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ROBERT GARDNER RANFTEL Research

Box 7892 94707-0892 (415) 526-282.0

A collection of writings — and some of Robert's favorite cartoons — compiled by Paul L. Hoch 1525 Acton Street Berkeley, CA 94702 • t

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. • , . • •••- • • • ••• • • . ;' .1'1' t!.4•4• *-- . •••• 3•• ••••1.• ;...11 • DIRECTOR, . FBI • •• . , . .4 • • • . r . IP • • . *4 • • - • 5C , NEW YORK • i T . ; '• . e FROM: • .re -6— • • ...1.‘•••;;VII, • -1; •• • • • k. A O.** • • • • LIZ 1°..#". 1 I\II " • • " • :'.• SUBJECTS • DEMONSTRATION BY RESEARCH ACTION GROUP ON ; • . • ASSASSINATION AT NYO,. 1/15/76•-• • .• . - , . . . . . . . . 11 .4. .44 ..:'-' . 1 ■ :: ll from Supervisor THOMAS B. CALL, 1/14/76.':-' .4.!1":.14-'.:1%.4...... ReButelv.,.*:,;7*!:!,•;•;•-••;‘••.• ., ... _ . .•. ca ..• •••••• : .... . .... •. . . , . . : ,. .... -. ., ..., •••.,-,.;..... •-•.,,..• - group of fifteen (15)"4.,`1"7-4.:-%-. . ''''..• t--$•'• ..4,.,--'•••:',.*'•-•- 4.- At 11:30 AM, 1/15/ 6; :•-!').;1- . .*••.-: ' dem6nstrators representati f. • / 4:-.'f.: -- ..- / -)13.1.4Akthal.i.o.u. appeared at Office of e Feder j1 is bureau 6f-XriVistigation. LOBE spokesmarafm.: .-. the .group,.was....met by AC- ?HILT IFF ' • •-v_API-1:-.%„' rit- 7h ) r.)%i • -?T-:..e. -!!'. - - ' - - According to FT , e purpose of the • 'demonstration was to bring to, the public's attention - - '''-'•'."--'2. the possibility that a conspiracy existed in the killing ., . ....s ..of Dr. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. and that this .should be14,.-,.:. :. pursued: ::;-.., 7‘.. :z.,..,.. t .... . • • , ...i. i.,:1. % ...- ., r...... - • • - ' :* ... -; ...,. F.; :*''' . : ' .. . —.' ':.. , ...... 1 :4: .. .. . ', '.. . , 1 - :::: ',:s.:„. ; , . ! z• '.7.. • --:e It ...:...r, : .•'(,;-4 . 4. ,.; . . . ..1 "e ,LC r 4 tv' ").1".:1:•:.; RANFTLE was advised that the Attorney General of 4.7 : .." V .7 •' :i'''t .. .40.,:' the United States is currently reviewing the FBI -1 . • • . , • • • s i.:( .:::.4 . lit "'investigationinvestigation of Dr. KING's death. They were alsti advised it- .4, that the NYO does not have the complete investigative files!'7:-; 4 h -; • . concerning this matter..','7',.1"%i• A 1 .'-:. 7. • *I .: .1.-i ;,-:- ..- -..:-. s , ' . ' • .- •%" :-. ':.". • :-?:F', • 4-' • '..t:•:,!.t.'-',';.• 0:..., , . . • • • ' ili^ f 1.-:-.. '' ' . • RANFTLE indicated he would communicate with the' ' "1:le71%..c ,...1.% Attorney General concerning this matt 3....-i,7&/...... „ 6a

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z- f • • Special' Agent In Chargidl;''''r'! ,....t ODYEU:MDIT raorsow am tw, e.• so • a 4 NYC" 17 NOV 78 e. , MO] NEW FILM SUGGESTS ation's Military Services Face a S By BERNARD WEINRAUB The comments by the two doctors re- I AN OSWALD COHORT Special to The New York Times lint some of the benefits and a key short- 1

But to-Audience's Eye, Film Made Before the Kennedy Killing Is Blurred and Inconclusive

By WENDELL RAWLS Jr. Special to The New York Times Photographs of Enlargements Barred WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 seven-sec- No photographs of the film or of the ond film was shown to a crowded room of slide enlargements were permitted so journalists and assassination buffs here that Mr. Bronson's "best interest could today, purporting to show the presence of be protected," Mr. Sigalos said. He added more than one person in the windows of later that Mr. Bronson was not claiming the sixth floor of the Texas School Book that the film disclosed anything new or Depository building in Dallas minutes be- startling, but that he was simply cooper- fore President John F. Kennedy was ating with the newspaper and the A.1.B. killed by shots fired from the vicinity of "because he has no reason not to." Mr. the windows. Sigalos said was he retained by Mr. Bron- The film and individual frames of it, son after arrangements with the newspa- which were copies and enlarged by more per and the information bureau had been than 1,000 times their original size, did completed. not show conclusively to the layman's The film was sent to Robert Groden, a naked eye the presence of at least two photography technician in Hope Lawn, human figures in the windows. N:J., who had performed "photo-en- The eight-millimeter film was taken by hancement" work on the famous Abra- an amateur photographer, Charles L. ham Zapruder film of the President being Bronson, a metallurgist from Ada, Okla. shot. Mr. Groden also had testified before He had used a wide-angle lens and was the House Select Committee on Assassi- standing about one block from the build- nations and had been paid by the commit- ing while he was filming, six to nine tee occasionally as a consultant, although minutes before Mr. Kennedy was killed he had not been selected to be on the com- • 15 years ago last week. mittee's panel of photographic experts. His film was viewed by the Federal Bu- Mr. GrOden said today that "it is be- reau of Investigation three days after the yond question" that there were two fig- assassination and was deemed "not suffi- ures moving at the windows from which ciently clear for identification purposes." the Warren Commission and the House Returned to the Photographer committee maintain the fatal shots were • The film was subsequently returned to fired. Mr. Bronson and apparently was never If his interpretation of the photographs viewed by other organizations investigat- is correct, it would disprove contentions ing the assassination. that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in The existence of the film was disclosed killing Mr. Kennedy. almost one year ago when the F.B.I. Frames Grainy and Blurred made available to the public some 90,000 However, the film and the enlarged ROBERT pages of previously classified documents frames are exceedingly grainy and relating to President Kennedy's murder. blurred. If they disclose anything to the Members of the Assassination Infor- layman's eye, it is perhaps one figure in mation Bureau, an organization of critics one window. of the Warren Commission findings in the Mr. Groden, who has previously said Kennedy assassination, read of the exist- that he thought there was photographic ence of the film and contacted a reporter evidence of shots being fired from other for the Dallas Morning News, who in turn directions, said he was "now certain located Mr. Bronson and the film. there is no question" of there being more The Dallas newspaper published than one person at the windows. And he several articles about the film and said that computer enhancing of the printed nine photographs of the enlarged photographs would make the point even movie frames in this morning's editions. more conclusively. In what appeared to be a carefully or- He told the Dallas newspaper, which chestrated presentation, the assassina- hired him to analyze the film, that it tions information bureau then called a showed that a "sniper's nest" was being news conference this afternoon and dis- completed just pnor to the arrival of tributed copies of the newspaper and President Kennedy's motorcade at Dealy Kiss releases. Also present was Mr. Plaza. Bronson's attorney, John Sigalos of Dal- las. DID LEE HARVEY OSWALD DROP a New evidence suggests he was among soldiers given LSD in a CIA test program

