Anyone who has tried to write about Mad Dog, a bizarre moment of this
state's literary history, can lay claim to the same feelings Susan
Sontag experienced when she wrote "Notes on 'Camp'" in 1964. "It's
embarrassing to be solemn and treatise-like about Camp," she declared
right off the bat, and proceeded to sketch the sensibility of camp in
the form of descriptive notes because "to snare a sensibility in words,
especially one that is alive and powerful, one must be tentative and
nimble." The essay form is too definite, too knowing, perhaps, to snare a
sensibility. Mad Dog is not a sensibility that is alive and powerful,
but it was at one time. But the rules are the same for snaring lost or
living sensibilities, and in the case of Mad Dog, for which there is not
an abundance of recorded history, the effort of resuscitating its lost
sensibility can be addressed most effectively by making notes about it.
"There were people who refused to join Mad Dog. ... I think
they thought it was too elitist. So we decided it was: It was too
elitist for them."
-- Bud Shrake being interviewed, Jan. 13, 2001
Defining "Mad Dog"
1. An attempt at definition: Mad Dog is the chosen name of a band
of rebellious artists -- mainly writers and journalists but also
musicians and painters -- who lived in Texas, mostly in Austin, in the
late Sixties and early Seventies who partied and wrote in an
identifiably Texan, outlaw manner. Members include
Texas Monthly senior
editor Gary Cartwright and his wife Phyllis;
novelist and screenwriter
Bud Shrake (Shrake and Cartwright were the founders);
Dennis Hopper, who
starred in Kid Blue (1973), a movie that Shrake wrote;
Marvin Schwarz, who produced the movie;
actors Peter Boyle and Warren Oates, also in Kid Blue;
Willie Nelson;
Jerry Jeff Walker (and later, his wife Susan);
Peter and
Jody Gent (Peter Gent is the author of the classic football satire North Dallas Forty and a former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver);
Bill Brammer, author of The Gay Place;
painter and sculptor Fletcher Boone;
labor lawyer David Richards and
his wife Ann, who would become the governor of Texas;
Larry L. King; and
Threadgill's proprietor Eddie Wilson, among others.
Once a Mad Dog
always a Mad Dog, but the hotbed of Mad Dog activity has long since
passed. The unofficial anthem of Mad Dog is said to be "Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother," by Ray Wylie Hubbard, but the Jerry Jeff Walker
version.
Holding a book-signing at Scholz Garten (in this case, for Larry L. King's … and other dirty stories
in 1968) is the epitome of Mad Dog style: a little beer with your
books. The man smoking behind King (seated) is artist Fletcher Boone,
and behind him, Bill Brammer. (Larry L. King Archives)
Trying to define the sensibility of Mad Dog in one statement
would betray the spirit of the group, since harboring anything as
sophisticated as a "sensibility" is not what Mad Dogs were after. There
was no purpose to Mad Dog (more on this later); its motto was "Doing
Indefinable Services to Mankind" and its credo was "Everything that is
not a mystery is guesswork.
Morrison complied, advising citizens to "support INCA with vigor." Similarly, Hale Boggs, U. S. congressman from the New Orleans area, helped INCA win tax-exempt status and praised it as "a prime example of making constructive use of our private citizens in the ideological and psychological struggle against communism."32
Although reliant on this local elite during its early years, INCA tried to expand beyond the city. It met with mixed results. Occasionally its appeals brought forth contributions. In 1964 Ochsner reported a $2,000 donation from the chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, [in 1964 the chairman was M. Jackson Rathbone, but note footnote 63 below; R.L. Blaffer was one of the founders of Humble Oil in Texas, partner of W.S. Farish, charged with trading with the enemy during World War II through Standard Oil of New Jersey, which had been a hidden shareholder in Humble Oil.] and in 1966 American & Foreign Power Company, most of whose Latin American subsidiaries had been nationalized, gave $1,000. INCA also hoped to attract funds from H.L. Hunt, the Texas oilman who was a generous patron of the ultra-right. In 1966 board member H. Eustis Reily traveled to Texas to tell Hunt about INCA. Afterwards Ochsner thanked the Texan for meeting with Reily, stressing the urgency of INCA's mission "because of the recent race riots and communistic infiltration." Apparently, though, Hunt did not assist INCA.33
California proved more lucrative. Dudley Swim, a California resident and chairman of National Airlines, was a major benefactor. As noted, Swim was Ochsner's friend, and he was familiar with New Orleans's Latin American program. Back in 1960, after visiting Guatemala on an International House trade mission, he declared he was "acquiring about 6,000 acres of land in Guatemala for agricultural development."
The most important Californian was Patrick J. Frawley, Jr. [photo above courtesy of Ghost of Mansion Past] Frawley joined Butler and Ochsner as INCA's most influential members. Beginning in the mid-1960s INCA depended increasingly upon the largesse of this Los Angeles businessman who was then an executive of Eversharp, Schick Electric, and Technicolor. Frawley was partial to rightist groups and causes. Among others he lavished large sums upon the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade, the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, the American Security Council, and the Young Americans for Freedom. He was a generous supporter of Ronald Reagan's early political career. And he often added prominent conservatives to his corporate boards; Ochsner was an Eversharp director, for example.34
These elite patrons were drawn to INCA, at least initially, because it offered a way to strike at the Cuban Revolution. INCA vowed to use its propagandistic skills to help prevent that revolution's spread elsewhere in Latin America. It devoted its first couple of years to producing and distributing Truth Tapes--anti-Castro recordings designed to be broadcast on Latin American radio stations and to sway the Latin American masses. To convey strong emotion on the tapes, INCA often enlisted Cuban refugees who, in Butler's words, spoke "in the unmistakable argot of their occupation, with the unimpeachable dialect of their class, and with the sincerity bred of bitter experience." By mid-1964, it claimed over 120 cooperating stations in sixteen Latin American nations. According to INCA, the tapes worked. Ochsner boasted, for instance, that one featuring Juanita Castro, Fidel's sister, helped Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei defeat socialist Salvador Allende in Chile's 1964 presidential election.35
Then an apparently fortuitous event encouraged INCA to take up other forms of anti-Cuban propaganda. On August 21, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, then a New Orleans resident, appeared on a local radio program with Butler and several others. Their discussion narrowed quickly to Oswald's professed Marxism, his sympathy for Cuba, and his defection to the Soviet Union. Several months later when President Kennedy was assassinated, the hunger for information about Oswald magnified the radio program's importance. Realizing this, INCA issued two records based on a recording of that program.36 In these records and in its literature, INCA described the assassination as tragic confirmation of its analysis and methods. Communist propaganda, argued Butler, had conditioned Oswald and then had incited him to violence. Communist "hate-conveyed always by words from communists to their sympathizers--finally moved the mind, that actuated the trigger, that killed the President of the United States. The links of guilt are visible and obvious." Claiming to have exposed and driven Oswald from New Orleans, Butler believed an INCA branch in Dallas might "have professionally neutralized Oswald there and perhaps saved the President's life."37
The Oswald episode provided raw material for another mode of propaganda: film. In 1965 INCA produced the lurid "Hitler in Havana," which equated Castro with Hitler and which blamed the Cuban leader for Kennedy's death. In the fall and winter of 1966 Frawley underwrote television showings of the film in several large cities. These showings elicited favorable comment. "This is the first time I have seen a TV documentary accurately depicting the tragic situation of post-Castro [sic] Cuba," the executive vice president of American and Foreign Power wrote Butler. And in December 1966 at New Orleans City Hall a rally of several hundred Cuban exiles and their supporters, including the mayor, saluted INCA's film. But "Hitler" appealed only to the convinced. New York Times reviewer Jack Gould ridiculed it as "the crudest form of propaganda," as a "tasteless affront to minimum journalistic standards."38
