Major Ralph P. Ganis, USAF (Ret) on The Skorzeny Papers and the Dallas Network

Major Ralph P. Ganis, USAF (Ret).

THE SKORZENY PAPERS - EVIDENCE FOR THE PLOT TO KILL JFK - (Skyhorse, 2018) 

Radio Interview Transcript

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvW_P2vZ-ck

Seattle – LA – NBC News Talk – House of Mystery

I was in Dallas, Texas this past weekend, for the Lancer Conference, which is a gathering of JFK historians and enthusiasts.  I was invited in as a speaker about my book The Skorzeny Papers Evidence for the Plot to Kill JFK.

I am not a JFK historian, I am a retired Air Force officer, so for me it was a real honor to be among people who have been studying this subject matter for some time. I met a number of incredibly intelligence academic historians, scholars and lay people who were just interested. I was well received by everyone there. It was very informative. I had a great time, they are great people.

When I got there very few people knew who I was but when I left I was quite the center of attention, on Saturday there were a number of lectures, but there were so many people who wanted to engage in sidebar discussions with historians who wanted to discuss my findings or ask questions as to how their particular research might fit in with what I’ve done.

I would have never entered this genre of history except for the fact I found the answer to what happened. And that’s what the book is about. When I gave my lecture at the JFK Conference, I told everybody in the audience I’m not here to convince them, I’m there to tell them what convinced me when I discovered the answer in the papers that I obtained at auction about six years ago –The Skorzeny Papers.

Otto Skorzeny was Hitler’s top commando in World War II, and he did a number of very famous military operations during the war. So my interest was in Skorzeny. And this was six years ago.

He surrendered to American forces in 1945 and was put on trial during the Nuremberg trails but was found not guilty. Two years later he surfaced in Spain; in 1950 Skorzeny surfaced in Spain and then lived his life there. He died 1975. But the fact of the matter is everyone knew what he did during the war, and then there was this great enigma as to what he did after the war.

So when his papers came up for sale six years ago at auction, out of Spain, they came right out of Madrid, I won the auction. I purchased the papers. My intention was to write a book about Skorzeny and solve the post war enigma of his life. To determine whether or not he was involved in the so-called ODESSA organization – the Secret – Rats,…. or just what was going on with him.

Well when I got the papers, I got the early shock, initially almost within an hour or two after getting the papers, I realized, and I think it was because of my background in intelligence, that he was an asset of the CIA. It was very clear and is documented in the papers.

So from there it expanded into research into these papers and just what this might mean as far as his relationship, his clandestine relationship with our government.

After years…..It took me three years of research, 16 hours a day. I stopped everything else I was doing. It was pretty evident, in the papers, and these are mostly business papers, and that’s what you need to understand, mostly business papers and some correspondence with his wife Ilsa.

These papers reveal clearly that the businesses that pertained to were the cover organizations that the CIA and other intelligence organizations gave him as a cover for his covert activities, which included assassinations. This is during the earliest days of the Cold War – from 1948 on…..I could go into detail if you like….But from 1948 on Skorzeny was running an assassination capability during the Cold War for the liquidation of double-agents and Soviet threats to Operation Paperclip. And by the end of the 1950s, into the early 1960s that capability was expanded into something that was called an Executive Action capability which targets foreign leaders for liquidation. It was THAT capability that was turned against the president on November 22, 1963.

So Kennedy was killed by an in-house US capability that was managed by Otto Skorzeny. Now I know I must say that when a lot of people jump to the conclusion that Nazis killed the President, and that’s the furthest from the truth. Nazis did not kill Kennedy.

The documents that I initially found – are in the Papers - and they will all be made public someday. All the papers I have – the Skorzeny Papers, will be made public - I hope to get them archived at a professional archival institution – like Duke, where the public can view what I’m talking about right now, and make up their own minds.

Skorzeny helped get the scientists initially. I interviewed  men who were involved with Skorzeny at the time. I interviewed twelve people who knew Skorzeny. And all twelve said that he was not a Nazi, just a good military officer. All twelve said that. When the war was over, he let it go. He was a professional soldier. All twelve men I interviewed to said that.

And also, - the Isralie also used Skorzeny by their own admission. I have personally interviewed twice - the man who recruited Skorzeny, this was the guy who captured Eichmann – so I asked him what was the difference?  And he said the difference was that Eichmann was a Nazi and Skorzeny was a soldier.

So he was a highly respected guy among the people who carry out this kind of work. And that was not known to the public, it was still a secret until I bought these papers. I was the first person to ever look at these papers and evaluate them – they came straight from the family. So it was a great secret.

As a matter of fact, the way you should look at this is if you have the CIA on one side and Otto Skorzeny on the other, well they gave Skorzeny the operational cover, which were the businesses that he was using. So when I bought these papers I bought the bridge, I bought the cut-outs. With those papers it allowed me to see those relationships between the CIA and US government and Otto Skorzeny.

They knew they had Otto Skorzeny’s papers. They were promoting the history – It was an historic auction. It is a very reputable historic Auction House. It was a public auction. It was on line I mean I was just one of many bidders, but I’d prefer not disclose the exact amount, but hey, it was a lot, in the tens of thousands of dollars for these papers.

Now I bought them completely unaware they would contain the answers to Dallas. And you must understand this is definitive. These papers, these businesses that are in these papers are Dallas businesses and Dallas personalities. So the earlist businesses association between Otto Skorzeny and these businesses that were intelligence and clandestine cover – starting in 1950-51, were coming out of Dallas. So when the President came into Dallas in 1963 there were businesses that were performing operational cover for an intelligence and clandestine network that included assassinations, years before he ever got there.

