Who Engineered the Heroin Coup?

Refer back to our October 8 posting of the excerpt from Heroin in Southeast Asia. We inserted a map of the Yunnan province of China, showing Kunming, "the hotbed of military operations," of  

1. Claire Chennault's 14th Air Force and of 

2. the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Detachment 202.

These military operations in this area of China were occurring at the tail end of WWII, and would lead up to the Korean War a few years later.  Kruger's focus in his book was on Captain Lucien Conein, the French Foreign Legionnaire turned OSS agent for the United States. Why? Because he points to our trail of money. Remember, we ALWAYS follow the money.

When President Truman agreed to drop the bombs on Japan, abruptly ending WWII, the old China hands realized their government budget to fight Chinese Communists had just dried up. They had to build an alternative supply to finance the "nationalist" Chinese forces led by the American-educated Soong family satellites, groomed to set up China's central bank by donors to Southern Christian colleges since the time Charlie Soon first arrived in North Carolina.

Background Reading to Get Up to Speed

Readers who have not already done so should familiarize themselves with this author's other blog, which has long followed the trail of opium money through the Forbes family that culminates into today's United States Secretary of State John Kerry, particularly at this point with his ancestor known as Jack Forbes, a contemporary of Secretary of State (later President) John Quincy Adams, who was the actual creator of the Monroe Doctrine during his tenure in the State Department. It was J.Q. Adams who was then handling the career of the first John Murray "Jack" Forbes, not to be confused with his nephew of that name who rose to opium fame several decades later.

At the other website, Where the Gold Is,  I posited that J.Q. Adams had accomplished his purpose of strengthening the nascent U.S. republic by allowing Jack Forbes, the consul he named to an important post in Europe as French hero Napoleon was shipped off to Elba. It should be remembered that at that time the French were our allies, while the victor, the British, were our avowed enemies. Thus, it was of little significance to Adams at that time that the only way that Forbes' consulate post, where he was sent to spy on the British enemy, could be financed was by allowing him to enter into commercial partnerships with family members, also based at the foreign consulate.

Jack's youngest brother, Ralph Bennet Forbes, was one of several partners who took advantage of that opportunity to trade in China following the tanking of his own business using slaves to grow sugar cane in what is now the island of Haiti/Dominican Republic (then known as Santo Domingo). There Ralph had become acquainted with James and Thomas Handasyd Perkins, ship owners involved in the triangular barter trading pattern between the island, New England and, during colonial days, Liverpool. They had seen much of their business interests destroyed, however, when revolutionary Americans boycotted and blockaded trade with the former "mother country."

As so often happens, his working relationship with the Perkins brothers led to marriage to their younger sister, Margaret Perkins. Quoting now from my other blog:

By 1811 Ralph had already been married to Margaret Perkins 12 years, and the brothers had given up trade in the West Indies for the East Indies, with China. In the meantime the young Robbins cousin [James Murray Robbins] went to Europe to replace Ralph Forbes. The editor of The Letters reports that President Monroe, through his secretary of state, Jack's old friend J.Q. Adams, called Forbes home and entrusted him with negotiations following Napoleon's defeat at the hands of the British, while the teenage Robbins was sent to Elsinore [Helsingor], Denmark, not far from Jack's 1813 post in Copenhagen. Was he merely there to keep his eyes and ears open and courier intelligence back? ... Did President Monroe, the last Founding Father to serve as chief executive of the United States, know what was about to hit the fan? Did anyone understand at the time that the cost of such intelligence to the new nation was to allow those consular officials free reign in smuggling drugs?

Kris Millegan's Theory

My early research has been guided and directed since about 1996 by the profound ideas and reading of the publisher of Trine Day books, who was then a mere hippie musician turned philosopher--Kris Millegan, who posted the following statement in 2000 to a research group to which I then was a participant:

Forced out of the lucrative African slave trade by US law and Caribbean slave revolts, leaders of the Cabot, Lowell, Higginson, Forbes, Cushing and Sturgis families had married Perkins' siblings and children. The Perkins opium business had made a fortune and established power over these families. By the 1830s, the Russells bought out the Perkinses and made Connecticut the primary center of the US opium racket. Massachusetts families (Coolidge, Sturgis, Forbes and Delano) joined Connecticut (Alsop) and New York (Low) smuggler-millionaires under Russell Trust. By 1856, Russell Trust Incorporated their open pirate emblem -- the skull and cross bones.

Millegan's theory related to the importance of Yale secret society, Skull and Bone, which he had found to be steeped in the long history of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency involvement in the Southeast Asian drug trade. Millegan was an avid reader who shared his insights by posting excerpts of books he read on this subject, one of which was Henrik Kruger's book, Heroin in Southeast Asia, cited previously. Much of this history has been made into an excellent online book by William P. Litynski, in downloadable format, called An Illustrated History of the China Trade and the Opium Wars.

Litynski mentions that William Russell, trustee of Yale University from 1745 to 1761, had two great-grandsons from two different sons. One was the China-trading Russell and Co. co-founder, Samuel Wadsworth Russell, and another was Skull and Bones co-founder, William Huntington Russell. This fact alone seems to indicate a connection between Yale and the opium trade in China worth pursuing. There are also many important links between the trade in opium in those days, not only with Yale, but with Harvard and Princeton as well, all of which occur because of the close family connections within the management of those three universities.

In January 2012 I traced the various ancestries, first by starting with John Kerry's relationship back through the Forbes family, and then by the Russell family's long connections to Yale and to the founding of Skull and Bones--a project I had been working on for several years. See 2004 article, "Primer on Controlling People, Using Their Own Money." As one can see, the same themes run over and over throughout this history.

In a more recent project, I showed how those same families who were involved in subsidizing the Skull and Bones (Russell Trust) network through the Morgan banking empire were, according to Antony Sutton's research, overthrown after the 1929 crash from a technology based on electric powered streetcars (Morgan) to one envisioning individually owned petroleum-fueled vehicles (Rockefeller). Both group of investors have been heavily entrenched within the Order of Skull and Bones. Whoever controls Skull and Bones thus seems to control the direction of American investment.

Now, Back to Heroin and French Indochina

Thomas Gardiner Corcoran, a/k/a Tommy the Cork, a contemporary of Jesse Jones in Herbert Hoover's Reconstruction Finance Corporation, had cemented his Texas connection in 1937 by lobbying for Sam Rayburn to become Speaker of the House of Representatives. Corcoran took a great deal of political flak for the maneuvers (such as the "Court packing plan) he handled for FDR; because of his loyalty, according to author David McKean, in October 1940 he was assigned to perform an undercover task in China:

The importance of being a Delano

Roosevelt conveyed to him, again through Lauchlin Currie, that he wanted to establish a private corporation to provide assistance to the Chinese. Corcoran thought the president's idea was ingenious, and later wrote that "if we'd tried to set up a government corporation per se, or do the work out of a Federal office, there would have been devil to pay on the Hill." Instead, Corcoran set up a civilian corporation, which he chartered in Delaware and, at the suggestion of the president, named China Defense Supplies. It would be, as Corcoran later recalled, "the entire lend lease operation" for Asia.
 
