Atomic Agent Oswald

Linked from Lewis Strauss and JFK

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“We must always remember Bertrand Russell’s profound unanswered question after he had received an advanced copy of the Warren Report. ‘If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security?’ Russell’s question…has never been answered.” –John Chuckman (‘Forty Years of Lies’ November 12, 2003)

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   The persistence of secrecy and withholding of classified documents on Oswald, not to mention testimony from witnesses and government agents, suggests something greater at stake than the mere revealing of another government agent. Were Oswald an “atomic agent” trained in counter-proliferation and supervised in some measure by the FBI and AEC, national nuclear security can dictate endless official silence and justify the words of investigators that “we will never know the truth” about the Kennedy assassination.

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Proposition to the field:

   While there is no absolute proof of an “atomic agent Oswald”, decades of diligence in JFK assassination research has produced an abundance of evidence giving a high probability to such a case. It lacks only a voice and a statement, so I’m going to make that case here, as expansively as I can, incorporating “new knowledge” learned from radiation-caused polio and other sources of background that also define a role for the atomic energy chief, Admiral Lewis Strauss.

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*                                                         L.L.Strauss in upper left background

 

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“Hoover lied his eyes out to the [Warren] Commission, on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it…” –Congressman Hale Boggs, House Majority Leader and former member of the Warren Commission (ref. p.314, Official and Confidential, The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, by Anthony Summers)

Here’s what we know:

—Oswald worked for the FBI, having pay vouchers in his possession (which provoked a secret session of the Warren Commission) because the FBI was required by law of the 1946 Atomic Energy Act to provide security and policing to the newborn nuclear industry. In 1949, due to discoveries about missing atomic materials, the FBI entered into a tentative “dual agent” program with AEC Commissioner Lewis L. Strauss (exclusively, unbeknownst to his co-commissioners) which failed on its face. In a series of declassified memos, dated 1949-53, it appears that Hoover delegated his authority to develop such a program to Strauss after he became AEC chairman in 1953. The fate or function of any dual FBI/AEC counterintelligence program is unknown.

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    Atomic plant security harbors a ghastly record; Strauss was the official “atomic plant” director after resigning his Commissioner’s seat in 1950, concurrent with his interim job as personal banker to the Rockefeller Brothers. It is unthinkable to suppose non-existing counterintelligence  security for the industrial safety of atomic reactors and weapons. We should expect that measures were taken and nuclear allies assured, even as the Atomic Energy Commission prepared a drastic downsizing of its participation due to scheduled privatization. The atomic agency itself was growing large, adding thousands of employees.  By 1960-62, the AEC was cutting many of its contractors loose, subject to the vagaries of commercial markets. Arms treaties with the Soviets hung in the balance.

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—J.Edgar Hoover expressed official concern for Oswald’s welfare (and the disposition of his passport) in Russia to the State Department in June of 1960 prompted by a letter to the FBI from his mother Marguerite, received earlier in May. Hoover may have been “discharging his duty” to atomic security in displaying this interest.

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—Oswald worked for the CIA, as sworn testimony suggests but does not describe, in preparing for his travel and stay in Russia which originated through his service with U-2 spy plane operations in 1957-58. The  CIA’s U-2 program functioned under the security umbrella of the Atomic Energy Commission, initiated while Adm. Strauss was AEC chair (1953-58). Strauss had full U-2 clearance and was additionally an extraordinary sponsor and friend to Edwin Land (of Polaroid), the key designer of U-2 program development.

–Oswald indeed, especially in New Orleans, became closely involved with the flow of small arms and ammunition and there is speculative evidence that nuclear materials were moved by that flow. Key persons and agencies connected to the JFK assassination had direct and profitable activities in atomic industry. Even a reframing of the U.S. Public Health Service particle accelerator story given by Ed Haslam in Dr. Mary’s Monkey, has more ominous implications if used to “recharge” or transform nuclear fuel from a spent or raw state to weapons and reactor grade material.

–Accepting the atomic agent premise, Oswald was a “special” special agent, perhaps on a solitary mission for the “common task” enunciated after the Kennedy-Krushchev  talks to halt nuclear proliferation in anticipation of a long sought test-ban. Agent Oswald entered the USSR in October of 1959  as the superpowers suspended atmospheric testing on the initiation of the Soviets with the consideration of a future treaty. Eisenhower described the suspension as a “moratorium on atomic weapons”. Edward Teller, director of the Livermore weapons lab through the Eisenhower-Kennedy transition, lodged a statement in his autobiography that he authorized the secret manufacture of nuclear weapons continuously, against the policy of a moratorium.

–Creation of the false “Oswald” trail in New Orleans by the CIA began January 20, 1961, the day of Kennedy’s inauguration and two weeks before Oswald himself first petitioned to return to the U.S.

–Former CIA agent Victor Marchetti suggested to BBC journalist Anthony Summers that Oswald worked for the ONI, restated by Jim Marrs in Crossfire: “...They were sent into the Soviet Union or into eastern Europe, with the specific intention the Soviets would pick them up and ‘double’ them if they suspected them of being U.S. agents, or recruit them as KGB agents. They were trained at various naval installations both here and abroad, but the operation was being run out of Nag’s Head, North Carolina.” –p117, Crossfire

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                                                                   New Orleans International Trade Mart, scene of Oswald’s street performance handing out pro-Cuba leaflets in the summer of 1963. The Trade Mart, managed by Clay Shaw until 1965, was the model for another World Trade Center connected to Shaw, called the Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC) in Rome, Italy

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Getting a Clue from Cuba

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In February of 1962, ten months after the Bay of Pigs invasion, a medical team of Americans led by Dr. Albert Sabin launched a mass vaccination campaign in Cuba using his OPV, oral polio vaccine, that Sabin had co-developed with the Soviets in 1956. Historically, Cuba recorded its first early cases of polio among U.S. residents living at the Isla de Pinos in 1906-09,(a likely after-effect of popular X-ray treatments in those days). “The epidemics subsequently intensified, by 1934 becoming periodic every four to five years…  Between 1957 and 1961, the disease.. reached epidemic levels [during peak fallout from atomic tests!]… In 1962..using the Sabin oral vaccine and targeting the entire pediatric population in a single time period, five million doses were administered in the first campaign.” www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/20133175944.html;jsessionid=F7B2770745445DAEA5B2E1EEB78586D1

   Polio in Cuba, and the presence of the vaccinators, prior to the Missile Crisis of October 1962 was the first inkling to this researcher that uranium or radiation-emitting products, other than fallout or Russian rockets, were moving around the island.  Inevitably,  pursuit of explanations for polio records, be it in Cuba, Canada, San Francisco or New Orleans leads to some unusual territory. Precisely such a polio pursuit concerning a major epidemic in Brooklyn New York back in 1916, led to the career origin of a young law student named John J. McCloy who was later appointed by LBJ to the Warren Commission. McCloy, at the time of Kennedy’s death, was a chief nuclear disarmament negotiator. Additionally, McCloy had another shadowy role as the chairman of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif. [see http://www.smokershistory.com/Salk.htm ], where he finctioned as the “eyes and ears of Lewis Strauss”.  Jonas Salk, president of his eponymous lab, announced in 1962 that cancer was going to be prevented by vaccines. It must have been a comforting litany to the many Manhattan Project scientists who worked for the Salk. One of the founding funders of the institute, Colorado oilman John W. King, failed to bribe Jim Garrison with a judgeship to drop the prosecution against Clay Shaw.

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McCloy, “bankers’ lawyer” and representative for the ‘Seven Sisters’  (all seven oil majors), Truman’s Asst.Secretary of War and Kennedy’s arms negotiator, was alleged to be present in Texas at the Murchison family ranch meeting on Nov.21, 1963. McCloy’s best lifetime friendships were among the partners of Kuhn, Loeb & Co: Benjamin Buttenweiser, Freddie Warburg [who lived next door in Connecticut], and Lewis Strauss. McCloy’s other next-door neighbor, close friend, and tennis rival, was Henry C. (‘Harry’) Brunie, president of the Empire Trust.

   “In [Warren] Commission arguments over the ‘single-bullet theory’, it was McCloy who finally proposed that the evidence supporting this theory be called ‘persuasive’..” –p.467, Crossfire, by Jim Marrs, 1989

   “The figure of John McCloy stands at the crossroads of several different Rockefeller worlds…” p243, The Seven Sisters, by Anthony Sampson, 1975 “When President Kennedy took office in January 1961 McCloy advised him…   At the very same time he was practicing as a very highly paid lawyer in the prestigious firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley and McCloy, and from that office, it later transpired, he represented the antitrust interests of all seven of the Seven Sisters: ‘My job,’ as he described it to [author Sampson] later, ‘was to keep ’em out of jail.’ …McCloy appeared as part of that discreet ‘supragovernment’ which remains while Presidents come and go…” p198, ibid.

McCloy began his law career of distinction with the firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore in the 1920s.

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   Mid-way between the Cuban polio inoculations and the Missile Crisis, In June ’62, Lee H. Oswald made his homecoming after spending more than a year petitioning for his exit from the USSR. Oswald spent almost three years with the Soviets. That same month of June ’62, a Russian KGB officer named Yuri Nosenko made his first contact with the CIA in Switzerland. Nosenko, “since the age of twenty-two..had served in Soviet intelligence. In 1949 he joined Soviet naval intelligence… In 1953 he resigned..to work for the State Security Agency, known.. by the initials KGB… From February to June 1962 he was attached to the Soviet disarmament delegation in Geneva as chief security officer. It was then that he first contacted an American diplomat and asked to be taken to see a CIA officer.” [p.5, Legend, by Edward J. Epstein]. Nosenko initially agreed to remain an ‘agent in place’ and carry on his normal KGB routines but after JFK’s assassination, he urgently pressed the CIA  to expedite his defection to the U.S.  He again slipped out of a Geneva disarmament conference in January of 1964 and told his handlers he had information about Lee Harvey Oswald; “Nosenko explained that..he was the KGB officer appointed to make a ‘complete investigation’ of the Oswald affair… He could therefore testify from his firsthand inspection of the complete files that the KGB had no connection to Oswald.” [p.11,ibid.] “At Langley, [Richard] Helms realized..[the]CIA could not afford to lose a potentially valuable witness to Oswald’s activities in the Soviet Union. He took the matter to John McCone, the Director of the CIA.” [pp13-14, ibid.] and previously Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission under Eisenhower. Lewis Strauss, the AEC predecessor chairman, claimed to have hand-picked his successor McCone.

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       JFK, Dulles, and McCone                           Nosenko (was he affirming the Kennedy-Krushchev ‘common task’ of nonproliferation?) “Nosenko had made his first contact with U.S. officials..on June 3, 1962. That was two days after the Oswalds left the Soviet Union.” p212 footnote, Reasonable Doubt, 1985, by Henry Hurt

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war profiteer John A. McCone, Bechtel-McCone, AEC, CIA, shareholder in Big Oil’s ‘sister’ Standard Oil of California (Socal). Author Anthony Sampson (‘The Seven Sisters’, 1975) said McCone’s “relationship with government has been shrouded in mystery.” p234, The Seven Sisters

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“McCone was an ardent Cold War warrior and in 1956 attacked the suggestion made by Adlai Stevenson that there should be a nuclear test ban. McCone, a strong supporter of Dwight Eisenhower, accused American scientists of being “taken in” by Soviet propaganda and of attempting to “create fear in the minds of the uninformed that radioactive fallout from H-bomb tests endangers life.”

In 1958 President Dwight Eisenhower rewarded McCone by appointing him Chairman of the Atomic Energy commission. After the Bay of Pigs disaster, President John F. Kennedy sacked Allen W. Dulles as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Under pressure from right-wingers in the intelligence community, Kennedy appointed McCone as the new director of the CIA.”  http://www.spartacus-educational.com/JFKmccone.htm

“...at his Senate confirmation hearing, [McCone] faced charges of having tried to oust members of the faculty at the California Institute of Technology (where McCone was a trustee) because of their expressed views on nuclear testing.” p53, The Weapons Culture, 1968, by Ralph E. Lapp

It is repeated often by author/researchers on the JFK assassination that CIA sources claimed McCone was not told about Cuban-exile guerilla activities or plots against Castro and Kennedy, conspiracies in which Oswald took part especially –could it be that end-running on McCone (if it’s true) was done to conceal Oswald’s involvement because ex-AEC chief McCone would have recognized an atomic dual-agent? According to Seynour Hersh in The Samson Option: “There was every political reason [for JFK] not to appoint him [to the CIA]: McCone not only was a prominent Republican but had spoken out against the White House’s much-desired test ban treaty… [however] McCone had his own policy goals, and they meshed closely with the young President’s, said [McCone aide Walter] Elder: ‘McCone was most adamant about American nuclear superiority…and nonproliferation.’ ” [p105] “Myron B. Kratzer, the AEC’s director of international affairs… [said] ‘One of McCone’s goals..was to force the Israelis to accept international inspection of Dimona.’ “, then being promoted as an enterprise in peaceful uses, but characterized by Hersh as a “classic example of illicit proliferation.” [p77, The Samson Option, Seynour Hersh, 1991]

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James Douglass wrote, “We have no evidence as to who in the military-industrial complex may have given the order to assassinate President Kennedy. That the order was carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency is obvious. The CIA’s fingerprints are all over the crime and the events leading up to it…  Investigative journalist Joseph Trento testified in a 1984 court deposition that, according to CIA sources, James Angleton was the supervisor of a CIA assassination unit in the 1950s. The ‘small assassination team’ was headed by Army colonel Boris Pash… Trento testified that his sources confirmed, ‘Pash’s assassination unit was assigned to Angleton’. ” [p142, JFK and the Unspeakable, by James Douglass, 2008]

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     Boris Pash  Pash with LBJ at Parkland Hospital –for more images of this ‘unidentified man’ with LBJ see https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/jfk-file-pash-at-parkland/

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>>>incidentally, some JFK researchers identify the man above with LBJ as Dallas Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels, of whom no photos exist wearing eyeglasses. “In 1963, Secret Service agents, like their FBI counterparts, wore crewcuts, dark suits, and narrow ties.”–p320, Crossfire— just as he is pictured below on the left. “Dallas Secret Service agent-in-charge Forest V. Sorrels was the only Secret Service agent to return to the scene of the assassination within an hour or so.” –p321, Crossfire, by Jim Marrs, 1989.  Sorrels claimed to have entered the Book Depository unchallenged with nobody asking for his credentials, possibly much sooner than “an hour or so” before the building was closed and guarded. Other claims posit Sorrels return to the TSBD from Parkland within 20-25  minutes.

   Later throughout the day on 11-22, Sorrels came and went from the police department hallway crowded with photographers, a number of them known to him, yet no individual with the likeness of “Pash” (as above) was captured on camera. Though controversial, Boris Pash may have had his own covert reasons for being at Parkland Hospital in addition to his work with the CIA’s Health Alteration Committee which was developing a bioweapon for use against Fidel Castro. One of those weapons was the ‘cancer vaccine’ project underway in New Orleans over the summer of 1963, involving Oswald, David Ferrie, Judith Vary (Baker), and as the evidence seems to indicate, Drs. Mary Sherman and Alton Ochsner.

   During WWII, Pash’s subordinate Col. Willard White was married to LBJ’s sister Josefa, and not long after that under the Truman administration, LBJ sat on the powerful congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy.

* * Forrest V. Sorrels, the image on the left, also from a newspaper, was possibly taken on 11-22-63

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   By the time of the Kennedy assassination, Pash had already made his mark on history: “Lt. Col. Boris T. Pash at G-2 Army Intelligence in San Francisco [was] Chief of Counterintelligence for the Ninth Army Corps on the West Coast… He had spent much of his career hunting communists… After America entered World War II, he assisted in the internment of Japanese-Americans [in a program conceived and authorized by Asst. Sec. of War John J. McCloy]...and then was assigned as the Manhattan Project’s chief counterintelligence officer.” [pp.190-191, American Prometheus, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, 2005]

   “Pash served from 1949 through 1952 as the CIA’s Chief of Program Branch 7 (PB/7), a special operations unit within the Office of Policy Coordination [OPC], the original CIA clandestine service. Pash’s boss, the Director of Operations Planning for OPC, told the Senate [Church Committee] investigators that Colonel Pash’s Program Branch 7 unit was responsible for assassinations and kidnapping as well as ‘special operations’. Pash denied..responsibility for assassinations… Former CIA officer E. Howard Hunt Jr. told the New York Times on December 26, 1975 that in the mid-fifties he had been informed by his superiors that Boris T. Pash was in charge of a.. unit responsible for the ‘assassination of suspected double agents and similar low-ranking officials’…

   “Despite the CIA’s claim that it had no records dealing with assassinations, the Senate committee staff investigators concluded that Pash’s unit was indeed assigned ‘responsibility for assassinations and kidnappings.’ It was documented, for example, that while working in the CIA’s Technical Services Division in the early 1960s, Pash was involved in the attempt to design poisoned cigars destined for Fidel Castro.” [p.254, ibid.]

   Pash also denied ever having worked for the CIA, maintaining that his regular employer, the U.S. Army,  loaned out his services. Over the course of 1953-54, Pash’s service was devoted to AEC Chairman Lewis Strauss in the cause of removing Robert Oppenheimer from any classified position of authority within the nation’s nuclear program. The Oppenheimer Case, which is the subject of American Prometheus by Bird and Sherwin, is also the title of a book by Philip Stern, the son of Edgar and Edith (Rosenwald) Stern of New Orleans, owners of NBC-affiliate WDSU TV and radio, and friends of Clay Shaw.

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John J. McCloy, Earl Warren, and Boris Pash, together, had the common responsibility for implementing McCloy’s Japanese internment program during WWII.

   “Carey McWilliams, the editor of the Nation…observed that ‘no one person had more to do with bringing about the removal of the West Coast Japanese during World War II –citizens and aliens alike; men, women, and children– than Mr. Warren’.” [p.40, Plausible Denial, by Mark Lane]

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         “Allen Dulles used to tell his sister that 1953 and 1954 were the good years at the CIA, when everything seemed to be going right and the Agency was his brother’s strong right arm in helping to reshape the world… For the first time, the CIA now had a budget running at over half a billion dollars, and there was no one outside the Agency Allen needed to tell how the money was spent...” [p.323, Dulles, by Leonard Mosley, 1978]  “...Never before or since has the CIA had more support from the State Department, or, because Secretary Dulles was so powerful, more freedom to infiltrate U.S…offices in foreign countries. [CIA] had complete freedom to undertake projects of enormous tactical or strategical significance with little or no oversight... [p.364, ibid.]

   “In 1955, Allen was able to extend the CIA’s kingdom to the stratosphere. [Literally, with the U-2 aerial reconnaissance program, p.365] …But the trouble with the Agency was that there was such a multiplicity of small activities going on at any given time that no one could keep account of them all, except, perhaps, the finance department, which had to pay for them –sometimes in weird and wonderful ways.” [p.370, Dulles, A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles and Their Family Network, by Leonard Mosley, 1978, Dial Press]

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“Allen Dulles’s interest in Texas seems to have picked up shortly after he left the Kennedy administration. In December 1961, he contacted a colleague..to request contact information for agency officers based in Houston. After the assassination, Johnson would bring Dulles back into government –first as a member of the Warren Commission investigating Kennedy’s death and then as a member of the Gilpatric Committee, a group of advisers on the proliferation of nuclear weapons.” [p99, Family of Secrets, by Russ Baker, 2009]

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The 1964 Gilpatric Committee, including appointees Dulles and McCloy from the Warren Commission, was formed to advise on strategies of nuclear counterproliferation: “The recommendations of the Gilpatric Committee remain largely unknown today. Johnson had prepared to announce a new American counterproliferation policy during a speech to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the United Nations, but Robert Kennedy discussed counterproliferation in a speech a few days earlier, leading Johnson to abandon the theme. The Committee’s report was then kept classified for three decades.” http://www.web.mit.edu/SSP/seminars/wed_archives03spring/gavin.htm

**  The importance of subject matter in Robert Kennedy’s speech mentioned here is that it was RFK’s maiden Senate speech: “Teddy waited fourteen months before making his maiden speech; Bobby made his, a powerful condemnation of nuclear-weapons proliferation, a little more than five months after he was sworn in, earning grumbles from ‘the club’ that it was too soon.” –p116, Good Ted, Bad Ted, by Lester David, 1993

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       Jim Garrison wrote: “Much later in 1978, James A. Wilcott, a former CIA finance officer, told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that Lee Oswald had been recruited from the military by the CIA ‘with the express purpose of a double agent assignment in the USSR.* [footnoted:] Wilcott testified under oath that he had handled the funding for the project to which Oswald was assigned...” [p.49, On the Trail of the Assassins, 1988]

   James Douglass contributes: “Jim Wilcott worked in the finance branch of the Tokyo CIA Station from 1960 to 1964. During the same years [his wife] Elsie Wilcott was a secretary at the Tokyo Station... [Wilcott recounted]..’a man I knew and had worked with before showed up to take a disbursement and told me Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA employee. I didn’t believe him until he told me the cryptonym under which Oswald had drawn funds when he returned from Russia to the U.S…. It was a cryptonym..that I was familiar with…  It was common knowledge in the Tokyo CIA Station that Oswald worked for the Agency.’ In an article based on what he learned at the Tokyo Station, Jim Wilcott wrote: “He had been trained at Atsugi Naval Air Station, a plush super secret cover base for Tokyo Station special operations… Oswald was recruited from the military for the express purpose of becoming a double agent assignment to the USSR… More than once I was told something like ‘so-and-so was working on the Oswald project back in the late ’50s.” [pp 146-147, JFK and the Unspeakable]

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http://s56.podbean.com/pb/a5cb9ca6c4078701ef751d5acb099fc5/551d7f7e/data1/blogs60/722245/uploads/TheRealDealep35mp3.mp3

The image of Boris Pash and LBJ together in Dallas on 11-22-63 at the Parkland suggests the immediacy of an Oswald problem. The above link to Jim Fetzer’s Real Deal program features a description of what happened to the next famous patient brought to the hospital:

(minute 36:30)

   “LBJ, or an LBJ top aide..called Henry Wade in Dallas [to insist] ‘You have your man…just move forward’…

   “Charles Crenshaw, who was one of the trauma room physicians when JFK’s moribund body was brought in… he closed JFK’s eyelids… was responsible two days later to take care of Oswald…[during which] he was notified he had a phone call from the President of the United States… There was that all too familiar voice of Lyndon Johnson saying he wanted a deathbed confession from the assailant. Crenshaw explained to him that actually Oswald seemed to be doing better and he thought [Oswald] was not going to die. Lyndon told [Crenshaw] there’d be a man in a trench coat there waiting to take the confession… and when Crenshaw returned to the room there was a sinister-looking guy in a trench coat whom I believe was David Sanchez Morales –but [then] Oswald took a turn for the worse and died. There was no deathbed confession. But, it’s really a fascinating aspect revealing how much LBJ was personally involving himself in covering up the case.”

   This Real Deal episode, incidentally, concerns the Murchison ranch ‘party’ the night before JFK’s murder, attended by witness Madeleine Brown –LBJ’s mistress– who swore to the occurrence there of a secret high-level closed-door meeting at which J.Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, John McCloy, LBJ and others were present. The Murchison meeting is the presumed green light for the next-day assassination.

An additional Real Deal program recorded in April 2015 with Alan Salerian, discussing the altered Zapruder film, mentions that Oswald’s arrest report was filed by the Dallas police at 1:40 pm, charging him with the murders of Officer Tippet and President Kennedy, ten minutes before Oswald was actually arrested (minute 1:16). The same program offers the location of one of the sniper teams in the open window office of Dallas Uranium and Oil (DUO), a CIA front company in the Dal-Tex building where the shooter had “George [H.W.] Bush supervising him.” (minute 33)  http://www.radiofetzer.blogspot.com.

“Perhaps Dallas homicide had systematically altered evidence not just to nail Oswald… Perhaps it had behaved as it had intentionally, to protect the actual killers of both John Kennedy and J.D. Tippet. If that were true, it would mean we were dealing with something beyond incompetence, even beyond cover-up. It would mean that Dallas homicide– or key members of it– had at worst colluded in the assassination before it happened or at best actively ratified it afterwards.” –Jim Garrison, p203, On The Trail of The Assassins, 1988

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AGENT OSWALD TIMELINE              

Circa late 1953— “Oswald…claimed his first contact with communist ideology came with a pamphlet handed to him on a New York street corner… about the age of 15…” –p98, Crossfire, by Jim Marrs, 1989

October 24, 1956: With his mother’s consent, at age seventeen LHO enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was sent to Camp Pendleton (San Diego/Oceanside, CA) for basic training.

March 18, 1957: LHO was assigned to Jacksonville, FL Naval Air Station for training in RADAR. He graduated in May and proceeded to Keesler AFB in Mississippi for aircraft control, finishing #7 in his class in June when next he was ordered to station in Atsugi Japan.

August 21, 1957: LHO boarded the USS Bexar in San Diego for a 21-day voyage. He served a 13 month tour in Japan.

November 2 1958: Oswald departed Japan for a two-week ride to San Francisco, where he received a new assignment at the El Toro Air base in Santa Ana, CA.

February 25, 1959: Oswald took his first Russian language test.

March 1959: LHO applied to the Albert Schweitzer College in Churwalden Switzerland for the 1960 spring term.

July 1959: filed for help with an early discharge to the Red Cross

August 17, 1959: filed for a ‘dependency discharge’ (to help his mother), approved September3

September 4: filed for a passport in Santa Ana (“to attend Albert Schweitzer College”), rec’d Sept.10

September 11: officially discharged, took a bus to Fort Worth TX, arrived 2am Sept.14

September 16: left TX for New Orleans, received a passport stamp “Import-Export”

September 17: booked passage with Int’l Trade Mart company Travel Consultants Inc. for the freighter Marion Lykes, headed to La Havre France. Oswald self-described as a “shipping export agent”.

Sept.20– shipped out of New Orleans, arrived in France on October 8, 1959; Claim of spending one week in England, then on to Helsinki Finland; received a visa to enter USSR in 24 hours.

October 15, 1959: LHO left Helsinki by train, bound for Moscow, crossing the border at Vainikkala.

—timeline reference source: Legend, The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jay Edward Epstein—

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“In a Moscow interview shortly after arriving in Russia, Oswald told newspaper reporter Aline Mosby: ‘I’m a Marxist…I became interested about the age of 15… An old lady handed me a pamphlet about saving the Rosenbergs… I looked at that paper and I still remember it, I don’t know why.’ Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been convicted of passing atomic bomb secrets to the Russians.” p98, Crossfire, by Jim Marrs

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“In December 1959 [Oswald] dropped out of sight for more than a year. No friends or relatives in the United States heard from him. Oswald’s activities are known today only because of a reconstruction based, often, on the most questionable of sources.” –p210, Reasonable Doubt. “Oswald’s defection and return occurred at a time when the CIA was openly debriefing simple American visitors –to the tune of 25,000 annually– as they returned from the Soviet Union. Even tourists’ snapshots were reviewed and those of CIA interest copied and filed. Through incredible coincidence, the CIA just happened to have a picture taken by a tourist of Oswald on a Minsk street.” –p218, Reasonable Doubt, 1985, by Henry Hurt

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According to Warren Commission testimony, tourist pictures of Oswald in Minsk include those taken by Rita Naman, Monica Kramer, and “Mrs. Marie Hyde” (more below)

 Import-Export; director of the NOLA Trade Mart and Rome CMC  Clay L. Shaw

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  ” In early January of 1960, Oswald was sent to Minsk –one of six Soviet cities to which defectors customarily were sent– and given a job as a metal worker [inspector] in a radar factory… he was given a number of privileges not available to the average Russian worker,  including a comfortable apartment and a relatively high salary.

   “In February 1961, after 15 months in the Soviet Union, Oswald applied at the American Embassy in Moscow to return to the United States.  The following month [March ’61] he met Marina Prusakova…the niece of a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Union’s domestic intelligence service. In April, less than two months after they met, they were married.”– p.50, On The Trail of The Assassins

   ...”[That the] United States government..demonstrat[ed] almost paternal solicitude for Lee Oswald’s welfare even while he was in the Soviet Union comprised, to my mind, a steady uninterrupted pattern. And the preferential treatment did not end with the arrival of Lee and Marina and their young daughter in New York in June of 1962…

   “…Immediately upon his return to the U.S., Oswald..moved to Fort Worth, Texas. There he worked at the Leslie Welding Company until October 7, 1962, when George de Mohrenschildt and his wife came over from Dallas to spend the evening as guests of Lee and Marina at their modest apartment.” –p51, ibid., Garrison

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  George deMohrenschildt of the Dallas Petroleum Club, ‘suicided’  March 29, 1977 after meeting with journalist Jay Edward Epstein, the same day he was later scheduled to meet with House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigator Gaeton Fonzi, a meeting that never took place.

   DeMohrenschildt’s fourth wife Jeanne had moved to Dallas in 1953 where she got a job designing for Nardis sportswear: “While Jeanne designed clothing, her co-worker Abraham Zapruder cut the patterns and material.” [p79, Family of Secrets] ” Jeanne had been born Eugenia Fomenko in 1914 in Harbin China..to Russian parents… [S]he and her first husband, Robert LeGon, had fled Manchuria when it was under Japanese control… Eventually, they made their way to New York, where brother Sergei was working on the top-secret Manhattan Project… [p78, ibid.]

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…“The following day, October 8, Lee packed up and moved to Dallas, 30 miles away, where deMohrenschildt lived. Oswald wasted no time in seeking a new job at the Texas Employment Office in Dallas… [B]efore October 1962 was over, Oswald had obtained a job that, for a former defector to the Soviet Union, seemed quite unlikely. Jagger-Stovall-Chiles, under a contract with the Pentagon, was engaged in the production of charts and maps for military use. Writer Henry Hurt has observed that ‘part of the work appeared to be related to the top-secret U-2 missions, some of which were making flights over Cuba’. This job required an extremely high security classification. Lee Harvey Oswald not only was given the job within one week of his arrival in Dallas, but also had access to a variety of classified materials.

   …”Socially, despite his ‘defection’ and his ostensibly vocal allegience to communism, Oswald and his family were welcomed with open arms by the White Russian community of Dallas… Oswald’s most frequent associate in Dallas, I discovered, was George de Mohrenschildt… His father, Baron Sergius de Mohrenschildt, had been governor of the province of Minsk for the czar. The family had fled from the communists after the 1917 revolution. De Mohrenschildt spoke Russian, French, German, Spanish and Polish. In World War II he had worked for French intelligence… [and] possessed a doctorate in international commerce and a master’s degree in petroleum engineering and geology… Among his close friends, one of the more interesting was Jean de Menil, the president of the mammoth international Schlumberger Corporation, which had close ties with the Central Intelligence Agency. [footnote] The CIA and Schlumberger had a mutual interest in the O.A.S. [Secret Army Organization]..led by former French generals who had revolted against President Charles DeGaulle in 1961 when Algeria was in the process of winning its independence. The Agency had been a staunch, although secret, supporter of the French anti-Gaullist movement.” pp52-53, ibid.,Garrison

*

*  Author and professor Joan Mellen writes, “The most notorious OAS-sponsored effort was the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle in 1962. [Guy] Banister operative Tommy Baumler remarked that ‘those who killed John F. Kennedy were those who wanted to kill de Gaulle.’ He was referring to the CIA, Clay Shaw Banister and ..PERMINDEX (Permanent Industrial Exhibition), based in Switzerland.” –p136, A Farewell To Justice, 2005

*

Ringleader of the French OAS generals, Jacques Soustelle former colonial governor of Algeria and French atomic energy minister

*

*  Ex-FBI New Orleans private detective Guy Banister : In a curious statement to the Louisiana Senate’s Legislative Committee on Segregation in March of 1957, Banister said, “We are particularly vulnerable to smuggled atom bombs. Even the big bombs were comparatively simple to assemble once they were made. Now they have them down to the size of an artillery shell. Dedicated Communist Party members can smuggle them in, leave them. I doubt that we have enough screw drivers and men to use to find them. They can be triggered, set off by a radio wave, or in several other manners. I know that it is possible and comparatively easy to assemble one of them and New Orleans is a key city in the south land…” http://www.mcadams.posc.mu.edu/weberman/nodule11.htm

In March of 1957, when Banister made this statement, Oswald was being trained on radar in Florida. The man who designed nuclear weapons “down to the size of an artillery shell” was Theodore B. (‘Ted’) Taylor, who left Los Alamos between 1956 and 1957 to join the creative staff of General Atomics, subsidiary of General Dynamics, in La Jolla CA. Ted said that General Atomics was like “Los Alamos West”. More on Ted Taylor below.

*

*  “Spring of 1963 arrived and Lee Oswald– as usual, without fanfare or any other preliminaries– left Dallas in late April for New Orleans. His wife and daughter arrived there shortly afterwards. By May 9 Oswald had obtained a job in New Orleans at the Reily Coffee Company, just on the other side of the post office building from Guy Banister’s office… Now I was interested in taking a closer look at how he found his way to employment at the Reily Coffee Company… Judging by [a] lengthy series of [Warren] Commission exhibits, he had sought employment at half the businesses in the city of New Orleans.” —pp56-57, On The Trail of The Assassins— “…[D.A. investigator] Frank agreed with me on the probability of Oswald’s impersonation in the job applications. What it amounted to, of course, was that Oswald had been destined from the outset to go to work at the Reily Coffee Company, close by Guy Banister’s office. All these applications by someone impersonating him were intended to obscure that.” –p59, ibid.

“It had always puzzled me why Oswald had left Dallas in April 1963 to spend the summer in New Orleans, only to return to Dallas again in October. But given what I had learned, this began to make sense. Clearly, if Oswald was being set up as a communist scapegoat, his close association in Dallas with the anti-communist White Russians had to be severed. Likewise, a summer of ostentatiously handing out out pro-Castro leaflets in New Orleans reinforced the image of a crazed communist assassin. In the intelligence community, there is a term for this kind of manipulated behavior designed to create a desired image: sheepdipping. It seemed to me that Oswald had been in New Orleans to be sheepdipped under the guidance of Guy Banister and that he had been sent back to Dallas when the mission was accomplished.

   “To see if I was on the right track, I studied more closely Oswald’s return to Dallas and his last two months before the assassination. On September 23, 1963, a pregnant Marina Oswald and her daughter left New Orleans. They were driven westward to Dallas, I learned, by Mrs. Ruth Paine. It was generally agreed that Lee Oswald left approximately a day later… [But it was not until] October 4, Lee returned to Dallas. He spoke of having been in Houston, looking for work. Ten days later Ruth Paine obtained an interview for him, and he got the job– at the Texas School Book Depository.

   For reasons that remain unclear, Oswald rented a series of small rooms in Dallas while his wife and daughter stayed at the Paine’s house in Irving. Although Lee kept a number of his personal possessions with him in Dallas, Mrs. Paine made her garage in Irving available to him for his other possessions.

   There was no way of guessing what Lee had in mind with this odd living arrangement, nor who suggested it. However, it was undeniable that this situation worked to the advantage of whoever was behind the assassination.” –pp63-63, ibid.

*

                  *********************************************************************************

                         *************************************************************************

*

“In 1954 it was Russia, not the U.S., that was most concerned nuclear weapons would spread. ‘Since even peaceful nuclear activities could lead to the production of materials usable for bombs, the proposed stimulation of such activities throughout the world could actually lead to an intensification of the arms race,’ the Soviets wrote in a January 1954 letter to Washington…

  [And, furthermore] “… ‘The kind of catastrophic accident that Strauss and his successors believed could never actually happen have taken a significant toll.’ “

https://www.energyvoice.com/otherenergy/65330/nuclear-threat-turned-iaeas-atomic-peaceniks-weapons-cops/

*

   1954 turned out to be a banner year for nuclear expansion following Eisenhower’s  December ’53 “Atoms For Peace” speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York. U.S. atmospheric tests that year took place exclusively in the Pacific Proving Grounds, scheduled as Operation Castle beginning March 1, 1954 with test ‘Bravo’.–a test so unexpectedly radioactive from more-than-double its predicted megatonnage, that an outcry over the fallout came in from around the world. AEC chairman Strauss was a shipboard observer at Bikini Atoll for Bravo which was the first and only bomb test he ever personally attended.

*

Lookout Mountain (Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles) studio film of Operation Castle:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfbHwj71k48

Castle- Bravo test weighed in at 15 megatons from its predicted 7 Mt and contaminated 5,000 sq. miles, including inhabited islands that were not evacuated beforehand, although the same islands had been evacuated in every prior test. “Wind shift” was blamed, however the monitors reported that the exact pattern of wind direction “was blowing at us for days”. The fate of the Marshallese is described here: http://www.polioforever.wordpress.com/fallout/

The military response to Castle-Bravo was to cancel two of its planned detonations, including the largest, and space the remaining tests farther apart, adding more than three weeks to the operation. The Salk polio vaccine field tests on American schoolchildren were also commensurately delayed.

*

Chairman Strauss returned to Washington at the end of March. filed his report about “wind shift”, and proceeded with his historic AEC tribunal against Robert Oppenheimer. Boris Pash and the FBI were indispensable Strauss allies throughout, and by May’s end Oppenheimer was banished, relegated to return to Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study under the authority of  Strauss, who was chairman of the IAS board.

*

August  of  1954 produced a renewal of the 1946 Atomic Energy Act, instituting a license framework for the private ownership of nuclear facilities and materials, nationally and internationally, at the discretion and approval of the Atomic Energy Commission –a curious challenge in light of the vapid attempt at a dual FBI/AEC agent program that dissolved in 1953. Or did it? An apparent gap in the FBI’s  record of memos spans more than ten years until September 30, 1964 when the last declassified memo signed by William C. Sullivan announces the final disposition of the files, sanitized and reclassified, to the Bureau’s general archive. Sullivan’s memo is dated just two days after dissemination of the published Warren Report.

