Friday, March 8, 2024

Magic at Dealey Plaza

 Magic at Dealey Plaza

“I have his brains in my hand. I love you Jack, I love you Jack,....the magic is gone…Now, I think that I should have known that he was magic all along….”   - Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

“The day they blew the brains of the king
Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing. It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise. Right there in front of everyone’s eyes. Greatest magic trick ever under the sun. Perfectly executed, skillfully done…..”       – Bob Dylan – “Murder Most Foul”

 “President Kennedy’s assassination was the work of magicians. It was a stage trick complete with actor’s accessories and props. And when the curtain fell the actors and even the scenery, disappeared. But the magicians were not illusionists, but professionals, artists in their own right.-  Fairwell America by James Hepburn – aka French Intelligence officers Philippe de Vosjoli, M. Andre Ducret

While the assassination may have appeared to be magic to some, it was actually a trick, a trick devised, practiced and conducted by men, and as President Kennedy said,  “problems created by men can be solved by mem,” and the murderous trick can be deciphered and understood.

I’d like to rephrase the JFK assassination argument from whether it was a conspiracy or not, to whether the president was murdered as the result of the spontaneous actions of a deranged lone-nut without any discernable motive, or was he killed by a well planned, practiced and successfully executed covert intelligence operation that was designed to decieve.

As Gene Wheaton – the Ultimate Whistleblower said of the assassination: “it was convoluted, but not complicated,” and it was a well developed plan, not a plot.

Most of those who propose the assassination was a conspiracy also portray a plot, as in the movies Executive Action and JFK, men sit around drining and smoking and talking about how to wack JFK, when in reality, it was a well conceived, practiced and execuited plan – starting out as a contingency plan in case it was needed. And when properly execuited, appears to be magic, or as Sun Tzu put it – a Divine Skein, as God would have it.

While the Great Wizzard appears to be almighty, when you pull back the curtains you see there’s only a man there pulling the puppet strings, a fortune teller, the seller of potions, a con artist and confidence man, and as John Kennedy himself said, problems created by man can be solved by men, and this is one of them.

There are a few basic principles to most magic tricks – and the key word is tricks because the magic is only in appearance. Two of the basic principles are slight of hand – and misdirection or deception.

The assassination of a president in broad daylight in front of his wife, the Secret Service and hundreds of witnesses is more than just a magic trick, it’s a Big Con.

General William Odom, the former Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI) and head of the National Security Agency (NSA) was once asked what makes a good intelligence case officer, Odom thought for a second and replied “The Sting.”

The movie with Paul Newman and Robert Redford?

“That’s it!” said Odom, “the con!” Actually The Big Con.

[Thomas Powers, Intelligence Wars – American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda]

And like witch crafts, the crafts of intelligence can be read in books, but only conveyed by a master, in a master-apprentice relationship – the tricks of the trade.

When Allen Dulles arrived at the first meeting of the Warren Commission he brought along a copy of a book American Assassins by Robert Donovan, the same guy who wrote PT-109. This book, as Dulles explained, makes the case that American assassins, unlike their European counterparts, are lone nut cases rather than connspirators, though it was pointed out that a half-dozen people were hung for their participation in the assassination of President Lincoln.

Rather than Donovan’s book, Dulles should have passed around copies of his own, then recently published book, The Crafts of Intelligence, believe to have been ghost written by E. Howard Hunt, that explains some of the tricks of the intelligence trade.

When I saw the movie “The Sting,” I immediately recognized that it was based on a book I had picked up at a garage sale and read – David Maurer’s “The Big Con,” about the unique slang and lingo of confidence men. Maurer was Kentucky linguist and based his book on his study of their slang. Maurer’s assistant confirmed to me that Maurer had the same reaction as I did when he saw the movie, and sued the producers for not giving him credit. The screenwriters claimed they never even read his book, but they had to admit they had when they couldn’t come up with any other published source for the name of “Gondorf,” the character played by Paul Newman which was based on a real confidence man mentioned only in Maurer's book "The Big Con."

Odom’s response clearly indicates he was once a student of Paul Linebarger at the Center for International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, where Linebarger taught psychological warfare and covert intelligence operational procedures.

Other students of Linebargers included Ed Lansdale, David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt, who Linebarger said, “had black minds.”

One approach the English have adapted to certain crimes is the Modus Operandi – MO – and in this case the MO of the assassination of President Kennedy must be viewed as a covert intelligence operation.

As former CIA Chief of Station in Moscow Rolf Larrson said at the CAPA conference in Dallas November, 2021, only a few men were capable of pulling off such a covert operation – and he named five – Allen Dulles, William Harvey, Desmond FitzGerald, James Jesus Angleton and Jacob Easterline.

In his book “Portrait of a Cold Warrior” Joseph Smith writes about taking Linebarger’s classes.\

Smith relates how Linebarger not only used his own classic text book “Psychological Warfare,” that delineates various levels of propaganda from white to black, with black being clearly and falsely identified as originating from the opposition.

Smith wrote: “Black propaganda operations, by definition, are operations in which the source of the propaganda is disguised or misrepresented in one way or another so as not to be attributable to the people who really put it out. This distinguishes black from white propaganda, such as news bulletins and similar statements…”

“Paul Linebarger’s was a seminar in black propaganda only,” writes Smith. “He loved black propaganda operations probably because they involved the wit-sharpening he loved to talk about. Also, he was so good at them that his was one of the inventive minds that refined the entire black operations field into shades of blackness. Linebarger and his disciples decided that propaganda that was merely not attributable to the United States was not really black, only gray…This left the term black propaganda for a very special kind of propaganda activity. Black propaganda operations were operations done to look like, and carefully labeled to be, acts of the Communist enemy….”

According to Smith, besides classes in propaganda, Linebarger also had his students read David Maurer’s book “The Big Con,” also published as “The American Confidence Man,” which gave good insight into how case officers could run operatives and conduct successful covert operations.

David Maurer’s book, originally a linguistic text on the unique language and slang of thieves, con artists and confidence men, led Maurer to uncover and detail the inner workings of the Big Con, and that was the basis of the script for the movie “The Sting,” as referenced by Odom.

As Smith wrote: “I want you all to go out and get a copy of David Maurer’s classic on the confidence man. It’s called ‘The Big Con,’ and its available now in a paperback edition,” Paul continued. “That little book will teach you more about the art of covert operations than anything else I know.”

Smith quotes Linebarger as saying, “Maurer’s book will give you a lot of ideas on how to recruit agents, how to handle them and how to get rid of them peacefully when they’re no use to you any longer. Believe me, that last one is the toughest job of all.”

