In regards to the Odio
story, I think Father McChann is an important player and living witness.
Father McChann catered to the Cuban Community of Dallas, his
parish supported by Catholic Welfare, which was in turn backrolled by the CIA
front Catherwood Fund, of Philadelphia, Pa.
McChann heard the confessions of the Odio sisters and reportedly
knew about the Oswald, Angel and Leopoldo visit.
McChann also shared the stage with John Martino in Dallas, when
he was on tour promoting his book.
After the assassination, McChann disapeared, only to surface at
a seminary in New Orleans.
He later left the priesthood, and was last known to be living in Tailand,
though his mother and sister were still in Dallas.
You got a mug of Rogelio Eugenio Cisneros?
Here's some excerpts from Lafontaine's book regarding McChann,
and have read Maryanne Sullivan's book, "Kennedy Ripples - A True Love
Story" (1994, San Clemente, Calf.), which Lafontaine calls the
"Harlequin Romance" version of the Kennedy assassination, which
follows McChann to New Orleans and Florida, but not to Tailand.
Peter Dale Scott has been spending a lot of time in Thailand,
and he's awaiting my review of Max Holland's KAT, and I'll ask him about
McChann.
Machann, Walter Michael, Father –
Also spelled phonetically as MaChann, McCann, McKann and McChan.
From: Oswald Talked – The New Evidence in the JFK Assassination
by Ray and Mary La Fontaine, (Pelican Publishing Co. , Gretna,
1996).
[p.264-265]: “The last time Father Machann was seen in his
public role as shepherd of the city’s Catholic exile community was the Tuesday
night of October 1, 1963. On that evening, he and other prominent members of
the resettlement committee had shared the stage of Highland Park Town Hall with
a guest speaker, John Martino, a fifty-two-year-old American and Mafia
associate who was on a Bircher-paid tour to talk about his recently published
book, ‘I Was Castro’s Prisoner.’ Martino had been imprisoned in Cuba for some
thirty-nine months (during which time he befriended Silvia Odio’s father,
Amador), and his three-hour book talk dwelled on the barbarism of his
confinement by the revolutionary regime – balm to the ars of the gathered
refugees and their circle of benefactors on the Town Hall stage…”
“Trudy Castor,…also sat on the stage with Father Machann that
last evening,…later said, ‘I have no idea why he [Father Machann] left….After a
week or two went by, of course, the Cubans were all talking about, well,
‘Where’s Father Machann?’ After all, this was their spiritual leader and no one
seemed to know where he was or what had happened.’”
[p. 268] : “Father Machann’s disappearance was somehow connected
to the assassination of the president,….he had heard, perhaps in confession
from one of the refugees, perhaps from his mistress Silvia, something about the
impending event.
This wasn’t an absurd or uncommon opinion, it should be noted.
Even Colonel Castorr (who, as Father Machann believed, had some sort of
intelligence interest in the Cubans) speculated that he priest had learned
something he shouldn’t have. Machann was at his mother’s Dallas home on the day
of the assassination, the mother would later reveal, and Colonel Castorr had
heard, probably from Mother Machann, that the father, ‘went to pieces in
hearing the telecast.’…”
“…investigator Harold Weisberg had also heard that Father
Machann entered ‘a home to rest’ following the assassination.”
Page 251: “….A few weeks before the assassination (Fr. Walter M.
Machann) had mysteriously dropped out of sight, perhaps from a breakdown, in
the city where he had been a lifelong resident. Some weeks later, after the
assassination, he quietly left town and has not lived in Dallas since, though
returning occasionally to visit his mother. He was last seen in (1993) in
Bangkok. (Machann’s mother told Mary in a recent interview that he was visited
by the Secret Service or other government investigators as recently as 1992 or
1990.).”
“But in the spring of 1964, Father Machann hadn’t yet made it to
Bangkok. That April, apparently at the behest of the Western general counsel J.