In order to provide the company with the stamp of respectability, Roosevelt arranged for his elderly uncle, Frederick Delano, who'd spent a lifetime in the China trade, to be co-chairman. The other chairman was T.V. Soong, Chiang's personal representative who frequently visited Washington to lobby for aid to his government. Soong, a Harvard graduate, was also Chiang's finance minister, as well as his banker and his brother-in-law. And he was a close friend of David Corcoran, whom he had met when the younger Corcoran was working in the Far East.

It just so happens that David was one of Tommy the Cork's brothers. Drew Pearson wrote about the Corcoran family's involvement in the quasi-government corporation in his August 1, 1942 column, which is so incredible it must be printed here in full, with emphasis added in italics:

WASHINGTON — For a long time official Washington never knew that the celebrated Tommy "the Cork" Corcoran ever had anyone else in his family. The public spotlight which beat down on him as the most intimate adviser of the president was so intent that it put everyone else in the shadow.

Recently, however, Washington has discovered two of his brothers. In fact, it has become very much aware of them. One is Howard Corcoran, assistant United States district attorney in New York, the man primarily responsible for the wholesale arrests in the German-American bund. For more than a year, Howard Corcoran waged an up-hill battle to round up the bund. Other federal officials argued that the bund could not be touched, most of the members being American citizens. Some of the leaders might be arrested, but that was all, they said.

Bund's Nemesis

Howard Corcoran, however, maintained that the proper strategy was not to arrest the leaders and scare the others underground, but to watch the entire organization, then make wholesale arrests. This quiet surveillance was carried on for more than a year, and resulted in the largest arrest in our history. David Corcoran, the other brain trust brother, is fighting the nazis in a unique manner. He has become the chief American spearhead in routing the nazi drug trust from South America.

To appreciate the importance of this, it is necessary to know that the drug industry for years has been the chief undercover organization for nazi propaganda in Latin-America. Nazi traveling salesmen, penetrating the byways, were able to report on everything a foreign military power wanted to know, in addition to arranging political contacts, and using radio and newspaper advertisements to spread nazi "kultur" among Latin-American good neighbors.

So important is this drug propaganda network that until a short time ago the nazis flew essential drugs into South America, smuggled aspirin from the United States through pro-nazi Latin-American armies and, thanks to the large stocks accumulated before war broke, have continued to carry on. For a long time the state department and the Rockefeller committee have been trying to get the United States firms to carry similar radio and newspaper propaganda, and now give credit to David Corcoran for doing the most outstanding job along this line.

Guns Turned Around

It is paradoxical that the commercial instrument through which Corcoran works is a firm that for a time had patent connections with the German drug trust. Corcoran's firm, the Sydney Ross Co., is a subsidiary of Sterling Products, the biggest drug business in the U.S.A. [Sterling purchased the U.S. assets of the German Bayer AG, including its patent to aspirin.] Its enormous resources, once partially derived from its relationship with the German drug trust, now have been completely  reversed and, through Sydney Ross, thrown into an economic war to the death in Latin America. As one Washington official expressed it: "We have boarded the Bismarck and turned her guns around."

[According to International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 1. St. James Press, 1988 relative to Sterling Drug, Inc."

 In the 1920's cartels with German companies were condoned as a means of helping Germany's beleaguered post-war economy. Yet, as argued in 1942 Fortune magazine article, it was at this early stage that the German government laid the foundation for a policy of economic fascism. At the roots of the struggle over "a simple glassine envelope containing two aspirin-compound tablets" was "Germany's attempt to reduce a continent to the economic and political status of a colony."

Whatever real or imagined designs Germany had in regard to its Latin American market, however, it soon became apparent that it was neither economically nor politically viable for Sterling to continue conducting business with Farben. Coming within a hairsbreadth of suffering U.S. government action, two Sterling subsidiaries in Latin America, Winthrop Products, Inc. and the Sydney Ross Co., suddenly became the advanced guard for a U.S. trade-war policy against Germany. In other words, an all out economic war to gain hegemony over the Latin American market was waged against Farben; as far as Sterling was concerned the cartel ceased to exist.

This sudden turnaround seemed inconsistent in light of the previous intimate business dealings between the two companies. The initial agreement of 1923 called for Sterling to supply aspirin to the Latin American market only if Farben were at any time unable to do so. Yet as late as 1941, during the British blockade of Nazi occupied Europe, Farben asked Sterling to violate the agreement between the two companies and send Winthrop ethical drugs to Latin America. After two and a half days of debate William Erhard Weiss (at that time chairman of the board) ordered the shipment sent.]

Dave Corcoran, the driving force behind the Latin-American Sydney Ross venture, got to it in a roundabout way, in fact via Asia. Originally he was preparing for a medical career, but a girl diverted him into Asiatic trade. When he was graduated from Princeton, he was entered at Oxford for medical studies, but he fell in love and wanted to get married. His father insisted he have a professional education first. A medical course would take several years, so Dave fished through college catalogues to find the professional education requiring the least time. He took a two-year course at the Harvard business school.

Romance Changes Career 

At the end of the course, he married his girl and went to work for an Asiatic trading company. In the far east, he became Tokyo manager of General Motors, saw the movement through Japan of the first military trucks for the conquest of Manchukuo, left General Motors to sell American pharmaceuticals for Sterling Products in China, the Philippines, Malaya and India. Later, Corcoran was lent to Washington as president of China Defense Supplies, Inc., of the lend-lease corporation, and was the first of the crusaders to get supplies up the Burma road, to make up for the trucks he had sent into Manchuria ten years ago.

About this time Sterling Products promised the justice department to compensate for its previous partnership with the Germans by trying to drive the German drug business off the commercial map of Latin America. It seemed an impossible job. But Sterling fished Dave Corcoran out of its pocket and put him in charge of an economic drive against the key item in the German line — aspirin, which had been trademarked and advertised in Latin America for nearly 20 years and had a practical monopoly.

Corcoran had to begin from scratch with a new name. The Germans had stocks carefully accumulated against the possibility of war. Corcoran had to export from the U.S.A., often by the air, as submarines handicapped shipping routes. The Germans had a solid, 65-year-old organization; Corcoran had only a handful of young Americans.

Dave Goes Into Action

The way the Sydney Ross Co. swung into action still has Latin America gasping. Corcoran called in his old team from all over the world and scoured the lists for every good export man he had ever known. In six months, the Latin American organization had tripled. The new trade name "mejoral" became the subject of the biggest American promotion job in Latin American history.