Angered, Ochsner complained to his friend Turner Catledge, executive editor of the New York Times, that Gould had slurred INCA and anti-communism. Catledge tried to soothe Ochsner, assuring him that his newspaper's editorial page was "unequivocally anti-Communist," and that Gould had only suggested that "politically motivated programs such as 'Hitler in Havana' should be advertised as such and not presented simply as documentaries with disinterested commercial sponsorship." Ochsner was not pacified. Forwarding a copy of Catledge's letter to Butler, he commented that "it just goes to show we are up against real problems when it comes to fighting the leftist press."39
Besides funding this film, Frawley helped INCA establish a presence in Los Angeles. In 1966 Schick and Technicolor, both headed by Frawley, invited Butler to counsel their "top management on the significance of current revolutionary conflict and their probable effects on the corporate future." Together the two firms would require one-third of his working time. In return, they would pay him a monthly retainer of $2,000, provide him a furnished home in Los Angeles, and allow him to continue his INCA duties. Butler accepted. Given his fascination with media and his ambitions for INCA, the chance to operate in Los Angeles under such generous patronage must have been irresistible. This decision, he explained, would benefit INCA. His new position would help the organization spread beyond New Orleans and would put him "on the ground floor in the midst of the communications center of America." And he pledged that INCA's headquarters and his own primary residence would remain in New Orleans.40
But changing circumstances were drawing INCA away from its Latin American orientation and from its New Orleans birthplace. While INCA was refining its propaganda capabilities and was expanding to the West Coast, a second threat was disturbing its elite social base. Gradually, opposition to the Vietnam war, student radicalism, and black rebellion were supplanting the Cuban Revolution as sources of elite alarm. Again addressing its patrons' anxieties, INCA devoted itself more and more to combating domestic radicalism, an insurgency whose flames burned brightest far from the Crescent City. INCA explained this shift as a mere tactical adjustment of its founding strategy. Because Cuba supposedly directed a concealed hierarchy of subversion that instigated and then manipulated domestic disorder, INCA's original purpose remained valid. Having earlier parried a Soviet-Cuban thrust into Latin America, INCA now engaged the same enemy within the U. S. The war had come home, thanks to the Cubans, when Oswald [sic] assassinated Kennedy and then, as the 1960s unfolded, when black and student radicalism raged. "Castro switched the major emphasis of his campaign from a Latin American encircling movement to a strike at the heart of the U. S.," wrote Butler.41
An especially disturbing expression of this external subversion was student radicalism. As Ochsner argued, "the drive to seize college campuses and convert them into staging grounds for urban revolt, is the current manifestation of Castro's campaign. The campuses are decisive." In 1966 Ochsner reported that Butler had "investigated the TEACH-IN at U.C.L.A. last week. Vicious material advocating everything from perversion to treason is being circulated to the youngsters there. He says that the situation is similar but worse than the Tulane SPEAK-IN." Similarly, Butler warned Frawley about "the present plans to capture the campuses and
convert them into staging grounds to attack white neighborhoods."42
INCA set out to douse these flames flickering across U. S. campuses. In the fall of 1967 Ochsner and another INCA member obtained a list of former Junior Achievers then attending colleges in New Orleans. From this list INCA hoped to assemble a nucleus of conservative students on each campus. INCA's executive committee recommended starting a "fight against communism on the campuses and in the colleges of New Orleans and gradually spread this out." Local high schools also concerned INCA. In October 1968 Richard E. Warren, an INCA staff member, offered assistance to the principal of John McDonogh High School. "For some time now," Warren wrote, "Dr. Joseph Schwertz (Fortier High School) and I have been communicating in order to prevent disruptions by radical students in his high school." Recently some McDonogh students had asked Warren for help at their school against similar disturbances and against organizing efforts by the leftist Students for a Democratic Society.43
Meanwhile on the West Coast, Butler was trying to intervene among rebellious youths. He faced imposing cultural, generational, and political obstacles. Whereas he represented an organization of white, conservative, older businessmen, radicals drew upon generational solidarity, upon revulsion with racism and intervention in Vietnam, and upon a common counter-cultural idiom manifested in the underground press, music, and other media. Butler thus confronted a tough problem: How to make INCA's stale anti-communism palatable to young Americans? INCA could not serve this purpose. It was, in Butler's mind, a conflict corporation, not a mass youth movement. Seeking an imaginative organizational form, Butler created the SQUARE Movement. Adapting Maoist ideas, he explained to Ochsner that every revolution walked on two legs: education and action. INCA handled the former, but its nonprofit status forbade it straying from "educational purposes."
Consequently, he was trying "to attract rank and file 'Activists' who will set up SQUARE Circles to practice what INCA teaches." Armed with INCA's ideas, SQUARE activists would battle the left for the minds of young Americans. Borrowing counter-cultural forms, Butler produced SQUARE posters, bumper stickers, buttons, and other artifacts. In the spring of 1968 he launched a magazine, the Westwood Village SQUARE, as an antidote to the underground press. Further heeding Mao's advice, Butler tried to swim as a fish in this youthful sea. Although well past thirty years old, he tailored his appearance to countercultural norms. "I have been working right in the middle of the mess," he wrote an INCA member back in New Orleans, "and so my hair is longer and my suits sharper. But the same old super-patriotic, American revolutionary heart beats beneath the bright threads." INCA had a national presence as well: In the late 1960s and early 1970s it organized annual conferences to train young Americans in conflict management; it intervened in the antiwar movement; it established a campus news service to help students print "freedom newspapers"; and its monthly information service reported on leftist activity.44
Notwithstanding its own boasts, INCA accomplished little on campuses. Its old-style anticommunism, even when dressed in hip fashions, was unable to deflect youthful discontent over U. S. foreign policy and domestic problems. The SQUARE Movement, admitted Butler early in 1971, "has been a generalized force, with little or no organization."45 This failure contributed to a larger pattern of decline. By the late 1960s INCA's earlier promise and confidence were fading. Its troubles stemmed partially from anticommunism's loosening grip upon American thought. The very issues that aroused INCA's supporters-revolutionary nationalism abroad and strife at home-caused many other Americans to question anticommunism's crudely reductionist assumptions. INCA's facile politics offered little historical grounding or analytical insight for those then trying to understand the war in Vietnam or the problems faced by U. S. blacks. Nonetheless INCA clung stubbornly to its ideas and thereby found itself increasingly at odds with prevailing political discourse.
Indicative of INCA's vulnerability was the trial of Clay Shaw. Ironically that trial occurred in INCA's New Orleans stronghold and centered on the Kennedy assasination, the source of INCA's major propaganda success. On March 1, 1967, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jim Garrison arrested Shaw, the former general manager of the International Trade Mart and a key figure in the city's Latin American program. Garrison charged that in September 1963 Shaw, David William Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald, and others met in New Orleans and conspired to kill President Kennedy. Whereas INCA had blamed the assassination on communism, Garrison pointed to a conspiracy from the right.46
Garrison's investigation disturbed INCA's leaders. Apparently in May 1967 INCA's general counsel, Gibbons Burke, advised Butler to secure the organization's files. Subsequently, Butler reported the records had been "air expressed out here to Los Angeles.... They arrived in good order two weeks ago, and I have put them under lock and key."47
Ochsner even feared his own arrest. In the summer of 1967, William Gurvich, who had just resigned as one of Garrison's investigators, claimed the district attorney was preparing a number of arrests, including that of adoctor. "I wondered whether he might mean me," Ochsner wrote Butler, "but did not think he did until Bill Helis, a good friend of mine, who knows Gurvich very well, called me [said Gurvich] and told him it was I and he was going to have me arrested as an accessory to the fact."