*

     William C. Sullivan headed the Oswald investigation for the FBI and allowed his serious “doubt” about Oswald’s guilt to lodge in the journalistic record. Sullivan was “accidently shot” to death on 11-9-77 at his woodsy New Hampshire home, “mistaken for a deer” (while standing on his front porch, they say). He was the FBI’s first Atomic Energy Commission liason officer (beginning 1947, followed by Charles Bates seen below) and contributed to two special study groups for government counter-proliferation strategy after resigning the FBI and before his death. The first special study, sponsored by the AEC, resulted in the Rosenbaum Report of April 1974 which includes the statement that “It is not the AEC’s business to conduct this sort of intelligence [such as infiltration of plutonium smuggling groups], but it is the AEC’s business to see that those agencies of the United States Government which have intelligence gathering responsibilities, including the FBI, CIA, and NSA, focus their attention upon this particular threat…”

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/33698

*

“Sullivan had been scheduled to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Sullivan was one of six top FBI officials who died in a six month period in 1977. Others who were due to appear before the committee who died included Louis Nicholas, special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and his liaison with the Warren Commission; Alan H. Belmont, special assistant to Hoover; James Cadigan, document expert with access to documents that related to death of John F. Kennedy; J. M. English, former head of FBI Forensic Sciences Laboratory where Oswald’s rifle and pistol were tested; Donald Kaylor, FBI fingerprint chemist who examined prints found at the assassination scene.”

http://www.spartacus-educational.com/USAfbi.htm

*  FBIundercoverAECfacilities_1949-1964

*

The pseudonymous Torbitt File, written by lawyer David Copeland and bearing the title “Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal”, makes this claim:

“The killing of President Kennedy was planned and supervised by Division Five [Sullivan’s command] of the Federal Bureau of Investigation…[acting] dualy with the Defense Intelligence Agency..under..their highly secret policy agency– the Defense Industrial Security Command [DISC]…[which] acts..on behalf of NASA, the Atomic Energy Commission, the U.S. Information Agency, and the arms, equipment, ammunition, munitions and related..manufacturing corporations contracting with NASA, AEC, USIA and the Pentagon.

   ..The Defense Industrial Security Command had its beginnings when J.Edgar Hoover in the early 1930s organized the police force of the fledgling Tennessee Valley Authority at the request of David Lilienthal [then governor of TVA and by 1947, chairman of the AEC until 1950] …This force grew and Lilienthal took it forward to cover the Atomic Energy Commission, thus tying it into the Army Intelligence Service.

   “L.M. Bloomfield, a Montreal, CANADA lawyer bearing the reputation as a sex deviate, the direct supervisor of all contractual agents with J. Edgar Hoover’s Division Five, was the top co-ordinator for the network planning the execution. A Swiss corporation, Permindex, was used to head five front organizations responsible for furnishing personnel and supervisors to carry out assigned duties.

The five groups under Permindex and their supervisors were:

1. The Czarist Russian, Eastern European and Middle East exile organization called SOLIDARISTS, headed by Ferenc Nagy, ex-Hungarian Premier, and John DeMenil, Russian exile from Houston, Texas, a close friend and supporter of Lyndon Johnson for over thirty years. [deMohrenschildt’s friend and president of Schlumberger oil services]

2. A section of the AMERICAN COUNCIL OF CHRISTIAN CHURCHES headed by H.L. Hunt of Dallas, Texas.

3. A Cuban exile group called FREE CUBA COMMITTEE headed by Carlos Prio Socarras, ex-Cuban President.

4. An organization of United States, Caribbean, and Havana, Cuba gamblers called the Syndicate headed by Clifford Jones, ex-Lieutenant Governor of Nevada and Democratic National Committeeman, and Bobby Baker of Washington, D.C. This group worked closely with a Mafia family headed by Joe Bonnano.

5. The SECURITY DIVISION of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) headed by Wernher Von Braun, head of the German Nazi rocket program from 1932 through 1945. Headquarters for this group was the DEFENSE INDUSTRIAL SECURITY COMMAND at Muscle Shoals Redstone Arsenal in Alabama and on East Broad Street in Columbus, Ohio.

The Defense Industrial Security Command is the police and espionage agency for the U.S. munitions makers. DISC was organized by J. Edgar Hoover; William Sullivan, his chief assistant, is in direct command. We shall later examine the involvement of a large number of the DISC agents including Clay Shaw, Guy Bannister, David Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby and others with Permindex’s Louis Mortimer Bloomfield of Montreal, Canada in charge.

As it must be, all of the preceding facts are established and documented by overwhelming evidence beyond a reasonable doubt on the following pages. Gordon Novel obtained the aid of the Columbus office in 1967 when Jim Garrison was attempting to get him back to Louisiana from Ohio. Personnel of the Defense Intelligence Agency were subject to assignment with the Defense Industrial Security Command.”(ref. found here: http://www.armoftheageddon.com/the_Torbitt_File.html )*

Copeland’s wife worked at the Fort Worth, TX Convair plant, subsidiary of General Dynamics, the largest defense contractor in the U.S. and parent company of General Atomics.

*

*   Jim Garrison came across the likes of “CIA asset” Gordon Novel after learning about a “munitions raid” by the FBI back in [July 31 and] August of 1963, shown to him as front-page New Orleans news items by investigator Frank Klein. Garrison wrote, “So, some ammunition had been found north of Lake Pontchartrain…There had been no announcement of any arrests. I pushed the news story off to the side. Later I would recall having almost tossed away a major lead…” (p36, On the Trail of the Assassins)

Gordon Novel, who participated in a weapons transfer from a Schlumberger bunker two years before the FBI raid, was in the “[Guy] Banister apparatus, as [Jack] Martin described it, .. part of a supply line that ran along the Dallas-New Orleans-Miami corridor. These supplies consisted of arms and explosives for use against Castro’s Cuba. The security control was so careful that ammunition was kept far-flung in outlying areas. Dispersal was the rule. On the occasions when such explosives were held in New Orleans only small amounts were kept at Banister’s office at any one time.” (p40, ibid.)

 *

“A copy-righted story in the New Orleans States-Item, April 25, 1967, [claimed its] investigative team working parallel to the Garrison probe reported that a reliable source close to Banister said he had seen 50 to 100 boxes marked ‘Schlumberger’ in Banister’s office storeroom early in 1961 before the Bay of Pigs. The boxes contained rifle grenades, land mines, and unique ‘little missiles’. Banister explained that ‘the stuff would just be there overnight’… It was alright, assured Banister, ‘I have approval from somebody.’ 

   ….According to the States-Item article, Novel’s oft-repeated account was that the munitions bunker was a CIA staging point for war materiel destined for use in the impending Bay of Pigs invasion. [Novel] is quoted as saying that on the day the munitions were picked up, he was ‘called by his CIA contact and told to join a group which was ordered to transport munitions from the bunker to New Orleans.’ The key to the bunker was by his CIA contact. Novel reportedly said the others in the CIA group at the bunker were David Ferrie, Sergio Arcacha Smith…and several Cubans. The munitions…were dropped in Novel’s office, Ferrie’s home and Banister’s office storeroom.”

   “The [arms] cases…were said to be labeled either ‘Schlumberger’ or ‘Interarmco’, the company owned by Sam Cummings, the Philadelphia arms merchant who supplied the guns for many a revolution…

    [The account of Luis Rabel Nunes] “who replaced Sergio Arcacha Smith..[was that] Rabel supplied a laundry truck with which weapons were transported” when it wasn’t being used on behalf of the Catholic Church’s aid to refugees, which “had the backing of both Mayors– Morrison and Schiro, Dr. [Alton] Ochsner and FBI agent Warren DeBrueys. It wasn’t until years later that I learned they had sometimes used the truck to transfer weapons.

   …[Novel] informed the FBI: “Schlumberger Well Service had an arrangement with the CIA wherein it leased a bunker…for the CIA. Eventually the material would be shipped out of the United States in Schlumberger boxes marked ‘Machinery’…”

http://www.jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/05/houma-bunker-raid-revisited.html

*

     ** Dr. Alton Ochsner, apparently a supporter of Catholic Cuban Relief, was a nationally prominent physician then teaching at Tulane University in New Orleans. He was one of a small clique of medical lobbyists belonging to the Lasker Group, originally founded by Albert and Mary Lasker, seeking to expand the National Institutes of Health and take control of the American Cancer Society.

*

Cubans in the Congo

It appears that intoning “Bay of Pigs” or “anti-Castro” as an explanation for CIA paramilitary operations connected with the New Orleans Banister apparatus occurs with liturgical frequency, however at the timing of the earlier Schlumberger bunker “heist” by Novel and his compatriots, the CIA was farther afield assisting in the secession of Katanga from its mother state of the (former Belgian) Congo. Mineral rich Katanga had been the object of covetous colonialism for the whole of the 20th century. Lewis Strauss, the Warburgs, and Herbert Hoover had once spear-headed a plan to make Katanga the center of a “United States of Africa”, even as Edgar Sengier of the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga was then in the process of arranging uranium yellowcake for delivery to the Manhattan Project.

   When the nationalist Congolese overcame their occupation rule winning independence for their country in June of 1960 and inaugurating Patrice Lumumba as the first prime minister of new Zaire, Allen Dulles issued an ‘urgent’ directive for his demise. CIA intervention included providing Katanga’s ‘leader’ Tshombe with an army of mercenaries:  Cuban exiles and other soldiers-of-fortune induced by “high pay” and other Agency perks. Tshombe was ultimately blamed for Lumumba’s murder on January 17, 1961, in the very last days of Eisenhower’s administration.

   New Orleans native Gordon Novel himself had a violent Neo-Nazi racist past, if the Congolese operations had any ideological personal meaning. He later expressed great admiration for his CIA cohorts as the “best people” and “real patriots”.

* Patrice Lumumba, died by CIA-assisted assassination January 17, 1961: “Apparently what happened is that this [CIA] man William Harvey..recruited someone by the codename QJ/WIN to assassinate Lumumba… [Harvey] was supposed to recruit people from the underworld..[and] suggested using..Corsicans… They didn’t want to bring in the [Sicilian] Mafia because [CIA] were protecting [them] as payback for their help… [Harvey] hired this man QJ/WIN on November 1, 1960 in Frankfurt for the Lumumba operation.” http://www.counterpunch.org/2005/01/29/tempelsman-s-man-weighs-in-on-the-murder-of-patrice-lumumba/

Sweden’s UN Secretary General, then residing in NYC, died in a mysterious plane crash on September 18, 1961, on his way to negotiate a ceasefire on behalf of Tshombe’s Katanga. Sweden too, uncoincidentally, was seeking to acquire atomic bombs and join the Nuclear Club.

*

Early in Europe’s WWII, Union Miniere du Haut Katanga and its chief Edgar Sengier had a pre-arranged shipment of Congolese uranium yellowcake shipped to the U.S., to sit dockside on Staten Island, New York awaiting its use in the future Manhattan Project. Sengier’s good friend Lewis Strauss later sang the Belgian’s praises for his remarkable “foresight”. Later on, in 1942, following an alleged act of enemy sabotage at the New York docks, the US Navy negotiated a dock protection contract with Meyer Lansky for the duration of the war. This arrangement between the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence and Meyer Lansky (or, as some sources purvey it, Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano) was dubbed Operation Underworld (and also published as The Luciano Project). Luciano’s role, ultimately, was to accept deportation from prison back to Sicily where he helped re-institute the Sicilian mafia, crushed under Mussolini, and aid the passage of Allied troops. Lansky, afterward, reigned as the Syndicate’s top man.

“Thus, the intelligence-mob collaboration established with Operation Underworld did not end after World War II. On the contrary, postwar narcotics overseas were subordinated to anti-Communist activities; and they were used as cover for ongoing use of mob assets, above all drug traffickers, around the world.

…”In this way, FBN [Federal Bureau of Narcotics] officials protected top-level international drug traffickers who were also anti-communists.” –p166-167, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, by Peter Dale Scott

*

Garrison described the Schlumberger ammunition retrieval : “The CIA, which was also supportive of the French OAS generals [Organisation Armee Secrete, in French!], had supplied Schlumberger with anti-personnel ammunition and in this operation at Houma [air base], following the demise of the OAS, was simply getting its ammunition back…which was then divided equally between Ferrie’s apartment and Banister’s inner office until the time arrived for its transport to Miami.” (p40, On the Trail of the Assassins)

   But the French generals, based in Algeria and Spain, at this point were still far from their demise. “The most notorious OAS-sponsored effort was the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle in 1962.” (p136, A Farewell To Justice, 2005, by Joan Mellen), which continues, “Banister operative Tommy Baumler remarked that ‘those who killed John F. Kennedy were those who wanted to kill de Gaulle.’ He was referring to the CIA, Clay Shaw, Banister and…PERMINDEX…”

*

Unique Little Missiles

*  Reactor fuel pellets

Did they look like this?

*

“In the wake of their [Bay of Pigs] defeat the bitter Cubans turned their wrath against the President who, they claimed, had not given the troops enough air support. However, according to an official government inquiry into the matter, the real reason for the overwhelming defeat was the failure of the CIA to provide the Cuban rebels with enough ammunition. The report added that the CIA had unilaterally stopped a convoy of supplies and ammunition to the troops –without the permission of the President.” [ref. Theodore C. Sorenson, Kennedy, p335 and The Hoffa Wars, p133, by Dan E. Moldea, 1978]

*

During the JFK murder investigation and the probe into Oswald’s weapon:

“The Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition..raised questions about CIA involvement… In the mid-1950s, four million rounds of this ammunition was purchased by the Marine Corps, prompting the author of the FBI document to state: The interesting thing about this order is that it is for ammunition which does not fit and cannot be fired in any of the United States Marine Corps weapons. This gives rise to the obvious speculation that it is a contract for ammunition placed by the CIA with Western Cartridge Corporation under a USMC cover for concealment purposes.” –p.201, Crossfire, by Jim Marrs, 1989

Did Oswald, under the alias Alek Hidell, purportedly mail-order a Mannlicher-Carcano to procure this unusual ammunition?

Researcher Peter Whitmey: “Oddly enough, when ordering the rifle, he chose not to purchase one hundred rounds of ammunition (which came with a free clip)”  http://www.mcadams.posc.mu.edu/creatingapatsy.htm

*

   The surreptitious ammunition transfers from the Houma air base and beyond by the Banister outfit are among the most compelling and under-described of pre-assassination events. They occurred over a long period from at least the spring of 1961, before the Bay of Pigs, until the FBI raid in the summer of 1963.  Despite the “major lead” provided to Jim Garrison’s investigation, an intentional effort to downplay or disregard the significance of this traffick was announced by Garrison in his October 1967 Playboy interview:

Playboy: “The New Orleans States-Item of June 14, 1967 quoted [Gordon] Novel as saying that if he were granted immunity from the assassination investigation, he would be willing to testify on a number of points, including ‘international fraud, mysterious intelligence activities from November 1959 to date [Oct.1967] in the Southern quadrant of the USA and certain islands off Florida, seditious treason, hot war games and cold munitions transfers, ten 1950-model Canadian surplus Vampire jet supporter aircraft and certain Cuban-Anglo-French sabotage affairs of early 1961.’ Why did you reject this offer?”

Garrison: “These are all intriguing… but that isn’t the subject of my investigation.”

http://www.jfklancer.com/Garrison2.html

(excerpted from Part 3)

   Earlier in the same interview, Garrison responded to the “who, how, and why” question concerning a conspiracy of assassins with this reply:

…“On the operative level, you find anti-Castro Cuban exiles…[who] believed sincerely that Kennedy had sold them out to the Communists. On a higher, control level, you find a number of people of ultra right-wing persuasion –not simply conservative, mind you, but people who could be described as neo-Nazi… After Kennedy’s domestic moves toward racial integration and his attempts to forge a peaceful foreign policy, as exemplifies by his signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, they found [a] target.

   So both of these groups had a vital stake in changing U.S. foreign policy… The CIA was involved with both of these groups…

   There was, in fact, a triangulation of CIA-supported anti-Castro activity between Dallas –where Jack Ruby was involved in collecting guns and ammunition for the underground– and Miami and New Orleans, where most of the training was going on. But then, Kennedy, who had signed a secret agreement with Krushchev after the Missile Crisis pledging not to invade Cuba if Russia would soft-pedal Castro’s subversive activities in the Americas, began to crack down on CIA operations against Cuba. As a result, on July 31, 1963, the FBI raided the headquarters of the group of Cuban exiles and Minutemen training north of Lake Pontchartrain and confiscated all their guns and ammunition –despite the fact that the operation had the sanction of the CIA. This action may have sealed Kennedy’s fate.”

*

The FBI raid, which may have even depended on information provided by Oswald, could have sealed his fate too.  Approximately eight weeks later, at the end of September ’63, Oswald took the alleged trip to Mexico City where he was said to visit both the Cuban and Soviet embassies –key (but false) evidence against him for a role in an international communist conspiracy. Just exactly what Gordon Novel was offering in testimony, had a deal been made,  slipped away as a lost opportunity. Novel moved on and is currently divulging secrets about Alien Contact. (See ‘Hidden Hand’, which includes Gordon Novel and Jim Marrs)

*

* *  * * Mary, Vary and Ferrie

*

   An alternate story about the Schlumberger munitions cache moving through New Orleans suggests itself in a few particulars of Ed Haslam’s book, Dr. Mary’s Monkey [DMM], originally titled Mary, Ferrie, and the Monkey Virus. The featured center of activity in DMM is a high-energy particle accelerator hidden in the laboratory of the Public Health Service naval hospital. According to Haslam, the accelerator was used in developing a mutant virus for an urgent anti-cancer vaccine countermeasure against the SV40 monkey virus-contaminated mass polio vaccines. Haslam claims this secret medical do-gooding was assigned to the supervision of Dr.s Alton Ochsner and Mary Sherman with the outside assistance of Judyth Vary [Mrs.Baker], David Ferrie, and Lee H. Oswald. No evidence exists of Haslam’s anti-SV40-cancer program, but it’s a matter of record that Alton Ochsner supported the “community service” activities of the Banister-connected Cubans, which included the transfer, support, and resettlement of incoming refugees. Among these efforts was the use of a laundry truck known to have hauled off the munitions plunder more than once.

http://www.jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2009/05/houma-bunker-raid-revisited.html

   Unfortunately, Dr. Mary’s Monkey does not prove that a particle accelerator was actually on the grounds of the New Orleans PHS in 1963. Nonetheless, as described, the machine in question bore the requisite assembly of industrial use equipment –not for medical purposes! Haslam’s multi-story accelerator split the primary vertical beam on a reflective hub set below in a basement chamber, directing the fractioned energy horizontally into thick fireproof containers resembling kilns. Inside such containers any number of high-energy transformations are possible, such as altering the molecular configuration of metal, wood or rubber to create new ‘metamaterial’ products.

   It happens that in 1961, coincident with the munitions transfers, one of the foremost American physicists from the UCBerkeley Rad Lab, Dr. Luis Alvarez, was granted a patent for an accelerator of this type designed to reconstitute spent nuclear fuel (or depleted uranium). It is easy to imagine, and much more plausible in application, that the NOLA accelerator in Ed Haslam’s scheme was re-producing nuclear fuel with the appearance of ammunition.

*

Recall Jim Garrison’s words:  …”control was so careful that ammunition was kept far-flung in outlying areas. Dispersal was the rule…   in New Orleans only small amounts were kept at Banister’s office at any one time.”  If these munitions emitted a particular radioactive signature it would be wise to manage their storage in this way. On the Houma military base, which was guarded and active 24/7, perhaps it made no difference when the cache was militarily protected, but we are also to believe that the transfers were protected as a sanctioned trade under the watchful eyes of government operatives, even in the open on the streets of downtown New Orleans –why then would these munitions require dispersal and isolation? What made these munitions “unique” and who, with any firearms experience, would use the word “unique” in describing them? Were they variously labeled for purposes of special handling and destination routes? Was all the ‘cancer research’, including the disease cases of David Ferrie and Jack Ruby, more expressly intended for themselves as special handlers of carcinogenic cargo?

*

   Robert Oswald remarked on the physical changes in his brother Lee, returned from Russia at age 22, as having thinned wire-textured hair and a sallow complexion –very unlike the robustly youthful marine he had last seen in the fall of 1959. Signs of early aging, like LHO’s, are a common and predictable side-effect of radiation exposure. The black-and-white photo below on the right shows not just thinning hair but patches of scalp which can be confirmed in the video images of Oswald being taken through the Dallas PD hallway.

   *Judyth, Lee Oswald’s 1963 summer girlfriend, attests to the gunrunning she herself participated in helping to unload weapons shipped to NOLA’s waterfront in crates of bananas and furniture.

According to Judyth, discussing Lee Oswald:

“He believed that the world could be changed without violence –he believed in nonviolence… In the Marines, he was a member of a group that was against nuclear bombs, against nuclear war… He really was a double agent… Lee was in the middle of a lot of different operations… [and] was a very busy man… [a] real patriot…and a very brave man.” (www.radiofetzer.com, 2010 archives, http://nwopodcast.com/fetz/media/jim%20fetzer%20real%20deal-judyth%20vary%20baker.mp3)

                                                             *  LHO newly turned 24yrs.

* Particle accelerator designer/builder and Manhattan Project veteran Luis Alvarez lent his formidable authority as a physicist to the Warren Commission, affirming its conclusions. Next to Leo Szilard and Ernest O. Lawrence, Alvaraz was the beneficiary of a privileged relationship with Adm. Lewis Strauss.

*

Alvarez melon shooting experiment, ‘proving’ a jet effect and retrorecoil of the President’s head: http://www.jfklancer.com/galanor/jet_effect_text.html

Alvarez Zapruder film ‘jiggle’ analysis:

http://www.jfkhistory.com/WebArticle/article.html

Film and audio analyses:

http://www.jfk-online.com/nas01.html

Zapruder observations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16ChphyKaE0

*

Alvarez patent: April 19, 1960 US2,933,442, Electronuclear reactor “…is described in which a very high-energy particle accelerator is employed with appropriate target structure to produce ..material in commercial quantities by nuclear transformations… The fertile material of the lattice is converted by neutron absorption reactions to an artificially produced material, e.g. plutonium, where depleted uranium is utilized as the fertile material.”

http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/alvarezpat.html

*

Stealing plutonium fuel pellets, it turns out, was easy if you worked in an AEC contract plant. See the post ‘JFK File: Signs of Traffick”

*

* David Ferrie, ‘suicided’ on the fifth day after the NOLA States-Item announced the Garrison probe on Feb.17, 1967.

Harold Weisberg:“The Warren Commission never conducted any investigation of Ferrie!” p168, Oswald in New Orleans, Weisberg, 1967. “Coronor Nicholas Chetta announced on February 28 that there was evidence of neither suicide nor murder… Coronor Chetta said death had to have come before four a.m. on February 22. George Lardner Jr, Washington Post reporter, was with Ferrie in his flat until four a.m. ‘Ferrie was certainly living when I said goodbye to him’…Lardner said…” [p164,ibid.]…“the corpse of David Ferrie shared the unkempt second-floor flat at 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway with three thousand books, including a full assassination library..[and] in the words of the Associated Press dispatch of February 28, ‘a blue 100-pound practice aerial bomb (exactly what the FBI seized when it raided the New Orleans invasion camp on July 31, 1963)...” [p163, ibid.] “..there is no denial of the third-hand report that the FBI had been investigating Ferrie ‘several weeks before 11-24-63’ “ [p182, ibid]

Ferrie was arrested by Garrison 11-25-63.

   He appeared to be a common denominator in New Orleans assassination activity. A most interesting bit of disregarded evidence about Ferrie concerned the “Winnipeg Airport Incident”:

   Two and a half months after the assassinations of JFK and Oswald, a 35-year-old businessman named Richard Giesbrecht who was waiting to meet a client, overheard a conversation in the airport restaurant lounge between two men, one of whom was Ferrie –‘positively’ identified, however, only after his death became front page news four years later. At the time of the conversation, Giesbrecht took notes. The men were discussing Oswald, how much his wife knew and then, “Ferrie asked about paper or merchandise coming out of Nevada. Latin Accent said it was too risky and that a house or shop had been closed down at a place called Mercury…[but] a good shipment had reached Caracas from Newport…”

http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/The_critics/Whitmey/Man.html

   Giesbrecht may or may not have been wrong in his ID of Ferrie –the man he saw wore eyeglasses– and others with ‘Ferrie’ that day, including a third man who pursued Giesbrecht attempting to contact the airport’s RCMP office, have also eluded identification, but the location mentioned in the conversation is unmistakable.

   * * ‘Gateway’ to the NTS and Groom Lake

   Mercury, Nevada is a “closed town”, according to wikipedia –an artificial barracks-turned-town on the Atomic Energy Commission’s Nevada Proving Grounds. “The town started in 1950 at the beginning of operations of the Nevada Test Site as Base Camp Mercury… In the early 1960s the town population grew to over 10,000… In 1962, the Desert Rock Airstrip was added for the visit from President John F. Kennedy on December 8. The town flourished until 1992 when all but subcritical nuclear testing ended… The population shrank rapidly thereafter..[to] a skeleton crew of scientists and military…last..recorded about 500 people.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury,_Nevada

*

   Another Atomic Energy Commission facility factored into the Oswald-centered JFK-assassination scheme in a curious way: On July 26, 1963, the visitor registry at the Oak Ridge Tennessee Atomic museum was signed in the handwriting of Lee H Oswald, giving the address of Dallas Rd. Dallas. At the time, Oswald was still a resident of New Orleans, yet to make his public pro-Castro appearances.

   Additional, but implausible and unusual “sign-ins” under Oswald’s name occurred in other places after this, though the Oak Ridge registry appears to be standing the test of time. LHO was unemployed on July 26, fired from the Reilly Coffee Co. a week earlier on the 19th. He filed for unemployment on the 22nd and does not reappear in the NOLA paper trail again until the 29th. Many sources have noted that Oswald did not drive a car, but Judyth says he did and liked to drive fast.

“Was Lee Harvey Oswald in Oak Ridge?” http://www.knoxblogs.com/atomiccity/2013/11/22/lee-harvey-oswald-oak-ridge/

*  “USSR” is scribbled after “Oswald”. Was it tampering after-the-fact?

If Oswald was actually in Oak Ridge on July 26, just a few days later the FBI in New Orleans launched its raid on the scattered munitions cache held by the Banister crew. On the same day as the Oswald visitor sign-in, President Kennedy broadcast to the public the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

*

JFK announces the Test Ban July 26, 1963: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0m4N8gw9cM

*

Boris Pash, and the FBI, maintained permanent offices at Oak Ridge.

*

According to Bill Kelly’s timeline, on July 27th “Lee H. Oswald makes a speech against communism to Jesuits in Mobile, Alabama.” Two days later on the 29th “The Dallas FBI office asked the New Orleans FBI office to ‘verify’ both LHO and Marina’s presence in New Orleans.”

http://www.jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/10/lee-h-oswald-at-atomic-energy-museum.html

Oswald was, during these last days of July, on a “family trip” with his uncle, aunt (the Murrets), and Marina, scheduled to visit the Jesuit seminary outside Mobile where his cousin attended.

*

Incidentally, Judyth recalls that the ‘mentor’, Col. Philip Doyle, who arranged for her to leave highschool in Florida and join in current elite cancer research prior to New Orleans, was a man with “close friends who had significant contacts to Oak Ridge…[and] did teach physics…”, adding that “he selected a few of us and worked with us, however..he was in a big community of retired military officers who supplied us with, like, geiger counters…” (www.radiofetzer.blogspot.com, May 3 2010, podcast archive) The name Doyle is linked to Permindex and also to a curious and brief New Orleans encounter with Oswald caught on film.

*

* Richard Giesbrecht was 100% certain that the odd-looking man he overheard in the Winnipeg Airport lounge was David Ferrie, as told to author/journalist Paris Flammonde.

   Mercury, Nevada was but one significant AEC location mentioned by the airport men; the other was Kansas City in reference to a meeting that would soon be held as a “textile” business gathering. Kansas City, Missouri was host to a special Atomic Energy Commission facility called the “Kansas City Plant” where for a period of time, reactor fuel slugs were made, though the main work of the plant focused on weapons components and assemblies.

“NIOSH has information that KCP workers inspected and assembled uranium components, machined uranium slugs, and handled uranium billets [small cylinders] and ingots… In February 1951, KCP set up a machine shop to produce 1,000 slugs per day to fuel AEC production reactors…. [p.21, NIOSH document] …The first report [to NIOSH] of DU handling at KCP was in April 1958, however DU machining began September 9, 1958…” [p.23]

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/ocas/pdfs/sec/kcplant/kcper-210.pdf

*

*The KCP, Kansas City Plant,  situated in the Bannister Federal Complex

      

*

According to information from Giesbrecht to Flammonde:

“...the [men] began speaking of a meeting to take place at the Townhouse Motor Hotel in Kansas City, Missouri on March 18. They mentioned that the rendezvous would be registered under the name of a textile firm… Ferrie mentioned that an ‘aunt’ (or ‘auntie’?–gay patois for an older homosexual) would be flying in from California. A name which Giesbrecht thought sounded like ‘Romeniuk’ was mentioned several times…. the author [Flammonde] inquired whether the word might have been ‘Romanian’ but [Giesbrecht] did not know…”

*

[Flammonde interviews Giesbrecht]:

Flammonde: “From the photographs you have seen of David Ferrie..[with] a three year lapse between seeing the man and the photograph… on the basis of that, what would you say your certainty that it was Ferrie was? Fifty percent? Eighty percent?”

Giesbrecht: “I would say a hundred percent.”

http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/Conspiracy_theories/Winnipeg/Flammonde.html

*

Initially, the Minneapolis FBI responded to the Giesbrecht/RCMP information with enthusiasm, calling it the break they’d been waiting for. Within a few months, however, Giesbrecht would be told that it was “too big”. Confusion over the location of the “Townhouse Motor Hotel” was to reign at FBI offices until the matter was dismissed. Researcher Peter Whitmey added, “… I had no idea whether or not the Kansas City or Wichita offices followed up on the “Townhouse” lead, since I had not received any document in this regard as a result of my FOIPA request. However, by inputting “Townhouse Motor Hotel” during a search of the NARA website, I discovered that there was, indeed, a four-page report, dated April 9, 1964. Initially, the FBI in Kansas City made inquiries with the Townhouse Motor Hotel on Seventh and State Streets in Kansas City, Kansas, as well as the Coates House Hotel on Tenth and Broadway in Kansas City, Missouri to no avail. In addition, the report included the results of a further investigation conducted by the Wichita, Kansas office, after discovering that there was a Townhouse Motel on the corners of Kellogg and Broadway. As in the case of K.C., there was no reservation for a textile group scheduled on or about March 18, nor for anyone by the name “Romaniuk…”

http://www.mcadams.posc.mu.edu/winnipeg.htm

   In this same link is another turn of Giesbrecht’s ‘hearsay’, written down by his lawyer Harry Backlin the day after the airport incident: “Reference was made in Backlin’s detailed letter to a planned ‘sales meeting’, the first since November, to be held in ‘a place sounding like Townhouse in Kansas City’. Mention was made of the names ‘Kellogg’ and ‘Broadway’…”

   No researcher yet has suggested that the men involved in the airport incident may have been using an informal name code, counting even use of the name Oswald, but we can consider going along with Sherlock Holmes on this one and “ruling out the impossible” (names and places that don’t match) for a remains closer to truth.

*

James P. Hosty described as the Dallas FBI ‘handler’ of Oswald, was transferred to Kansas City Missouri after the issuance of the Warren report (but transferred later, in 1965):

“As a consequence for not arresting Oswald before the assassination, Hosty was banished by Hoover to the Kansas City KS FBI bureau. In those days it was considered by the director as the graveyard for agents who failed in the line of duty. But Hosty’s opinion of Kansas City…was a great place for him and his late wife Janet to raise their nine children, and a good place for an FBI agent to work.” http://www.donmooreswartales.com/2013/11/22/james-hosty/

–note that this interview erroneously names the state of Kansas, ironically the one ‘Kansas City’ with an actual Townhouse Motor Hotel, listed as the Cross Lines Tower in wikipedia today.

   Peter Whitmey remarked that Hosty was the only assassination case investigator familiar with Giesbrecht: “Hosty indicated to me that he was aware of the Giesbrecht allegations and had, in fact, read both the FBI reports and the RCMP’s own statement, which he claimed were furnished to the Warren Commission.”

*

Kansas City Missouri Chief of Police Clarence M. Kelley   Far from an FBI agent’s wasteland, Chief Kelley, installed in 1961 on the recommendation of Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy, innovated and updated policing there to a national model. After Watergate, and following the resignation of the hapless Patrick Gray, Kelley became Director of the FBI on Nixon’s final appointment to the post.

  http://www.kcpolicememorial.com/history/kelley/

*

Hosty was the only known FBI agent to interview Oswald at the Dallas Police Department after his arrest. Hosty additionally handled the investigation into the “Sylvia Odio encounter”, a visit allegedly made by Oswald and two Latin men to the Dallas apartment of Ms. Odio in late September ’63. Oswald’s ‘official’ whereabouts at that time put him in Mexico City, though known and confirmed to have been an imposter, the identity of the Odio visitors remains unresolved. Hosty himself said, “I’m also the third of three Agents who was assigned to the Lee Oswald case. The first one John Fain had it for two years and he is the one that interviewed Oswald twice before the assassination. Then the second Agent to have it assigned was Milton Kaact. K-a-a-c-t… Milton Kaact was in New Orleans… Oswald was interviewed one time in New Orleans by Jack Quigley… I got the case in October of 1963, one month before the assassination, lucky me. I never did interview Oswald until he was arrested… I was forbidden to interview Oswald because he was a contact case. As you [FBI] all know..when they contact the Soviet Embassy, you may not interview them without specific permission. In this case, I am sure it would never have been granted because the CIA was involved… I might add that I found out later that all of the, quote, CIA agents, unquote, who were conducting the surveillance were actually FBI Agents who had left the Bureau, gone to the CIA and had set up a system almost identical to what we had in New York and Washington Field Office. I got that straight from the legal attache [legat] from Mexico. I forget his name…but he told me and several other agents…in September of ’63 that these were all ex-FBI.”

http://www.nleomf.org/assets/pdfs/nlem/oral-histories/FBI_Hosty_interview.pdf

*

At odds with Hosty’s account is another that asserts, “Dallas FBI agent James P. Hosty Jr. For over a year in 1962-63, Hosty had been keeping occasional tabs on Oswald and his wife, Marina.” p55, The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell, 1992

*

More references to pre-assassination activity in Kansas City, known to the FBI, includes ties to David Ferrie, Jack Ruby, and the anti-Castro Cubans.

Example:

Researcher-author-lawyer Harold Weisberg wrote about an alleged Castro “spy” named Fernando Fernandez, who was caught and tortured in Miami trying to infiltrate an anti-Castro group called CDM or MDC (Christian democratic movement), ostensibly to get back into Cuba. “Fernandez must have known better: Infante told the FBI that what really worried Fernandez, why he really wanted to get out of the country, was his fear of prosecution by the federal authorities at Kansas City. Fernandez confessed just this, in detail. He had operated ‘an employment agency wherein he imported Mexican women to act as maids to the Kansas City area’..as a sideline while attending Kansas City University, ‘and this activity resulted in investigation by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Fearing arrest by INS, Fernandez left Kansas City and came to Miami…desiring to return to Cuba…  Fernandez also told the the Miami FBI that ‘he traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, to receive commando training at a farm about 30 miles north of New Orleans..[which was] inadequate and it appeared to Fernandez that the MDC was conducting a racket by exhibiting the ‘commandos’ in training to wealthy Americans who were asked to contribute to the anti-Castro cause… Ultimately, Fernandez was relocated..[w]ith the help of the Catholic Cuban Relief, [and] sent to Chicago [where he was] charged with ‘encouraging and inducing the illegal entry of aliens…” [sentenced February 1964].  Weisberg adds that “one reason for federal silence about this New Orleans training camp could be..embarassment at having tolerated such consummate incompetence. They could not plan and execute the capture of a home for crippled octogenarian women. The time had come…” pp157-161, Oswald in New Orleans, 1967

*

   Professor Peter Dale Scott records that “As the FBI agent assigned to handle both arms trafficking and the Oswalds before the assassination, Hosty quickly became a party to some the FBI’s most serious cover-up activities. [p119, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK] “One possibility…is that Oswald was indeed an FBI informant…and that in Dallas James Hosty, the FBI liason on gunrunning cases, was using Oswald to investigate gunrunning.” [p120, ibid.]