Overnight, Sidney Ross became the biggest radio and newspaper advertiser and the biggest sound and movie truck operator in Latin America. For the first time the American government has a Latin-American "sales" organization comparable to anything the Germans ever had in their commercial conquests. This organization covers not only the city areas, but follows the trail of famous German peddler and his mule throughout the interior.

The success of the drive has been phenomenal. Wherever Sydney Ross can get supplies it is already consistently outselling the Germans and has developed such a fierce competitive technique that anti-monopoly cranks in Washington already are more concerned that Sydney Ross will dominate the market than lambasting the Germans. All of which causes Dave Corcoran to remark:

"Monopoly! About the same kind of monopoly the marines had at Wake island!"

(Copyright, 1942, by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.)

Once you have time to digest all this, we'll be back with more about Tommy the Cork's law partner, William Sterling Youngman, Jr. who is the central man in this story. In 1934 Youngman was licensed to practice law, and in April 1937 was married to Elsie Hooper Perkins. We pick up there next time. Be ready!

Sugar Daddy of John Birch Society

A popular "conspiracy" author, G. Edward Griffin, member of the John Birch Society, narrated a documentary about John Birch in the 1960s, which readers may find interesting. It depicts the heroic life of Birch as a missionary who was on the scene to rescue the Doolittle Raiders, who had a secret mission to bomb the Japanese mainland in April 1942. Corporal Leland D. Faktor was killed during the raid and was buried in a service presided over by Rev. Birch.

Who exactly was this man, Robert Welch, who in 1958 founded a group in honor of John Birch? Besides being the man who gave us Sugar Daddies, Sugar Babies, Milk Duds and Junior Mints, he also gave us the father of the Koch Brothers, chief funders of the Tea Party movement today. Jane Mayer wrote in her 2010 article in The New Yorker, "Covert Operations: The Billionaire Koch Brothers' War Against Obama":

A Republican campaign consultant who has done research on behalf of Charles and David Koch said of the Tea Party, “The Koch brothers gave the money that founded it. It’s like they put the seeds in the ground. Then the rainstorm comes, and the frogs come out of the mud—and they’re our candidates!”

Did the Tea Party Spring from John Birch's Ashes?

Robert Henry Winborne Welch, Jr., was born near Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in 1899, growing up on the farm Frances Hallowell Welch, his grandmother, owned. Her son, Robert, Sr., wife Lina Verona (James) Welch, and their children farmed the land with help from six black workers who lived there. Even after the candy-making brothers left home, the youngest son William Dorsey Welch would remain on this northeastern North Carolina farm surrounded by his grandmother's Hallowell relatives.

Something of a prodigy, young Bobby entered college at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at the age of 12 and graduated from that institution in 1916. The cities of Chapel Hill and Durham were the agricultural, industrial and financial domain controlled by Julian Shakespeare Carr and his wife Nannie--who in 1924 made application to the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, the same year he died. After Carr's tobacco company had become successful, he sold it in 1898 to James Buchanan Duke of nearby Durham, who had begun mass producing cigarettes in the 1880s. Duke died only months after Carr's death, but not before James B. Duke, his father and brother had helped to change this section of North Carolina forever.

• J.B.'s older brother, Benjamin Newton, had launched the family into the textile business as early as 1892. As their textile interests developed, the need for economical water power led the 
• Dukes into the hydroelectric generating business. In 1905, they founded the Southern Power Company, now known as Duke Power, one of the companies making up Duke Energy, Inc. Within two decades, this company was supplying electricity to more than 300 cotton mills and various other factories, electric lines, and cities and towns primarily in the Piedmont region of North and South Carolina.
• Lifelong Methodists, the two brothers practiced the kind of financial stewardship encouraged by their church and instilled in them by their father. Ardent Republicans and sympathetic to the downtrodden, the Dukes, individually and collectively, gave to a number of causes. 
• In December, 1924, James B., who was by far the wealthiest member of the family, established The Duke Endowment as a permanent trust fund with designated beneficiaries. In so doing, he was following the family's long-standing patterns of philanthropy. 
• In 1892, Washington Duke had helped a Methodist-related institution, Trinity College, relocate to Durham, and since 1887 Ben had been a member of the school's Board of Trustees. A new university built around Trinity was to be the prime beneficiary of the Duke Endowment, and at the insistence of Trinity President William Preston Few, the college was re-chartered as Duke University in honor of Washington Duke and his family.

Back in 1880 Trinity College enrolled a "special" student, its first international student-- a young Chinese boy who would later be known as Charlie Soong, who spent the summer of 1881 in Durham with his sponsor, Julian S. Carr. It was a decade later that Trinity was relocated to Durham, the name being change to Duke. The Duke University Board of Trustees was established the year Carr died and the year James B. Duke created his endowment. James B. Duke and his wife had only one child, Doris Duke, born in 1912. When he died in 1925, he left another $67 million to the endowment.

Too young to join the military, he enrolled at Annapolis Naval Academy, according to the Documentary History of John Birch Society:

Bobby Welch

Robert H.W. Welch enrolled in the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis MD during World War I, and during World War II he served on the Advisory Commission of the Office of Price Administration [one of 50 advisers] for the candy industry. In 1922, Welch founded the Oxford Candy Company and was its Sales Manager in 1935. Beginning in 1940, he was Vice President and Director of Sales and Advertising of his brother's candy company, The James O. Welch Company of Cambridge MA. In 1947, Welch was the recipient of the Kettle Award by the candy industry. From 1940-1944, Welch was a Board member of the Massachusetts Chess Federation.

From 1951 to 1954, he was a member of the Belmont MA School Committee and served as Director of several small businesses and one bank. He served as Chairman of the Board of the Washington Commission of the National Association of Candy Manufacturers and also was a member of the Board of Directors of the United Prison Association. From 1951-1957 he was a Director of the National Association of Manufacturers, being its Vice President from 1955-1957. In 1941, he authored the book, The Road To Salesmanship. In 1952 his book, May God Forgive Us was published and in 1954, The Life of John Birch.

In conducting research on certain persons in Fort Worth, Texas, this blog writer came across the fact that John Birch, for whom Welch named his group, had attended a Baptist seminary in that city in 1940 and arrived in China only months before the U.S. entered the war against Japan. Rick Perlstein wrote in Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, that Welch's book, The Life of John Birch:

told the tale of a young American Baptist missionary-cum-spy who learned at the close of World War II of the Communists' secret plan to take over China. He was assassinated, and his murder was supposedly covered up by State Department quislings who knew if the story got out their own complicity in Mao's victory would be revealed.

