The Other Party with an Assassin's Twist

THE OTHER PARTY WITH AN ASSASSINS TWIST

By William Kelly

The release of the secret JFK Assassination records, new books on the subject and FOIA civil suits against the CIA are making the Dealey Plaza cold case heat up.

Former New York Times reporter Phil Shenon, author of "A Cruel and Shocking Act - The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination," recently had an article published in the Washington Post, another posted on Politico and then he appeared on National Public Radio where he promoted his conspiracy theory that Castro Cuban Commies were behind the assassination. (1)

According to Shenon, the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald attended a Twist Party in Mexico City where he met Cuban embassy officials who encouraged him to kill the President.

As demonstrated rather conclusively from witnesses who were there, the Twist Party occurred at a time when the accused assassin was not in Mexico. (2)

Oswald's absence is a problem that also discounts other similar false accusations that Castro Cuban Commies were behind what happened at Dealey Plaza, including the Nicaraguan agent who claimed to have seen Oswald take money from a red haired negro Cuban inside the Cuban embassy, (3) and the Man on the Motorcycle who allegedly gave Oswald a ride to the embassy on the back of his motorcycle. (4) In all three instances, the alleged events occurred when Oswald was not in Mexico.

But the accused assassin did attend a party where he was encouraged to commit a political assassination - that of right wing General Edwin Walker, a crime he is also accused of committing. (5)

This February 22, 1963 party at a house shared by three Magnolia Oil Company engineers, was held specifically for the purpose of introducing Oswald to Michael Paine, ostensiblbly because both shared similar political philosophies.

Oswald, an-ex Marine defector and redefector to the Soviet Union, returned home with his Russian wife Marina, and was thought to have political leftist sympathies with Michael Paine, whose father was a founder of the Trotskyite communist party in the USA and butressed by the fact that Oswald subscribed to the Trotskyite newspaper.

But Michael Paine didn't attend the party, though Oswald's wife Marina met Michael's estranged wife Ruth Hyde Paine, and they became close friends until the day of the assassination. While Marina Oswald and Ruth Paine bonded in the kitchen, talking in broken Russian, Oswald had an extended, two hour conversation with Volkmar Schmidt, one of the Magnolia Oil company engineers who lived at the house.

Magnolia Oil recruited Volkmar Schmidt in his native Germany, where he was raised by the father of his friend Dr. Keutemeyer,  a psychoanalysis. (6)

In a telephone interview Schmidt said he was intrigued by Oswald and utilized a "reverse psychology" technique on Oswald that he learned from Keutemeyer, saying that General Walker should be killed as Hitler should have been.

Schmidt specifically mentioned the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler organized by German military officers included two of Dr. Keutmeyer's associates.

The July 20, 1944 plot, code named "Vzlkyrie,"  would be mentionyed throughout the assassination narrative, but it begins with Volkmar Schmidt's February 22, 1963 conversation with Oswald at the Magnolia Oil  house party.

It should be noted that my phone interview with Volkmar Schmidt is footnoted in both Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History book and Larry J. Sabato's The Kennedy Half-Century. (7)
  
It should also be noted that Jim Braden, aka Eugene Hale Brading, who was taken into custody as a suspicious person at Dealey Plaza, had earlier been arrested for vagrancy and evicted from Dallas for attempting to swindle the widow of one of the founders of Magnolia Oil. The company's red Pegasus sign above the Magnolia Oil skyscraper, was a landmark on the Dallas skyline and merged with major oil  conglamorates. 

Also present at the house party was another resident, whose father was a producer at Radio Free Europe, whose financial supporters, besides the CIA, included D. H. Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository. (TSBD) 

Shortly after the house party conversation where Schmidt encouraged Oswald to kill Walker, Oswald purchased a mail order rifle under the alias "Hidel," and had it sent it to his Dallas PO Box that wasn't authorized to receive package for Hidel, as his New Orleans PO Box was. (8)

On the day he is said to have picked up the rifle from the Post Office Oswald worked a full day at the Jaggers-Chiles-Stoval graphics arts firm where he worked on a project for the Sam Bloom Public Relations firm, that would later the details of the President's motorcade. (9)

After Oswald cased out Walker's neighborhood and photographe his house, two men, one ostensibly Oswald, were seen leaving the scene after a shot was fired through Walker's window, missing him. (10)

That same morning, April 10, 1963, the USS Thresher nuclear submarine went down with all hands, possibly because of faulty equipment manufactured by the defense contractor Bendix. A Bendix employee said he was visited by three men in suits who claimed to represent JFCOTT - Justice for the Crew of The Thresher, and threatened to kill the Secretary of the Navy. (11)

Oswald had written the Secretary of the Navy from the USSR seeking assistance in returning home. (12)

The JFCOTT visitors seem suspiciously similar to the three men - Oswald and two Cubans who visited Sylvia Odio, and threatened to kill the Secretary of the Navy. (13)

The son of New York Times editor James Reston floated the theory that Oswald was not shooting at JFK but rather John Connally, the former Secretary of the Navy who Oswald had correspondence with. (14)

It appears that multiple motives and possible scenarios were being laid out in anticipation of the assassination, and Oswald's role as the shooter or Patsy.

When George deMohenschilt, who arranged for the party to introduce Oswald to Paine, saw the rifle in Oswald's closet, he jokingly asked, "How did you miss?" hitting Walker.

Oswald then had his wife Marina take a photo of him with the rifle, pistol and two communist publications, one of them a Trotskyite paper. When Oswald did finally meet Michael Paine, Paine picked him up in his car to take him to his house in Irving for dinner, and saw the photo of Oswald with the rifle, even though he testified to the Warren Commission he didn't know Oswald owned a rifle, despite having moved it around in his garage wrapped in a blanket.

Another copy of the backyard photo of Oswald with the rifle was found among the papers of deMohrenschildt, with the hand written inscription - "Hunter of Fascists - Ha Ha." (15)

Shortly after the Walker shooting Oswald took a bus to his hometown of New Orleans, where he got a job and an apartment, and Ruth Paine drove Marina and the rifle to the Big Easy where they had an eventful summer. (16)

A few months later Ruth Paine wrote the pregnant Marina a letter asking her to move in with her in Texas until she had the baby, and gave a return address of "Arthur Young - Paoli, Pennsylvania," Michael Paine's step dad, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, who had arranged for Michael to work at the Dallas helicopter plant. (17)

Marina accepted and Ruth Paine stopped in New Orleans and picked up Marina and the rifle and drove them to Texas while Oswald went to Mexico. (18)

On the same day, September 25, 1963, the Joint Chiefs of Staff met at the Pentagon where they were briefed on covert Cuban operations by CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald. (19)

According to a memo prepared by Col. Higgens, aide to General Krulak, the meeting was chaired by Air Force Chief General Curtis LeMay, as General Taylor was in Vietnam.

Higgins also noted in his memo that the CIA was preparing a "detailed study" of the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler to be adapted for use against Fidel Castro of Cuba.

James Lesar of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for that "detailed study" and after being rebuffed by the CIA he has appealed their "final response' in a civil suit. (20)

At a CAPA press conference at the National Press Club in March Lesar said he believes the CIA study of the Hitler plot is the most important outstanding record on the assassination of President Kennedy and he is determined to see this case through.