T WAS A HOT SUMMER DAY IN NEW IN JULY 1979, THE FINAL REPORT OF THE drug. It was during this search that CIA Orleans in 1963. A young man walked into House Select Committee on Assassinations scientists first got their hands on LSD. Early the office of Edward Gillin, an assistant (HSCA), the first full congressional inves- reports looked promising. One document district attorney. Gillin offered the visitor a tigation of the murder of President Kennedy, indicated that "experimentally, LSD has seat, but the young man chose instead to was published. The committee concluded been used in interrogation and has proved stand across the desk from him. He had a that Kennedy was probably killed as a result remarkably successful." Another memo question about a drug—one that Gillin had of a conspiracy, although it stopped short of stated unequivocally that acid was "better never heard of before. identifying the conspirators who may have adapted than known drugs to both inter- This was no ordinary drug, Gillin was been behind Oswald. The HSCA contended rogation of prisoners and use against troops told. This drug would affect the social and that Oswald fired the fatal shots at the and civilians." economic history of the world for the next president, but that he was accompanied by a Or so they thought. Later experiments 200 years. The young man wanted to try the second gunman. Thus, Oswald, a loser all showed that LSD was not a reliable speech- drug, and that was what had brought him to his life, was finally relieved of sole blame. inducing agent Accurate information could Gillin. He wanted to know if the drug was It had been a long road for Oswald from not always be obtained from a person who legal and if he could bring it into the country infancy to infamy, and now, at last, the gov- was high on acid, because the drug caused from somewhere else. It was important, he ernment admits he may not have traveled it marked anxiety and loss of contact with insisted, speaking for the better part of an alone. reality. hour on the wonders of Since the assassination, the mind of Lee But this did not faze the CIA, which was this new chemical. Harvey Oswald has been open turf for histo- fascinated by LSD. If it did not live up to its By Martin A. Lee, Gillin just sat there, rians, psychologists and conspiracy theorists potential as a truth drug, Artichoke scien- somewhat bewildered, to muck about in, speculating on every con- tists would simply adapt the interrogation Robert Ranftel and trying to assimilate the ceivable motive and intrigue that might ex- procedure to suit the "far-out" possibilities story. Who was this plain what role he may have played in the of this unique chemical. LSD led to totally Jeff Cohen guy? What was this death of the president. Described as assassin new methods of interrogation. drug cli.t would tsausforni the world? Any or patsy, lone nut dr conspirator r; misguided -Often a subject was given a surreptitious drug that could produce the results this Marxist or CIA operative, Oswald has never dose of acid, and once the effects took hold, person spoke of, Gillin reasoned, would have been pegged as a doper. he was told that unless to be illegal. Gillin called the FBI the day Oswald was he spilled the beans, he He also concluded that his visitor was killed and told them he believed Oswald had would be kept in a probably a bit crazy. Gillin suggested that the been using unusual drugs, but the FBI tripped-out state in- OSWALD STATIONED IN young man visit the New Orleans chemist, seemed uninterested and the drug lead was ly. the police authority on such matters, and never pursued. dper ofinv led s u c Cse :sr:1c; strongly urged that he consult his personal Had the Warren Commission decided to LSD interrogations of JAPAN DURING THE LATE physician as well before doing anything fur- investigate the psychedelic connection, the by spies were in full ther. The visitor left and Gillin never heard logical place to begin would have been to ask, gear hy the mid-1950s from him again. did Oswald turn on, and if so, where did he and continued through FIFTIES WAS RECRUITED A few months later—over the weekend of get his drugs? As it turns out, there is good the early 1960s November 22nd, 1963, to be precise— Gillin reason to believe that Oswald was taking Acid proved useful came to recall that odd encounter. President psychedelics at a time when the CIA was for other CIA pur- BY THE -CIA FOR ITS John F Kennedy was slain on Friday, a handing them out The temptation to con- poses as well. In order new president was sworn in two hours later, nect these two facts demands a look at two to discredti sociistal or and on Sunday the accused assassin was relationships: that between the CIA and left-leaning politicians SPECIALL_ OPERATIONS 1 himself shot down in a Dallas jail. As these drugs, and between Oswald and the CIA. in foreign countries, incredible events tumbled into one another, the agency would slip a Gillin thought of the conversation he had THE CIA FIRST BEGAN EXPERIMENTING hit to unwitting targets CONTENDS ONE OFFICIAL had that summer. As the details and descrip- with'LSD during Project Artichoke, an ex- so they would become tions of the life of the accused assassin tensive behavior-control effort launched in incoherent and embarrass themselves at became known, Gillin realized that the visi- 1951. Project Artichoke was aimed primarily public appearances. (The CIA has denied tor he had received that afternoon in New at developing unorthodox methods of inter- ever using dirty tricks of this sort in domestic Orleans was none other than Lee Harvey rogation — including narco-hypnosis and a politics.) Oswald. combination of various chemicals that, when The CIP:s acid experimentation took on properly administered, would catapult a per- more comprehensive and extravagant di- MARTIN A. Lee is completing a book, 'The son into a semiconscious limbo that the mensions under the supersecret MK CIA and the Acid Generation: the Secret His- agency called "the Twilight Zone." ULTRA program. Consisting of 149 dif- tory of LSD.' ROBERT RANFTEL is an inves- After several years, however, the CIA had ferent projects, MK ULTRA was one of the tigator and storyteller in Berkeley, California.ia. not yet found a method of interrogation that most sensitive covert operations ever under- JEFF COHEN is a lawyer and writer in Los would guarantee a recalcitrant subject would taken by U.S intelligence. In addition to An geles.All three archon were associated with the disclose sensitive information. This prompt- hallucinogenic drugs, MK ULTRA com- Assassination Information Bureau. ed the agency to step up its search for a truth prised every conceivable mind-control tech-