Lee Rankin, the Secret Service had launched an all-out search for the unusual
padre, who was rumored to have bedded a number of women parishioners during his
denture as assistant pastor at the Catholic church in east Dallas. After agents
failed even to identify the father in Miami (where he had received his training
as a Cuban refugee adviser), Secret Service inspector Thomas Kelly managed to
locate Machann in New Orleans, interviewing him on Thursday, April 30.”
“The former Dallas priest (he was now on indefinite leave) had
been attending classes at LOYOLA UNIVERSITY, and was, as he told Kelly, a
frequent visitor of Silvia’s uncle, Dr. Agustin Guitart, a physics professor at
the university. Cuitart, it may be recalled, happened also to be a friend of
Carlos Bringuier’s, and had attended the New Orleans court hearing of Lee
Harvey Oswald following his ‘street scuffle’ with Bringuier and two other
members of the local chapter of the Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE) the
previous summer.”
“It wasn’t, of course Machann’s vow-breaking proclivities that
interested assassination investigators like Kelley, but the role he was said to
have played from 1961 through most of 1963 as chaplain of a Dallas group
assisting Cuban refugees; for if rumors were flying concerning the priest’s
sexual liaisons, they were even more rampant on a more relevant matter, the
possible participation of Cubans – whether pro- or antic-Castro one couldn’t
say – in the assassination of the president. On the latter matter, Machann had
been in a position to be an invaluable informant.”
“Organized in 1961, the Cuban Catholic Committee of Dallas had
sought to help Cuban refugees by finding them jobs and planning social and
religious functions for their families. In march 1963 the committee had gone a
step further, setting up a resettlement office funded through the Catholic
Relief Service. Responsibility for conduct of the new office, which offered
food and other living assistance for arriving exiles (who were frequently met
by committee members as they stepped off a plane at Love Field), had been given
to the committee’s capable director, Father Machann. In his capacity as
benefactor and spiritual liaison with the Church, the clean-cut father had been
a popular figure with the refugees. He knew virtually everyone in the Dallas
exile community, and everyone knew him – this despite the fact (as Machann told
[s.S.] Inspector Kelly in April 1964) he had made it a policy never to attend
‘any of the political meetings of the Cuban groups that were represented by the
Cubans in Dallas, although he was often cajoled and entreated to attend them.’”
“That the father had often been cajoled as well by ladies of the
flock wasn’t hard to believe. He was twenty-nine - three years older than
Silvia – tall, and movie-star handsome. (However, the Secret Service mistakenly
reported Machann’s age at this time as twenty-six.) He had dimples; he was
intelligent; he was polite; he was perfect….”
“For all its good works, the Cuban Relief Committee of Dallas
had been abruptly disbanded immediately after the president’s murder, by which
time the handsome and seemingly competent father, though still in town, was
nowhere to be found. He had reportedly taken shelter at his mother’s house, and
was there on the Friday of the assassination – when he, like Silvia that day,
was said to have suffered a collapse. But whatever the priest’s personal
problems may have been at this time – the ones that had driven him underground
– the Secret Service and other federal agencies knew nothing of them, except
for the whispers of his sexual entanglements. That Silvia [Odio] had been a
conquest of Machann’s (or vice versa, perhaps) had already been reported to
authorities by her old socialite confidante, Lucille Connell, and tacitly
acknowledged by Silvia’s psychiatrist, Dr. Burton Einspruch. The psychiatrist
told Warren interviewer Burt W. Griffin that he ‘did not believe the affair
with Father Machann was as serious as (the Commission) had been led to
believe,’ a rather ambiguous assessment….”
April 1964, having located the missing priest, and armed with
the knowledge of his suspected past with Silvia Odio, the Secret Service
concocted a devious plan that in efficacy, at least, was miles ahead of the
‘straightforward’ approaches of the FBI and Warren Commission. Instead of
grilling Silvia directly on her hallway-Oswald story, Inspector Kelly wanted
Father Machann to call Silvia long-distance in Dallas (he would be ‘furnished
the necessary funds’) and see if he could get her to tell him ‘the name of the
JURE representative who had accompanied Oswald.’ As Kelly may have calculated,
she might well confine things to the former lover – her ‘father confessor,’ as
she called him in a 1993 documentary – that she wouldn’t say under oath or the
glare of a federal inquiry. In this the inspector was probably right, but would
Machann be snake enough to go along?”
