Bloom and the owner operator of Morty Freedman Inc. at 2135 Lamar in Dallas. More importantly, he shared the telephone number with the Dallas Uranium and Oil Company on the third floor of the Dal-Tex Building."

Continuing with my metaphor, I knew what I wanted to know, but I had to follow money maps to reach my destination, while ignoring all the billboards (statements Williams made as truths), attempting to divert me from a successful completion of my journey. It took many twists and turns, and for that reason, I am pinpointing for readers the stops made along the way, intersections as it were with other money trails, that eventually led to the correct path to the discovery of the role uranium played in the plot to kill the Kennedy brothers.

1. In September I decided to look into the background of a Waco attorney named David Copeland, the man behind the mask of William Torbitt and the "Torbitt Document," as well as a major source of information secretly supplied to Penn Jones, Jr., an early researcher in the JFK assassination. Copeland's wife, Jayne Copeland -- daughter and partner of Mrs. Lillie Mae Blain Baker -- was a children's clothing maker who traveled within circles of the fashion and textile industry in Dallas, New Orleans and New York. This was the same industry engaged in by many of the backstage characters in the Kennedy assassination--people like Abraham Zapruder and Jeanne LeGon De Mohrenschildt. Did Copeland learn what he knew through his wife's contacts or from other sources?
2. The Torbitt Document took me back to research I had begun years before but never completed--a fascinating look at a trial of two Mexican assassins arrested by Alice District Attorney Sam Burris in the mistaken killing of the son of a lawyer from south Texas named Jake Floyd. 
3. Researching the background of Sam Burris was a step necessary in determining how close he may have been to a relative named Howard Burris, lurking inside the excellent research of Richard Bartholomew's treasure, Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used In the JFK Conspiracy. 
4. Within Bartholomew's manuscript was revealed a connection between Howard Burris and the notorious Edward G. Lansdale, an Air Force Major General at the time of his retirement on November 1, 1963, who headed Operation Mongoose during the Kennedy years.

Only recently did I discover that Jack Ruby was aware of the book written by J. Evetts Haley before his death of a fast-growing cancer in 1967. Ruby wrote a letter, addressed only to "John," which can be seen at page 104 of a book written by William P. Litynski and uploaded to Scribd:

While Ruby is in jail, he writes this letter:  [image of note] It reads:

"you must believe me that I know what is taking place, so please with all my heart, you must believe me, because I am counting on you to save this country a lot of blood-shed. As soon as you get out you must read Texan looks at Lyndon [A Texan Looks at Lyndon by J. Evetts Haley], and it may open your eyes to a lot of things. This man is a Nazi in the worst order."

Further on in this letter Ruby writes:

... isn't it strange that Oswald who hasn't worked a lick most of his life, should be fortunate enough to get a job at the Book Building two weeks before the president himself didn't know as to when he was to visit Dallas, now where would a jerk like Oswald get the information that the president was coming to Dallas? Only one person could have had that information, and that man was Johnson who knew weeks in advance as to what was going to happen, because he is the one who was going to arrange the trip for the president, this had been planned long before the president himself knew about, so you can figure that one out. The only one who gained by the shooting of the president was Johnson, and he was in a car in the rear and safe when the shooting took place. What would the Russians, Castro or anyone else have to gain by eliminating the president? If Johnson was so heartbroken over Kennedy, why didn't he do something for Robert Kennedy? All he did was snub him.

This letter and Ruby's remarks to the press, suggest that Ruby became only later convinced that Johnson was a power behind the scenes. During his Warren testimony he shows no inkling of this conviction.

Upon investigation, we learn that the above letter was printed in an issue of Ramparts magazine with the following lead-in:

The letter which follows is one of two unsigned letters handwritten in pencil on slips from a memo pad confiscated by one of Ruby's guards and subsequently smuggled from the jail. They were sold at auction in the Astor Gallery in New York on January 31 1966 by Charles Hamilton, a reputable autograph dealer who vouched for their authenticity. The purchaser of this one was Texas editor Penn Jones Jr., author of the book Forgive My Grief. He paid $950. Ruby's younger brother Sam immediately contacted Jones and confirmed that Ruby had admitted writing the letter.

With Jones' permission we are publishing most of the letter (33 pages in its original handwritten form) This is its exclusive publication and it is presented as Ruby wrote it without correcting his errors in spelling, grammar, or punctuation, without attempting to clarify its ambiguities, contradictions, and evident factual errors. It will be remembered that Ruby never went beyond the eighth grade in school.---by David Welsh

The letter can be read as it appeared in Ramparts by looking at the file on Jack Ruby at the Mary Ferrell website. The complete file is 204 pages long. I will be glad to email a pdf of the file to anyone requesting same.