Jack Alston Crichton
Jack Alston Crichton was born on a cotton plantation
in Crichton, Louisiana,
on 16th October, 1916. After leaving Byrd High School in Shreveport in
1933 he attended the Texas
A&M University. Fellow students included Harvey Bright and Earle Cabell.
He graduated with a degree in Petroleum Engineering in 1937.
During the Second World War he
served with the Office of
Strategic Services (OSS) in Europe. In 1946 Everette DeGolyer recruited
Crichton. According to Russ Baker:
"He started and ran a baffling array of companies, which tended to change
names frequently. These operated largely below the radar, and fronted for some
of North America's biggest names, including the Bronfmans (Seagram's liquor),
the Du Ponts, and the Kuhn-Loeb family of financiers."
In 1952 Jack Crichton joined a syndicate that
included Everette
DeGolyer and Clint
Murchison to use connections in the government of
General Francisco
Franco to acquire rare drilling rights in Spain.
The operation was handled by Delta Drilling, which was
owned by Joe Zeppa.
In August 1953 Crichton joined the Empire
Trust Company. He eventually became a vice-president
of the organization. According to Stephen
Birmingham, the author of Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York (1962)
the company had a network of associates that amounted to "something very
like a private CIA". The Empire Trust was also a major investor in the
defence contractor General
Dynamics.
In 1956 Crichton started up his own spy unit,
the 488th
Military Intelligence Detachment. Crichton served as
the unit's commander under Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, who was in
overall command of all Army Reserve units in East Texas. In an interview
Crichton claimed that there were "about a hundred men in that unit and
about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department."
In the 1950s Jack Crichton became involved with
several oil men who began negotiating with Fulgencio Batista,
the military dictator of Cuba.
A key figure in this was George
de Mohrenschildt, who at that time worked for a company
called Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company (CVOVT)
that had been established by William
Buckley Sr. Crichton later remarked that "I liked George.
He was a nice guy." It is argued by Russ Baker that
Crichton's Empire
Trust Company played a major role in the
financing of the Cuban venture.
On 30th November, 1956, The New York Timesreported
that: "The Cuban Stanolind Oil Company, an affiliate of the Standard Oil
Company (Indiana), has signed an agreement with the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting
Trust and Trans-Cuba Oil Company for the development of an an additional
3,000,000 acres in Cuba. This is in addition to the original agreement covering
12,000,000 acres." George
de Mohrenschildt later told Albert E. Jennerthat
CVOVT had managed to obtain leases covering nearly half of Cuba in the 1950s.
As Russ
Baker pointed out in Family of Secrets(2008):
"Though now almost completely forgotten, on many days in the mid-1950s, it
was one of the four or five most actively traded issues on the American Stock
Exchange."
On 1st January, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba.
The following day Fidel
Castro and his revolutionary army marched into
Havana. The
New York Times reported on 22nd November 1959,
that Castro's government had approved a law that would reduce the size of
claims for oil exploration and halt large-scale explorations by private
companies. These claims were now limited to 20,000 acres. This was a major
problem for the Cuban-Venezuelan
Oil Voting Trust Company that had signed an agreement
with Fulgencio
Batista for 15,000,000 acres.
Jack Crichton also had a close association
with George
H. W. Bush. According to Fabian
Escalante (The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba,
1959-62), in 1959, Crichton and Bush raised funds for the
CIA's Operation
40.
Originally it was set up to organize sabotage operations against Fidel
Castro and his Cuban government. However, it evolved
into a team of assassins. One member, Frank Sturgis,
claimed: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders,
naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties
of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some
of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents... We were
concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time."
The failure to assassinate or overthrow Fidel
Castro caused tremendous problems for the Cuban-Venezuelan
Oil Voting Trust Company and other foreign oil companies that
had already invested more than $30 million looking for oil in Cuba. In December
1960, CVOVT was de-listed from the American
Stock Exchange.
