In the 1950s the richest man in the world, an oil billionaire in Texas, invented a
new form of television journalism. It pretended to be objective and balanced but in
fact it was hard core right-wing propaganda. It was way ahead of its time because,
in its fake neutrality, it prefigured the rise of the ultraconservative right-wing
media of the 1990s - like Fox News, with its copyrighted slogan, "Fair and Balanced"
The billionaire was called H. L. Hunt - Haroldson Lafayette Hunt. He made his
fortune in the early 1930s by getting hold of one of the biggest oil fields in
America - in the pine forests of East Texas. He was a ruthless, driven man and from
early on he became absolutely convinced that he had superhuman qualities that made
him different from other humans.
Here is a picture of Mr Hunt which gives you a sense of his conviction about
himself.
From the 1920s onwards Hunt was a bigamist. He married two women and raised two
families that were oblivious of each other. He told his second wife, Frania, that
he was called Major Franklyn Hunt. There was a rocky moment when his picture was
on the front page of all the Texas papers because of his spectacular oil deal.
Frania asked Hunt if that was him - he told her no, that it was his uncle who had
been so clever.
Hunt was part of a group of extreme right-wing oil men in Texas who had enormous
influence because of their wealth. There is a brilliant book written about this
group - The Big Rich by Bryan Burrough. Burrough describes how they had first
risen up in the 1930s because they loathed President Roosevelt - "a nigger-loving
communist", as one oil man called him. They were convinced that Roosevelt's New
Deal was really run by Jews and communists - or "social vermin" as they politely put
it.
A Texas congressman called Sam Rayburn summed up this group of right-wing oil
men. "All they do is hate" - he said.
After the Second World War H L Hunt did two things. He added another, third, family
to his bigamist's collection. And he also turned to the new medium of television to
promote his ultraconservative views. In 1950 he wrote a pamphlet putting forward
the idea of what he called an "Educational Facts League" - its purpose, Hunt wrote:
"will be to secure a impartial presentation of all the news through all the news
channels concerning issues of public interest"
It would, said Hunt, be an organization where ordinary Americans would be supplied
with the true facts of political life.
Hunt announced that the organization would be called "Facts Forum" -
which produced radio and television programs of conservative, anti-Communist
political commentary approved of by Hunt. That included the distribution of books
by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy whose Senate campaign was financed by Hunt.
Hunt discovered Dan Smoot to be Facts Forum’s public face. Smoot had been an FBI
agent - and he was smooth and reasonable. Starting on radio, but then moving to
television, Smoot presented a show called Facts Forum which every week would claim
to present a balanced presentation of the facts behind the news. Very reminiscent of
the later catch-phrase on Fox News - "We Report, You Decide".
In fact, this declaration of balance and fairness was nonsense. Smoot would begin by
presenting the left or liberal viewpoint on a subject in a dull, bland way. Then
would enthusiastically put forward the alternative, or what Hunt called, the
"constructive" view. This view was simple - all government was bad, business should
be left alone - and anyone who disagreed was a communist trying to take over the
world.
The programs were radically skewed to promote an ultraconservative agenda while
pretending to be neutral and balanced.
There was lots of implied racism in the shows. In his book Bryan Burroughs quotes
from one episode where Smoot argued against fair employment legislation - and said:
"Remember that the negroes when first brought to America by Yankee and English
merchants were not free people reduced to slavery. They were merely transferred
from a barbaric enslavement by their own people in Africa to a relatively benign
enslavement in the Western Hemisphere."
Facts Forum became a successful media enterprise - with two syndicated radio shows
and three TV shows produced from their own studios in New York. They were backed up
by books and pamphlets paid for by Hunt. One was called "We Must Abolish the United
Nations" - written by Joseph Kamp. His previous "balanced" books had included one
called "Hitler Was a Liberal".
Hunt was obsessed with spreading his propaganda - sending out endless pamphlets,.
Interestingly, it was the Taft-Hartley Act that granted the right to distribute propaganda
literature to combat labor union organizing -- a movement elitists like Hunt blamed on
communists.
He trained young men and women to become part of his League of Youth Freedom
Speakers, and even insisting that his whole family sit at the dinner table to listen to one
of his new radio shows. It was called LIFELINE. Again, Hunt was ahead of his time -
because the show fused right-wing anti-communism with fundamentalist religion.
Hunt hid the tragedy of his life away from the public - his eldest son Hassie. He had
originally followed his father into the oil business, but had then become violent and
paranoid. Hunt had tried his own treatment - bringing in lots of women for Hassie to
have sex with. But what had worked for the father didn't do much for the son. Doctors
tried ECT - but that didn't work. In the end Hunt was persuaded to let them give Hassie
a prefrontal lobotomy and his son spent the rest of his life wandering the Hunt estate
like a strange ghost.
