Walter Machann Interview Synopsis
Note: Many thanks to A. Louis Rossi for editing this, and Jim DiEugenio for asking me to compose this synopsis and posting it on line at Kennedys & King Web site, where some of the best and most recent research can be found:
Written by William
Kelly
Bill Kelly presents excerpts of interviews conducted
by Gayle Nix Jackson with Father Walter Machann, friend and confidant of Silvia
Odio, concerning, among other things, her famous late September, 1963, visit by
“Oswald”.
Gayle Nix Jackson’s Interview Excerpts with Walter
Machann.
Bill Kelly's Review of book: JFKcountercoup: Review of Gayle Nix Jackson's book "Pieces of the Puzzle"
For the complete interview – see Gayle Nix Jackson, Pieces of the Puzzle (2017)
We know Gayle Nix Jackson as the granddaughter of
Orville Nix, who, like Abraham Zapruder, filmed the assassination of President
Kennedy, the subject of her first book—Orville Nix: The Missing Assassination
Film (2014).
Then, after interviewing a number of important
witnesses, including Walter Machann, Gayle put together a second book, Pieces
of the Puzzle, an anthology that includes contributions from a number of other
JFK researchers and touches on other important subjects. The interview with
Machann stands out however, as a key piece to the Dealey Plaza puzzle.
Not only did Gayle Nix Jackson find Walter Machann;
it can’t be overemphasized how important it was that she gained his trust and
he talked to her on the record, answering key questions.
One of the more significant and elusive characters
in the JFK assassination story, Walter Machann was a Catholic priest who
catered to the needs of the Cuban exile community of Dallas, including Silvia
Odio and her family.
Before the assassination, Silvia Odio told Father
Machann about three visitors to her Dallas apartment, including “Leon” Oswald,
a former Marine who said President Kennedy should have been assassinated after
the Bay of Pigs. Machann not only confirms Odio’s story but provides and exact
date, a fact that had eluded official investigators.
To put things in chronological order, Machann
explained to Gayle Nix Jackson: “I’m Polish on my father’s side. Irish on my
Mother’s side … My dad worked as a shipping clerk for over 50 years at an oil
company. My mother had only a high school education. My dad finished high
school at night school … I never had money. I wasn’t tied to luxuries in life …
My mother sent me to school at age 5 … Sister Winifred took me like her little
boy. I graduated high school before my 16th birthday … and I was shipped off to
the Seminary. I had been an altar boy and one of my friends was a secular
priest. I got interested in philosophy because the Jesuits are famous for that,
for their arguments, like Socrates and St. Thomas Aquinas. I was really just
being carried along in the wave … I was ordained before I was 23. The cut-off
age was 24. I have a little frame of the Pope in Rome that gave me dispensation
to be ordained before age 24. I wasn’t really prepared emotionally, but I was
very pious, very religious.”
“I spent a summer in Mexico while still in
Seminary,” Machann continued; “I saw a lot of Mexico and can speak Spanish
well. It’s almost a second language.” Which is why he became head of the
Catholic Cuban Relief Program in Dallas.
“Bishop Tschoeper appointed me (to the Catholic
Cuban Relief Program),” Machann said. “He knew I spoke Spanish and had done
well at the University of Mexico. I was young and energetic. I think he felt I
would be the right person for that job. The Cuban Catholic Committee of Dallas
was not very representative of all the Cubans. There were different segments …
a pretty small group … It’s always difficult when you have such people who have
been thrust into a new country knowing no one and longing for their families.
So many of these Cubans were young or newly married. Many of them were from
quite wealthy families in Cuba and they got here and could barely scrape up
enough money to buy food. It was very sad for them.”
“As for the Odios,” Machann said, “I knew her
sisters. Sarita. I knew Annie. She was a teenager. They were accustomed to
living in a higher part of society. Castro made their country estate into a
prison. That’s what revolutions are about I guess. Castro was at their house a
lot. They had a wedding there for (Castro’s) sister.”