"We were all soon reading 'The Big Con,'” Smith wrote. “The tales it told did, indeed, contain a lot of hints on how to do our jobs. For me one sentence seemed to sum it all up beautifully, ‘The big-time confidence games,’ wrote Maurer, ‘are in reality only carefully rehearsed plays in which every member of the cast EXCEPT THE MARK knows his part perfectly.’”

 “A note of caution that Linebarger added to these discussions of black operations sounds like a bell down the years,” wrote Smith, quoting Linebarger as saying, “I hate to think what would ever happen,” he once said with a prophet’s voice, “if any of you ever got out of this business and got involved in U.S. politics. These kinds of dirty tricks must never be used in internal U.S. politics. The whole system would come apart.” 

Well these kinds of dirty "magic" tricks were used before Watergate, including what happened at Dealey Plaza, and the whole system did come apart.

Just as linguist David Maurer learned the secrets of the Big Con through the study of the unique language of the con artists, we can only learn the means and methods of the covert operators by learning the terminology they use in crafting their covert operations - the Lingo of Dealey Plaza.

Some key words are mutually used by the Big Con con-artists as well as the covert operators – such as Inside Man and Outside Man to distiguish those who work in an office  (such as JMWAVE), and those who go out on the street and recruit agents and operators that the confidence men called “Ropers.” Then there are “cut-outs” to keep operators apart, case officers to direct the operators, team leaders to run crews, and the use of codes and ciphers to prevent others from learning the process……..

MORE TO COME

Related Liks

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-greatest-magic-trick-ever-under-sun.html

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-sting-at-dealey-plaza.html

https://www.jfk-online.com/farewell.html

https://www.jfk-online.com/farewellhinckle.html

https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-great-game-act-of-man-god-or-magic.html?m=1

Monday, March 4, 2024

Admitted Assassin - Roscoe White and the Murder of President Kennedy

Admitted Assassin - Roscoe White and the Murder of President Kennedy - (Peniel Unlimited , LLC 2023) by Ricky White as told to J. Gary Shaw and Brian K. Edwards. 






                                                                        Roscoe White 

Just when you thought the Roscoe White story was put to rest decades ago, well think again, as Gary Shaw and Brian Edwards have brought it back in light of what we now know today. 

Gary Shaw is one of the longest running and most respected Dallas based researchers, while Edwards is an experienced police investigators who has taken a serious interest in the assassination. 

I always thought that there was more to the Roscoe White story, especially after it was attacked so viciously by both lone nutters and conspiracy theorists alike. But there are a few undeniable and unchallenged facts that should make the story worth while pursing. - Roscoe White served in the US Marine Corps with Oswald in San Diego, traveled on the same ship to Japan, and served at the same bases as Oswald in the far east. 

Roscoe White began work for the Dallas Police Department at the same time Oswald began work at the Texas School Book Depository and Roscoe's wife Geneva began to work as a hostess at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club. 

They are firmly established facts that should make anyone take further interest in Roscoe White, and his son Ricky took that interest. 

Years ago, Gary Shaw was partners with Larry Howard and Bud Fensterwald in the JFK Assassination Information Center, which was situated on the third floor of a retail mall in the West End district, directly behind Dealey Plaza. I visited there a few times, and got to know and like the principles. 

Larry Howard gave me the three cassette  tapes of the Air Force One radio transmissions that he said came from the LBJ Library, and I think I put them to good use. 

They were the first to take interest in the Roscoe White story, as explained by Ricky White, and they assisted in the investigation of a number of leads that the late Roscoe White had left behind. He had been severely hurt in an explosion at work - some believe was not accidental, and on a death bed confession to his pastor admitted involvement in the murder of the president. 

In the course of his investigation of his father's background, Ricky White found his father's footlocker, a diary-journal containing his acknowledgement of being a gunman behind the picket fence on the Grassy Knoll, a bank bag with two keys, a scrapbook of news clips and photos, and a waterproof container in which three orders were given to MANDARIN - Roscoe White's code name in the Office of Naval Intelligence - aka Naval Intelligence Service. 

I am familiar with other ONI-NIS letters and orders and they are very similar to the MANDARIN teletype- no official letterhead. 

As I have written extensively about the ONI-NIS connections to the assassination, as the authors acknowledge, I refer to the only "smoking" document from the files of the director of ONI, that reports he had two undercover informants in Jack Ruby's  Carousel Club who maintained the microphones and sound equipment. They reported they saw Oswald there.

What I didn't know, and learned from this book, is that one of the informants worked with Roscoe White as part of the security of a major defense contractor.

Like all networks, spider webs or intelligence networks, or what Sun Tzu called a skein - fishing net, the connections come together at certain points.

In the course of assisting Ricky White in his investigation, Washington D. C. attorney Bernard Festerwald took interest, as did Congressional investigator Kevin Walsh. While Festerwald, who founded the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC), thought there was substance to the Roscoe White story, Walsh disagreed and returned to DC in disbelief. Fensterwald then died suddenly, and some say suspiciously. 

Although they called a press conference to announce and release their findings, and received much publicity, the whole story seemed to just fade away and die, until now, as it is being renewed by Shaw and Edward. 

While some say the evidence was created and planted, that too would be a crime and conspiracy.

As Shaw and Edwards acknowledge this when they write, "There remains a remote possibility this evidence may have been prepared and planted to further confuse or discredit independent research into the assassination. The authors do not believe this is so."

"The existing evidence strongly suggests that Roscoe White himself carefully preserved this self-incriminating evidence, believing it would someday be discovered and disclosed."

And Roscoe White was better suited and qualified than the assassin on a number of counts.

And besides the evidence collected, and Roscoe White's deathbed confession there are a number of other witnesses to him being behind the fence on the Grassy Knoll. 

Motorcycle policeman Bobby Harges saw Roscoe White there, as did Beverly Oliver, who knew him as "Genevia's husband." 

Then there's Mike Robinson, a 14 year old who watched the motorcade with his friend Glenn, whose father was 33 year veteran DPD Captain Frank Martin. After the shooting the boys visited Glen's father on the third floor of City Hall and were there when Oswald was brought in. There they witnessed officer Bobby Hargis slam his helmet into a wall. Hargis had seen Roscoe White on the Grassy Knoll.