Rumor had Ochsner treating Jack Ruby, discovering a hopeless cancer that convinced Ruby "he had nothing to lose by killing Oswald," and then destroying Ruby's record, thereby withholding evidence. Two weeks later he wrote Butler that Garrison "is still going wild." Gurvich had told the press that the district attorney was about to arrest "a number of people in New Orleans, including a doctor, a coffee man, and a hotel owner." Allegedly those to be arrestedwere Ochsner, a member of the Reily family, and Seymour Weiss, formerly managing director of the city's Roosevelt Hotel. "I have heard nothing about it, but I would not be surprised if he would attempt to do it," wrote Ochsner.48
Garrison's probe therefore challenged INCA's version of the assassination and threatened to implicate Ochsner in a sensational trial. Predictably, Ochsner and Butler responded by trying to make communism the issue. Bearing the brunt of the attack was Mark Lane--whose book Rush to Judgment had placed him among the leading critics of the Warren Commission and who was then conferring with Garrison. In a public statement the two INCA leaders branded Lane an unscrupulous communist, "a professional propagandist of the lunatic left who has been inferring Oswald was innocent and Kennedy was the victim of a right wing plot, since four weeks after the assassination." Communists were manipulating the issue to create distrust of the government and to cause the U. S. to "crumble from within."49
They turned to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for more information. Ochsner asked F. Edward Hebert, a U. S. representative from the New Orleans area, to "get whatever information you can from Congressman Willis about Mark Lane." Edwin E. Willis, also a U. S. representative from Louisiana, was HUAC chairman. Hebert sent Ochsner a report culled from HUAC files, which cited "Communist Fronts" with which Lane had been associated between 1952 and 1967.50
Ochsner also obtained a five-page intelligence report about Lane. Although its sources were unspecified, this report was preceded by an unsigned memorandum attributing the report's information to "the files of the New York City Police, the FBI, and other security agencies." The memorandum charged that Lane "is and has been a dedicated Communist; is and has been a sadist and masochist, charged on numerous occasions with sodomy." This suggestive prelude was followed by the familiar listing of membership in "front" organizations, civil-rights arrests, and involvement in the assassinationi nvestigation. The "numerous "sodomy charges shrank to mention of a 1962 inquiry by the Queens County District Attorney, without detailing its outcome.51
Armed with such material, INCA tried to discredit and isolate Lane. In December 1967 Ochsner scolded the presidents of both Tulane University and the Young Men's Business Club for allowing Lane to speak at their respective institutions. Later that month he appealed to an executive of Time, Inc., to expose Lane and other alleged subversives. New Orleans had been invaded, complained Ochsner, by a "legion of lunatic left-wing extremists,"w ho were "launching the most outrageous innuendoes, all aimed at undermining public confidence in the FBI, the CIA, the Office of the Presidency, stigmatizing Cuban refugees, and anti-communists and obtaining classified information." Yet, he lamented, "not one national news medium has had the courage to expose their deep-seated political bias, despite the fact that they have track records which read like the indexes to the WORKER."52
Unable credibly to denounce Garrison as a communist, Ochsner and Butler instead whispered that mental instability left the district attorney prey to communist manipulation. "As you know," Butler wrote Ochsner", Garrison is a sick, sick person mentally but clever enough to manipulate public opinion." Ochsner agreed: "People generally in New Orleans are losing complete faith in the man and most people think he is completely nuts, which I believe he is, and before long he will crack up." At least once, Ochsner spread apparent evidence of Garrison's problems. During an election campaign for district attorney, an opponent had obtained Garrison's military medical records, which documented treatment for psychological disorders from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s. Ochsner possessed a transcript of these records and sent a copy to a friend who was the publisher of the Nashville Banner. "It shows why he is doing what he is," Ochsner observed. "Of course, it is a shame that he is playing into the hands of the Communists because he is being advised by Mark Lane and [Harold] Weisberg."53
Eventually in 1969 the jury rejected Garrison's case and acquitted Clay Shaw. Although INCA and its leaders avoided implication, the episode was revealing. Unlike the nurturing circumstances of the early 1960s, INCA felt beleaguered by the decade's end. In addition to these external pressures, it was weakened also by internal conflicts that eroded its most valuable asset, elite support. Although its members never abandoned INCA's principles, they grew dissatisfied with its ineffectiveness. Much of their discontent stemmed from Butler's alleged managerial shortcomings, especially in financial matters.
INCA had been plagued by a chronic shortage of funds--an anomaly for an organization blessed with such wealthy patrons. Payments to staff, landlords, and creditors often were delayed or missed altogether. In 1966, for instance, Butler advised INCA's landlord that only $200 of its $380 office rent would be forthcoming, while at the same time he pleaded with the previous landlord to delay collection of unpaid rent.54 Blaming INCA's shortcomings on the staff's amateurish methods, some members suggested adopting business-like procedures of accounting and office routine. Such measures, they argued, would generate regular income from supporters and thereby end the worrisome deficits. Emerging as their spokesman was
INCA treasurer Maurice W. Grundy, the president of two lumber companies.
More the publicist and promoter than the manager, Butler resisted these seemingly innocent and sensible suggestions. His argument hinged on the related assumptions that INCA was a combative propaganda organization and that the conflict manager must possess financial control. Business norms, he said, would deprive a conflict organization of its flexibility, disarm it before communists, and transform it into a social club spinning harmless platitudes. Defeating communists required innovation and daring, not the predictable routine of an accountant. In revealing words he summarized his differences with Grundy: "Suffice it to say that it was based on a Military Management, rather than the Business Management approach."55 This tension between professional anticommunist and businessmen patrons threatened to tear INCA apart.
Continuing financial embarrassment sharpened this conflict. In June 1966 a frustrated Butler told Ochsner that electricity at INCA's office had been shut off due to delinquent bills. For this and other ills he blamed Grundy for "tieing strings" to the thousands of dollars in INCA's bank account. Blinded by business orthodoxy, Grundy tried "to reduce the financial foundation to the cut and dried concepts of the lumber industry." The conflict, insisted Butler, was irreconcilable. But Ochsner rejected this implied ultimatum, defending the need for revised office procedures and advising Butler to "get over your persecution complex as far as Mr. Grundy is concerned."'56
This particular crisis subsided, probably because a chastened Butler dared not antagonize Ochsner further. But the underlying problem still chafed Butler, and his factional opponents still demanded changes. By the fall of 1967 Butler's position seemed precarious. Ben C. Toledano, an attorney and prominent local conservative, wrote his fellow INCA directors that he had been" considering simply resigning from the INCA Board for this would be the easiest way to remedy my displeasure with the way things have been going." The executive committee, which included Grundy, began using T. Sterling Dunn--formerly the area manager for Sears, Roebuck--as a consultant. Dunn reported that membership confidence was eroding due to sloppy operational methods. At one executive committee meeting Ochsner stressed that INCA must function in a businesslike fashion, and at another the executive committee decided "we must have a businessman in the INCA offices to constantly supervise the business end of the organization and to see that the members were properly billed and followed up." A defensive Butler believed Grundy was using Dunn "to interfere in the INCA office by remote control."57
Yet Butler somehow reversed this momentum and drove Grundy from the organization. Their final confrontation occurred at a board meeting in April 1968 when Butler suggested INCA cosponsor a conference of conservative youths that summer. Grundy countered that INCA should instead plan an alternative program for September, that money should be conserved for office management, and that a fund drive should be prepared. Butler exploded: Delay would be disastrous and, besides, Grundy was unqualified to decide the issue. His patience exhausted, a weary Grundy gave up. Reminding everyone that he had tried to quit two weeks earlier, he now insisted t he board accept his resignation. It did, whereupon h and Dunn quit the meeting and INCA.58
Butler's victory did not, however, slow INCA's decline. Especially damaging were Frawley's business misfortunes. In May 1970, for example, dissident Technicolor shareholders charged him with investing more than $ 9 million of Technicolor funds in other companies he headed. In a proxy battle a month later the dissidents ousted him and arranged purchase of his Technicolor stock. "Pat's ability to help is going to be severely curtailed for awhile," Butler observed. Indeed, the rich vein that had been opened so generously by Frawley now contracted. Butler noted that his own "income from Frawley Enterprises has been curtailed."59 In this dispirited setting INCA, in November 1970, finally formed an area council in Los Angeles. But the council either lost or failed to recruit its indispensable patrons: Dudley Swim died and Frawley declined to serve as cochairman. With a grim show of determination, Butler resolved to reestablish the council "promptly and begin methodically recruiting Anti-Communists as we did in New Orleans, gradually building up the Big Names." Instead, financial deficits widened and the council died.60
Late in 1972, cut off from Frawley's patronage, Butler resumed permanent New Orleans residence. Prospects were no better in the Crescent City. As always, financial pressures harried and demoralized the staff. Richard Warren, a key staff member, complained to Ochsner that his four years with INCA had left him with "a destroyed marriage, a ruined credit rating, and drastic change in my personality." He would stay with INCA only "until I can find something else that is not as demanding."61
INCA weakened further as the 1970s unfolded. Its ineffectiveness continued to alienate its remaining elite members. Years later Captain John W. Clark recalled that the Delta Line, of which he had been president, had given "substantial sums in the way of contributions . . . and I personally underwrote some notes when they needed it." Yet, INCA "never really got off the ground." It was "more of a fundraising organization to pay for the expenses. And they constantly have been from one crisis to another." Similarly, one of Ochsner's sons said supporters "dropped off because they just didn't see INCA doing what it used to do." "I don't know how effective INCA was," he said. "I've talked to a lot of people in Central America particularly, and I can't find anybody that's heard... Truth Tapes."62
Perhaps INCA also suffered from its devotion to a single issue. In its early years that focus had been an advantage. Bruised by Castro's revolution and alarmed about its spread, New Orleans's elite had gathered under INCA's apocalyptic banners. The immediacy of the Cuban spectre had encouraged a heterogeneous elite to unify around a single issue. But as the Cuban threat receded, it probably became increasingly difficult to sustain such cohesion. Then perhaps the dependence on one issue became a liability, robbing INCA of whatever vitality and clarity might have been gained from a broader conservative program. As resonant and powerful as it remained, anticommunism could not fit every situation. Over-reliance on it forced INCA into increasingly cranky positions. Thus Ochsner and Butler perceived the Watergate imbroglio through the reducing spectacles of communist conspiracy. Ochsner informed a Houston supporter that INCA had uncovered proof of "a definite link between the communists and the people who are trying to impeach the President." And Butler explained to a friend that "the disinformation campaign on Nixon may go down in history as even more decisive than the Kennedy assassination enterprise. It is much more easily laid at the CPUSA's [Communist Party, USA] door, although the mass media has neglected to probe for the underlying facts."63
By the late 1970s, only a handful of loyalists held INCA together. In 1978 a subdued Butler told Ochsner that the directors had "unanimously decided to try to keep INCA alive." "I've had to devote most of my time just to keeping doors open at INCA for the past six months," he complained. When Ochsner, pleading the debilities of age, tried to reduce his commitment to INCA, Butler begged him to remain at the helm as his "departure would be a disaster." Ochsner relented, though he gave up the presidency for the titular position of chairman. "Unless we can get the support of more people," Ochsner wrote, "it is difficult to see how we can keep it viable." On September 24, 1981, he died at the age of eighty-five.64 INCA was then a palsied twenty years old.