Critchton was appointed head of the intelligence
component of the Dallas
Civil Defence. The conservative radio commentator
Paul Harvey wrote in his syndicated column in September 1960: "The
Communists, since 1917, have sold Communism to more people than have been told
about Christ after 2,000 years." He urged his readers to support the
"counter-attack that had been mounted in Dallas."
In 1961 Crichton joined forces with other right-wing
figures in Dallas to establish a
program called "Know Your Enemy". This was to combat communist
influence that "was undermining the American way of life". The
following year Crichton opened an underground command post under the patio of
the Dallas Health and Science Museum that
was intended for "continuity-of-government" operations during a
communist attack.
In 1963 Crichton was nominated by the Republican
Party for the post of Governor
of Texas. He joined forces with George H. W.
Bush,
who was the nominee for the U.S.
Senate. As Crichton later recalled, he and Bush
"spoke from the same podiums" that year. However, Crichton was
defeated by John
Connally and he later wrote a book about his failed
attempt to become governor, The Republican-Democrat Political Campaigns: In
Texas in 1964.
In November 1963 Crichton was involved in the
arrangements of the visit that President John
F. Kennedy made to Dallas. His close friend, Deputy
Police Chief George L. Lumpkin, and a fellow member of the the 488th Military
Intelligence Detachment, drove the pilot car of Kennedy's
motorcade. Also in the car was Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander
of all Army Reserve units in East Texas. The pilot car stopped briefly in front
of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lumpkin spoke to a policeman
controlling traffic at the corner of Houston and Elm.'
In the Warren
Commission Report it stated that Crichton arranged
for a member of the local Russian community, Ilya Mamantov, to
work for the Dallas Police Department as a translator for Russian-born Marina Oswaldshortly
after the assassination of John
F. Kennedy. Crichton's volunteer translated for Oswald during
her initial questioning by the Dallas authorities in the hours immediately
after her husband Lee Harvey
Oswald had been arrested. According to Russ Baker,
the author of Family of Secrets (2009),
there "were far from literal translations of her Russian words and had the
effect of implicating her husband in Kennedy's death."
Crichton was president of Nafco Oil and Gas. He also
owned a company called Dorchester Gas Producing. A fellow director was David Harold
Byrd who
along with Clint
Murchison, Haroldson L. Hunt and Sid
Richardson, was part of the Big
Oil group
in Dallas. Barr
McClellan (Blood, Money & Power)
argues that "Big Oil would be during the fifties and into the sixties what
the OPEC oil cartel was to the United States in the seventies and beyond".
One of the main concerns of this group was the preservation of the oil
depletion allowance.
Jack Crichton who was President of the Dallas
Petroleum Engineers Club, also served as a Director to Florida Gas
Company, Clark
Oil and Refining, Whitehall Corporation,
Transco Energy and the Consolidated Development Corporation.
Primary Sources
Jack Crichton is a wealthy Dallas oilman who
volunteered his services to the Dallas Police Department as a translator for
Russian-born Marina Oswald shortly after the assassination. Jack Crichton
translated for Marina during her initial questioning by the Dallas authorities
in the crucial hours immediately after her husband Lee had been arrested. While
Crichton's role as interpreter on that day is mentioned in at least two Warren
Commission documents, the exact details of how he became involved in assisting
the Dallas police are unclear. Interestingly, Jack Crichton was, by his own
admission, a former Army Intelligence operative.
Crichton was also a prominent Dallas oilman whose
conservative political activities were well-known throughout Dallas. Crichton
had in fact once been a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Texas. At the present
time, Crichton is still active in various business activities in the Dallas
area.
Mr. MAMANTOV. No; we got to Seminole--one more place
I went from there. No; two more places--I went from Seminole to Snyder, Tex.,
and from Snyder, Tex., I went for 3 weeks to Forest, Miss., and at that time I
quit the company and got my job with Sun Oil Co. here in Dallas.
Mr. JENNER With Sun?
Mr. MAMANTOV. Right; and purchased our home at 6911
East Mockingbird in October, the 1st of October 1955.
Mr. JENNER. Now, what is your facility in the
command of the Russian language, with particular reference to--did you or have
you done any teaching of the language?