“It turned out he would. He was, in fact, remarkably docile and
cooperative, reportedly stating that ‘it was the duty of every citizen to
cooperate to the full extent in the President’s Commission investigation and
that he felt he was bound in conscience to give whatever assistance he could.’
It is possible that Machann’s docility was caused (as S.S. head James J.
Rowley, Kelley’s superior, wrote on the father’s behalf) by the fact that he
‘did not realize at the time that she [siliva] had not made a full and frank
disclosure of the names of the people who brought Oswald to her.’ Toward the
end of December 1963, while the priest was still laying low in Dallas, Silvia
had spoken to him about the Cubans who had supposedly shown up with ‘Leon
Oswald’ in September, but she also told Machann she had already ‘discussed this
matter fully’ with the FBI agents. Later, after Father Machann moved to New
Orleans, she had written him a letter saying she again ‘discussed her meeting
of Oswald with government officials.’ Consequently, Machann told Kelly, he
didn’t feel that he would be ‘violating a confidence in giving any information
previously given [by Silvia to] the proper authorities.’ Even so, the eagerness
of Machann to participate in this game – ‘stating that he could not induce her
to tell him who the people were, he could induce her to tell it to the proper
authorities’ – sounds a bit edgy somehow, as if fear or nervousness is driving
at it, if not the passivity that sometimes accompanies convalescence from a
mental breakdown.”
“The deal was struck, and it was agreed Machann would call
Silvia that same Thursday evening around 6:30. He requested, and received,
privacy for his call. Then, “upon his return to Inspector Kelly’s room at 7:30
pm, he said he had made the call to Mrs. Odio in Dallas and she was very
anxious to discuss the entire matter. She advised him [Father Machann] the only
information she could provide on the people who visited her was that one of
them said he was using the code name Leopoldo, that the second man she could
identify as Eugenio Cisneros, and the third man was introduced to her as
Leon.’”
“This was amazing, Where did the CISNEROS come from? Silvia
hadn’t said a word to the FBI or any other investigative bodyprior to this
phone call about one of the two Cubans being Cisneros….”
“…Cisneros himself would immediately jump up and deny the
assertion with corroboration of his whereabouts elsewhere in late September of
that year…”
“[silvia] Steadfastly refused to admit the obvious, that she had
told the priest that one of the men in the hallway had been Rogelio Cisneros.
After repeated questioning, the exasperated [Warren Commission attorney Wesley]
Liebeler brought out his trump card, the report on the Secret Service-sponsored
New Orleans phone call that Kelly’s superior had sent the Commission.”
“MR. LIEBELER. Now, I have a report before me of an interview
with Father McKann by a representative of the U.S. Secret Service in which it
states that Father McKann told this Secret Service agent that you had told him
that one of the men was Eugeneio. But you indicated now that this is not so?”
“MRS. ODIO. No. Perhaps he could have misunderstood me, because
he has the same problem with names. Probably I did tell him that the man was
not Eugenio….”
[p. 251-256]
“Not many people outside the Catholic circle were talking much
about anti-Castro Cubans as possible suspects in the days immediately following
the assassination (when the work of the refugee committee was abruptly
discontinued by Msgr. Thomas Tschoepe)…” [p. 262]
[Also see: Kennedy Ripples: A True Love Story by Marianne
Sullivan (1994, San Clemente, Calf.)]
Good stuff, Bill.
I do have an image of Rogelio Cisneros somewhere which is so
well filed away I can not find it. It might be amongst the images I have not
scanned yet. I will keep looking.
Regarding the good reverend, did the name Fernando Robaina ever
pop up as an associate? Robaina was Vice-President of the Peter Plenty Ice
Cream Company which supposedly was started by Cubans for Cubans; easy to buy
into franchise type arrangement. Anyway, Robaina was fanatically anti-Castro
and money was allegedly sourced through the company for anti-Castro activity.