Gayle gave Machann Silvia Odio’s book of poetry,
written in Spanish, from which Machann translated to English and from which we
learn that Silvia was born in Cuba in 1937, but was sent to the United States
to go to school. She graduated from Sacred Heart High School in Philadelphia,
studied law at Villanova University, returned home and then left Cuba in
December, 1960.
According to Machann, “She was artistic,
semi-intellectual. The Spanish philosopher Ortega de Garcet [sic; probably
refers to José Ortega y Gasset] was her favorite … She was romantic about the
fate of Cubans coming to Dallas. Some of her ideas I even put in my sermons.
Because of the trauma of the revolution, going from wealth to poverty, you have
to remake yourself. Forge a new self.”
Catholic Cuban Relief
As for the Catholic Cuban Relief Program, Machann
said, “ … I would talk to businesses asking them to help and then there were
many socialites who helped bring clothing and food and such for us to
distribute to the refugees.”
Among the Dallas socialites who assisted Machann in
taking care of the Cuban refugees was Lucille Connell. “Lucille Connell! Yes!
She was one to remember… ,” said Machann. “There were a group of women who …
helped with the Cubans. Most of them weren’t even Catholic, but a few were. They
were more social than they were anything. I suppose because of the times it was
their way of being in a kind of club to help others. They were always in the
paper, Lucille Connell especially.”
And it was Connell, not Silvia Odio, who first
alerted authorities to Odio’s three visitors, including Lee Harvey Oswald, the
accused assassin.
In Lucille Connell’s testimony, she mentions Silvia
and Annie going to the movies. Gayle says that “Faith Leicht … said that while
they were at the movies, Silvia said she would be right back. They figured she
was going to the restroom. She didn’t show up after the movie was over. Faith
said that they later found Silvia wandering around Turtle Creek near General
Walker’s home. This was April 10th of 1963. Faith said that Annie called you to
see if you knew where Silvia was and then called Lucille Connell. They then
called the police. The police picked her up on Turtle Creek and took her to
Lucille Connell’s home.”
April 10th was the date someone took a shot at
General Walker while he was in his home office on Turtle Creek. To that story,
Machann said, “I don’t think that happened. I think that must be made up. I
don’t remember anyone calling me about Silvia … It seems like another
distraction. I don’t know what proof there is that he ever shot at General
Walker and just missed him.”
Besides Lucille Connell and Faith Leicht, another
Dallas socialite who assisted Machann in helping the Cuban refugees was Trudi
Castorr, wife of Colonel Castorr, who was involved in running guns to Cuba with
the husband of one of the bartenders at the Carousel Club, and Jack Ruby was
the bagman in the operation. But Machann doesn’t recall Trudi Castorr.
“Trudi Castorr? That doesn’t ring a bell, but I
didn’t know all of them,” Machann said. But he did know Sylvia Odio,
intimately. “Silvia was one of the Cubans from a wealthy family; in fact, I
heard that her dad was one of the wealthiest men in Cuba. Silvia immediately
took up with Lucille … She also liked attention and nice things. Her state of
mind, I don’t know how you would describe it, but she was prone to nervous
breakdowns. She was highly excitable, but also very strong. She told me she was
her father’s favorite child and I think she must have been very much like him.
Though she would faint and feign nervousness, she was strong and outgoing,
unlike her sister Sarita … Sarita went to the University of Dallas and was here
with their younger sister (Anne) who was in high school. She was engaged to a
Swedish man. I think they may have gotten married. Sarita was very quiet. She
never rocked the boat. She was the opposite of Silvia.”
The Visitors
Before the assassination Silvia wrote to her father
in a Cuban prison to tell him about the three visitors, told a Navy
psychiatrist—a friend of Connell—and told Father Machann. She told those three
close confidants, and Connell, about three strangers who visited her apartment
seeking assistance for their Cuban cause, including “Leon” Oswald, the accused
assassin of the president, who said that JFK should have been killed after the
Bay of Pigs.
When the strangers came, Silvia’s younger sister
Annie answered the door and the visitors at first asked for her other sister
Sarita. Silvia’s father was affiliated with JURE, a liberal anti-Castro group
led by Manolo Ray, while Silvia’s sister Sarita was a Dallas college student
involved in the DRE, the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil.