INCA declined, but its brand of anticommunism remained potent. In 1982 several influential New Orleanians helped form the Caribbean Commission, an organization that resembled INCA. Dr. Alton Ochsner, Jr., a son of the late INCA leader, served as the commission's chairman; Samuel G. Robinson as president; and, until his death, Ernest Burguieres, Jr., as executive vice president. Ochsner and Robinson had been INCA members. As INCA had fixed on Cuba, the commission dedicated itself to discrediting the Nicaraguan Revolution. It portrayed itself and the Nicaraguan contras as defenders of democracy and of a revolution betrayed, as opponents equally of the Somozas and of the Sandinistas. Arguing that communists had usurped the democratic revolution against Somoza and had installed an oppressive regime that served Soviet and Cuban masters, it demanded the U. S. government "give enough aid to the Nicaraguan freedom fighters to permit them to complete their revolution and eliminate Sandinista oppression." Besides propaganda, the commission provided the Contras with food, clothing, and medicine, and Ochsner treated wounded Contra soldiers without cost in New Orleans.65
Much like INCA, though, the commission's democratic rhetoric and its judicious criticism of both Somocistas and Sandinistas obscured the amicable relations that the commission's leaders or their families had enjoyed with the Somozas. As noted previously, this had been true of Ochsner's father. And the son rallied to the Contras before they acquired the trappings of a democratic insurgency. Just weeks after the 1980 U. S. presidential election, he appeared before Reagan advisers on behalf of Nicaraguan counter-revolutionaries, whom a UPI dispatch described as "pro-Somoza Nicaraguan exiles." Robinson and Burguieres had similar connections. The former was an executive of the family company, Robinson Lumber, that had possessed extensive interests on Nicaragua's east coast. He admitted he "personally knew all three Somozas, and they were well educated and thoughtful people." Burguieres, a New Orleanian of elite background, had lived in Nicaragua as a businessman for several years after World War II and had maintained friendly ties with the Somozas.66
Complicit with a social structure that invited revolution, the commission's leaders tried to bury their past by appropriating a democratic idiom and by defaming revolution as the work of a global conspiracy. In short, the history of INCA and the emergence of the Caribbean Commission suggest a persisting intimacy between anticommunism and elite citizens.
ENDNOTES:
32 Butler to Morrison, June 21, 1961, Morrison Collection; Morrison to Members of
the Information Council of the Americas, June 24, 1961, carton S61-11, Morrison
Collection; Hale Boggs, "Congressman Warns of Apathy in Wake of Nuclear Test
Treaty," Clarion Herald, October 10, 1963.
33 Ochsner to Clayton Nairne, February 25, 1964, folder 3, box 51, Ochsner Papers;
Information Council of the Americas, INCA Cash Receipts, December 14, 1966, folder 1,
box 53, Ochsner Papers; H. Eustis Reily to H. L. Hunt, January 5, 1967, folder 6, box 105,
Ochsner Papers; Ochsner to Hunt, December 31, 1966, folder 1, box 53, Ochsner Papers.
34 Dudley Swim to Ochsner, December 24, 1970, folder 6, box 144, Ochsner Papers;
Swim to Neville Levy, November 28, 1960, International House Papers; Moody's
Industrial Manual, 1969, p. 1224; William W. Turner, Power on the Right (Berkeley,
1971), pp. 172-184, 191-194.
35 House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International Organizations
and Movements, Winning the Cold War: The U. S. Ideological Offensive, Part V, 88th
Congress, 1st session, 581; Ochsner to Joyce Hall, July 7, 1964, folder 2, box 51,
Ochsner Papers; Ochsner to George St. John, December 28, 1964, folder 1, box 51,
OchsnerP apers.
36 These records were titled Oswald: Self-Portrait in Red and Oswald Speaks. On
Oswald's New Orleans sojourn, see Michael L. Kurtz, "Lee Harvey Oswald in New
Orleans: A Reappraisal," Louisiana History, X XI (1980), 7-22.
37 Edward Scannell Butler, "INCA vs. Oswald: The Motivation of an Assassin,"
Victory, (December 11, 1963), n.p.
38 Butler to INCA Membership, December 7 , 1966, folder 1, box 53, OchsnerP apers;
H. W. Balgooyen to Butler, November 2, 1966, folder 2, box 53, Ochsner Papers; Times-Picayune, December 19, 1966; New York Times, October 28, 1966.
39 Ochsner to Turner Catledge, November 15, 1966, Ochsner Papers; Catledge to
Ochsner, November 22, 1966; Ochsner to Butler, November 26, 1966, folder 2, box 53,
Ochsner Papers.
40 John F. Seyer to Butler, March 3, 1966, Ochsner Papers; Patrick J. Frawley, Jr., to
Butler, March 1, 1966, folder 4, box 53, Ochsner Papers; Butler to Ochsner, March 9,
1966, folder 4, box 53, Ochsner Papers.
41 Butler to Friend of INCA, August 22, 1967, Information Council of the Americas,
Political Ephemera Collection, Tulane University; Butler to Wallace M. Davis, January
15, 1966, folder 4, box 53, Ochsner Papers.
42 Ochsner to INCA Supporter, n . d., Information Council of the Americas, Political
Ephemera Collection; Ochsner to Percival Stem, March 31, 1966, folder 4, box 53,
Ochsner Papers; Butler to Patrick J. Frawley, Jr., November 4, 1968, folder 1, box 121,
Ochsner Papers.
43 INCA Executive Committee, minutes of October 17, October 31, November 28,
1967, meetings, folders 1 and 3, box 105, Ochsner Papers; Richard E. Warren to Joseph
Abraham, Jr., October2 8, 1968, folder 1, box 121, Ochsner Papers.
44 Butler to Ochsner, December 18, 1970, folder 6, box 144, Ochsner Papers; Butler,
Revolution, p. 115; Butler to Dudley Swim, May 9, 1968, folder 4, box 121; Butler to
James Richards, January1 6, 1970, folder 4, box 145, Ochsner Papers;" INCA Fact Sheet:
Ten Years, 1961-1971," Information Council of the Americas, Political Ephemera
Collection; Ochsner to INCA Member, January 12, 1970, folder 4, box 145, Ochsner
Papers.
45 Butler to Richard E. Warren, February 20, 1971, folder 7, box 165, Ochsner Papers.
46 Rosemary James and Jack Wardlaw, Plot or Politics? The Garrison Case and Its
Cast (New Orleans, 1967), p. 58.
47 Butler to Gibbons Burke, June 12, 1967, folder 4, box 105, Ochsner Papers.
48 Ochsner to Butler, June 29, 1967, Ochsner Papers; Ochsner to Butler, July 12,
1967, folder 4, box 105, Ochsner Papers.
49 "An Unrushed Judgment of Mark Lane: Statement by Alton Ochsner and Ed Butler
of INCA," April 5, 1967, folder 3, box 105, Ochsner Papers.