There was also supposedly a connection between Robaina and Manuel Orcarberrio
(Dallas Alpha 66) which I have yet to confirm.
Pretty loose but possibly an interesting circle of connections
Is it not true that
the Secret Service had a tap on Father Walter M. Machann during one of his
conversation's with Silvia Odio, and that in addition he was a 'frequent
visitor of Silvia' uncle Dr. Agustin Guitart, a physics professor at Loyola
University (where Machann attended classes after leaving Dallas.)
And perhaps more importantly, Guitart it is said also happened to
be a friend of Carlos Bringuer!
Incidentally Guitart even pops up at the court hearing for
Oswald and Bringuer (Bringuer - jumped? from Alpha-66 to DRE, during that
fateful period.)
A point that if correct points to some other machinations is
that Odio had mentioned Rogelio Cisneros 'war name' Eugenio in
her Warren Commission Testimony, right off the bat (see W.C. XI 380).
From Secret Service memo re: Rogelio Cisneros "Mr. Cisneros
said he went to Dallas, TX from Miami, FL in June 1963....specifically for the
purpose of contacting Silvia Odio who was to introduce him to a person in
Dallas who was interested in selling them small arms. Cisneros said he
contacted Sylvia Odio only once,and at that time he was accompanied
only be Jorge Rodriquez Alvareda, their [JURE's] Dallas delegate, and no one
else. (see W.C. XI 375)
Ostensibly, 'the person of interest' was a Uruguayan gun dealer
named Juan (Johnny) Martin, according to Silvia, who also 'owned a washeteria
down the street (this is in regards to Odio's residence on Oram, not the
Crestwood Apt's on Magellan Circle (this was before the move to there).
Regarding Jorge Rodriquez Alvaredo and Antonio Aletando Leon the
two were interviewed by the FBI, Rodriguez said that the meeting in Dallas was
for the 'purpose of organizing the Dallas Branch of JURE,' However no gun deal
was made.
According to the 'discredited?' see 'What the La Fontaines
didn't tell you' Lafontaines, pg 253 'Oswald Talked'
Inspector Kelley 'persuaded' Machann to call Silvia long
distance in Dallas...and see if he could get her to tell him the name of the
JURE Representative who had accompanied Oswald (to the infamous Sept 26th
meeting) at Silvia's.
The stage is set and according to the La Fontaines (FWIW, I am
only too aware of how controversial this is Robert) She (Silvia) advised him
(Fr. Machann) concerning 'the meeting' [/i]was that one of them said he was
using the code name Leopoldo, that the second man she could identify as
Eugene Cisneros and the third man was introduced to her as Leon.
In 'Oswald Talked' the source of the information in the last two
paragraphs is cited as 'Chief James J. Rowley (Secret Service) letter to J. Lee
Rankin - May 5th, 1964 and Commission Exhibit 2943 (6).'
In conclusion, I am aware of, and agree that there are
significant shortcomings to the LaFontaines work, I personally get very
irritated when fellow members throw mud at other researchers, as the La
Fontaines do towards Gaeton Fonzi and Anthony Summers. I do not take sides in
such nonsensical business, we have enough problems dealing with the task at
hand, instead of bickering with each other, and I have been guilty of this
myself. Even though I do not agree with some things in the La Fontaines book,
and they are not insignifcant, I might add, neither do I subscribe to the idea
of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater.'
Hell, maybe Rowley is lying. But I am still uncertain about de
Torres and Murgado as 'Leopoldo and Angel.'
....and the post immediately after the one at the above link,
and from links displayed in the post
Dear Jim,
The enclosures are self-explanatory. My haste
Is writing what may seem e
cryptic letter may not be, but 1 have
appointments early this morning in geshington
that will take the entire day. Other pest-due
obligations will keep me too busy for
s lengthy letter for more.than_severel week,.
.