“On January 24 1964, the Warren Commission heard from Dallas district attorney Henry Wade and Texas attorney general Waggoner Carr that Oswald had been an FBI informant since September 1962, that he had a government voucher for $200 at the time of his arrest, and that FBI Agent James Hosty’s name and phone number were in his address book…[which] proved to be true…  As to the story that Oswald was an FBI informant, I doubt that Oswald was directly on the FBI payroll. A more likely possibility is that he worked for a private security agency which in turn reported to the FBI, the way that ex-FBI and ex-Office of Naval Intelligence agent Guy Banister, according to a CIA document, reported to the FBI in New Orleans. It is time to look more closely at Oswald’s extraordinary career, in which he appeared to develop revolutionary sympathies while in the Marines, established communications with the Communist party, and nevertheless was able to gain an employment at a firm (Jaggars-Stiles-Stovall in Dallas) which did classified work for the US.Army requiring a security clearance.” [p243, Deep Politics…,1993]

*Professor Scott uses an example of a dual agent in the person of Robert C. Ronstadt who “went to work for a Los Angeles firm, Allied Records, that was concerned about possible Communist employees. At the same time, Ronstadt began to sell subscriptions to the Communist Daily People’s World, and after some months he became a Communist Party member in the spring of 1947. Ronstadt, who had originally passed his FBI entrance exam in 1942, later explained…that his job had been to smoke out potential Red sympathizers. His actual employer was the private investigative firm of [McCarthy and Dunn], industrial security consultants to Allied Records…  After Ronstadt succeeded in joining the Communist party, he ceased to work for McCarthy and Dunn, and for the first time was paid directly by the FBI as an informant. [p244]

“Oswald’s business career is suggestively like Ronstadt’s… According to the Warren Commission, Oswald’s [Jaggars-Stiles-Stovall] job was found for him by the Texas Employment Commission (WR719). However, according to investigative journalist Anthony Summers, George deMohrenschildt’s wife and daughter both said that deMohrenschildt, who as we saw had CIA connections in both Dallas and Washington, arranged for the job…  Shortly after beginning work, in the same month of October [1962], Oswald and his wife established social contact with Max Clark, the chief of industrial security for the General Dynamics plant in Fort Worth which secured the controversial TFX contract in the fall of 1963.

“Thereafter, Oswald’s proximity to potential subversives, worthy of investigation, seems to have been continuous… Even during his next job, at the Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans, both he and his co-workers talked of moving soon to the newly opened NASA Space Center in nearby Michoud…[p245]

“All this suggests that, like Ronstadt, Oswald’s true employer may not have been the firms, but a private investigative agency doing industrial-security work. This would explain the FBI’s zeal to cover up the paycheck anomalies, and the reluctance of the government, to this day, to release Oswald’s income-tax records.” [p246, Deep Politics and the Death Of JFK, 1993]

   In the next chapter of Scott’s book, chapter 16 page 254, the author poses his inquiry into the title: “Oswald as a Double Agent for Hoover”, capturing the essence if not the substance of the point at hand.Were the documents available to him, Dr.Scott might have perused the Dual Agent memos of the FBI and AEC which were closed out,  refiled, and signed off by William Sullivan on September 30 1964, four days after the initial publication of the finished Warren Re[ort.

*

…. According to FBI/AEC Dual Agent Memo April 13, 1949, “the field was instructed over two years ago to develop confidential informants. Recently such offices were instructed to make an effort to promote some Communist into a position with the Atomic Energy Commission because it was felt that he could be of more assistance..from the standpoint of subversive coverage and..espionage… Supervisors in the [Bureau] are constantly alert to discover some individual who might be utilized as an informant.”… “but prior to making any definite arrangements with them, Commissioner Strauss..will be contacted on a confidential basis…  Memo July 18 1949, [Strauss] requested that we let him meet the Special Agents selected so that he could..vouch for them. He stated..he would not mention it to any of the other Commissioners.” Evidently, the FBI was deterred from planting informants when the Agents were rejected by AEC contractors for employment. The Director informed all concerned to take no action. Memo Feb.28, 1950, “It may be pointed out that at the time this matter was first discussed with Commissioner Strauss…he stated that he could be helpful in placing undercover Agents. Later, Admiral Strauss advised that he would rather not actively assist… You will recall that Admiral Strauss is leaving..on April 15, 1950.” (3/4 down page). The result of this memo series, ending in August 1953 with Strauss’s return to the AEC, was a request by the now Chairman Strauss for the Bureau to re-initiate the undercover program. The FBI responded: “Strauss was advised that our personnel and funds would not permit such a program… Strauss was further informed that collaterally, the lack of cooperation…lack of centralized control in AEC and the absence of an adequate inspection system were factors which the Bureau considered. Mr. Strauss..wanted the Director to know that centralized control..and inspection..would definitely be accomplished..after his reorganization of the Division of Security.”   http://www.governmentattic.org/4docs/FBIundercoverAECfacilities_1949-1964.pdf

*  

*   The most conspicuous facts about the FBI/AEC Dual Agent memos are the ten year gap in the record (1954-1964) at the time of greatest nuclear promotion and the curious closure of the files a few scant days after the Warren Report rolled off the presses. Rarely is it ever mentioned in the scheme of “who benefited” after JFK’s assassination that the fledgling government-funded nuclear power complex ballooned to new heights starting in January of 1964. The available record of early memos [1949-1953] also corresponds with the timing of the discovery of atomic spies Klaus Fuchs and the Rosenberg ring, and the successful tests of H-bombs by the U.S. and USSR.  “In August 1949 FBI Liason Charles Bates asked AEC security to investigate the activities of Klaus Fuchs, a physicist of British citizenship who had worked at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge during the war.” p114, No Sacrifice Too Great, by Richard Pfau, 1984. The statement has been made by Hans Bethe that if Fuchs had passed H-bomb secrets from Los Alamos to the Soviets it would have been harmless because they were then ‘headed in the wrong direction.’

Prosecution of the Rosenbergs was another FBI/AEC collaboration.

*

*    Supervising the would-be atomic agents in the dual FBI/AEC start-up was FBI agent and Dallas, Texas native Charles W. Bates, born in the north suburb of Lewisville  along with his twin brother. The Bateses were close family friends of Texas congressman Sam Rayburn and the boys looked on him as a second father, according to author Priscilla McMillan in The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a fact which impressed J. Edgar Hoover. Charles Bates’s maternal aunt was Sam Rayburn’s secretary, Alla Clary, who was well-known in Washington D.C. and a local celebrity in her hometown of McKinney Texas.

   During the secretive 1954 AEC tribunal against Oppenheimer engineered by chairman Strauss and abetted by Hoover, Bates became the special courier for files and messages between the two chiefs. “Hoover had chosen his go-between with care. At the age of thirty-four, Bates, a good-looking, gregarious man with slicked-back dark hair, dark skin, and sometimes dark glasses, had become part of Strauss’s inner circle… He spent nearly all his time at the AEC and had entree to everyone in the building. Not only did he deliver the FBI’s wiretap reports, but he carried verbal messages between Hoover and Strauss…  Bates now looked on Hoover, too, as a second father and came up with pretexts to drop in at his office… Bates got along with Strauss… Eventually Strauss relied on Bates and sometimes turned to him for advice. Hoover relied on Bates..to help him gauge Strauss’s frame of mind.” [p189, The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer, 2005, Viking/Penguin]

*

Of  the three boys born to Kate Clary Bates, ‘Benjamin Clary’ (the likely twin) became a doctor in Austin, ‘Charles William’ in the FBI, and ‘Uncas Daniel’ who remained in Dallas working for the city’s Water department. On 11-22-63 if it means anything, there was also a water hydrant incident on the motorcade route which blocked traffic at about the same time an ‘epileptic seizure’ event took place in Dealey Plaza. (called in by DPD  patrolman F.T.Chance, who requested dispatch to get help from the water dept.)

*

*   Marina Oswald and author Priscilla Johnson (Mrs.) McMillan

   The purveyor of the privileged and secretive relationship among Hoover, Bates, and Strauss is none other than the “writing collaborator for the Agency” Priscilla Johnson, who interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald in 1959 at the Hotel Metropole in Moscow. At the time Mrs. McMillan was representing NANA, the North American Newspaper Alliance, which has been called an “OSS-CIA asteroid” founded by Ernest Cuneo, the WWII White House liason with British intelligence. She published three books in her career; Krushchev and the Arts (with Leopold Labedz) in 1965, Marina and Lee in 1977 (reissued for 50th anniversary of JFK’s death), and The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer in 2005.

    Johnson McMillan herself was to benefit from a privileged and exclusive relationship living-in with Marina Oswald in 1964 while the Warren Commission was in session. “[Priscilla] once was an assistant to Senator John F. Kennedy and went on to become an acknowledged expert on Soviet affairs. It is Mrs. McMillan who has been responsible for much of the information concerning Oswald’s personal life shortly before the assassination.” [p.120, Crossfire by Jim Marrs].

                                                                                                         *

*

Priscilla Johnson earned a bit of extra notoriety for having “dated” Senator John F. Kennedy: “Though Priscilla refused to sleep with him, Jack enjoyed their playful, teasing relationship…’Jack,’ Priscilla told him, ‘if you get divorced, cease being Catholic, and get out of politics, I might think of you seriously.’ [Jack said] ‘You’ve been stringing me along all these years because I’m an interesting political figure.'” –p231, All Too Human, 1996, by Edward Klein

*

Lawyer Mark Lane stated that, “The FBI, in its previously top-secret documents, had considered only two persons to be suspects in the assassination of President Kennedy. One, of course, was Lee Harvey Oswald. The other was Priscilla Johnson…” [p.67, Plausible Denial] “Priscilla Johnson had met Oswald in Moscow in 1959, almost as soon as he arrived there”…[p.68] “Johnson had been assigned by the CIA to meet with Oswald and interview him.” [p.69, ibid.] Lane relates how during the last days of the Warren Commission, “the unresolved question…[about when] Oswald was supposed to have been in Mexico City for a week [Sept.26-Oct.3, 1963]…had no evidence of his presence [there]” until the sudden appearance of bus tickets, found by Johnson, folded inside a magazine in Marina’s hotel room.

*

   Of the two books authored by Mrs. McMillan in her career, The Ruin of J. Robert Oppenheimer (2005) positioned her as something of a go-to expert on Oppenheimer and the origins of atomic weapons (dontcha know– see “manhattan project voices” on the web). Two other writers of note already mentioned in this post seem to have followed an associated course: Kai Bird with American Prometheus (2005) and Philip M. Stern with the 1969 publication of The Oppenheimer Case. Stern dedicated his book to his mother, Edith Rosenwald, heiress to the Sears Roebuck fortune amassed by her father Julius and expanded by her brother, Lessing J. Rosenwald.

   Among numerous titles and offices held by Lessing Rosenwald was the wartime (WWII) presidency of Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study, where Admiral Lewis Strauss, future chair of the Atomic Energy Commission, shared the executive as vice-president. The IAS produced essential research and technology for the Manhattan Project and weather control. The men were also to share over the course of many years office holdings in the American Jewish Committee, where Edgar Bloom Stern additionally held membership. We know today that the AJC sponsored ‘Frankfurt School’ psychology and the conferences which led to the creation of MK-Ultra, the CIA’s secret mind control programs.

*

As for Strauss insider and ‘dual atomic agent’ veteran Charles W. Bates, he “was at different times head of the FBI’s offices in Chicago, Cleveland and Omaha, Neb., and served seven years [1958-1965] as the legal attache at the U.S. Embassy in the United Kingdom [London], another Hoover appointment. In the [legat] position, he was chief of the FBI [intelligence] liason office covering England, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland.” http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Charles-Bates-79-long-FBI-career-3095966.php

    It is not possible to locate Bates’s actual whereabouts during his long-term London service, interfacing with MI5, MI6, and other U.S. agencies, though it is doubtless that Bates and Oswald were familiar during LHO’s transit through London and Helsinki. Bates later surfaced in a more public way: “In 1969, Charles Bates was a special agent at the Chicago office of the FBI when police killed Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark while they were sleeping [during a 4am raid on a family apartment]… In 1971, Bates was transferred to Washington D.C. According to Watergate burglar James McCord…on June 21, 1972 (four days after the break-in), White House attorney John Dean checked with acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray as to who was in charge of handling the Watergate investigation. The answer: Charles Bates –the same FBI official who in 1974 would be in charge of handling the SLA investigation and the search for Patty Hearst.” http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/patty-hearst-the-twinkie-murders

*

*                                                                        

Another ‘Bates’, Miss Pauline V. Bates, had an unusual encounter with Oswald only days after his return from the USSR to Fort Worth in June of 1962. Oswald sought legal stenographer services to type his loose notes from Russia, notes that “were very bitter against Russia” according to her Warren testimony. He left her with the impression, as the local headline reads after the assassination, that “He Was Secret Agent For U.S.”  Was Oswald feeding his legend*, his legacy, or naming his handler?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlnpOHfhLvQ

[legend: cover story]

   The oddity of Oswald’s first seemingly voluntary act as a redeemed American was the 3-day effort for the uncommunicative Oswald to get ten dollars worth of typewritten pages from Ms. Bates, a job paid for but left unfinished.

Asking the obvious: Was Pauline Bates a relative of Charles Bates? She said that she was first in the phonebook and rejoined with a statement that she was also the only ‘legal’ stenographer in the area, qualified for work with law enforcement.

*

Watergate Note:

   At the time of the June 1972 hotel break-in, Charles W. Bates was an assistant director of the FBI, chief of the CID, Criminal Investigations Division. J. Edgar had died weeks before on May 2, and was replaced by Nixon appointee and loyalist L. Patrick Gray. To fend off interference from the White House and CIA, four senior FBI asst. directors, now known to have worked collectively as ‘Deep Throat’, conspired to leak evidence about White House activities to the press: They were W. Mark Felt, Charles Bates, Robert G. Kunkel and Richard Long. In September of ’72, Dir.Gray announced that two of them would be leaving the capitol. Kunkel would be transferred to St. Louis and Bates would “exchange jobs” with the SAC in San Francisco.

http://www.jfk.hood.edu/Collection/WeisbergSubjectIndexFiles/KDisk/KunkelRobertSA/Item01.pdf

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/fbi-cleared-w-mark-felt-of-watergate-leaks-6403421

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The infamous slush fund for Nixon’s CREEP, used in part for the Watergate burglars and exposed during the House investigation by Wright Patman, included laundered cash provided by “Robert H. Allen, a mysterious nuclear weapons materials executive. Allen was chairman of Gulf Resources and Chemical Corporation in Houston. His company controlled half the world’s supply of lithium, an essential component of hydrogen bombs…  Robert H. Allen was Texas CREEP’s chief financial officer… In keeping with its strategic nuclear holdings, Allen’s Gulf Resources was a kind of committee of the main components of the London-New York oligarchy.” p247, George Bush, The Unauthorized Biography, by Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, 1992

   Business filings in Delaware list Gulf Resources and Chemical Corporation as established on January 20, 1961 –JFK’s inauguration day and an important Oswald imposter event that helped set up a false trail in Dallas while LHO was still in the USSR.

   “A decade after Watergate, it was revealed that the Hunt family had controlled about 15 percent of Gulf Resources shares. This Texas oil family hired George Bush in 1977 to be the executive committee chairman of their family enterprise, the First International Bank in Houston.” p248, ibid. The Patman investigation was derailed and shut down: “House Republican leader Gerald Ford led the attack on Patman from within the Congress…” p249, ibid.

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*

Another Presidential assassin took a potshot at Gerald Ford in Charles Bates’s San Francisco jurisdiction —really in his jurisdiction– when S.F. FBI informant, linked to the SLA, Sara Jane Moore fired off a round on September 22, 1975, less than three weeks after Manson girl Squeaky Fromme attempted the same in Sacramento Sept.5. Had the attempt succeeded, Nelson Rockefeller would have become president.

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*                                         * Sara Jane Moore, FBI-informant-turned-presidential-assassin — “Moore’s attempt to kill Ford was part of a string of bizarre crimes in Northern California.” http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Sara-Jane-Moore-who-tried-to-kill-Ford-in-75-3232286

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One of those bizarre crimes in which Charles Bates had direct involvement was the Chowchilla schoolbus kidnapping — Chowchilla CA became a post-assassination focal point in the mid-70s when an alleged former CIA contract agent named Claude Barnes Capehart, said to have been photographed at the Texas School Book Depository on 11-22-63, ‘retired’ to Chowchilla. There Capehart came to the attention of (former District Atty.) Judge David Minier who had ruled on Bates’s Chowchilla kidnapping case, and followed up on Capehart after learning about him “from the FBI”. Judge Minier filed a lawsuit against the CIA for the release of JFK assassination records.

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*                                                                             

While agent Oswald was in Japan, FBI and Deep-Throat conspirator Robert G. Kunkel was the U.S. embassy legat in Tokyo (1957-1959). When Oswald made his 1959 journey through the UK, Helsinki and USSR, as stated, Bates was the legat in London. British author of Official and Confidential, Anthony Summers, used Charles Bates as a vital source of information in the telling of J. Edgar Hoover’s secret life. Summers did not mention, however, any special relationship between Bates and Hoover or anyone else. What became situationally clear in Summers’ book just the same, was Bates acting on the special bidding of Hoover– example of implicating JFK in the ‘Profumo Affair’ sex scandal in Britain. For the brief remainder of Bates’ days in Washington D.C. after Hoover’s death and the Watergate break-in, he could have spent his time destroying documents which were known to have disappeared from the FBI repositories by the truckload.

*

*

The Profumo Affair was not just a sex scandal for Britain’s Defence Minister but a Soviet spy ring: [2013, The Mirror] “Christine Keeler comes clean and admits to being a spy… [Stephen] Ward used that first meeting [between Keeler and Profumo] to steal secret letters from Profumo’s briefcase detailing the delivery of nuclear weapons to Germany… Christine says she has now seen FBI documents that prove she was being watched by them.” http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/profumo-affair-christine-keeler-comes-1940402

   At least three of Christine Keeler’s friends came to Washington DC: “JFK got involved with the sex parties arranged by Bobby Baker, connected, it seems, to Stephen Ward in London… By 1963 Kennedy realized that [LBJ] was behind Baker’s operation..to.. blackmail politicians in Washington…” http://www.educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=20893

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“Legal Attaches..are expected to coordinate their investigative activities with other U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, such as the DEA and CIA… Historically, organized crime has been the top priority of the Tokyo Legat…   FBI seeks candidates for Legat and ALAT [assistant legat] positions who have broad knowledge of FBI programs…and require minimal guidance and direction from FBI headquarters.” http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fbi/legat.pdf

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*                                                           

By the time young Oswald reached Japan, “according to the declassified 1956-57 Far East Command ‘Standing’ Operating Procedures for Atomic Operations, 13 separate locations in Japan had nuclear weapons or components, or were earmarked to receive nuclear weapons in times of crisis or war… It is true that..the bombs stored on the mainland lacked their plutonium and/or uranium cores, and that the nuclear-armed ships were a legal inch away from Japanese soil. All in all, [an] elaborate stratagem maintained the technicality that the United States had no nuclear weapons ‘in Japan’.”

http://www.archives.gov/declassification/pidb/meetings/norris-arkin-burr

   Journalist Yoichi Shimatsu adds that Prime Minister Nobusuke “Kishi secretly negotiated a deal with the White House to permit the U.S. military to store atomic bombs in Okinawa and Atsugi naval air station outside Tokyo. (Marine corporal Lee Harvey Oswald served as a guard inside Atsugi’s underground warhead armory.) In exchange, the U.S. gave the nod for Japan to pursue a ‘civilian’ nuclear program… On his 1959 visit to Britain, Kishi was flown by military helicopter to the Bradwell nuclear plant in Essex..[and later] uttered the famous statement that ‘nuclear weapons are not expressly prohibited’ under the postwar Constitution’s Article 9… Covert weapons development..is rife with problems. In the event of an emergency, like [the Fukushima meltdowns], secrecy must be enforced at all cost…” http://www.rense.com/general93/hid.htm

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“In the 50-year history of U.S. overseas nuclear deployment policy, Japan has consistently been  positioned as an important nuclear base in Asia. When the overall occupation of Japan by the U.S. came to an end [c. 1951], an overseas nuclear war command center was established in the central part of Tokyo at the end of 1952. This was one of two such establishments in the whole world, with the other one near London.” http://www.jcp.or.jp/english/e20008_niiharo.html

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It soon followed that “President Eisenhower then authorized the use of war-gold [‘Golden Lily’ or ‘Yamashita’ treasure, combined with Nazi and Fascist loot, known as the Black Eagle Trust [or Japan’s Showa Trust] to set up the LDP [Liberal Democratic Party, which was neither], interfering in the domestic political process in Japan, putting the Japanese people back under a one-party dictatorship under a man –Kishi– who had been involved in armed robbery, narcotics, and slave labor since the 1930s.” –Sterling and Peggy Seagrave (p.236, Gold Warriors)

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Atsugi was known as “one of only two locations outside the United States (along with Manila in the Philippines) where the CIA maintained a store of LSD.” (e.g. Peter Levenda, http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php?topic=34787.0

Manchurian Candidate-style mind control, as Atsugi was transitioning for coexistence with a constitutionally self-governed Japan, was then initiated as Project Bluebird.

*

” ‘I went into Atsugi just as World War II ended, taking some of MacArthur’s bodyguard in there,’ says Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, a former Pentagon-CIA liason officer (1955-63). ‘A montrous stairway went down into caverns you could drive a truck into. A huge underground base. The agency used it for a lot of things.’ “ –p135, The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell, 1992

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***

Harold Weisberg (author previously of Whitewash and Whitewash II):

“At one o’clock in the morning of December 15, 1966, in the Oakland California studios of Radio Station KNEW, I had just finished appearing on..[a] lengthy phone-in radio program… There was a man on the line who..wanted to speak to me but not on the air [and] firther, he wanted the assurance that our conversation would be private… [p85]

   “This man had been in the Marine Corps with Oswald. From his personal experience, he did not believe a single word about the Oswald..that became public with the [Warren] Report. He had agonized in silence for..three years…[and] had built a successful life, had a family, and was worried about the possible consequences…

   “[H]e would only talk in anonymity…

   “Briefly, it is his story that Oswald was bright, not a kook of any kind, not a blatant or proselytizing Marxist, and really a quiet serious guy. They knew each other socially… He never heard Oswald say anything about Communism, for or against, in all this time.

   “More important is what he disclosed about Oswald’s position in the Marine Corps. The unit in which both served, said my informant, was one of three similar ones of which one was always in Japan and the others in the United States. Their function was classified. Every man in the outfit carried a security clearance. [p86]. They had a security designation of which I had never heard. These were that kind of unusual military organizations. Of all the men in the outfit, five had special ‘top’ security approvals. The entire complement carried a minimum of ‘confidential’ (the grade the official file records Oswald as having). Above this there were ‘secret’, ‘top secret’, and a special one, ‘crypto’. Of all the men only five were ‘crypto’. One of these was Lee Harvey Oswald!

   ” ‘Can you possibly be wrong?’ I asked him.

   “He insisted not.

   ” ‘Could your memory be playing tricks?’

   “No, he was positive. He went farther when I questioned him about ‘crypto’, which he indicated was ‘black box’ stuff. I took it to mean a connection with nuclear weapons.

   “If correct, this is more than in disagreement with the entire official story of Oswald, his relations with the government and the assassination… In every way he could, this man insisted he was not in error, that he knew. And he went into more detail..[about Oswald’s] ‘hardship’ discharge so he could care for an allegedly destitute mother… the mysterious caller specified that Oswald spent his last two or three weeks in the service with CID. [military intelligence]” –pp85-87, Oswald in New Orleans, by Harold Weisberg, 1967

*

   Godzilla comes to Tokyo 1954

Popular interpretation has it that the Godzilla impulse arose from the Bikini “Castle-Bravo’ test of March 1, 1954, attended by Chairman Strauss, and the contamination of the Japanese fishing boat Lucky Dragon #5, but the not-so-secret arrival of nuclear weapons on Japanese shores suggests itself.

*

*                                                       Is that Godzilla!? –no, it’s detonation Castle-Bravo: “This radiological calamity had a significant impact on world opinion and helped spark the movement for a nuclear test moratorium which ultimately led to the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty…  Until recently, an extensive collection of documents on nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands was readily available on a Department of Energy website: The Marshall Islands Document Collection. It no longer has an online presence. In the fall of 2013, at the time of the U.S. government shutdown, this important collection disappeared from the web.”http://www.nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb459/

*

“In 1954, the Japanese government began funding a [U.S. approved] nuclear research program. In December 1955, it passed the Atomic Energy Basic Law, establishing the Japan Atomic Energy Commission… the JAEC…[and] purchased its first commercial reactor from Britain but quickly switched to US-designed light-water reactors. By mid-1957, the government had contracted to buy 20 additional reactors...” –Peter Kuznik, The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, http://www.thebulletin.org/japan-nuclear-history-perspective-eisenhower-and-atoms-war-and-peace-0

Atoms for Peace plans called for Japan to become a nuclear showcase. It was even proposed to site the first power generating station in Hiroshima, but the groundswell to ban nukes originating from “a group of middle class housewives in the Suginami ward in Tokyo… grew into a nationwide movement… Lewis Strauss..told the White House press secretary [that the fishing boat] was really a ‘Red spy outfit’, a component of a Russian espionage system. At the request of Strauss, the CIA investigated..and categorically denied it. Nonetheless, Strauss continued to maintain that the irradiation of the Lucky Dragon ‘was no accident’ for the captain..must have been ‘in the employ of the Russians’.”  apjjf.org/-Lawrence-S.-Wittner/4636/article.html

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The 23-man crew of Lucky Dragon #5 were all hospitalized in Tokyo after reaching their home port of Yaizu. All had suffered “nausea, fatigue, vomiting, anorexia, conjunctivitis…leukopenia, thrombopenia, and mild to moderate anemia” with a host of persistent skin disorders from radiological exposure. News in the U.S., some coming from fact-finding congressmen, assured the public that the fishermen would recover in “2 to 3 weeks”. Two AEC health investigators were sent to observe the patients.  www1.american.edu/ted/lucky.htm

   In September more than six months after Bravo, the first and allegedly only Lucky Dragon crewman to do so, died of radiation injuries. The others survived, recovering in a 2 to 3 years time. Six weeks after the radio operator’s death on September 23, the FBI opened it’s first Tokyo Legal Attache office in the embassy, November of 1954.

*

*

*Richard Case Nagell

“The Man Who Knew Too Much” told journalist Dick Russell, “I knew Lee Harvey Oswald before 1962. We had a casual but purposeful acquaintance in Japan when he was stationed there in the Marines. My association with him, then and later, was strictly with an objective.” p80, The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell

   Nagell’s objective was military intelligence, then working for the Army’s Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) coming off a two-year stint with it’s more secret Field Operations Intelligence (FOI) unit headquartered in Tokyo. FOI had its ostensible start under the leadership of MacArthur’s WWII intelligence chief Charles Willoughby: “In correspondence with Allen Dulles, Willoughby described his having ‘solved’ his intramural battles with the CIA in occupied Japan ‘thru the creation of a J.S.O. (Special Operations) in which CIA had autonomy but co-ordinated with us in covert operations to avoid crossing wires’… Willoughby also set up the original 441st Counter Intelligence Corps Group…   [T]he Asian network he had left behind was flourishing. MacArthur, Willoughby, and the CIA had midwifed a string of bone-crushing regimes calling themselves the Iron Triangle, as author Sterling Seagrave has written. These included Chiang Kai-shek’s old Kuomintang on Taiwan, right-wing strongman Syngman Rhee in South Korea, as well as puppet governments in the Philippines and Japan. By 1954, elements within South Korea’s Headquarters Intelligence Division (HID) and Chiang’s own spy net would unite conservatives from across the continent to battle the ‘red hordes’. They called themselves the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League (APACL). Their prime mover in Tokyo was Nobusuke Kishi, another war criminal freed by Willoughby… And [Kishi’s] seventy-five thousand [75,000]man National Police Agency, first established by MacArthur and Willoughby, spent much of their time keeping an eye on American servicemen and tourists with possible ‘subversive leanings’.” pp128-129, ibid. By 1955 “Willoughby was living on Park Avenue in New York.” p130, ibid.

“Meanwhile, the Munich-based Gehlen apparatus with which Dulles and Willoughby worked soon extended its tentacles far into Asia, its operatives hooking up with those of the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League.On Taiwan in October 1957, an international meeting was held setting the stage for a grand global alliance of such forces. Chiang Kai-shek, Syngman Rhee, and South Vietnam’s leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, all sent representatives to the steering committee. German veterans were included, notably Fritz Cramer– a former Nazi Abwehr officer who then headed up a private vigilante group that ferreted out German leftists at the behest of private industry. Its U.S. sister organization was the American Security Council (ASC), a private Washington group set up in 1955 by ex-FBI agents that built an index of over one million alleged ‘subversives’ for major corporations seeking security checks. Willoughby, a friend of Fritz Cramer, eventually sat on the ASC’s board… This event coincided with Oswald’s arrival in the Far East… In Tokyo the Nagell and Oswald paths were soon to cross for the first time.” pp131-132, ibid.

*

   In September of 1963, after posting an assassination warning to J.Edgar Hoover, Nagell went into a bank in El Paso Texas and fired two shots into the ceiling corner. He left the building and sat in his car until surrendering minutes later to an El Paso officer. “During the course of his El Paso trial in 1964, Nagell was asked to describe the [Army’s] CIC. ‘Well…the mission is to investigate any matters relating to treason, subversion, espionage, disaffection, that might be taking place within the military establishment or that might be conducted by civilians which are employed by the corporations, factories or concerns which are under military contract… And overseas..[CIC] have police powers… In fact, overseas they are just like the FBI in some ways.'” [p97, The Man Who Knew Too Much] …[Nagell] also told me [author Russell] the FBI was working overseas when they weren’t supposed to be.” [p26, ibid.] “As Nagell wrote years later, ‘What it all boils down to (the impetus behind the government’s diligent prosecution of me in the 1960s, the true reason for my lengthy imprisonment, all of this injustice) can be explained in one sentence: I informed the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and others, as early as September 17, 1963, that Lee Harvey Oswald and two of his Cuban associates were planning to assassinate the President of the United States… and nothing was done about it.’ “ p441, ibid.

*

According to Nagell, the Soviets had induced him to work for them, even at times when Nagell believed he was working for the CIA: “In the summer of 1963,’ as Nagell wrote to Senator Richard Russell, ‘I received instructions to initiate certain action against Mr. Oswald, who was the indispensable tool in the conspiracy, and thereafter depart the United States legally.’ Nagell was to try to persuade Oswald ‘that the deal was phony’… [p429] “In the event that Nagell failed in his attempt to get Oswald to back away from the ‘phony deal’, he was supposed to meet with him –and then kill him– in Mexico City… According to [Nagell’s lawyer] Fensterwald memo of a 1973 conversation with Nagell, ‘The USSR ordered Nagell to eliminate Lee Harvey Oswald because they thought it might be an extreme embarassment to them if he was caught, not because he was one of them, but because of his history.’ ” [p438] “Whatever else Nagell may have been involved in with Oswald, Nagell has never been willing to say… What alarmed Nagell was that he found himself caught in the middle of something going on between American and Soviet intelligence.” p440, The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell, 1992

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Author Russell claims that “This book marks the first time that any known meeting between Oswald and Soviet intelligence in Japan has ever been alleged. Though I have only Nagell’s word that it occurred, the name of ‘Nicolai G. Eroshkin’ under a heading of former military attache at the Tokyo embassy does show up in the notebook taken from Nagell by the FBI in 1963. Nagell maintained that Oswald and the Russian colonel had more than one meeting, though he has never specified what they may have talked about. But Nagell did add that almost since the day ‘Oswald first saw Eroshkin at the embassy, the Soviets suspected the Marine of being an agent of one of the U.S. intelligence services.’

   “Something else was going on around Colonel Eroshkin in 1957 and 1958. The CIA was trying to entice him to defect to the American side.” [p.136]

   [A Japanese official and personal friend of Nagell’s]“Jun Murai, head of the Tohoku Regional Police Bureau and formerly director of the Cabinet Research Office, Japan’s equivalent of the CIA…’warned [Nagell] that the Japanese had penetrated the [Eroshkin] project and believed that it entailed something else, something unlawful that might further strain the already tense relations then existing between Japan and the USSR.’ Murai made ‘pointed reference to some unsavory incidents that had occurred over the past several years involving the CIA’…” [p138, The Man Who Knew Too Much]

*

Incidental to Russell’s research, on a prompt from Nagell regarding his 1963 suspected-KGB contact ‘Oaxaca’ in Mexico, who requested a meeting with Oswald through Nagell [the September ’63 Mexico City trip], Russell introduces a curious fellow named Albert Alexander Osborne, a.k.a. John Howard Bowen. Albert Osborne sat next to Oswald on a bus ride for 18 hours into Mexico. The figure of Osborne/Bowen, whom the FBI believed to be one person with a duel-identity, remains a mystery today, deepened in that Dick Russell’s detailed reference to Osborne in his 1992 book was wholly omitted from the 2003 re-issue of the Man Who Knew Too Much.

*                                                 Albert Alexander Osborne   a.k.a. John Howard Bowen, born and raised in England, had only one clearly traceable residence-location from where he came and went in the United States in Knoxville Tennessee, the nearest city to the Manhattan Project’s Oak Ridge Facility. It may even be that Albert Osborne adopted his second identity as Bowen in Knoxville in 1943 as Oak Ridge was being built and inhabited. Bowen was said to have left Knoxville after the summer of ’43. Over a ten year period beginnng in 1953, “Bowen” infrequently but occasionally announced his status as a missionary in Mexico through articles sent to the Knoxville Journal. Osborne later took refuge in Knoxville again in 1964 to escape hounding by the FBI according to his anonymous friends. The FBI at least caught up with Osborne in Nashville in March of ’64 for what was his third and last interview with the FBI. After this he was officially written off as a con man and witnesses were told to forget about him. He died in San Antonio, Texas in 1966 at age 77, believed to be caused by food poisoning.

   Besides his infamous September of ’63 bus ride with Oswald in Mexico, Osborne the traveler left New York City for the U.K. six weeks later on November 13. The journey included a novel visit to his English siblings who hadn’t seen him in 40 years and then, as his sister told it, Osborne departed for London, arriving on or near November 18, 1963. He returned to New York on an Icelandic Airlines flight originating in Luxembourg on December 5. Albert Alexander Osborne, whose name-parts were variously used as aliases by Lee Harvey Oswald (or his impersonators), was not the only Oswald contact trekking to London in the months or weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy.

*

Luxembourg is a tiny sovereign nation surrounded by France, Belgium, and Germany and “is one of the world’s largest financial centers as well as worldwide leader in the investment industry and the largest international private banking center in the Eurozone.” http://www.relbanks.com/europe/luxembourg

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Independent of Nagell, Russell revealed a forewarning of Kennedy’s assassination from a military source; a young Army  codebreaker stationed in Metz, France named Eugene B. Dinkin. Metz is less than 40 miles from the city of Luxembourg in Luxembourg. Dinkin’s troubles began, according to a superior officer, when “During a troop information class on the subject ‘Duty, Honor, Country,’ Private Dinkin made a 25-minute speech on the government’s stockpiling of atomic bombs…’ On September 24, 1963…Dinkin was given a psychiatric evaluation” which resulted in the revocation of his ‘crypto’ clearance and a transfer. Within a month, Private Dinkin initiated a personal campaign to warn U.S. authorities about a planned assassination against the U.S. president scheduled for late November. “So Dinkin suddenly left his unit. On October 25, he set set out to try to contact certain European ambassadors in the nearby nation of Luxembourg, in hopes that his message would then filter through their intelligence networks back to the United States. Nobody would give him the time of day except the Israeli ambassador to Luxembourg, who, Dinkin writes, advised him how best to present his case at the American embassy there.” [p554, The Man Who Knew Too Much] Private Dinkin was shortly to learn “through the military grapevine” that the Army was going to lock him up as a psychotic –he went AWOL and took his message to the press office of the U.N. in Geneva Switzerland, followed by a visit to Frankfurt, then on to the U.S. embassy in Bonn, W. Germany where he failed to convey his warning. Advised to return to his unit, Dinkin was promptly arrested and hospitalized on November 13 and held incommunicado, finally ending his travels stateside weeks later; “transferred on December 5, 1963 to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C…[and] began receiving ‘therapy'” for his “unfortunate condition [of] schizo-assassination prognostication.” [p556, ibid.]

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Osborne is very reminiscent of the “wandering bishops” written about by Peter Levenda, at least four of whom were working with Guy Banister in Louisiana (David Ferrie, Jack Martin, Thomas Beckham, Tommy Baumler). A week after the southbound Mexico bus ride, allegedly, Osborne returned to the US heading for New Orleans –one day later, Oswald returned and headed for Dallas where he lodged at the YMCA. Osborne too, frequented the local ‘Y’s on his travels, having been found by the FBI at a Y in Nashville.

   The wandering bishops of New Orleans in the JFK assassination plot were tied to two men who inducted them through “apostolic succession”, and both were working with the FBI by the time of the Garrison investigation in 1967: those two were Carl J. Stanley and Walter (Wolodymr) Propheta. Bishop Propheta in New York was even “installed as Primate” of the American Orthodox Catholic Church in ’67 by J. Edgar Hoover, according to Levenda. Another overlap occurrs relevant to 1963 with “yet another personality close to the Propheta organization [who] was the famous wrestler Antonino Rocca –retired from wrestling at that time– claimed to be an agent of the CIA working out of Lebanon; he further claimed that he was running Phantom jets into Israel under diplomatic radar by having them shipped to Luxembourg first and then flying them into Israel…” [p283, Sinister Forces, by Peter Levenda]

Again, similar to Osborne, was Fred Lee Crisman*

Characterized as a roving minister and con man from Tacoma Washington, Crisman’s colorful background included a role in the first recorded UFO encounter known as the Maury Island incident in Puget Sound 1947. Crisman was a former military man, ex-employee of Boeing and allegedly Lockheed as well. He went on to promote his UFO and alien technology experiences in Amazing Stories magazine. Guy Banister, claims Peter Levenda, was sent in from Butte, MT in those days as the FBI’s “X-Files” officer. There were in fact nuclear aircraft in the works from the late ’40s up until the Kennedy years, specifically contracted to General Dynamics‘ California facilities. (General Dynamics and subsidiaries, Convair and General Atomics —see the record of physicist/weaponeer Ted Taylor, below)

   According to Garrison’s investigators: “Our information indicates that since the early sixties he [Crisman] has made many trips to the New Orleans and Dallas areas in connection with his undercover work for that part of the warfare industry engaged in the manufacture of.. ‘hardware’ –meaning those weapons sold to the U.S. government which are uniquely large and expensive.” https://archive.org/stream/nsia-CrismanFredLee/nsia-CrismanFredLee/Crisman Fred Lee 03#page/n0/mode/2up, Harold Weisberg documents archive

   Crisman was a ‘business partner’ with the younger Thomas Beckham, and friends with both Banister and Clay Shaw, alleged to have been the first person called by Shaw after his indictment.