Mr. MAMANTOV. Yes; I am teaching since 1960 here in
the Dallas area. I taught scientific research to some men, of a research
personnel in 1960-1961. And, I taught in the Austin College in Sherman from--it
was the fall of, yes, it was fall of 1961 and 1962 No--1962 and 1963. Now, I am
teaching at SMU or Dallas College, to be specific, of SMU.
Mr. JENNER. Have you done any interpreting or
translating?
Mr. MAMANTOV. Yes, sir; for the American Geophysical
Union, quite extensively in 1959, 1960, and 1961, and I think--yes--1961 I
finished.
Mr. JENNER. And have you also done any interpreting
or translating for any law enforcement agencies?
Mr. MAMANTOV. Here in the States?
Mr. JENNER. Yes.
Mr. MAMANTOV. Let me think a little--no, I don't
remember. I have translated minor papers, you see, like Soviet Union's marriage
certificates and birth certificates for our local courts connected with
divorces, and I might be of a help to a group of Latvians, people here in town,
when they received their citizenship, so much, but this is the first time for
the police department.
Mr. JENNER. All right. I'll get to that. Have you
ever been called upon by either any agency of the Government of the United
States or of the State of Texas or the City of Dallas to do any interpreting or
translating?
Mr. MAMANTOV. Yes, I was called by the police force
for the City of Dallas around 5 o'clock, November 22.
Mr. JENNER. What year?
Mr. MAMANTOV. Of 1955, on 2 or 3 minutes' notice.
Mr. JENNER. It was 1955 or 1963?
Mr. MAMANTOV. Excuse me, 1963.
Mr. JENNER. I got from what you have said, then, you
had no prior notice?
Mr. MAMANTOV. No; sir.
Mr. JENNER. You were called by some official of the
city police department?
Mr. MAMANTOV. Yes; I was called by Lt. Lumpkin. I
think he's Lieutenant--they call him Chief.
Mr. JENNER. And you repaired then to the Dallas City
Police Station?
Mr. MAMANTOV. Excuse me, I was called by somebody
else, a couple of minutes ahead of Lumpkin--is it important?
Mr. JENNER. I don't know--you might state what it
is.
Mr. MAMANTOV. All right. I was called by Mr. Jack
Chrichton, C-h-r-i-c-h-t-o-n (spelling)--I don't know how to spell his name
right now, but I guess it is that, but I can find out in a day or two.
Mr. JENNER. And who is he?
Mr. MAMANTOV. He is a petroleum independent
operator, and if I'm not mistaken, he is connected with the Army Reserve,
Intelligence Service. And, he asked me if I would translate for the police
department and then immediately Mr. Lumpkin called me.
These were intelligence operatives seeking out
Russian speakers. Ilya Mamantov knew George Bush and spoke Russian. A geologist
with Sun Oil, he received a call five hours after the assassination from Jack
Crichton, who was at that time the president of Nafco Oil and Gas, Inc. and a
former Military Intelligence officer then attached to Army Reserve
Intelligence. Crichton was also director of Dorchester Gas Producing Co. with
D.H. Byrd, who owned the Texas School Book Depository building and was a close
friend of Lyndon Johnson.
In late November 1959, James Noel, CIA station chief
in Havana, met with his closest collaborator to analyze the evolution of the
political situation in Cuba. He had received instructions from Colonel King to
prepare this analysis. His years with the Agency had taught him that when his
boss personally asked for a report, big issues were involved and since nobody
could swim against the current, he took great care. Noel believed that there
were still individuals in the Cuban government that could be won over to the
cause of the United States; that everything had not ended with the capture of
Huber Matos and his associates; and that men such as Sori Marin had definite
influence. However, he knew he should be cautious when offering his opinions,
since an error could cost him his career. Therefore he adopted a dual position,
giving King the report that he wanted to hear, while at the same time - with
his pawns - continuing to play the game. The document that the CIA specialists drafted
concluded: "Fidel Castro, under the influence of his closest
collaborators, particularly his brother Raul and Che Guevara, has been
converted to communism. Cuba is preparing to export its revolution to other
countries of the hemisphere and spread the war against capitalism."