He was channeled into an environment that was already an operational environment.

How would the CIA let these get out? And that’s an important question. And here’s the answer. This is the business world - the world that I come from, it is quite simple actually. The CIA didn’t know about it.

See, you have to understand something. The capability, when you see the timeline and event matrix I put into this book.

The development of this capability with Otto Skorzeny began in 1948 in a very compartmented, isolated section of the CIA. So the way to look at this is – the CIA was not running Skorzeny, that is not the correct way to say this, the CIA didn’t know about it. The correct way to say it is this - there was an assassination capability inherent and located within one office of the CIA – that was highly compartmented and highly controlled. So, it’s not like the entire CIA was involved. It was literally only one office, and even then, within the office it was probably on a need to know basis….So we may be literally talking about five individuals…..I mean this, this was a high secret, a high state secret, so it would not have been general knowledge, nor would it have been something that a lot of people would know about.

The capability itself, the Executive Action capability itself, I equate in the book to the use of Atomic Weapons. The only way to launch this capability would have been by Executive Order – by the President, or the National Command authority – that level, - the Secretary of Defense, at that level. It was a presidential, national command authority level capability. Somebody at the CIA couldn’t use it. It would even have been impossible for even rogue use. This was a Command and Control situation. A target would be designated. But in other words, to use this capability would have required Executive Approval.

So this small office within the CIA – called Staff D. And the guy who ran it was a man named William K. Harvey, during that time period. He managed the program. He managed that program – much like maintaining a nuclear bomber. There are US Air Force personal who man the bomber, and there’s people who maintain the bomber, but they can’t launch the bomber. That comes from the President. The same with this capability.

To kill a foreign leader, to liquidate a foreign leader is a very, very risky proposition. So that capability was held at the highest levels of our government.

William K. Harvey managed the program. And Otto Skorzeny, a foreign asset, ran the program for the agency, and it was a foreign program. So Skorzeny and the people involved in the actual business end of this capability, were in many cases…foreign operatives.

For example the man who was sent in to Dallas to carry out the Dallas affair was a man named Capt. Jean Soutre – I talk about him in the book. So he was a French assassin, so it was a French assassin who was sent in to kill President Kennedy.

Skorzeny’s exact involvement in the assassination may never be known unless documents surface, but we can say this: The network that was utilized in Dallas has links to the principle characters of the assassination, and I’ll give you three very good examples.

The shooter for example – or the man at least who was in charge of what would have been a sniper team, and I did not get into the forensics in this book – so I can’t tell you where the shots came from.

But I can tell you there was a sniper team that was sent in – it was led by a man named Capt. Jean Rene Souetre – and he was a French OAS assassin, the same guy who had been trying to kill DeGaul.

And the reason we know he was in Dallas is because of a declassified CIA document - it’s publically available (you can find it at MaryFerell.org and a number of other sites), other historians have talked about him. Souetre was flown out of Dallas the day after the assassination.

What people did not know was that he was part of Skorzeny’s network. That’s what’s new. So there was already a document saying that this French assassin had been flown out of Dallas. What changed? The dynamics that have changed is that the Skorzeny Papers confirm he was a part of an assassination network.

So if you want to believe at this point, if you want to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did it or didn’t do it, it doesn’t matter. Now you have a very big problematic situation where you have to explain the presence of a known French assassin in Dallas on November 22 and according to the Skorzeny Papers,…that he was part of an assassination network.

The papers are also linked to Jack Ruby in a very big way. And I’ll explain this. It’s very simple. Jack Ruby had a business partner in gun running - his name is Thomas Eli Davis. Other historians have written about him. You can find his name as well in other academic studies, but  people didn’t know too much about him.

Thomas Eli Davis - and this is documented again through declassified CIA documents. Thomas Eli Davis was in Madrid just weeks before the assassination where he met with a Madrid businessman named Victor Oswald – no relation to Lee Harvey Oswald. Victor Oswald was a Swiss national. He was the Chase Manhattan bank representative for Spain. He was also former OSS officer – Office of Strategic Services intelligence officer. But most importantly he is one of the principle business partners of Otto Skorzeny in the Skorzeny Papers.

So the fact of the matter is, Jack Ruby’s business partner in gun running met with Skorzeny’s main principle business partner in Madrid only weeks before the assassination. And I could go on about this guy, but that’s the basic crux of that connection.

As far as Lee Harvey Oswald himself – he was a patsy just as he said he was. He was an operational deception.

He is also linked to the Skorzeny Papers through the Tolstoy Foundation. Most people are familiar with the name George deMohrnenschildt – the Russian who befriended Oswald in Dallas. George deMohrenschildt and Paul Raigorodsky, two of the biggest Russians in Dallas, were intimately connected to the Tolstoy Foundation. And as it so happens, on the Board of Directors of the Tolstoy Foundation, listed on the board of directors with Paul Raigorodsky, is Colonel Hershel D. Williams, a US Air Force Intelligence Officer, who is also in the Skorzeny Papers, and a principal business partner with Otto Skorzeny.

And I could go on with these types of connections – in other words, every major fascit of the story whether it involves Oswald, whether it involves Ruby, whether it involves this mysterious French assassin who was flown out – Souetre – and other aspects I could talk in detail about -  are ALL linked to the Skorzeny Papers. And the reason I talk so definitively is I am not just coming up with some idea. I never developed a theory about the JFK assassination. That’s not what this is about. 