Hunt's Facts Forum was the model for much of what was later to come with the rise of
the right in the media in the 1990s - both in radio and TV. But Hunt didn't just shape
the future of the right, he also had a profound effect on the way the left too
attacked and corroded the idea of objectivity and neutrality in journalism.
Many of Lifeline's programmes had attacked John F. Kennedy as a communist dupe
who was destroying America.
A full-page advertisement placed in the Dallas Morning News on the day of the
assassination had been partly paid for by another of Hunt's sons - Nelson Bunker
Hunt. It was surrounded by a black, threatening border - and was titled sarcastically
"Welcome Mr Kennedy to Dallas".
The newspaper’s publisher, Ted Dealey—whose family name adorned the plaza were
JFK was shot—was himself an outspoken opponent of the president and had
pointedly confronted him at a White House event. “We need a man on horseback to
lead this nation,” Dealey told Kennedy. “And many people in Texas and the Southwest
think that you are riding Caroline’s tricycle.”
Just before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, he upset people like Clint Murchison
and Haroldson L. Hunt - both financial backers of Senator Joe McCarthy - when he
talked about plans to submit to Congress a tax reform plan designed to produce
about $185,000,000 in additional revenues by changes in the favourable tax treatment
until then accorded the gas-oil industry. Kennedy was particularly upset that
Hunt, who had an annual income of about $30,000,000, paid only small amounts of
federal income tax.
Another point of issue was Cuba. Kennedy was extremely upset that the CIA invaded
the Bay of Pigs without his knowledge and refused to provide air cover for the
invading forces.
This angered Hunt further as a strong opponent of Fidel Castro, Hunt helped to fund
the Cuban Revolutionary Council, a group that worked with the Mafia and the Central
Intelligence Agency in an effort to remove Castro from power.
Kennedy had also personally angered H.L. Hunt. After being summarily thrown out of
the upcoming 1964 World’s Fair project, presumably at the instruction of JFK himself,
Hunt turned to John Curington, his attorney, and said “I’ve about got a belly-full of
those Kennedy boys. They both need to go.” A few months later John Kennedy would
be dead.
Like his father, Nelson Bunker Hunt was an ultraconservative - and the Dallas
Morning News advertisement was placed under a title that echoed Facts Forum. It
was called "The American Fact-Finding Committee" who described themselves as
"An unaffiliated and non-partisan group of citizens who wish truth". And it accused
JFK of all sorts of treasonous acts against America - including:
"Why have you ordered your brother Bobby, the Attorney General, to go soft on
communists, fellow-travellers and ultra-leftists in America, while permitting him to
persecute loyal Americans who criticize you, your administration, and your leadership?
We DEMAND answers to these questions, and we want them NOW."
As a result, newspapers across America attacked Hunt's operations for at the very
least creating the "climate of hate" in Texas that contributed to the President's death.
And Hunt and his sons became targets in the FBI investigation that would then
become part of the Warren Commission.
Some other connections to the JFK assassination come from a alleged mafia member,
arms smuggler and FBI and HUAC informant from Chicago going by the name Jack
Ruby-the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald. According to the book The Judas Factor:
The plot to kill Malcolm X - Ruby was at the offices of H.L. Hunt the same day he
“Welcome to Dallas” ad was published. Also, at the time of his arrest some pieces
of paper that were found in the jacket pocket were scripts from Hunt's LIFELINE
radio programme. The third had a telephone number of one of Hunt's sons.
John Birch Society
The rise of a religious Anti-Communism fundamentalism really began to rise from
the ashes of McCarthyism.
The John Birch Society was one such group.
Although in a 1964 interview with the New York Times, H.l. Hunt denies attending
meetings and being a member of the John Birch Society, he is listed as a member
along with other family members at sources online.
Hunt expressed his admiration for Robert Welch - founder of the John Birch
Society and acknowledged that he had met Mr. Welch and talked with him by
telephone and leaflets around the Hunt Oil offices at the time the interview was
conducted promoted two pro‐Goldwater books that were distributed by John Birch
Society members.
Another connections to JBS comes via General Albert Coady Wedemeyer, former chief
of staff to Chiang Kaishek and a advisory board member of Hunt’s Life Line.
Wedemeyer was a member of the John Birch Society advisory council.
Another member of Hunt’s Life Line advisory board was Gen. Robert E. Wood, former
chairman of Sears Roebuck & Co. Wood was a leader in the Old Right American
Conservatism movement from the 1920s through the 1960s.