After awhile Mike had to go to the bathroom, but because there was so much activity on the third floor Captain Martin took him down to the basement where the police officer's lockers were located. While the story was first brought out by Walt Brown, the authors put it this way:

"Mike was completely alone when he entered the restroom. He entered one of the stalls and sat down. Just then the silence was broken by three individuals in mid-conversation as they entered the restroom. Unsure whether he was supposed to be in the officer's facility, Mike lifted his feet ad 'hid' in stall." 

"Initially, the men whispered, but eventually, one of the men raised his voice and used profanity. Mike recalled one of the men said, 'You knew you were supposed to kill Lee, then you stupid son of a bitch, you go and kill a cop.' Then another man entered the restroom and the first three immediately stopped talking. The newest man to enter, whom Mike saw through the small gap between the stall and the stall door, was wearing a blue police uniform. This man stood at the urinal, did his business and left." 

"Mike heard one of the original three men state, 'Lee will have to be killed before they take him to Washington,'" 

"Eventually, the three men left the restroom, but Mike stayed behind for several minutes before he exited the stall. As he passed through the police locker room, one officer, while changing out of his uniform, stared at Mike as if to say, 'Were you there when we were?" 

Later Robinson was shown pictures of police officers and he selected the one of Roscoe White as the officer who stared at him in the locker room.

Now to me that story is believable and convincing, as is the rest of this book. 

It is written short and sweet, Hemingwayish style, so it is easy to read, and touches on all the necessary details in a chronological way that isn't  confusing.

But this story isn't over yet. The authors are asking readers to help identify some of the individuals in photos in the scrapbook, and the mysterious "C. Bowers," allegedly author of the three MANDRIN documents. New Orleans researcher John Gooch has already come up with Dr. Cecil Bowers, who does have a Navy background. 

There are other key characters like Roscoe White that should be re-evaluated again in a similar fashion - Curtis Leverne Larry Crafard, Thomas Beckham, Jack Lawrence, Roy Truly, Jack Crichton, Dr./Col. Jose Rivera, Larry Meyers, Michael Paine and his mother Ruth Forbes Paine Young.

While the book is available over Amazon, its suggested you order direct from the publisher Michael Marcades - Rose Cheramie's son, at Peniel Unlimited, LLC, www.peielunlimited.com. 

Bill Kelly

billkelly3@gmail.com 




















MORE TO COME - STAY TUNED



Wednesday, February 21, 2024

The Mafia at Dealey Plaza

 The Mafia at Dealey Plaza 

The Mafia and the Mob are two different things. The Mafia is a very distinct, Italian organized criminal group, while the mob can be any group of organized criminals. 

The Mafia came into the JFK assassination picture even before JFK was president. It was during the Eisenhower administration when the CIA's Richard Bissell had his agent James O'Connell visit Las Vegas in order to see if they could develop mutual plans to kill Cuban premier Fidel Castro. 

O'Connell first checked in with former FBI agent Robert Maheu, who told O'Connell that the man to see was John Rosselli, the right hand man of Chicago mafia boss Sam Giancana, who controlled all the illegal rackets west of Chicago. 

Rosselli and O'Coonnell agreed, though Rosselli explained he would have to run the idea past his boss Giancana, who said that since it was a Havana operation, it had to include Santo Traficante of Tampa and Havana. Traficante said he could arrange for Castro to be poisoned by a chef who ran a restaurant that Castro frequented. The CIA passed the poison and $10,000 in cash to the expected executioner, but nothing happened. 

After considering other exotic methods of murder including exploding cigars and sea shells and a tainted wet suit that was to be given to Castro, it was decided to have snipers shoot Castro in the head when he drove by in an open jeep, as he often did. Castro did visit the former Xandau Dupont estate on the north shore east of Havana, and there was only one road to it that ran through the resort town of Veradero. The plan was called the Pathfinder Plan. 

And it just so happened that Dr. Rolando Cubella (AMLASH) reportely had an apartment in Veradero that could be used as a staging area. 

The Pathfinders were the most elite of the Bay of Pigs brigade, and especially trained to infiltrate Cuba before the invasion and lay the ground work among the local dissidents. When the invasion failed, some of the Pathfinders were rounded up, killed or imprisoned, but some escaped back to Florida where the reunited at the CIA's JMWAVE base at the University of Miami. 

There they were given additional training by CIA trainers John Harper, an explosives and sniper expert, infiltration and exfiltration expert Carl Jenkins, and the Mafia's John Rosselli, who was dressed in a US Army officer uniform and went by the names of Colonel Rawliins. 

Rosselli's CIA case officer, James O'Connell, was replaced by William Harvey, the head of the CIA's ZR/RIFLE assassination project, and he arranged for Rosselli to help train the anti-Castro Cubans including the Pathfinders. 

Two US Army Ranger Captains, Bradely Ayers and Edward Roderick, were also cross posted to the CIA by USMC Gen. Brute Krulak, who was responsible for the Pentagon's assistance to the CIA for covert operations, especially those in Cuba and Vietnam. 

They set up remote bases in the Florida everglade swamp to continue the training in small boat handling, and at Point Mary near Key Largo to train the snipers. 

Even after William Harvey was fired as head of the Cuban desk by RFK, Harvey continued to act as Rosselli's case officer, and they last met in the spring of 1963 in Miami, with Harvey picking up the tabs for their hotel, meals and drinks, using the ZR/RIFLE account to pay those bills. 

FitzGerald briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon on their covert operations in Cuba, and Gen. Krulak's aide Col. Higgins took notes, which reflected the fact that FitzGerald said the CIA had studied the German military's Jully 20 1944 Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler in detail, in order to develop 

Harvey was replaced by Desmond FitzGerald, who also acted as the case officer for Cubella (AMLASH), who was meeting with CIA agents including FitzGerald himself to plan the assassination of Castro. 

MORE TO COME ON THIS.























The Atlantic City Mob Museum

 

THE ATLANTIC CITY MOB MUSEUM 



The mobsters walking down the Atlantic City boardwalk, including Meyer Lansky, Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Nucky Johnson. Note; This is a composite photo put together by William Randolph Herst syndicate. 

This story originally appeared in the Jersey Shore Local Newsmagazine 

https://shorelocalnews.com/the-case-for-an-atlantic-city-mob-museum/

There isn’t an Atlantic City Mob Museum, yet, but there should be one.

The Las Vegas Mob Museum is now the most popular tourist attraction in Vegas outside of the casinos, even though the history of the mob there pales in comparison to Atlantic City.