The reason I talk so definatvely is that I have evidence. I have evidence as to what happened in Dallas on November 22^nd. That’s what this book is trying to explain. It explains the history, the timeline, the event matrix and the principle organizations and networks tied to the Skorzeny covert capability.

The Skorzeny Papers are the definitive answer.

I put my name on the line on this based on the evidence I have seen: “The Warren Commission was not created to find the answer to the JFK murder but to deflect attention away from all intelligence and operational links to the assassination. Witnesses that should have been called were not, others acted as agents of deception. Superfluous and irrelevant data abounds in the documents, obtained by equally worthless witnesses and individuals called to testify. Mountains of documents were created to confuse, mislead, and divert attention away from the true conspiracy that was linked to a covert paramilitary network operating in Dallas and linked to Otto Skorzeny.” 

So the bottom line is this – the conspiracy was the cover-up, the capability is simple. It was already in place. When it came time to do this the National Command Authority – and by that I mean the people in charge of the government, who would have been in the know as far as the capability. They ordered it into action. Orders were issued, orders were carried out. There was no conspiracy with the Mafia, with Cubans – this was a direct U.S. capability directed against the President.

And if you get into the motive side, I state very clearly, in my opinion, because motive is not revealed by the papers, but finding pointers to the motive, they did this to save the country from a catastrophic impending doom that was imminent.

I have a small section in my book on the motive which could be debated because it is not dervived from the Skorzeny Papers, I derived the motives through parallel analysis. The Papers reveal certain facts, and those are what I put into the organizational studies, the link analysis, and the identification of individuals who either worked with or for Skorzeny, so that’s pretty definitive.

To get to the motive I looked at major events that were taking place and I point to two –very specific pieces that would have in my opinion would have played in the backdrop as to why they had to do this and they are the Profumo Affair in England and the Bobby Baker scandal in the United States. If you like I can explain them in detail but if not the listeners can look them up, as they are critically important as to why this action took place.

They are very simple and you can look these up. The Profumo Affair was a prostitution ring in England in 1961, that centered around a prostitute named Christine Keeler,….that literally almost brought down the British government. She was sleeping with our equivalent of the Secretary of Defense, the Minister of Defense McMillan. And she was also the girlfriend of the Soviet military attaché in London. It was a big mess, it broke publicly, and Kennedy was watching the Profumo Affair because in the United States there was a simultaneously, or almost happening simultaneously – a scandal breaking in the United States – called the Bobby Baker Scandal. Again you can read about all this on line.

Bobby Baker was a political operative of Johnson, and was being investigated for slot machine irregularities, and that investigation was leading to something else he was doing and that was providing a call girl service in Washington D.C. These Party Girls, as they called them, were being provided to Senators, Representatives, lobbyists and the President. So the President was utilizing prostitutes from the Bobby Baker ring, and one of these in particular was named Ellen Rometsch she was flown out of the United States, from what I understand on a military aircraft only a few weeks before the assassination. A month at the most I think.

But in any event the President was sleeping with Ellen Roman, she was the wife of a West German sergeant who was stationed here in the United States on special duty..She was prostituting herself, was sleeping with the President and it is suspected she was also a Soviet agent.

We have to research this, there are people working on it now.

The bottom line is this – I think - and this is where I had to kind of divine this because the Skorzeny Papers don’t reveal this, but I wondered what would cause the national command authority to engage their executive action capability against their own president?

It is my opinion that what was getting ready to happen was this scandal was getting ready to break.  The Bobby Baker scandal investigation was going to lead to the public exposure of this information and expose the overlapping two prostitution rings. This would have effectively and totally disgraced the president; it t would have destroyed the office of the President. It would have brought down the halls of government because of the other people that were involved. And it would have handed the Soviets a high ground moral victory at the very height of the cold war, when nuclear tensions were at its peak. 

This whole affair just overlaps and would have greatly affected what we call the Nuclear Command and Control - the President’s control of nuclear weapons. This would have affected that. And so they had to do something to stop it. And in my opinion, they made a call – a dread full call - a gut wrenching call – to kill one man to save the country – to spare the country of this knowledge. It was not a coup de’etat - it was a coup d egrace – they were basically doing this – to sacrifice one man –  I equate it in the book I equate it to dropping the atomic bomb – you don’t want to drop an atomic bomb, you kill millions of people. And during the war to save a lot of lives ultimately. But in this case, instead of killing millions, you kill one and preventing the adversary – in this case the Soviet Union a great propaganda victory, at a time when we could least afford to have it.

So in other words they sacrificed Caesar to save Rome.

The capability itself had already been used, not used but proposed – it was Skorzeny’s assassination capability that was being directed at Castro in 1959-1960, and then that same capability was redirected to the Congo to kill Patrice Lumumba.

 That assassination capability that was already being directed at other foreign leaders, was turned against their own man.

So they didn’t have to get people to go around and get the mafia, that would have been impossible, in my opinion, and that’s why I don’t agreed with conspiracy theories is that they were too incredible. They need a cast of thousands for it to work, but the Skorzeny Papers eliminates the cast of thousands, because the pre-existing capability was already there, in existence and it extended out of Dallas. The number of people could have been less than ten – five in the entire government, who knew about this capability. People at the top knew we had the capability but they didn’t know who managed it, or how it worked. They had the ability to order into action, it would have been a very controlled capability. It is not something that you can just put together. It’s a big deal.

You have 2,000 books published on the assassination of President Kennedy, but the names in the Skorzeny Papers are not in those books.