50 Ochsner to F. Edward Hebert, April 10, 1967, folder 2, box 105; Hebert to Ochsner,
April 19, 1967, folder 6, box 105, Ochsner Papers. This report was titled "Information
from the Files of the Committee on Un-American Activities, U. S. House of
Representatives, April 14, 1967, For: Honorable F. Edward Hebert, Subject: Mark Lane."
51 This report is located in folder 1, box 134, Ochsner Papers.
52 Ochsner to Herbert Longenecker, December 12, 1967, Ochsner Papers; Ochsner to
Milton L. Fletchinger, December 12, 1967, Ochsner Papers; Ochsner to James Linen,
December 28, 1967, folder 1, box 105, Ochsner Papers.
53 Butler to Ochsner, July 15, 1967, folder 4, box 105, Ochsner Papers; Ochsner to
Butler, July 19, 1967, folder 4, box 105, Ochsner Papers; James and Wardlaw, Plot or
Politics?, pp. 102-103; Ochsner to James G. Stahlman, January 17, 1968, folder 7, box
121, Ochsner Papers.
54 Butler to Paul Dastugue, November 19, 1966, Ochsner Papers; Butler to Barney
Maloney, November 19, 1966, folder 2, box 53, Ochsner Papers.
55 Butler to Bruce Baird, Jr., May 5, 1968, folder 4, box 121, Ochsner Papers.
56 Butler to Ochsner, June 17, 1966, Ochsner Papers; Ochsner to Butler, June 21,
1966, folder 4, box 53, Ochsner Papers.
57 Ben C. Toledano to Board Member of INCA, September 27,1967, folder 4, Ochsner
Papers; INCA Executive Committee, minutes of October 17 and of December 5, 1967,
meetings, folders 1 and 3, Ochsner Papers; Butler to Ochsner, November 17, 1967, folder
3, box 105, Ochsner Papers.
58 INCA Board of Directors, minutes of April 8, 1968, folder 5, box 121, Ochsner
Papers.
59 Wall Street Journal, May 20, 1970; June 18, 1970; Butler to Ochsner, August 31,
1970, folder 7, box 144, Ochsner Papers; Butler to Ochsner, February2 9, 1972, folder
3, box 172, Ochsner Papers.
60 INCA Board of Directors, minutes of December 21, 1970, meeting, folder 6, box
144, Ochsner Papers; Richard E. Warren to Mr. and Mrs. Patrick J. Frawley, Jr.,
November2 4, 1970, folder 6, box 146, OchsnerP apers;B utlert o OchsnerF, ebruary2 9,
1972, folder 3, box 172, Ochsner Papers; Butler to Ochsner, August 5, 1972, folder 2,
box 172, Ochsner Papers.
61 Ochsner to Butler, March 14, 1974, folder 4, box 194, Ochsner Papers; Warren to
Ochsner, December 16, 1971, folder 5, box 165, Ochsner Papers.
62 John W. Clark, interview with author, Gulfport, Miss., May 29, 1984; Alton
Ochsner, Jr., interview with author, New Orleans, June 10, 1984.
63 Ochsner to Mrs. R. L. Blaffer, April 4, 1974, folder 2, box 194, Ochsner Papers;
Butler to Eugene H. Methvin, September 11, 1974, folder 3, box 194, Ochsner Papers.
64 Butler to Ochsner, November 27, 1978, Ochsner Papers; Ochsner to Butler,
December 1, 1978, folder 5, box 235, Ochsner Papers.
65 Caribbean Commission Newsletter, November 1, 1982; Times-Picayune/States-Item,
January 16, 1984; August 6, 1983; April 20, 1985; Times-Picayune, September 30,
1984; Alton Ochsner, Jr., letter to the editor, Times-Picayune/States-Item, April 13,
1984.
66 Times-Picayune/States-Item, November 19, 1980; S. G. Robinson, letter to the
editor, Times-Picayune/States-Item, July 27, 1983; Virginea Burguibres, interview with
author, New Orleans, May 15, 1984; Erest Burguieres, Jr., to Victor H. Schiro,
November 1, 1967, carton S67-2, Schiro Collection.
Notice the date of publication. November 22 (Third Edition). California would have been two hours behind Texas, making the time of the assassination 10:30 instead of half past noon. But still, to have these quotes from Dallas Police and a photo of Lee by the end of the day is quite amazing. Did the information Gannaway furnished the press come from the FBI or from some other source?
On April 24, 1964, the Dallas Morning News had contained an article concerning a "five-paragraph memo" prepared by Lieutenant Jack Revill, which had been passed along to Chief of Police Jesse Curry. Curry, who had testified before the Warren Commission (WC) during the third week of April, gave the Commission a copy of the memo. Following up on Curry's testimony, the Dallas Morning News quoted
"a source close to the Warren Commission" about the evidence presented
to the WC, including Revill's memo. The Associated Press called Lt. Revill at a convention
in Sacramento, California, and were told that another Dallas policeman could confirm that FBI Agent James (Joe) Hosty had told the local police:
"We
knew he [Oswald] was capable of assassinating the president..."
Jack Revill had first appeared before the Warren Commission on March 31, three weeks before his Chief, but had been questioned only in regard to the shooting of Lee Oswald by
Jack Ruby. Apparently the WC questioners were unaware of the Friday afternoon headlines which zeroed in on Oswald and quoted Revill's immediate superior, W. Pat Gannaway, saying that Oswald had been to the Soviet Union and had a Russian wife, even obtaining a 1959 photo of Oswald when he left Fort Worth, later ending up in Moscow.
While the AP contacted Revill in California, the rival paper of the Morning News, the Dallas Times Herald, contacted FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. He furnished them a most amazing statement:
"This is absolutely false. The agent made no such statement and the FBI did not have such knowledge."
The only thing absolute in this flap was that somebody was lying. Was it a member of the local Dallas police, or was it a member of the FBI?
To discover the truth, Lt. Revill was called back to the WC on May 13 to testify about his conversation with Agent Hosty in the DPD. Revill said he had previously conducted a "systematic search" of the Texas School Book Depository offices (located at 411 Elm) along with numerous other detectives from his office. He went directly from that location to the basement of DPD, where he got out of his car and allowed it to be parked by a staff member. Before he could enter the headquarters building, he testified, Agent Hosty had run up to him, saying:
"Jack,
a Communist killed President Kennedy....Lee Oswald killed President
Kennedy....He is in our Communist file. We knew he was here in Dallas."
Both Gannaway and Revill have been discussed previously at this blog in connection with the framing of Candy Barr for narcotics possession. As undercover narcotics policemen in Dallas, they also knew George W. Owen, a man once married to Maurine Biner, the woman John Dean eventually married shortly after the Watergate break-in in Washington, D.C. Owen was said to have been present at the Murchison home on November 21, 1963, along with LBJ's girlfriend, Madeleine Duncan Brown, and others who overheard LBJ threaten that after the following day Johnson would not have to put up with Kennedy any more. Is it possible Owen's police friends heard about the plan from him and were prepared to release the background on Oswald quickly? Also according to Brown, George Owen had driven to Redbird Airport in Dallas the night of the 21st to meet J. Edgar Hoover's plane and deliver him to the Murchison party. She said Owen was ready to talk when he suddenly dropped dead. Read more on this story at the March 26, 2011 posting, "
About two weeks after the assassination of President Kennedy, a 47-year-old minister named Irwin Tucker entered the police station in Scranton, Pennsylvania and spoke with Anthony Batsavage, the Superintendent of Police. Tucker had just returned from a three-week tour of missionary duty among the Indians in Ontario, Canada. He said that he had been staying at the home of a relative in New Liskeard, when he had heard about the shooting in Dallas. That same night he was watching the evening news for further details, when he saw a picture of the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. Tucker immediately recognized that face. He was certain that he had seen this man about five months previously in downtown Scranton with a group of peace demonstrators. [1]
The demonstration was located on a street corner of Courthouse Square. Tucker had been listening to the demonstrators for a considerable period of time, because he was interested in hearing their views. Oswald was among this group passing out leaflets. He remembered him in particular, for he got into a heated discussion with him. As he would later put it, the young man kept "running down our country" and he was arguing that "President Kennedy was not doing right by Cuba." Tucker lost his patience with this unpatriotic tirade and told the young man that if liked Castro's Cuba so much, he ought to move over there.
When a Scranton reporter heard about this story, he went to Batsavage to ask for his opinion regarding the clergyman's credibility. The superintendent said that he had personally known Tucker for many years and that he regarded him as "a serious, reputable man."