The visitors said they were “working in the
underground,” and they introduced themselves as “Leopoldo,” “Angelo,” and
“Leon” Oswald, an American. The next day, Leopoldo called Silvia and told her
Oswald was a former Marine and expert marksman who said the Cubans should have
assassinated President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs.
Machann said, “The one thing I did tell them was
that I remember that date because Silvia and Lucille were going to a celebrity
party with that actress (Janet Leigh) … and I felt slighted. I wondered why
they didn’t ask me to go. I would have liked to have gone. I just remembered
when she called and told me … I connected it to that party I didn’t go to … I
do know she told me the day she said they came was the day they were going to
the party.”
Gayle found a Tuesday, September 24, 1963, newspaper
report on the Galaxy Gala Ball that was scheduled for the following Friday,
September 27, setting the date of the visitors exactly.
Besides having knowledge about Odio’s visitors
before the assassination, and providing the date, Father Machann, the Dallas
newspapers also reported, introduced John Martino to a John Birch Society
audience in Dallas when he was promoting his book, I Was Castro’s Prisoner.
In that talk, with Sylvia Odio’s sister Sarita in the audience, Martino said he
knew her father Amador Odio in the Isle of Pines prison in Cuba. Odio was
incarcerated for participating in a plot to kill Fidel Castro that also
included Antonio Veciana, who also becomes entwined in the JFK assassination
story. Martino’s mention of her father caused Sarita to cry.
John Martino is well known to JFK researchers from
his role in the Bayo-Pawley raid to Cuba with William Pawley and other suspects
in the assassination. In the 1990s, while I interviewed Martino’s sister and
brother in Atlantic City, Anthony Summers was in Florida interviewing Martino’s
son and wife. Martino’s widow told Summers that her husband had expressed
foreknowledge of the assassination of the president on the morning of the
murder.
Machann however, says today that he didn’t know John
Martino and doesn’t recall introducing him to the Birch Society audience.
Machann said that with the Cubans, “Politics and
religion were separate. Whereas in Texas, politics is religion … I just
remember I think it was at a Mass we had for him, I gave a sermon, that was
later published in the Catholic Weekly, and it was, kind of my
interpretation of some of the things that Silvia had said about this
philosopher Ortega y Gasset, talking about consciousness, the change of
consciousness, I kinda played a little on that now they needed to think of
something positive for the future.”
Machann said that “I would go to different
businesses asking for help with the organization. I met the oil baron H. L.
Hunt that way … When I went to Mr. Hunt’s office he just talked about the
Communism problem and his Lifeline show. He never donated any money to us.”
The CIA Connection
While Machann assisted the Cubans and helped raise
donations for them, he worked closely with a Cuban, Mr. Joaquin “Papa” Insua.
“We worked together. Mr. Insua kept our books so he knew about all the money we
took in and gave out … I didn’t [hire him], I don’t know who did, but I would
think it was someone from the Diocese.”
It was Joaquin Insua who kept the records and
accounted for the money, the origins of which we now know was the CIA.
The Catholic Church’s support for the Cuban refugee
relief was sponsored, as least in part, by the Philadelphia-based CIA conduit
Catherwood Foundation.
[See: Catherwood Fund—http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/catherwood-fund.html and
Cuban Aid Relief—http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/cuban-aid-relief.html].
The CIA’s interest in refugees from communist
countries began with Nazi German general Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s intelligence
chief for the Eastern front, who recognized the value of the information
provided by the refugees fleeing the Soviets with Operation Wringer. The CIA
continued this operation with the International Rescue Committee, headed by Leo
Cherne, who Lee Harvey Oswald wrote to three times from the Soviet Union
seeking assistance in returning home.
As most Cubans are Catholic, it wasn’t surprising
for the Catholic Church to support the Cuban refugees, and the Church’s effort
was in turn supported by the CIA Catherwood Foundation, that provided money and
set up medical clinics in Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas, where large numbers
of Cubans settled.
New Orleans
Sometime shortly after the assassination, Machann
suddenly left the priesthood, disappeared from Dallas, and resurfaced in New
Orleans.