If you are focused on Oswald, or if you are using the declassified documents, or the Warren Commission, then you are using the deception. There’s no way to get to the answer and you can’t just developed something in your mind, that won’t work. This case can only be solved with evidence, and the Skorzeny Papers is the evidence.

Now, if the American public wants the answers, then I just wrote about it, If they don’t and they want to continue to believe in a mythology or follow some other hypothesis that continues to go down Rabbit Holes, that’s their prerogative. I can’t control that. And I can’t control whether or not I make some people mad.

All I know is this: I know what I’ve seen, I know what these Papers contain, and I know these papers will be made available to the American public so they can make their own determination. I feel very confident that my analysis is correct, and I didn’t do it in a vacuum. I motor boarded this with friends of mine, who are very adept, and researches themselves, and I tried to make sure I didn’t make any analytical mistakes. Now there are mistakes in the book, small errors, and I think I called Dallas the capitol of Texas for example. There are some small errors in the book. And somebody may argue with my determination on the motives, for instance. That’s fine.

But the bottom line is the existence of the capability and Skorzeny’s connection to it, and the people who are tied to the network that I describe is absolutely irrefutable because there’s documents and these documents tell the story that I just described to you.

I write military history, and the day that this happened, when I found out about the auction, I was researching military history – I read about World War II history, I think I was doing queries on Otto Skorzeny and I noticed the auction came up. And I thought – Oh, my gosh, Otto Skorzeny’s personal papers are going to be auctioned? So I immediately signed up for the auction, and went into the bidding process, which was telephonically – on the phone, and I won. And the auction house had reviewed the papers and they admitted to their historical significance, and stating that whoever gets them might find some nuggets from the Cold War or something.

I wasn’t interested in the assassination or conspiracy. My only interest in JFK before I bought the papers was JFK’s birthday was May 29, and my birthday is May 29^th. And I remember as a small boy at 5 years old was the stoic response of my parents when JFK was killed.

As far as I was concerned, I had no idea that these papers contained anything related to the JFK assassination, it was the farthest thing from my mind. But when I got the papers, I initially, almost within the hour or two, that I realized he was an asset of the CIA.

But it was still several months later before the Dallas angles to it arose out of the research. But there came a threshold, there came a point where wow. I recognized these businesses were a cover for operational activity during the Cold War, and they are coming out of Dallas. So as I did the study of the people involved and their links, I thought this has – it is tied to the assassination. I reached a point where I knew it. I recognized that and I knew I could write a book about it.

Am I afraid about what I am saying? No. We are free men living in the United States of America. I’ve been a soldier all my life. I have served my country in the Army, Marines and Air Force, thirty seven years, through five wars. It may be dangerous for my business, but don’t fear anything in that sense. It’s been a long time, it’s very historical, the papers are not classified documents, they are support documents that relate an unfortunate truth.

The American people have wanted an answer, have felt that perhaps there was a conspiracy. And now I am here to tell the American people that is correct. There was a conspiracy. The United States government killed Kennedy and they used an in-house capability to do it, and then they had a cover-up. The Warren Commission (Report) is a false document designed to cover and spare the American public the unfortunate and ugly truth of a Kennedy doom, the national authorities – whether you agree with it or disagree with it – it’s tragic. They felt in their minds, this was their way out – to save and spare the nation this tragic news.

That’s the way I see it. Now like I said, people can argue motive, that’s fine, but they can’t argue the ….  Skorzeny network.

The wrench has been thrown in the engine. The engine is going to lock up now. People can avoid talking about the Skorzeny Papers all they want to, but they exist, and the book has been written. And by the way, I will say this….I wrote this book in a way that you don’t need the papers, if you read what I wrote, and look at the operational links and analysis I did, you still should come to the same answer I did without the papers. You can go to other studies to confirm the things that I said. The papers help and the papers provide an instant confirmation of the people and associations. But even without the papers, the exposure and explanation of the link analysis that’s in this book can stand on its own without the papers, and therein lies the problem for people who are going to try to counter it.

I thought it was my civic duty when I found the answer. I had evidence of what happened. If I did nothing I would be an accessory after the fact. So I did it the way I thought it was necessary to do it. I wrote this book to bring the evidence before the American people and from there my work is done. The Papers themselves need be made public so scholars and the American people can see them and make their own determination. I did the best I could. I think my work is done. I bought the Papers, I saw the answers, I revealed them, and I’m still an Air Force Officer, I’m retired, so I did my duty to my country and the American people. I feel like I’ve done my duty in other words..

As to where to go from here, for the country it’s going to be a quite challenge to do a little soul searching here, and realize there’s a great moral lesson here, that people in high positions of power, the presidency and other high positions of power, their personal lives and the things that they do have major ramifications. They have to be focused on the things they swore they would do. This is about having a moral compass and doing the right thing. People have got to do the right thing if they are going to lead the country. As far as the American people are concerned, they can rest easy now that the answer has been found…..They should feel good that an Air Force officer found the answer and came forward.

There’s not a government conspiracy that’s going to continue to keep this under wraps. There are men and women who are true to their oaths to the constitution, and they’re not going to be involved in anything that is extra-legal, or illegal or immoral. I think that’s an important thing.

It’s a dark history. I didn’t want to find it, but it came to me. I personally have not lost any love for my country or my fellow Americans. I don’t see this as a tragic mark on American history. It is what it is. These men made a decision to use the capability. Was it extra legal? I think it was. Was it right or wrong? It looks to be wrong, but we don’t have all the facts yet. Can it be overlaid by the fact that they did it to save the country? Again that’s my opinion. Perhaps, I don’t know. We just need to accept it as the evidence presents itself.