In the fallout from the successful CIA backed 1954 Guatemalan Coup, he founded the
American Security Council in September of the same year.
Nelson Bunker Hunt was a financial backer of and served as a member of the Council
of The John Birch Society.
Nation of Islam
According to The Judas Factor author Karl Evanzz - John X Ali, was the FBI's top
informant within the Nation of Islam organization. Soon after John X. Ali was named
the NOI's national secretary in early 1960, Texas millionaire and ultraconservative
H. L. Hunt began to send funds to the NOI.
Hunt himself denied any connection claiming he didn't “know anything about them,
except that they're a bad Negro group.”
John Birch Society and the JFK Assassination
Harry Dean worked for US intelligence as an undercover operative. During the late
50s and 60s, Dean infiltrated several groups including the Fair Play For Cuba
Committee, the National Minutemen's Organization and the John Birch Society
gathering information for the agencies concerning their various activities.
Dean gathered first-hand information from certain unnamed members of the John
Birch Society regarding their plans to assassinate John F. Kennedy.
Dean refers to an unnamed congressman and general as the people who convinced
some members of the JBS that a “dirty communist” tag should be plastered onto
Kennedy and that he should be marked for death to save the United States from “falling
into Red hands.”
Dean described the congressman and his special band of Birchers as smooth talkers.
“The propaganda they handed out at the meetings was so convincing, that, I, too
almost began to believe that John Kennedy was a communist.”
“The tragedy of it all was the fact that they were able o brainwash several persons
into believing that Kennedy was a communist and therefore, it was not a crime to
murder him,” Dean said.
According to Dean not only did the congressman and his conspirators plot to
assassinate Kennedy, they adapted their original plot to include the framing of Lee
Harvey Oswald as the assassin.
Dean insists that Oswald was a undercover intelligence agent like himself and
attended John Birch meetings using an alias. According to Dean the congressman
found out about Oswald’s infiltration and orchestrated their assassination plot to
include setting up Oswald.
Oswald’s previous work and background as a CIA agent posing as a Soviet defector
and association with the Fair Play for Cuba group would provide the opportunity to
paint Oswald as a communist and Castro sympathizer and lay the blame for the
assassination on their political and ideological enemies. In theory, this would be the
perfect plot.
So, who could the congressman and general Dean is referring to be?
One of the enemies of Kennedy who was a general was Army Major General Edwin
Walker.
In 1959, Walker met publisher Robert Welch. Welch founded the John Birch Society to
promote his anti-communist opinions, one of which was that President Eisenhower
was a communist. This assertion surprised Walker because it coincided with the
segregationist argument of Reverend Billy James Hargis that the civil-rights
movement was a communist plot.
On August 4, 1959, Walker submitted his resignation to the U.S. Army. President
Eisenhower denied Walker's request for resignation and offered him command over
more than 10,000 troops in Augsburg, Germany, specifically the 24th Infantry Division,
which Walker accepted. He began promoting his "Pro-Blue" indoctrination program for
troops, which included a reading list of materials by Hargis and the John Birch
Society.
Because the John Birch Society regularly claimed that all U.S. presidents from Franklin
D. Roosevelt onward had been communists; its opinions were considered too
controversial politically for a U.S. general to advocate; military officers were not
supposed to engage in politics at all. Walker was quoted by the Overseas Weekly as
saying that Harry S. Truman, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Secretary of State Dean Acheson
were "definitely pink."
The U.S. Army officially rebuked Major General Edwin Walker and President Kennedy
accepted his resignation from the Army in 1961.
The disgraced Walker found a home in Dallas. During his time in Dallas, Walker
increasingly became a strident critic of the Kennedy’s.
Walker also became active in segregationist resistance efforts in the South and said
civil rights demonstrations in Washington and in Austin, Tex., were "pro-Kennedy,
pro-Communist and pro-Socialist."
In October 1962, after Federal marshals had put down riots at the University of
Mississippi and forced the university to admit James H. Meredith, a black student,
General Walker was arrested on a Federal warrant charging him with insurrection and
seditious conspiracy. But a Federal grand jury miraculously failed to indict him and the
charges were dropped.
This wasn’t Walker’s last brush with the law. At age 66, Walker was arrested on June 23,
1976 for public lewdness in a restroom at a Dallas park. He was accused of fondling and
propositioning a male undercover police officer. He was arrested again in Dallas for
public lewdness on March 16, 1977. He pleaded no contest to one of the two
misdemeanor charges, was given a suspended 30-day jail sentence and was fined
$1,000.