2 0 : ROLLING STONE, MARCH 3, 1983 ,WSM FILES .45-cali- attractive nineteen-year-old who, ironically, nique: hypnosis, sensory deprivation, clec- mention that Atsugi was the home, during record says that he was shot with his was a druggist. Her name was Marina Prusa- " troshock, ESP, lobotomy, subliminal projec- those years, of another young marine—Lee ber service revolver, but it was later ruled that kova, and she lived with her uncle, a Soviet tion, sleep teaching and thousands of dif- Harvey Oswald. In fact, Oswald served in the he'd been shot with a .22. intelligence officer. Their courtship lasted ferent drugs. The CIA employed hundreds same marine unit as the source. On another occasion, while Oswald was but a month, most of it while Oswald was in a of academics and behavioral experts to help on guard duty, gunfire was heard. He was hospital and under medication, allegedly re- crack the secret code of the human mind in PRIVATE LEE HARVEY OSWALD ARRIVED IN found sitting on the ground, more than a covering from an adenoid operation. They order to control it. A multimillion-dollar Atsugi in September 1957 He was seventeen little dazed, babbling about seeing things in were married, and Oswald inexplicably soon effort, this program literally spanned the years old and had spent his childhood the bushes. His colleagues, unfamiliar with began making arrangements to return with globe. One location in particular deserves bouncing between foster homes and the what in the Sixties would become known as a his bride to America. careful observation. company of his widowed mother in New bad trip,walked him back to his barracks and York, Louisiana and Texas. A voracious put him to bed. The Warren Commission briefly consid- Somehow, between shooting himself and ered the possibility that Oswald had been ATSUGI, JAPAN, WAS THE SITE OF THE reader who scored above average on aptitude brainwashed by Soviet secret police prior to CIAs headquarters in the Far East, a partic- tests, he had nonetheless been habitually shooting randomly into the bushes, Oswald his return to the U.S The commission was ularly strategic location in those years that truant and dropped out of high school. This learned to speak Russian. Wilcott and others suspicious about the "suicide" attempt, and bridged Korea and Vietnam. While the led him into the marines and to Japan, osten- contend that these language lessons were hypothesized that Oswald might have been CIAs presence at the Atsugi Naval Air Base sibly as a radar operator. According to one courtesy of the CIA. (Private Oswald pos- tampered with while hospitalized in Moscow has long been known CIA official, however, sessed a high-security clearance.) No one At one point, the commission asked the CIA (U-2 spy flights over Osd acted the has suggested any other way he could have for a briefing on the latest developments in Russia and China took ton he Tokyo achieved the proficiency he did, but "Os- mind control. Richard Helms, then head of off from Atsugi), an IF OSWALD WAS SENT CAEIstatiand was waldkovich," as he was dubbed by his befud- then prepared for CIA covert operations, concluded that while important facet of its recruited for its .spe - dled barracks mates, was the Soviets were studying drugs like LSD for activities has only the next step on what turned out to be a possible clandestine use, there was no evi- just recently come to TO RUSSIA ON SOME cialAccording °Peratims." to James rather strange trip. 1959, he requested and dence Oswald had been brainwashed. light. Wilcott, a CA finance In September Helms wrote in a June 1964 memo,"Sovi- Since the early officer in Japan at the received an early discharge from the marines research in pharmacological agents pro- 1950s, Atsugi served as COVERT TASK THEN IT'S time of the Kennedy and then traveled (with unexplained money et ducing behavioral effects has consistently one of two overseas assassination, news of and by unknown means) to the Soviet lagged five years behind Western research. field stations where the the events in Dallas Union. There, he swiftly appeared at the . There is no present evidence that the CIAconducted exten- QUITE POSSIBLE THAT HE came as no great shock U.S embassy to announce he was defecting Soviets have any singular new potent drugs, sive LSD testing. A to agency personnel. and giving military secretfto the Russians. or that they are particularly expert in the use 1953 memo stated that First, they had expect- The change from marine to Muscovite was of such drugs to force a course of action on LSD was being stored ed someone to do sudden and dramatic, leaving almost every- WAS GIVEN LSD AS an individual." (Later that same year, Helms at the Manila and At- something about Ken- one puzzled. One exception was Oswald's privately urged that the CIA continue to test sugi CIA stations, and A and his "anti- mother, Marguerite, who showed herself to LSD and related chemicals on unwitting that its use in special . CIA policies." And be a woman ahead of the times by contending PART OF HIS TRAINING. American citizens in order to keep up "with interrogations in Eu- second, the man who in 1960 that her son was a spy for the U.S. Soviet advances in this field.") rope was being considered. appeared to have taken the task upon him- government. Her argument was no compel- In addition to interrogation sessions, the self, Lee Harvey Oswald, was no stranger to ling that J. Edgar Hoover sent out a memo WHILE OSWALD WAS IN RUSSIA FALLING IN drug was also employed experimentally on the CIA. two and a half years before the assassination with a pharmacist, the CA was bedding military personnel. These tests continued The story that circulated among CIA suggesting there was more to Oswald than love down with mobsters in an effort to bump off throughout the Cold War decade and into personnel stationed in Tokyo, Wilcott main- met the eye. Fidel Castro. Both longed for a return to the the early 1960s. One marine-corps veteran tains, was that Oswald had been recruited If Oswald was sent to Russia as a pseudo- Cuba that hardexisted before Fidel, a right. who participated in the experiments at At- from the marines for a deep-cover operation defector, performing some covert task for- wing haven for gamblers, drug runners and sugi recounted how two CIA officials gave into the USSR. With no friends in the the U.S. (exactly what the Russians suspect- the United Fruit Company The GAs anti- him a variety of drugs and apparently tried to marines, fleeting contact with his family and ed from the beginning), then it's quite possi- Cuban alliance with the Mafia was originally recruit him for CIA service: "This guy says, a history of moving about, he would easily ble he was given LSD as part of his training. supervised by then-CIA director Allen 'We just want to see how you'll react. If have been able to embark upon a secret A lengthy GA memo entitled "Truth Drugs Dulles, who later sat on the Warren Com- you're going to be a spy, don't you want to be project without attracting much attention. in Interrogation" reveals the agency's predi- mission but failed to inform the other com- informed about every mind-altering drug The most striking aspect of Wilcott's lection for administering LSD to agents who missioners of the CIAs assassination plots. there is?' statement was that he'd heard speculation were destined for dangerous overseas mis- Thus, the commission never considered the "They wanted to find out how well you that the CIAs recruitment of Oswald at sions. The CIA feared that the Russians implications of what Lyndon Johnson called could stand up under pressure. Like what if Atsugi was facilitated by a special "handle" might use LSD in interrogations or as a the GM "Murder, Inc" in the Caribbean. the KGB agent drops a tab of acid in your the agency had on Oswald, after discovering brainwashing device. The ClAs anti-Castro operations began drink? You've got to be ready for it. "during a routine lie-detector test that he'd An adversary intelligence service, in the before Kennedy took office with a series of "It was pretty weird," the ex-marine ex- murdered someone or committed some words of the report, could employ LSD "to foiled attempts to undermine Fidel's charis- plained. "I'm eighteen and chasing all the other serious crime." A routine test? Or one produce anxiety or terror in medically un- matic appeal. One plan was to spray Castro's whores in town, and these CIA guys are assisted by modern chemistry? sophisticated subjects unable to distinguish broadcasting studio with a powerful hallu- buying my drinks and paying for the whores The HSCA rejected Wilcott's story of drug-induced psychosis from actual insan- similar to LSD, creating an embar- giving me a whole lot of drinks with lots Oswald's CIA recruitment for lack of cor- ity." But as the report states, "an enlightened cinogen rassing scene as the premier babbled in a ..1 weird drugs in them." roboration from other Tokyo-based agents. operative" (that is, someone who had tripped drug-induced stupor.This plan was scrapped One of the drugs was LSD. Investigating covert matters twenty years before and was therefore familiar with LSD's "Pretty soon all the shadows arc moving after the fact is not easy, due, in part, to faulty effects) would not freak out, "knowing that because the drug proved too unpredict- able. around—we're in this bar, see—and Samurais memories — some intentionally faulty. As the effects of these hallucinogenic agents is Yet another plot involved dusting Cas- are everywhere, and I started to see skeletons former CIA director Richard Helms stated transient in normal individuals." The ques- tro's shoes with thallium salts, which would and things. My mind just started boiling when asked to explain gaps in his testimony tion is, was Oswald "enlightened"? cause his beard to fall out. Apparently over, going about a thousand miles a min- on the JFK assassination, "My memory has hatched at the GAs Bible Desk, "Operation ute." been contaminated." Thus, any direct trail LIFE FOR OSWALD IN RUSSIA WAS ALMOST AS Samson" postulated that Castro would lose In addition to LSD, the Atsugi-based from the CIA to Oswald remains, as one strange as life in the marines. He traveled to his charisma once defrocked of hair. marine was given mescaline, sodium pen- might expect, clouded. obscure places doing mundane tasks; biog- After a few months of pursuing such tothol, downers and speed. "I'm sure there Oswald's career as a marine was, in a word, raphers still wonder what he was really up dubious schemes, the CIA shifted its focus are going to be some little old ladies whdre weird. At one point, he shot himself, wound- to. When the Russians told Oswald they were from bad trips and beard trims to eliminat- gonna be surprised that illegal drugs like ing his arm in what appeared to be a feeble returning him to the U.S., he tried to slit his ing Castro altogether. In August 1960, heroin and LSD were freely used by govern- suicide attempt rather than the accident he wrists—another unsuccessful suicide. As in Colonel Sheffield Edwards, who had origi- ment agents," he continued. "But that's the claimed it was His fellow marines saw it as a the marines, he was allowed to stay. nally coordinated Project Artichoke for the way it was." ploy to enable him to remain in Japan when In Minsk, where he was given work in a CA, was asked to organize an assassination If that's the way it was it's important to his unit was to be transferred. The official radio factory, he met and fell in love with an