With these words, they pronounced a death sentence
on the Cuban Revolution. Days later, on December 11, Colonel King wrote a
confidential memorandum to the head of the CIA which affirmed that in Cuba
there existed a "far-left dictatorship, which if allowed to remain will
encourage similar actions against U.S. holdings in other Latin American
countries."
King recommended various actions to solve the Cuban
problem, one of which was to consider the elimination of Fidel Castro. He
affirmed that none of the other Cuban leaders "have the same mesmeric
appeal to the masses. Many informed people believe that the disappearance of
Fidel would greatly accelerate the fall of the present government ."
CIA Director Allen Dulles passed on King's
memorandum to the NSC a few days later, and it approved the suggestion to form
a working group in the Agency which, within a short period of time, could come
up with "alternative solutions to the Cuban problem." Thus
"Operation 40" was born, taking its name from that of the Special
Group formed by the NSC to follow the Cuban case. The group was presided over by
Richard Nixon and included Admiral Arleigh Burke, Livingston Merchant of the
State Department, National Security Adviser Gordon Gray, and Allen Dulles of
the CIA.
Tracy Barnes functioned as head of the Cuban Task
Force. He called a meeting on January 18, 1960, in his office in Quarters Eyes,
near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which the navy had lent while new
buildings were being constructed in Langley. Those who gathered there included
the eccentric Howard Hunt, future head of the Watergate team and a writer of
crime novels; the egocentric Frank Bender, a friend of Trujillo; Jack
Esterline, who had come straight from Venezuela where he directed a CIA group;
psychological warfare expert David A. Phillips, and others.
The team responsible for the plans to overthrow the
government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was reconstituted, and in the
minds of all its members this would be a rerun of the same plan. Barnes talked
at length of the goals to be achieved. He explained that Vice-President Richard
Nixon was the Cuban "case officer," and had assembled an important
group of businessmen headed by George Bush [Snr.] and Jack Crichton, both Texas
oilmen, to gather the necessary funds for the operation. Nixon was a protégé of
Bush's father Preston, who in 1946 had supported Nixon's bid for congress. In
fact, Preston Bush was the campaign strategist who brought Eisenhower and Nixon
to the presidency of the United States. With such patrons, Barnes was certain
that failure was impossible.
They set to work immediately. They had to come up
with a plan to destabilize the Cuban government and extinguish the expectations
of social justice which had been ignited in the hemisphere. They created
several teams with specific goals and concrete short- and medium-term plans.
They assumed that the Cuban Revolution could not resist a combined assault of
psychological warfare, diplomatic and economic pressures and clandestine
activity, all of this backed up by a political structure made up of men in
exile. When the time came, these men would declare themselves a rebel
government which the United States and its allies could publicly recognize and
assist.
There were several problems, however. The main one
was the deeply rooted support for Fidel Castro among the Cuban population.
Therefore, from the very beginning, the physical elimination of the Cuban
leader was considered one of the CIA's highest priorities.
There was also the fact that Cuba, being an island,
had no borders from which invasions could be organized and directed. The task
force analyzed this problem in detail, and finally proposed a strategy of
general uprising, which consisted in stirring up the whole Cuban population in
order to legitimize a military intervention. Two key elements in the plan were
the organization of a "responsible opposition in exile" and the
infiltration of several dozen agents into the island, properly trained to
deliver the mortal blow.
Byrd prepared well for the trip: Temco, Inc. was an
aircraft company founded by D.H. Byrd and which later merged with his friend
James Ling's electronics company (1960), and aircraft manufacturer Chance
Vought Corporation (1961) to form Ling-Temco-Vought (LTV). Byrd became a
director of LTV and bought, along with Ling, 132,000 shares of LTV in November
1963. Byrd then left the country to go on his two-month safari in central
Africa. He returned in January to find his good friend Lyndon Johnson president
of the United States, his building famous, and a large defense contract awarded
to LTV to build fighter planes - to be paid for out of the 1965 budget which
had not yet been approved by Congress.