Before going down there I wrote Colonel
Castor: *gain. Be was seen he wife
opened end reed the letter end phoned me* and
es * consequenee he asst I lunched in the
Army-Mevy Club in Washington Friday. They both
cone up hprldetee leotard*/ *noisome
end remained until about one this morning. I
believe his'Zilei that he ever engaged
in gun running. They were careful to
distinguish between rumor, which they labelled,
and what they seemed to retell. Asa conseepene
I thinkers. Lucille Connell and
Father Mechem (the right spelling) eight be
more Interest to you end I am more
than ever, vonvineed of the story, of The
False Oswe1d end of the perlicipetioe.ia it
of Roll and Howard, particularly from their
recollections 01001, *WO chereeter
Is remarkably like that of the Been tope from
her description.'
It one of your more sensitive end delicate
men, possibly * lawyer (and maybe
Bill Martin, who could converse with him in
Spanish if Mechem were embarrassed by
anyone overhearing them) were to speak to
Mechem' in a way that indicated the priest
may hove involuntarily been Innocently
involved in e scandal that was probably non,
scandalous !inti also involved Sylvia Odio end
Lucille Qonnell, I think he might have
interesting information to offer, for this
seems to have happened, from whet Ors.
Castorr was careful to identify as rumor she
ben beard. It seems as though Meoltenn
either got drunk or was drugged somehow end
such a thing wee staged, inferentially
by Mrs. Connell, about whom the Castorr'a have
deep misgivings. In evaluating this
please beer in mind the strange beliefs of the
radical right that the Cestorr/ s
hold and which, I believe, can color their
mmnoepts of reality.
According to them, era. Connell often flashed
large sums of money. They
are willing to believe she could have been CIA
and so said. ". havens way of
evaluating
this, but eventually a large part of 'ghat
they said can be checked out. When I can
type up my note-5'a thiss-long meeting there
will be other-nemes. _
AA times that coincide with the FBI reports I
quote men of the approximate
descriptIon of those reports were in Bolles
and engaged In public activity, ibcInding
TV speech-making (recall Sylvia/a testimony on
television that Liebeler had no interest
in). Ile speaker of the group is remarkably
like the FBI deserlptiog of Bell. In
describing end referring to him she kept
indicating prominence to the hair in the front
end each of her hands went up to the side of
the middle of her heed while she spoke,
se did Sylvia, of a reoeasion of the brir, as
though there was on the top or toward
the beck a reales/on or a bald spot. this TV
broadcast was part of a large fund-raining
rally at which Bell apparently spoke. There is
a long-shot that semitone in Dallas
may resell this or that there was newspaper
coverage. Were one to check the *news
.papers, i'd_eugaeetsoinghoth ways from
December 1, 1963.,
They loaned me a 1964 Dells* phone book and in
checking for the spelling of
names and addresses Mrs. De tor: repeatedly
commented that 8 number of their sequelstaincee
seem to have disappeared fro$ it. Sba also
used and checked for tte name
FBI AS (palm), which also like the reports, In
oonnetion with Sylvies hysterectomy
end strongly auggest6d- of an affair, ea a men
who arenged for Sylvia to spend her convalescence
with people named Rogers and her subsequent
move to Maul.
These characters seem also to have been at the
hoe of the now-desceased
Ed Schwille, a wealth radical righter, within
a dee, or two of the Sunday tmlker
meeting in ')ctober end at a foeum meeting
that woo taped in ieptember. she aanyot
identify them from thelizzo and Bringuier
exhibits. Her versions is much more indicative
of DBE than TUBE eaexdation end of excellent Dallas
conneetions.
On gun-running the colonel quotes Vfalker as
saying Dallas was a center.
She often referred to Sarah 'destillo and
something the FBT reports do not,
of the accompantitng of these men by
s'beeutifel end intelligent women from Miami
whoeee possible neme 'h have.
The White Rock Lake meeting had Sylvia giving
the invocation. These men
were there also. Mrs. O's - description of
thaseeohd -Men is no nearly as tall as the
first, uenally silent, and chunky.