22 : ROLLING STON1, ?surto.' 3, 1983 squad to snuff out Castro. Edwards turned to Oswald's life in America was no less pe- On top of all his strange hobbies, Ferric pessimistic novel of a drug-induced totali- the CIAs Las Vegas contacts, eventually culiar than it had been in Atsugi or in Minsk. worked as a pilot and private investigator for tarian society, as This Great hiring mobsters Johnny Roselli, Sam Gian- Lee and Marina settled in Texas and soon Carlos Marcell°, the Mafia boss of New Given Gillin's inability to eyeball Oswald cans and Santos Trafficante for the task. took up with an odd assortment of friends, Orleans and Dallas, a sworn enemy of the and the FBI's blindness as to who "Hucks- Colonel Edwards' successor in charge of none more unusual than George Dc Mohr- Kennedy; a cohort of the CIA-Mafia con- ley" was, it is not surprising that the bureau's the Castro project, William Harvey, was an- enschildt. Born a Russian count before the spirators and, according to his tax returns, probe was inconclusive. However, had the other CIA spook who graduated from mind revolution, De Mohrenschildt thrived in a one heck of a tomato salesman. Marcello FBI taken the trouble to review its own control to murder conspiracies. Harvey was world of political shadows,appea ring at vari- claimed a $1600 per month income from records, it would have found that during the one of a handful of CIA officers kept abreast ous times to be working for Polish intelli- tomato sales, but somehow had accumulated summer of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald of behavior-control projects from the begin- gence, the Nazis, the French Resistance, the a net worth of $40 million (government checked out several books by Aldous Hux- ning, and as CIA chief in West Germany in British, the Americans, the Rockefellers — a investigators contend through drugs and ley from the New Orleans Public Library the 1950s, he employed LSD in special inter- man of many masks. By 1962, he was calling racketeering). Edward Gillin, who is now a juvenile- rogations. He was then promoted to head himself a geologist and a friend to the Os- Thus David Ferrie represents a nexus in court judge in New Orleans, remembers the Operation ZR-Rifle, which developed the wald& the JFK murder mystery between the Mafia conversation as if it had occurred last month. CIAs "executive action capability" — a eu- In April 1963, Oswald moved to New and the CIA, drugs and assassination. In "He was looking for a drug that would open phemism for the agency's capability to assas- Orleans, where his social circle—in view of 1967, his ranking as his vision, you know, sinate foreign leaders. his alleged Marxist sympathies—was even dball in the mind expansion," re- Harvey, along with MK ULTRAS head stranger than in Dallas. There he met Carlos calls Gillin. "I was very sorcerer-scientist, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, Bringuier, an anti-Castro Cuban exile with lIes`i:arscldssured when he died of an apparent ONE COULD ARGUE THAT curious about any guy studied the feasibility of applying a bizarre CIA connections. Oswald first sought to suicide, soon after hav- who would come into array of gadgets and biochemical poisons to work for Bringuier, then appeared to be ingbecome a key sus- the DAs office asking "executive actions." This program banded working against him. Eventually, the two pect in the assassina- WALD'S LIFE HAD BEEN if a drug is legal and together the most right-wing elements of the engaged in a well-publicized street brawl and giving me a long spiel CIA with their natural allies: anti-Castro •then a debate about Cuba on New Orleans about a book by mercenaries and the Mob. attor- radio. Joining Oswald and Bringuier in the t°7ney `Jimabll Garrison.sericbty A PSYCHEDELIC MINE Aldous Huxley" Such an unholy alliance was not officially debate was Ed Butler, a right-wing propa- Into this bed of In September 1963, acknowledged until the 1975 Senate inves- gandist for the Information Council of the stra nge Oswald applied for a tigation headed by Senator Frank Church, Americas (INCA), a group that later sold Leef eFlilaorvweys visa to go to Mexico. which established that there had been eight FIELD--ALMOST IMPOS- LPs of the debate as part of its anticommu- Oswald in the summer Like an old familiar attempts on Castro's life. (Castro, in a better nist crusade. The president of INCA was Dr. ghost, the CIA cast an- position to count, numbered them at closer Alton Ochsner, described as a consultant to d1963.Wkatgoing through kePt those him other shadow across to eighty) Senator Church reported that the SIMI 10 PASS THROUGH the air force on "the medical side of subver- days is not exactly his path. The visa im- plots utilized deadly bacterial powders, sive matters." The directorships of Brin- clear: his jobs were mediately preceding cigars dipped in lethal poison, exploding guier's anti-Castro group, and Ochsner's meager and his politi- Oswald's was issued to seashells, a poison fountain pen rigged with a WITHOUT TRIPPING. INCA included the owners of the Reily cal efforts halfhearted. a William Gaudet, an hypodermic syringe and other devices that Coffee Company where Oswald, the man The best explanation for his political schi- admitted CIA contact.