“I didn’t see them after the assassination. I moved
to New Orleans and never saw any of those people again,” Machann said.
As for leaving the priesthood, Machann says:
“There’s a saying, ‘El camino que no coriste.’ It means, ‘The road you didn’t
take.’ People do tend to think what would have happened had I stayed? I mean, I
see many of my classmates … what happened to them in their careers. You know. I
had a very good friend who was a counselor at the University of Dallas, another
was a chancellor to the Arch Diocese, at that time every place I had been
assigned, they couldn’t find anything to keep me challenged. I couldn’t find
anything to keep me adequately engaged. They kept me busy. I would do all the
things and turn the money over to them, but basically it was not something I
had really chosen. It didn’t seem to be what my potential was. You know? It
wasn’t my real vocation, whatever that is, my calling. It was my mother’s dream
… My mother didn’t like me leaving the priesthood. I didn’t really tell her I
was going. I just left. She didn’t even know where I was … I ended up
negotiating with the Diocese, very privately, that I could be admitted to
Loyola in New Orleans. They didn’t know what to do with me, and they … It’s not
that they didn’t want me, I just found the priesthood unfulfilling. Of course,
I was a bit scandalized by some of the things I saw, which of course you would
be when you get too close to people who are very sanctimonious, or at least
have all the trappings of religion … I held myself to a certain standard but I
didn’t see anyone else doing it. I think shock is what allowed me to make the
break. Otherwise, I may have not ever broken away. It was a critical time. My
personal crisis just happened to occur simultaneously as the Kennedy Crisis.”
When he left the priesthood, Machann had talked the
church leadership into allowing him to attend Tulane University, where he got a
degree in Sociology and Philosophy.
In New Orleans, unknown to Silvia, he visited her
uncle, Dr. Augustin Guitart, a college professor who attended Oswald’s court
hearing after the altercation with Carlos Bringuier and the DRE Cubans who
accosted him. Guitart was a friend of Bringuier.
Of his time there Machann said, “I knew the Odio
family well enough that when I went to New Orleans I would visit her uncle
(Augustin Guitart). He was a professor … He taught physics … It was nice
knowing him though because I was in a city where I knew no one and I would go
to his home and it felt like family.I spent a lot of time at the Guitart home …
He was a quiet man. He didn’t seem like an activist. He was a physics
professor, short in stature. He was a mature, serious pleasant man.”
After the Warren Commission learned about what
became known as “The Odio Incident,” an investigator visited Machann in New Orleans.
Besides Gayle Nix Jackson, Machann says there have only been two other
interviews with him. “One was an FBI agent that found me in New Orleans, the
other was a Frontline team that put me on camera and asked me questions. There
were only two official interviews. The FBI guy in New Orleans and Frontline.”
Machann’s associate in the Dallas Catholic Cuban
Relief program, Mr. Insua, had a daughter who served as their secretary and
taught school at the church, including the son of FBI agent Hosty, a parishioner.
And it was Hosty, Machann says, who tracked him down in New Orleans and
interviewed him there.
“That FBI guy’s name was James Hosty,” Machann now
says. “He was a former parishioner at Blessed Sacrament Church where my family
had attended church for a long time and he was the one who found me in New
Orleans and came to my boarding house where I was renting a room. He called me
downstairs and had a talk and I followed his direction, he asked me to make a
phone call which I did. But the only thing I could tell him is what I said. He
couldn’t get any more information, I wasn’t really involved. If they did send
him, or why they did send him, he didn’t ask me a lot of questions, like did
they ever confess to you. Even if I had heard confessions, it’s nobody’s
business, it’s sealed and locked away. Maybe they were just trying to find out
anything they could find. They like trying to catch someone. Like fishing.
They’ll try anything. I didn’t know anything. How soon the investigation got to
be a cover-up rather than an investigation, I don’t know. It became more a
distraction than an in-depth investigation … They talked to me … just because
it was a way to throw sand up in everybody’s face … they had to pretend they
were doing a completely thorough investigation.”
The problem here is that the official Warren
Commission records indicate that it was not Hosty, but Secret Service Inspector
Thomas Kelley, who questioned Machann in New Orleans about the Odio incident.