Armed with that information, I began to wonder why Robert Welch was drawn to use John Birch as the name of a supposedly libertarian society, given the fact that foreign missionaries were engaged in such an internationalist role abroad, and that Norris' seminary was so closely tied to, and financed by, an international network of airline companies. Notwithstanding that curious anomaly, it should also be pointed out that descendants of some of Welch's original members are today involved with equally incongruous activities.

Fred C. Koch

For example, during the early days of the JBS, it has been revealed in a recent memoir by Claire Conner, Wrapped in the Flag: A Personal History of America's Radical Right, how much influence Welch exerted on her father, Stillwell J.Conner. The author talks about  Fred C. Koch, who was on the original board of the JBS with Welch, and about his two sons, Charles and David Koch, the subject of another recent book, Koch Brothers Exposed. The Koch brothers, as we all know, set up the infrastructure for today's "libertarian" Tea Party, based upon their pouring of:

hundreds of millions of dollars into right-wing organizations like Institute for Humane Studies, the Cato Institute, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Bill of Rights Institute, the Reason Foundation, Citizens for a Sound Economy and the Federalist Society.

These foundations are not unlike the propaganda mill which used the millions of dollars made available after World War II through the Marshall Plan in Europe, which these so-called libertarians have long ranted against. It is also similar to funds like INCA which spread propaganda throughout South and Central America.

The Candy Man Can

What was it that inspired Welch to start funding this libertarian movement? After completing his studies in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Welch spent two years at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. He then moved to Cambridge in 1919 to attend law school at Harvard until 1921. While he was was preparing to be a lawyer, however, he met a Wellesley girl in the Class of 1922 named Marian Lucile Probert, whose father (George Ernest Probert) had immigrated to the U.S. from England and worked in the area of Pittsburgh before settling down in Akron, Ohio. As a freshman at Wellesley, therefore, Marian may have encountered May-ling Soong (eventually Madame Chiang Kai-shek),who graduated from Wellesley College in 1917. Or perhaps Robert walked in the steps trod by her brother T.V. Soong, who finished college at Harvard in 1915 and was Finance Minister of the Nationalist party in China by 1927.

When Robert and Marian married  in the Wellesley College Chapel, his bride had recently returned from a trip to Europe with college friends. The newlyweds remained in the Cambridge area while Robert worked in his brother's candy factory, giving up a career in law. By 1928 he was treasurer of the Oxford Candy Company at 185 Albany Street and had moved to the Watertown suburb of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In August 1929 Marian again returned from a trip to England with their two sons, Robert III and Hillard, but if Robert accompanied them, he returned on his own through an unreported means of transport. The year 1930 found the Welch family living on Long Island at Hempstead, New York, while he commuted to his own candy factory in Brooklyn. A younger brother, Miles Edward Welch, lived with the family and helped in the manufacture of the candy.

Several years later, as early as 1939, both Robert and his brother, James Overton Welch, lived almost next door, both owning homes on Fletcher Road in Belmont, MA. We are told that Robert took a trip to England in 1946 to study socialism's negative impact on the country:

In 1946, Welch journeyed to England to study the destructive impact on that country of its socialist Labor Government. He was alarmed and distressed by the pursuit of similarly destructive policies by our own federal government. He was even more alarmed by the foreign policies of the Truman State Department, which were betraying our allies and assisting with the establishment of Communist regimes in Europe and Asia.

However, according to an item appearing in a June 1947 newspaper in Portland, Maine, Welch had spent "several years" in England. Although it is not clear from any source found that Welch ever served in any military capacity, or exactly how he studied the socialist economy, it is noteworthy that he and his wife, Marian, spent some time in the British island of Bermuda, returning on a PanAm flight from Kindley Field in September 1949. That would have made them one of the first tourists to visit Bermuda by air, if they were indeed tourists and not visiting the island for business purposes.

Welch then became a candidate in the 1950 Republican primary for Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, coming in second to Laurence Curtis, who lost in the general election to his Democrat opponent. 

The James O. Welch Co. began expanding in 1955, purchasing Mansfield chocolate factory, which made packaged candies like Peppermint Patties, Junior Mints and Milk Duds. In 1961, Welch bought the 40-year-old Merckens Chocolate Co. of Buffalo, N.Y., and transported half a million pounds of Merckens’ machinery to the Mansfield plant. In 1963 the National Biscuit Company bought James Welch's company. James Welch, Sr. served as a director of Nabisco from 1963 until his retirement in 1978, and his son was president of the company, which in 1988 was the subject of much interest for takeover. But by then, Robert had left the company, ostensibly to pursue his intellectual interests and writing.

Was there more to his story?

The White Russian--A Powerful Cocktail

This is only one part of the series. See other parts at www.Opednews.com.

THE JFK CASE: The Twelve Who Built The Oswald Legend 

(Part 6: White Russians Keep An Eye On Oswald In Dallas)

Author, Bill Simpich

By Bill Simpich

(a civil rights attorney and an antiwar activist in the San Francisco Bay Area)

OpEdNews: www.opednews.com

After Oswald returned home from the USSR, George de Mohrenschildt became Legend Maker #9.

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

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

Max Clark, an attorney and former industrial security supervisor at General Dynamics, was a mentor for de Mohrenschildt and this community. Clark was part of a network of security personnel that put the squeeze on the Kennedy Administration that year to get General Dynamics' TFX project in Fort Worth approved over their Boeing competitors.  At the time, this deal to churn out the F-111 fighters was one of the largest military contracts in history. 

The White Russian community harbored an underground anti-Soviet movement known as the NTS.  

White Russian army in 1917

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

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

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

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

Chaplain William Sloan Coffin

During the 1950s, the famed anti-war Yale chaplain William Sloane Coffin (the inspiration for the Rev. Scott Sloan in Doonesbury) joined the CIA.   Coffin worked with the NTS to smuggle their spies into the USSR by parachute in a program known as REDSOX.   Most of them were killed.   Coffin looked back on the experience:  "It was a fundamentally bad idea...we were quite naive about the use of American power."

At its peak, NTS had about 100,000 members and its headquarters near Berlin in Frankfurt.  In 1958,Soviet consul Gregoriy Golub confided that it was "a great step in his career" when he was successful in halting NTS' campaign of writing harassing letters to the Soviet personnel in Helsinki.

William Blum, the author of Killing Hope, says that CIA decided that the NTS provided the best analysis about the Soviet Union, and became their main financial backer:  "From North Africa to Scandinavia, the CIA network confronted Soviet seamen, tourists, officials, athletes, even Soviet soldiers in East Germany, to present them with the Truth as seen by the "Free World," as well as to pry information from them, to induce them to defect, or to recruit them as spies."  By 1963, the State Department was helping NTS send broadcasts to Soviet troops in far-flung places such as the Dominican Republic.  Although the NTS' power waned over time, the Soviet Communist Party admitted its fear of the NTS and other groups working with Western security agencies as late as 1990.