Mac Wallace, who received a five-year suspended
sentence in the shooting death of John Douglas Kiner in Austin on October 22,
1951, went to work for Temco, Inc. of Garland, Texas five months after his
trial. He remained in that position until February 1961, four months before
Henry Marshall's mysterious death on June 3, 1961, when he transferred to the
Anaheim, California offices of LTV.
The transfer required a background check by the
Navy. "The most intriguing part of the Wallace case was how a convicted
murderer was able to get a job with defense contractors. Better yet, how was he
able to get a security clearance? Clinton Peoples [the Texas Ranger Captain who
investigated the Marshall and Kiner murders] reported that when the original
security clearance was granted, he asked the Naval intelligence officer
handling the case how such a person could get the clearance. 'Politics,' the
man replied. When Peoples asked who would have that much power, the simple answer
was, `the vice president,' who at the time was Lyndon Johnson. Years later,
after the story broke [of Billie Sol Estes' March 20, 1984 testimony that
implicated Lyndon Johnson, Malcom Wallace, and Clifton Carter in the death of
Henry Marshall], that investigator could not recall the conversation with
Peoples but he did say no one forced him to write a favorable report. He also
added that he wasn't the one that made the decision to grant the clearance. The
whole matter might have been solved with a peek at that original report but
unfortunately, when the files were checked, that particular report was
suspiciously missing. It has never been seen since."
Wallace was transferred and given clearance in
February 1961. "In January 1961, the very month Johnson was sworn in as
vice president, and the month Henry Marshall was in Dallas discussing how to
combat Estes-like scams, Billie Sol Estes learned through his contacts that the
USDA was investigating the allotment scheme and that Henry Marshall might end
up testifying. The situation was supposedly discussed by Estes, Johnson, and
Carter in the backyard of LBJ's Washington home. Johnson was, according to
Estes, alarmed that if Marshall started talking it might result in an
investigation that would implicate the vice president. At first it was decided
to have Marshall transferred to Washington, but when told Marshall had already
refused such a relocation, LBJ, according to Estes, said simply, 'Then we'll
have to get rid of him.'"
According to Craig Zirbel, author of The Texas
Connection, in May 1962, "...Johnson flew to Dallas aboard a military jet
to privately meet with Estes and his lawyers on a plane parked away from the
terminal.... This incident would probably have remained secret except that
LBJ's plane suffered a mishap in landing at Dallas. When investigative
reporters attempted to obtain the tower records for the flight mishap the
records were "sealed by government order."
Still more LTV intrigues were revealed by Peter Dale
Scott: "A fellow-director of [Jack Alston] Crichton's firm of Dorchester
Gas Producing was D.H. Byrd, an oil associate of Sid Richardson and Clint
Murchison, and the LTV director who teamed up with James Ling to buy 132,000
shares of LTV in November 1963. While waiting to be sworn in as President in
Dallas on November 22, Johnson spoke by telephone with J.W. Bullion, a member
of the Dallas law firm (Thompson, Wright, Knight, and Simmons) which had the
legal account for Dorchester Gas Producing and was represented on its board.
The senior partner of the law firm, Dwight L. Simmons, had until 1960 sat on
the board of Chance Vought Aircraft, a predecessor of Ling-Temco-Vought. One
week after the assassination, Johnson named Bullion, who has been described as
his `business friend and lawyer,' to be one of the two trustees handling the
affairs of the former LBJ Co. while its owner was President."
Five hours after the assassination, Ilya Mamantov,
who had never met Oswald, received a phone call from Jack Crichton asking him
to serve as "interpreter" for the first interrogation of Marina.
Crichton was in 1963 the president of Nafco Oil & Gas, Inc., and a former
Military Intelligence officer still connected with Army Reserve Intelligence. According
to information uncovered by the Garrison investigation, Crichton had been among
a small group of Army Intelligence officials who met with H. L. Hunt soon after
the assassination.