While mobsters didn’t arrive in Las Vegas until Bugsy Siegel built his Flamingo Hotel-Casino in 1946, Atlantic City has a history of mobsters dating back to the 1890s, and is infamous for the long reigns of such noteworthy city bosses as Enoch “Nucky” Johnson and Hap Farley for most of the 20th century.

The Vegas Mob Museum even celebrated the 1929 Atlantic City Conference of crime bosses from around the country in an exhibit focusing on Al Capone’s attendance at the proceedings. The conference was ostensibly held to celebrate Meyer Lansky’s wedding, but the actual reason was to decide what to do with Capone: the mob boss behind the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago which killed seven and brought unwanted scrutiny on all of the mobsters.

Lansky kept a low profile because he wasn’t Italian like most of the mobsters; he was a Jewish accountant who handled the mob’s money. The organization, at least in New York City, was run by old-timers they called “Mustache Petes,” who were at war with one another. Lansky was childhood friends with Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Bugsy Siegel, who were in the mafia and were preparing to take over the rackets after the Mustache Petes killed each other off.

Luciano called for the 1929 conference and arranged for it to be held in Atlantic City, which was known as an “open” city where Nucky Johnson ran things. Luciano invited all the big-city mob bosses from around the country to be there. The new Convention Hall on the Boardwalk had just been completed, and the mobsters mostly stayed at the President Hotel at the south end of the Boardwalk. They met casually at bars and restaurants, and walked along the beach in small groups so the sounds of the breaking waves drowned out their conversations.

 

The main topic was what to do with Capone, who brought the heat down on all of them by killing off Bugs Moran’s gang in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre that same year. While they discussed what to do with him, Capone reportedly hid out in the men’s locker room of the Atlantic City Country Club in Northfield.

Another topic on the agenda was a permanent solution to mob violence. Luciano advocated Lansky’s proposal – to run their businesses like major corporations do, complete with a board of directors. If there were a problem between different city mobs, the board would negotiate a solution. They were called the National Syndicate of Organized Crime or just the Syndicate, while the board was called the Commission. Luciano was appointed the chairman, while big-city bosses would have “sitdowns” together including bosses from Philadelphia, Boston, New Orleans, Chicago, Tampa and Havana.

Most of their profits at the time were generated by bootlegging. The end of prohibition was coming which meant that they would have to get into other businesses. Lansky proposed gambling: big-time casino gambling beginning in Florida and Havana where Lansky had connections with the Cuban dictators, especially Fulgencio Batista. Lansky arranged for legal Havana casinos to be located only in large hotels, and the Syndicate bosses would own all those hotels, mainly patronized by American tourists.

As for Capone, he had to take the rap for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and do jail time. So he took a train to Philadelphia where he was met by a friendly policeman he knew, turned over his revolver, and was arrested for having the weapon. Given a one-year sentence handed down by a bought-off judge, Capone was incarcerated at Eastern State Penitentiary, now a popular Philadelphia museum, where his cell is a prime tourist attraction. He was allowed to have rugs, a lounge chair, a comfortable bed, a radio and had food catered to him until he was released after nine months on good behavior.

Luciano was also arrested and put in jail, but during World War II he made a deal to help US Navy Intelligence protect American docks and shipping from Nazi saboteurs, paving the way for the successful invasion of Sicily. He was released from prison because of his patriotic assistance to the war, but he was forced into exile, first going to Havana, then a popular tourist and gambling destination for Americans, where they held another conference before Luciano retired to Italy.

When the Mustache Petes faded away, Luciano took control of New York where there were five mafia families. Other areas with representatives on the board included Angelo Bruno of Philadelphia, Carlos Marcello of New Orleans, Russell Buffalino of Northeast Pennsylvania, Sam Giancana of Chicago, and Santo Trafficante of Tampa and Havana. Each one of these bosses was given a percentage of the casino profits – illegal casinos in Saratoga, N.Y., Florida, and legal casinos in Havana and Las Vegas.

When the Flamingo, Bugsy Siegel’s hotel casino in Las Vegas, opened in 1946 and quickly foundered, the mob bosses were tired of his excuses and bankrolling him. He owed them $10 million, an unpayable amount, so on the orders of the Commission he was killed – shot in the head by a sniper as he sat in the Hollywood apartment of his girlfriend, Virginia Hill.

With Luciano gone, the five New York mafia families fought among themselves and Sam Giancana assumed a leadership role, obtaining control of all the mob rackets west of Chicago including Detroit, California, and Las Vegas, where his right-hand man, John Rosselli, was put in control.

Old man Joe Kennedy owned many of the Canadian whiskey and Caribbean rum companies, which were legal in those countries. Kennedy sold his liquor to American bootleggers in the prohibition era, including Nucky Johnson and Sam Giancana, and he owned a piece of the Cal-Neva Lodge casino hotel near Lake Tahoe.

He sold his Tahoe interests to Giancana who had his friend, Frank Sinatra, front for him as the owner. Sinatra brought in his trusted friend, Skinny D’Amato, to run the casino.

D’Amato owned the 500 Club in Atlantic City where Sinatra often performed. D’Amato’s family ran the 500 Club while Skinny was in Nevada. Sinatra was also pals with Joe’s son, Senator John Kennedy, future president of the United States. They drank, smoked cigars and had romantic ties to the same women, including Judith Campbell, who was also Giancana’s girlfriend.



                                                        JFK and Sinatra at the Inagural Ball 

When JFK ran for president, Sinatra provided his theme song, “High Hopes,” and D’Amato helped JFK win the critical West Virginia primary to get him the nomination. Giancana ensured that Illinois would go with Kennedy in the election. Sinatra was put in charge of providing the entertainment for Kennedy’s inauguration and helped arrange for Atlantic City to get the 1964 Democratic National Convention when it was assumed Kennedy would be renominated. Events would play out differently, however.



                            Skinny D'Amato advising Sen. JFK during campaign stop in New Jersey 

Judith Campbell served as a courier between JFK and Giancana, and even visited the White House. But when FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover found out about the relationship, he warned the president through Kennedy’s brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, that the FBI was onto the relationship and that it was unwise and dangerous. So Kennedy broke off his association with Campbell and Giancana, as well as Sinatra. Giancana and Sinatra didn’t like having a falling out with the president, whom they helped get elected, especially when JFK’s brother began to prosecute the mobsters.

Then, just like Bugsy Siegel, JFK was shot in the head by a sniper and killed. While Lee Harvey Oswald was blamed for the crime, Giancana and Rosselli were considered suspects, and Rosselli was murdered shortly after testifying in a secret congressional session about the assassination. Giancana was killed shortly before he was to testify. All of this is the subject of a major motion picture, now in production, titled “2 Days, 1963.” Directed by David Mamet, it stars Al Pacino, Sylvester Stallone, Shia LaBeouf and Courtney Love.