The intelligence background of George de Mohrenschildt and his role in the Dallas-Fort Worth White Russian community

The Oswald family in Dallas

The CIA-funded NTS network greeted the Oswald family upon their arrival to Fort Worth.    Lee Oswald, however, was a little bit too weird for this community to embrace.  It took another outsider -- the eccentric baron George de Mohrenschildt -- to bring Lee towards the fold as Legend Maker #9.  

De Mohrenschildt's father was Russian, of German and Swedish descent, and was a marshal of nobility of the Minsk province.  Similarly, his Russian mother was of Polish and Hungarian descent.  The Bolsheviks ran the family off their Russian home, and they were forced to move to Poland and consolidate their land holdings.  One story is that de Mohrenschildt's father was killed by the Bolsheviks; another story is that his father was arrested but escaped. De Mohrenschildt observed that "most of the colony in Dallas is more emotionally involved in Russian affairs then we are, because they are closer to them. All of them have been relatively recently in Soviet Russia -- while my wife has never been in Soviet Russia in her whole life, and I was 5 or 6 when I left it. So to me it does not mean very much."

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

Schreyer 1961 memo

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

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

Harbin China's Russian Orthodox Church

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

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

  

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

De Mohrenschildt's relationship with the NTS in Dallas

De Mohrenschildt knew all about NTS, telling the Warren Commission about:

"This group of Russian refugees (who) called themselves Solidarists. And Mr. and Mrs. Voshinin in Dallas belonged to that group and tried to make me join it. Not being interested, I refused, but I read some of their publications.  And it is a pro-American group of Russian refugees who have an economic doctrine of their own.  And they seem to have some people working in the Soviet Union for them, and all that sort of thing.  It is a pretty well-known political party that - their headquarters is in Germany."

The NTS was very active in Dallas. When the group's leader was interviewed in New York in 1957 by the FBI, the two Dallas people he knew  were oil man Paul Raigorodsky and NTS activist Igor Voshinin. Raigorodsky, known as the "Czar" of the White Russian community, was the head of the Office of Petroleum Coordination for War for two years during the forties. Igor Voshinin and his wife Natalie lived in the New York City area between 1947-1955, and then moved to Dallas. When Mrs. Voshinin was interviewed by the FBI on Dec. 10, 1963, less than three weeks after the Kennedy assassination, she made it clear just how serious the Solidarist movement was in the Dallas area:

"She and her husband are members of NTS - Russian Solidarists, which she stated is known as the National Union of Working People, which organization has a representative in Washington D.C.  She stated this organization exists in the form of an underground movement in Russia and also has groups in the rest of the world; that its objectives include the abolishing of Communism and the establishment of private enterprise."

Jenner was careful not to ask her any questions about the NTS at the Warren Commission hearing. But the irrepressible Natalie Voshinin still managed to flip the script. When Jenner was probing for communistic connections by de Mohrenschildt, she exclaimed that "George repeatedly hinted that he was performing some services for the State Department, you know, of the United States, yes.  And under those circumstances, you just don't feel like asking any questions."  Jenner quickly changed the subject.

De Mohrenschildt once made a presentation at a lecture hall about General Vlasov's Russian POWs that fought on the side of the Germans at the end of World War II, discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Just to shock his Jewish friends at the club, de Mohrenschildt quipped "I came to the conclusion that Himmler wasn't a bad boy at all."  Raigorodsky agreed that de Mohrenschildt was a "prankster." De Mohrenschildt settled down as a member of a political grouping that is virtually extinct - a liberal Republican.  He said that Kennedy was the first Democrat he would ever vote for.  Both De Mohrenschildt and Oswald  were attracted by the union of opposites. 

Look at de Mohrenschildt's musings about Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev:

"He is gone now, God bless his Bible-quoting soul and his earthy personality." 

On the plight of the poor, George brought up his bond with Lee Oswald:   

"I am from New Orleans, as a kid I met refugees from all these banana republics.  No better source of information.  In this way, Lee and I were non-conformist, even revolutionaries...A younger man, I was career and money mad, a hustler...But Lee was the same since his childhood, which made him such a beautiful and worthwhile person to me."

As an aristocratic liberal from a mixed ethnic background, de Mohrenschildt was an outsider in the White Russian community. De Mohrenschildt turned to George Bouhe for guidance in how to get things done. Bouhe was an old-school kind of guy -- born in in Leningrad when it was still St. Petersburg and a bit of an aristocrat himself. Bouhe was an accountant for one of the local oil barons and served as a patriarch in the community.   Bouhe testified that Paul Raigorodsky was the 'godfather' of the group, while he himself did the organization work.  

Bouhe formed the St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Parish, one of the two Russian Orthodox parishes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 1963.    Also known as the "Bouhe group," they met in individual homes with a priest from Houston visiting every five or six weeks and had services in Church Slavonic, an old Slavic language that is different from modern Russian language. De Mohrenschildt was part of St. Nicholas' choir when married to his Philadelphia wife. The other church, St. Seraphim's, was located at 4203 Newton Street in Dallas, where Igor Voshinin attended and services were in English. Voshinin didn't like Bouhe because he was very publicly in everyone's business, saying things like "Well, you know, I forget things - so I keep a file on everybody." 

De Mohrenschildt's attorney Max Clark had an intelligence background, doubling as an industrial security supervisor at General Dynamics.

When the White Russian community heard about Oswald, they sought out Max Clark's opinion as how they should respond to Oswald. De Mohrenschildt considered Clark to be his lawyer. De Mohrenschildt testified that he thought Clark was connected with the FBI in some way. Clark referred to his interviewing agent Earle Haley as "Earl," and told the Warren Commission that he was familiar with Haley and the FBI from working with them when he worked security at General Dynamics.

"Everyone was discussing that as to whether or not they should (associate with Oswald) especially when he first came back and all of them asked me and I said, "In my mind he is a defector and you know what he is..."

Clark was an industrial security supervisor at the Convair wing of General Dynamics and well-versed in the ways of intelligence. In 1951, Convair had landed the Air Force contract for the first funded ICBM study contract. Max's wife, Gali Clark, was an excellent Russian speaker sought out by Oswald to help his family get situated after their return from the USSR.  Her name was in Oswald's address book.

Stripling High School replaced by Arlington Heights High.

Max Clark had a close relationship to General Dynamics supervisor I. B. Hale.

Three years earlier in 1959, Max Clark had received a CIA "covert security approval" in "Project ROCK" during the same time period that then-foreign intelligence chief Bill Harvey of Staff D worked on the U-2 related Project ROCK.

A covert security clearance with the CIA gives the CIA officer the right to share classified information with a civilian. A CSC is telling evidence of strong interactions between the subject and the CIA, whether the subject is witting or unwitting.  