(At this time, Gaudet strain the imagination. The CIA even con- being denounced by both organizations as a zophrenia is that Oswald was some type of was employed by Dr. Alton Ochsner, the sidered the possibility of using a hypnotized communist, had recently been on the informant posing as a pro-Castroite. His aforementioned INCA president.) When "Manchurian Candidate" to kill Castro. payroll. marriage was less than ideal, and Marina was the Mexican government submitted the In attempting to unravel these murder By far the strangest bird to intersect beginning to see him as a bit of a space cadet. names of visa holders preceding and follow- schemes, Church's Senate Select Committee Oswald's orbit was David Ferri e. Eccentric in. "Lee no like. Russia." she once said."Lee no ingQiwald's to theWarten CommissionAnly on Intelligence found itself over a barrel behavior, belief and appearance, Ferrie had like America. Lee like moon." . one name — Gaudet's — was omitted. No when Johnny Roselli's body turned up inside been an Eastern Airlines pilot until he was explanation for the omission has ever been one, floating in the ocean. He was one of arrested for a "crime against nature" with a WHICH BRINGS US FULL CIRCLE TO WHAT offered. several participants in the CIA-Mafia plots sixteen-year-old boy He was a priest in the began as a typical day for New Orleans Why did Oswald want to go to Mexico? who met an untimely death. Before he was Orthodox Old Catholic Church, a bizarre assistant DA Edward Gillin but ended some- Having received no help from the New murdered in 1976, Roselli claimed that Os- sect engaging in animal sacrifice and occult where in the Twilight Zone with a strange Orleans DAs office, perhaps he was heading wald had been a mere patsy and that the real rituals. Ferric had no hair on his body (per- visit from a young man preaching the virtues south of the border in his quest for drugs. presidential assassins had been a Mafia hit haps someone had poisoned his shoes) and of psychedelic drugs. Gillin's assurance that George De Mohrenschildt had traveled fre- squad originally trained to kill Castro. wore ill-fitting wigs and fake eyebrows that Oswald had been his visitor was rejected by quently to Mexico, and his stories may have And what was the motive? CIA rightists fooled no one and made a striking, if not the FBI on the grounds that Gillin was figured into Oswald's plans. (De Mohren- were apparently incensed by JFK, who in his shocking, impression on all who saw him. extremely nearsighted and therefore incap- schildt committed suicide in 197Z shortly last year had obstructed anti-Castro para- Although the Oswald-Ferrie relationship able of eyewitness identification. But due to before he was to testify before the House military operations while making moves is well-proved, it is unclear when it began. his poor vision, he had come more and more Assassinations Committee.) Visa in hand, toward detente with Cuba. The House As- The House Assassinations Committee sug- to rely on voice as a means of identification, Oswald went to the library to pick up more sassinations Committee also suggested that gested that the two men may have met as and when Oswald's voice was played on the books by Huxley and a few by Ian Fleming, the JFK conspirators were organized-crime early as 1956 in New Orleans, when young radio (the INCA recording previously men- and soon he was on the long bus ride to figures, presumably Trafficante and others Lee was a cadet in a Civil Air Patrol squad- tioned), Gitlin recognized it as that of his vis- Mexico City involved with CIA attempts on Castro. ron headed by Ferrie. By the time of the 1963 itor. What Oswald did there the last week in radio debate, Oswald and Ferrie were well He claimed that his visitor repeatedly September has never been totally clear. It's IT WAS AGAINST THIS BACKDROP OF acquainted. A right-winger who hated Ken- referred to an author whose books on drugs alleged he contacted the Soviet or Cuban secret plots and CIA-Mafia connivance that nedy Ferrie was active in paramilitary opera- described the new world that the visitor, too, embassies. It's reported he hung out on col- Oswald returned to America in June 1962. tions against Castro and claimed to have had foreseen. The FBI, in a case of literary lege campuses and attended a party with During his years abroad, the drug expertise flown in the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs myopia, recorded the author's name as people connected to early LSD experiments. and enthusiasm of the CIA had advanced to invasion in 1961. "Hucksley" "Hucksley" can, of course, be But Oswald's trail is far too cold to deter- the point where various chemicals, including Ferrie was also a hypnotist and fancied none other than Aldous Huxley, author of mine just what he was thinking. Perhaps the [SD, were routinely used in questioning himself a biochemist. He claimed to have Tlx Doors of Perception, the manifesto of books he was reading are the best clues to defectors, suspected double agents and the created drugs that caused cancer (some- psychedelic consciousness. Apparently he what his trip was about: espionage and mind like. The returning Oswald seemed a prime thing the CIA was also secretly developing) was unknown to the FBI, which is not too expansion. In any event, he soon returned candidate for special i nterrogati on, given the or caused heart attacks indistinguishable surprising. (When informed in 1964 that to the U.S., to Dallas and to his place in Kis- circumstances of his defection and the sud- from natural death (another CIA endeavor ), Jean-Paul Sartre had called for a new inves- t01)t denness of his return. Yet there is no evi- as well as aphrodisiacs and amnesia-induc- tigation of the Kennedy assassination, J. On November 22nd: 1963, the Kennedy dence that the CIA or any other agency met ing drugs. At times, his apartment was over- Edgar Hoover promptly scribbled on a administration came to an abrupt end. On with Oswald upon his arrival. (The State run by laboratory mice. Many attributed his memo, "Find out who Sartre is.") In a slip that very day, a cancer stricken Aldous Hux- Department even loaned him $435 for his hairless condition to a chemistry experiment almost too Freudian to be believed, the FBI's ley lay on his deathbed, took a sizable dose of return to the U.S.) gone awry memos refer to Brave New World, Huxley's LSD and passed on ...tripping, [Cont. on 54]