So when the Super Bowl is played in Las Vegas this weekend, the most popular tourist attraction besides casinos and football will be the Las Vegas Mob Museum where you can learn all about the history of organized crime, the Syndicate and the Commission and how it all began in Atlantic City.

The Mob Museum, which opened in 2012, is a nonprofit corporation, but is very successful, charging $25 admission and featuring photos, films and lectures. Such a museum should be established in Atlantic City, with seed money from the Atlantic City Casino Reinvestment Development Authority and a building furnished from unused property owned by the city.

Right now there is no Atlantic City Mob Museum, but there should be and can be, if the powers that be deem it worthwhile.

NOTE ABOUT SOURCES – Information about the 1929 conference of mob bosses in Atlantic City can be found on the Las Vegas Mob Museum website. Background on Joe Kennedy, Sam Giancana, Cal-Neva Lodge, Judith Campbell and JFK is from Seymour Hersh’s “The Dark Side of Camelot.” The best source on Skinny D’Amato, Frank Sinatra and the 500 Club is Jonathan Van Meter’s “The Last Good Time.”

Billkelly3@gmail.com

Friday, February 16, 2024

Was the Real James Bond a Spy?

 Was the Real James Bond a Spy? 



Well the evidence is not as strong as it is for two other Ian Fleming characters from Philadelphia - Cummins Catherwood, who was featured as Milton Krest in the short story The Hybred Rarity, or Henry Pleasants, 007-s frequent CIA sidekick Felix Leiter, as both were strongly affiliated with the CIA. Catherwood allowed his non-profit Catherwood Foundation to be used by the CIA to fund covert operations, as revealed by David Wise and Thomas Ross in their book The Invisible Government. 

Wise and Ross also reveal that former OSS officer Henry Pleasants, who debriefed Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, also wrote classical and jazz music reviews for the Philadelphia Bulletin and New York Times, a background Fleming attributes to Felix Leiter in Live and Let Die when Leiter accompanies James Bond to a jazz club in Harlem. Pleasants later became the CIA Chief of Station in Bonn, Germany while continuing writing about music. 

And both men had connections to Fleming. One of the members of the Catherwood Fund board of directors was a friend of  Ian's brother Peter Fleming, and after thinking about it for a few moments, Pleasants told me that his wife Virginia, a former harpsacordist in the Philadelphia Orchestra, was in a small chamber music group in London with Fleming's sister, who played the cello. 

As for James Bond, the Curator of Birds at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences and author of the book Birds of the West Indies, he attended Cambridge University, the school of spys, most notably the Cambridge Spy ring (Kim Philby et al.), and was a member of the Pitt Club, that Guy Burgess would also be a member of. 

Mrs. Bond, in on of her books about her husband - Far Afield in the Caribbean, mentions that in 1938 James Bond sailed on a tramp steamer with Somerset Maugham, a famous writer and important British spy who was sent to Russia in 1917 to prevent the Communist revolution, a mission that failed but emphasized his importance. 

Maugham, the author of numerous classic novels such as The Razors Edge, also wrote Ashenden, one of the earliest spy novels based on his own, personal experiences.

Did Maugham recruit Bond on that voyage? When I asked Bond about meeting Maugham, he said Maugham said he was on his way to Devil's Island, and didn't talk much. But I also noticed, on the book shelf next to the door of his apartment, was a complete works of first edition volumes of Somerset Maugham, so Bond must have read him, something he failed to do with any of Ian Fleming's books. 

I also recalled that during England's war with the Argentina over the Faulkland islands, a TV cliip showed British soldiers being briefed on the terrain they would expect when they landed, a briefing by the last Englishman who was on that beach - a birdwatcher. 

In 1948 Bond did sail with Catherwood on his yacht The Vigilant, visiting remote out island like Old Providence, where Morgan the Pirate's treasure was rumored to be burried. When I asked Bond about Catherwood, he didn't have anything nice to say. Bond described him as a imprudent millioinaire who made the voyage unbearable. But the Bond and Catherwood connection is set in stone aboard the Vigilant. 

Mrs. Bond  reports that during WWII Bond encountered a German on a mountain in Haiti, and though it important enough to report the fact to the FBI, but they then began investigating Bond, why was he there? 

Bond was also investigated by J. Edgar Hover's FBI after the Cambridge spy ring was uncovered, as all Americans who attended Cambridge were. 

And as Mrs. Bond recounts in her books, James Bond was at the Bay of Pigs a few weeks before the CIA backed anti-Castro brigade landed there. And he picked up some important intelligence information - that new roads had been constructed to that remote swamp. Did Bond convey that information to the CIA? 

In his new biography of James Bond, Jim Wright mentions my work and association with Bond, and questioning whether or not Bond was a spy, but he says that he could not obtain Cummins Catherwood's CIA file even though Catherwood's CIA credentials had been exposed, not only by Wise and Ross in The Invisible Government, but by Joseph Smith in his Portrait of a Cold Warrior as he used the Catherwood Foundation as a front for his CIA mission to the Phillipines. 

And of course, Kim Philby, the most important double agent of all time, reported in his book My Silent War, that when he was British Secret Intelligence Service liaison to the CIA, Frank Wisner explained to him how they were using private Foundations as a cover for their covert operations. 

So the answer to the question of whether the real James Bond was a spy must remain inconclusive, but maybe someday the records of the agency will reveal the truth. 

Billkelly3@gmail.com 

















Friday, February 2, 2024

How I Came to Meet James Bond

 How I Came to Meet James Bond - William Kelly billkelly3@gmail.com 

It was in the course of my JFK Assassination research when I came across the real James Bond. It must have been some November anniversary, probably around 1973-5, when Philadelphia Magazine ran a story of the Philadelphia connections to the assassination. 

The late great Alan Halpern was the editor then, and his protege Gaeton Fonzi was off to Washington or Florida working for Sen. Richard Schweiker and the Church Intelligence Committee and later the House Select Committee on Assassinations, so the article was written by another good investigative reporter Michael Malowe. 

Warren Commission lawyers William Coleman and Arlen Spector were both from Philadelphia, as was later HSCA chief counsel Richard Sprague. Then living there at the time were Ruth Paine, Michael Paine's mother Ruth Forbes Paine and her husband Arthur Young, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, as well as Priscilla Johnson, critics professor Joshia Tink Thompson, film buff Robert Groden and my old college mate John Judge. 