   Investigator and photo analyst for Garrison, Richard E. Sprague, authored The Taking of America, 1-2-3 (1976) wherein he leveled his own indictment against Shaw, Ferrie, Osborne, Crisman, Ferrie, Nagell, Oswald and others as co-plotters.

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToA.html

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*

*Theodore B. (Ted) Taylor *, Los Alamos(1949-1956), General Atomics, Project Orion (nuclear spaceship)

   Physicist Freeman Dyson said of his colleague, Ted Taylor, “He was the first man in the world to understand what you can do with three or four kilograms of plutonium, that making bombs is an easy thing to do…” p79, The Curve of Binding Energy, by John McPhee, 1973

…“Taylor once designed an implosion bomb that weighed twenty pounds… Studying ordinary artillery shells, he replicated their external dimensions in conceiving fission bombs that could be fired out of guns.” p78, ibid.

“So far as we know, everybody in the world who has tried to make a nuclear explosion since 1945 has succeeded on the first try.” p100  

…”There is good, better, and worse, but there is no nonweapons-grade plutonium in the nuclear industry.” –Dr. Ted Taylor, p113, The Curve of Binding Energy

   In the early sixties, Ted Taylor turned his attention to the issue of nuclear safeguards. “Safeguards cost money, which means a diminution of profit… Safeguards suggest dangers, which belie the promise of Atoms for Peace, and thus can be a hindrance to the promotion of nuclear commerce. The Atomic Energy Commission, as a whole, is profoundly dedicated to the growth and spread of nuclear power…” pp46-47, ibid.

   Another of McPhee’s sources, Russell Wischow who formerly worked for the AEC, added that “Safeguards are frustrating. The stuff is difficult to quantify. You can’t put it into a vault and keep it there. Once it is in the manufacturing cycle, you open it up to pilferage.” p48. Wischow was replaced by Charles Thornton who told McPhee, “The aggregate MUF [Material Unaccounted For] from the three diffusion plants alone is expressible in tons. No one knows where it is. None of it may have been stolen, but the balances don’t close. You could divert from any plant in the world in substantial amounts and never be detected.” p49, The Curve of Binding Energy

“When the Chinese exploded a uranium bomb in 1964, it was assumed that the Chinese were not smart enough to have figured out the technology of isotopic separation. Therefore, the Chinese must have stolen the U-235. Where? No one could guess. Some months later, though, it was disclosed that sixty kilograms of U-235 was unaccounted for at a nuclear-fuel-fabricating plant in Apollo, Pennsylvania. Perhaps the Chinese had stolen the uranium in Pennsylvania. While this speculation was going on, the [U.S.] government revealed…the presence of a gaseous-diffusion plant at Langchow.” p12, ibid.

   And there, apparently, the matter rested.

*

The plant in Apollo PA was called NUMEC, the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, co-founded by Zalman Shapiro in 1957 and co-owned by the Stern family of New Orleans –Edith Rosenwald Stern, friend and supporter of Clay Shaw from the International Trade Mart. MUF at NUMEC during the ’60s caused a stir as an alleged supply source for Israel’s clandestine weapons.

   “One of the most celebrated of the MUF cases occurred in the fall of 1965, when a [NUMEC] plant at Apollo Pennsylvania came up 207 pounds short in its inventory of highly enriched uranium, worth about $1 million at the time. The AEC had the plant closed down and began looking for the material. Thirteen pounds turned up in air filters… Another 15 pounds was discovered at a mountaintop burial pit, 8 miles [away]. But there were still 148 pounds missing at the end of the search…” p179, Unacceptable Risk, by McKinley C. Olson, 1976

*

   The significance of author McPhee citing the Material Unaccounted For (MUF) from NUMEC as the sole reference to suspect weapons-fuel gains by the Chinese in 1963-64 is a narrowing of the window-in-time that accurately describes the effort of the Israelis to acquire weapons-fuel. The Israelis later confessed to smuggling NUMEC fuel for their reactor at Dimona, recorded by Gordon Thomas in Gideon’s Spies (1999), however, assigning the contraband coup to year 1968. Mr. Thomas did not specifically cite ‘1968’ in his book, but later ‘concurred’ in a separate statement given during an investigation. The story made big news. The Apollo smuggling operation within the greater sphere of U.S.-Israel relations included using the political pressure of the Jewish Vote applied by American Zionist Abe Feinberg, a pressure that could only be effective in the re-election bid of JFK, and therefore in keeping with the 1963-64 time frame.

*

According to Gideon’s Spies:

“Trouble had begun in 1956, when France had sent a twenty-four megawatt reactor to Israel. Ben Gurion announced its purpose was to provide a ‘pumping station’ to turn the desert into an ‘agricultural paradise by desalinating a billion cubic gallons of seawater annually.’ [A desalination ‘nuplex’ for Israel was the brainchild of Lewis Strauss, proposed in 1956 and reconstituted with Eisenhower’s approval as the “Oasis Plan”] The claim promptly led to the resignation of six of the seven members of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission…

   “Ignoring all opposition, Ben-Gurion gave the order for the reactor to be sited in the Negev Desert, close to the bleak, sand-blown settlement at Dimona.. south of Tel Aviv... [p80]

“Three months after the reactor had been installed, a small nuclear material processing company opened for business in a converted World War II steel plant in the unappealing town of Apollo, Pennsylvania. The company was called the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, Numec. Its chief executive was Dr. Salman Shapiro.

   “On LAKAM’s computer database of prominent American Jews with a scientific background, Shapiro was also listed as a prominent fundraiser for Israel. Rafi Eitan knew he had found a potential answer to how to provide the Dimona reactor with fissionable material... [p81]

“The son of an orthodox rabbi… [Shapiro was] an important member of the nuclear research and development laboratory at Westinghouse; the corporation was contracted to the United States Navy to develop submarine reactors…  Shapiro, in his ‘typical discreet way’, had provided several million dollars for the Technion Institute in Haifa that offered tuition in science and engineering.

“In 1957 Shapiro had left Westinghouse and set up Numec. It had twenty-five stockholders, all openly sympathetic to Israel. Shapiro found himself head of a small company in an aggressive cutthroat industry. Nevertheless, Numec had won a number of contracts to recover enriched uranium, a process that usually led to the loss of a quantity of uranium during the salvage operation. There was no way of telling how great or when the loss had taken place. [p82]

…“[T]he already uneasy relationship between Israel and the United States over the desire of the Jewish state to become a nuclear power increased when Ben-Gurion traveled to Washington in 1960. At a series of meetings with State Department officials, he was bluntly told that for Israel to possess nuclear weapons would affect the balance of power in the Middle East. In February 1961, President John F. Kennedy wrote to Ben-Gurion suggesting that Dimona should be regularly inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

   “Alarmed, Ben-Gurion flew to New York to meet with Kennedy at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel… But Kennedy was firm: there had to be an inspection… He returned home convinced ‘a Catholic in the White House is bad news for Israel’. The prime minister [p83] turned to the one man in Washington he could trust, Abraham Feinberg, a Zionist supporter of Israel’s nuclear aspirations.

At one level, the native New Yorker was the most important Jewish fundraiser for the Democratic party. Feinberg made no secret of why he had raised many millions: every dollar was to ensure the party backed Israel in Congress. He had also discreetly provided many more additional millions of dollars to create Dimona. The money came in cashier’s checks to the Bank of Israel in Tel Aviv, thus avoiding the accountability of the Israeli foreign exchange controls. Ben-Gurion told Feinberg to ‘sort out the boy. Make the putz understand the reality of life’.

   “Feinberg’s method was straightforward political pressure– the kind that had already infuriated Kennedy when he was running for office. Then, Feinberg had bluntly told him: ‘We are willing to pay your bills if you will let us have control of your Middle East policy’…

   “Now he used the same direct approach: if President Kennedy continued to insist on an inspection of Dimona, he should ‘not count on Jewish financial support in the next political election’…

   “Nevertheless Kennedy was resolute…”

*

–more reading, “The Eisenhower Administration and the Discovery of Dimona: March 1958-January 1961” –when Secretary Herter asked the Israelis where the financing came from he was told “from [the United States]” — http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb510/

*

“At some point in his AEC career, [Lewis] Strauss..met and befriended his Israeli counterpart, Ernst David Bergmann… neither Strauss’s biographer nor his son Lewis, who has had access to all of his father’s personal papers, knew that the two had met. The friendship with Bergmann provides the strongest evidence of Strauss’s sympathy for the Israeli nuclear weapons program… rules were bent for Strauss… [who] privately was in favor of a nuclear-armed Israel.” pp85-86, The Samson Option, by Seymour Hersh

   “Dino Brugioni briefed Strauss regularly on U-2 nuclear intelligence, but found him inscrutable when it came to information on the Israeli nuclear reactor: ‘I never knew what he was thinking; never understood him”…Brugioni had his own reasons for wondering about Strauss. He knew there was evidence inside the CIA suggesting that American and European Jews had been directly involved in the financing and construction of Dimona from the start. ‘There was a fervor…The attitude was ‘You had to protect Israel and anybody who did not suffered.’ “ p90, ibid.

   “Abraham Feinberg shared Lewis Strauss’s belief in operating behind the scenes on behalf of Israel…” p93, ibid. “The issue of Jewish political power and the Israeli bomb was complicated during these years by the fact that John Kennedy was intellectually and emotionally committed to a halt in the spread of nuclear weapons.” p98, The Samson Option

*           

Evidence of an operational Dimona reactor in mid-1963: pres-.elect JFK was briefed by Secretary of State Cristian Herter that Israel’s Dimona plant was capable of producing 90 kilograms of plutominum by 1963.

*        dimona-1

Rafi Eitan claimed to have boldly arranged shipment of NUMEC fuels to Israel in 1968 under the noses of the FBI and U.S. State Department, likely as cover for the earlier acquisition. The overtly marked radioactive containers observed by U.S. agents were meant to discourage inspection or interference –U.S. officials were dared to interfere, according to Eitan’s story, and assured that transport would continue under diplomatic immunity if they tried.

*

As further evidence of the conjunction in smuggling of drugs, small arms, and nuclear weapons materiel, author Gordon Thomas referenced this minor discovery, also at a much later date: “Justiano Torres was a courier for a Colombian drug cartel who had expanded into trafficking in even deadlier substance. [His] suitcase contained, in sealed containers, the two hundred grams of plutonium239 that [Soviet scientist] Tashanka had sold him. It had a street value of $50 million…[and was] sufficient to make a small nuclear device.” [p87, Gideon’s Spies]

*

The Israeli bomb project began “In the spring of 1952 [when Ben-Gurion] started his nation on the path to nuclear weapons… acting on the recommendation of Ernst David Bergman…in the Ministry of Defense…

   “Of particular importance to Israel was the relationship established with the French atomic energy commission [the CEA]. Israeli scientists were granted access to the Saclay Nuclear Research Center as well as Chatillon…” [p237, Spying on the Bomb, by Jeffrey Richelson, 2006]

   …The [Israeli] cabinet.. chose to start small with a reactor purchased from the United States and located at Nebi Rubin, south of Tel Aviv. But an opportunity to advance Israel’s quest for nuclear weapons, with French assistance, arose out of a foreign policy fiasco. France had already become an important military supplier to Israel, largely owing to [Shimon] Peres… The director general of the Defense Ministry and future Prime Minister [Peres] also played a significant role in obtaining additional assistance that went far beyond training scientists at Saclay and Chatillon.

   Shortly after Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal in late July 1956, [the] French..asked Peres..whether Israel was willing to participate in a military operation along with France and Britain to seize the canal… [p238, ibid]

  “In mid-September, before the military campaign began, the Commisariat l’Energie Atomique [CEA] and IAEC [Israel Atomic Energy Commission] agreed, in principle, on the sale to Israel of a small research reactor similar to the EL-3 at Saclay. But t he military campaign turned into a debacle when Soviet leaders threatened missile attacks on the invaders and Eisenhower responded with condemnation rather than support. On November 8, Ben Gurion sent Peres and foreign minister Golda Meir on a covert mission to France to determine what kind of support the French would provide in case the Soviets made good on their threats against Israel…

   “What Israel wanted was an upgraded version of the reactor that the CEA had planned to provide Israel, one similar to the large G-1 (40-megawatt thermal power) reactor at Marcoule, which was capable of producing between twenty-two and thirty-three pounds of plutonium a year. In addition, Israel wanted France to provide the technology required to extract plutonium from the spent reactor fuel, and requested…an underground plant attached to the reactor.” [p239] ….By [mid-1959, with settled supply agreements in place] construction of the  [Dimona] nuclear facility was well underway… But political changes in France threatened to bring the joint effort to a halt well before the research center could be completed.

   “The potential stumbling block was French president Charles de Gaulle, who was determined to end his nation’s close military collaboration with Israel, in part because of fear of Arab reaction if the extent of cooperation became known. In 1959 [deGaulle] had been talked out of his plan to simply abrogate the nuclear agreement. In 1960, after the departure of pro-Israeli atomic energy minister Jacques Soustelle, [the] French…made three demands..[including] international inspections. Unless Israel complied, France would refuse to supply the natural uranium needed to fuel the reactor.

   “Accepting the French demands, particularly for international inspections, would threaten the plan to produce fissile material for atomic bombs… High-level discussions between deGaulle and Ben-Gurion followed in June 1960…[which resulted in] terminating official involvement through the CEA… Israel was able to take over most of the effort…” [p241, Spying on the Bomb, by Jeffrey Richelson]

*

  *deGaulle and Kennedy 

                                                                                                                     Soustelle

“In 1955, Soustelle was sent to Algeria as Governor General by Prime Minister Pierre Mendes-France; he developed a network of ‘colonialist’ supporters independent of his government position, networks that were to become a leading part of the Algerian Secret Army Organization. His provocative behavior led to his removal from office.

   “Returning to France, Soustelle was re-elected to parliament and became president of the France-Israel Alliance Caucus on the eve of the French government’s collaboration with Great Britain and Israel in the Suez invasion. [About this time or shortly after, Soustelle became the Minister of atomic energy]

   “It was only after deGaulle’s return to power [c.1958] that Soustelle openly discarded his ‘Gaullist’ clothing and went into exile, taking leadership of the OAS Algerian terrorists and other parallel groups. Soustelle’s terrorists had the active support of David Ben-Gurion and Israeli intelligence. Financing for the OAS and other bands came from the Permindex Corporation. This assassination bureau was established by British-Canadian Major General Louis Mortimer Bloomfield, who channeled monies through the U.S. FBI Division Five (which Bloomfield set up during World War II). Permindex engaged in over 30 attempts to assassinate President deGaulle, notable among them the [1962] Petit Clamart incident to which Soustelle was directly linked.

   “Seeking refuge in Switzerland, Israel, Madrid and Rome, Soustelle in the following period obtained aid from sources in the United States associated with William F. Buckley and his National Review circle…” [Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) Volume 6, No.44, Novemeber 13, 1979]

*

“It was out of the World Commerce Corporation that Permindex was formed [the post- WWII apparatus of Canadian millionaire and “master spy” William Stephenson who maintained British intelligence wartime espionage operations on the 35th and 36th floors of New York’s Rockefeller Center]”…“Schlumberger Ltd [owned by Mrs. Dominique Schlumberger deMenil, whose] husband, Jean deMenil, was a Permindex board member and close collaborator of [Louis] Bloomfield since the war. Involved in oil diagnostics [which uses radioactive ‘downhole’ explosives and tools] the firm [Schlumberger] served as a cover for Permindex operations internationally. During WWII, deMenil had been the head of deGaulle’s Free French Forces in Venezuela together with Jacques Soustelle.

   “In 1962, the Secret Army Organization of Permindex board member Jean deMenil oversaw an assassination attempt against.. deGaulle…”

*

                 Permanent Industrial Exhibition, Perm-ind-ex, was chartered in 1956 Basle Switzerland. In 1959, a Permindex center was opened in Rome called Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC). The head of Rome’s CMC was Georgio Mantello, a.k.a. George Mandel and often referred to as Mantello-Mandel. Permindex/CMC would later move operations to Johannesburg South Africa, c.1964.

*

“The leadership of PERMINDEX included a longtime asset of CIA Deputy Director for Plans Frank Wisner. His name was Ferenc Nagy and he was the president of PERMINDEX… Briefly, in 1945, he had been prime minister of Hungary. But it was Nagy’s CIA history that catapulted him to the leadership of PERMINDEX…

   “Confirming deGaulle’s thesis that PERMINDEX funded the OAS is that Nagy was a ‘munificent contributor’ to Jacques Soustelle… In 1960, Soustelle met in WashingtonD.C. with Richard Bissell, then heading the CIA’s clandestine services. A year later, Soustelle went into exile…Two years after that he would be accused of colluding with OAS in the attempted assassination of deGaulle…

   “In New Orleans, [Banister’s secretary] Delphine Roberts identified Nagy from his photograph as someone she had seen at Guy Banister’s office.” –p137, A Farewell To Justice, by Joan Mellen

*

*  Ferenc Nagy     *

Researcher Maurice Philipps:

“Documents found in the Bloomfield archives gave us more details on the structure and leadership of Permindex. For instance, they show that Ferenc Nagy was the active leader of Permindex and, in 1960, was making contact with David Rockefeller in order to develop the New York City World Trade Center on the model of the CMC [or Centro Mondiale Commerciale, based in Rome, and itself modeled on the New Orleans International Trade Mart]…. Nagy eventually moved to Dallas, TX, where he was residing in 1963, allegedly engaged in anti-Castro activities.”

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=16780

“…documents show that Ferenc Nagy…was the direct liason between Permindex and Rockefeller.” http://www.somesecretsforyou.blogspot.com/2010/10/permindex-cia-link.htm

*

[The Rockefeller Foundation, ‘RF’] “would have preferred to distance themselves from the dubious honor bestowed by Ernest O. Lawrence, who unwittingly boasted that ‘if it hadn’t been for the RF, there would have been no atomic bomb.’ As [they] saw it, the Foundation now shared the awesome prospect of writing the ‘world’s obituary’ and shared in the responsibility of controlling the future use of atomic energy.” –p219, The Molecular Vision of Life, by Lily E. Kay, 1993

*

In January of 1960, Lee Oswald took up his position in Minsk at the electronics factory. Over the next few months his mother began to worry: “On June 3, 1960, Hoover sent a letter to the State Department warning that someone posing as Lee Harvey Oswald in Russia might try to get hold of Oswald’s passport… Also in the letter was an FBI report from Dallas dated May 12, 1960 in which Oswald’s mother, Marguerite.. said she was worried about the safety of her son. She had written to him in Russia…[and] all letters had been returned to her. The State department added a notation, issuing orders that Oswald’s passport would not be returned to him through the Russian postal system but only in person; and the passport was actually handed over to a man calling himself Oswald in July 1961…” –p111, The Assassination Chain

   The next month, August of 1961 and perhaps only days later, three American women who were traveling by car had brief encounters with Oswald. Two of them, Rita Naman and Monica Kramer, were roommates from Solvang,CA who started their journey in Britain. The third, Mrs. Marie Hyde, from the Seattle/Tacoma area of Washington, joined them in Moscow after engaging the women to give her a ride to Poland. Miss Naman reported to the Warren Commission that she took pictures in Minsk of a small group of people including Oswald standing by her car. One picture, at least, taken by Naman with Mrs. Hyde’s camera, showed Mrs. Hyde in a photo with Oswald. That photo apparently was sent to the CIA, shown neither to the Warren Commission nor the public. No testimony or photo image from Mrs. Marie Hyde has ever been published. Only a coincidence of surnames suggests a possible link between Mrs. Marie Hyde and Ruth Hyde, the wife of Michael Paine, an avid Russian speaker who befriended the Oswalds through the Dallas White Russian fellowship.

   Outstanding in the background of Ruth Hyde Paine was a generations-long family friendship with the Herbert Hoovers. Ruth’s husband Michael Paine, as many researchers note, bore a strong resemblance to Lee Oswald.

*

*     Ruth Hyde Paine   * Michael and Lee

*

” ‘I think the only really effective clandestine collection on Russia came from defectors,’ Richard Bissell said later… ‘It was part of the duties of the clandestine service to receive and encourage defectors, and some extremely valuable ones came in. But I don’t think clandestine collection is ever going to be a useful activity in a totalitarian society. The reason is only partly the difficulty of infiltrating agents into the country.’ “ –p374, Dulles, A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John Foster Dulles…, by Leonard Mosley, 1978

Bissell’s methods of getting information out gets no mention from Mosley.

*

Judyth said that Lee Oswald knew Ruth Paine  a “long time before” she befriended Marina and Lee in Dallas. (The Real Deal interview Part One, April 30, 2010, www,radiofetzer.blogspot.com)

   For years Ruth had been involved in arranging exchange visits between Americans and Russians. “In 1958 Ruth Paine was involved in a Russian/American exchange program on a leadership level.” http://www.joust38.rssing.com/chan-8543343/all_p4.html

   In the 1990s, Ruth “admitted to her friend that her father [William Avery Hyde] had worked for the CIA as an ‘executive agent’. Apparently while he was traveling abroad for Nationwide Insurance and then later while working for the Agency for International Development, he would gather intelligence information for the agency…Ruth’s sister [Sylvia Hyde Hoke] worked for the CIA as a staff psychologist in 1961…” http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/Paine.pdf

   Michael spent 3 years of college training in academic physics at Harvard and Swarthmore, netting a job in Bartol Research Foundation’s nuclear labs in 1951. Ultimately without a degree due to poor performance as a scholar, he still found a good position with Bell Helicopter Research in Texas, helped, they say and with certainty, by family connections.  His mother Ruth Forbes (ex-Paine) married Bell helicopter inventor and scientist Arthur Young when Michael was 18. On his father’s side, the influence was Trostkyite socialism. The politics of the Paines, it appears, was liberal and leftist, and their legacy in the conspiracy was to contribute the incriminating evidence of a violent and lone nut Oswald. The ‘lancer’ article above remarked on the extensive official interviewing of Ruth and suggests that they might have had “the wrong Paine”. Was Michael Paine someone to watch?

   Despite the relentless obsequiousness of Mrs. Paine’s Garage, author Thomas Mallon passes on something Michael said to a coworker at Bell, told to SA Hosty after the assassination: “George Stephenson, a Bell engineer who sold him a used car in the fall of ’63, would tell FBI agent Hosty that he recalled Michael Paine stating, ‘I may have a problem here and I may have gotten myself into something and I better try to get out of it.’ Mr. Stephenson stated that he understood by this statement that Michael Paine was concerned about having the wife and children of [Lee Oswald] reside with his wife in view of his pro-Communist statements. Michael doesn’t remember this conversation…” p183, Mrs. Paine’s Garage, by Thomas Mallon, 2002

 Michael Paine knew better than anyone that Oswald was anti-Communist.

*

Ruth Paine, on a tip from the neighbors, made the phonecall securing Lee Oswald a job in the Texas School Book Depository

*

                                                           ‘TSBD’*

Researcher Bill Weston: “The Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) moved into the seven-story, 411 Elm Street building during the summer of 1963, but exactly when is unknown. Ruth Paine, while driving on the freeway, saw the company name on a four-story warehouse and thought that Lee worked there, not realizing that a larger building, also within her view, was the place where he really worked. [2] Evidently a new sign was added later, but exactly when is unknown. The difficulty of obtaining specific details is of course due to the building’s role as a shooting platform, but there is something else to consider. From clues derived from a variety of sources, company executives used schoolbooks to disguise shipments of firearms and narcotics.”

www.educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6017

                                              *******************************************************************

                                                                    *********************************************

*

Michael Collins Piper: “[W]hen Garrison launched his investigation of Shaw he had unwittingly unearthed the ‘Rothschild connection’ to the JFK conspiracy, although Garrison himself apparently didn’t realize it at first…  Documents unearthed by Canadian author Maurice Phillips demonstrate beyond question that Shaw’s associate on the board of Permindex (its chief executive officer and primary shareholder), Louis Mortimer Bloomfield of Montreal, was a longtime attorney for the Rothschild dynasty… In addition, Bloomfield and Montreal liquor baron Sam Bronfman…were among a clique of money kings who, in the 1950s, bankrolled Israel’s secret nuclear arms program…”

http://www.americanfreepress.net/?p=13765

*

Edgar Bronfman, son of Sam, said: “He [father] loved the oil business. ‘If it’s good enough for the Rockefellers, it’s good enough for me,’ he used to say… Father agreed to relocate his oil business to the United States [for tax advantages]…[though] we were still involved in the Canadian oil and gas business…[and] we stayed in the oil business. One reason was our eventual success in Forrest Oil, a company I had come across..in 1953 when I worked at the Empire Trust Company…  [Edgar Bronfman] hired Dallas economist Carroll M. Bennett to guide the Bronfman oil investments…[and] move the company..to Dallas where he lived.” https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bronfman-spirits.html

*

                                  Montreal lawyer, OSS, and FBI liason, Louis M. Bloomfield

*

Researcher Steve Gaal (interview by Bill Weston, 2010): “Permindex..is connected to Clay Shaw. For a long time we have known that Clay Shaw was an asset of the CIA, but recently new documents have been found that show that Permindex was connected to Rothschild and British interests…. Freeport Sulphur was a [law] client of Doyle Smith and Doyle… Probe magazine printed an important article that connects Clay Shaw to Freeport Sulphur…[and] Doyle Smith and Doyle was a very important company within the conspiracy milieu. Another important British-connected company was Empire Trust. This company was controlled by the Rothschilds via Kuhn Loeb & Co [sic]. Jack Chrichton was part of Empire Trust… The British-connected Great Southwest Corporation had control of Marina following the assassination… The Great Southwest was made up of British interests, including Loeb Rhoades [&Co.] and Anglophiles William Zeckendorf, the Rockefellers, and Murchison family…”

http://www.educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=17035

“Perhaps our most interesting discovery, fitting tribute that it is to Wesley J. Liebeler, is the report of Portland (Oregon) FBI Agents Julius A. Bernard and William S. Brown. On November 26, 1963, they interviewed J. Pat Doyle, of..Portland. This was but four days after the assassination. Doyle told the government that his family had been on vacation in New Orleans the day Oswald got himself arrested giving out his handbills. Their son Jim took movies of the operation.  These movies are not in the Commission’s files.” [p175, Oswald in New Orleans, H.Weisberg, 1967]

*

“Rothschilds via Kuhn Loeb & Co” is a subject in the’ Lewis Strauss and JFK’ series, along with the special lifetime relationship between Strauss and Herbert Hoover. The “United States of Africa” was but one of many schemes they shared. Hoover, the mining engineer, claimed to have known Strauss since he was 19 years old, which would place their meeting in 1915 (Strauss was born January of 1896), pre-dating their co-administrations of the WWI Committee for Relief in Belgium (CRB). From their New York City CRB offices, significantly, Strauss worked for two agencies controlled by the Warburgs [Kuhn Loeb partners] at the same time; one was the Jewish Hospital for Joint Diseases (HJD), of which Strauss became president, and the other was the Joint Jewish Distribution Committee (JDC), which he claimed led to his partnership in Kuhn Loeb & Co.

“After the election [of Herbert Hoover] Strauss learned that another promotion awaited him, and on January 1, 1929, he became a [full] partner in Kuhn Loeb, a full member of the inner circle…  In only ten years, and at an incredibly young age, he had become one of the leaders in the world of banking, marked out to carry on the future of Kuhn Loeb.” [p40, No Sacrifice Too Great, by Richard Pfau]

*

British and Rothschild interests, by the 1960s, had long since coagulated into global energy domination, including a world-scale uranium cartel, encompassing the principal nations of the former Anglo-empire. The Rothschilds, who controlled the Rio Tinto mining operations since the 1880s, and had at times employed Herbert Hoover, took a distinctive interest in expanding their uranium holdings when radium first came on the market in 1903. At that time, radium was a drug costing $150,000 per gram until the Canadian ore came to Ontario’s Port Hope refinery, circa 1931.

*

In the U.S. alone, “Between 1948 and 1961, uranium ore production soared from 54,000 to 8,000,000 tons… By 1956 [when Permindex was founded] it was becoming evident that the AEC might be faced with an embarrassment of riches. In October 1957 [the month after Lee Oswald joined the Atsugi base] the AEC announced that it was ‘no longer in the interest of the Government to expand the production of uranium concentrate.” http://www.nmgs.nmt.edu/publications/guidebooks/downloads/18/18_p0184_p0187.pdf

By design, government-developed assets would be leased or sold into private hands.

“Although the AEC incentives ceased in 1962, the agency continued to purchase ore..at guaranteed prices through the end of 1970. Initially, the AEC paid $8.oo per pound… The industry was revitalized shortly thereafter by the prospect of supplying fuel to the developing commercial nuclear power industry.” http://www.epa.gov/rpdweb00/docs/tenorm/402-r-08-005-voli/402-r-08-005-v1-ch2.pdf

*

Rothschild Uranium:

“The twisting, turning career that Joseph Hirshhorn found to be the shortest distance between poverty and fortune zigzagged to a climax..[in 1955]..[at] Joe’s suite in Toronto’s Bank of Nova Scotia Building…   For the occasion, there perched on Joe’s desk [was] a cake whose pink-and-green frosting proclaimed: ‘Rio Tinto-Hirshhorn E Pluribus Unum’.  Towering at Joe’s [5’4”] side stood the natty British figure of Roy William Wright, boss the Rio Tinto Mining Co. of Canada Ltd.,  a new offspring of Great Britain’s venerable..Rio Tinto Co. Ltd., in which the Rothschilds have large interests. As the cake was cut, Joe sighed and sang “I’ll be loving you always and always.’ He had just traded Rio Tinto Ltd. His equity in a vast sweep of Canadian mining properties – uranium, gold, iron, copper, acquired over a period of two decades at a cost of some $4,800,000—for about $31 million in Canadian Rio Tinto stocks and debentures and the chairmanship of the Canadian company’s board…  [In] 1953, Joe put up $30,000 [and] two months later ..had the greatest uranium find outside Africa, a discovery that took Joe on to the sweeping deal with Rio Tinto.” p57, The Very, Very Rich and How They Got That Way, by Max Gunther, 1972, Playboy Press Chicago

“It was in the late forties that Joe first acquired his interest in uranium, which was to prove more fascinating than anything he had touched in his life… [p65, ibid.] …[Joe’s geologist and partner, Franc Joubin] began reading about the leaching of uranium-bearing land where sulfur is present, and this gave him an idea [about deeply bedded deposits] ..[They decided] ..to test..Algoma ore…” [p66]  “[The men] formed a Hirshhorn company, Peach Uranium…[and sent] trained men to stake the northern area [known as Blind River]… And on July 11 [1952], in mining recorders’ offices all over Ontario, lawyers and engineers raced in to enter a total of 1,400 claims covering 56,000 acres. [Toronto’s] Bay State was stunned. Joe and his friends had secretly staked out one of the most fabulous claims in Canadian history…” [p67]

   “As is his custom, Joe sought out some expert help –in New York, attorney Sam Harris who became his most intimate counselor, and in Washington [D.C.], the dignified Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson… By November 1954…[a deal] came to Joe—in the shape of Rio Tinto Co.Ltd. of London. Rio Tinto..was especially interested in a uranium investment… [and it ] soon became clear that longer-range interests of both Joe and Rio Tinto were neatly intersecting: Rio Tinto wanted permanent control over his whole Canadian mining empire, and Joe..needed a corporate package for all his holdings. The negotiations were complicated and delayed by Joe’s need to get a favorable tax ruling from the U.S. Treasury governing the transfer of his assets to a foreign concern. This ruling Dean Acheson succeeded in getting. The result.. was Rio Tinto Mining Co. of Canada Ltd. Into this elegant new receptacle Joe dropped all of his holdings in forty-six different Canadian mining companies (one of which was itself a package of seventeen earlier companies). Although Joe did not get voting control, he owned the biggest single slice of equity (55 percent).” [p68]

   [Hirshhorn describes his incentives and ‘passion for discovery’ to Fortune magazine]   …” ‘I’m not interested in the industrial or manufacturing picture,’ Joe explains. ‘That’s strictly competitive, not truly creative…[and] No, I don’t have a very high regard for Wall Street –it’s parasitical, what does it create? But resources –that’s something else. There you’re in the world of the Harrimans and the Huntingtons and the men who really built. So, look at Blind River. It took a lousy $30,000 to get it started –and now [1956] there’s four, maybe eight billion dollars in wealth there. But that isn’t all.  There will be 20,000 people making their living there by the end of next year. There are railroads [to build]. There are mills [to build]. There are homes. There are schools. The whole works. It’s new. It’s just been born…”  [p71, The Very, Very Rich]

Joe Hirshhorn* “By 1960, he had made more than $100 million from uranium.” http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/11212/hirshhorn-of-plenty

“[The] Blind River discoveries..added some $30 billion to the Canadian economy” http://www.mininghalloffame.ca/inductees/g-i/joseph_h._hirshhorn/

   “[Hirshhorn] likes simplicity… Even Joe’s closest friends have no clear glimpse of his likely future moves. When Joe recently left for several month’s rest in Europe, Gordon Dean [former AEC chief, 1950-1953] could only remark: ‘His ship, I know, stops at Gibralter. I would not be surprised if he came back with the Rock.” [p72, The Very, Very Rich]

   “Aside from the penalty for exporting Canadian dollars during the war [WWII], Joe has had only one encounter with the law. In 1950, New York State Attorney General Nathaniel Goldstein, whom Joe had known since [ his youth in] Brooklyn days, took to the press to warn the public away from a stock offering by a company called American-Canadian Uranium Co. Ltd., in which Hirshhorn was involved… Goldstein submitted the facts to the SEC, but the SEC found no grounds for a hearing.

[Earlier] During the forties, Joe’s happiest venture had involved a U.S. company, Mesabi Iron, owner of substantial taconite properties. ‘When I bought Mesabi stock,’ he says, ‘no one knew what taconite was… I knew what it was, and I knew it was going to be big.’ “ [p65, The Very, Very Rich, Max Gunther, 1972 –article reprinted and edited from Fortune magazine November 1956]

*

 Gordon “Dean was a Democrat who had been a law partner of the late Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut… [In] 1950, I spoke to the President [Truman] at the request of Senator McMahon to recommend the nomination of Dean [for the chair of AEC]… Dean had been the only one of the Atomic Energy Commissioners to support me..with the development of thermonuclear weapons. Dean and I..in course of time became friends.” p332, Men and Decisions, by Lewis Strauss. Footnote, p334, “Mr. Dean lost his life in an airplane accident in 1958.”

   Senator McMahon, who had been the chairman of the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (the JCAE), died previously from a fast cancer and was replaced in a special Senate election by Prescott S. Bush, 1952. Bush took a seat on the JCAE.

*

As it happened, the uranium cartel taking shape in the  ’50s was brought to the bench in the ’70s, but first, in the ’60s, there was an industry to build:

“A legal suit filed against Rothschild mining interests by the U.S. Westinghouse Corporation [in 1976] contains heavy documentary evidence of a ‘monopolistic’ conspiracy..to raise the international price of uranium to prohibitive levels… However, a continuing [EIR] investigation into the case’s background suggests that a broader, primarily Rockefeller family campaign to sabotage..energy sources..has enjoyed the benefit of Rothschild cooperation…

   “Central in the affair is the Wall Street firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver and Kampelman, which represents the international legal interests of both major Rockefeller concerns and the Rothschilds’ Rio Tinto Zinc Corp. Ltd, the largest British-based mining company whose uranium holdings extend throughout South Africa, Namibia, Australia, Canada and the United States… [T]he principal is partner Sam Harris… Westinghouse identified Sam Harris by name, and held the cartel responsible for increases..[up] to $40 a pound in 1976.“

http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1977/eirv04n04-19770125/eirv04n04-19770125_014-westinghouse_vs_rio_tinto_zinc_a.pdf

*

Thomas Eli Davis III*  –another strange character involved with “Oswald” who was arrested Dec. 8, 1963 in Tangiers Morocco. At the time of his arrest, Davis was carrying a letter in his own hand referring to Oswald and the JFK assassination. The addressee was lawyer Thomas G. Proctor, an original board member of the American-Canadian Uranium Co. Ltd.

   “At the time of the Kennedy assassination, Davis was in North Africa allegedly setting up a deal to supply arms to the OAS. Less than a month later he was jailed in Tangiers in connection with the assassination…  [He] not only was in New Orleans during the same time as Oswald in the summer of 1963, but once admitted to reporter George Carter that he used the name ‘Oswald’ while in North Africa.” [p207, Crossfire, by Jim Marrs]

   Davis’s wife traveled with him and told this to police: “She stated they left the United States on November 2, 1963, and arrived in Tangiers via London, Paris, and Madrid on November 28… Proctor reportedly [was the] legal agent [for] Morocco’s World’s Fair Exhibit New York.”

    From the small amount of information published about “soldier of fortune” Thomas E. Davis, it is known that he was born in McKinney,Texas (north of Dallas, hometown of the Clary/Bates family) and died from accidental electrocution in Jacksboro, 1973, supposedly in the act of stealing copper wire.