An even more bizarre addendum to Harry Dean’s account on the events leading up to
the events of November 22nd 1963 comes from Oswald’s widow Marina. She claims
Oswald attempted to assassinate Walker because he was "an extremist". The alleged
attempt obviously failed and in a twist of fate, the incident was conveniently cited as
evidence of Oswald's capacity for violence by the Warren Commission.
This undoubtedly warrants further investigation.
It is also worth noting that in his 1964 interview with the New York Times, H. L. Hunt
listed Major General Edwin Walker as a man that he admired.
As far as the congressman goes, determining who was a congressman who would fit
the profile, political climate and location would make Bruce Alger chief suspect.
Alger was a Republican U.S. representative from Texas, the first to have represented a
Dallas district since Reconstruction. He served from 1955 until 1965.
Prior to the assassination of Kennedy, Kennedy’s vice-presidential candidate Lyndon B
Johnson and his wife were assaulted in Dallas by a “mink coat mob” of housewives who
have been racked up into a fury by ultra-conservative congressman Bruce Alger’s
rhetoric, who organized the demonstration where the assault took place.
Alger had become a darling of the conservative Dallas housewife. He drew many of
them into the local chapter of the John Birch Society.
The book Dallas 1963 by Bill Minutaglio and Steven L Davis depicts Bruce Alger as
the most extreme member of Congress. The book also documents interesting
connections between Alger, Major General Edwin Walker, ultra-conservative Dallas
Morning News publisher Ted Dealey, ultra-conservative oil man H. L. Hunt,
pro-segregationist preacher WA Criswell, and the secretive John Birch Society to the
JFK assassination but do not consider the connections in light of Harry Dean’s
information.
However, upon further research an investigative report called General Edwin Walker,
The Meetings in LA and the JFK Assassination revealed details that of Harry Dean’s
account. As the title suggest, Los Angeles was the location of the alleged meeting,
not Dallas where Walker resided at the time.
John H. Rousselot is the congressman identified in the report.
Rousselot worked as a management consultant and as Western regional director for the
John Birch Society. His long-time association with this group created controversy
during his career as a Congressman. Two of his allies during this time were Walker,
and the segregationist Reverend Billy James Hargis.
The report states Rousellot been in the meeting and had owned the building that the
meeting had been held in where Walker had talked about a plot to assassinate President
Kennedy and had selected a patsy by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald because Oswald
had communist ties, had defected to Russia, had started a chapter of the Fair Play For
Cuba Committee in New Orleans, and had gone on a New Orleans radio show
proclaiming he was a Marxist. Since a huge portion of the Anti-Castro Cuban
community had been absorbed into the John Birch Society, there is little doubt that
they loved Walker’s idea of using Oswald as the patsy simply because they understood
that could become an Operation Northwoods type operation and trigger a US invasion
of Cuba.
The report states two InterPen (Intercontinental Penetration Force) members who had
been selected to help set up Oswald with documents that back up the fact that they had
meetings with Oswald and had been in Dallas, Texas.
The report also covers a source who stated under oath that two weeks before the
assassination and one day after Walker had travelled to New Orleans and had a meeting
with two employees of Guy Banister, this source delivered a package to the one of the
two InterPen members in Dallas who had been there to set up Oswald.
Included is as an extensive overview of the JFK assassination that proves beyond any
reasonable doubt that it was a conspiracy.
When Russo was shown a picture of Clay Shaw, he said that he had seen the man at Ferrie’s
service station.
During his testimony at his trial in New Orleans, Clay Shaw categorically denied ever
knowing or meeting Lee Harvey Oswald. He did admit knowing Ferries roommate Layton
Martens but denied knowing that Martens was associated with David Ferric.
Nicholas and Matilda Tadin testified to the contrary at Shaw's trial. The Tadins knew
Ferrie as a flight instructor for their teenage son. In the summer of 1964 they saw
Ferrie and Shaw exit together from a hangar at Lakefront Airport in New Orleans.
Nicholas Tadin quoted Ferrie as saying that Shaw was a friend of his
and that he was in charge of the International Trade Mart.
According to an eyewitness Clay Shaw attended a meeting with Cubans at Ferrie’s residence.
Clay Shaw - Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald used the alias A J Hidell and there is evidence that Clay Shaw used the
alias Lambert. An affidavit accompanying the HSCA RG 233 document claims that Georgian
Edward J Girnus stated in 1967 that one of Clay Shaw's aliases was Lambert. Girnus told
Assistant District Attorney James Alcock that he had met with Clay Shaw and Oswald in
New Orleans during April 1963 to discuss the purchase of guns. Shaw told Girnus that he
knew people who wanted to buy guns. After Shaw made a phone call, Oswald and an
unknown man entered the office to discuss the deal. Girnus also said that he witnessed
Shaw and Oswald at a party held at an old colonial house that he thought was owned by
Shaw.