ROLLING STONE, MARCH 3, 1983 25

Oswald

Cont. from 25] STILL, THE QUESTION REMAINS: did Lee Harvey Oswald drop acid? , ...1111104.704,44, The assistant DA of New Orleans suggests yes. The FBI says no. By 1%3, Oswald had had several op- portunities to acquaint himself with psychedelics: through the CIA at Atsugi or through his con- tacts with intelligence and under- world types. • Indeed, one could argue that Oswald's life had been a psychedel- ic mine field, almost impossible to pass through without tripping. His alleged murder of the president,on the other hand, was a shot through the trees at a moving target—a feat that has never been duplicated. Had Oswald lived to tell his story, we could have learned if he had really done either. But such was not his fate, as a stunned TV audience witnessed Oswald's execution at the hands of a gangster. Years later, when an entire gen- eration of young people seemed to he turning on, George De itiP1011S HUXLEY Mohrcnschildt eulogized his friend: "No matter what they say, The Doors of Lee Harvey Oswald was a delight- Perception guy.They make him out to he a but he was smart as hell. Ahead of his time, really. A kind of hippie of those days.... And I will tell you this—I am sure he did not shoot the president." 0

• • 46..v ro ••)". •, . • • 5 EOC 1 -6- or three separate forms of illicit activities and underworld operations." That was relevant enough to get quoted in a HSC staff report (9 HSC 93). I recommend that you read and enjoy this article. You might not learn anything about the assassination, but it does say something about the methodology of historical analysis. When many of us think we know most of the answers, it's good to be reminded that we may not even know all of the questions.

FRAM 'ECHOES 4F Cataphttoel (mu` KoCNs U.077' -R) 114412V1 .7-8, 1753

Exclusive! EOC interviews Robert Ranftel: EOC: First of all, let me start with the question that is on everyone's lips (as the HSC pathologist said to Dr. Humes [7 HSC 243]): are you guys serious? RR: I'm afraid that we are. Everything in the article is true, and we tried to include every item of evidence that suggested LHO might have taken LSD. Naturally, we left out evidence that he might not have. In a way, I think that what we did is very similar to what Earl Warren did in his much longer piece, "Did LHO kill JFK?" One of the things we wanted to do with this article, which we saw more as a literary effort than an investigative one, was to show that what you find in an investigation depends a lot on what you set out to look for. If you want to show that Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy, there's a lot of evidence you can point to that shows just that. When the HSCA found itself with acoustical proof of a conspiracy, they went back to the evidence, and - what do you know - it suddenly turned out that there were earwitnesses whose testimony had been on the books for years and who suddenly became credible. EOC: Okay, seriously, then: what's the bottom line? If Oswald did drop acid, does that have anything to do with November 22? Was he high in the TSBD when Kennedy was shot? RR: The bottom line is - here's some new information about Oswald's life. I don't know what that has to do with November 22. I don't necessarily think that the reason he wasn't watching the parade with everyone else was that he was off somewhere getting stoned. But before the bottom line is drawn, you've got to add the possibility that he took drugs to the equation. EOC: How did you come across this story? RR: I was reading FBI files for David Lifton, who was working on "Best Evidence," and Marty Lee was reading CIA files on LSD and mind control. We would hang around together at Marty's house and talk to each other about what we found, and one day it occurred to us that with his new information about acid at Atsugi and my reading of Gillin's allegations from the New Orleans field office file, we had a new hypothesis: the Oswald-acid connection. We thought it an interesting story, albeit "National Enquirer" kind of stuff. EOC: Can Gillin be taken seriously as a witness? I remember seeing his story in some CD many years ago, and I just assumed it was a typical crazy Oswald sighting. RR: Jeff Cohen found and talked to Gillin. While he might easily have said, yeah, I thought it was Oswald once, but who knows?, instead he said, absolutely, I remember it as if it happened last month. Gillin also took issue with FBI allegations of his blindness. I haven't gone to N.O. and stood in front of Gillin, asking "How many fingers am I holding up?" We're not convinced that it was Oswald who visited Gillin, but we are convinced that Gillin is convinced. Granted the N.O. DA's office has never 5 EOC 1 -7- seemed to have too high a standard for employment, but with Gillin's story of the encounter and the various records that show that indeed, Oswald was at that time reading Huxley, and had been at one of the CIA's LSD-connected stations, the idea seems believable. EOC: It seems really bizarre that anyone would ask a DA about LSD. RR: Oswald seemed to enjoy doing bizarre things. It's bizarre to shoot at General Walker; or to create incidents with Bringuier in N.O. or at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. It's bizarre to pose with a rifle and "The Militant" or to leave a threatening note at the FBI. When you consider all the things that Oswald or Oswald impostors are reported to have done, this seems right in character(s). EOC: One trouble with seeing Oswald as a doper, I would think, is that people who took LSD talked about it - often wouldn't stop talking about it, in fact. Priscilla McMillan's book tells us a lot about Oswald - e.g., that he disliked fat women - but there is no reference to drugs in the index. Isn't it hard to believe that nobody knew of and talked about LHO's interest in drugs, if it really existed? RR: Yes. However, there are a lot of facets to Oswald's life that he never talked about but that reasonable people suspect existed nonetheless. An organized crime connection, for instance, or a CIA one. He kept himself pretty busy jabbering about Cuba and Marxism, and who among us believes that? Tim Leary's incessant acid-babble at that time was the exception and not the rule. One didn't really hear Henry Luce or Cary Grant or the wife of a prominent Senator talk about acid, but they all took it. One of JFK's mistresses supposedly was "experienced." (Hint: she was married to a CIA official, although that's not how she is reported to have gotten the stuff.) EOC: What's all this about a possible LSD connection to explain Oswald's visit to Mexico? RR: That's not the strongest of allegations. Elena Garro de Paz claimed that she attended a "twist party" in Mexico City where Oswald was present. Her husband, Octavio Paz, has written about his involliement in LSD experimentation.- Except for the proven LSD connection of her husband and how that added to our thesis, I wouldn't be interested in her story. The HSC did seem to take her pretty seriously, however. EOC: Could Oswald have been on Mafia LSD, rather than CIA LSD? It's hard to believe that Marcello's people recruited Oswald by taking care of his $25 bail, but if they were supplying him with controlled substances.... RR: I have to depend on the acid historian, Mr. Lee, for this information; he contends that acid did not fall into the hands of the mob for some years. In 1963 it was still available only from the CIA and some of the centers of higher learning in this country. (Tulane? I don't know.) EOC: Did anything good get left out of the "Rolling Stone" article? RR: The best evidence is there, but there is a lot more. For instance, just before Oswald's Mexico trip, Leary was quoted in newspapers as saying he was going to Mexico to form a community based on Huxley's writings. If one can postulate that LHO read Dr. Castro's pronouncements, why not Dr. Leary's as well? Tito Harper's parents contend that George DeMohrenschildt led their son into a life of drugs in Mexico. I wonder what drugs. EOC: What do you think writing this article will do to your reputation? What will plugging it do to mine? RR: One of the things the article shows, I hope, is that there is still a great deal that the independent researcher can do. There are still interesting people out there and interesting questions to ask them. You don't need 25 FBI agents and $2 million to find things out. And there is still an audience for your discoveries. I don't really want to be known as the man who invented the LSD connection (or the Bronson film, for that matter), but I don't mind at all being known as someone who, 20 years after the fact, is still digging away. I was impressed by how many people noticed the article. At this stage of 5 EOC 1 -8- the game, I don't think there's such a thing as bad publicity for the case, as long as the information is documented and the investigation responsibly done. Publishers and readers will still pay attention to new information; that means that we should continue. Okay, the LHO-LSD connection seems somehow silly, but the investigation of those facts and the facts themselves are serious. Until we've compiled all the facts, the picture is not complete. Earl Warren didn't have it, the HSCA didn't have it, and chances are we still don't have it.