I think they were caught between a rock and a hard place. If this information about the prostitution rings, the Soviet penetration and the honey trappers and all of the massive details of what was going on in DC and in England. I think it would have been an absolute unmitigated disaster. I would say this: It was not a matter of national security, it was a matter of national survival. This was the most desperate, probably one of the most desperate acts in history.

I think there was a great deal of relief in that the assassination team was headed by a Frenchman, Jean Rene Souetre I guess the point here is I don’t know what American soldier would have the intentional fortitude to kill an American president, or any American for that matter. It would have been very, very difficult.

Oswald was a patsy. It was an incredible move to use Oswald, he had been to the Soviet Union, he was a low level (Soviet) agent. By using Oswald they held a trump card I believe to use against the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union had come forward to disclose the information that the national authority was trying to prevent from coming out, then the national authority could have said no, your guy killed our president – World War III. In other words, on the back burner was this even more terrible scenario that they would have probably gone to World War III rather than let this information get out about what had happened, and Oswald was their ace. By using him as the patsy they held a card over the Soviets, a war card. And that was their fail safe.

I don’t do social media. The book is available on Amazon. The Skorzeny Papers. I only did one book signing. It’s not about promotion, its about the information. I didn’t do this for fame or glory. I did it because I found the answers.

Can I make a final comment. I’ll leave you with this. There’s the famous Zapruder film which shows the president being shot, I think most Americans have heard of it. It was acquired on the day of the assassinations. The man who acquired that film on the day of the assassination for Time-Life Books was Charles Douglas – C.D. Jackson. What Americans may not know is two things about him – one is that he was the top psychological warfare officer of the United States government at the time of the acquisition. He was literally the top psychological warfare officer. He is linked to the Skorzeny Papers.

But more importantly, twenty years later when that film was finally released to the American public, about 1975, around that time frame – Walter Cronkite and a young Dan Rather, did a documentary TV special, they did a frame by frame and the analysis of that film showed that the president was shot from the Texas School Book Depository and not from anywhere else.

Here’s the problem with the Skorzeny Papers: the company that did that analysis for the CBS TV special was ITEK. That company had a chairman a man by the name of Frank Lindsey. Now here’s the problem. Frank Lindsay in 1948 was the operations officer for the Office of Policy Coordination OPC – the fore runner of the CIA. The OPC run by Frank Wisner, that brought Skorzeny in as the initial assassination capability into an office called PB7, run by Colonel Boris Pash.

So the bottom line is this: the Zapruder film is tainted from front to back, from its acquisition by C.D. Jackson, to its analysis by ITEK, whose chairman is Frank Lindsey. So there’s another example of how the papers are definitive, and how the documentation and evidence is going to be decisive as soon as people understand what is in The Skorzeny Papers. 

Colonel Robert G. Storey

Colonel Robert G. Story – Dallas attorney

From Maj. Ralph Ganis – The Skorzeny Papers (2018, Skyhorse)

Director of the Documentation Division and Executive Trail Counsel in Nuremberg (p. 81)

– “The senior officer at the heart of all document handling for the Nuremberg Trials was a USAF Intelligence officer and OSS veteran, Colonel Robert G. Storey, who hailed from Dallas, Texas. Colonel Storey was also one of the very few officer in the entire U.S. military privy to ULTRA. Years later, Storey would play a very prominent role as an independent attorney working with the Warren Commission after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy… (p. 30)

 “Storey had served with General Charles Cabell during the war,…In Dallas, Col. Storey was president of the Republic National Bank and head of the American Bar Association,…Director of the State Bar of Texas and Chairman of the Board of the Southwest Legal Foundation. From 1949-1959, Storey served as the Dean of the Southern Methodist University School of Law….” (p. 181)

– Storey “special counsel to the attorney general of Texas,…liaison to the Warren Commission. Colonel Storey was present in the Dallas jail cell when Chief Justice Earl Warren met with Jack Ruby….”  

 

“Colonel Storey served on a number of boards and committees with……Algur H. Meadows and Judge Gordon Simpson, Skorzeny’s principal Dallas oil business associates. One of Colonel Storey’s intimate friends was Leonidas (Leon) Jaworski,..... (p. 314-315)

George H. W. Bush in Dallas 11/22/63

George Herbert Walker Bush at Dealey Plaza

Now that President Bush is in the ground, I will comment on some of his connections and associations with the assassination of President Kennedy.

For starters, that is not Bush in a suit and tie standing next to the TSBD in the wake of the assassination. While it does look like him, photos can be funny, and that person has been identified and its not G.H.W. Bush.

But – and that’s a BIG BUT – he was in Dallas that day.

We know from government records released under the JFK Act that Bush stayed the night at the Dallas Sheraton Hotel with his wife, and he then traveled to Tyler, Texas to give a political talk while his wife had her hair done.

After Bush learned about the assassination, he dropped a dime on James Parrott, a Republican political operative who Bush said should be considered a suspect in his murder.

Bush told the government he intended to return to the Sheraton, which was itself a hotbed of conspiratorial activities.

The Secret Service agents from out of town stayed at the Sheraton while the White House Communications Agency (WHCA), set up a remote radio shack in one of the Sheraton rooms and monitored both the Secret Service motorcade channel as well as the Air Force One radio transmissions.