Clay Shaw was also on the board of directors of the Foreign Policy Association of New
Orleans with Alton Ochsner. Ochsner was a big part INCA, the Information Council of the
Americas. INCA was involved in a sustained propaganda campaigns and psychological
warfare throughout the Americas.
INCA was financed largely by two familiar names - Patrick J Frawley, who also was a
significant donor to the American Security Council - and the Texas oilman Clint
Murchison.
Murchison was so close to Ochsner that Murchison also paid for construction of
Ochsner’s medical clinic and also bought Ochsner a race track that Ochsner later sold
for half a million dollars. The two also played poker together at the interestingly
named Koon Kreek Klub in Texas.
INCA created broadcasts, called Truth Tapes, which would be recycled through targeted
areas. Domestically, stage rallies and fund raisers to both energize its base and collect
funds to redouble its efforts. By this time, as Carpenter and others point out, Butler
was now in communication with people like Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA,
and Ed Lansdale, the legendary psy-ops master within the Agency whose focus on Cuba
was increasing at the time.
The daughter of Julius Rosenwald of Sears Roebuck & Co fame, Edith Rosenwald Stern of
New Orleans was the owner of NBC-affiliate WDSU TV and radio, and a friend of Clay Shaw.
In 1967, Edith established a fund to aid in the legal defense of Clay Shaw. She also
a member of INCA.
Interestingly, the Stern’s WDSU radio did not only broadcast the staged interview /
debate of Lee Harvey Oswald with INCA officials, WDSU TV filmed the footage of Oswald in
New Orleans passing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets. Those two instances were used to
help build the perception that Oswald was a communist.
Another person linked to INCA was Carlos Bringuier. The address on the leaflets
distributed by Oswald was 544 Camp Street, New Orleans. This was also the office of Carlos
Bringuier.
Bringuier was a CIA operative in the Cuban exile community and leader of the DRE, one of
its most important groups in New Orleans.
In August of 1963, Bringuier was also involved in a “scuffle” with Oswald as he
distributed literature for the FPCC, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. This resulted in
the arrest of Oswald for disturbing the peace. This resulted in a documented police record
of Oswald’s communist activities just months prior to the assassination of JFK.
The fallout of this “scuffle” led to the aforementioned interview/debate broadcast on WDSU
radio.
Butler's role in the assassination tale now gets even more interesting. For as Time
magazine noted in its 11/29/63 issue, "Even before Lee Oswald was formally charged with
the murder, CBS put on the air an Oswald interview taped by a New Orleans station last
August." That night, according to New Orleans Magazine, Butler and the INCA staff churned
out news releases about Oswald in order to offset the "rightist" and "John Bircher" charges
flying about. Then, Senator Thomas Dodd, who ran the Senate Internal Security
Subcommittee, was called up by Butler. Conservative Democrat Dodd was very friendly with
the CIA and was a personal and professional enemy of Kennedy. Dodd was out of
Washington on November 22nd but booked a special flight back and announced to his staff,
"I am a friend of the new administration!" Dodd then began to mimic and deride those who
were bereaved over Kennedy's death. He topped it all off with this: "I'll say of John Kennedy
what I said of Pope John the day he died. It will take us fifty years to undo the damage he
did to us in three years."
Dodd then invited his acquaintance Ed Butler to testify before his Senate Sub-Committee, a
kind of parallel to Richard Nixon's red-baiting House on Un-American Activities Committee.
Dodd later wrote of this episode that he was in contact with Butler just a few hours after
Kennedy was shot --- when Oswald was still alive! Further, Dodd added that Butler's
testimony convinced him and his colleagues that "Oswald's commitment to communism,
and the pathological hatred of his own country fostered by this commitment, had played an
important part in making him into an assassin. This important and historical record
completely demolishes the widespread notion that Oswald was a simple crackpot who acted
without any understandable motivation." In other words, Oswald really was a communist,
and he alone killed Kennedy for that cause. (Hale Boggs was so enamored of Butler that he
invited him to serve on the Warren Commission.)
Finally, apparently completing Butler's public relations tour, the tape of the WDSU interview
was forwarded by the CIA to Ted Shackley at the Miami station and used in the CIA's
broadcasts into Latin America, furthering the legend about Oswald the communist
killing President Kennedy. Declassified files reveal that the label on the box with the
tape says, "From DRE to Howard". This means that Bringuier's group (DRE) probably gave a
copy to Howard Hunt who forwarded it to Shackley who, in spite of later denials, was still
funding the DRE at the time of the assassination.