"Then we've agreed that all the evidence isn't in, and that even if all the evidence were in, it still wouldn't be definitive."

an 'Zraanrisco ronicic Thursday, December 24, 1987

Nixon.Wanted Robert. Ranftel, a researcher who obtained the memo under the H GARCHIK Freedom of Information Act, said Infoimation on he was told by the FBI that the White House at one time possessed a Hot mmuNnT list of the names of suspected gay Gay Reporters journalists but that the information rom9e, Diahan an Top of the Heap has been destroyed. Illilbari,and a fro ndependent Television News By Rick DelVecchio concert 'I Cheerlec The Nixon administration Ranftel, who is investigating venture fined in the )ularity poll with 19 percent of asked the FBI in 1970 for infor- old FBI files for the newsletter Fair- Days' is the Persi( mation on "known and suspect- ness and Accuiacy in Reporting, has made a new request to confirm ed" homosexuals in the Wash- nt, got more votes than her hus- that the file no longer exists. tent. ington press corps, according to le one with the most flowers on a memo obtained by a Berkeley Ranftel, who has worked on ex- No Ao researcher. poses of the assassination of Presi- mproved fifth-place showing, The one-page memo, signed by dent John F. Kennedy and the sister-in-law, the Duchess of J. Edgar Hoover and dated Nov. 25, death of , said Hal- 1970, said that Nixon chief of staff deman told him last week that he knew nothing of the memo. "He which is 4 percent less than his H. R. Haldeman called and "stated the president wanted to ask ... for a very sincerely said eight different rundown on the homosexuals ways, 'I don't remember.' " By 1 tould have stayed in the known and suspected in the Wash- able Margaret. ington press corps." quoted _ N OMi Haldeman as saying the hoover to ;.rtititryoung royals should hold Washingtotide nitt-pref erring that they stick to "I thought we have some of the note "rings no bells at all." the I The Rq rn - natit material," the memo went on. "Mr. The memo does not shed light plans to Haldeman mentioned (name or co f a on any unexplained cases of harass- wide list o ed Guil. Idle Gossip names deleted) and some of the oth- inent of individual journalists dur- ers rumored generally to be and ple whose ng • Madonna, who recently ing the pre-Watergate Nixon years conduct" ess also whether we had any other most vithdrew her petition for di- but serves as a reminder of the for- eligible tkd stuff; that he, the president, has an plem .orce from Sean Penn, was seen mer president's bitterness toward grants, sch or interest in what, if anything else, we the press at a time when the nation bran! tepping out in New York the know." sidies and (cts ther night with actor Matt Dil- was split by Vietnam, Ranftel said. ip- dors( on. Her hair was brown. "I told Mr. Haldeman I would The Ger the The researcher said there is al- tration wou inner • Diane Sawyer has broken get after that right away, and we ought to be able to send it over so a lesson in the memo for journal- accordance de- &f in •^1, her boyfriend, Shear- IV as I certainly not later than Friday," ists. posed by the to an Richard and Budget ice entin and is going around concluded the memo, which was ad- "That's not a new game," he dressed to five of the FBI director's have until n ow ith director Mike Nichols. , said, referring to press investiga- assistants. the regulati gover tions into the private lives of Demo- e in Ma cratic presidential candidate Gary tion i Hart and other public figures. "it's Individ Mark. just that the sides have changed." have their govor dures for harringlielliii Haldeman, contacted in Califor- nia where he is now running several Nixon White House Sought small businesses, said he does not remember making the telephone call to Hoover or receiving any re- FBI Data.on Gay Journalists sponse. "It rings no bells at all," Halde- Hoover Memo of Talk With Haldeman Found man said. - Charles D. Brennan, one of the after that right away, and we ought assistant FBI directors to whom the By Eleanor Randolph to be able to send it over certainly memo was addressed, said he had Washington Post Staff Writer not later than Friday," the memo no recollection of the memo. "That said. It concludes, "Very truly was 17 years ago," he said. In November 1970, President Experts on Hoover said that it Nixon's chief of staff H.R. Halde- yours, John Edgar Hoover, direc- tor." • was the former FBI director's prac- man asked then-FBI Director J. tice to make a record of every Edgar Hoover to pass on any infor- The document, which was found by a California researcher, Robert phone conversation or contact with mation the agency had collected the White House. about homosexuals "known and sus- Ranftel, among the files now avail- able to the public in the FBI's "I have no doubt that it's a de- pected in the Washington press pendable.; rendition of what hap- corps," according to a newly dis- Freedom of Information and Priva- cy Act reading room in Washington, pened," said David Garrow, who covered memo of the conversation won a Pulitzer priie this year for his that was made by Hoover at the is a telephone memo from Hoover dated Nov. 25, 1970, at 4:32 p.m. nonfiction book on the Rev. Martin time. A media-watch group in New Luther King Jr. "As a regular mat- Hoover, who addressed the York called FAIR (Fairness & Ac- .' ter, whenever he would have a memo to his five assistants, said curacy in Reporting) plans to re- ' phone request from the White that Haldeman had called and "stat- print the document in its newslet- House, he dictated one of these ed the president wanted him to ask, ter, EXTRA!, to be published this memos. It was Hoover's way of and he would imagine I would have week. maintaining a . . . paper rec- it pretty much at hand so there Ranftel said that he and another ord." would be no specific investigation, researcher in New York, Peter "It's well known Hoover was ob- for a rundown on the homosexuals Krass, had requested information sessed by the issue of homosexuals. known and suspected in the Wash- that might have been passed to the Many people think it was because ington press corps." White House on Nov. 27, 1970, two he was not certain about his own The memo went on to say, "I days after Hoover's memo. He said sexual [identity]," said Sanford thought we have some of that ma- the FBI told them Hoover's copy of Ungar, dean of the school of com- terial. Mr. Haldeman mentioned whatever material went to the munication at American University [name or names deleted] and some White House had been destroyed. and author of a 1976 book, "FBI: An of the others rumored generally to The researchers are asking for Uncensored Look Behind the be and also whether • we had any descriptions of the documents that Walls." other stuff: that he, the president, were destroyed and for documents "But in many ways this memo has an interest in what, if anything from other FBI officials' files tells more about Haldeman than i else, we know. that could relate to the memo, he it does about Hoover," Ungar ,told Mr. Haldeman I would get said. added. Page 16 Extra! September/October 1988 Farewell to the Annenbergs • by Robert Ranftel