Also among the records released under the JFK Act is a report of “George Bush of the CIA” being given special information, though Bush was not officially associated with the CIA at that time, and it was alleged that the “George Bush of the CIA” was a reference to another man in the CIA by the same name. But when that George Bush was located and interviewed he claimed to be a minor level functionary who would not be given such information.

Lee Harvey Oswald was also familiar with the Dallas Sheraton, as it was part of The Southland Center, a major building complex that included offices – including those of a friend of George deMohrenschildt (Marty Balan), who interviewed Oswald for a job that he didn’t get.

The Southland Center office building also includes the Mexican Consulate, the private Chaparral Club where the rich and powerful met and socialized, as well as the law offices of the attorneys who represented Oswald’s brother Robert and his wife Marina when they testified before the Warren Commission. The same law firm also represented Clint Murchison and the Dallas Cowboys.

On the roof of the building is a sky tower that overlooks the city, and is a popular tourist attraction, where two young high school kids were walking through the lobby on their way to one Saturday in September. Wynn Johnson and his girl friend were stopped by three men who asked them directions to a coffee shop. They later recognized one of the men as Lee Harvey Oswald, and the other two have been identified as CIA spy master David Atlee Phillips and anti-Castro Cuban terrorist Antonio Veciana.

Then there was the ostensible reporter who checked out of the Sheraton leaving behind his notes that a cleaning lady thought suspicious and reported, which created a document that remains classified today. 

Sheraton – Suspicious notes – 104-10006-10026

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=190758&search=104-10006-10026 - relPageId=1&tab=page

ORIGINATOR: FBI

DATE: 11/27/64

TITLE: INVESTIGATION CONCERNING NOTEBOOK FOUND IN ROOM 2422, SHERATON HOTEL, DALLAS, TEXAS, CONTAINING HANDWRITTEN NOTES IN ENGLISH REGARDING OSWALD AND ASSASSINATION OF JFK

Postponed in Part Reason for Board Action: The text is redacted because it reveals the identity of an intelligence agent that might be withheld under Section 6(1)(A) of the JFK Act. The Board is awaiting additional evidence from the CIA, at which time it will reconsider the postponement   Substitute Language: CIA Employee

As for Bush’s connections to the assassination, he had a business partner Thomas Devine. As Russ Baker details in his book “Bush Family of Secrets,” Thomas J. Devine was a former CIA staff employee, worked with Bush on his Zapata Oil company business before moving to New York to work for the CIA with another CIA official – John Train. Train handled the business interests of a number of CIA propriety companies.

When Oswald’s good friend George deMonrenschildt took a job in Haiti in April, 1963, he stopped by the Oswald’s apartment to say goodbye. As it was a few days after the Walker shooting, when deMohrenschhildt saw the rifle in a closet, he asked Oswald “How did you miss?”

Oswald also gave deMohrenschildt a copy of the Backyard photo of him with the rifle, pistol and two communist publications – that Marina inscribed “Hunter of Fascists! Ha  Ha.”

When deMohrenschildt left Texas for Haiti, he stopped in New York City and met with both Devine at John Train’s office, then went to Washington D.C. and met with Dorothie Matlack and Col. Sam Kail. Both worked for the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ASCI), whose office in the Pentagon also controlled Col. Jack Crichton’s Dallas 488^th Army Reserve Intelligence unit, as well as Col. Frank “Brandy” Brandstetter, the manager of the Havana Hilton where Castro stayed when he first assumed power.

In any case, while George H.W. Bush may not have been at Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination, he was in Dallas, stayed at the Sheraton, and was distinctly involved in various conspiratorial shennagans that we are still trying to figure out.

And it was supposed to be a “Kennedy Dynasty,” with RFK assuming power after JFK’s second term, and Teddy down the line, but instead, it became a Bush Dynisty after the assassinations of JFK and RFK.

OPERATION TROPICAL

OPERATION TROPICAL 

By Major Ralph P. Ganis, USAF, Ret.

From: The Skorzeny Papers, (Skyhorse, NY, 2018, p. 269-277)

With authorization to proceed at full speed against Castro, things now moved in a very serious direction. Eisenhower’s chief National Security advisor, Gordon Gray, later recalled that the president’s original order for covert action in Cuba contained what he termed “drastic” measures, a clear reference to assassinations.

Chapter Nineteen – The Mysterious QJ/WIN

SKORZENY (QJWIN), ZRRIFLE, AND “OPERATION TROPICAL”

One such drastic measure was reportedly conceived by Castro’s Ambassador to Britain, Sergio Rojas Santamarina, who resigned his post in late June of 1960 and returned to Cuba. Information on this assassination attempt on Castro comes from a copy of an unidentified newspaper retained by Skorzeny that he had secured within his papers. 

Before proceeding with the description of events from the article we briefly pause to highlight a memo written by William Harvey, exposed during the Senate Investigation on Assassinations in 1975. The memo stated that the asset QJWIN had been “developed for the original ZRRIFLE project,” (emphasis added). ZR was “a diagraph for Division D”; and the RIFLE designation, a secret code reference for an operation to assassinate Fidel Castro. Harvey’s memo suggests that there were two different versions of this project – the original ZR/RIFLE, and the subsequent one. Much has been written about the subsequent ZR/RIFLE missions involving Harvey and the Mafia boss Johnny Roselli after 1961. This has been analyzed by the author and determined as evidence Skorzeny was involved in the original ZR/RIFLE project, the one referenced in the article retained by Skorzeny in his papers.