Upon the launch of Garrison’s investigation of the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald in New
Orleans. Alton Ochsner told a friend that he feared Garrison would order his arrest and
the seizure of INCA's corporate records.
The Executive Director of INCA, Ed Butler took these records to California where Patrick
J. Frawley arranged for them to be hidden. Ronald Reagan, the governor of California
refused all of Garrison's extradition requests. Frawley had previously helped fund
Reagan's political campaigns in California.
Ed Butler had history with Clay Shaw. He originally sought financing from Clay Shaw for
his anti-communist campaigns. This included the establishment of two organizations: Free
Voice of Latin America (FVLA) and the American Institute for Freedom Project (AIFP). Butler
employed Guy Banister to work for the AIFP.s
So now with a substantial amount of connections established linking these military
industrial complex intelligence networks to the JFK assassination, we can view the story of
Oswald’s alleged attempted assassination of General Edwin Walker.
Let‘s first take a look at some of the background information of the alleged source of the
claim - Marina Oswald.
At the time of the assassination of John F Kennedy, Marina lived rent free in a house with
Ruth Paine in Irving, Texas. This, on the surface seems odd. How did this obscure
relationship and arrangement develop?
Meet George de Mohrenschildt.
de Mohrenschildt was the son of a wealthy Russian noble. His family ran the Branobel Oil
Company on the coast of Caspian Sea.
In 1915, the government of Nicholas II dispatched George’s uncle, Ferdinand von
Mohrenschildt to Washington to plead for American intervention in the First World War.
He stayed in the country and eventually married the step-granddaughter of President
Woodrow Wilson.
After the Russian Revolution, George, his siblings and his father managed to escape to
Poland.
He claimed that he was involved in a pro-Nazi plot to kill Joseph Stalin. De Mohrenschildt
reached the United States in 1938. British intelligence warned the American government that
they suspected that de Monrenschildt was working for German intelligence.
While in New York, George worked under Pierre Fraiss who was connected with French
intelligence. De Mohrenschildt agreed to collect information on people involved in
"pro-German activity". In 1939 he went to work for Humble Oil, a company that was
co-founded by Prescott Bush. During this period de Mohrenschildt also met
George H. W. Bush.
In 1941 de Mohrenschildt went to work for his cousin, Baron Maydell, and his company,
Film Facts, in New York City. Maydell was also known to have pro-Nazi sympathies. During
this period he made a documentary about the resistance movement in Poland. Later that
year he failed in his attempt to join the OSS.
After the Second World War de Mohrenschildt moved to Venezuela where he worked for
Pantepec Oil, a company owned by the family of William F. Buckley.
In 1950 he launched an oil investment firm with Edward Hooker with offices in New York City,
Denver and Abilene. In 1952 De Mohrenschildt moved to Dallas where he worked for the oil
millionaire, Clint Murchison. He joined the Dallas Petroleum Club and became a regular at
Council on World Affairs meetings, a right-wing organization established by Neil Mallon.
De Mohrenschildt also joined the Texas Crusade for Freedom. Other members included
Earle Cabell, Everette DeGolyer, Harold Byrd, Ted Dealey, Paul Raigorodsky, George Bouhe,
Neil Mallon and Lewis MacNaughton.
In Edward Jay Epstein’s book ‘I'm a Patsy’ (1977), de Mohrenschildt’s account of how he
came to know of the Oswalds - "Early in the summer of 1962 the rumours spread out among
the Russian-speaking people of Dallas and Fort Worth of an unusual couple-the Oswalds...
(Lee) had lived in Minsk where I had spent my early childhood. And so I was curious to meet
the couple and to find out what had happened to Minsk. Someone gave me Lee's address
and one afternoon a friend of mine, Colonel Lawrence Orloff and I drove to Fort Worth, about
30 miles from Dallas (to meet them)."
Over the next few months George took Oswald to anti-Castro meetings in Dallas.
He later told Edward Jay Epstein that he was asked by J. Walton Moore to find out about
Oswald's time in the Soviet Union. In return he was given help with an oil deal he was
negotiating with Papa Doc Duvalier, the Haitian dictator. In March 1963,
De Mohrenschildt got the contract from the Haitian government. He had assumed that this
was because of the help he had given to the CIA.
In February, 1963 George de Mohrenschildt introduced Marina Oswald and Lee Harvey
Oswald to Ruth Paine. On 24th April, 1963, Marina and her daughter went to live with Paine.
Oswald rented a room in Dallas but stored some of his possessions in Ruth Paine’s garage.