   Researchers have discovered that Davis was sprung from the Tangiers jail, possibly before or at the time of JFK’s assassination, by a mysterious intelligence agent known as QJ/WIN, whose identity is uncertain but said to have been an accomplished smuggler, spy and con man of French origin. QJ/WIN was enlisted by the CIA’s William Harvey to assemble an assassination team to kill Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, and continue in various undercover operations as a citizen of Luxembourg doing business in that city. Army cryptologist Eugene Dinkin is thought to have intercepted the Kennedy plot among the coded message traffic tied to this CIA-OAS group– Dinkin initiated his rogue campaign of warning in Luxembourg on October 25.  Both Albert Osborne-a.k.a. Bowen and the unfortunate Dinkin were flown out of Luxembourg on December 5, 1963, three days before the alleged arrest of Davis.

*

Jack Ruby and Thomas E. Davis:
“On March 15, 1959 Ruby telephoned and met with CIA-connected gun-runner Thomas Eli Davis III in Beaumont, TX. A year earlier, in June, 1958, Davis received a sentence of five years of probation for robbing a bank. While on probation Davis worked for the Agency training anti-Castro units in Florida. Soon, Ruby and Davis were supplying arms and munitions to Anti-Castro Cubans, apparently without the fear of arrest.
NOTE: When JFK was assassinated, Davis was in jail …[and]was released from jail through the intervention of the CIA’s foreign agent code-named “QJ/WIN,” who was identified by the top-secret CIA Inspector General’s Report as the “principle asset” in the Agency’s assassination program known as ZR/RIFLE.
    After Ruby’s arrest for killing Oswald, his defense attorney (Tom Howard) asked  Ruby if he could think of anything that might damage his defense. Ruby responded and said there would be a problem if a man by the name of “Davis” should come up. Davis was later identified as Thomas Eli Davis III…  Ruby told Howard that “he had  been involved with Davis, who  was.. entangled in anti-Castro efforts and that he (Ruby) had intended to begin a regular gun-running business with Davis”. Ruby warned Howard about this connection,  and feared that if it were to be revealed by either an investigative reporter or a witness it would blow open the CIA’s role in JFK’s assassination.”

http://www.harveyandlee.net/Ruby/Ruby.html

*

                                                                                            ** Ruby’s relationship with Davis allegedly began prior to a 1959 deal on which they collaborated to buy and ship jeeps to aid Castro in Cuba.

*

Michael Collins Piper: “Jack Ruby was connected to two people who were involved in smuggling nuclear triggers to Israel. One was Lawrence Meyers.” http://www.fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/ryan-dawson-and-michael-collins-piper-israel-and-jfk/73660

Lawrence V. Meyers was in Dallas with Ruby at the Cabana Motel lounge on the night of November 21, 1963. He gave his family background to Warren Commission counsel Burt Griffin: “I have a daughter who is a nuclear chemist and who has worked at Argonne and various nuclear reactors. I have a son who was in the ASA [Army Security Agency] for a couple of years.. who had a crypto clearance, and I and my wife and my family have been investigated two or three times…”  http://www.jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/meyers_l.htm

*

*

*

Imports, Exports and Trade Fairs — Building a private Nuclear Power Industry:

   Excluding some 120 experimental reactors operating in the U.S., “By January 1961, only two reactors built under the Power Reactor Demonstration Program were operating… Five other small prototype reactors were under construction. That was the extent of the United States nuclear power program, for the electric utility companies had no plans to build a large number of additional reactors. The nuclear power program was a small, government-subsidized sideshow as far as the electric utility industry was concerned, and it was going nowhere. [p58, Cult of the Atom, by Daniel Ford, 1982] ...”Others put the doubts about nuclear power in starker terms. The atomic power program ‘has been quite a flop, and is not to be taken seriously,’ former AEC Chairman Lilienthal told an interviewer… AEC estimates that year still showed that the electricity from nuclear plants would be about 30 to 60 percent more expensive than from conventional power stations. [p59, ibid.] Given the widespread disillusionment with atomic energy, President John F. Kennedy asked [AEC] Chairman Seaborg in March 1962 to prepare a report that took ‘a new hard look at the role of nuclear power in our economy.’ “ [p60, ibid.]

*

Previously, in 1956 when Permindex was founded, the American Petroleum Institute presented its members with the scenario of Peak Oil:

Lewis Strauss wrote “… I ventured a prediction that nuclear power plants of much greater size and more sophisticated technology would soon be built.” [p324, Men and Decisions].  At the same time, a Shell Oil Co. geologist named Marion King Hubbert began working for the Atomic Energy Commission. As Hubbert recalled it: “In the summer…spring and summer of 1955, I had begun service and had a couple of preliminary meetings [with] the Advisory Committee of the..Atomic Energy Commission on Waste Disposal. Land Nuclear Waste Disposal… In the course of those hearings, I had obtained information which I had not had before on the magnitude of the energy that could be obtained from fission… previously I’d regarded nuclear energy as unpromising because of the scarcity of uranium and thorium… So, this awareness of the magnitude of energy..changed the picture in my mind… So that, in turn, reflected on my previous analysis of energy based on fossil fuels.

   “Some time in the fall of 1955…I was on a trip to Denver on company business..[and] encountered one of the Shell production engineers whom I knew from Houston, and we had breakfast together… [He] remarked that he was..chairman of the program committee of the forthcoming American Petroleum Institute meeting..in March. And they were looking for someone who could give them a broad brush picture of the overall world energy situation…” 

   According to the website, www.mkinghubbert.com ,  Hubbert had only recently obtained sufficient information from the AEC to give a presentation, and “at the time he was convinced that atomic energy was a viable source for future world energy needs [though] Hubbert did ultimately change his mind.” Later in life, when this interview took place, Hubbert’s opinion of nuclear power was “the sooner we get rid of it the better off we’re going to be.”  Nevertheless, Hubbert carried the torch for Peak Oil (that reserves would ‘peak’ in 1970 and thereafter decline toward a global shortage) from the time of his March 1956 presentation to the API in San Antonio and for the rest of his life. John F. Kennedy almost caused Peak Oil to become undone by marginalizing Hubbert in favor of a USGS report stating there was plenty of oil. Hubbert also later said of his Peak Oil theory that “there was not a lot of analysis that went it” but he still defended it. In 1964, Hubbert quit Shell and went to work for the USGS… “this led to a 1967..paper showing that discoveries..were declining..back to within the original [1956 predicted range]… The U.S. peaked in 1970.”* http://mkinghubbert.com/about/prediction

*(JFK Conspiracy Con, part III)

*                                                                           The Atomium, 1958 World’s Fair, Belgium*

In the summer of 1958 AEC chairman Strauss declined President Eisenhower’s offer to become the permanent atomic energy chairman. He further declined job offers as White House chief of staff, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State. “Finally, Eisenhower suggested a position Strauss would accept… [as] secretary of commerce…   Strauss wanted this post, he told the president, because his patrons Oscar Straus and Herbert Hoover had held it and because he felt qualified. Strauss also saw Commerce as a base from which to fight the Cold War; as he told a Senate committee, ‘I believe that the economic warfare which the Soviet Government has [now] declared upon the United States can be most effectively countered in the work and decisions of the Department of Commerce.’  …Until Strauss assumed his new duty, he continued to serve as special adviser to the president for Atoms For Peace. “ –p223, No Sacrifice Too Great, by Richard Pfau, 1984  “Strauss’s..contribution..on Atoms For Peace was to chair the American delegation to the Second International Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, held in Geneva from September 1 through September 15, 1958. As in 1955 [the First Conference], elaborate preparations preceded the conference, and again the American exhibit was spectacular, this time including four separate [nuclear] reactors, a huge technical library, and exhibits by fifty American corporations.” p224, ibid.

*

“In a February 4th, 1960 letter, Louis Bloomfield wrote from its Montreal law office to Dr Ernest Wolf, a Permindex director residing in Basle, Switzerland:
“You’ll be pleased to hear that David Rockefeller had a meeting yesterday with Dr Nagy… It was a great success. Mr. Rockefeller..suggested immediate collaboration..which I shall discuss with Mr. Rockefeller on my meeting with him in a week or so… In the meantime, Mr. Rockefeller contacted the Chairman of the New York Port Authority, which is the principal mover of the scheme for New York and which is a multi-billion dollar independent concern, to start technical discussions on collaboration.”
Bloomfield completed this letter by informing Wolf that Permindex’s literature shall be distributed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and its 33 field offices, according to an article that was published in the February 1, 1960 issue of Foreign Commerce Weekly.”

http://www.somesecretsforyou.blogspot.com

   “Secretary” Strauss did not survive the Senate approval process for his cabinet post, losing his desk after the full chamber vote in June 1959: “Determined not to reveal his bitterness, Strauss invited newspaper photographers in the next morning while he laughed and joked over breakfast with Senator [Harry] Byrd. Strauss then rode to the White House..and issued this parting statement: ‘I have done the best I know how to do– to protect and defend the national security, even when that was not the recognized, nor easy, nor popular action at the time.” p240, No Sacrifice Too Great. “Most Americans knew him as the destroyer of J. Robert Oppenheimer…” p241, ibid. “After a trip [abroad]..he returned to Washington where he set up an office, attended to his neglected financial affairs, and enjoyed the society of the city’s elite, who welcomed the Strausses back into their circle.” p242, ibid.

*

“They were long time friends, Harry Byrd and Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss. Strauss joined Kuhn, Loeb and Company [in 1919] and with his financial backing Byrd went into the Martin Organization [of Virginia politics], which later became the Byrd Machine, with Rothschild backing. After many years of total dictatorial rule in Virginia, Byrd finally died. Strauss pushed his son to replace him and the Byrd Machine continued with..Harry Jr… [and] to those in the know it was always the Byrd-Rothschild Machine.”

–Eustace Mullins, 2006, http://www.rense.com/general72/contract.htm

*

The Byrds

Harry F. Byrd (Sr)*  brother, Adm.Richard E. Byrd*   cousin, D.Harold Byrd*

*   For reasons unexplained, Admiral Byrd kept an office at the Atomic Energy Commission headquarters until he died in 1957. The staff recalled being amused by the stories of the old polar explorer as he wandered among them. His cousin, David Harold Byrd, who owned oil and uranium properties, supported many of the Admiral’s adventures, including joint business dealings from a building he owned –the ‘future’ Texas School Book Depository building in Dallas.

*

Just a few weeks before Admiral Strauss won his bid from Eisenhower to ascend in Commerce, “ In the spring of 1958, Enrico Mantello, the vice-president of PERMINDEX and brother of Giorgio [Georges Mandel/Mantello] visited New Orleans. Touring the Trade Mart, he invited Clay Shaw to join the board of directors… Nagy appeared at the American Embassy in Rome to announce that he intended ‘to strengthen U.S. control in PERMINDEX by adding..Mr. Shaw, who is in charge of the New Orleans, Louisiana permanent exhibit.’” p138, A Farewell to Justice, by Joan Mellen, 2005    “Nagy claimed that Shaw ‘had from the outset great interest in the PERMINDEX project… When [Shaw] added his PERMINDEX directorship to Who’s Who in the South and the Southeast, the Department of Commerce warned Shaw about ‘this shadowy organization’ “ p139, ibid.–sure, sure, the shadowy organization that Commerce was soon officially promoting. It’s not known to this researcher to what extent ‘Secretary’ Strauss aided the fledgling PERMINDEX, either promoting or protecting, only that he was in the right place at the right time and used the same language (‘permanent exhibitions’) in his presentations on nuclear trade in Atoms for Peace. The Peaceful U.S. conferees in Geneva were selling their floor model reactors right out of their shiny showrooms.

   The Atomic Energy Act, as amended in 1954, mandated a role to the U.S. Department of Commerce to assume oversight of nuclear facilities: Sec.2,c., “The processing and utilization of source, byproduct, and special nuclear material affects interstate and foreign commerce and must be regulated…”  Sec.2,f., “protection against possible interstate damage occurring from the operation of facilities for production or utilization of source or special nuclear material places the operation of those facilities in interstate commerce for the purposes of the Act.” (full text) http://www.pbadupws.nre.gov/docs/ML13274A489.pdf#page=23

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*                                                            

One assumes that the policing and investigating agencies of Commerce, U.S. Customs principal among them, acquired expanded jurisdiction in operations and intelligence: “…government documents, released since Garrison’s investigation, ..suggest that Oswald shared, like Miami customs agent Cesario Diosdada, an affiliation with not only the FBI and the CIA, but also with U.S. Customs…  At Customs, Oswald’s handler was a man named David Smith. Oswald’s employment with Customs was so sensitive that the HSCA [House Select Committee on Assassinations] interview with bar owner and FBI informant Orestes Pena was sealed for twenty-five years… Pena placed Oswald with Customs officials on a regular basis. So explosive were Pena’s revelations about Oswald’s relationships with Customs officers that Pena’s files were systematically destroyed by the FBI in a multicity effort that stretched across Europe… After the assassination, David Smith was transferred to Uruguay.” p46, A Farewell to Justice

*

    By then the international trade in radioactive isotopes was booming: “From 1946 to 1955, the AEC sent out nearly 64,000 shipments of radioactive materials to research laboratories, companies, and clinics… [T]he AEC’s role in facilitating their widespread consumption..is barely acknowledged in the historiography…[T]he AEC was, first and foremost, a production agency itself… as a consequence, by the early 1950s the government’s capital investment in atomic energy plant facilities and equipment totaled to more than the ‘capital investments of U.S. Steel and General Motors combined.’ As the chief of the AEC’s Isotopes Division commented, ‘Atomic Energy is truly a big business.’ …[Radioisotope use] flourished in the 1950s and 1960s in no small part attributable to remarkable growth of public funding.. particularly through the National Institutes of Health… Even the role of government as the main source of radionuclides was gradually lost from view by the 1960s as the infrastructure for radioactive materials was increasingly privatized on the consumer end.”  www.academia.edu/302719/The_Industrialization_of_Radioisotopes_by_the_US_Atomic_Energy_Commission

 

 

*

   Strauss made the case that “Over a million medical patients are being diagnosed or treated with radioisotopes each year. In industry, savings through isotope use were estimated at about a hundred million dollars in 1953. By 1958, they were five times that. This is the first return (other than the great, intangible dividend of security) on our national investment in atomic energy… As sources of massive radiation, their uses include sterilization of foods and drugs, vulcanization of rubber, polymerization of plastics, initiation of chemical reactions, and X-raying of castings, welds, etc.” p326, Men and Decisions. “The demand for isotopes..has been steadily gaining as new uses are found. It is entirely possible that these by-products of the fission process may have future economic value more important than the application of power… In 1955 our classification policies were revised to open up large areas of reactor information… As of today [1962], in the field of reactors, only data primarily of importance to reactor systems for military applications remain classified.” p327. “The feature of our international co-operation, or ‘Atoms for Peace’ program, which distinguished it most completely from enterprises by other nations, is that we were both able and willing to allocate quantities of reactor fuel. In 1958 there was a total allocation for peaceful uses of 100,000 kilograms of uranium 235… [designated] half for the Atoms for Peace program.” p329, Men and Decisions, by Lewis Strauss, 1962.

    If the nuclear industry was to find itself hamstrung in the future by cost deficits in electrical power or treaties banning weapons and tests, the commercial traffic in isotopes and research reactors was a bank of certainty in manufacturing, instrumentation, agriculture, and medicine. No modern nation can compete, or merely hold its own, without nuclear technology.

*

   Despite the sting of losing his post at Commerce before the fall of ‘59, Strauss himself was to remain a permanent exhibit of nuclear industry as a delegate to the IAEA, work in which he presumably engaged from his private offices in Washington. “From retirement Strauss occasionally tried to settle old political scores… he found ‘particular satisfactions’ in the defeats of.. opponents in 1959… ‘These were dividends of considerable savor to me,’ he commented.” p243, No Sacrifice Too Great. His most visible post-Commerce activity in the capitol was lobbying against any weapons agreement, most especially a nuclear test-ban treaty.

*

    Lawyer/author Mark Lane was to mention Lewis Strauss twice in his JFK assassination corpus; first, in Executive Action where the film version shows historical footage of both Strauss and Edward Teller lobbying against the Test-Ban Treaty; secondly as a nonsequitur  in 1991’s Plausible Denial (p124), relating to friendship with William F. Buckley Jr.—a thin lead, perhaps, for follow-on to subjects of involvement with CIA and the American Security Council. Lane even works a mention of plutonium worker Karen Silkwood into Plausible Denial (p30) along with the New York Times reporter David Burnham who “covered nuclear energy stories” and was assigned to discredit the House [HSCA] lawyer leading the formative assassinations investigation, Richard Sprague. Lane is unique for even mentioning Strauss.

*

It was just a few weeks after the losing vote for Strauss’s cabinet post in Commerce that Lee Oswald prepared for his Marine discharge. He proceeded from California to his mother’s house in Ft. Worth to New Orleans, bought a ticket for a freight- liner from the travel agency at the Trade Mart, and carried a passport marked “import-export”.

Was Oswald then under the wing of Commerce, Customs, PERMINDEX, and the World Trade associates?

*

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*                                                                                                                                              

Robert E. Webster, “an American who told officials he was defecting to Russia less than two weeks before Oswald, is worth considering since there appear to be many similarities between the two. Webster, a former Navy man, was a young plastics expert who simply failed to return home with colleagues after working at an American trade exhibition in Moscow. He had been an employee of the Rand Development Corporation, one of the first U.S. companies to sell technical products to Russia. Although Rand Development was thought to be separate from the more notorious Rand Corporation –the CIA ‘think tank’ front..—there is some evidence of connections between the two. The firms were at one time located across the street from each other in New York City; Rand Development held several CIA contracts…  While in Russia, Webster took a Soviet girl as common-law wife (he was already married to a woman in the United States) and the couple had a child. Like Oswald, Webster claimed to have become disenchanted with Soviet life and he returned..about the same time as Oswald. But now the story turns even stranger. Although Webster is said to have told American officials he never had any contact with Lee Harvey Oswald, when Oswald was arranging his return to the United States in 1961, he ‘asked [U.S. Embassy officials] about the fate of a young man named Webster who had come..shortly before he did… Furthermore, there are some intriguing connections between Webster and Oswald’s wife Marina. Years later in America, Marina told an acquaintance that her husband had defected after working at an American exhibition in Moscow.” Pp116-117, Crossfire, by Jim Marrs

*

“..[S]uspicions about Marina were heightened considerably by a CIA document released under legal pressure in 1976…[about] a ‘holiday’ she took in the fall of 1960 at a government ‘rest home.’ In analyzing Marina’s address book, the CIA located an acquaintance she had made at a certain address..[where] an American named Robert E. Webster lived at the time in the same building… It could, of course, be mere coincidence that Marina Prusakova was on holiday and in the immediate vicinity of the two young American military men who had just defected. Or, it could mean that she was involved in some way with official Soviet interest in these Americans.” p217, Reasonable Doubt, by Henry Hurt, 1985

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http://www.educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/23120-yes-oswald-was-an-intelligence-agent/

*

At the time of his defection in September of 1959 Robert E. Webster worked for James Henry Rand III, founder of the Rand Development Corp. of Cleveland. Rand stayed well-informed of Webster’s activity throughout his near-three-year defection and re-defection back to the U.S. in May of 1962 –just ahead of Oswald in each case. James Rand III was a twin son of Remington-Rand founder James Henry Rand Jr. who turned over the operation of Remington Rand in 1958 (which had previously merged with Sperry Corp), to James’s twin brother Marcell. Vice-president of research and development for Remington-Rand in those years (1948-1961) was the former chief of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie R. Groves. Among other sundry defense contracts, Remington-Rand was collaborating with Bell Labs on nuclear missile guidance systems: https://www.flightglobal.com/FlightPDFArchive/1956/1956%20-%201743.PDF

   Rand Development Corp. turned its attention to medical devices –by the 1960s, engaged in the production of experimental cancer vaccines.

*   James Henry Rand III, aka H. James Rand, Dr. Henry Rand* employer of Robert E. Webster, photographed here in 1967 at the US District Court in Cleveland after the court “imposed as tough a ban as the law allows on further experimentation with the so-called Rand anti-cancer vaccine. H. James Rand and his Rand Development Corp. were permanently enjoined and restrained from manufacture and shipment of the vaccine, and even from further animal experimentation…”   http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,836753,00.html

*

If Robert Webster was involved in a cancer vaccine project, as Oswald was in New Orleans, no record has yet been disgorged, though he still appears to have a role within in the Cancer-Polio nexus providing context to the JFK assassination conspiracy. The Rands, father and sons, shared a common goal in supporting cancer treatment research.

*

* Founder of Remington-Rand, James Henry Rand Jr : ..‘in 1961-62, Rand left an estate in Stuart [Florida] to reside permanently in the Bahamas where he would begin building a ‘Science City’ to conduct important and vital research. Even while in Stuart, he was particularly involved with developing a cure or vaccine for cancer. Ironically, he died of cancer…” http://www.archive.tcpalm.com/news/historical-vignettes-interesting-stories-and-facts-about-martin-county-part-2-ep-349553375-340215561.html

*

*   Robert E. Webster likely did not work for James Rand III beyond the expedient of getting into the USSR:

Sept.1960 CIA internal memo, “[James Rand] mentioned the fact that Mrs. Robert E. Webster still thinks that her husband is returning to this country (although Rand does not) and that she had asked him recently if  ‘they would rehire him’, with ‘they’ being someone other than Rand Development Corporation. Rand said that he had told her he didn’t think ‘they’ would. The matter was dropped at this point…” http://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=55065#relPageId=51&tab=page

According to available internet compilations on Webster, Rand sponsored Webster as a traveling exhibitor, demonstrating the very products he displayed for the Moscow trade fair.

*

The American National Exhibit Moscow (ANEM) or the Sokolniki Fair

  * * First of its kind and a very important event in U.S-Soviet relations. Milton Eisenhower, Krushchev, and Nixon cut the ribbon on opening day, July 24, 1959. Exhibits included displays shown earlier at the 1958 World’s Fair in Belgium.

*

Organization for the Sokolniki Exhibition began in 1958. Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of Commerce, Gilbert A. Robinson, described the effort: “[Howard C. McClellan and] I spent six months..putting it together. We sent managers over there. I also became the coordinator of the exhibition. We had staff in Moscow. Then he and I went over for six months and had the largest contingent of Americans since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917… A lot of people think that Nixon was the head of the delegation, but Eisenhower made his brother..the Chairman of the delegation… In fact, the President mandated that Commerce had the lead… Ambassador Tommy Thompson gave me an office there at the embassy...” http://www.adst.org/OH TOCs/Robinson,Gilbert A.toc.pdf (oral history interview with Tom Brokaw)

 Robinson never mentions Sec.of Commerce Lewis Strauss missing his senior staff away in Moscow. Strauss was required to step down only days before the opening of the American National Exhibit.

   
*Post continues here: Atomic Oswald Two https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2017/03/20/atomic-oswald-two/

Lewis Strauss and JFK

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                                                                  Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss

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Last year I posted a five-part series called the JFK Conspiracy Con introducing my way in to the subject of the JFK assassination. For me, it was a long outgrowth on the theme of militarized medicine– an intriguing and unexpected turn-of-events in pursuit of the biological hazards of radioactive fallout.

   Merging of JFK assassination events with all-things-nuclear, in retrospect, is as natural as the convergence of rivers on their way to the sea. Thanks to intrepid research across a broad range of topics, I’ve been able to navigate into the main current with the certainty of being carried on the strongest course. It takes no special talent to ride with a torrent –merely a skill to maintain position and allow the flow to work for you. While this describes my experience with the assassination it also, keenly, describes the career of the subject of this post, Lewis L. Strauss, who mastered his gratuitous position atop the military complex, or the military-industrial-medical complex as I’m obliged to say. To the best of my present knowledge, there is no record of any direct personal interaction between John F. Kennedy and Lewis L. Strauss. What does exist is a dazzling set of facts that fit a context of qualifiers demonstrating that Strauss had the capacity to plan, execute, and cover-up the assassination of our president as an ultimate sort of inside man.

   There are many published investigators into the JFK assassination who suppose we will never know the names of the shadowy perpetrators; that they are shielded in a hierarchy of structure that seals them forever beyond the reach of inquiry and evidence. A fascinating observation of concealed power is the fact that Strauss’s job as the Atomic Energy Commission chairman, his long years prior as a Kuhn Loeb & Co. banker, Naval Intelligence officer and admiral, and a man of great wealth and international influence has resulted in but one (one!) biography sanctioned by the Strauss family. James B. Conant, a Manhattan Project leader of the highest rank, called the AEC chair “the most important job in the world” and expected it to be offered to himself. It never was. Eisenhower wished to designate Lewis Strauss the “permanent chairman” of the AEC, according to biographer Richard Pfau. Strauss declined the offer in favor of his next appointment as Secretary of Commerce, a pro-tem assignment for which Congress rejected him a year later: “He never got over it.” Officially, Commerce was his last public service with a government paycheck and Strauss went on to wrap his career as a pro-nuclear ambassador and political activist until dead in 1974.

    I find it a stunning testament to Fear and Loathing that an apologist’s screed, written to offset the ridiculously “blameless life” of Strauss’s own autobiographical memoir, stands for commentary on his most interesting contribution to history. The very lack of accessible narrative makes these recordings more acutely incisive for the bareness of cutting edges. References to Strauss are virtually everywhere touched by the Cold War. He dominates the long-stewing events of the JFK assassination with the charm and presence of the Elephant in the Room –malodorous and darkening, with the potential to bring down the house. 

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Protocol 15

[article 4 and 5]

“The class of people who most willingly enter into secret societies are..careerists, and in general people mostly light-minded, with whom we shall have no difficulty in dealing and in using to wind up the mechanism of the machine devised by us. If this world grows agitated, the meaning of that will be that we have had to stir [it] up in order to break up its too great solidarity. But if there should arise in its midst a plot, then at the head of that plot will be no other than one of our most trusted servants.

[article 9]

Death is the inevitable end for all. It is better to bring that end nearer to those who hinder our affairs than to ourselves, the founders of this affair…

Protocol 18

[article 2] It must be remembered that the prestige of authority is lessened if it frequently discovers conspiracies against itself… we have broken the prestige of the Goy kings by frequent attempts upon their lives through our agents…

[article 8]

With the establishment of official defense, the mystical prestige of authority disappears…

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The Maccabee

Rosa Lichtenstein’s first child, born in 1896, was the “apple of her eye“. In that same year, Theodor Herzl wrote, “I believe that a wondrous generation of Jews will spring into existence. The Maccabeans will rise again.” http://www.zionism-israel.com/js/Jewish_State.html

   Twenty-two years later, returned from Europe on a junket to the Paris Peace convention as a newly minted banker with Kuhn Loeb Company, Lewis Strauss wrote a poem “For Mother” saying, “the blood of Maccabees runs in my veins and courses hot past throbbing temples calling me to rise and smite the foes of God and Righteousness” [p49, No Sacrifice Too Great]…”Strauss always believed that his life embodied some plan of God’s…[p22] As he grew toward that ministry in the ’30s, New York’s Temple Emanu-El made him their president, a member scriving “The Jews of the world are in a state of war. Lewis Strauss is our wartime president.” [p55, ibid.]

Temple Emanu-El: “Its landmark building on Fifth Avenue is the largest Jewish house of worship in the world… The congregation was founded by 33 mainly German Jews who assembled for services in April 1845” http://www.nyc-architecture.com/UES/UES039.htm

   Rosa L. Strauss from Richmond, VA, may have been by her son’s side as he fulfilled her great ambition for him. The historical record is clear that she died of cancer in 1935, yet in one of Edward Teller’s possibly famous indiscretions, Teller told a pair of his own biographers about meeting Strauss’s mother after a speech at the Temple Emanu-El in 1948, the year Strauss resigned his 10-year wartime presidency there. The recollection was vividly made by Teller in the 1976 book Energy and Conflict who seemed amused by the incident. Mrs. Strauss wanted so much to introduce the physicist to her son, the president. Teller and Strauss had already become great allies in the battle to build H-bombs. Was Teller grossly indiscreet in the wake of Lewis Strauss’s passing (’74), or does the record of Rosa Strauss’s 1935 cancer death provide the crucially public motive for her son’s indefatigable activity as a cancer fighter? The motive was to impel the transfer and import of pre-weapons technology, radioactive substances like radium, and the scientists themselves. In one of the most obscure references to Strauss, he was also tersely noted as a member of a secretive medical research group called the Maccabee Club, presumably unrelated to any other known or traceable group by that name. The medical Maccabees remain a mystery.

*

“Rosa Strauss expected Lewis to earn a fortune and then devote himself to public service…[p6]…She criticized his father’s lack of drive so often that..Strauss would recall that, ‘Father was totally devoid of ambition’…[p7]…Her husband was, in her words, ‘still a child’, satisfied with his limited world. She hoped her eldest son would escape his father’s..life, and [Herbert] Hoover would be a superb role model, if only she could attach her son to him. Strauss shared his mother’s twin motives. ‘My idea,’ he wrote at the time [c.1917], ‘is to serve under Hoover..and..study this great man’s methods.’ ” [p10, No Sacrifice Too Great] Hoover had recently gained fame in the United States for first aiding the safe passage home of thousands of Americans stranded in Europe by the war, and secondly, for leading a war-zone food distribution known as the Commission for the Relief of Belgium (CRB). When the U.S. entered the war in April of 1917, Hoover was called away from his business in London by President Wilson to head a new agency, the U.S. Food Administration. Rosa Strauss hung Hoover’s portrait in the family living room and urged her son to go and meet him in Washington.

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“To keep Germany in the war, Paul Warburg, head of the Federal Reserve System, hastily arranged for credits to be routed to his brother, Max Warburg, through Stockholm to M.M. Warburg Co. Hamburg. Food presented a more difficult problem. It was finally decided to ship it directly to Belgium as “relief for the starving Belgians”. The supplies could then be shipped over Rothschild railway lines into Germany. As director for this “relief” operation, the Rothschilds chose Herbert Hoover. His partner in the Belgian Relief Commission was Emile Francqui, chosen by Baron Lambert, head of the Belgian Rothschild family.  The plan was so successful that it kept World War I going for an additional two years,  allowing the U.S. to get into the “war to end wars”. ” —Eustace Mullins  http://whale.to/b/mullins46.html#The_Career_of_Herbert_Hoover__

*

What no memoir (yet found) records about Lewis Strauss at this time is his apparently simultaneous acceptance of a post as the president of the Jewish Hospital for Joint Diseases (HJD). The hospital was originally set up in 1905 inside a Rothschild family residence at 588 Lexington Avenue (Manhattan) New York as a drug dispensary, run by the brothers (in-laws) Henry and Herman Frauenthal. Henry Frauenthal later published the most extensive medical manual on the crippling disease of polio up to its time, in 1914. http://polioforever.wordpress.com/henry-frauenthal/ . Henry Frauenthal, who survived the fated sinking of the Titanic in 1912 with his family, was married to Clara Heinsheimer, sibling of Kuhn Loeb & Co. partners, niece and nephews of the founding Loebs, related by marriage to Schiffs, Warburgs, and Seligmans.

   Young Strauss held his hospital presidency for 8 years or longer (1917-1925), but his experience on the job is no more than a dot in an historical document issued by the Montefiore-NYU medical complex that came to absorb the hospital. Were it not for a minor notation,  Strauss’s years at the HJD would be rendered invisible.  And those were boomtimes. The Frauenthals’ orthopedic business increased so greatly that a new 8-story building was needed with an entire floor (at the top) dedicated to X-ray/radiology. Strauss was the documented leader during this expansion. Not bad for a young man whose personal interests were “physics and photography”.

   Polio too was undergoing a great expansion: 1916 New York endured the highest case rate of concentrated polio in its history– 9,000 cases, nearly a third of them fatal. The epidemic erupted in August just days after a major explosion rocked the NY Harbor railhead known as Black Tom Island off the Jersey shore. News reports told of more than 50 deaths on the New Jersey side. The shipping goods, all European-bound materiels for the Allies, were completely incinerated– Black Tom Island burned for 2 weeks and was determined to have been German sabotage. Prosecution was delayed more than a decade and became part of the additional reparations demanded from Germany before WWII. The case also made the reputation of an up-and-coming lawyer named John J. McCloy, who, among other things, helped establish and serve the Salk Institute and the Warren Commission.

   In 1917, director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (RIMR), Simon Flexner, had procured the first experimental polioviruses from dead post-Black Tom polio victims. The virus type was dubbed “mixed virus” (MV, ‘mixed’ in the brains of living monkeys), a dangerous neurotrope that frightened many of the lab workers who came in contact with it. HJD personnel were accustomed to sharing the labs at the RIMR, which today bills its founding mission as the study of poliomyelitis and the pasteurization of milk. HJD became a renown polio center, perhaps the only polio hospital in the world at the time; Strauss was part of it, and they were well placed to know of polio’s significance as a radiation-induced disease that can emerge months or years after irradiation. The poliovirus made in labs has been called “the perfect human off-switch” and a “guided missile headed straight for the brain”.

   If I had to guess about the medical Maccabees, who they were and what interested them, I wouldn’t need to look further than the HJD and RIMR, a force combination of Rothschilds and Rockefellers. A last note on the Hospital for Joint Diseases here concerns the resident polio expert Henry Frauenthal after this WWI timeframe.  Not long after Lewis Strauss resigned in 1925 and signed up for Naval Intelligence, on March 11, 1927, Henry Frauenthal plunged to his death from the top of the hospital and Clara Heinsheimer Frauenthal was commited to an asylum for the rest of her life.

Hoover’s Relief

“..Less than a month after he first reported to the Food Administration [May 1917], Lewis Strauss became the private secretary to Herbert Hoover –‘the Chief’ as his closest subordinates called him,” ascending in a subterfuge that got the former secretary fired, “thus opening the job Strauss wanted.” [p13, No Sacrifice Too Great]

   Hoover had parlayed his successes with Belgian Relief, run from the offices of Societe Generale Bank by his mining partner Emile Franqui, into an invitation to direct the U.S. Food Administration, which did not exist until the Food and Fuel Control Act passed on August 10. “The task assigned to the USFA was to regulate the supply, distribution, and conservation of foods… The USFA bought and sold..through two subsidiaries: the Food Administration Grain Corporation (U.S. Grain Corporation) and the U.S. Sugar Equalization Board, Inc.” http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww1/cou/us/food/w1cus-usfa.html [note in this link the Food Administration art poster with a caption that reads “designed in 1915 or 1916”]

   “Two of Hoover’s principal assistants were a former lumber shipping clerk from the West Coast, Prentiss Gray, and Julius H. Barnes, a grain salesman from Duluth. Both men became partners in J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation in New York after the war, and amassed large fortunes, principally in grain and sugar… Another J. Henry Schroder partner, G. A. Zabriskie, was named head of the U.S. Sugar Equalization Board. Thus the London Connection controlled all food in the United States through its grain and sugar “Czars” during the First World War… After the war, the partners of J. Henry Schroder company found that they now owned most of Cuba’s sugar industry.” –Eustace Mullins http://www.whale.to/b/m_ch7.html

   As for Hoover, “little of the man himself was known. Long periods of his life were utterly blank… His business career and operations were carefully guarded and elaborately obscured.” http://www.monmouth.com/~colonel/hoover.html

   These were not the only methods studied and adopted by Strauss. “Two years with Hoover not only led smoothly to Strauss’s job with Kuhn Loeb but left their mark on Strauss’s personality as well. A loner since his shoe-selling days [after highschool], Strauss now hid himself further behind a shield of coldly polite formality very much like Hoover’s own…. Strauss also found in Hoover a model of impatient leadership, unwilling to compromise, who bossed rather than led. Like him, Strauss assumed that once he had thought a question through to a conclusion..others must follow simply because he was right. This..would carry him ahead quickly in banking.” [p27, No Sacrifice Too Great] But earlier, before he had congealed in his Chief’s style, and about to leave for Britain on the first mission of the USFA, “Felix Warburg called on him… Warburg told Strauss..Hoover’s private secretary could perform a great service to his people… Strauss leapt at the opportunity…[p16, ibid.]..and he also saw that if he did his work well, he could not fail to impress Warburg…[p17] Strauss had agreed to serve the JDC [Joint Jewish Distribution Committee]..before he left New York. He became administrative coordinator, trouble shooter, and financial agent for a network of JDC workers who fanned out into the cities of Warsaw, Prague, Vienna, and the surrounding countryside…[p23] All cables from the JDC headquarters in New York passed through his office, as did reports from JDC agents in the field. Strauss located surpluses in the depot of the U.S. Army, organized transportation, and arranged for payment… In addition, under the auspices of the JDC, Strauss..fought against overt anti-Semitism...[p24]…Strauss’s work for the Joint Distribution Committee led directly to his next career. Felix Warburg..and Harriet Loewenstein, the head of the JDC’s team in Europe, saw a bright future for the intelligent, ambitious young man. They thought about bringing him into their firm, Kuhn Loeb & Co, where Warburg was a partner and Loewenstein an accountant.” [p26, No Sacrifice Too Great]. Mortimer Schiff, on Red Cross business in Paris during the 1919 Versailles negotiations, delivered the offer.