Now it was Ilya Mamantov who, at the request of this
Army Intelligence Reserve officer, went to the first post-assassination session
with Marina. Also present was Marina's protector since April 1963, Ruth Paine.
Marnantov was, curiously, the one member of the Russian community besides de
Mohrenschildt who knew the allegedly ultra liberal Paine.
No transcript exists of Marina's first questioning
by Mamantov, Paine, and the Dallas police. Her second interpreter on Sunday,
November 24, was Peter Gregory. Right after the Oswalds' return from the USSR,
Gregory, a petroleum engineer and Russian-language instructor, had been the
first member of the Dallas-Fort Worth expatriate community whom Oswald met.
Oswald had listed Gregory as a reference in obtaining his first job in the
region, at Leslie Welding. Gregory's son Paul became the couple's first friend,
having long discussions with Lee on political philosophy. But Peter Gregory had
not seen Oswald since October 1962. Then he and his Secret Service agent friend
Mike Howard came to spend the entire day of Oswald's death with Marina and
Oswald's mother, Marguerite-under circumstances that were never adequately
explained.
Researcher Peter Dale Scott, who studied the
transcripts of Gregory's several translations with Marina, noticed numerous
inconsistencies. Six days after the assassination, in the presence of Gregory
and Russian-speaking Secret Serviceman Lee Gopadze, Marina contradicted her
testimony of three earlier interviews. At first she had said she could not
describe Lee's rifle, nor had she ever seen a gun with a telescopic sight.
Then, on November 28, Marina allowed that she could recognize the rifle without
question and admitted taking the famous photograph of Oswald holding the
weapon, including the scope that she had allegedly never seen. On December 3,
Marina "revealed" that her late husband had also fired at General
Walker-an allegation that the Munich newspaper had published a week earlier.
The Oswald women were sequestered at the time in an
Arlington, Texas, motel, the Inn of the Six Flags. Its manager, James Herbert
Martin, soon became Marina's business agent, even temporarily lodging her in
his home early in 1964. It was Martin who negotiated the sale of the photograph
of Oswald posing with his rifle and two left-wing newspapers, which appeared on
the cover of Life magazine on February 21, 1964.
All of this convinced Scott, and other researchers,
that Marina-barely able to speak English, terrified of being deported back to
the LSSSR - was manipulated by her "handlers" to incriminate Oswald
in the proper manner.
In 1959, a young officer and businessman from Texas
received directions to cooperate in funding the nascent anti-Castro groups that
the CIA decided to create, but it wasn't until 1960 that he was assigned a more
specific and overt mission: to guarantee the security of the process of
recruiting Cubans to form an invasion brigade, a key aspect within the grand
CIA operation to destroy the Cuban Revolution.
The CIA Texan quickly took a liking to the Cuban
assigned to him for his new mission. The system of work, although intense, was
simple. Féliz Rodríguez Mendigutía, "El Gato," would propose a
candidate to him, who would then be checked out, both in the Agency and among
the Miami groups, and finally, the Texan would give the go-ahead.
In that period, Félix Rodríguez already knew quite a
few Cubans, like Jorge Mas Canosa (subsequently the leader of various
counterrevolutionary organizations and then president of the Cuban-American
National Foundation) and had confirmed his loyalty to "the cause" and
to the Americans. For that reason he was among the first to be proposed. He
passed through the process satisfactorily, and in a meeting in the city of
Miami, which the Texan liked to make as formal as possible, Jorge Mas Canosa
officially became an agent of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Jorge Mas didn't know how to thank Félix for what he
had done for him. From that moment he was constantly grateful to him and, at
the same time, obedient to his every petition.
But Jorge Mas was far from imagining the
significance of this recruitment on the rest of his life. The significance
rested on the fact that that Texan officer who undertook his recruitment
process, approved it and then notified him at that meeting, was none other than
George Herbert Walker Bush, the same man who, later, between 1989 and 1992, was
the 41st president of the United States.