Ruth also helped Oswald to get a job at the Texas School Book Depository.
After Kennedy was murdered, the Dallas police rushed to the Paine's home. From that
garage and elsewhere, via the Paines, came most of the incriminating evidence against
Oswald.
Michael Paine was overheard talking to his wife on the phone on the day of the
assassination. He said that he felt sure Lee Harvey Oswald had killed the President but did
not feel Oswald was responsible, and further stated, 'We both know who is responsible.”
Page 66 of Warren Commission document 206, finally declassified in 1976, was part of a
from an FBI report, showing that on the day after the assassination a telephone call was
intercepted in Dallas in which confirms the overheard conversation.
When asked by the Warren Commission if he recalled going to any meeting yourself in
October 1963, with or without Oswald, at which General Walker was present?
Paine replied “General Walker was present at the Oswald mentioned U.N.-U.S. Day
meeting held by the rightists, which occurred a day or two or two nights before the ACLU
meeting. He had been to that by himself. I had gone that same evening to a John Birch
meeting. We were not together, but they were two things that occurred simultaneously,
and that's where Lee, by his report at the ACLU meeting said he was and Walker was there.”
So, Paine was also a member of the John Birch Society. I wonder what really happened
at that meeting, I guess we will never know but I’d bet a lot of the concocted Oswald
backstory came out of those JBS meetings
Paine also claimed to be a ACLU member - which he could well have been infiltrating himself.
He interestingly made sure to create separation between Oswald and the JBS in an attempt
to cover up those connections.
Michael Paine’s interesting connections don’t end there, he was also a descendant of the
Cabots on both sides. His cousin Thomas Dudley Cabot, former president of United Fruit,
had offered their Gibraltar Steamship as a cover for the CIA during the Bay of Pigs. Another
cousin was Alexander Cochrane Forbes, a director of United Fruit and trustee of Cabot,
Cabot, and Forbes. Both Allen Dulles and John J. McCloy were part of the United Fruit team.
The Paine family had links with circles of the OSS and the CIA.
Ruth Hyde Paine maintained close ties with the Forbes families. Peter Dale Scott
investigated the Paines, "the patrician Paine and Forbes families." A far cry from anybody's
neighbor.
Michael's education came as a tradition, third generation physicist at Harvard before
working for Bell Helicopter.
At this point the powers behind the Birchers and Birchers themselves had evolved their
alleged fight against communism into a delusion cult of smear artists attacking all
those who opposed the financier backer’s business interests, didn’t religiously agree
with their beliefs and fit with their agenda. Their fight had become more about
gaining their own political control than a fight against communism. Unfortunately,
this development benefited the likes of H. L. Hunt, who was
interested in implementing his political agenda by fusing right wing anti-communism
with fundamental religion.
The incitement of anti-communist sentiments and the ability to channel the resulting
angry energy of the movement’s supporters into his hands and directing it against his
political rivals provided Hunt with his desired political power and influence.
This underlying concept was the bedrock not only in this notable chapter in history
but also the foundation of the emergence of fundamentalism on the right.
A trend that would continue under the influence of the Hunt family.
In 1967, Nelson Bunker Hunt formed Christian World Liberation Front (CWLF) as a covert
front for Campus Crusade, which split off and became a leading ministry in the Jesus
People movement.
In the same year Hunt provided Cameron Townsend, founder of the Summer Institute of
Linguistics (SIL) and the Wycliffe Bible Translators, with property in Dallas for a
new international translation center. Thy Will Be Done, by Gerard Colby and Charlotte
Dennett, documents the business and political connections between Wycliffe Bible
Translators, the Rockefeller family, and the CIA. The book recounts missionaries used
as intel gathers to assist counter insurgency forces. The result of the dealings was
the genocide of indigenous tribes in the Amazon basin and the exploitation of
resources in virgin rainforest for the benefit of Rockefeller’s fossil fuel empire.
Continuing on the tradition of his father’s Youth Freedom Speakers, Nelson funded
Ed McAteer, "the Colgate-Palmolive salesman who was the organizing force behind
the politicized Fundamentalist movement... The sheer human energy amassed by
wealthy SIL backers like North Carolina's James A. Jones, one of the
largest contractors for military bases in Vietnam, and oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt of
Texas. 'Bunker Hunt had helped me considerable,' McAteer freely offered.
Texas's corporate leaders were prominent in helping Townsend build SIL's International
Linguistics Center near Dallas; the Linguistics Center's board meeting was one of those
special occasions where a Rockefeller business partner like Trammel Crow could rub
shoulders with an ultra rightist like Nelson Bunker Hunt. But they were the old core
of supporters.