The Scranton peace demonstrations that had taken place from July 22 through July 25, 1963 consisted mostly of young people, about forty in number. They carried signs, which bore the peace symbol - an upside-down broken cross within a circle - and messages such as "Your conscience demands it - REFUSE to serve in the ARMED FORCES." Other signs reflected a concern for the problem of Cuba: "Soviet Troops and U.S. Marines: Leave Cuba" and "Demand Freedom to Visit Cuba."
The rally on Monday evening began with folk singing and then proceeded into speeches. A crowd of about 200 to 300 people came out to listen to them. As the rally went on, hecklers in the audience became more hostile and disruptive. Some of the hecklers protested that the demonstrators were desecrating the memory of "our boys" who have died in Vietnam and if they don't love America they should leave it. The intensity of the hostility would have turned ugly had not the police moved in to break up the demonstration. [2] It was a scene that would become a familiar sight on television newscasts during the Johnson and Nixon Administrations.
The story of his presence at a peace rally in Scranton becomes even more interesting in light of another report that he was meeting with members of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) at another peace rally in Philadelphia. Someone who only identified himself as "J.H.C." had dropped off a postcard at radio station WPEN in Philadelphia shortly after the assassination and had addressed it to talk show host Red Benson. As indicated below, the hand-written message contained several errors in punctuation and spelling.
Why, has no one checked out this. Lee Oswald [underscored by the writer] was at our meeting this summer here at Rittenhouse Sq. Check this by Fairmont guards who know about out F.P.T.C meeting. They saw LeeJ.H.C.
In an envelope postmarked "Philadelphia, November 26, 1963" and addressed to "Special Att. Dis. Atty HENRY WADE, Dallas, Tex." the following letter was enclosed:
Phila. Pa. Mr. Wade: Will this help you? Read it: This summer, we had a meeting of "Fair Play" at Rittenhouse sq. this city. (Check by the guards of Fairmont park. they will recall such. Lee was, there with us. I have pictures of this meeting to prove such. Lee needed some money, and he got some from a night club party, called "Sparky in Dallas, and so help us, if Ruby says he did not know us, he lies. A copy of this is being given Sec. Service, as we have photos to prove such Lee. was here this summer and I know Ruby enough to get [missing copy here] Mr Red Benson WPEN, can tell you about Fair play meeting, at park this summer.
Apparently this letter arrived anonymously, yet it must have been written by the same person who wrote the postcard to the Philadelphia radio station. To determine the identity of J.H.C., the FBI checked with the producer of the Red Benson Show. He said that neither he nor Benson knew who J.H.C. was. Of the documents that I could find, there is no mention of whether or not the FBI had been successful in locating J.H.C. Neither do these documents reveal whether or not Benson, the producer, or the Fairmont guards were questioned about what they knew concerning Oswald's presence at a pro-Castro meeting in Rittenhouse Square. One document however does record a statement by the inspector of the Fairmont guards who said that, according to their records,
"the only affair held in Rittenhouse Square that could in any way pertain to Cuba, the Cuban situation, or the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was a demonstration on August 15, 1963 put on by the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace." [4]
This was the same group of peace demonstrators that was in Scranton a few weeks before.
From Canada to Cuba
Both rallies in Scranton and Philadelphia were part of a grand project of a pacifist organization called the Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA). The man in charge of CNVA was A.J. Muste, a renowned pacifist, whose ideals of non-violent civil disobedience profoundly influenced such civil rights leaders as Martin Luther King and CORE leader, Bayard Rustin. [5]
A.J. Musteworked within the labor movement, infiltrated by agents provocateurs,since at least 1929.
In 1928 a faction within the American Federation of Labor had put the kibosh on a British labor speaker invited by Muste, with approval from AFL president William Green, to address his students at Brookwood. In March 1921 Muste had been executive secretary of the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America at the time he was selected to head the new college, set up by the labor movement:
"Katonah, N. Y.—Labor leaders and
educationalists who state they are for
a new social order met here today in
Brookwood school, behind closed
doors to plan the founding of the 'first
resident workers' college in America.
As the NEA Service reported on labor activities that summer with the rise of two new American labor movements which emerged during the summer: "One is the Conference for Progressive Labor Action and the other is the Trade Union Unity League." Just weeks prior to the stock market crash in October, Dutcher opined in his syndicated article:
However, one may view the chances of success of any new labor movement led by Foster, the Communist, the work of the Conference for Progressive Labor Action has been attracting widespread and thoughtful interest. This group stands somewhere between labor's left wing and the right wing A. F. of L. Its chairman is A. J. Muste, head of the Brookwood Labor College, who has announced sweeping plans to fight the "new capitalism." The C.P.L.A. hopes that bold, energetic organization work will win over millions of workers to trade unionism and it looks forward to a new solidarity and idealism among the labor class. Speakers at its recent four-day session at Brookwood outlined their aims along with their plaint against the A. F. of L. It was charged that the southern textile field, the best testing place for militant labor action, had found the A. F. of L. completely unprepared to deal with its challenge. ...Muste sees a definite trend toward progressive action in the ranks of labor. "No progress has been made in organizing basic industries," he says. "In politics, due to failure to organize a Labor Party, the unions are without influence.
Intro by W.Z. Foster
Sees Labor Militant Again
"But we have reached a turning point. The post-war period marked by brutal attacks upon labor by open shoppers, subtle undermining of organized labor by company union and welfare schemes, and in the ranks of organised labor itself by internal conflict, stagnation, retreat and defeatism is being liquidated. A new period which will be marked by a revival of militant progressivism and courage has begun.
"Among the workers of America there is again evident a spirit of revolt and militancy, a dissatisfaction with the share of prosperity which they are getting, with the strain of speed-up systems, with the drawing of the deadline against workers at 40 years of age or earlier and the accompanying burning up of the youth of the nation in our mechanized industries, with lack of insurance against the risks of old age, unemployment and sickness—dissatisfaction which is beginning to express itself again in action and not mere grumbling under the breath."
William Z. Foster (a communist) had been secretary of the Trade Union Educational League, at 156 West Washington street in Chicago, and had called for a general labor strike in 1927.
To dramatize the need to end the Cold War by unilateral nuclear disarmament and also to reduce tensions with Cuba, the CNVA had conceived the idea of delivering its message via a transcontinental walking tour from Canada to Cuba. The Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace was strictly a long-distance foot march, accompanied only by a pickup truck to carry sleeping bags, food, water and supplies. It would begin in the city of Quebec and was expected to reach Miami, Florida in seven months. From Miami, a boat would be taken to Havana, Cuba - either with or without the permission of the United States. From Havana they would walk 700 miles to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo, where they would hold their final demonstration, calling for the closure of the base. Covering an average of 15 miles a day, they would stop at various towns or cities along the way, where they would give speeches or pass out leaflets. Any local people sympathetic to their cause would be invited to join the walk for as far as they wanted. Any organizations, which had similar goals (such as the FPCC), were invited to participate. [6]
The project opened with a brief public meeting in a central plaza in historic Quebec City on May 26. By June 9 they were in Montreal, where they spent several days doing demonstrations. It was here that the walkers had Oswald among them for the first time. According to a lead provided to the FBI by an attorney in Windsor, Ontario, Oswald participated in a "ban-the-bomb" protest in Montreal. [7] Another citizen in Seattle said that Oswald was in Montreal with the head of the FPCC. [8] There is also a March 26, 1964 report of a letter from the senior customs representative in Montreal in which it was stated, "several persons had contacted his office and stated that Lee Oswald had been seen distributing pamphlets entitled `Fair Play for Cuba,' on St. Jacques and McGill Streets in Montreal during the summer of 1963." [9]
In an attempt to counter the customs official's letter regarding the Oswald sightings in Montreal, an April 8, 1964 letter was written to the Warren Commission from J. Edgar Hoover, which said: "For your information, the records of the William Reily and Company, Incorporated, New Orleans, Louisiana, reflect that Oswald was on the job Monday through Friday of the week June 3 through 7, 1963, and that he was also on the job all of the following week, June 10 through 14, 1963." As I have pointed out in another article last year, Oswald's attendance records at the coffee company were falsified to conceal the fact that he hardly ever came to work. [10] The job was really a cover to hide his wide-ranging political activities.
After the peace walkers left Montreal, they reached the border of the United States by the latter part of June. In the next two months they crossed the states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. By the end of August they were in Washington, D.C. where they participated in the massive civil rights demonstration led by Martin Luther King. This event marked a turning point for the peace walkers, for after their departure from the capitol, their focus shifted from issues of foreign policy to that of racial equality. As they advanced deeper into the southern states, their racially integrated ranks aroused an increasing antagonism among deeply committed segregationists. While passing through Georgia, their progress was interrupted in three towns, where they were put in jail for violating segregation laws. They were frequently insulted, harassed, or pelted with debris.