As I was born and raised across the Delaware River in Camden, NJ, I often visited Judge, who worked at a Quaker center on Walnut Street near Rittenhouse Square and lived in a Germantown mansion with two other former University of Dayton school mates, where we would listen to Mae Brussell "World Watcher" radio broadcast tapes. 

One of John's jobs at the Quaker center was to call supporters on the phone and ask for donations, and one day he told me he called Ruth Paine and she made a donation. 

The Philadelphia magazine article in question included an interview with Ruth Paine, but it also somehow connected her to a mysterious foundation - the Catherwood Foundation, which was connected to the CIA. 

The book The Invisible Government (Wise and Ross) exposed the CIA's foundation system for financing covert operations, listing the Catherwood Fund among a dozen or so others. Double agent Kim Philby, in his book My Sikent War, related how while he was the British SIS liason to the CIA Frank Wisner explained to him how rich Americans were convinced to establish foundations and funds the CIA could funnel their money through, so it was a secret only kept from the American people.

So I did what I routinely do when I come across a new name and went to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin archives, called the morgue, where I looked up Cartherwoods file.

The Bulketin paid old ladies tjo clip every story, circle each name mentioned, and place the clipping in an envelope with that person's name on it, that was fiked in metal cabinets alphabetically.

Cummins Catherwood's envelope was bulging with clips that I took over to a nearby table to read. It was late at night so few people were around but the editor Tom Flynn came over and asked what I was working on.

As a millionaire who inherited his millions from a family munitions industry, his CIA work clearly stood out, as the Catherwood Fund backed the Cuban Aid Relief, established to support anti-Castro Cuban professionals in exile.

Catherwood also used his tax exempt Fund to have a large sailing yacht built, the Vigilant, that in 1948, he took four scientists to Caribbean out islands, one of whom studied mollusks, another was "James Bond, whose main interest is birds."

At first I thought it was a joke, a CIA agent using James Bond as an alias, but then looked at the date- 1948, and realized it was before Ian Fleming made James Bond the world's most famous spy.

With that I packed it in, and put Catherwoods envelop back in the filing cabinet and went over to visit a friend, WMMR radio news man Bill Vitka. Sitting listening to records and sipping wine, I told him about Catherwood and Janes Bond, and he recalled reading an interview with Ian Fleming in which he said he took the James Bond name for 007 from a Philadelphia ornithologist.

Later, when I returned to the Bulletin clipping morgue, I took out the envelope labeled Bond, James, and confirmed Vitka's memory.

The one and only real James Bond is the Philadelphia ornithologist who wrote the field guide Birds of the West Indies, a copy of which I obtained from the Princeton Antique Book shop in Atlantic City.

I obtained Bond's address at Hill House in Chestnut Hill, a suburb of Philadelphia from the public phone directory, and while John Judge waited in the car, walked up to that apartment building next to the train station. 

When I told the door man-security guard I was visiting James Bond, he directed me to the elevator and said his apartment was on the 10th floor 1007. Ha, another coincidence.

I nocked on the door, my copy of his book in my hand, and when Mrs. Bond answered, I held it up and asked if Mr. Bond would sign my copy of his book. She invited me in, and called out, "Jimmy!, there's a young man here to see you."

Jimmy, I thought, was a real American and not the prim and proper English James.

Mr. Bond emerged from a back room wearing a tuxedo, much as his Hollywood namesake wore. They were going out that night to attend a charity ball, he explained, and said, "Let's see what you have here- an early first edition on which he enshrined, "To Bill Kelly, good birding, - James Bond."

At the Bond's invitation I returned a few more times, purchased and read Mrs Bond's books - "How 007 Realy Got His Name," "Far Afield in the Caribbean," and "To James Bond, With Love."












Tuesday, January 30, 2024

James Bond, Ian Fleming, Lee Harvey Oswald and JFK

James Bond,  LHO and JFK

Previously posted in part: https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/05/007-lho-jfk.html




In the course of reading Nicholas Shakespeare’s new 800 page biography - Ian Flaming: The Complete Man I noticed or recalled a number of associations with JFK that are relevant to his assassination and are worth mentioning,

Peter Dale Scott first turned me on to Robin Ramsay’s UK based Lobster Journal “that looks at the impact of the intelligence and security services on history and politics, from espionage to dirty tricks.”

Some  years ago Ramsey ran my review of Phil Shenon’s JFK assassination book “A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination,” that’s primarily devoted to the Mexico City “Twist Party,” and I tracked down the two American Gringos who were ostensibly with the accused assassin of the President and Cuban embassy officials.

For more on Shenon and the Twist Party::   JFKcountercoup: A Cruel and Shocking Twist

With the impending release of Shakespeare’s new biography “Ian Fleming: The Complete Man,” ( Penguin, 2022) https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/441629/ian-fleming-by-shakespeare-nicholas/9781787302419 ) Robin Ramsey arranged for me to get an advanced copy to read and r

While many back issues are available to read free, I recommend you subscribe to Lobster, ( https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/issue/88/ ), where you can also read my review in Issue 88, ( https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/article/issue/88/oo7s-real-mission-continues/ ).

As I write at Lobster – There are three things that I thought should be rectified about Fleming that his previous biographies got wrong: why Fleming began the first 007 novel Casino Royale, an accurate portrait of the real James Bond – the Philadelphia ornithologist and author of the book Birds of the West Indies, and the real persons known to Fleming that he used as characters in his stories.

As Shakespeare finally acknowledges Fleming began his first 007 novel Casino Royale because of what they called at the time - The case of the missing diplomats – Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean. The revelations about the Cambridge spy ring was what instigated Fleming to write “the spy story to end all spy stories,” which leads me to the associations with JFK and his assassination.

With the disappearance of Burgess and MacLean, Fleming sent Mercury News correspondent Richard Hughes to Moscow where it was arranged for Hughes to meet Burgess and MacLean, confirming their defection. Shakespeare quotes Christopher Moran as saying “Mercury looks like a spy operation. It smells like a spy operation, ergo, I think it is a spy operation.”

Though Shakespeare describes the Mercury news syndicate as a virtual spy network, he doesn’t do the same for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), owned by Fleming’s close friends and wartime associates Ivor Bryce (SIS) and Ernest Cuneo (OSS), whose names are also portrayed as characters in 007 novels. They hired Fleming as a foreign editor, and one of their correspondents Priscilla Johnson (McMillan) interviewed former US Marine defector Lee Harvey Oswald in Moscow.

