Dialogue: Assassination #9 (1971-08-25)

Mae Brussell Archive Show Notes

Audio for this broadcast available here.

Part of an effort to provide a searchable database of Mae Brussell’s life work. More info on Mae can be found here.

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Dialogue: Assassination #9 (1971-08-25) Show Notes

Main Subject(s): JFK assassination, Warren Commission.

– Mae discusses why she does her research.

– Discussion of the recently declassified (at the time) minutes of the Warren Commission Executive Sessions. Mae touches on discussions between some Warren Commission members (she mentions Allen Dulles and John J. McCloy) on how much of their findings to publish and how much to suppress. How Dulles insisted all the testimony be published so there would be no accusations of coverup and how he didn’t think that “…anybody would pay any attention to it to begin with.” How the commission tried to dismiss evidence presented by Thomas Buchanan, Mark Lane and others, by having the Associated Press and United Press International investigate their claims.

– Mae mentions Commission member John Sherman Cooper in relation to his remarks on April 30, 1964, about the commissions investigation being weak in regards to Lee Harvey Oswald’s travel between to and from the Soviet Union (USSR), and his connection to George de Mohrenschildt. How the commission then went off-the-record to discuss something regarding de Mohrenschildt and his testimony.

– Mae relates how only 4 witnesses out of 552 gave testimony with a commission member present, violating their own rules. She then states that de Mohrenschildt was the most important witness to the whole commission. She explains that when de Mohrenschildt gave his testimony, only two people were present: Albert Jenner, senior counsel for the commission, and Alfred Goldberg, a Pentagon historian.

– Mae talks about how the commission had recruited Goldberg to write the Warren Report from the US Air Force and how this decision was made after consulting with Rudolph Winnacker.

– Mae gives a quick background on Rudolph Winnacker, his intelligence connections via the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and his work as chief of the Pentagon’s historical division.

– A quick background on de Mohrenschildt follows, touching on his relationship to Lee H. Oswald, his Nazi sympathies, his run-ins with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and allegations that he was a Nazi spy.

– Mae then enters into a dialogue about the various printings of the Warren Report. How the first edition printed by the Government Printing Office (GPO) had no introduction. How the introduction to the second printing in paperback written by Robert Donovan used the exact same language to paint Lee Oswald as a lone nut, as an article did in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner on Nov. 23, 1963. How the introduction to the third printing by the New York Times (NYT) which was written by Harrison Salisbury, managing editor at the NYT, described anyone who questioned the commission report as crazy and unpatriotic. How the introduction to the Doubleday printing written by Louis Nizer was full of misstatements and flat-out lies.

– Mae proceeds to pick apart Nizer’s assertions that Lee Oswald was psychologically and emotionally disturbed, despite there being a clear lack of medical records in the commissions evidence. She shows how allegations, claimed by Nizer as fact, that Oswald beat his wife were 2nd and 3rd hand rumors from a party in December of 1962. How Nizer’s claim that Oswald was dishonorably discharged was a complete reversal of the fact.

– Discussion of how attempts to paint Lee as a reprobate were often unbelievable. How the commission’s line of questioning made it seem that Lee lost his job in Ft. Worth, despite a well crafted resignation letter, and testimony from the man who hired Oswald at the Leslie Welding Co. to the contrary. How Marina Oswald’s testimony that people had to help Lee get a job in Dallas because he was incapable, contradicted Marguerite Oswald’s testimony that a group of influential people told Lee they had a job for him at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. How Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall published Government bonds, did photographic and cartographic work for the US Army, and required employees in many departments to have a security clearance. How Lee Oswald’s cancelled checks for that period contradict Marina’s testimony.

– Mae begins to break open the finances and associations of the Russian émigré community in the Dallas and Ft. Worth area in relation to Lee Harvey Oswald. How George de Mohrenschildt was in the oil exploration business, and worked for Brown & Root (now KBR) at the time of the assassination. How Brown & Root was a major construction contractor in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. How Lyndon Baines and Lady Bird Johnson allegedly had extensive holdings in Brown & Root as documented by Ramparts Magazine (See Building Lyndon Johnson, Ramparts Magazine, Dec. 1967). The frequent gifts to the Oswald family of clothing, money, transportation, housing, and employment from this community.

– Mae touches on the fact that the FBI seized all of the Oswald’s possessions after the assassination, and then used them as evidence in the hearings. How Marina Oswald was asked to identify these items in her testimony, and that one item was identified as a small black address book that had only been used while they were in the USSR. How in this address book appeared the name of the woman whose husband got Lee Oswald the job at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. How Lee’s address book from the USSR had the name of a woman at the Hotel Berlin in Moscow they would later meet in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.

– Mae touches on the flimsy cover stories of witnesses who met Marina Oswald alone including: George de Mohrenschildt, Colonel Lawrence Orloff, and George A. Bouhe. She touches on some of the interesting connections of Ruth and Michael Paine who Marina stayed with. How Michael Paine had a security clearance while working at Bell Helicopter Company under Walter Dornberger, a Nazi scientist who came to America under Project PAPERCLIP with Wernher von Braun.

– Mae talks about why she thinks Marina Oswald is fabricating her story. How Marina’s family was well off before the Bolshevik Revolution. How her grandmother taught her French and how to be a lady. How Lee Oswald wrote a letter dated Nov. 9th, 1963, to the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C. (Warren Report, Vol. XVI, Commission Exhibit 15, pg. 33), detailing how FBI agent James P. Hasty offered Marina “protection.”  How none of the Oswald’s State Department papers which were released by the Warren Commission had any signatures when they came back from the USSR. How John McVickar and Richard Snyder were the two people who helped Lee and Marina return to America from the USSR, and how their testimony is full of discrepancies. How they were alleged to be Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) assets (See Who’s Who In The CIA, Julius Mader, 1968.)  Mae draws comparisons between Marina Oswald and Svetlana Stalina.

– Mae comments on a bibliography for her research and how some books on the JFK assassination are better than others, especially if they have footnotes for their sources. She names a few books including Rush to Judgement by Mark Lane and Accessories After the Fact by Sylvia Meagher. She also touches on Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw and how Mae contacted the prosecution about the Reily Coffee Company, after which Garrison brought in a Marcella (misstatement? possibly Dante Marochini?) for questioning.