According to these documents, the investigator had Machann call Sylvia Odio on
the phone and ask her once again about her visitors. And according to the
official report, Odio then said one of the visitors was Rogelio Cisneros, but
she later denied saying that.
And then we don’t hear from Machann for many years.
When I tracked Machann’s family to Texas and talked to his sister on the phone,
she said her brother was in Thailand, where he moved to after leaving the
priesthood. I imagined he had continued his theological musings and became a
monk, but boy was I wrong.
Machann says that, “My first real job other than
being a priest or throwing a newspaper route was working at the Mental Health
Halfway house (in New Orleans).”
World Travel—Thailand
After leaving New Orleans, Machann says, “I worked
in Florida for a few years in the mental health field. I didn’t like the commercialization
of Florida. I lived in West Palm Beach where the rich people were … I traveled
throughout Russia with a travel group. It was a break in the Cold War. They
wouldn’t let you read just any book, so you had to be careful which books you
carried. I bought a Volkswagen in Hamburg in 1968 and drove all the way through
the Baltic States, the Czech Republic and the Coast of Spain. I was sleeping in
the car and eating just to stay alive. I ran out of money and had to come back
home.”
“When I was in New York, I was having a hard time
finding a job. I had put in applications to many overseas jobs and WHO just
happened to hire me. I moved to Thailand and lived there many years. In fact, I
had my son there. Yes, I have a son … Unfortunately, his mother died when he
was seven of dengue fever. He basically grew up as an orphan. He had no mother.
But he always was interested in philosophy as well. I don’t know how much of
who we are is genetic, environment or education, but he was mesmerized by Greek
books at a very young age … He did a few tours in Iraq and came back a
different man. He tried to find peace here, but eventually moved back to
Thailand. I’m going to see him soon.”
“I haven’t talked much about my low points in life,
because you don’t go through traumatic changes in your life without discussing
your philosophy, emotions, mental state and the like. My wife dying forced me
to come back to Texas. That’s when I also found that in life after 40, you
become unemployable in the states. My friends tried to get me jobs.
Incidentally, one was a medical director at UT Southwestern. He hated the
Kennedys. What came out was, he had a tremendous hatred for the Kennedys even
though he was from the north. I was kind of shocked. He was one of these New
England Harvard graduates, I don’t know. But I knew I didn’t want to work
there.”
“Truth is a difficult thing. I don’t know how to
explain it. Have you read a book called Killing Time?
[Paul
Feyerabend’s autobiography; see - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Time_(book)]
The man who wrote it is one of my favorite modern
philosophers … The world is changing politically and environmentally. It’s
harder to travel these days. When I came back to the states, I noticed how
different everything was. I knew I needed to be here to help my sister, but the
Thai government was making me jump through hoops, so it was necessary to come
back. They were making my life inconvenient. My son and his Thai wife were
living here with me for a while … While I’m thinking about it and it amazed me
that it happened. I used to come on home leave every 2 years from Thailand and
other places. I was back at the house on Oak Cliff Blvd. and the phone rang, no
one was there but me, I don’t know where everyone else was and it was Silvia
Odio. She called me from Miami. She was telling me about her new husband making
all these trips to Cuba and had other girlfriends and she was kinda complaining
… She said she was very, very crushed and upset. She said people were twisting
the truth, they don’t believe me. Of course, she was a very unusual person and
personality so she inspired a lot of interest … It was a short conversation. We
kind of cooled off then. We never spoke again.”
The Assassination
As for the assassination itself, Machann says: “I
thought there was a conspiracy. Though Oswald was very left-wing and
pro-Castro, none of it seemed to make sense. I still think there is something
more to the assassination but I have no idea what … After the Bay of Pigs,
there were many upset Cubans, they were patriots. They missed their homes. But
I don’t believe they were upset enough to kill the President.”
“I think it was something far out of my realm and my
hands. I think it was power at the very highest levels. That’s one thing I
learned about Greek history and civilization—trouble always began when the
power and wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few. That’s what’s
happened in the US now. Very few have wealth and power, elected or not. So, I’m
just afraid this was a power elite type of conspiracy. They have the confidence
of power. They can do all kinds of things.”