In 1970, Hunt donated $10 million to Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasters Network.
The two would become significant figures in the Council for National Policy, the
religious right networking group.
Hunt was one of the main sponsors of the conservative organization Western Goals
Foundation, founded in 1979 by General John K. Singlaub, journalist John Rees, and
Democratic Congressman from Georgia Larry McDonald. Each of the founders Western
Goals was also a member of the World Anti-Communist League.
Western Goals Foundation was the private domestic intelligence agency of the John
Birch Society. It went defunct in 1986 when the Tower Commission revealed it had
been part of Oliver North's Iran–Contra funding network.
The former FBI agent Dan Smoot who had previous been the face of H. L. Hunt’s Facts
Forum was also a member.
Other notable people associated with the group include Manhattan Project famed
nuclear scientist Edward Teller and the previously highlighted lawyer Roy Cohn.
Teller would go on to be a member of the Board of Governors of the CNP at the time
of its founding as well as being a part of the American Security Council's Coalition
for Peace Through Strength. He purportedly attended secretive Bohemian Grove
gatherings.
During the mid-1980s, Hunt contributed almost half a million U.S. dollars to The
National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty (NEPL), a conservative
fundraising organization later heavily implicated in the Iran–Contra affair.
NEPL was a shell company used by Oliver North to provide funds and support
right-wing death squads who were fighting the left-wing Sandinista government. The
company was a way for wealthy American citizens who were sympathetic to Reagan’s
Contra policy to donate large sums of money and arms to Nicaragua. The company used
the International Business Communications (IBC) to funnel money from illegal arm
sales to Iran to the Contras.
Hunt also made a contribution of $1 million to the Moral Majority in 1981,
according to Perry Dean Young.
Hunt was a major figure in the formation years of the aforementioned Council for
National Policy. A christian right wing networking group linking wealthy
financiers with a vast array of christian leaders, politicians, media people,
think tank heads and the like into a formidable political machine in the begin of
the Reagan era.
From the information publicly available - Hunt was the vice president of the CNP
between 1982-1983; President Executive Committee 1983-1984 CNP Executive Committee
1988, and was listed as a member in 1998.
The New Right played an important role in the 1980 election of President Ronald
Reagan and sought to consolidate its gains by expanding its ~institutional presence
in Washington, D.C. The CNP organizes support for confrontational policies long
sought by Radical Rightists and ultra-conservative hawks. Support for the peace
through strength labelled "Reagan Doctrine" developed by the military industrial
complex and establishment financed neoconservative think tanks.
The Coalition for Peace Through Strength was an arm of the aforementioned American
Security Council.
The CNP also addresses domestic social and cultural issues along the lines of the
goals of the Campus Crusade for Christ.
In many foreign policy matters and domestic issues, the CNP also frequently reflects
a slick, updated repackaging of John Birch Society philosophy. The Birch influence
on the political goals of the CNP is significant. The JBS was with CNP from the
beginning. As mentioned ealier, Nelson Bunker Hunt, was a prime mover in the John
Birch Society and a key player in the founding years of the CNP's. By 1984,
JBS Chairman A. Clifford Barker and Executive Council Member William Cies were CNP
members. Other JBS leaders also joined the Council. Five board members of Western
Goals Foundation joined the CNP as well.
Hunt was also a member of the Military and Hospitaller Order of Saint Lazarus of
Jerusalem, a "brotherhood" modeled after the Hospitallers. "Its international
membership is consisting of Roman Catholic, Anglican, Protestant, Orthodox, United,
Old Catholic, New Apostolic and other Christians"
In 1975, Percy Foreman was indicted by a federal grand jury for obstruction of
justice. Also indicted in this case were Nelson Bunker Hunt and W. Herbert Hunt,
the sons of the Dallas oil man H. L. Hunt. The grand jury charged that the Hunt
brothers paid the attorney $100,000 to insure that Foreman’s clients (Rothermel &
Curington) would not testify against them. The two men, allegedly employed by the
Hunt to conduct illegal wiretaps, were offered money by Foreman to accept a jail term
rather than testify the principals involved in the case. Naturally, the
distinguished attorney never told his clients that he was really working for the
Hunts.
As the trial was about to begin, Foreman claimed that he was too ill to continue.
After Senator James O. Eastland made several inquiries with the Justice Department,
the defendants, including Nelson Hunt, were allowed to plead no contest to a lesser
charge and pay a fine. The New York Times reported that great political pressure
was brought in Washington to keep the Hunts from going to trial, and that Eastland,
the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had denied that he had received
$50,000 from the Hunts for his lobbying efforts.