We also note, that Santamarina was in London at the time of the Skorzeny’s timely meeting with Colonel Stirling in June 1959, in which it is believed by the author that William Harvey was also present. Santamarina had in fact stated to the press that his resignation was in response to Cuba’s shift toward Communism. His first act was to seek refuge in the Argentine Embassy in Havana, and his second was a mission to remove Castro.

The article begins with details of a meeting at the Argentine Embassy when Santamaria began to collaborate with Dr. Jose Miro Cardona. Cardona had accepted the role as Cuban Ambassador to the U.S. after Castro’s takeover but later resigned around the same time as Santamarina. The two men were aware that plotting already existed in exile circles to remove Castro and decided to initiate their own plan for assassination. It was through discussions, as reported in the article, the idea was hatched to approach Otto Skorzeny to lead the mission.

However, on the surface, the man they selected to approach Skorzeny is a seemingly odd choice. This was a well-known Hollywood press agent and public relations man named Guido Orlando. Orlando was born in Barisciano, Italy, and immigrated to the United States in 1917. It is not clear why Orlando was selected for such a secret matter, perhaps to not draw attention.

Orlando was an interesting character in his own right, having influenced the careers of the famous movie stars Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino, and Ingrid Bergman. But, also had a mysterious side, having served in the United States Army Air Forces during the Second World War, and had some confidential relationship with Howard Huges involving secret government aircraft projects. A final hint is Orlando’s claim he participated directly in the Italian elections in 1948 to defeat Communists. This makes it possible he was connected to the OSS or early CIA, as were so many others in the public relations and entertainment fields. Regardless, as the article maintains, once Skorzeny heard about Santamarina and Cordona’s plan, he decided to back the venture. 

The information for the plan was then passed to the CIA planners who gave the plan the name Operation Tropical. The approximate date for these events would have been mid-July to early August of 1960.

The article states that in August 1960, planning for Operation Tropical began. That month, the CIA purchased, through Assistant Secretary of Defense Perkins McGuire, the civilian airline Southern Air Transport, or SAT. The airline had been operating out of Miami, Florida, since 1947 and was previously owned by former USAF pilots. The purchase of the airline was explained by Fred C. Moor III, whose father was an original owner. Moor’s small book on the company, Then Came the CIA: The Early Years of Southern Air Transport, gives the details of its acquisition by the Agency. Moor cites a CIA document he acquired in 2010 under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that states that SAT was being acquired as a CIA proprietary due to “operational missions leveled on the Agency.” It went on to say that SAT “possessed certain air rights in the Caribbean which were also of interest to the Agency for contingency operational use.” This was a clear inference to Operation Tropical and other covert missions for the Cuban project. Importantly, SAT was given the CIA code word ZR/CLIFF, establishing a hard link to William Harvey’s Staff D.

In addition to Perkins McGure the purchase of SAT included Percival Brundage, former Director of the Bureau of Budge. Brundage was heavily involved with “black budgets,” dealing with covert operations of the CIA and military. Brundage, a Unitarian, was, curiously, founder of the American Friends of Albert Schweitzer College, the mysterious university in Switzerland that Lee Harvey Oswald applied to but never attended. The timing and purchase of Southern Air Transport by McGuire and Brundage placed a major CIA air propriety at the disposal of Otto Skorzeny.

According to the article, training began in September 1960 at secret locations. The final plan involved a classic Skorzeny-style airborne commando operation, with the objective not only to assassinate Fidel Castro, but Raul Castro and Che Guevara as well. It is likely that Southern Air Transport was tapped to supply the aviation assets for the paratrooper commandos.

On the suggested timeline for the operation, intelligence would have been provided by the CIA Chief of Station James A. Noel, who was in contact with secret assets throughout the country. Later, in November 1963, Noel would be assigned as the chief of station in Madrid. One of Noel’s chief contracts in Cuba was Bernard Barker, a former member of Batista’s secret police who had worked with the FBI. At this point, it may come as no surprise to the reader that Barker was a future Watergate burglar.

The ambush site selected for Operation Tropical was a remote area near a Cuban military training base. Intelligence had been received that Castro would be returning to Havana from a visit to the base. Intelligence also reported Castro had a bodyguard contingent of thirty well-armed men. The force for Operation Tropical consisted of forty-seven paratroopers, including twenty Cubans, twenty Germans, and seven headquarters personnel. According to the plan, Skorzeny was to personally lead the raid. 

The Commando unit trained for seven months, and millions of dollars were spent in its preparations. The commando group was reported to have trained at secret locations in the Florida Keys. As a note of curiousity, the CIA had a secret training base on the coast of South Carolina, known as “Isolation Tropic,” at the same time.

Coinciding with the suggested start date of Operation Tropical was the initiation of what appears to be a simultaneous propaganda campaign, a task set out under the original Cuba committee orders. Right on cue, both Santamarina and Skorzeny became involved in the psychological warfare effort by making public statements directed at Cuban leadership. Skorzeny’s quip came first, when he took an opportunity during the same Canadian television interview mentioned above involving Pierre Berton. This aired on September 15, 1960, for the Canadian Broadcasting Company TV show Close-Up. Berton began by asking Skorzeny if he had been approached since the war to conduct operations like the type he did during the war. Skorzeny answered yes, that many countries had approached him, including the United States. When asked to elaborate what he did, Skorzeny simply said with a smile, “Oh,….some special work.” When Bertron continued to press, Skorzeny added, “I wouldn’t say it, you don’t talk about such things.”