Various sources coincide on the foregoing. Paul
Kangas, a Californian private investigator, published an article containing
part of his investigations in The Realist in 1990, in which he
affirms that a newly discovered FBI document places Bush as working with the
now famous CIA agent Félix Rodríguez on the recruitment of ultra-right wing
exiled Cubans for the invasion of Cuba.
For his part, in his "Report on a Censored
Project," Dr. Carl Jensen of Sonoma State College states: "There is a
record in the files of Rodríguez and others involved in the Bay of Pigs
invasion, which expounds the role of Bush: the truth is that Bush was a senior
CIA official before working with Félix Rodríguez on the invasion of Cuba."
But Kangas is more precise in his quoted article,
when he states:
"Traveling from Houston to Miami on a weekly
basis, Bush, with Félix Rodríguez, spent 1960 and 1961 recruiting Cubans in
Miami for the invasion."
Other publications that have referred to the theme
are The Nation magazine, whose August 13, 1988 edition reveals the
finding of "a memorandum in that context addressed to FBI chief J. Edward
Hoover and signed November 1963, which reads: Mr. George Bush of the CIA;"
or the Common Cause magazine that, on March 4, 1990, affirmed: "The CIA
put millionaire and agent George Bush in charge of recruiting exiled Cubans for
the CIA?s invading army; Bush was working with another Texan oil magnate, Jack
Crichton, who helped him in terms of the invasion."
Without knowing it, Jorge Mas had become part of
something far more complex than the planned mercenary invasion. The recent
recruited CIA agent became one of the participants in what was originally known
as Operation 40.
Operation 40 was the first plan of covert operations
generated by the CIA to destroy the Cuban Revolution and was drawn up in 1959
on the orders of the administration of President Ike Eisenhower.
In his book Cuba, the CIA's Secret War,
Divisional General (ret) Fabián Escalante Font, former head of the Cuban
Counterintelligence Services, explained what occurred in the early 1960.
"A few days later (end of 1959), Allen Dulles,
chief of the CIA, presented to the King (Colonel, chief of the Western
Hemisphere Division of the CIA) memorandum to the National Security Council,
which approved the suggestion of forming a working group within the agency
which, in the short term, would provide alternative solutions to the Cuban
problem."
The group, Escalante Font relates, was composed of
Tracy Barnes as head, and officials Howard Hunt, Frank Bender, Jack Engler and
David Atlee Phillips, among others. Those present had one common
characteristic: all of them had participated in the fall of the Jacobo Arbenz
government in Guatemala.
General Escalante recounts in his book that, during
the first meeting, Barnes spoke at length on the objectives to be achieved. He
explained that Vice President Richard Nixon was the Cuban "case
officer" and had met with an important group of businessmen headed by
George Bush and Jack Crichton, both Texas oil magnates, to collect the necessary
funding for the operation.
If Poppy Bush was busy on November 22, 1963, so was
his friend Jack Crichton. Bush's fellow GOP candidate was a key figure in a web
of military intelligence figures with deep connections to the Dallas Police
Department and, as previously noted, to the pilot car of JFK's motorcade.
Crichton came back into the picture within hours of
Kennedy's death and the subsequent arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, when a
peculiar cordon sanitaire went up around Marina Oswald. The first to
her side was Republican activist and precinct chairman Ilya Mamantov, a
vociferous anti-Communist who frequently lectured in Dallas on the dangers of
the Red menace. When investigators arrived, Mamantov stepped in as interpreter
and embellished Marina's comments to establish in no uncertain terms that the
"leftist" Lee Harvey Oswald had been the gunman-the lone gunman-who
killed the president.
It is interesting of course that the Dallas police
would let an outsider - in particular, a right-wing Russian emigre-handle the delicate
interpreting task. Asked by the Warren Commission how this happened, Mamantov
said that he had received a phone call from Deputy Police Chief George Lumpkin.
After a moment's thought, Mamantov then remembered that just preceding
Lumpkin's call he had heard from Jack Crichton. It was Crichton who had put the
Dallas Police Department together with Mamantov and ensured his place at Marina
Oswald's side at this crucial moment.