John Judge and I wrote about this in more detail in an essay Bottlefed by Oswald’s NANA – 

https:/archive.politicalassassinations.net/2012/07/was-oswald-bottlefed-by-nana/

Shakespeare mentions Priscilla Johnson as the author of Lee and Marina, a book that portrays accused assassin Lee Oswald as a lone nut, but one who was an avid reader of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, as was President Kennedy.

Shakespeare writes: “It was not merely John F. Kennedy who was overly influenced by Ian Fleming’s novels and engaged in secret plots. Another Bond fan was the emotionally disturbed young man who killed him. At 9 p.m. on Thursday 21 November 1963, a private screening of “From Russia with Love” was held for fifty guests in the White House projection room….”

It was Fleming’s novel “From Russia with Love,” that President Kennedy’s secretary Evelyn Lincoln added to the list of books the President read because she thought the list was all boring history. When the list was published in Life magazine it boosted the sales of Fleming’s 007 series. It was also one of the books found among Lee Harvey Oswald’s effects in his boarding house room.

The complete list as published in Life Magazine:

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/JFK-Miscellaneous-Information/Favorite-Books.aspx

Lord Melbourne by David Cecil
Montrose by John Buchan
Marlborough by Sir Winston Churchill
John Quincy Adams by Samuel Flagg Bemis
The Emergence of Lincoln by Allan Nevins
The Price of Union by Herbert Agar
John C. Calhoun by Margaret L. Coit
Talleyrand by Duff Cooper
Byron in Italy by Peter Quennell
The Red and the Black by M. de Stendhal
From Russia with Love by Ian Fleming
Pilgrim's Way by John Buchan
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
Writing and Speeches of Daniel Webster
Andre Malraux
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
Henry Clay by Carl Schurz 

As noted: Dave Powers later added a few titles to the list, and Kennedy’s secretary Mrs. Lincoln later acknowledged she added “From Russia with Love” to the list of otherwise dull and academic books to give it a human touch with a book she knew Kennedy had read that ordinary people could identify with.

The “From Russia with Love” story concerns the theft of a Russian Lector cipher machine from their embassy in Istanbul, which reflects on the theft of the real German Nazi Enigma cipher machine that was successfully broken by the British during WWII, a secret that was kept for thirty years after the war. And Shakespeare tells us that both Ian and his brother Peter Fleming were among the small Bigot List of those who had access to the secrets revealed by the codebreakers.

The story also has Russian assassin Donovan Grant attempting to kill James Bond and retrive the cipher machine. Shakespeare says that Fleming named the SMERSH assassin Donovan Grant after Gen. William Donovan, head of the OSS, and that “Since August, Oswald had used the pseudonym ‘Alik James Hidell.’"

While everyone speculates that "Hidell" was meant to match Fidel, Shakespeare tells us, "The middle name ‘may have been taken from James Bond,’ according to his biographer, Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who, who had interviewed Oswald in Moscow after his defection in October 1959,” But Shakespeare fails to note that at the time McMillan interviewed Oswald the defector in Moscow she was working for Bryce, Cuneo and Fleming at NANA.

“It is not unreasonable to suppose,” writes Shakespeare, “that once Oswald returned to America in June 1962, tail between his legs, and learned of the President’s widely publicized reading habits, the fictional career of Donovan as ‘the chief executioner’ of SMERSH offered an alternative vision of how his defection was to have played out. Kennedy saw himself as Bond, and Oswald, in a warped version, as example of Bond’s would-be assassin, Donovan Grant – only successful….” That may be a stretch, but one that is made by Priscilla Johnaon and Shakespiere, not me.

Fleming did meet JFK. As recounted in all three of Fleming biographies, Fleming met and had dinner with Senator John F. Kennedy at his home, when he was visiting his close friend Oatsie Leiter, a Georgetown neighbor of JFK and Jamaican neighbor of Fleming. Over dinner, JFK asked Fleming what James Bond would do about Fidel Castro, to which Fleming replied, “ridicule, chiefly.”

Shakespeare fails to mention that Fleming anoits 007’s CIA sidekick with the name Felix Leiter, and that the family of Oatsie Leiter’s husband John once owned the Virginia land that the CIA headquarters was built on.

Soon after becoming President JFK requested that the CIA send over “America’s James Bond” and the portly, pear shaped William Harvey showed up at the oval office, leaving his pistols with the Secret Service at the door. While Harvey didn’t look like James Bond, he was just as lethal, and is now even considered a suspect in the murder of the President. Harvey also was one of the first to claim, after attending a party at Philby’s apartment, that Philby and Burgess were Soviet spies, and JFK did play an unintentional role in the exposure of the Cambridge spy ring.

President JFK appointed Michael Straight to head a new arts commission, but when Straight found his background was to be closely vetted by the FBI, he confessed that there was an attempt to recruit him into the Cambridge spy ring while he was a student there. Besides Philby, Burgess, McClean, Straight threw another name into the spy ring – Sir Anthony Blunt, the surveyor of the Queen’s pictures. It was Straight's confession that led Philby to flee to Moscow himself. 

While Straight claimed not to have provided them with any useful information, as publisher of his family’s liberal New Republic magazine, he did print some of Philby’s articles and in London Fleming visited the American millionaire Whitney Straight, brother of Michael Straight in order to discuss Burgess and MacLean, who Straight also knew at Cambridge.

The former assistant to the chief of British Naval Intelligence christened his secret agent Double-Oh Seven - 007 - James Bond, who was licensed to kill on behalf of her majesty’s secret service, while having the cover job of an import-export agent for Universal Export. A few years later, Lee Harvey Oswald, just out of the US Marine Corps, boarded a tramp steamer in New Orleans and sailed for Europe on the first leg of a journey that would take him behind the Iron Curtain as a “defector” to the Soviet Union. The passport that Oswald turned over to the US Embassy in Moscow when he announced his defection indicated that his profession was “Import-Export” agent.