Berton then asked if Skorzeny had been approached by Cuba. Skorzeny answered honestly but with little detail, replying, “I was not officially approached but, unofficially, I was approached also.” Berton quickly returned, “Was that by Castro?” Skorzeny mused, “It was first by Castro and NOW by the enemies of Castro.” (emphasis added). Here, Skorzeny appears to be making a point. Given the orders for psychological warfare, Skorzeny’s reference in the present tense, “and now by the enemies of Castro,” appears to be for effect. This is supported by the fact that, at that very moment, the initial training phase of Operation Tropical was underway. These “mind games” are precisely in line with Skorzeny’s war fighting principles as recorded in Charles Foley’s book Commando Extraordinary – In Skorzey’s words, “That is the psychology of panic. Broadcast that you will hit a certain (target) – and hit it.”

Santamarina joined in on October 24, 1960, with headlines in U.S. newspapers announcing a coming struggle to regain Cuba – “Fidel Revolt Aim of Ex-Envoy.” It said Suntamarina had managed to escape Cuba and get back to Britain, and now was preparing to fly to Florida to join in the formation of a counter-revolutionary army of 150,000 Cuban émigrés. He warned, “It will be civil war – another Korea,” and colorfully added, “Castro is a mad dog. He must be wiped out.” He stated that he had been “having important talks with people all over Europe” for three weeks, and “this is not just another Latin-American Revolution,” but “a battle against Communism in the Caribbean.” Shortly after the newspaper interview given by Santamaria, he flew from London to the U.S. His exaggerated statements for the paper intentionally inflated the Cuban exiles’ capabilities and served to deflect from the actual planning being conducted for Skorzeny’s “surgical” strike.

The two “Psyop” efforts described above were part of an overall plan that had many other examples, including a CIA leaflet drop on Havana by ex-Cuban Air Force officer name Pedro Luis Diaz and Frank Sturgis, the future Watergate burglar mentioned earlier.

Two important events occurred in the late fall of 1960 hat would have directly impacted Operation Tropical. First, was an exploding crisis in the Congo that started earlier that summer and the second was the presidential election. The Congo crisis temporarily diverted Skorzeny from Operation Tropical and sent him on an emergency reconnaissance to assess the situation in the African nation for the CIA…..The disruption in the Operation Tropical timeline had other implications since Vince President Nixon wanted to remove Castro before the US elections, thus helping his bid for the presidency. The final assault date for Operation Tropical was set for April 18, 1961. This date coincides with the eventual Bay of Pigs operation that occurred (the previous day).

According to the article on Operation Tropical, although millions of dollars were spent and thousands of hours conducted in training, the mission would not go down. In November, Nixon lost his bid for the presidency to Senator John F. Kennedy. In January, within 24 hours of leaving office, Nixon arrived at Perkins McGuire’s island resort home in the Bahamas. It should also be pointed out that after the election of John F. Kennedy, McGuire left his position as the Assistant Secretary of Defense and became an executive-level CIA contract officer.

Also present was Lindsay Hopkins of Zenith Technical Enterprises, a cover company for the CIA deeply involved in covert actions against Cuba. Some plan of action relative to Operation Tropical must have been discussed, including briefing the new president. At this point, things were evidently still proceeding, as former Cuban Ambassador Santamarina was reported as the leader  of anti-Castro forces.

The Operation Tropical article intimates that President Kennedy was briefed on the full details of the assault, including the use of Otto Skorzeny. The article also states that those in attendance also included CIA Director Allen Dulles, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Senator J. William Fulbright (the man Kennedy wanted as Secretary of State), and Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Fulbright was reported as shocked at the revelation concerning the use of Skorzeny. Rusk, McNamara, and Dulles were in favor of the action, but Robert Kennedy and Senator Fulbright worried that if the mission failed, the political fallout of using Skorzeny would be disastrous. Kennedy concurred with Senator Fulbright and canceled the mission.

The validity of the Operation Tropical article seems highly probable. More analysis is needed but preliminary findings appear to confirm the accuracy of events. Interestingly, President Kennedy abolished the Operations Control Board, the government’s covert action approval body at the point in the timeline he would have received the Operation Tropical briefing. Irony is also not lost on the fact that President Kennedy kept a picture of Skorzeny on his desk in the oval office.

Kennedy went on to approve other Cuban operations but ones not involving Otto Skorzeny, including an invasion by Cuban paramilitary forces. This revised plan became the Bay of Pigs operation, which failed on the beaches for lack of U.S. support. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Anthony Herbert, who, as a Captain, had been slated to lead an army pathfinder team in the invasion, noted the anger and frustration over the cancellation of the mission. “When the invasion was called off, I began to hear generals and colonels cursing President Kennedy as weak-kneed, candy-assed, chicken-livered coward.” The colonel went on to point out that their anger over missing “their chance for glory” was misguided, as “There were international complications and considerations, and that the civilian commander-in-chief had given an order.” Ironically, Captain Herbert had earlier attended Skorzeny’s School of Commando Tactics.

The fact that historians have never mentioned Operation Tropical is interesting since there were references to it in the newspapers. Perhaps this was because the basic storyline seems sensational, or the lack of evidence at the time confirming Otto Skorzeny as a covert asset of the United States. This book presents just such evidence throughout its pages thus changing the view of Operation Tropical…..

The Mafia and Cubans had nothing to do with the central assassination but were connected to the Skorzeny network and may have had uses in post assassination cleanup operations. Regardless, digging into these links (and for that matter Operation Tropical) would eventually expose the Skorzeny’s paramilitary assassination group. A group that was fully active and in Dallas on November 22, 1963.