Max Clark's file states that he "worked closely" with I. B. Hale, a former FBI agent who was the chief of industrial security at General Dynamics.  I. B. Hale had been married to Virginia Hale, who got Oswald his sheet metal worker job at Leslie Whiting during July 1962.   When interviewed after the assassination, Virginia Hale said that she remembered Oswald "quite well".

The Hale family was involved with blackmailing the Kennedy Administration in the TFX scandal.

During this time, the Hale family was involved in a brazen campaign of extortion designed to force the Kennedy Administration into approving General Dynamics as the prime contractor to build the TFX bomber at their Fort Worth plant. This plane is now better known as the F-111. At the time, this 7 billion dollar contract was the largest military contract in history.

Two weeks after I.B.'s wife Virginia got Oswald a job, their sons led a break-in at Judith Campbell's house. Campbell was the girlfriend of not only John F. Kennedy, but also Mafia chieftains Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli.

On August 5, Marilyn Monroe died in Brentwood, an affluent LA suburb, with a Kennedy phone number near her bed. There are many well-known stories tying her with close relationships with both JFK and RFK. The next day, August 6, JFK mistress Judith Campbell twice called the White House. A note in the White House log shows that Kennedy was in conference, with the scrawled addition "no."

Knowing of these relationships, the Hoover FBI had created a stake-out across the street from Campbell's home. While Special Agent William Carter was on duty, he saw two young men in their 20s come to Campbell's apartment. Campbell was not home, and the FBI later verified that she was elsewhere. One of the perpetrators went inside the apartment, while the other one stood as lookout on the balcony. Agent Carter obtained the license plate numbers for the car, which matched Hale's car. 

The FBI agent concluded that the perpetrators were Hale's sons based on their age (early 20s) and their physical description.   The perpetrators left after about 15 minutes without taking anything.  It is reasonable to assume that they had planted a listening bug.  

The reason for the stakeout is right in the FBI report: The FBI had heard the stories that Judith Campbell was the girlfriend of Sam Giancana, Johnny Roselli, and JFK.  The FBI wanted no part of this case and declined to take any further action after running out a few leads.  

Attempted blackmail around the TFX contract would appear to be the motive. Two months later, in October 1962, General Dynamics won the 7 billion dollar contract over the heavily favored Boeing.  This controversial decision dogged the Kennedy Administration from that day.

Endnotes:
NTS was founded in 1930 by "second generation" White Russian emigres.  At that time, most of them were living in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria:    Kevin Coogan, Dreamer of the Day, (Autonomedia:  Brooklyn, 1999), p. 572. Yugoslavia is where Mr. and Mrs. Igor Voshinin met and married in early 1940 - Dallas emigres, active in NTS, and knew Oswald:  Testimony of Mrs. Igor Voshinin, 3/26/64.  Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 8, p. 427.


After Germany attacked the USSR during World War II, NTS was allowed to set up a Berlin headquarters:   Arch Puddington, Broadcasting Freedom:   The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), p. 160.   

After World War II, the CIA included NTS and its journal Possev (Seed) within the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty organization:   Coogan, Dreamer of the Day, p. 573.

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


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


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

Meyer saw it as part of his responsibility to "try to provide the radio with the counter-intelligence protection against this continuing intimidation"...:   Cord Meyer, Facing Reality, pp. 120-121.
Coffin looked back on the experience:   "It was a fundamentally bad idea...we were quite naïve about the use of American power.":   Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes (New York, Doubleday:   2007), p. 47.

Soviet consul Golub confides that it was "a great step in his career" when he was successful in halting NTS...:     Memo from CIA's Helsinki Chief of Station to Chief, Western Europe, 1/24/58.  
The CIA network confronted Soviet seamen, tourists, officials, athletes, even Soviet soldiers in East Germany...to induce them to defect, or to recruit them as spies:   William Blum, Killing Hope, p. 116-118.

By 1963, the NTS was broadcasting to Soviet troops in far-flung places such as the Dominican Republic:  Memo by Thomas Parrott to the 303 Committee Group, 4/26/63, Miscellaneous CIA Series / NARA Record Number: 104-10306-10024.J

In 1990, the Communist Party within the Soviet Union admitted its fear of the NTS and other groups working with Western security agencies in preparation for the collapse of the Soviet government:       JPRS Report -- Soviet Union Political Affairs, 1/9/90,   pp. 16-17.

De Mohrenschildt's father was Russian, of German and Swedish descent, and was a marshal of nobility of the Minsk province...:   Warren Commission testimony of George de Mohrenschildt, Volume 9, pages 168-169.

The Bolsheviks ran the family off their Russian home, and they were forced to move to Poland and consolidate their land holdings:   Nancy Wertz, "George de Mohrenschildt, Who Are You?", The Fourth Decade, Volume 5, Issue 5, July 1998.



One story is that de Mohrenschildt's father was killed by the Bolsheviks:   Statement of Igor Pantoroff, an NYC portrait artist, who knew de Mohrenschildt since the early 40s.   See report of SA James Morrissey, 2/28/64, p. 18, Reel 5, Folder M -- George de Mohrenschildt, NARA Record Number: 1994.04.25.14:02:25:940005.

Another story is that his father was arrested, but escaped:   Statement of Igor Voshinin.   See memo of SA James K. Fresney, 3/12/64, Reel 5, Folder M -- George de Mohrenschildt, NARA Record Number: 1994.04.25.14:02:25:940005.

De Mohrenschildt observed that "most of the colony in Dallas is more emotionally involved in Russian affairs then we are...So to me it does not mean very much." Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of George de Mohrenschildt, Volume 9, p. 266.

De Mohrenschildt had an extremely deep background with the intelligence community, going back for more than twenty years:  A good source on his background is Nancy Wertz, "George de Mohrenschildt, Who Are You?", Fourth Decade, Volume 5, No. 5, p. 8, July 1998.

His handler appears to have been Thomas Schreyer, identified as "the acting chief" of the IO Division back in 1956...:    7/6/56 memo from Thomas Schreyer to DCI, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 14 /NARA Record Number: 1993.07.14.17:33:14:000480.

Schreyer also signed the Fitness Reports during the sixties era for E. Howard Hunt, who was a key contact for the Cuban exiles: 12/20/73 memo by DDO, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 37 / NARA Record Number: 104-10105-10233. 

It is curious Hunt advanced so far in the agency, as he was described as "unstable" to CIA security officer Robert Bannerman as early as 1949.  

In April 1963, C. Frank Stone at the Domestic Operations Division asked for traces on de Mohrenschildt.  Background information was provided, and Schreyer's name was provided as the source for any follow-up:    5/9/63, Response to Request for Traces by REDACTED. Russ Holmes Work File /NARA Record Number: 104-10436-10014.

The CIA admitted before the assassination that de Mohrenschildt was "of interest" to them:     Memo by Richard Helms to Warren Commission counsel J. Lee Rankin, 6/3/64, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 62 / NARA Record Number: 1993.08.06.15:03:12:400028.