   At the time, Lewis Strauss was living with his “uncle” Oscar Straus and “aunt” Sarah in their Paris mansion, rescued from the “elegant Hotel Crillon” where the lesser staff legations were housed along with the 200-person entourage of Colonel Edward Mandell House. “Oscar and Sarah..took care of him like blood relatives… They treated him like a son, and he relished the relationship. [p21] The Strauses took him to museums, horse races, and the opera, showing him the rewards enjoyed by those who could afford them, and they stimulated his ambition for money. [p22, No Sacrifice Too Great] Meanwhile, “Europe was desperate.“

   On this second and long leg of the mission in Paris, while Strauss was flexing his cultural muscles with the Strauses and running the operations of the JDC, his daily tasks were focused on the post-war work of the American Relief Administration (ARA) which recast the wartime USFA into a reconstruction project. The USFA ceased to exist upon the signing of the armistice, November 11, 1918. “Hoover established the ARA, like the Food Administration, without organization charts or ponderous bureaucracies. He..found a way to staff the ARA cheaply by using American soldiers..who could not return..because of the shortage of ships. He took on 2,500 men..paid by the army and navy and hence cost the ARA nothing. Hoover organized them..with a simple mandate: ‘Set up the machinery of economic rehabilitation.’…The ARA rebuilt and managed a railroad system…cleared and opened ports, canals, and the Danube River; and..stepped in to operate the mines on a supranational basis. When typhus began to spread..killing 100,000 people a week, the ARA set up a containment line, stopped movement..across it, and then sent delousing teams..to stamp out the epidemic… Strauss worked at the center of the ARA. From the original two rooms at the Hotel Elysee-Palace the headquarters grew to fifty offices… As in Washington, Strauss controlled access to the Chief, drafted letters, and supervised execution of the Chief’s orders.” [pp 18-19, No Sacrifice Too Great] He even participated in high-level doings: “Strauss spent some time in conferences with President Wilson and other key officials” [p21]. “Strauss served as intermediary for a diplomat from Finland, Rudolf Holsti…Strauss became Hoslti’s benefactor and Finland’s champion.” [p20] “.. the country of Finland, which he..helped establish in 1919.” [p60, ibid.] Are Finnish schoolchildren taught that Lewis L. Strauss is a founding father of their country? It may have an unappreciated significance to Americans that many of the anti-communist Russians who banded together in Dallas Texas and extended their friendship to Lee and Marina Oswald had originally been funneled through Finland on their flight to the United States.

*

   The match with Hoover, Strauss wrote himself [published 1962], “has endured. There has scarcely been a month in the half a thousand months which have elapsed that I have not visited him.” [Forward, Men and Decisions] Hoover endorsed Strauss’s decision to turn down the job of Controller of the League of Nations. Strauss recalled, “my friend Justice Brandeis..had [written] to say that he had hopes of a career in public service for me…[but]Now more than ever, I was dedicated to the idea of making my way in the world of business… I returned ahead of Mr. Hoover..to report for work at the offices of Kuhn Loeb.. and sailed..on the S.S. Finland… We landed in New York on September 19 (1919).” [p51, Men and Decisions]

   “Strauss joined Kuhn Loeb at the perfect time to make a fortune quickly.” [p29, No Sacrifice Too Great] And “before the end of 1919 Herbert Hoover began a run for the Presidency.”[p30, ibid.]

                                     ___________________________________________

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World War I,  NOTES: “The JDC‘s resources came from funds collected by the American Jewish Relief Committee (est.) 25 October, 1914 and headed by wealthy Reform Jews of German origin, including Louis Marshall (who served as president), Jacob H. Schiff and Felix M. Warburg… By the end of 1917, the JDC had transferred $2,532,000 to Russia, $3 million to German occupied Poland and Lithuania..[etc.]…During the emergency relief period of 1919-1920, the JDC expended more than $22 million..abroad… The Society for Safeguarding the Health of the Jewish Population formed in 1921.” http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/American_Jewish_Joint_Distribution_Committee

“..midsummer of 1914…The beginning of the European hostilities..found J.P. Morgan & Co. fortuitously appointed fiscal agent in the United States for the British and French governments. As such it took charge of the vast war purchases of the Allies…[and] crisis for the banking house was averted…. Most of the war’s cost was financed by pledging the government’s credit, i.e. the people’s credit, and this pledge at the end of the war amounted to nearly $30 billion, or more than 30 times the prewar national debt.” http://www.vlib.us/wwi/resources/archives/texts/t041226.html

“The First World War helped transform the American Red Cross into a powerful social force. At the outset of the war, the ARC had 562 chapters and about 500,000 members… by the end of the war, there were 3,724 chapters, 17,000 branches, and over 31 million members… The main tasks of the [ARC] War Council were to raise great sums of money..to run the Red Cross..transforming it into an efficient arm of the government.” http://www.redcross.org/museum/history/00-19_b.asp; “The chairman of its Central Committee was Wilson’s presidential predecessor William Howard Taft...” [p128, The Great Influenza, by John M. Barry] Spanish Flu, the pandemic begun in February of 1918, ravaged the American delegation at Versailles; Colonel House sickened with it 3 times and Pres. Wilson’s bout caused him to “lose his fire”. Wilson suffered a major stroke later in 1919 to the detriment of his policies such as Prohibition, which he opposed.

   The American Red Cross was founded in 1881 by Adolphus Simeon Solomons, agent of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, and chartered by the Swiss headquarters in 1892. Clara Barton became the chapter’s president and Solomons served as vice-president. Barton and Solomons attended the 1894 Geneva Convention in which Solomons was elected to the vice-presidency of the International Red Cross.

*

The two relationships of greatest publicly claimed importance to Strauss from USFA experience were with Hoover and Robert A. Taft, the son of William Howard Taft and grandson of Alphonso Taft (1810-1891), co-founder of Yale’s Shull & Bones who was a Cincinnati judge and cabinet member under U.S.Grant as Atty.Gen and Secretary of War. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonso_Taft

By the 1950s, Senator Robert Taft “was widely regarded as the most powerful man in Congress.” He opposed sending Americans to fight in Indo-China. In his last speech before dying of cancer in 1953 he said, ‘I have never felt that we should send American soldiers to the Continent of Asia’…In 1957, a committee led by Senator John F. Kennedy selected Taft as one of five of their greatest Senate predecessors… Kennedy would profile him in his book Profiles In Courage.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Alphonso_Taft

                                          __________________________________________

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Kuhn Loeb & Co.

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Kuhn, Loeb & Co. started out in Indiana as a dry goods merchant, trader, pawn, and promissary note exchange, establlished in 1867 as the firm of Kuhn, Netter, Loeb and Wolff. In 1885 Solomon Loeb’s son-in-law, Jacob Henry Schiff, bought out Abraham Kuhn for proprietary control and became president.

   “In its early years, intermarriage among the German-Jewish elite was common. Consequently, the partners..were closely related by blood and marriage to the partners of J.& W. Seligman, Speyer & Co., Goldman Sachs & Co., Lehman Brothers, and other..German-Jewish firms… a particularly close relationship existed between the partners of Kuhn Loeb and M.M. Warburg & Co. of Hamburg Germany, through Paul and Felix.” http://tristencosgroveblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/kuhn-loeb-co.html

Kuhn Loeb put the big money on railroads; e.g. Chicago and Northwestern, Pennsylvania, Chicago Milwaukie & St, Paul.

   In 1901, with Kuhn Loeb funding, Edward H. Harriman “famously battled James Jerome Hill and J.P. Morgan to acquire control control” of the Union Pacific Railroad. Kuhn Loeb “also joined a partnership with Rockefeller in 1911 to gain control of [Morgan’s] Equitable Trust Company which was later to merge and become Chase Bank.” Incidently, in 1911, the Equitable Building in New York had a fire that burned the Union Pacific’s records.

   But turning the clock back to Kuhn Loeb’s financial rise reveals its central role in the founding of Marxist Communism: “Jacob Schiff even in 1890 organized and financed training for Jewish revolutionaries from Russia. It was B’nai B’rith..that planned the instruction for those training courses.” [p141, Under the Sign of the Scorpion, by Juri Lina] “From 1890, the First of May..[became] the date when communists and socialists across the world celebrate under Rothschild’s red flag, which symbolizes the permanent revolution.. [p86]…On the 31st of October, Vladimir Ulynov [Lenin] arrived in the capital St. Petersburg, where he began his subversive activity… In March 1898, the leading Jewish social democrats gathered in Minsk..and propagated the founding of a Zionist state. [p100] …Jacob Schiff…a minion of the Rothschilds, took care of the contacts between the revolutionary movement in Russia and the B’nai B’rith. (ref. Gerald B. Winrod..) [p136] The [Jewish] war began with a Japanese attack on Port Arthur (now Lushun) on the 9th of February 1904… All possibility of credit was shut off to Russia while Japan had unlimited credit. The most important Jewish loanshark, Jacob Henry Schiff in the United States..supported the Japanese military forces with a loan of $200 million dollars. [p139] …In December 1911, the American president William Howard Taft nullified the Russo-American trade agreement. [p149] In the archives of the State Department there is a document, No. 861.00/5339, which reveals how Jacob Schiff, who was very influential..within..B’nai B’rith, and his companions Felix Warburg, Otto Kahn, Mortimer Schiff, Isaac Seligman, [Jerome Hanauer] and others had made plans as early as 1916 to overthrow the Russian Tsar. [p151] …During the First World War…Trotsky lived in France…[then] was deported to Spain..[and] sent away to the United States of America. He landed in New York on January 13, 1917. [p150]…Some powerful forces had exactly the same interest in using the revolutionaries. It was primarily the American International Corporation, with John Pierpont Morgan Jr. (1867-1943) at the head, who tried to gain control of those international..adventurers… It was above all Jacob and Mortimer Schiff, Felix Warburg, Otto H. Kahn, Max Warburg, Jerome J. Hanauer, Alfred Milner and the copper family Guggenheim who financed the Bolsheviks…Two further names are mentioned in [the State Dept.] document: Max Breitung and Isaac Seligman. All those people were Jews and freemasons.” [p182, Under the Sign of the Scorpion]

   “The rabbi Isaac Wise (1819-1900), chairman of the B’nai B’rith Lodge in Cincinnati, has explained: ‘Freemasonry is a Jewish institution whose history, degrees, charges, passwords and explanantions are Jewish from beginning to end.’…[p204]…It has been calculated that the international financial elite made a total of 208 billion dollars on the war.” [p215] Mr. Lina suggests multiplying by 100 for a current valuation. The revolution “cost a lot of money, which mostly came from the United States. Jacob Schiff declared publicly in April 1917 that it was through his financial support that the revolution in Russia had succeeded. The freemasons exploited the food shortage.” [p189, ibid.]

*

“The pace of banking then was slow. Each deal tooks weeks to complete…and Strauss found many long days with little to do but write a single letter that moved a developing negotition forward a small step… Luckily, he could spend the slow time learning..from two of the masters. Partners Otto H. Kahn and Jerome J. Hanauer carried the load for Kuhn Loeb in the twenties, and Strauss was..apprenticed to them. Kahn was flamboyant… [p29, No Sacrifice Too Great] Hanauer, on the other hand, was quiet, patient, and generally unnoticed; everything about him was carefully in place, and..he looked after the details of the business.” [p30, ibid]

   “As one of the most eligible Jewish bachelors in New York, Strauss found no end of social life. He centered his activities on ‘Uncle’ Oscar and ‘Aunt’ Sarah Straus, his hosts in Paris, and their circle of friends.” [p33, ibid]

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Other Strauses

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The Strauss family tree is another area in which privacy (obfuscation or blankness) prevailed. Lewis Strauss named no other family than his parents, brother, and son. He mentioned a “rich uncle in New York”. The biographer included his grandparents and acknowledgement to LLS’s descendents. Going further is a matter of guesswork, however, if records of correspondence are any guide, Lewis Strauss had made significant contact with the extended Straus clan (alternately spelled with two ‘s’s) as a teenager, several years before his meeting Oscar and Sarah in Paris. The families had much in common with both patriarchs arriving as latecoming “48”ers, fleeing the Marx-inspired Revolutions of 1848. They came from the same region south of Frankfurt (between Darmstadt and Karlsruhe) and started out as dry-goods peddlers with “horse, buggy, and benefactor” in the rural countryside until they each afforded purchasing a store. Leopold Strauss (Lewis’s grandfather) settled in Culpeper Virginia. Lazarus Straus (Oscar’s father) settled in Talbotton Georgia, coming to the U.S. under slightly different circimstances –at an older age than Leopold, with a wife and five children. Leopold was about 18 years old and unattached; he married his benefactor’s daughter, Caroline Lowenthal, and raised 11 children.

   Oscar Solomon Straus (1850-1926) was 46 years older than Lewis Strauss, the youngest of his four siblings, with 3 older brothers. Two of them made their indelible marks on history; Isidor (1846-1912) and Nathan (1848-1931), who co-owned R.H. Macy’s and  Abraham & Straus department stores. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidor_Straus; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Straus ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Straus_(politician) Isidor and his wife, Ida Blun Straus, were killed with the sinking Titanic, leaving the stores largely to their sons. Nathan, who retired after Isidor’s death, achieved renown for his Zionism and worldly effort to pasteurize milk. Nathan’s laboratory in Palestine became the manifest anchor establishment of the Weizmann Institute for Scientific Research. The two brothers had owned their Abraham & Straus property jointly with Simon F. Rothschild, whose older brother Louis Frank Rothschild (married to Cora Guggenheim) was the lifetime executive treasurer of the Hospital for Joint Diseases.

   It’s a plausible theory  that Leopold and Lazarus were brothers, descended from large merchant families of traveling salesmen who sent their offspring into the countryside to stake out territories for themselves and their own families. The greater Strausses from southwest Germany, relocated to the U.S. between 1840 and 1860 would have been “cousins” and second cousins. They are still painstakingly rediscovering each other today from meager stories of the past. Back then, some would have fled the revolutions as armed combatants deliberately veiling their origins –perhaps, especially, Leopold Strauss.

    Lewis Strauss may have been expected to court a suitable “cousin” when he came of age–  he certainly appeared to be “courted” by the Strauses. His mother, of course, was not a Strauss. She held a high ambition for the “right” marriage for her son, a dynastic marriage, fulfilled to her pleasure when Lewis L. Strauss married Alice Hanauer in March of 1923. Nonetheless, important alliances were forged among them. For example, Nathan Strauss collaborated with Lewis Strauss, Samuel Untermeyer, and journalist Herman Bernstein to bring a high-profile defamation/libel suit against Henry Ford; Ford’s crime– publishing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the Dearborn Independent. In Bolshevik Russia, possession of the Protocols meant getting shot on sight. The acceptable Soviet reading material, it seems, was a copy of Colonel E.M. House’s “Philip Dru, Administrator.”

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“During 1915 and 1916, Wilson kept faith with the bankers who had purchased the White House for him, by continuing to make loans to the Allies. His Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, protested constantly, stating that “Money is the worst of all contraband.” By 1917, the Morgans and Kuhn, Loeb Company had floated a billion and a half dollars in loans to the Allies. The bankers also financed a host of “peace’ organizations which worked to get us involved in the World War. The Commission for Relief in Belgium manufactured atrocity stories against the Germans, while a Carnegie organization, The League to Enforce Peace, agitated in Washington for our entry into war. This later became the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which during the 1940s was headed by Alger Hiss. One writer* claimed that he had never seen any “peace movement” which did not end in war.” –Eustace Mullins http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/federal_reserve_secrets3.htm

Oscar S. Straus became president of the New York Peace Society, creator of the League To Enforce Peace, organized under the rubric of the Lake Mohonk conferences on International Arbitration. http://microformguides.gale.com/Data/Download/8379000C.pdf

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Rising Star

*

   The training days of Lewis Lichtenstein Strauss in which he did his job well, to summarize, began in 1917 with dual appointments; the hidden executive of a Rothschild medical enterprise and their special envoy in war organization. Alliances forged through these experiences became the significant relationships of his professional life. Proof of Strauss’s mettle as a prince of Maccabees was rewarded with riches and marriage. He then acceded to numerous high-ranking offices such as the executive of the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Agricultural Society. Next step was an officer’s commission in military intelligence as a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserve, assigned to the New York district under the command of Paul Foster.  Foster and Strauss became “close friends”.

   Of greatest import was the role he was being groomed to fill, following in the footsteps of Jacob Schiff. Certainly, in time, he would have been expected to exercise the same audacious kind of authority if not by the same means.  “Jacob Schiff declared publicly in April 1917 that it was through his financial support that the revolution in Russia succeeded….[p189, Under the Sign of the Scorpion]….The order to murder the Tsar and his family actually came from New York…Yakov Sverdlov..had received orders from Schiff to liquidate the Tsar and his entire family.” [p276, ibid.]

*

“Only thirty years old in 1926, Strauss was well on his way to the top of Kuhn Loeb… Each time the partners increased Strauss’s responsibility, he responded superbly. This rising star was thus the obvious choice to represent Kuhn Loeb on a trip to Japan. The firm had served as bankers to the Japanese government for decades. Most significant was the $200 million loan that financed the Russo-Japanese war in 1904-05. As a result of the war, Japan emerged as a major world power..and holder of important economic rights in adjacent Manchuria. In 1907..Jacob Schiff had made a tour of Japan…[and] In 1926, Strauss set out to renew the personal ties on which Kuhn Loeb’s special relationship with Japan depended.” [p36, No Sacrifice Too Great]

   He was, by now, a most trusted servant. “A promotion greeted Strauss in his return from Japan. As of December 31, 1926, he held sole power of attorney. His signature alone on a contract or check could commit Kuhn Loeb…His compensation for 1927 exceeded $120,000… enhanced authority meant that he negotiated on his own… [H]e began to make contacts among the managers of [steel producers] Youngstown, Bethlehem, Cleveland Cliffs, Inland and National…. Strauss was clearly a young man to watch…” [p37] And “when Herbert Hoover made another bid for the presidency, Strauss threw himself into the campaign… He took charge of..the South…then moved quickly to mobilize support for Hoover among southern bankers” [p38, ibid], resulting in a “great victory” celebrated at the Hoover home in Palo Alto.

   “After the election Strauss learned that another promotion awaited him, and on January 1, 1929, he became..a full member of the inner circle. In only ten years, and at an incredibly young age, he had become one of the leaders in the world of banking, marked out to carry on the future of Kuhn Loeb.” [p40, No Sacrifice Too Great]

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Autobiographical Notes

 from Men and Decisions (published 1962):

[p53] “During Mr. Hoover’s service in the cabinets of Harding and Coolidge [as Secretary of Commerce], my contacts with him were less frequent. The banking business absorbed my interest and my time. I was succeeded as his assistant by Christian A. Herter, [from Hoover’s USFA staff] who had been secretary of the U.S. Peace Commission in Paris in 1918-19, where he had impressed everyone… He served Mr. Hoover with distinction during the period when the Department of Commerce was raised to a degree of usefulness to the economy which it had never before attained. Mr. Herter later entered politics, served..the House of Representatives, as Governor of..Massachusetts and was appointed Under Secretary of State, and later Secretary [of State, 1959] by President Eisenhower.”

[p55]..”Mr. Hoover did not settle in Washington, but established his headquarters at 42 Broadway in New York, where his overseas relief activities were centered… my office was at the corner of William and Pine streets, only a few blocks distant…

>>>Christian Archibald Herter was a descendent of “48”-ers (named Hagerlocher) who immigrated to New York’s Lower East Side and established an exclusive furniture business catering to industrial nouveau riche. Christian’s uncle, also named Christain A. Herter, was an experimental biologist who inspired J.D.Rockefeller Jr. to an interest in medicine. Uncle C.A. Herter died in 1910 at age 45 of a neurological wasting disease, thereafter bearing his name (Gee-Herter disease). As Eisenhower’s second Secretary of State, C.A. Herter provided the crucial ‘nuclear briefing’ to president-elect John F. Kennedy.

*

[p83] “The twenty-seven years with Kuhn, Loeb & Co. were fortunate ones for me, as I came under the tutelage of men who were among the wisest..experts of their day…”

[p85] “The aggregate..financing in which I was involved totals many hundreds of millions of dollars and included adventurous projects such as building a steel plant in Detroit… the laying of a new transatlantic cable…financing the ideas of inventors and other enterprises that were off the beaten course of banking…”

[p85] “[During the 1920s] I came to know Leopold and Philip Block of Chicago, Ernest Weir of Pittsburgh, George Humphrey, George Fink, Tom Girdler, Frank Purnell, and other powerful figures in the world of steelmaking. Eventually I handled the banking for their companies; Inland, National, Great Lakes, Youngstown, Republic and other steel companies. At one point, all but two of the large independent steel manufacturers were my clients.”

[p94] “.. during a visit to London..in October and November of 1933 [where] on November 1 I had lunch at New Court, the impressive and venerable Rothschild banking establishment… At the table, with my Rothschild hosts Anthony and Lionel, were Sir Robert Waley Cohen, Lord Melchett and other figures… Mr. Lionel..said, ‘Mr. Strauss, I suppose you know.. your government has been buying gold and this morning your President Roosevelt has set a price of $32.28 for it. Can you tell us why the President would suddenly jump the price to that particular figure?’ To this I replied, ‘Maybe he just pulled the figure out of a hat.’…It might as well have been drawn out of a hat, as I so lightly advised the Rothschilds and their friends.”

*

[p97] “As a boy, photography had been a major interest…”

[p98] “In 1922, Everett Somers [military aide]..introduced two young musicians, Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky… [They conceived a method of making photographs in color with one exposure on a single film..using an ordinary camera…  I arranged for the necessary money to pay for patent applications and attorney fees and to rent and staff a small laboratory. The Eastman Kodak Company co-operated by furnishing required sensitizers, dyes, and other materials, but brushed the process itself aside… [until] I decided to go over the head of [Kodak] officers.. and traveled to Rochester with Sir William Wiseman [of British Intelligence], one of my associates, ..to George Eastman himself.. which resulted in marketing the product called Kodachrome. Annually it earns many millions for the Kodak Company and until the patents finally expired in 1952, was highly profitable to the young inventors and to all concerned.”

>>>George Eastman (1854-1932) committed suicide by a gunshot to the heart on March 14, 1932

…”Another decision was to back a young inventor, Edwin H. Land, who was introduced to me..by his camp counselor, Julius Silver… Land impressed me at once, a fact of which I am proud… Land has many inventions to his credit.. some of them of a classified character… He is best known perhaps for the Polaroid Land Camera.”

>>>read more about Polaroid here: https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/morgification/

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Eastman Kodak was one of the great corporate success stories of the 20th century and George Eastman was in the top 25 of richest Americans by WWI. Kodak’s early commercial success was built on the production of x-ray film plates. In 1912, Dr. C.E. Kenneth Mees, “acquired” through merger with a British firm and made vice-president, established the Kodak Research Laboratories. Mees was a pioneer in aerial photography technology, and by his efforts Kodak participated in defense work using a Rochester lab on the Genesee River called “Hawkeye“. In the early 1920s, the Hawkeye plant was making the Barnes camera (developed by plant manager F.W.Barnes), the first 16mm movie camera. http://www.city-net.com/~fodder/16mm/film.html Kodachrome would become Kodak’s stock commercial movie film. In time, Hawkeye produced classified aerial maps for the NRO and CIA (i.e.Project Bridgehead) and prepared the images of Soviet missiles in Cuba that were shown to JFK in October of 1962. The Zapruder film copy that came into the hands of Navy photo analysts on the weekend of JFK’s assassination is said to have been processed first by Kodak’s Hawkeye works.

   Two years before Strauss met Godowsky and Mannes (1920) George Eastman funded the creation of the Rochester University School of Medicine and Dentistry and its affiliated Strong Memorial Hospital under the courtship of Abraham Flexner: “one of the most astute medical statesmen and administrators the United States has ever produced–Dr. Abraham Flexner, at the time secretary of the Rockefeller General Education Board.” http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=2326  Abraham Flexner was not a doctor though his older brother Simon Flexner had earned the title through a one-year medical course in Louisville Kentucky, the very kind of school that the Flexners sought to shut down. Abraham, the educator, wrote a national medical school survey report called the “Flexner Report” (1910), used by the AMA, Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations to leverage compliance to ‘standards’ in exchange for funds. The new Rochester school was to be a model of Flexnerian innovation emphasizing research. During WWII, Rochester M & D and Strong Memorial were the headquarters of Manhattan Project human medical experiments with radionuclides and fluorine.

>>>Grand Rapids, Michigan was the first U.S. city to institute fluoridation…Gerald R. Ford was Grand Rapids’ congressional representative from 1949 to 1973 ..(and also on the Warren Commission)…[read more about fluoride http://polioforever.wordpress.com/fluoride/]; a third Flexner brother, Bernard Flexner, lawyer and protege to Kuhn Loeb lawyer Louis Brandeis, was a leader of the 1917 Red Cross Mission to Russia and Roumania and 1922 founder of the Palestine Economic Corporation.

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The Strange Career of Hoover

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Herbert Hoover’s “famed mining career began in the goldfields of western Australia (‘Sons of Gwalia’ gold mine) in 1897 where he also co-founded the Zinc Corporation (Rio-Tinto-Zinc Ltd) in 1905” –so begins a blurb on Hoover written two years ago in a post called “Atomic Power, No Contest” about the early preparations made in the 1920s for World War II and the coming atomic bombs. https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/atomic-power-no-contest/ At the time, I knew little about the jurisdiction of the Secretary of Commerce, but it was still clear to me that Hoover was constantly operating outside of his jurisdiction, focused on local and regional power utilities, for example. Within his jurisdiction, however, were unique opportunites relating to trade and traffic. He took office during an agricultural depression brought on by WWI, bearing directly on the Food and Relief Administration programs of overproduction, capitalization, and fixed pricing.  Hoover’s time as Sec. of Commerce and then President also ranged over nearly the entire period of Prohibition, and some of this activity was taken note of by journalists as Hoover’s unpopular presidential policies in the deepening Great Depression stirred national discontent. [reference this essay on Hoover’s presidency http://www.americanheritage.com/content/wrong-man-wrong-time?page=2]

   “During Hoover’s presidency Strauss played an important role in the illegal use of naval intelligence for a partisan political purpose… On May 21, 1930, Strauss received Commanders Paul Foster and Glenn Howell in his office at the Kuhn Loeb building. Foster, Strauss’s first chief at the Naval Intelligence District, had become a close friend, and Howell was the incumbent chief.” [p41, No Sacrifice Too Great] Strauss told the men that a man named O’Brien was collecting documents about “unsavory episodes” in Hoover’s past and intended to have them published. ” ‘Strauss is authorized by the President to utilize the services of any of our various secret services,’ Howell believed [and wrote in his personal diary]… Using as a cover story the premise that foreign agents threatened the United States, Howell enlisted the aid of the man whose office adjoined O’Brien’s… obtained an impression of [O’Brien’s] lock…made a key, and early on a Monday morning quietly entered O’Brien’s office, only to find..O’Brien had moved out with all his furniture and, of course, the documents...” O’Brien was collaborating with Mr. John Hamill, and they did indeed give Strauss the slip and published a book called The Strange Career of Herbert Hoover Under Two Flags. The biographer Richard Pfau continued,”What this incident showed about Strauss was his willingness to employ the clandestine skills of counterintelligence for a political purpose. He probably justified the illegal activity on the ground that it necessary to protect the presidency. Like Watergate…this was a wanton abuse of power. It shows that for Strauss..no sacrifice was too great, even though it violated the law, if he could convince himself it was necessary for the nations’s security.” [p42, ibid.] The 1930 break-in on James J. O’Brien by the NYC ONI is described here: “Hoovergate”…”Glenn Howell was no stranger to break-ins and espionage against his fellow citizens. In his 1930 diary he speaks confidently of infiltrating and spying on Communist cells and then arranging for break-ins…” http://www.americanheritage.com/content/hoovergate

   But there were others: “This post discusses how Herbert Hoover misused the..powers of his office..to harass a group of authors, including distinguished muckraker Walter Liggett, who were preparing anti-Hoover biographies… Howell relates the harmless subterfuge used to gain access…[but] Liggett was murdered in a gang-land killing [in front of his wife and daughter] in Minneapolis in 1935… Shortly after the [American Commission for Russian Famine Relief] was launched, Mr. Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce,..commissioned..an FBI investigation of Walter W. Liggett… Liggett made his reputation..describing the catastrophic impact of Prohibition on the integrity of law enforcement and local governments… Liggett’s successful newspaper and magazine writing provided the opportunity to publish a book on a long-time interest of his –Herbert Hoover…The prospective book was a hot property… Walter either did not realize or did not care that..detectives were investigating and reporting on him while he worked… Liggett was lured to a hotel with the promise of information and then savagely beaten by..men led by gangster Kid Cann… Finally, on December 9, 1935, Walter Liggett was gunned down by five fatal shots [from] none other than Kid Cann.” http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/2006/12/last-of-the-muckrakers-appreciation-of.html

Kid Cann (Isadore Blumenfeld) ” was convicted of violating the Mann Act in 1959 and, after a short prison term, retired to Miami Beach, Florida, where he and Meyer Lansky operated a real estate empire. He was involved in organized crime in Miami Beach and Havana, Cuba, until his death.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_Cann

*

   “Hoover’s agricultural program –the showpiece of his 1929 initiatives– ended in fiasco. The Grain Stabilization Corporation stopped buying surpluses..driving the price of wheat catastrophically lower… The farming sector faced ruin…. one-fourth of American farmers lost their holdings –their fields, their stock, their barns and their homes– many of which had been in one family for generations” http://www.americanheritage.com/content/wrong-man-wrong-time?page=4

   “In the summer of 1933…Strauss decided to buy a farm in Virginia… At the severely depreciated prices produced by the Depression, large estates were available for small sums… Strauss also thought he might accept a post in Washington one day… a home within easy reach of the capital would be useful… In July 1933 he bought 1,600 acres near Brandy Station, between Warrenton and Culpeper… In addition, a corner of the land had been a battleground in the Civil War.” [p47, No Sacrifice Too Great]

>>>”Brandy Rock Farm..was..designated as a ‘conservation’ property…The heirs of L.L. Strauss have been paid $30-50,000 annually in government funds …the third largest farm subsidy in the state of Virginia.”

The Byrd Machine

“Strauss..bought an historic estate at Brandywine, Virginia during the 1930′s, from which he ran the notorious Byrd machine for many years, a totalitarian control of Virginia politics which had begun at the turn of the century… [Harry F.] Byrd, with Strauss’ money behind him, became Governor of Virginia… He continued his long association with Byrd during their years together in Washington. When Byrd retired, Strauss became his son’s campaign manager.” –Eustace Mullins

http://polioforever.wordpress.com/lewis-l-strauss/

Harry Byrd’s cousin, Texas oilman D.H. Byrd, was the owner of the Texas Schoolbook Depository building and according to Russ Baker’s book (Family of Secrets), D.H.Byrd had formerly employed Oswald’s handler, George DeMohrenschildt. DeMohrenschildt is noted to have been a dealer in uranium.

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The Radium Trade

*

Lewis Strauss was born (Jan.1896) just weeks after the news of Wilhelm Roentgen’s first medical x-ray (Dec.1895), taken of his wife’s hand, flashed with excitement throughout the scientific world. Photosensitive glass plates were key to proving the existence of radioactivity and the intrinsic properties of energetic materials. The dogged persistence of Marie Sklodowska Curie in procuring radium, helped by her husband Pierre and friend Henri Becquerel fueled the industrial emergence of a radium trade by 1903. Parallel developments  in radium treatment between the French and Americans was carried on in the U.S. by a New York surgeon named Robert Abbe who brought a supply over from the Curies lab. In that year, 1903, “Hans Zinsser, who became an American bacteriologist of high academic achievement..wrote his first paper..on the effects of radium on bacteria… The Zinsser family chemical business [dealing in commercial lacquer and paint] was run by Hans’s brother whose daughters, Margaret and Ellen, married Lewis Douglas [Phelps-Dodge] and  John J. McCloy [Black Tom Island lawyer], respectively.” http://polioforever.wordpress.com/x-rays/

   Marie Curie’s radium was made from a stock of pitchblende found in the uranium waste of the Joachimstal mines. Little is known or said about her sponsors motives, however uranium pitchblende ore was already in use in the U.K as a steel-hardening alloy, shipped to London in 1872 by a British mining agent Robert Pearce who sold his 3-ton cache for $7,500. Pearce found the pitchblende in Gilpin County, Colorado and soon pockets around the Colorado Plateau were yielding high grade ore. By 1911, Colorado ores bearing radium were sent to Pittsburgh for processing and reduction by the Standard Chemical Company, the largest supplier of its time. Radium came on the market in those days at a cost of $150,000 per gram.

   Across the pond in Belgium, a legendary gathering of European physicists was convened for the first Solvay conference, a colloqium of the brightest minds, including Emil Warburg, Albert Einstein, Mme Curie, Paul Langevin and Ernest Rutherford. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_Conference Rutherford, considered the father of the atom, “had made a classic discovery: The core of the hydrogen atom was blasted from the core of nitrogen. Rutherford had achieved the old dream of alchemy; this was the first time man had accomplished transmutation… In 1904 he had glimpsed a possible way atomic energy might be released… He told [a London lecture] audience, ‘A mere pound of uranium, on the scale we see possible, might liberate the same energy as burning 100 million pounds of coal. Scientists are working hard to find a way to release this energy at will. Personally I hope they do not succeed until man has learned how to live with his neighbors in peace.” [p52, The Deadly Element, by Lennard Bickel]

   It does not take a detective’s eye to follow the early development of atomic energy. Rutherford’s 1904 statement is a clear indicator of the groundbreaking path, known to his fellow conferees. Radium marketed as a medical miracle generated capital, industriousness, and intense scientific interest. It was a like substance and stand-in for all uranium products, including plutonium which didn’t yet exist. Under the auspices of Belgian Relief and the U.S. Food Administration, the assumed contacts were made to corner the radium market with ore from the Belgian Congo: …”We had both [Sengier, president of Union Miniere du Haute Katanga, and Strauss] been connected with Hoover’s Commission for Relief of Belgium in World War I, and our friendship dated from those days” —Lewis Strauss [p317, Men and Decisions] The Union Miniere built an exclusive facility and put its radium on the market in 1922 at lower cost (roughly S100,000-120,000). In the prior year, another assumed advance occurred in which a demonstration of fission was offered to Albert Einstein while visiting Prague (assumed that Einstein accepted and the offer came from Leo Szilard). Einstein was scheduled to travel to the United States with Chaim Weizmann on a Zionist fundraising tour –which he did– and then returned to Prague straight away to arrange a special laboratory where he began working with Szilard.  Fission was made possible by the advent of particle accelerators.

   Pennsylvania’s Standard Chemical Co., domestic radium supplier, was out of business by 1926 and the Belgians remained unchallenged in the field of radium distribution until the Canadians discovered the Great Bear Lake region in northern Saskatchewan.

*

“..the Canadians..brought in their mines from the distant Northwest Territories in 1931 thanks to ‘flying wheelbarrows’ and bush pilots… [Boris]Pregel said, “The monopoly of radium which Union Miniere had went on for many years till the Canadians came in with their own material [and] their refinery, Port Hope… they began to sell, to compete with the Belgians. They did it because they didn’t have the necessary distribution channels… practically nobody…”. https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/jfk-conspiracy-con-iii/ (Part III) And practically noboby left records of how the Canadians managed to compete, but the prices dropped according to statements, for the first time below $100,000 per gram.

   North of Rochester New York, across the open water of Lake Ontario, “Port Hope.. is known for having the largest volume of historic low-level radioactive wastes in Canada. These wastes were created by Eldorado Mining and Refining Co. and its private sector predecessors.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Hope,_Ontario

   Most importantly in this period of the early 1930s, is the continuation of nuclear technology developments in settings of medical research. Hospital labs became fundamental proving grounds for isotopes and particle accelerators, and radium was still the most expensive drug on the market.

*

Lewis Strauss  wrote, “Following the deaths of both my parents (in 1935 [not?] and 1937), I became aware of the inadequate supply of radium for the treatment of cancer… the demand was so great that the stock was divided into milligrams. Dr. James Ewing, then director of Memorial Cancer Hospital in New York, told me that if he had enough radium he would construct a ‘bomb’ holding several grams, which he felt might be the answer to the treatment of deeply located cancers.” [p163, Men and Decisions] To this end, Strauss claims to have struck up a relationship with physicists Leo Szilard and his colleague Arno Brasch. From Strauss’s own correspondence records, the exchange with Szilard began in 1934 –significantly the year in which Szilard patented the first known nuclear reactor. Strauss privately arranged to buy a particle accelerator from Brasch through his relative, Isbert Adam, a business broker in Havana Cuba. The ‘surge generator’ and the scientist were both slated for a destination at the Kellogg Radiation Laboratory , part of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

   Caltech, under the direction of Strauss’s professed ‘idol’ Robert Millikan whose textbook inspired his devotion to physics, was then the center of advanced U.S. study in genetics and aeronautics, ( Guggenheim Aeronautics Laboratory at Cal. Inst. of Tech.(GALCIT) and the new Jet Propulsion Laboratory) headed by Theodore von Karman. Von Karman, himself an Hungarian immigrant, was ‘spiritual father’ to the small group of four Hungarian scientists who were nicknamed the Martians –they were, Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, John von Neumann and Leo Szilard. Wigner and von Neumann were secured in resident lifetime fellowships in 1930, not long after the Guggenheim Aeronautics lab was created, at a new East Coast counterpart at Princeton, the Institute of Advanced Study [IAS]. Albert Einstein had also been contracted to the IAS in 1930, coming later in 1933.

    Princeton’s IAS was founded  by “Dr.” Abraham Flexner (same as Rochester Medical) with funding from the Bamberger department store fortune –Lewis Strauss joined its board of directors during WWII and became its chair concurrent to his executive with the Atomic Energy Commission.

   The first nuclear technologies then, X-rays and radium, were delivered into the world at the very time of Lewis Strauss’s birth –he may have taken great meaning from it as a talismanic guide in “God’s purpose” for him. Eisenhower’s offer of “permanent chairman” (1958) for atomic energy was merely acknowledgement of what had already been. Virtully every step of this man’s life was in furtherance of achieving the most powerful weapons ever created on behalf of an ancient cult of racist assassins to whom he owed his glory. It is the most salient fact of his existence, and he stopped at nothing for its gain.