When they finally reached Miami, they spent several months besieging a State Department office in the city, trying to get permission to go to Cuba. When all legal avenues were finally exhausted, six of the remaining walkers got into a powerboat on October 27, 1964 and started for Havana. They were stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard, which seized their boat and kept it impounded. This defeat put an end to the peace walkers' efforts to get to Cuba.
From start to finish the Quebec to Guantanamo Walk for Peace was organized and led by CNVA coordinator, Bradford J. Lyttle. Two years earlier he had led an even more ambitious Walk for Peace that began in San Francisco on December 20, 1960 and finished up in Moscow on October 3, 1961. Strangely enough, it was while the peace walkers were going through Russia, that they might have been seen by Lee Harvey Oswald, who was living in Minsk at the time. It would therefore be relevant to go into some detail regarding the first Walk for Peace. [11]
In 1966 both Muste and Lyttle were present in Saigon at a protest rally against the war.
The First Walk for Peace
A group of about twenty walkers, more or less, began its walk south towards the city of Los Angeles. There they heard an address by Nobel Prize laureate Linus Pauling, who was also a leader in the peace movement. From Los Angeles, they walked through thirteen states, stopping at towns, cities or military bases to hold demonstrations. When they reached Washington, DC a delegation of the peace walkers was granted a 45-minute interview with White House political advisor, Arthur J. Schlesinger. From Washington, they went to New York City, where they took a plane flight to England. After joining with British peace organizations in a big nuclear disarmament rally in London's Trafalgar Square, they took a boat to Belgium (France having denied them entry).
Their march across the European continent advanced unchecked into the Iron Curtain countries. The effect of these peace walkers upon the Communist-controlled populace must have been electrifying. It marked the first time that anyone was allowed to carry placards and distribute leaflets urging young men to resist the draft or demanding that the Soviet Union stop the development of nuclear weapons. Whenever they stopped in a town to hold a rally, as many as 1000 to 1500 people would come out to welcome them.
On September 22, 1961 they arrived in the city of Minsk. In the center of the city they saw one of the few monuments to Josef Stalin remaining in the Soviet Union. The huge, 10-ton, bronze statue was a city landmark and it was near the Oswalds' apartment building. Marina used to pass by this statue while riding on a bus to work. One of the peace walkers later wrote down the following words regarding his impression of Minsk:
The streets were filled with serious, silent, humbly friendly, almost shy people . . . Most people reacted with noncommittal fascination and amazement. But there was, as in every other country, every other variety of reaction. Some people grasped our hands and shook them heartily, or beamed admiration. Others refused leaflets. . . . A few people walked along with us. Quite a few officials who were with us seemed apprehensive that the crowd might grow to unmanageable proportions, and they kept things circulating, according to reports. Nevertheless, there were large numbers all along our route through the broad streets and past the massive, classic buildings . . . [12]
That same evening, they held a meeting at the Friendship House. A Newsweek reporter from Moscow was also in attendance and the following is an excerpt from his report:
Jerry Lehman of Mokena, Ill., speaking through an interpreter, told an audience of boisterous Russians: "We hope you'll say to your leaders what we said to ours -- that no government which urges development of nuclear weapons and tests them is sane." This struck the Russians as funny and they roared with laughter. But after Lyttle had followed Lehman on the speaker's stand there was a different reaction. "I went to jail," Lyttle said, "because I refused to serve in the U.S. Army. I have protested against American rockets aimed at your cities and families. There are Soviet rockets aimed at my city and my family. Are you demonstrating against that?" There were murmurs in the crowd and a dark-haired girl shook her head. Obviously she had not heard anyone publicly ask that question in quite that way before. [13]
It is hard to believe that Lee and Marina were indifferent to this intrepid band of American pacifists, especially since America was so much on their minds at this time. Lee was making repeated visits to bureaucratic agencies in order to speed up the process of getting exit visas to return to the United States. His mother was sending copies of Time magazine, which he pored over eagerly. Yet despite the momentousness of the arrival of the peace walkers, they receive no mention in any of the Oswald sources. It is not as if this period of time is unrecorded. In a letter to the American Embassy dated October 4, 1961, Oswald said that his wife Marina had been hospitalized for a five-day period beginning September 22. This was the same day the peace walkers came into Minsk. In the letter, Oswald demanded that the Embassy launch an official inquiry, for he claimed that Marina's hospitalization was due to a nervous condition, resulting from intimidation by local authorities, who were trying to get her to withdraw her application for an exit visa.
The statements in the above mentioned letter were later contradicted by Marina when she denied to the Warren Commission that she had ever been hospitalized in 1961. This denial was reversed in Priscilla MacMillan's book, Marina and Lee, in which Marina said that she remembered going to the hospital "around September 20." It was not the result of intimidation, but rather she had been riding a bus to work and she had succumbed to the exhaust fumes. [14] These conflicting statements in combination with the complete silence regarding the peace walkers themselves raise questions marks about the importance of this episode in the lives of the Oswalds. The changing stories, especially in light of Priscilla McMillan's and the peace walkers presence, need to be explained.
After spending a few days in the vicinity of Minsk, the peace walkers resumed their march on Moscow. On October 3, they stumbled footsore and utterly exhausted into Red Square, where an enthusiastic crowd awaited them. It was an extraordinary triumph. 3900 miles across the United States and 1750 miles across the continent of Europe. In Russia alone, over 80,000 leaflets were distributed. It could hardly have been possible without the shuttle diplomacy efforts of A.J. Muste, who regularly performed miracles in shepherding the walkers past bureaucratic roadblocks.
In the ensuing years of the 1960's Muste continued to use his energy and talents in the cause of world peace. In February 1967, at the age of 82, he died a few days before he was to launch an anti-war campaign called the Spring Mobilization against the Vietnam War. This massive demonstration drew to the UN Plaza of New York over 300,000 people. On this occasion Martin Luther King gave an address denouncing American policy in Vietnam.
The official commemoration service of Muste's death was held at the Friends Meeting House in New York. Although Muste was technically a Presbyterian minister, his real spiritual home was among the Quakers. The Quakers were the most active supporters of Muste's CNVA. To those participating in the peace walks, they provided food, lodging, assistance, publicity, and meeting places. [15]
Ruth Paine
The Quaker Connections
Muste's ties to the Quaker church leads us to consider the Quaker connections of one of the most visible figures to emerge from the events surrounding the JFK assassination. Ruth Paine told the Warren Commission that she first became interested in the Society of Friends in 1947. In 1955 she was a chairman of the Young Friends of North America Committee, a student exchange program between the Soviet Union and the United States. [16]
What gives the connection even more weight is the fact that Wesley Liebeler asked Ruth's non-Quaker husband Michael a startling series of questions about the walk during the Warren Commission hearings. The queries reveal that Liebeler and the Commission knew and were interested in the march, its organizers, and the Quaker connection.
Mr. Liebeler: Are you acquainted with an organization known as the Friends Peace Committee? Mr. Paine: It is a familiar name. I guess not, though. I don't think I have been to a meeting of theirs. Mr. Liebeler: Do you know if it is connected in any way with the Young Friends Committee of North America? Mr. Paine: I take it to be a Friend, you know, a Quaker committee, but I believe it is connected. Mr. Liebeler: Do you know a gentleman by the name of Dennis Jamieson, who I believe is active in the Friends Peace Committee? Mr. Paine: I don't think so. Mr. Liebeler: Or George Lakey. Mr. Paine: For particle purposes, no. The names seem a little familiar but I can't place them. Mr. Liebeler: Do you have any recollection of the connection in which it is familiar to you? Mr. Paine: No. Mr. Liebeler: Are you familiar with the Committee for Non-Violent Action? Mr. Paine: Many of these things sound familiar. I don't - I really am saying no. [17]
In typical double-talk fashion, Michael Paine avoided giving straight yes or no answers to Liebeler's questions. Had Liebeler addressed these same questions to Ruth, he might have gotten more interesting responses. Yet as far as the public record is concerned, she was never asked.