CIA Director Richard Helms complimented de Mohrenschildt  for providing valuable foreign intelligence in 1957:   Id.

His brother Dimitri von Mohrenschildt, described by the CIA as being "employed in a confidential capacity by the U.S.government":   Memo, "#775 Subject was Investigated by Federal Agencies", p. 2, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 41 / NARA Record Number: 104-10112-10454.

He is said to have been one of the founders of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty:   AllExperts website:  http://en.allexperts.com/e/g/ge/george_de_mohrenschildt.htm .  Also see Joseph Trento, The Secret History of the CIA.
 
This CIA bio of George states that "Dimitri is stated to be employed in a confidential capacity by the U.S.Government."   Memo, "#775 Subject was Investigated by Federal Agencies", p. 2, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 41 / NARA Record Number: 104-10112-10454.

Records indicate that Dimitri was approved to work with the OSS and that he provided intelligence services for the CIA in the 1950s:   Biographic information on George De Mohrenschildt, 12/21/67, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 41 / NARA Record Number: 104-10112-10442.

Here's a 1968 CIA document looking at using Dimitri at that late date as a source:   11/1/68, Interoffice Memorandum, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm - reel 5: Conte - De Mohrenschildt) / NARA Record Number: 104-10244-10132.

A lengthy CIA-created list entitled "Companies and People Known to be Associated with De Mohrenschildt" includes only one political group:   "Dallas Committee Radio Free Europe.":   See title page and p. 5, Reel 5, Folder M, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm - reel 5: Conte - De Mohrenschildt) / NARA Record Number: 1994.04.25.14:02:25:940005.  

A CIA memo notes a New York Times article and a de Mohrenschildt quote indicating that George knew the families of the Kennedys and the Oswalds better than anyone else:   Office of Security background information on George de Mohrenschildt, 4/28/75, p. 2,   HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 34 / NARA Record Number: 1993.07.20.11:12:53:400530. 

George couldn't get OSS credentials during World War II because of security disapproval:   Memo from M.D. Stevens to Chief/Research Branch/SRS/OS, 12/30/63, p. 2,  HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 47 / NARA Record Number: 1993.07.31.08:46:41:900046.  

He was subjected to five separate investigations by intelligence during the 40s and 50s:  Memo, "#775 Subject was Investigated by Federal Agencies", p. 2, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 41 / NARA Record Number: 104-10112-10454.

One of the recruitments of de Mohrenschildt exposes his roots in Pennsylvania from back in the day with his Quaker wife Phyllis Hamilton:  See the passport information in Russ Holmes Work File / NARA Record Number: 104-10431-10041.
On Phyllis Washington's employment at Radio Free Europe: See memo from M.D. Stevens to Chief/Research Branch/SRS/OS, 12/30/63, p. 2,   HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 47 / NARA Record Number: 1993.07.31.08:46:41:900046.

On Dulles setting up Itkin's meeting with "Philip Harbin" in 1954:  See Memorandum for the Record by CIA counsel Lawrence Houston, 11/20/68, p. 2, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 38 / NARA Record Number: 1993.07.20.16:58:46:960340 .

CIA chief Allen Dulles was the first chief of Radio Free Europe after World War II:   Puddington, p. 25.

William Gaudet verified at an HSCA deposition that he knew De Mohrenschildt under his alias as Philip Harbin:   Gaudet's 6/15/78 deposition is at the National Archives, JFK Document 010347.  

Nancy Wertz discusses Gaudet's claim that de Mohrenschildt was "Philip Harbin" in her article, "William Gaudet -- Make Room for the Man at the Front of the Line", Kennedy Assassination Chronicles, Volume 5, Issue 2.

De Mohrenschildt's beloved and soon-to-be new wife, Jeanne, was from Harbin, China:   FBI memo, 2/28/64, p. 69, Reel 5, Folder M -- George de Mohrenschildt,   NARA Record Number: 1994.04.25.14:02:25:940005.

Angleton testified that Dulles was a very close friend of his family:   Deposition of James Angleton, p. 31, Church Committee Boxed Files / NARA Record Number: 157-10014-10003.


Lawrence Houston said in a 3/20/70 Memorandum for the Record that "everything we could determine after thousands of hours of research was that the first contact with Mr. Itkin was in 1962":   HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 38 /NARA Record Number: 104-10106-10434.

There was a 1974 discovery of an Itkin file and a "MIKE/PORTIO/HAITI" file in Angelton's possession, just two files of many that Angleton kept out of the CIA records:   Memo from David H. Blee, Chief, CI Staff, to Chief, Information Management Group, 11/29/79, Miscellaneous CIA Series / NARA Record Number: 104-10303-10000

Itkin's Story of His Work for the CIA:  As related by notes, by Warren Donovan, 1/17/68, NARA Record Number: 104-10107-10116; for a broader overview, see Time Magazine, 10/17/69; and how he got his CIA code name "Portio" and more in the New York Times, 12/15/69. 

Itkin brought down Carmine DeSapio and city commissioner James Marcus:  Martin Arnold, "Marcus, DeSapio Trophies for Shadow Worker Itkin", New York Times, 1/2/70, NARA Record Number: 1993.07.24.08:41:29:500310

During May of 1963, Itkin became the attorney for the Haitian government-in-exile, and filed papers with the State Department to register as the group's foreign agent:  Memo from C/WH/7/CI to Chief, WH/FI, Subject:   Herbert Itkin, 9/19/68,   HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 38 / NARA Record Number:   1993.07.20.16:58:46:960340

Itkin's handler in 1963 was Mario Brod, who was recruited in Italy by James Angleton during World War II and had operational involvements in Haiti:     Notes re memo from Jerrold B. Brown for Inspector General, "Possible Questionable Activity", 7/1/75, pp. 1-2, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (staff notes) /NARA Record Number: 180-10143-10196.

Before his brother was killed, Bobby Kennedy himself was relying on mob tips from Itkin :   Memo from Jerrold B. Brown for Inspector General, "Possible Questionable Activity", 7/1/75, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 43 / NARA Record Number: 104-10119-10002. , 7 HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 43 / NARA Record Number: 104-10119-10002.
In 1966, Itkin was reportedly researching the case of the Sovi  et spy George Blake, under his code name "Portio," while Angleton held onto his private "Mike/Portio/Haiti" file:   "Notes on People", New York Times, 2/23/72 HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 43 / NARA Record Number: 1993.07.24.08:41:29:500310.

"Mike" at the CIA got the article about"Itkin/Portio" anonymously in the mail, according to Ray Rocca:   Note by DC/CI Ray Rocca on Routing and Record Sheet, 2/29/72, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 38 / NARA Record Number: 104-10106-10341.