In fact, Oswald, before enlisting in the US Marines, did work at an import and export firm in New Orleans. As explained by his brother Robert (Lee – A Portrait of Lee, Coward-McCann, 1967, p. 74), “In November (1955) he (Lee) went to work as a messenger and office boy for a shipping company, Gerald F. Tujague, Inc. He made only $130 a month, but it must have seemed like a lot of money to him, since it was his first full-time job. Mother said he was generous with his money…Feeling prosperous, now that he had a regular income, Lee bought other things, too. Mother said he paid $35 for a coat for her, bought a bow and arrow set – and gun…I remember that gun…Lee really seemed to enjoy his work at Tujague’s for a while. He felt more independent than ever before, and he liked the idea of working for a shipping company. When he first told me about it, he was eager, animated and genuinely enthusiastic. ‘We’re sending an order to Portugal this week,’ he’d tell me. Or, ‘I received a shipment from Hong Kong, just this morning.’ It was a big adventure to him – as if all the company’s ships were his and he could go to any of the places named on the order blanks he carried from one desk to another. It made him feel important, just to be on the fringes of something as exciting as foreign trade.” 

Tujague later came back on the record as a leading member of the Friends of a Democratic Cuba in New Orleans and was said to be on the board of directors of a bank that also included John Mecom, who employed George DeMohrenschildt and sent him to Europe, which led to him being debriefed by the CIA. So both Oswald and DeMohrenschildt, although their lives wouldn’t entwine until years later, were both employed by directors of the same bank, an indication they were both working for the same economic interests years earlier.

Gerald F. Tujague  (10 HSCA, 134, note 64; CE2227, 25 H 128) Owner of a New Orleans shipping company that sixteen year old Oswald worked for from November 10, 1955 to January 14 1956, shortly before he enlisted in the USMC.

Trujague was Vice President of Friends of Democratic Cuba, an anti-Castro Cuban group incorporated in New Orleans on January 6, 1961, which also included Guy Banister on its board of directors. On January 20, 1061, when Oswald was in the USSR, two men visited the Bolton Ford dealership in New Orleans and inquired about the purchase of trucks for their organization, the Friends of Democratic Cuba, using Oswald’s name. 

Was there a reason for Oswald to list his occupation as “import-export agent” on the passport he used to defect to Russia, and was it in any way associated with import-export agency he worked for in New Orleans shortly before enlisting in the Marines? Or was it some kind of inside joke, tongue in cheek reference to James Bond’s occupation as an import-export agent for Universal Export?

In JFK & 007, Less Sanger Golden (alias Author337) perpetuates the myths and takes note of the mutual associations of 007 and Camelot, as well the Oswald connection. Golden wrote: “Meanwhile, the James Bond novels were having a huge impact on another young man, Lee Harvey Oswald. He too was a fan of the novel From Russia with Love, a story of political defection that oddly mirrors Oswald’s own defection to the Soviet Union. In the story, James Bond wisps the young Russian Tatiana Romonvav across the iron curtain with promises of decadent western luxuries. While in Russia, Lee Oswald similarly swept young Marina Prusakova off of her feet and brought her to America with promises of a better life. But when things started going badly, Tatiana and Marina realized that perhaps they were in for more than they had bargained for.” 

As Golden also noted other similarities when he wrote: “If JFK represents all the most charming aspects of James Bond, then perhaps Lee Oswald is a reflection of his dark side. His rages, his wrath. The irony inherent in any substantive comparison of JFK and 007 is inescapable. For while James Bond is a timeless figure, JFK was a figure taken before his time. And while James Bond is unkillable, we all that the same cannot be said of Jack Kennedy.”

After Oswald  living in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, Oswald took a number of books out of the local New Orleans library. A Warren Commission memorandum included the list of the books that Oswald checked out of the New Orleans Library. First on the list is “Goldfinger,’ and it officially notes that the author is IAN FLEMING, the book was checked out – 9/19/63 (Sept. 19) and the return date is indicated as 10/3/63 (October 3). “Goldfinger” wasn’t the first 007 novel that Oswald checked out, as the records show that he had previously taken out “Thunderball” and “From Russia With Love.” Another 007 book “Moonraker” was also checked out on the same date as “Goldfinger,” both of which were returned on October 3. For assassination investigators the problem with Oswald’s “Goldfinger” is that, according to the records of the New Orleans Library, the book was returned on October 3, 1963, a full week after Oswald, the friendless loner had left New Orleans. If Oswald was on a bus from Mexico to Texas on that day, who returned the book to the New Orleans library?

Of course if Lee Harvey Oswald was the real assassin of the President of the United States, these books would have been given a through going over and psychoanalysts would have given their interpretation of the assassin’s state of mind at the time, but since Oswald was a patsy, and framed for the crimes, just as he claimed, there has been no real attempt to even try to understand the psychological makeup of the patsy. If he had been the actual triggerman and assassin, then it would be a different story. In any case, Oswald is one of the most thoroughly analyzed patsies in history, so we know a lot about him, much more than we know about the actual assassins. One of the things we know is that he read a lot, and we know what he read from the library records.

Oswald did take an literary interest in the subject of espionage, as another book he checked out was, “Five Spy Novels.” 

The President’s wife Jackie was as well-read as her husband, and later became a book editor and publisher. She also took notice of Ian Fleming’s novels, though she may not have gotten the joke, but she is credited with recommending Fleming’s books to CIA director Alan Dulles. Dulles also enjoyed Fleming’s stories and tried to cultivate a similar genre of CIA themed literature that would do for the agency what Fleming’s books did for the British spy agencies. Both E. Howard Hunt and David Attle Phillips wrote a number of officially approved fictional pulp paperback novels that were similar to Fleming’s 007 stories in style and content.                   

While “Casino Royale” was the first 007 novel, the story had been adapted to an American television show, so the first 007 major motion picture was “Dr. No,” which Oswald could have and probably did see.  

In 1961, Kennedy watched the first James Bond film, Dr. No, in a private White House screening, and in part to Kennedy’s influence, the next movie was based on “From Russia, With Love,” and according to William Manchester, it would be the last movie that the president saw, on November 20, 1963, the evening before he left for Texas. 

Vincent Canby made the observation: “Whether accurately or not, the first films made from the Bond novels came to characterize a number of aspects of the Kennedy Administration with its reputation for glamour, wit and sophistication, and its real-life dram and melodrama. Indeed, the President himself could be seen as a kind of Bond figure, and the 1962 Cuban missile crisis as a real-life Bond situation.”

Any cursory review of the books we know Oswald read should begin with “Goldfinger,” which opens with a quote above the table of contents that reads: “Goldfinger said, ‘Mr. Bond, they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, the third time it’s enemy action.’” 

While some of these incidents are speculative, some are coincidences and other perhaps hapenstance, if the happenstances and coincidences are added up, one must come to the conclusion that it is neither happenstance nor coincidence but intentional covert action.

As David Atlee Phillips said, “The intelligence profession does not encourge one to believe in coincidence as an explanation for events.”

Billkelly3@gmail.com