“At that time (Oswald) was doing crazy things … I
heard a radio interview he had once in New Orleans … The guy talked very
honestly like he was involved in these causes for a reason. He was convincing.
He didn’t sound stupid, he just sounded confused or misguided or mixed up.”
“The thing that really blows my mind is they really
put the story across that using that weapon, he fired those shots you have to
really twist everything around upside down and inside out to make that stand
up. Only power can do that … We still don’t know some of the secrets of the
Roman Emperors. You know, this is almost like a thorough kind of reductio ad absurdum as if there are other possible
explanations, other than a top down kind of conspiracy, deliberate type plan.
These things don’t just happen like this.”
“Let’s face it, there is room somewhere in the real
world that somethings are not what they seem to be and the story we get told
and we are led to believe aren’t always true. The American Dream is not all
real … But you can see how I was pulled into maybe as a distraction or
confusion to muddle the picture. Something like that, I really feel like I was
a spectator like everyone else … But you see, that’s like all the bloodhounds
following the false scent somewhere. And I think that was deliberate on
someone’s part, to put up all these distractions. Whereas the real culprits
escaped.”
“I didn’t see that (JFK) movie for a long time. When
I did see it, I thought it was pretty well made … but then … it finally made up
my mind, you know, I could never believe their story. I was convinced there was
a conspiracy.”
In Conclusion
“Well, that’s all. I hope that you can tie it up and
be satisfied that you’ve done what your conscience compelled you to do and call
it a new day and become a writer in your own right,” Machann concluded her
conversation with Gayle Nix Jackson.
Gayle noticed that when Machann talked about his
past he did so in the third person, as if he was another person, as he says in
his parting shot letter to Gayle:
“The way or path to come through a better and
stronger person while showing compassion for those you have spent so much of
your life trying to support is one you must find for yourself. There are
different paths. I have found my own, and my son has tried his own, but now we
share the same. The work it entails determines the degree it rewards … I expect
you may try and will find the path for yourself. In response to your questions
re my past … Fr. Machann is an earlier person, self-evolved into a changed
identity beginning 50 or more years ago. As I recall, he was an innocent
bystander with respect to that tragic event of the murder of an American
president. My own present memory, i.e., of Walter J. Machann Jr., can add
little to your specific requests for evidence in your work to expose facts and
a more truthful history of that crime. I can feel how personal this quest has
become. I don’t believe that a chapter on “Father Machann” would be meaningful,
or really pertinent to the core of your work. Whatever you decide I will remain
a friend and confidant in need as you wish.” Sincerely, Walter J. Machann Jr.
What Walter Machann remembers of Father Machann is
meaningful and pertinent to the core of our work, as he was innocently entwined
in the murder like a fly in a web, the intelligence network that was responsible
for the covert action that resulted in the murder of the President—the Dealey
Plaza Operation.
From what we now know, it is disturbing that Machann
doesn’t recall introducing John Martino at his Birch Society book promotion, or
Trudi Castorr, society wife of Colonel Castorr, involved in a Cuban gun-running
operation with Jack Ruby.
The discrepancies are disturbing. Was it FBI Agent
Hosty or Secret Service Inspector Kelley who questioned Machann in New Orleans?
And who were Leopoldo, Angelo and “Leon” Oswald, and was it the historic Oswald
or an imposter? Either way the whole scene stinks of conspiracy.
What Machann does tell us is significant. He was
apparently unaware of the CIA-backing of the exiled Cuban Aid Relief; and the
sudden, suspicious death of Joaquin Insua and the arson fire that destroyed
their records leaves open areas of new investigation.
Machann gives us dates, names and places that
provide additional leads that will allow us to find other missing pieces to the
Dealey Plaza puzzle.
William Kelly
William Kelly is the Research Coordinator for CAPA
(Citizens Against Political Assassinations, http://CAPA-US.org),
and is the author of the blog http://JFKCountercoup.blogspot.com
He can be reached at Billkelly3@gmail.com
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