Angleton held onto his private "Mike/Portio/Haiti" file:  The Mike/Portio/Haiti file was held in Angleton's office and not integrated with CIA documents.   Memo from David H. Blee, Chief, CI Staff, 3/29/79, Miscellaneous CIA Series /NARA Record Number: 104-10303-10000.

By 1971, Paul Hartman from CIRA was asking to review Itkin's CIA file, no doubt to educate himself on some fine points:  6/4/71 request by Paul Hartman for Itkin's security file,   NARA Record Number: 1993.07.24.08:41:29:500310.

This group of Russian refugees called themselves Solidarists:    Warren Commission testimony of George De Mohrenschildt, Vol. 9, p. 267.


When the group's leader was interviewed in New York in 1957 by the FBI, the Dallaspeople he  knew of that were active at that time were Igor Voshinin and oil man Paul Raigorodsky:   Memo by SA Paul Garrity, New York, to Director, FBI, 10/21/57, FBI - HSCA Subject Files, Q - R / FBI - HSCA Subject File: Paul M. Raigorodsky / NARA Record Number: 124-90123-10010.

Raigorodsky, known as the "Czar", served as the chief of the Petroleum Coordinator for War during two years in the forties:  9/16/52 memo by St. Louis FBI.   FBI - HSCA Subject File: Paul M. Raigorodsky /NARA Record Number: 124-90123-10089.

Igor Voshinin and his wife Natalie lived in the New York City area between 1947-1955, when they moved to Dallas:    Testimony of Igor Voshinin, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 8, p. 450.  

The NTS - Russian Solidarists...exists in the form of an underground movement in Russia and also has groups in the rest of the world: FBI interview by SA Kenneth B. Jackson with Mrs. Igor Voshinin, 12/10/63, Dallas, Texas; Oswald 201 File, Vol 16/, CD 205, Part 1.


George repeatedly hinted that he was performing some services for the State Department...   Mrs. Igor (Natalie) Voshinin, Warren Commission Hearings. 8, p. 442, 3/26/64.

De Mohrenschildt made a presentation at a lecture hall about General Vlasov's Russian army that fought on the side of the Germans:   Testimony of Igor Voshinin, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 8, page 468.

Raigorodsky agreed that de Mohrenschildt was a "prankster":   Testimony of Paul Raigorodsky, 3/31/64, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 9, p. 20.    When asked if de Mohrenschildt was a "provocative personality", Natalie Voshinin said "definitely".  Id., Vol. 8, p. 443. 

He said that Kennedy was the first Democrat he would ever vote for:   George de Mohrenschildt, manuscript of I'm a Patsy!   I'm a Patsy!   HSCA Report, Volume 12, p. 225.


Look at de Mohrenschildt's musings about Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev:   "He is gone now, God bless his Bible-quoting soul and his earthy personality":   George de Mohrenschildt, I'm a Patsy!, p. 204.

On the plight of the poor, George brought up his bond with Lee Oswald: George de Mohrenschildt, I'm a Patsy!, p. 187.

Bouhe testified that Paul Raigorodsky was the'godfather' of the group, while he himself did the organization work:    Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of George Bouhe, Vol. 8, p. 358.
George Bouhe formed the St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Parish, one of the two Russian Orthodox parishes in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 1963:   FBI interview by James Hosty of Igor Voshinin, 12/12/63, Commission Document 205 - FBI Report of 23 Dec 1963 re: Oswald, p. 593. Testimony of George Bouhe, Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 8, p. 357.

The "Bouhe group" met in individual homes with a priest from Houston visiting every five or six weeks and had services in Church Slavonic, an old Slavic language:   Mrs. Igor Voshinin, Vol. 8, p. 430, 3/26/64.

De Mohrenschildt was part of St. Nicholas' choir when married to a Philadelphi woman from the prominent Sharples family:   Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Igor Voshinin,. Vol.. 8, p. 455.


The other church, St. Seraphim's, was located at 4203 Newton Street in Dallas,where Igor Voshinin attended and services were in English:  FBI interview by James Hosty of Igor Voshinin, 12/12/63, Commission Document 205 - FBI Report of 23 Dec 1963 re: Oswald, p. 593.

Bouhe was in everyone's business, saying things like:  "Well, you know, I forget things - so I keep a file on everybody." :   Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Igor Voshinin, Volume 8, p. 454.
De Mohrenschildt considered Clark to be his lawyer: Interview by Norman E. Warner, First Secretary of the American Embassy in Haiti, of George DeMohrnschildt, 12/4/63

Clark referred to his interviewing agent Earle Haley as "Earl":   Testimony of Max Clark, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 8, pp. 349, 352.  

Everyone was discussing whether or not they should (associate with Oswald):   Testimony of Max Clark, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 8, p. 351.

Back in 1951, Convair had also won the Air Force contract for the first funded ICBM study contract:    George Michael Evica, A Certain Arrogance, (Xlibris, 2006), p. 205.

Her name was in Oswald's address book:   See the Office of Security memo, with Max Clark's bio and OSI file: RIF# 104-10419-10316, pp. 1-5.

Clark received a "covert security approval" by the CIA in April 1959 for use in what was referred to as "Project ROCK":      RIF# 104-10419-10316.

William Harvey was part of Project ROCK during this time period:  HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 42/ RIF# 104-10106-10581.


Also see M. D. Stevens memo to file, 1/30/64, "Lee Harvey Oswald/Address Book", HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 47, NARA Record Number:   104-10132-10011.  Re the U-2 (Aquatone) tie-in with Project ROCK.

 

Max Clark worked closely with I.B. Hale, the chief of industrial security at General Dynamics:    HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 40; NARA Record Number:     1993.08.02.10:25:15:250060; Office of Security File on Clark, Max Edward.


I. B. Hale had been married to Virginia Hale, who got Oswald his sheet metal worker job at Leslie Whiting during July 1962...she remembered Oswald "quite well":    Interview by SA Earle Haley and SA Robley D. Madland with Virginia Hale, Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 23, p. 694, Exhibit 1891.  

 

At the time, the 7 billion dollar contract for the TFX was the largest military contract in history: Peter Dale Scott, in The Dallas Conspiracy, Chapter 3.

The next day, August 6, JFK mistress Judith Campbell twice called the White House:  Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential, (G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York, 1993), p. 301.

On I.B. (Insall Bailey) Hale's role with the break-in at home of Judith Campbell, girlfriend of both JFK and gangster Sam Giancana:  Report of SA William R. Carter, 8/8/62, FBI - HSCA Subject File: John Roselli/NARA Record Number: 124-10220-10433. Carter was interviewed by Sy Hersh in The Dark Side of Camelot.

Controversy over the decision to award the contract to General Dynamics:  George C. Wilson, "Twining's Book Backs", Washington Post, 9/18/66.