The hospital Cuban of the Rowley 5/6/64 letter
may hove been one Sancho*,
Who had a friend possibly named Rodriguez.
She started to talk of kugustin 4Ultert end
never cams beck to him.
There are some seemingly mysterious
Connell-Odio, letters Sylvia left behind
when she lefts the Rogers home that Mrs. R gave to Mrs. C who
gave them to Lt. Butler of
the Dallas police, who also has the 'tape referred to above
(which w as widely duplie
lasted by a husbendpwife pair of chiropractors
active in the forem-sold-se a mlneY4
raising device). These letters may
have been written from Boston, where Mrs. 'Connell had
a doctor-son.'
Nachman sew the assassination -reporting on TV
fee in his parents' home and
left apparently in shock and was shortly
thereafter hospitalized-small Dallas hospital.
The Hall-forum matting was October 1 at the
same time Mrs. Castoar was speaking
eleeehore with Machann end martino. 't was
hold in a bank building in an area
known as Farmers branch. The ppeaker was
excited when he learned he was being taped
and tried unsuccessfully to get the tape,
theemtening even to use the karate in which
he oleimed to be brown belt. He said in his
apeoch that Kennedy was coming to Dallas
soon end "we'll get him, one way or
another". The man who made the tepee of these
meetings lived in Irving. 1964 yellow section
should identify, if mrs. estorr does not
"member.'
There is an elderly *4.41:4004 Olen Myers,
meadow Road, a World War LBO—
commander, snagged in gun-runaing. North
Dallas off of Preston. Fits - October
doings from FBI reports.
1 am now already late end went to mail this in
Washington to save two days
in getting it to you. I think it might be
significant. I shall ask her, after she
hes had time to think of what we discussed end
I recalled to her memory, to creak to
me again and before a tape machine.
Sincerely,
-Harold Weisberg
Link above to .pdf file of 23 April, 1967
letter to Mrs. Robert L. Castorr from Harold Weisberg.
TAPE #1 (SIDE 2)
-19-'
Mrs. C: And this man's name is Lt. George
Butler. I believe that I called
Lt. Butler and set up an appointment to take Joanna
to his home
within the next day or two and so the MWAKIXX
conversation went
on for about 2 hours with Lt, Butler. And,
from then on, I sat ±
in on very tee few meetings with Joanna and
Lt. Butler but they
worked very closely together.
Now, I daresay within a couple of weeks I had
a call from Maryanne
Ramus. Maryanne (we were just talking about
the Cubans and this and
that thing) and she said "Mrs. Castorr,
if you knew something and
you wanted to talk to one xax±±x reliable
person, who would you go
to"and I said "I won't tell you over
the phone but let's have lunch
together". So later, we had lunch
together xx at a hamburger place
and Maryanne began to tell me the story of how
she was offered some
money for some information about the
assassination. And I said "
"Maryanne, I'd just rather not go ex into
this -- whatever this is
all about -- but I will direct you to a
persona and you should tell
your t story to him". However, previously
to my meeting Maryanne
at k 1:00, I had called Lt. Butler aastx at his
home and set up an
appointment and went a right from there to his
home. And again,
all the conversations and everything wax were
between Maryanne and
Lt. Butler.
W: Before you turned her over, did salex she
indicate what people and
who were interested in what kind of
information?
Mrs. C: She told me that akex it was ironic
that I would suggest....
Page 29 of the transcript of same interview of
Robert L and Trudy Castorr as the text displayed above the following image:
...and the next page, page 30 :
....and what, of any importance is the later literary "tell
all" of Lucille's "rival" Marianne?
Sullivan's Kennedy
Ripples: A True
Love Story
, you know you've
entered a new zone. The book, though published (in 1994) by a small
San Clemente
press, could glibly be
called
...
Marianne Sullivan - 1994 a true love
story : a priest, a woman and the assassination of J.F.K. Marianne Sullivan.
Published by: Lillian James Publishing 63 Calle De Industrias Suite 450 San
Clemente, California 92672 First Lillian James Edition 1994 Printed in United