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Radium Notes: “In the fall of 1901, the Belgian Companie Internationale d’Orient..appointed Emile Franqui (1863-1935) [as] the Belgian consul in Shanghai…The company belonged to Emperor Leopold II of Belgium. Edgar Sengier (1879-1963)..was sent in 1907 to Shanghai to direct this company. Both Franqui and Sengier became later directors of Union Miniere du Haut Katanga.” http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1047&context=fathi_habashi&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%3B_ylt%3DAtNBEZ1r_sXVy.ovG4QWFqqbvZx4%3Fp%3DEdgar%2BSengier%2BEmile%2BFranqui%26toggle%3D1%26cop%3Dmss%26ei%3DUTF-8%26fr%3Dyfp-t-701-1#search=%22Edgar%20Sengier%20Emile%20Franqui%22

“The Congo can best be understood as the private preserve and reservation of Societe Generale [bank]… its influence over the financial houses of Europe was said to have equaled that of the Rothschild family or the J.P.Morgan banking empire” [p44 of the book text of ‘Uranium’; www.scribd.com/doc/88719832/5/THE-RAINBOW-SERPENT ]…”A substantial amount of uranium has been smuggled out of the Congo in the last decade [since 2000] and the source is almost certainly Shinkolobwe [mine].”  [p10 ibid.]

Author Joseph Conrad wrote about the genocidal atrocities in the Congo committed by the Belgians in his ‘novella’ Heart of Darkness: “in 1902, Heart of Darkness was included in the book “Youth: a Narrative, and Two Other Stories” (published November 13, 1902, by William Blackwood).[republished in 1917]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_Darkness

When Emile Francqui died (1935)..”the New York Times memorialized him as the ‘copper king of the Congo’…In 1891 he led an expedition into the Congo and gained it for King Leopold…While [earlier] consul general at Shanghai, he secured valuable concessions, notably the Kaiping coal mines and the railway concession…” http://modernhistoryproject.org/mhp?Article=FedReserve&C=7.0

Joseph “Conrad had himself gone to Congo in 1890 at the time [Leon] Rom was committing his atrocities.” http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/35/181.html

“The agent of C.R.B. [food relief] in Belgium, the Comité National de Secours et d’Alimentation with Ernest Solvay as Chairman and Emile Francqui as President organized food distribution in occupied Belgium through Provincial Committees.” http://www.baef.be/documents/about-us/history/the-commission-for-relief-in-belgium-1914-.xml?lang=en

Lewis Strauss thought to write in his 1962 memoir that after he started his new banking career (9-19-19) and took his relief activities to a higher level, in April of 1920, “about that time, I was reading Joseph Conrad and suffered from troubled dreams of leaky ships, overcrowded with men and foundering in tropic seas.” [p74, Men and Decisions] It was the only instance in the memoir that Strauss mentioned his personal reading material.

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Radium, and its daughter gas radon, were added to public drinking water beginning in 1903 according to whistleblower Dr. Albert Schatz, the discoverer of streptomycin.  Radium and its mine waste was later packaged and sold as fertilizer by the Standard Chemical Company, starting in 1911. phttp://polioforever.wordpress.com/x-rays/

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Joe Kennedy

Joseph P. Kennedy was a ‘friend’ to Lewis Strauss by some accounts although no such relationship is claimed by either camp or demonstrated by any record known to this researcher. Kennedy’s career actions, however, reveal an astute and enterprising sense of sharing in the ‘friendly’ interests among Strauss’s associates. He certainly had their attention from his stellar foray into the movie business through the buy-out of the Film Booking Office (FBO). The movie business, and not bootlegging as the myth persists, made Kennedy’s fortune: “Hollywood studio chiefs in the mid-20s were almost all immigrants, men such as Carl Laemmle of Universal, Louis B. Mayer and Marcus Loew of MGM, and Adolph Zukor of Paramount, men who had started with arcades, nickelodeons, or small theaters… “

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2002/04/joekennedy200204

   JPK’s closest partners in the FBO venture included Louis Kirstein and Guy Currier. Kirstein, who ran the Filene’s department store in Boston, was “a man of many interests” and “one of the outstanding leaders of American Jewry..[as] chairman of the General Committee of the American Jewish Committee… national chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, the leading fundraising agency for..Palestine…[and] he acquired a role similar to that of Jacob H. Schiff and Felix M. Warburg…striving [for] cooperation of all sections within the Jewish community for one common purpose.” Strauss was then, and continued to be, on the executive of the American Jewish Committee.

http://archive.jta.org/article/1942/12/11/2859338/louis-e-kirstein-dies-in-boston-at-75

   Acquisition of the FBO, a prolific producer of films itself, poised Kennedy and his partners for a strategic consolidation during a period of great technological change in the business– the sound revolution. They exploited a leadership power vacuum among the companies that made up the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer network and made a new entity, RKO, with Kennedy’s silent partner, RCA/NBC’s president David Sarnoff. According to Cari Beauchamp, author of the Vanity Fair article and book, in October of 1927 Kennedy met Sarnoff “at the Oyster Bar in New York’s Grand Central Terminal… Kennedy had a studio; Sarnoff had the technical equipment..[and] Telling no one else, they put their heads together and came up with a plan.”

   The first approach was an overture from Kennedy to Frank J. Godsol, the president of Goldwyn Pictures. Sometime between 1921 and 1922, Godsol had engineered the ousting of Samuel Goldwyn from his own company –Godsol had a colorful past. He was the son of Russian jewelry dealer in Cleveland who made an undisclosed fortune “in the West” as a very young man, and then expatriated himself to Paris France where he first sold imitation pearls (called Tecla pearls) through exclusive shops and then became a war armaments dealer to the French government.

>>>Tecla pearls are a ‘trade-marked name for both solid and wax-filled imitation pearls’ made of glass. http://stoneplus.cst.cmich.edu/zoogems/pearls.html ; “[Godsol] went West while still a boy and amassed a fortune in a few years in Montana. Then he established the Saretecora and Brazilian diamond business that had an amazing success. Later he invaded Europe and launched the Tecla pearl..which enabled the possessors of priceless..pearls to put their treasures in safety deposit boxes and at the same time appear properly jewelled…” [New York Tribune, April 1, 1919 http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1919-04-01/ed-1/seq-6/  Godsol had only recently survived a scandal and jailing over charges of fraud, profiteering, and special favoritism in a suit involving his brokerage of trucks during World War I where he made at least $1.5 million each year of the war, possibly from the sale of Pierce Arrow vehicles alone. Godsol represented multiple auto companies. It also came out in his trial that Godsol had  war-era connections to film-making; accused by prosecutor Alfred J. Decker of employing Benjamin Blumenthal who “was president of..Germanic Official War Films Inc.” and used his station for generating pro-German propaganda. Blumenthal denied “that pictures..were shown in the interests of Germany.” http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1918-04-19/ed-1/seq-10

   Shortly after Godsol tookover Goldwyn Pictures, it was bought in 1924 by Marcus Loew of Loew’s Incorporated, perhaps the largest theater corporation anywhere.

   Marcus Loew was a pioneer in grassroots fundraising for Jewish War Relief  (run by Warburgs) through the agency of his theaters. The model was carried through even after Loew’s passing in 1927 (year of the RKO deal) –Loew’s became a staple collections field in the March of Dimes when the funds were dedicated to polio. Joe Kennedy was touching a lot of nerves. His successes in making the movie industry a legitimate and profitable target of investment and his ‘reorganization’ at Goldwyn with the resulting creation of RKO put him on the radar as a man to watch. He played their banking game with undaunted brilliance. Beauchamp wrote,”Kennedy..personally exited the RKO deal with more than $5 million… In 1937, Fortune magazine ran a cover-story profile of Kennedy and credited his time in Hollywood as a major source of his personal fortune.”

   Legend has it that Kennedy enriched himself as a rumrunner in the 1920s, though often disputed and demonstrably out-of-character. Kennedy may have walked close to the line, but there’s no evidence that he personally crossed it or encouraged it for his own benefit. He creditably took his movie earnings after selling out to RKO, allegedly before the crash of ’29, and leveraged them into legal distributorships of distilled spirits, positioned to claim an ample market share at the end of Prohibition. These maneuverings for liquor rights brought him into direct competition with Samuel Bronfman, who expected those very same licenses to be his. Bronfman’s venom for Joe Kennedy overflows from the Bronfman family history up to the present.

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David Sarnoff, in Lewis Strauss’s own words, was a “steadfast friend”. Sarnoff (1891-1971), born near Minsk Russia, emigrated as a boy and landed a job with Marconi Wireless at the age of 15 (1906) and worked his way up. In 1919, General Electric created the Radio Corporation of America in order to acquire Marconi which was a British company, and remained its largest shareholder during the years of radio development. Sarnoff took the helm of RCA in the mid-20s and launched the company on a great expansion through stock swaps to acquire patents. G.E. held 30% of RCA, Westinghouse held 20% and AT&T held 10%. Strauss was an individual stockholder. In 1926, RCA created NBC; the next year RKO, and by the end of 1920s, RCA entered into a leaseholder deal to occupy the new site of the soon-to-be-built Rockefeller Center. Rockefeller archives record the event as a reflection of ‘Junior’s’ interest in radio: “One can safely say that quite suddenly in the late 1920s, the radio industry became one of the defining features of Junior’s life… Rockefeller Center..came to focus Junior’s attention on..the business of radio… he was approached by a group that was looking..to consolidate its operations and build up-to-date facilities. This was the Radio Corporation of America that..brought together the assets and patents of General Electric, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Westinghouse, and the United Fruit Company.” http://www.rockarch.org/workshops/pdf/buxton2.pdf

   The Rockefeller family themselves had just recently completed (in 1927) a merger between their own Standard Oil and the Warburgs’ I.G.Farben to create the largest industrial chemical combine in the world. http://polioforever.wordpress.com/the-rockefeller-institute/  This timeframe also saw Strauss join the Office of Naval Intelligence, renew the ties of Kuhn Loeb with Japan and receive the full-fledge of the company, followed by the fatal plunge of polio doctor Frauenthal from the Jewish Hospital for Joint Diseases.

   RCA was to roar out of the 1920s with a near monopoly in telecommunications. It became an indispensable asset to the military-complex for engineer training in advanced electronics and high-energy physics. Another Russian emigre, Dr. Emanuel Piore, did extensive work on television at RCA, enabling such weapons as the “t.v.-guided bomb” –“In April 1942, a TV-controlled drone was successfully guided into a target ship from a control aircraft 50 km (30 mi.) away.” http://www.earlytelevision.org/military_tv.html   Piore, working for the Chief of Naval Operations in World War Two, left his statement that “we were the group that supervised the operation that killed Joe Kennedy [Jr.]” https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/jfk-conspiracy-con-iv/

Joe Kennedy Jr. “volunteered for a dangerous mission that required him to fly a navy PB4Y Liberator bomber containing 22,000 pounds of explosives to a German launch site on the Belgian coast. Joe and a copilot were supposed to eject themselves from the plane after activating the remote control guidance and arming system. But their plane exploded before they even reached the English Channel… In 2001, a new theory emerged regarding the cause of Joe’s death…  the radar signals interfered with the radio controls of Joe’s plane and caused the explosion.” http://www.netplaces.com/john-f-kennedy/finding-his-way/a-devastating-time-joe-jr-s-death.htm

   In his memoir extolling involvement in the creation of the radio-activated “proximity fuse”, the nearest thing the U.S. had in WWII to guided missiles, Strauss made a point of saying that “I felt there was a possibility that a self-propelled bomb could be flown across the Channel, riding a radio beam rather than taking a ballistic course.” [p140, Men and Decisions]

>>>Parent company General Electric divested from RCA in 1932 over the controversy of federal monopoly hearings and repurchased RCA in the 1980s. G.E. faced its own controversy over products when 90,000 color televisions were recalled in 1967 for dangerous X-ray emissions. [ref. p42, The Zapping of America, Paul Brodeur]

*

Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., of course, came to national attention as FDR’s first chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Arthur Krock lauded Kennedy’s government service in his Memoirs as “unmatched for competence, imagination, and courage in the areas of fiscal and monetary economics.“[p167] Krock prefaced his praise by writing, “The New Deal began, I suppose, on a negative basis…But the positive side was initiated very promptly by the adoption of..Hoover measures…” [ p161, Memoirs; Sixty Years on the Firing Line, Arthur Krock, 1968] Although credited to Roosevelt, the SEC was a Hoover proposition. Austrian School economist Murray Rothbard was generous to accountability: “Throughout the Depression, Hoover gave vent to his standing dislike of speculation and the stockmarket. In the fall of 1930, Hoover threatened federal regulation of the New York Stock Exchange..[and] went on to propose what later came to pass as the New Deal’s SEC, a regulation that Hoover applauded.” In fact, as Rothbard explained, “Herbert Hoover’s entire program of activities as Secretary of Commerce was designed to advance the subsidization of industry and the interpenetration of government and business“, restoring to peacetime what had been gained by “war collectivism“, described as “a totally planned economy run largely by big-business interests..for the purpose of providing a network of subsidies and monopolistic privileges to business.”

   In Hoover’s record it’s possible to pick up the threads of continuity of government that generated the permanent conditions of the rising military-industrial-medical complex: Rothbard wrote that “As soon as the war was over Hoover set out to ‘reconstruct America’..[as] peacetime cooperation. He urged national planning..under the ‘central direction’ of the government..[for] the cartelization of industry through trade associations..to raise prices, restrict production and..impose standardization and ‘simplification’ of materials and products… [Historian] Grosvenor Clarkson hailed the fact that: ‘The ideas conceived and applied by the War Industries Board in war are being applied in peace by the Department of Commerce’…no one could have been as ideally suited as..Hoover to be President at the onset of a Great Depression and to react with a radical program of statism… Hoover began his ‘gigantic’ program as soon as the stock market crashed on October 24, 1929… The most important call for the compulsory cartelization of a corporate state was sounded by Gerard Swope, the veteran corporate liberal who headed General Electric… men like..Swope were in effect urging [President Hoover] to throw off the voluntarist [policy] cloak and adopt the naked economy of fascism… In short, a general clamor arose for an economy of fascism.” Rothbard complained, “that Herbert Hoover, far from being an advocate of laissez-faire, was in every way the precursor of Roosevelt and the New Deal..[as] one of the major leaders of the twentieth-century shift..to the modern corporate state.” [ref.essays, New History of Leviathan, pp 66-145]

    The intimate and lifelong relationship of Lewis Strauss to Herbert Hoover appears at its most obscure in these years given the high profile of the Chief. General history is peppered with odd facts drawn from his narrow but deep well of support: “Hoover was very much in the news in 1927. His was the image first sent by television… Hoover displayed an extraordinary talent for publicity through extensive newspaper, magazine and film contacts. When Will Irwin in 1928 pieced together the campaign film ‘The Master of Emergencies’, he had some ten miles of films showing Hoover..since 1914 from which to select… Popular demand made Hoover the nominee and carried him into the White House… None of the major Republican machines favored Hoover… A leading business journal reported: ‘Business stood the campaign well…And the time may come when business will not shiver at any proposal of politics, knowing and realizing that trade makes its own laws no matter which party is in power’… Hoover should be made a dictator: Let Congress pass one bill giving certain necessary powers to President Hoover as did the Democratic Congress of 1914.” [pp29-50, p117, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression, Harris G. Warren, 1959]

*

   The Stockmarket Crash of October 1929 was not investigated until the Pecora Committee was authorized in mid-1932 and Hoover was clearly on his way out of office. Counselor Pecora reported “The testimony had brought to light a shocking corruption in our banking system, a widespread repudiation of old fashioned standards of honesty and fair dealing in the creation and sale of securities, and a merciless exploitation of the vicious possibilities of intricate corporate chicanery.”

   Strauss’s biographer added, “The fundamental ground rules of investment banking changed as a result… the integrity of the banker lost most of its importance in the new climate, where the government interposed itself to watch over the honesty of representations made to the investor. The slow pace of the past..disappeared… [Strauss] won some new clients for Kuhn Loeb, especially in the steel industry [one of the most cartelized] and his personal fortune continued to grow, but the profession had lost much of its appeal.” [pp46-47, No Sacrifice Too Great] Strauss took a nearly wistful posture in his own memoir, reflecting on his ascent: “There were then fewer great houses and far fewer partners in those firms. The rewards were large, taxes were low, and the difficulties which brought the Securities and Exchange Commission into existence were not then in the lexicon… The men engaged in it generally commanded large personal fortunes..and conducted themselves like princes… This aspect of investment banking has almost disappeared with the institution of competitive bidding for..financing, a competition which severed the traditionally close and mutually beneficial relationship between the borrower and the banker.” Ironically, big banking was forced into competition as big business turned anti-competitive, yet it prevented the system from toppling in on itself and staved off the march into fascism for another war. Still, the bitterness in Strauss comes through. He took it personally, Bronfmanesque, as if Joe Kennedy was touching his nerves. Just as physically close, perhaps, was FDR’s next assignment for JPK as head of the Maritime Commission, originally incarnated as the WWI Shipping Board and led by another Strauss intimate, Albert D. Lasker.

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Albert D. Lasker

“Albert Lasker’s life was an example of every immigrant’s dream come true… In 1912 he became the president of Lord & Thomas, one of America’s leading advertising agencies… Albert Lasker loved to sell…” http://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entry.php?rec=57

   “The gist of the shipping problem, and Lasker’s job, was that the United States had built an immense amount of merchant tonnage during World War I…but, with the war over, such weight was not only useless but a colossal expense. Some 2,200 ships were..rotting away..[at the] cost of..$500,000,000 a year…  [In] all it was Lasker’s job to liquidate an investment valued at $3,500,000,000 and buikd a new merchant marine out of what could be salvaged… Lasker got rid of useless ships..at an average price of $30 a ton…of course, much less than they had cost, and he was severely criticized in Congress..for ‘throwing our ships away’… Before his first year at the Shipping Board was up Lasker realized that…[t]he government itself would have to operate the American merchant fleet or the private owners would have to be assisted by a large government subsidy… Lasker chose..subsidy [as] the only solution…[and] fought for his solution –a subsidy–in and out of Congress…[but] was beaten by one vote in the Senate… He took the defeat in an acutely personal manner and from that day [on]..had a subconscious resentment against Washington…

   “The best-known episode connected with Lasker’s tenure on the Shipping Board [1921-1923] was a trial run of the S.S. Leviathan…the old German Vaterland [taken] as an item in war reparations. Lasker reconditioned it..[into] the finest and largest ship afloat..and [gave] his friends a ride. The party was strictly stag..[with] some six hundred male guests…sail[ing] to the West Indies..for several days… This trip..[became] the foundation of his long friendship with David Sarnoff… Lasker, rapt in admiration for this man who could apparently harness the secret forces of the universe, decided that he must be a friend for life. Anyway, the trip was a grand success.” [pp128-134, Taken At The Flood, John Gunther, 1960] “Admiral Lewis L. Strauss..had been a good friend of Lasker’s since the Shipping Board days.” And when Strauss put himself behind the ‘surge generator’ project of Brasch and Szilard in the mid-30s, “Albert became vehemently interested and offered to contribute $100,000… Then came the war and the Manhattan Project, and anything..to do with..nuclear energy became ultra-top secret. Lasker repeatedly called Strauss asking him to report on what was going on and to call on his money but Strauss could not, of course, say a word.” [p292, ibid.]

   Lasker was Strauss’s senior in age, wealth and status; a member and executive officer of the American Jewish Committee (1917–) alongside Jacob H. Schiff and notable war organizer Julius Rosenwald, owner of Sears Roebuck &Co. Lasker’s AJC position is noted in the famous book created by the AJC in 1920 denouncing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion titled “The ‘Protocols’, Bolshevism and the Jews” http://archive.org/details/cu31924087981175  His collaboration with Strauss was a key function in what became Strauss’s most self-important investment –his image as a great cancer-fighter and medical research philanthropist.

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Julius Rosenwald

Julius Rosenwald, in turn, was close to the Flexner brothers –Simon, Abraham and Bernard– swapping a voluminous amount of correspondence in particular with Abraham Flexner, “the educator” who authored the medical school survey report of 1910, co-founded Rochester’s School of Medicine and Dentistry and Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. The elder Simon was the first Director-President of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (RIMR), and the younger Bernard was a protege of Louis Brandeis and leader in the Zionist movement. Rosenwald’s closest lifelong friends were banker Henry Goldman and Henry Morgenthau Sr.

   Henry Goldman financed his friend Rosenwald’s rise at Sears Roebuck, making $10 million for Goldman Sachs at the first public stock offering in 1906 and helping to turn Sears into the “largest store in the world”. Two points of singular interest emerged from this friendship: Goldman’s cash support of the physicists Max Born and Albert Einstein in Germany (who made his first ‘fundraising visit to the U.S. in 1921 with Chaim Weizmann) and Rosenwald’s preparation for the coming ultimate weapon.

   “Largely unknown to the public is the many and varied sites that made up the Manhattan Project.  The University of Chicago’s Metallurgical Lab (Met Lab) included a location inside the Museum of Science and Industry, created at the urging of Rosenwald patriarch, Julius Rosenwald, who proposed the museum project in 1921 and provided $7 million for its development. The MSI took over the standing Fine Arts building in Chicago: ‘Vacant since 1920, the building required extensive renovation, which began in 1929.’  The public was invited to tour the new MSI in 1933 during the ‘Century of Progress Exposition’ world’s fair when 10% of its space was available for exhibits, but delays and unprofitability plagued the MSI until ‘A turning point came in 1940, when the board of directors lured Major Lenox R. Lohr (1891-1968), the head of the National Broadcasting Company..to its presidency.’ http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/859.html; Lohr earned his stripes in the Army Corps of Engineers, edited the ACE journal ‘The Military Engineer’ until 1929, resigned the Army and joined the Naval Reserves as a Lt. Commander (1929-1941). Lohr was NBC president from 1934 to 1940, under RCA parent David Sarnoff…  ‘During his twenty-eight years as head of the Museum, Lohr also organized.. the Military-Industry Conferences in 1955-1957.’ http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/specialcoll/services/rjd/findingaids/LLohrf.html  Rosenwald’s museum, and its subsequent use for the Manhattan Project, is one more enterprise that gives evidence of early atomic weapons development covertly played out in the 1920s and ’30s.” http://polioforever.wordpress.com/dr-marys-monkey/jfk-assassination/ It is assumed until definitively proven that the contract extended to Einstein for Princeton IAS residency was the result of the Goldman-Rosenwald-Flexner connection.

   The senior Rosenwald, along with Jacob Schiff, was preeminent among American Jews for his patronage in areas of Jewish colonization and agriculture: i.e. “Most of the wealthy Jews who funded projects in Palestine were not Zionists… The Technikum (now Technion)..was launched [c.1912] with two large gifts: one..from..a Moscow millionaire, and one hundred thousand dollars from Jacob Schiff.”[ p137, Mostly Morgenthaus]… As a fitting climax for [Ambassador] Morgenthau’s Palestine excursion, [Rabbi] Wise arranged a visit with the fabled..agronomist Aaron Aaronsohn…[who had]..some of the United States’ most powerful Jews support for his agricultural experiment station at Athlit, outside Haifa. Morgenthau was impressed by its all-star board of directors, which included Julius Rosenwald as president, and Paul Warburg, Henrietta Szold [Hadassah], Louis Marshall and Judge Julian Mack.” [p146, Mostly Morgenthaus, by Henry Morgenthau III] Rosenwald was promoting contemporaneous ‘scientific’ agriculture in the U.S. as well, which placed a new emphasis on the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers among other practices.

   “While the nature of ‘classical’ colonization is primarily to exploit, Zionist colonization displaces and expels..proceed[ing] under three basic slogans. The first of these is Kibush Hakarka (Conquest of the Land)…This means that the soil..is to be made the patrimony of the Jewish people. Jews must work the land…” [ref. Akiva Orr, The Other Israel] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzpen

   Julius Rosenwald died in 1932, the “miracle year in physics” and the expanding legacy passed to his five children. The eldest sibling, Lessing J. Rosenwald (1891-1979), tookover the business of Sears. William watched over the philanthropies which included special funds for ‘rescue’ and relocation beginning in the spring of 1933 and both sons joined the executive board of the American Jewish Committee. Lessing and Lewis Strauss were later co-trustees of Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study together after WWII: noted in the 1945-46 IAS Bulletin with Strauss serving as vice-chairman of the board. Strauss first offered the directorship of the IAS to Robert Oppenheimer in this capacity. http://library.ias.edu/files/pdfs/bulletins/Bulletin12.pdf. Sister Edith Rosenwald married cotton merchant Edgar Bloom Stern of New Orleans where the pair founded radio station WDSU in partnership with their older son who expanded into television. WDSU, for a long time New Orleans only tv station, gave legendary airtime to Lee Harvey Oswald for the construction of his image as a Marxist. The Sterns have been identified as silent partners in Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation, a company charged with diverting and smuggling radioactive fuels to Israel, and with using its workforce as human lab rats for “fallout studies”.

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Princeton Institute of Advanced Study

   Among the IAS’s most famous resident scholars were those in the small group known as the ‘Martians’, formerly Hungarians from Budapest who kept close ties throughout their careers. The group included ‘old friends’ such as Theodor von Karman who headed Caltech’s Guggenheim Aeronautical Lab in Pasadena, Dennis Gabor (high-voltage physics), Edward Teller and Leo Szilard who both went to Chicago’s  Metallurgical Lab for the MED (Manhattan Project).  John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner were the first of the group to settle in Princeton. Albert Einstein, more as their spiritual father and long committed to Zionism, established himself there over the course of 1933-34, coming to the U.S. as a “refugee” by way of the British Bahamas. In 1933, the British were “saving science”: through the leadership of the London School of Economics, Leo Szilard was “rescued” from Vienna and appointed administrative secretary of the Academic Assistance Council, England’s premier placement agency for the exodus.

   Einstein and Szilard had an enduring partnership that began in 1919 Berlin, according to journalist William Lanouette. “Szilard was a shadowy figure in the history of nuclear science –essential to its progress, yet now mostly forgotten. Szilard preferred to work behind the scenes…” http://beforeitsnews.com/war-and-conflict/2011/02/einstein-and-szilard-in-princeton-416098.html

Some of Szilard’s most valuable behind-the-scenes activities were done in concert with Lewis L. Strauss but the extent of those activities is still unknown to the public today. “Through Szilard’s letters Strauss was able to keep track of the furious pace of discovery” [p54, No Sacrifice Too Great]. The official record of letters begins in 1934, perhaps containing the seeds of the surge generator project with Arno Brasch, but also Szilard’s own technical and experimental accomplishments which in 1934 meant a patent for a nuclear reactor –the world’s first. Szilard evidently looked to Strauss as his banker-benefactor in the way Born and Einstein engaged Henry Goldman. “…during the 1920s, Szilard and Einstein shared 20 joint patents..for..refrigerators… [T]heir concept became essential in the 1950s..to run another Szilard invention, the breeder reactor…[refrigeration was crucial to the first ultra-low temperature ‘thermo’ nuclear H-bombs]…”After World War II, Szilard shifted from physics to arms control and biology… Szilard actually became a Princetonian for a few years in the early 1950s when he moved into Drumthwacket [mansion]..then the home of Abram Spanel..[who] headed the International Laytex Corporation… [then] he helped found the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, CA, where he was a fellow until his death in 1964.” –W. Lanouette.

   But in the ’30s, when people generally had no idea about atomic or high-energy developments, the IAS was a special haven. Von Neumann’s war work was focused on the creation of a super-computer and solving calculation problems for the MED and other projects. His fame came about through developing economic Game Theory. http://www.thefreelibrary.com/John+von+Neumann%27s+contribution+to+economic+science.-a0113139424

   Eugene Wigner “designed the very large plutonium producing reactors constructed at Hanford Washington” making plutonium for the ‘Trinity test’ and ‘Fat Man’ bombs, and uses thereafter http://web.gc.cuny/edu/sciart/0405/transcript.htm; and took charge of the radioactive isotope program at Oak Ridge Tennessee.

   IAS was not merely centered on math and physics. Cultural “social” sciences, psychology, and active foreign exchange programs were part of the roster; many of those scientists stayed in the U.S. and found placement in government and industry.

    Right after WWII, a major institute effort went into developing von Neumann’s computer for use in meteorology and weather prediction, co-sponsored by the (new) Office of Naval Research (established by Strauss), Radio Corporation of America (Sarnoff again), and the U.S. Weather Bureau, a gov’t agency in the Department of Commerce. Head of the Meteorological Research Group at IAS was another son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Jule G. Charney. Charney bio: http://libraries.miy.edu/archives/research/collections/collections-mc/mc184.html The chief of the US Weather Bureau, Francis Reichelderfer, was a Navy careerist who “made many influential friends” developing an aviation weather service for Harry Guggenheim. His tenure at the National Weather Service was called “Reich’s reign” (1938-1963) and “after the war, Reich continued pressing forward..[the] advances in radar meteorology, the introduction of computerized numerical weather prediction [the IAS project in theoretical meteorology],..studying..cloud seeding, severe storms, and patterns of radioactive material dispersal all..throughout the 1950s… Perhaps the greatest of..innovations, the meteorological satellite, was also introduced..with the launch of TIROS 1 on April 1, 1960.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_W._Reichelderfer

   TIROS stands for Television Infrared Observation Satellite and “was the first satellite..capable of remote sensing of the Earth… Participants in this satellite project included [NASA], US Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory, Radio Corporation of America, the U.S. Weather Bureau and the United States Naval Photographic Interpretation Center” [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIROS] which processed its classified photography through the Kodak Hawkeye Works.

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Leo Szilard

   In the name of cancer research, Strauss recorded his meeting with Szilard: “Toward the end of 1937 two young nuclear physicists, Dr. Arno Brasch and Dr. Leo Szilard..approached me through Francis Rosenbaum, a mutual friend. They asked me to finance them in the construction of a ‘surge generator’ with which..to explore nuclear phenomena in high-energy ranges… Brasch and Szilard believed that it would be possible to produce radioactive isotopes of many elements by bombarding [them] with subatomic particles accelerated by surges of current at very high voltages. An isotope of cobalt thus produced..would emit gamma rays similar to radium… Radioactive cobalt could be made..at a cost of a few dollars per gram. Radium was then priced at about fifty thousand dollars per gram… I foresaw the possibility of producing this isotope in quantity and of giving it to hospitals as a memorial to my parents.” [p164, Men and Decisions, L.L.Strauss, 1962] Not only is cobalt cheap, but cobalt in  nuclear bomb cores, it turns out, is a life-ending scenario on planet Earth, “intended to contaminate a large area with radioactive material. The concept of a cobalt bomb was originally described on February 26, 1950 by physicist Leó Szilárd, who suggested on a radio program that an arsenal of cobalt bombs would be capable of destroying all human life on Earth.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobalt_bomb

    A letter sent to Strauss from Szilard on January 25 of 1939 ensured that the news of fission (chain reaction) brought by Niels Bohr from Copenhagen put Strauss on-the-record: “The letter made Lewis Strauss the first public figure in America to be alerted to the nuclear future.” [ref.p171, The Deadly Element, Lennard Bickel, 1979]

*

Six months later, in July of ’39, Strauss was on his way to London again, lobbying British support for creation of the United States of Africa. He wrote, in defense of his effort on behalf of war refugees, “I had received certain assurances from Bernard Baruch, Henry Ittleson, Albert Lasker, Mr. Rosenwald, and a number of other men of considerable means..that if the British Government could be persuaded to devote a sufficiently large area in Kenya, Tanganyika, or Northern Rhodesia for settlement by refugees from European countries..these men were willing to tithe their capital to assist it… Ex-President Hoover was..willing to..organize its communications, its transport, and the development of its resources.” [p113, Men and Decisions] Convenient to them all, the suggested areas for occupation bordered the uranium rich site in Katanga.  Strauss reported, “Mr. Baruch gave me a letter which I carried to London. In it he had written: “That a large part of Africa…be converted into one country…  The country can be cleaned up with modern equipment… Panama and Cuba were cleaned up, and Africa can be cleaned up too… [In] this new land there would be a place for tens of millions and they would be the best, the strongest and the most courageous people because they are anxious to get away from these over-regulated, goose-stepping civilians of Russia, Germany, and Italy. It will cost a lot of money, yes, but the money is to be raised principally by the Jews of the world by assessing themselves at least 10% of their total capital…” Hoover also prepared a letter writing, “It has long seemed to me that there is but one unoccupied area in the world upon which a new and sound civilization could be builded. That is the uplands of Central-East Africa, embracing parts of Northern Rhodesia, Tanganyika, Kenya, and Belgian Congo… from reports available it does seem to have the soil, climate, and resources upon which 10 to 20 millions of white civilization could be builded.” [pp115-116, ibid.] The British, however, “had a resettlement area of its own which it favored. This was the British Guiana project…a land of swamp and jungle..canvassed..in the interest of finding a new home for the Assyrians of Iraq…One month to the day after the war had begun, Mr. [Anthony] de Rothschild found it necessary to cable me: ‘Committee cannot continue Giuana’ .” [p117, ibid.] “Before leaving London for Paris, I talked with Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy. He said that he thought there was sufficient intelligence in Germany to avoid a mistake which would be as terrible as a second World War, and that he allowed himself the optimistic belief that it would not occur… To the same question, Ambassador Bullitt [in France] said that..war was inevitable but not imminent…M. Paul Reynaud..took a much less optimistic view… [He] asked, ‘When are you planning to leave?..I said that we had reservations on both the  Ile de France and on the Normandie. ‘If I were you..I would take the earlier sailing. There may be a scramble to leave in late August.’ Hitler invaded Poland on September 1.” [p118, Men and Decisions]

   This note in the memoir is Strauss’s only personalized account of contact with a Kennedy. Did Strauss also meet Joe Jr. or Jack in the summer of ’39? Ambassador Kennedy made official assistants of his older boys: “At the instance of Felix Frankfurter, who reminded him that an earlier Bostonian, John Adams, had done the same in London, Kennedy arranged for sons Joe and Jack to spend terms as staff assistants in the embassy.  An immersion in international politics would be an invaluable aid to the career in public affairs the father anticipated especially for the eldest son.” [p160, Kennedy and Rossevelt, Michael Beschloss, 1980] Earlier, on the stump for FDR’s first reelection, Kennedy denied to the public that he held ambitions of high office for his sons, but by the time of his third post under FDR, the situation apparently was changing.  Kennedy had been a keenly successful advisor to the New Deal. The Baltimore Sun’s Frank Kent wrote, “No man ever held an important post in Washington who has had more praise and less abuse than Mr. Kennedy.” [p152, ibid.]  Beschloss called him Roosevelt’s “showcase businessman“. Joe Kennedy told American business, “You can’t tell the public to go to hell anymore. Fifty men have run America –and that’s a high figure. The rest of America is demanding a share in the game and they’ll get it.” [p125, ibid.]

*

Rescue from the Nazis

Strauss described his own efforts at rescue, beginning in 1933, as “having crossed the ocean and negotiated again and again, but to no effect.” [p104, Men and Decisions] His first ‘negotiation’ in this effort was as special envoy of the AJC: “The American Jewish Committee..concluded that it should be represented at the meeting in London and I was asked to attend for that puepose. I was loath to leave by business affairs, but Dr. Cyrus Adler, Judge Joseph Proskauer, Felix Warburg, Albert Lasker, Sol Strook and other men who were my seniors..represented it to me as a duty. I sailed on October 20, 1933 and reached London six days later. On arrival I met with Dr. Chaim Weizmann to whom I had been introduced by Justice Brandeis sixteen years before… By arrangement with the British authorities, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, which Weizmann directed, controlled the issue of permits to enter Palestine… Otto Schiff complained to see that ‘Weizmann is allotting his scant allowance of entry permits for months ahead to people who are Zionists but..under no pressure of any sort’… For [Weizmann] it was not a question limited to compassion. He was founding a state… [footnote:]But many..refugees did finally reach sanctuary in Israel without benefit of permit. The figure has been estimated as high as six hundred thousand. [p107, ibid.] The conference broke up with a series of resolutions and all eyes were turned to the United States…” [p109, ibid]

*

   On this same trip Strauss reported (as above in Autobiographical Notes)) “.. during a visit to London..in October and November of 1933 [where] on November 1 I had lunch at New Court, the..Rothschild banking establishment… Mr. Lionel..said, ‘Mr. Strauss, I suppose you know.. your government has been buying gold and this morning your President Roosevelt has set a price of $32.28 for it. Can you tell us why the President would suddenly jump the price to that particular figure?’ To this I replied, ‘Maybe he just pulled the figure out of a hat.’…Many years later, I learned..a series of morning meetings with the President for the purpose of setting the gold price for the day..were held in the President’s bedroom… On one occasion the President decided that the rise..would be twenty-one cents. ‘It’s a lucky number,’ the President said with a laugh… It might as well have been drawn out of a hat… Kuhn, Loeb & Co. occasionally imported gold from England..and sold it to the Treasury Department.” [pp94-95, Men and Decisions] Henry Morgenthau Jr, Sec. of Treasury, was the evident source of Strauss’s intelligence, and without naming him, it was known that Kennedy was a White House “bedroom adviser”:  Krock wrote that FDR “consults Mr. Kennedy on everything“. Beschloss included, “there were morning visits to the presidential bedroom and, on occasion, to the presidential bathroom.” [p106, Kennedy and Roosevelt] But Strauss had other means of inside information  —Samuel I. Rosenman, for example, was a cousin to his wife Alice Hanauer Strauss. “Rosenman..proposed and organized the ‘Brain Trust’..” http://newdeal.feri.org/kiosk/profile.cfm?QID=1751

   The biographer Pfau stated Strauss’s opinion of Franklin D. Roosevelt: “In 1918 Strauss and Hoover had met Roosevelt in Europe but they dismissed him as a spoiled dilettante of little ability and nothing in the interim had changed their minds.” [p44, No Sacrifice Too Great] On the subject of the Oct-Nov trip to London, Pfau writes, “Strauss recalled that ‘the entire conference was an idea of the Zionists.’ Strauss’s main goal, as representative of the American Jewish Committee, was to prevent the Zionists from dominating… he proudly reported to the [AJC] at the end of the conference ‘our autonomy is unimpaired.‘” [pp 50-51, ibid.] Despite the rhetoric and power struggles, relief and rescue united the contentious factions of Zionists and Anti-Zionists, displaying the methods in division of labor.