Nevertheless, Michael's admission of a connection between the Young Friends of North America Committee and the Friends Peace Committee is sufficient ground for putting Ruth in association with those who were actively involved in the Walk for Peace. The George Lakey mentioned above was the executive secretary of the Friends Peace Committee and he served as the principal host for the peace walkers during their stay in Philadelphia. [18] The Dennis Jamieson mentioned above was the chairman of the Friends Peace Committee and he served as chief publicist for the march as it went through Pennsylvania. In a Scranton news photo of a group of peace walkers on the steps of the YMCA, he could be seen next to Bradford Lyttle, holding a sign that read "Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace." [19]
A second instance of an opportunity to join in peace walk activities occurred in Washington, DC during the big civil rights demonstration. Ruth Paine had come to the capitol for a few days to visit her sister and also a family known as the Houghtons. According to the Houghtons, she had actually attended the demonstration during her stay in Washington. [22] Once again Ruth's itinerary had crossed paths with the peace walkers' route of march.
Since Ruth considered herself a pacifist, it would be natural to assume that she would be among those professing sympathy for the peace walkers. Certainly there would be no reason for her to reject an invitation to join them for the peace rally at Rittenhouse Square on August 15 or the Washington civil rights rally on August 28.
If Ruth Paine found reason enough to be attracted to the peace walkers because of their activism in promoting world peace, her friend Lee Harvey Oswald would have been drawn to them for the same reason. He was an advocate of peaceful coexistence between the United States and the Soviet Union and he fully approved of President Kennedy's efforts to bring peace to the world and to end the cold war. "If he succeeds," he once said to his friend George de Mohrenschildt, "he will be the greatest president in the history of this country." [23]
Another reason why he would have been interested in the Walk for Peace was its emphasis on improving relations between Cuba and the United States. He certainly would have approved of their positions regarding American policy toward Cuba. As stated in a Philadelphia newspaper, "The peace walkers ask the U.S. to give up an intention to support an invasion of Cuba, stop reconnaissance flights over the island, end travel and trade restrictions, guarantee economic and technical assistance to Cuba through the UN." It is quite probable that Oswald would not even have objected to the demands directed toward Cuba. "They ask Cuba for withdrawal of foreign military personnel and weapons, renounce all intention of military intervention in other nation's affairs, end restrictions on the political freedom of Cubans, encourage its people to visit the U.S." [24]
A third reason why he would have been sympathetic to the peace walkers is their strong stand against racial injustice. According to de Mohrenschildt, Oswald said "It hurts me that the blacks do not have the same privileges and rights as white Americans." He admired Kennedy's efforts to end segregation and he also "greatly admired Dr. Martin Luther King and agreed with his program . . . he frequently talked of Dr. King with a real reverence." [25]
Overshadowing these noble sentiments on world peace and racial equality is the reference to Jack Ruby in J.H.C.'s letter to Henry Wade. What is the true nature of the association between the salacious night club owner and the virtuous political activist? It is common knowledge that Ruby's friends in the criminal underworld hated Castro for closing down the Havana gambling casinos. It is also known that Ruby served as the paymaster for anti-Castro operations. Why then would Oswald solicit money from Ruby?
The letter from J.H.C. strips off the leftist masquerade and exposes Oswald's true intentions. The man who supposedly grieved over racial inequalities was the same one who continued to have a working association with such fanatical segregationists as Guy Banister. The man who professed sympathy for Castro was the same one who stamped on his leaflets the address of an anti-Castro center, 544 Camp Street. And finally, the man who said that he admired President Kennedy for his efforts to bring peace to the world and to end racial segregation was the same man who willingly served as the lynchpin in a conspiracy that ended the President's life.
If Oswald's professed ideology turned out to be a sham, what does that tell us about the professed piety of the Quaker woman who sheltered him and his family during the six critical weeks prior to the assassination? Was Ruth Paine really just a simple housewife, who had no inkling of the unsavory characters that Oswald had been spending a lot of his time with? Are there hidden motives behind the amiable Quaker facade? In a highly important article for Probe, authors Carol Hewett, Steve Jones, and Barbara LaMonica reveal how Ruth Paine has been suspected of being a government informant by her peers in the peace movement. [26] It is relevant to mention at this point that Sylvia Hoke, the sister whom she stayed with during the 1963 Washington civil rights demonstration, was an employee of the CIA - an agency that has no scruples in violating the civil rights of public and private citizens. It is also noteworthy to mention that the tax returns of Ruth and Michael Paine still remain closely guarded classified secrets.
The Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace, as well as the predecessor that went to Moscow, are mostly forgotten in historical works dealing with the 1960's. They hardly rate even a footnote. Yet the power of this small band of peripatetic pacifists must have worried some major political interests enough to bring upon them the full encumbrance of such undercover heavyweights as Lee Oswald, Jack Ruby, and Ruth Paine.
ENDNOTES
1. The Scranton Times, December 11 and 12, 1963. The second newspaper article mentions a local resident named Gloria Glickman who said that she had been among the peace walkers and she was sure that Oswald was not among them. But since the peace walkers were in Scranton for several days and since they sometimes split up into teams to protest at different warmaking industries around the city, it is quite possible that Glickman was not at the right place and time to see Oswald.
2. The Scranton Times, July 22, 23, 24, 25, 1963.
3. Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1992), p. 277.
4. FBI report dated 12/5/63 of letter to Henry Wade in Dallas by SA James Bookhout and SA George W.H. Carlson; FBI report dated 12/4/63 of an interview with Theodore Reinhart, producer of the Red Benson Show in Philadelphia by SA Mason P. Smith; FBI report dated 12/3/63 of an interview with Inspector Philip Cella, Fairmont Park Guard, Philadelphia by SA Edward A. Smith. There is a difference of only a single day between Oswald's appearance in Philadelphia on August 15 and his appearance in New Orleans on August 16, where he was seen passing out FPCC leaflets in front of the International Trade Mart. To travel the 1225 miles between the two cities in one day could only have been accomplished by airplane.
10. See "Budreau's Music and Appliance Store" in the July 1996 issue of The Fourth Decade.
11. The most detailed account of this march is Bradford J. Lyttle's book You Come with Naked Hands: The Story of the San Francisco to Moscow Walk for Peace (Raymond, New Hampshire: Greenleaf Books, 1966).
25. George de Mohrenschildt, I Am a Patsy! pp. 127, 146, 198.
26. "Ruth Paine: Social Activist or Contra Support Networker" by Carol Hewett, Barbara LaMonica and Steve Jones in the July-August 1996 issue of Probe.
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organization called the 
, a renowned 
profoundly influenced such civil rights leaders as Martin Luther King and CORE leader, Bayard Rustin. [5] 
worked within the labor movement, infiltrated by agents provocateurs, since at least 1929.
sees a definite trend toward progressive action in the ranks of labor. "No progress has been made in organizing basic industries," he says. "In politics, due to failure to organize a Labor Party, the unions are without influence. 
(a communist) had been secretary of the Trade Union Educational League, at 156 West Washington street in Chicago, and had called for a general labor strike in 1927.
y by a pickup truck to carry sleeping bags, food, water and supplies. It would begin in the city of Quebec and was expected to reach Miami, Florida in seven months. From Miami, a boat would be taken to Havana, Cuba - either with or without the permission of the United States. From Havana they would walk 700 miles to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo, where they would hold their final demonstration, calling for the closure of the base. Covering an average of 15 miles a day, they would stop at various towns or cities along the way, where they would give speeches or pass out leaflets. Any local people sympathetic to their cause would be invited to join the walk for as far as they wanted. Any organizations, which had similar goals (such as the FPCC), were invited to participate. [6]
and he served as chief publicist for the march as it went through Pennsylvania. In a Scranton news photo of a group of peace walkers on the steps of the YMCA, he could be seen next to Bradford Lyttle, holding a sign that read "Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace." [19]
, who lived in Paoli, a town about 30 miles west of Philadelphia. During her month long stay in Paoli, she had visited with her Quaker friends in Philadelphia. Whether or not she got involved in Walk for Peace meetings during these visits, she did not say. [21]
highly important article for Probe, authors Carol Hewett, Steve Jones, and Barbara LaMonica reveal how Ruth Paine has been suspected of being a government informant by her peers in the peace movement. [26] It is relevant to mention at this point that Sylvia Hoke, the sister whom she stayed with during the 1963 Washington civil rights demonstration, was an employee of the CIA - an agency that has no scruples in violating the civil rights of public and private citizens. It is also noteworthy to mention that the tax returns of Ruth and Michael Paine still remain closely guarded classified secrets.
: A Biography of A.J. Muste (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), p. 117
, p. 196.
(New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 155-157, 592.