Despite this revelation, Crichton almost completely
escaped scrutiny. The Warren Commission never interviewed him. Yet, as much as
anyone, Crichton embodied a confluence of interests within the
oil-intelligence-military nexus. And he was closely connected to Poppy in their
mutual efforts to advance the then-small Texas Republican Party, culminating in
their acceptance of the two top positions on the state's Republican ticket in
1964.
During World War II, Crichton had served in the
Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA. Postwar, he began
working for the company of petroleum czar Everette DeGolyer and was soon
connected in petromilitary circles at the highest levels. A review of hundreds
of corporate documents and newspaper articles shows that when Crichton left
DeGolyer's firm in the early fifties he became involved in an almost
incomprehensible web of companies with overlapping boards and ties to DeGolyer.
Many of them were backed by some of North America's most powerful families,
including the Du Ponts of Delaware and the Bronfmans, owners of the liquor
giant Seagram.
Crichton was so plugged into the Dallas power
structure that one of his company directors was Clint Murchison Sr., king of
the oil depletion allowance, and another was D. Harold Byrd, owner of the Texas
School Book Depository building.
A typical example of this corporate cronyism came in
1952, when Crichton was part of a syndicate - including Murchison, DeGolyer,
and the Du Ponts - that used connections in the fascist Franco regime to
acquire rare drilling rights in Spain. The operation was handled by Delta
Drilling, which was owned by Joe Zeppa of Tyler, Texas - the man who
transported Poppy Bush from Tyler to Dallas on November 22, 1963.
It was in 1956 that the bayou-bred Crichton started
up his own spy unit, the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment. He would serve
as the intelligence unit's only commander through November 22, 1963, continuing
until he retired from the 488th in 1967, at which time he was awarded the
Legion of Merit and cited for "exceptionally outstanding service."
(9) The Dallas Morning News (5th January 2008)
John Alston "Jack" Crichton passed away at
his home in Dallas on December 10, surrounded by his loving family.
He is survived by his wife, Marilyn Crichton, and
daughter Catherine Morris and her husband Craig, and daughter Anne Crews and
her husband Kyle. Jack is also survived by his sister Frances "Dinks"
Atkinson and his granddaughter, Cassie Morris and his grandson, John Morris. In
addition to his parents, he was predeceased by his brother, Joe Crichton.
Jack graduated from Byrd High School in Shreveport
in 1933, from whence he boarded a train to College Station Texas to begin a
long relationship with his beloved Texas A&M University. After graduating
with honors, (BS Petroleum Engineering), in 1937 from A&M, -- while also earning
athletic letters in Tennis, Basketball and Cross Country Track -- Jack
subsequently earned a Master of Science degree from MIT, where he was a member
of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity.
Jack proudly served his country during the Second
World War in the U.S. Army as Special Agent OSS in Europe, where he was awarded
the Bronze Star, Five Battle Stars and numerous other Citations of Merit. He
was a retired Colonel in the US Army Reserves.
Jack's career as an international petroleum
consultant, engineer, geologist, oil and gas executive, explorer and writer and
his love for travel led him to work in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya, United Arab
Emirates, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the Arctic, Alaska, Ceylon,
Wales, Canada, Somalia, Egypt, Columbia, Vietnam and Brazil.
He served as President of several companies,
including Yemen Development Corporation, Dorchester Gas Corporation and Arabian
American Development Company. He served as a Director to Florida Gas Company,
Clark Oil and Refining, Whitehall Corporation. Transco Energy, Dorchester Gas
Corp and Consolidated Development Corporation. He was Co-Author of the
"Dynamic Petroleum Industry", published by University of Oklahoma
Press. In 1964 he served his Republican Party of Texas as Candidate for Governor.
Jack was a Past President of the Dallas Petroleum Engineers Club. He served his
Alma Mater as President of the Association of Former Students of Texas A&M,
President of the Lettermen's Association and Chairman of the A&M
Development Foundation.
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