   The next rescue effort mentioned was the creation of the 1939 Anglo-American Corporation which produced the Coordinating Foundation to raise a bounty for German-Jewish “ransom”. Strauss commented, “It was apparent that the [‘transfer agreement’] plan was an enormous and sadistic hoax, a moneyed traffic in lives… I was shocked by its malevolence..[p 111, Men and Decisions]…to payment of outrageous blackmail..” As it appears, no ransom was ever paid. “The capital of the foundation, which had been subscribed primarily in the United States, was returned to the subscribers when the foundation was liquidated in the early war years.” [p113, ibid.] The United States of Africa was the last rescue in the notes for Strauss. He lamented, “But I might have done so much more than I did…and it is to my eternal regret.” [p104, ibid.]

   “Bankers’ Choices” would describe Strauss’s activity in these times: getting the best returns on investment. There were, perhaps, many hundreds of rescue organizations and those in which he was an officer were oriented to colonization. Some appear in this list such as the American Jewish Joint Agricultural Corporation and the American Society for Jewish Farm Settlements in Russia Inc. http://displacedscholars.wordpress.com/z/   Leo Szilard proved out to be one of Strauss’s best investments.

   Szilard attended the October 1933 conference. According to Strauss: “Among the committees..was one of ‘academicians’ (scientists, educators, philosophers, mathematicians) and on that committee was a young Hungarian physicist, Dr. Leo Szilard, whom I did not meet but whose name I remembered some years later when we met under far different circumstances.” [p108, Men and Decisions]  For Strauss not to meet Szilard, Einstein’s close colleague, at the conference is implausible in the extreme. Szilard was not only a great physicist, of deep personal interest to Strauss, but he attended in the capacity of co-founder and executive administrator of Britain’s Academic Assistance Council, it’s premier refugee agency for ‘saving science’. At the time, Szilard was ensconced with a day job in the St. Bartholomew’s Hospital London laboratory experimenting with isotopes, remembering the period as his nuclear epiphany– a day he stood at a traffic light and had a revelation about chain-reaction.  In his AAC work, Szilard was uniquely placed to distribute scientific talent around the world and help to achieve weapons parity in a future arms race. His best friends in science were already working under contract at the Institute of Advanced Study. It’s only a short time after the London conference when the documentation of correspondence begins between Szilard and Strauss.

   Edward Teller wrote this remembrance: “I was surprised by how seriously the scientific community of Great Britain took the threat of Nazism. By April 1933, the British had begun a rescue operation on behalf of the scientists.. financed by the Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), the British analog of I.G. Farben. Every scientist..who had ability..was being welcomed...” [p88, Memoirs, Edward Teller, 2001] ..”They accepted many more scientists than Britain could possibly use.” [p120, ibid.] Teller was sponsored to London after a year in Copenhagen with Niels Bohr. “I had met Szilard in Budapest… But at the time..I did not know him well. Szilard, like me, was a refugee, but his was an unusual case. He was influential… Szilard..also possessed a talent for anticipating the future. At Lindemann’s [Lord Cherwell] invitation, Szilard had gone to Oxford; there he was conducting..experiments with neutrons, the particles discovered..a few years earlier. Szilard had the idea that neutron bombardment..could produce..more and more neutrons and energy..resulting in a powerful explosion… Rutherford denounced Szilard’s ideas..[but] Szilard just became more determined to prove [it]…[p110] “His clash with Rutherford was neither the first nor the last time that his surprising and absolute pronouncements provoked a strong negative reaction. He even acquired a nickname, The General, among his friends… [Szilard] was never boring, and he always remained a friend.” [p111, Memoirs, Edward Teller] Teller himself arranged to emigrate from Britain to the United States at the end of 1934 where a tenured teaching position opened for him in Washington D.C. at GWU. He rejected an offer from “Princeton”(IAS) for lesser pay. Later, Teller and Strauss became formidable allies after WWII for building H-bombs along with the Berkeley Rad Lab leaders, Ernest O. Lawrence and Luis Alvarez.

*

Early Atomic Development

   Edward Teller did not repeat his remarks about Rosa Strauss being alive in 1948 in his Memoirs, though he gave ample suggestions about the early development of atomic energy. “As far as I was concerned, what happened in physics between 1920 and 1933 was so magnificent that it was a privilege to work even on minor details.” [p79] “During my [spring 1932] stay in Rome, Fermi and his group..were just starting to bombard every element in the periodic table with neutrons…[p80]… When [Fermi] bombarded [the uranium] nucleus..he observed scores of radioactive substances instead of one or two… Soon after..he received a letter from a German chemist, Ida Tacke Noddack..[who] suggested that the effect he had observed..was a split of the uranium nucleus… He discarded Dr. Noddack’s suggestion… Had he [accepted it], the hunt for chain reactions would have started sooner.” [p81] …”Paul Scherrer in Zurich had an even closer encounter with the discovery [of fission]. He bombarded thorium (another of Szilard’s favorite substances) with neutrons and saw the fission fragments… But Scherrer wouldn’t believe his eyes. He thought his Geiger counter was malfunctioning… In 1939, I did not realize how fortunate it was that those slight changes in an experiment in Rome or Zurich did not occur. If fission had been discovered in 1933..the United States probably would not have been the first nation to possess nuclear explosives. Fermi, Scherrer, and Szilard, in their different ways, had a profound..influence on history.” [p141, Memoirs, Edward Teller]

   Strauss helped to regroup the physicists again and again in a variety of settings, including his ‘subsidized farm’ estate in Virginia. The ‘magnificent’ period that Teller mentions (1920-1933) was coincident to Hoover’s public service –the transition of war collectivism into peacetime cooperation— and brought about the prophetic accomplishment necessary to build atom bombs, stated by Niels Bohr: “You would need to turn the entire country into a factory.” [p143, Memoirs, E.T.] When Bohr joined the Los Alamos MED early in 1943, Teller recalled him exclaiming, “didn’t I tell you that you could not make a nuclear explosive without turning the whole country into a huge factory? Now you have gone ahead and done it.” Teller reported, “from that day on [Bohr] participated diligently..” [p186, ibid.]

*

Demonstrations of Power

   Although ignoring the subject of nuclear development, the very thin stream of information given by Lewis Strauss in his so-called autobiography, Men and Decisions, is a record appropos of timing by its 1962 publication. Washingtonians in the capital, and JFK’s administration in particular, were the intended audience for Strauss’s work. He wrote in the Forward, “In the main, this is..a book about other men..” The biographer, who published in 1984, continued the theme in his Preface, “This is not a ‘life and times’ biography… Neither is it the story of the private man…” In the last chapter of No Sacrifice Too Great, entitiled ‘Retired’, Richard Pfau wrote that “From retirement Strauss..tried to settle old political scores.” [p242], and apparently with meager but potent additions such as the ONI break-in on the anti-Hoover action, Pfau is extending Strauss’s reach beyond the grave.  He reminds readers on the last pages that “Strauss the government servant..was austere, aloof..and calculating. Like Herbert Hoover..his model, Strauss maintained a facade for the public.” [p251, No Sacrifice Too Great] Both Strauss and Pfau played on a balancing act to reveal power and still maintain the facade. In the politically and historically astute milieu of Washington D.C., however, the hastily produced Strauss edition was a selective show of dangerous alliances which, I have no doubt, was meant and delivered as a threat.

   Far from a fate headed for the dustbin of history, Men and Decisions sold enough copies “to place it on the New York Times list of bestsellers” though Strauss indeed had the personal wealth to make that a reality (whether he did or not). How many readers, I wonder, might have perceived a dire reckoning in the making? To whom was it meaningful in 1962 that Strauss was heir to Jacob Schiff and the Warburgs; that he was the Jews’ War President; sponsor of “father of the bomb” Leo Szilard and Polaroid’s Edwin Land; that he was chosen as the “permanent chairman” of nuclear affairs and was still its leading global dignitary? Not lost on this group, the Kennedys, nor students of history, was the continuing chronology of Strauss’s Decisions.

*

Father Coughlin and Father Drought

   As a financier during the Great Depression, Strauss made a brief note about taking on a new client at this time –the Catholic Maryknoll mission, in the person of Father James Drought, its administrative officer. Strauss assisted the Maryknoll to recover and prosper and Drought became a “close friend”. By the mid-30s, Drought was aiding Strauss behind the scenes in unspecified ways to silence the famed Father Coughlin. Michael Beschloss describes “the weekly discourse of the Reverend Charles Coughlin” as an “indignant crescendo against the money changers, the Bolsheviks, the international bankers and, increasingly, Franklin Delano Rossevelt. The priest of the Shrine of the Little Flower posed, with Huey Long, the most serious single threat to [FDR]‘s reelection, or so [it was] believed.” Roosevelt “charged Joseph Kennedy with the responsibility of keeping the good priest on the reservation.” [pp 113-114, Kennedy and Roosevelt] Coughlin had become a formidable political force: “Sixty-six congressmen signed a petition asking Roosevelt to make Coughlin an economic adviser… Kennedy befriended the priest… ‘Joe was fascinated by Coughlin’s talent on the radio,’ James Roosevelt remembered. ‘He recognized it as demogoguery but revelled in what the priest could accomplish. He was intrigued by Coughlin’s use of power.’…By the end of 1934 Coughlin was poised to challenge Franklin Roosevelt. He formed his own political organization, the National Union for Social Justice… he informed his audience that..Roosevelt had ‘out-Hoovered Hoover’, protected plutocrats and comforted Communists… [A]betted by William Randolph Hearst and other isolationists, Coughlin led the fight against the president’s bill to bring the United States into the World Court.” [p117, ibid.] By 1936 “Kennedy urged the president to keep trying to mend fences with..Hearst and Father Coughlin… Coughlin announced to his radio audience that he and the president were now unalterably opposed.” [p122] After that, censure came quickly to Coughlin via the Vatican –he was ordered off the air. “..[Y]ears later, Father Coughlin in retirement, confided..that a deal had been struck” through the Pope’s emissary, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, that included a new office of the U.S. “presidential representative” to the Vatican. Two years later, Pacelli was invested as Pope Pius XII. No document known to this researcher describes the internal diplomacy or the involvement of Father Drought but Strauss treated his readers to this cryptic footnote: “there is a message from [Drought] to me [with] an excerpt from a letter to the Catholic clergy in America from [Pacelli] Pope Pius XII. The reference to Father Coughlin is oblique but Father Drought suggested that I note that results would follow, as indeed they did.” [121, Men and Decisions] Many people have been given the impression that Joe Kennedy arranged the censure of Coughlin, inducing the Vatican to exert influence on U.S. political affairs.

   Father Drought, under the guidance of Lewis Strauss and Herbert Hoover, later found himself in the center of one of the most tragic and lamentable events in modern times, attempting to secure a peace agreement between the U.S. and Japan in the year before Pearl Harbor. Strauss’s report on Father Drought, including a letter from the priest, is listed in the comments of the JFK Conspiracy Con (part II) https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2011/12/22/jfk-conspiracy-con-ii/; Drought died in 1943 from fatal injuries suffered in a plane crash.

1936-1939

   During the year in which Father Coughlin was dealt with and FDR was reelected, Strauss built a stone fortress on his Virginia estate and took an avid interest in developing advanced technology. In 1937, while shopping the Brasch-Szilard particle accelerator (of approx. 5-million-volt capacity) to his friends Irving Langmuir and W.D. Coolidge at General Electric, the men arranged an “opportunity to meet Ernest Orlando Lawrence” who was then building a hundred-million-volt cyclotron (circular accelerator). Strauss expressed his new “friendship” with Lawrence as “one of the finest experiences of my life” to last until Lawrence’s death. [p165, Men and Decisions]. The year prior, young physicist Luis Alvarez, brother of Lawrence’s secretary, came to the Berkeley Rad Lab and soon became the lab’s associate director. In a decade hence, after the Manhattan Project became the Atomic Energy Commission, Alvarez would design the largest particle accelerator ever built, the Materials Testing Accelerator (MTA), around which the Lawrence Livermore laboratory was constructed (1950-52). The MTA was conceived to convert uranium into plutonium for nuclear weapons and produce other “metamaterials” for experimental uses. Alvarez patented a much smaller version of this accelerator type in the months before John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and the Warren Commission made Luis Alvarez its key consultant in erecting a physicist’s proof of a lone gunman’s shot-from-behind in accord with the Zapruder film.

   Also in 1937, Lewis Strauss joined a small pool of investors to establish the Polaroid Corporation under its creator Edwin Land, the future “father” of the U2 spyplane. Alvarez,too, was a significant contributor to the U2’s optics, as he had been vital in the “lens” trigger of the plutonium bombs.

   In 1938, Temple Emanu-El elected Strauss war president, Hitler annexed Austria, and Germany had its 9-11, the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938, written 9-11-38 and numerologically identical to 9-11-2001). Over the course of 1938, the rest of the essential assembly of physicists, including the traveling Szilard and Enrico Fermi, claimed their permanent residence in the U.S.

   By 1939, Strauss, Hoover and Bernard Baruch had organized their US of Africa scheme for the very Heart of Darkness where the president of the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga, Edgar Sengier, began sending surreptitious shiploads of uranium yellowcake steaming to New York Harbor where they languished on the docks of Archer Daniels Grain Corp. Meanwhile, Sengier was aiding the French atomic bomb project in the Sahara and Strauss was visiting London, Paris, Joe Kennedy, and the “fragile and beautiful” sights of the Continent– he left Europe with his family on August 7 of 1939.

*

War…

   Richard Pfau wrote that “war gave Strauss an opportunity to aid the country of Finland, which he had helped establish in 1919.” [p60, No Sacrifice Too Great] Strauss recalled, “Without..warning..Stalin invaded Finland on November 30, 1939…[p65, Men and Decisions]…My idea was to ask Mr. Hoover to head a relief operation… Later that day I sought the advice of an old friend. Ben Cohen was high in the councils of [FDR’s] Administration… He came up with the idea [of] a corporation…[p66]…The military aspect of our assistance of Finland was insulated from the relief operations..[as] the Finnish-American Trading Corporation. I enlisted Dr. Julius Klein to head this. [Klein]..had served as chief of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce [under Hoover as Secretary]…There were contributions from foreigners as well… Dr. Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist, had already given the gold medal received with his Nobel Prize..for the relief of Finnish refugees in Denmark… The Franklin Institute had just announced..its gold medal..[was Bohr’s]..and Bohr said..he would like to contribute that medal to the fund… Years later..Bohr came to my office and retrieved his gold medal.” [pp68-69, Men and Decisions]  The result of Finnish resistance was that “The flower of the Finnish Army had been sacrificed in the early weeks of the war. On March 12, 1940, the Finns asked for terms of peace. These were severe– a large part of their best land had to be ceded to Russia, and..half a million people were dispossessed of their homes… The war that had been called ‘phony’ had become very real indeed.” [p70, ibid.]

   Pfau picked it up: “The war then exploded in the west. Hitler seized Denmark and Norway in April 1940… six weeks after the attack began [on France], the French surrendered… Because..Japan was a nation [Strauss] remembered fondly, he wanted the United States to..seek peace with Japan. He therefore helped..mediate the struggle for mastery of the Pacific… Father James Drought..and Bishop James Walsh..called on Strauss for letters of introduction to important men in Japan… The priests sailed on November 11, 1940.” [pp61-62, No Sacrifice Too Great]; 13 months before Pearl Harbor.

   “Ambassador Grew had reported to Washington, ten months before the fact, that he had heard rumors of plans for a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor… Grew also noted in his diary, ‘I rather guess that the boys in Pearl Harbor are not precisely asleep.’ …The volunteer intermediaries, Bishop Walsh and Father Drought [have] now passed from the picture [Walsh was captured by the Chinese and never heard from again], but the negotiations they had begun..continued up to the last hours… [T]he efforts of men of good will were completely thwarted.” [p128. Men and Decisions]

*

Months earlier “The Navy had arranged for the first approach to the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga..[in] June 1940.. at [Admiral] Bowen’s request [Alexander] Sachs made a contact with the company…Edgar Sengier..had concluded with extraordinary prescience that uranium..would become important..and had managed to divert..about twelve hundred tons of ore...” [p181, Men and Decisions]

>>>Sachs previously gave mail delivery service to FDR on behalf of the famous Einstein letter, penned by Szilard, signed by A.E. on August 2, 1939 and delivered in October.

    Also in June of 1940, Albert Lasker married his third wife, Mary Woodard, in a civil ceremony performed by Judge Samuel I. Rosenman. In April of 1939 when they met, Albert and Mary were introduced three times on the same occasion before it stuck. Together over lunch at ‘Twenty One”, were friends William Donovan (of the OSS), Lewis Strauss, and Max Epstein who each took a turn at the match. Within a few years, the Laskers focused their combined acumen on the health industry, took control of the American Cancer Society, and rewrote the book on Washington’s medical lobby.

*

Bureau of Ordnance

   “I had held a commission in the Naval Reserve since 1925, and in March 1941 orders had arrived to report for duty. This was nearly ten months before Pearl Harbor, and I seriously considered asking to be released… I was placed in charge of ordnance inspection with the astonishing designation General Inspector of Ordnance… As we had only a handful of qualified men, the first step was to train more immediately. I arranged for a school..and by dragooning civilian friends and acquaintances, recruited some hundreds of men of all ages… At dinner one evening at the home of Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Knox..I expounded on the value of consolidating all naval inspection… The Secretary was impressed… Navy material inspection was duly consolidated.. [with] the blessing of James Forrestal, Under Secretary of the Navy..[and] my assignment was changed..to..executive assistant to the chief [of ordnance] –Admiral Blandy. We soon became friends.” [pp132-134, Men and Decisions]

   As Strauss metered toward indispensability in weapons procurement and a place in the Pentagon’s hierarchy (then being built with a groundbreaking on 9-11-41), his colleagues in business and the AJC were taking the lead in war material management. Donald Marr Nelson and Lessing Rosenwald of Sears Roebuck led the War Production Board while a second enterprise with Sears’ Robert E. Wood and the silent participation of Rosenwald fizzled out– the isolationist America First committee.

   Strauss: “Before we were at war, many manufacturers were reluctant to take ordnance contracts from the Navy… Secretary Knox asked me to devise a project which would overcome this reluctance… I suggested..an incentive system… the right to paint an ‘E’ [for Efficiency and Excellence] on the turret of a ship… In the following year the project became the Army and Navy ‘E’ Award…generally..regarded as a model for successful industrial and public relations campaigns.” [pp149-150, Men and Decisions]

   Polaroid, for example, as a research-based upstart with Strauss on its board, suffered a net income “loss of about $100,000 in 1940. Nothing told [Edwin] Land and [Julius] Silver that they had  yet built a business that could survive, let alone grow… At the Polaroid Christmas party in 1940, Land called the [staff] together..[and] climbed up on a chair… The world was engulfed in war. The United States was not in it yet but –he spoke with chilling authority– it would be within a year. The Navy had offered Polaroid a..contract… Polaroid would devote its principal energies to defense work.” [pp67-69, Land’s Polaroid, Peter C. Wensberg] Strauss’s program “brought Polaroid the first of three Navy ‘E’ pennants for excellence in 1941, several months before the Pearl Harbor attack. The company had sales of a million dollars in 1941… In 1942, a fourth Army-Navy E was run up the flagpole.” [pp73-74, ibid.]

   Strauss’s brand of dispersal for war contracts, however, was not going entirely unnoticed: “During the hot summer months in 1941, a subcommittee of the House Naval Affairs Committee had begun an investigation of the procurement policies of the Navy. Counsel..was a man named Toland… Someone had informed him that I had been instrumental in placing large orders for aircraft with companies in which I had a substantial financial interest… I had nothing to do with the letting of contracts… Instead of inquiring, Toland undertook to obtain evidence by subpoena. Late one afternoon two young [Army] men with credentials identifying them as attaches of the Toland Committee arrived at my office… Under protest, I surrendered what the subpoena called for… The following morning I walked into the office of the Under Secretary of War and expressed my indignation. Judge Patterson agreed that it was outrageous to have officers of one service used to police the other… Captain Noble..sent me a note.’You should have called me at my home,’ he wrote. ‘I would have gotten a few Marines and chucked those fellows out of the window.’ ” [p151, Men and Decisions]

   Strauss: “There was a variety of assignments during [my] tour of duty… Once Forrestal asked me to follow the Navy’s interest in a biological warfare project…[I went] on a visit to a laboratory operated by Dr. Merck and his associates… I [co-wrote a report for the Secretaries of War and Navy..establishing proceedures for unified purchase of materials..The reforms..were at once instituted… Appointed as Navy member of the Munitions Board in 1944, I served..a year… Secretary Knox died suddenly in 1944 and was succeeded by James Forrestal.” [p155] “

*

James V. Forrestal

   “In private life, Forrestal and I..had not been close friends. Indeed, as bankers we had been brisk competitors.” [p155] Forrestal “first saw me in uniform..during one of the monthly inspection visits [and] the next day..new orders..for me..read: ‘Additional duty as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of the Navy.’…[W]hen he became Secretary of the Navy, my office was moved at Forrestal’s order to one connecting with his. We saw each other several times daily… By 1944 he was recognized as the most influential man in the Cabinet. Stimson was the more venerated..but..Forrestal was on his way up politically and there was no comparable rival… Had Forrestal lived, there is a possibility that he might have been General Eisenhower’s opponent in 1952.” [pp156-157, Men and Decisions]

   Strauss set up a condition of pique in the memoir linking the “Toland affair” with Forrestal, whose ‘leap’ out a high-floor window in Bethesda Naval Hospital in May of 1949 was a widely suspect murder. It was Forrestal originally that assigned Strauss to a counter-investigation on behalf of the Navy to track the source of information flowing to Congress and into the hands of its legal counsel Toland. Strauss produced a denigrating ‘anonymous letter’ about Toland for his Navy superiors, which Pfau relates was the object of Toland’s search. Afterward “Strauss demanded retribution. He complained..to anyone who would listen… the Navy did not want a feud. The vendetta subsided when Forrestal terminated Strauss’s work with the [Navy’s information] Clearing Office…but the under secretary did not want to waste time listening to Strauss’s complaint… Strauss turned in ten..pages [to Forrestal and] concluded, ‘You and the Navy,’ he wrote,’will have cause to regret any appeasement of Mr. Toland and I greatly fear it and hate to see you head into it.’ ” [pp 68-69, ibid.] Pearl Harbor had not yet occurred and “Strauss requested release from active duty..” so that he could return to full-time banking with Kuhn Loeb. The Navy was considering it until December 7, 1941.  Strauss’s complaint with the Navy by then was its failure to promote his rank above Lt. Commander.

   As Forrestal rose in authority, his office “had become a nexus for weapons research since efforts to establish a federal science agency were languishing.” [p310, James B. Conant; Harvard to Hiroshima, James Hershberg, 1993] In due time, Strauss’s position with Forrestal proved satisfying: “Strauss..accompanied Blandy..Forrestal and others on a tour around the..Pacific… Strauss linked the scientists with the Bureau of Ordnance… [He] prepared blistering letters that Blandy used to drive [production] work forward… Strauss..coordinated the development of the proximity [self-guided radar] fuse which began as [a] secret antiaircraft weapon… The proximity fuse project was Strauss’s first [military] experience with research under..secrecy… Strauss saw that research and production could proceed in an atmosphere of secrecy to yield a new and terrible weapon… Forrestal liked Strauss’s plan[s] so well he assigned Strauss to implement [them] and he promised Strauss a promotion to rear admiral… Forrestal insisted [and] Strauss agreed to organize… With his unusual skill, he..assembled a team..established..proceedures, and promulgated..policies” [pp 72-74, No Sacrifice Too Great] “Forrestal also assigned Strauss to protect the navy’s interest in scientific research..after the war… Strauss worked closely with Senator Harry F. Byrd of Virginia to keep military research out of the hands of the National Academy of Sciences. The result..was..the Office of Naval Research…” [p77, ibid.]

   Full Pentagon access had significant benefits. “Strauss, while at the navy [James Conant recalled] ‘kept poking his unauthorized nose into things we were doing about atomic matters (at OSRD)…We told him off; in fact Van [Dr. Vannevar Bush] and I didn’t speak to him after that. We didn’t trust him and never did.‘….[later] business friends strongly counseled [Conant] to avoid one person in particular: Lewis L. Strauss..whom they said was out to make a name for himself by whatever means were necessary.” [p272, James B. Conant, Hershberg]

   Strauss: “The fact that Russian espionage had penetrated out atomic weapons project at several points was not then known. Likewise unknown was the degree of Soviet interest in rocket development… Had Forrestal’s good health continued [after the war], the history of Communist primacy in rocketry and satellites might..have had a different outcome… But Forrestal’s tough image was deceptive… He temporized and tried persuasion and forbearance. The word went about that he was intimidated.” [p159, Men and Decisions]  “Strauss was Forrestal’s assistant for eighteen months, from July 1944 to January 1946…[p76, No Sacrifice Too Great…[and] knew immediately about the success of the [Trinity] test. As Forrestal’s assistant, no secrets were hidden from him.” [p77, ibid.] On a personal note, Strauss remarked that “The friendship between us was marked by candor in discussion of his plans for the..Navy and, after the war was clearly won, of his own future.” [p156, Men and Decisions]

   The two men crossed swords, however, after Forrestal became Truman’s Secretary of Defense and Strauss was a commissioner on the Atomic Energy Commission. The issue at hand was atomic security under the civilian AEC; serious breaches of AEC facilities were occurring that included missing plutonium –not mentioned by Strauss. He did report that Forrestal informed him that he was recommending the military takeover of the guardianship of atomic weapons. Strauss urged, “Don’t do it, Jim, the President will decide against you.” [p160] It was the beginning of Forrestal’s decline. Truman responded, “that ‘the custody of atomic weapons is a proper function of the civil authorities’. The occasion may have been a turning point..[in] Forrestal’s failing health… [Months later] on March 8, 1949 [Forrestal] asked me to lunch in his dining room in the Pentagon for what was to be the last time.” [p160, Men and Decisions] In the James B. Conant biographical chronology, just days after their Pentagon lunch, author Hershberg noted that “On March 12, 1949 the New York Times reported..on its front page, Secretary Forrestal ‘broke an official three-year military silence..on the use or discussion of the term ‘biological warfare’…” Hershberg was enumerating the complexities of disarmament and control that Conant was facing; he was hearing that “ ‘Biological warfare renders the atomic bomb childplay’…Another project that Conant tenaciously resisted..was radiological warfare, an idea championed by the air force and by Ernest Lawrence.” [p356, James B. Conant, James Hershberg]

   The death of James Forrestal, according to Arthur Krock, began with a fall from favor “with [Truman] for two reasons in particular. The first was his opposition..to the partition of Palestine..on military grounds –that the creation of..Israel would threaten the supply of Middle East oil to the West, especially to the..Navy. And with rare foresight he considered it a dangerous political concept..to create a state surrounded by enemies and give it a guarantee of protection… The second reason..grew out of [Forrestal’s]..patriotic desire to assure a smooth..transition of government power if Dewey should win the 1948..election, as was widely expected… [but] his balking at the Palestine policy..made him powerful enemies in the Administration… [F]riends..detected a steady decline..from that time…” [pp 252-253, Memoirs, Arthur Krock]

   Krock revealed a source he called only ‘Z’ for details that followed: “It had long been Z’s habit to lunch with Forrestal when in Washington and on March 29, 1949, he phoned..as usual. An aide informed him..he could not lunch with him but would like Z to phone him [at home]..” Z arranged to see Forrestal at once. “[T]he butler said that his boss seemed to be very sick.” [p254] “Z told Forrestal he would have to leave the house promptly; that he was going to send him to Hobe Sound [Forrestal home in Florida] by plane and bring a doctor there… Z then flew to New York and inquired of Howard A. Rusk for the..’best psychiatrist in the country’…Z and Dr. William C. Menninger flew to Hobe Sound on Friday morning [p255]..and an agreement was reached that Forrestal should be taken to Bethesda… Z and Forrestal’s former aide, Rear Admiral John Gingrich, watched him through the night… That day Forrestal went willingly with Z and the two doctors by plane to Washington… He was not violent at any time. But he did have delusions and he had lost his health and his power to make decisions… Forrestal said..that his intestinal functions had not been normal for more than six weeks… In his mental agony Forrestal saw Zionist spies and assassins lurking..near his residence bent on revenge for his attitude toward the Palestine partition. And after..he entered the Naval Hospital, he never left it until he jumped..from a tower window.” [p 257, Memoirs, Arthur Krock]

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Dr. Howard A. Rusk had since joined forces with the Laskers’ D.C. medical lobby and would soon count Joe Kennedy Sr. and JFK among his patients. Within weeks after JFK’s assassination, Rusk was invited to set up a new polio hospital in Taiwan; six months later the Chinese detonated their first atomic bomb.

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Atomic Energy

   Richard Pfau reported that Strauss was “already involved in atomic policy before he left the navy…[and] it was clear that Congress would establish a civilian Atomic Energy Commission… By July..1946, Strauss expected the president to offer him one of the five places on the..Commission.” [pp 85-88, No Sacrifice Too Great] Strauss had no official role in the Manhattan Project although as a prior Munitions Board executive it seems he was placed in the line-up for a spot on the Target Committee. Strauss replaced Ralph Bard and suggested that the first atomic bomb be dropped on Nikko Japan, the near-perfect physical center of the main island (Honshu) which had over a thousand years of sacred history. Strauss was quite well-informed that Japan knew the war was lost and had been seeking terms of surrender since May of 1945. “[Strauss] recommended to Secretary Forrestal that the United States should demonstrate the power of the bomb…From his trip to Japan he remembered ‘a grove of cryptomeria trees near the little village of Nikko’..[that] held great symbolic significance… If an atomic bomb laid the trees out in concentric rows, the demonstration of American power would lead, Strauss believed, to Japan’s surrender.” [p80, No Sacrifice Too Great]

   The disturbing selection of Nikko for targeting by Strauss is an ominous insight into his real nature. In every way, the “little village”, as he called it, was/is the spiritual heart of the Japanese, set among the most precious and preserved natural landscapes of their domain. Once the seat of power, home of its ancient culture, and destination of pilgrims, Strauss set his desire against them as one who carves out the heart of his defeated enemy and obliterates its spirit from the earth. Nasty man.

   While he was alive, Franklin Roosevelt refused to approve Strauss for a Navy promotion stemming from a personal offense, but “the new president, Truman, bore no ill will toward Strauss…” He received his rank of Rear Admiral and “used the title proudly for the rest of his life.” [p82, No Sacrifice Too Great]

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   The U.S. began its postwar atomic tests in the summer of 1946 in the new Pacific Proving Grounds –ceded territory previously occupied by the Japanese in the Polynesian Marshall Islands. Operation Crossroads staged two detonations with elaborate assemblies of ‘experimental’ ships and materiel called ‘Able’ and ‘Baker’. “Admiral Blandy was put in command… My friends Dr. John von Neumann and Dr. Karl T. Compton were present as observers… During the same week that the underwater ‘Baker’ test was scheduled at Bikini atoll, I went to California to be the guest of ex-President Hoover at the..Bohemian Club… Mr. Hoover and a few of his friends maintain a camp there..” [p210, Men and Decisions] Strauss was interrupted on his holiday to answer a summons from Truman to come to Washington immediately. “Back in his office, the President came directly to the point and asked whether I would be willing to serve..’the most important branch of the Government to be created in a hundred years.'” Strauss told Truman he would consider becoming the first of the five new Atomic Energy Commissioners. “When I left the White House, I called my wife..in Virginia. I also consulted two friends. I called Robert A. Taft..in Salt Lake City at the time…[and] the other friend was Arthur Krock, the dean of American journalism. I went to his home and talked it over with him. His advice was, ‘Accept it.’  That afternoon I sent word to the President. A message came back..to say nothing of it to anyone.” [p213, ibid.]

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Krock wrote of meeting Joe P. Kennedy Sr. in 1934 on appointment to the the SEC “to take the measure of the man” at the initiation of two friends. “These two friends were Bernard M. Baruch and Herbert Bayard Swope.”–journalist brother of G.E. president Gerard Swope. Krock went on to describe Joe Kennedy ”as a news source and later as an intimate companion.” [pp330-331, Memoirs]

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WWII notes, pertaining to Strauss: In 1943 the Navy began a consolidation of its research and development projects that became the Office of Research and Inventions, rechartered as the war-end Office of Naval Research. Lewis Strauss wrote “Admiral Bowen, first Chief of Naval Research, has too generously ascribed its establishment to me.” [p147, Men and Decisions] “In early 1944, I proposed to Forrestal that we should obtain a sizable appropriation from the Congress… We should request a billion dollars..[to] enable long-range research… The result was that when the Office of Scientific Research and Development [OSRD, under Vannevar Bush] began to liquidate at the end of the war, the Office of Naval Research [ONR] filled the breach… The Atomic Energy Commission has shared many projects in nuclear physics with ONR.” [p148, ibid.]

Physicist Allan T. Waterman became the ONR’s chief science director until replaced by Emanuel Piore. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_Waterman; Waterman was married to Mary Mallon, sister of H.Neil Mallon of Dresser (Halliburton) Industries and business partner of D.H.Byrd (and George deMohrenschilt). H. Neil Mallon was “a close friend and business partner of Prescott Bush.”(wikipedia)

   The Navy additionally established its own counterpart to “ALSOS”, the Allied occupation vanguard to capture and recruit technical and scientific assets (i.e.Project Paperclip). “Accordingly,” wrote Strauss, “I proposed the..task force… It..turned up an astonishingly large and heterogenous variety of scientific information, material and people..located cunningly in concealed laboratories and..installations… It took possession of tons of documents and reports… Fleet Admiral King was proud…[and] not the only one who had pride in the mission. Among the officers..was my son and I was more than pleased.” [p149, Men and Decisions]

   One of the German Paperclip scientists recruited by the Navy task force in Frankfurt was Herman P. Schwan who set the electronic radiation exposure levels (for radar) that became the Navy’s “recommended” limit, arguably 10,000 times higher than biologists endorse as safe: https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/the-moscow-signal/

Meanwhile, in Medicine…

   Consolidation in “public health” took several forms. Under the wartime Armed Forces Epidemiological Board, a comprehensive Influenza surveillance and reporting system was initiated. The AFEB was stuffed with Rockefeller personnel who became officers and had their military salaries augmented by private funds. In 1943 Thomas Francis (formerly of Rockefeller Hospital) and Jonas Salk tested new flu vaccines from their base at the University of Michigan. According to Army records, the worst global pandemic spread of flu on record occurred in 1943, far outdoing the 1918-19 Spanish Flu by case volume. The pair later led the polio vaccine effort.

   The Laskers, “almost from the moment they met [in 1939]..addressed themselves to medical problems.” [p315, Taken At The Flood]. “Back in 1942 the Laskers set up the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation…and went to Dr. Alan Gregg of the Rockefeller Foundation for counsel… Albert said frankly he wanted ‘bargains’… Gregg suggested a variety of leads…[and] the [Lasker] awards were launched.” [pp324-326, ibid.] But “[Albert] Lasker was a revolutionary among philanthropists, because he was the first to suggest putting federal money to work in a big way…[p331]…figures tell the story…In 1945 the total research budget of the U.S. Public Health Service was a scant $2.4 million; by 1952 it had risen to $56 million, and in 1958..$211 million, a hundred-fold increase in thirteen years. For 1960..it was doubled…so..the increase from 1945 [was] 2,000 per cent.” [p332, Taken At The Flood]

  The Sloan-Kettering Memorial Cancer Research Institute [SKI] was chartered in 1945 with Lewis Strauss and MED [Manhattan Proj.] luminaries on its board. “Technically SKI is a subsidiary of Memorial Hospital. There is also a tie-in..with the nearby Cornell University Medical Center, New York Hospital, etc. Dr. Conant, Compton, Dr. Bronk, as well as Lewis Strauss and Alfred Sloan, are trustees of SKI. Lawrance [sic] Rockefeller has recently become President of Memorial Hospital, in which his family has long been interested, and which has a relatively large board, including Lewis Strauss… Dr. [Cornelius “Dusty”] Rhoads is eager to obtain supporting grants because of the uncertainties of the Institute’s sources of income. He pointed out that much of the work that is being directed toward concise research is closely related to chemical warfare and perhaps not so distant from biological warfare matters… He told me that he has been invited to lunch by Fred Lawton, Director of the Bureau of the Budget on November 10…[and] thinks that Mrs. Lasker may have arranged it.” [1950 memo written by William T. Golden] http://archives.aaas.org/golden/doc.php?gold_id=80

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In progress…PART TWO : https://jenniferlake.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/lewis-strauss-and-jfk-part-ii/

  on the AEC monopoly, presidential gatekeeping, atomic secret agents of the FBI, Robert Oppenheimer, etc.