Rupert Murdoch's purchase of TV Guide is a milestone in the of the Mirror as my kind of paper. I always thought of Annenberg news business. Not only does it add to the Australian's media as my kind of guy." empire, it also marks the end of an old and equally important In 1922 Annenberg purchased the Daily Racing Form and dynasty in publishing—that of the Annenberg family. supplied betting information to the nation's bookies. Men like Before there was TV Guide and television, there were news- Johnny Roselli, a ganster-graduate of the circulation wars later papers. And before Murdoch, there was William Randolph Hearst. hired by the CIA to kill Castro, organized a nationwide gambling Chicago was an early battleground for control of news media, with syndicate from Annenberg's base. And with this wealth Annen- 8 dailies and fierce competition for circulation. Street-corner berg expanded his news empire to include bawdy magazines with newsboys sold only one paper and fought for favored sites to hawk names like Brevities, as well as the more respectable their ware. "Circulation wars" erupted with fights and strongarm Philadelphia Inquirer, creating what Fortune called the largest tactics deciding which papers would sell most. annual income in the US. When Hearst moved into Chicago, he hired an immigrant Lots of money and a shady past prompted an IRS probe and named Moe Annenberg as one of his circulation managers. Annenberg was indicted for tax evasion. His son, Walter, was also Annenberg, in turn, hired street gangs to see that news dealers indicted for aiding and abetting his father's crimes. In return for bought the Hearst product. Trucks were wrecked, papers dumped having the charges against Walter dropped, Moe plead guilty and into the river and newsboys were murdered, though no one went to prison. Walter became head of the empire. employed by Hearst was ever arrested. For the next thirty years Walter ran the rightwing Inquirer, Annenberg was subsequently promoted to Hearst's New York establishing a reputation once described by Philadelphia attorney Daily Mirror, whereupon he turned to two up-and-coming gang- Harry Sawyer as "the greatest institutional force for evil" in that sters, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, for help in honing that city. He maintained a blacklist of people and organizations that competitive edge. They employed the same goon squad tactics that were never to be mentioned in Inquirer news stories (Ralph Nader put Annenberg on top in Chicago. Said Luciano: "I used to think and the ACLU, among others). He used his newspaper to attack a gubernatorial candidate who opposed plans that would have George Bush's Affirmative profited the Pennsylvania Railroad, but Annenberg didn't tell his readers that he was the railroad's largest stockholder. Annenberg Action for Servants was also said to have given Philadelphia Mayor Frank Rizzo veto 1 Most American voters may never find out about George Bush's power over certain news stories. ' Gaucasian;oniy covenants in Texas. On February 4,1981 ;aftei he But time and tremendous wealth seem to cleanse reputations: took his vice-presidential oath, Bush bought a lot in West Oaks, President Richard Nixon appointed Annenberg to the diplomatic Texas, where he hopes to build a retirement home. The neighbor- corps.("Walter Annenberg, of all people, to be ambassador to hood is all white; Bush was a member of the exclusive all-white London, of all places?" wailed James Reston. )But serve he d id, with Ramada club when he bought the property. Bush's contract con- tained a clause that the land coUld'not "be sold, leased or rented to TV Guide and The Racing Form continuing to fill the family any person other than of the Caucasian race, except in the case of coffers. According to a White House document (8-9-72) recently servant's quarters." unearthed by Extra! from the National Archives, Annenberg Information about this racially restrictive deed—and several offered to make the pages of TV Guide—with its circulation of 18 others signed by Bush since the 1950s—has been available since The million—available to Nixon to promote his Vietnam policy. Nation (11-28-87) exposed the story last year. But the mass media Now the former ambassador of checkered past has sold out to have been virtually silent. Did Bush know of the racist clause in the the tabloid monger of checkered present. As Linda Ellerbee would 1981 deed? If not, has he admonished his attorney who drew up the say, "And so it goes." contract? Will he appoint an attorney general as racist, or as sloppy, as the lawyer who represented him in Texas? —Paul Rockwell Robert Ranftel is a FAIR research associate

FAIR 130 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001

Application to Mail at Second-Class Postage Rates is Pending at New York. NY 10001 Page 14 Extra! November/December 1988

Anderson's Fairy Tale by Robert Ranftel

A deluge of stories commemorated the 25th anniversary of off the FBI about his and Pearson's column before it appeared. President Kennedy's death—from Time to the National Anderson also sought Hoover's help when writing about mutual Enquirer, from to MacNeil/Lehrer—including adversaries. over 30 hours of primetime programming. The media took a Among Anderson's adversaries were the Kennedys. Extra! second look at the possibility of a second gunman in reports has obtained an FBI document, dated May 21,1968, indicating ranging from the serious (PBS Nova's probe of the scientific that Anderson proposed to the Bureau that he write a column evidence) to the ludicrous (Time's theory that Oswald was accusing Robert Kennedy—not J. Edgar Hoover—of instigating aiming at Connally not Kennedy). the wiretap on Martin Luther King. "Kennedy should receive a Perhaps worst of all was Jack Anderson's American Expose— death blow prior to the Oregon primary," the document quotes Who Murdered JFK?, a two-hour syndicated special which Anderson as telling the FBI. Kennedy lost that primary shortly claimed—with flashy graphics and flimsy proof—that Fidel before he was murdered in June 1988. Castro masterminded Kennedy's death in retaliation for CIA During the previous year Anderson had a 6 hour conversa- plots against the Cuban leader. Anderson's tale has Castro and tion with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who was the Mafia—bitter enemies since Castro ran the Mob out of then investigating the JFK assassination. Anderson proceeded to Havana in 1959—working together to kill JFK. How Castro (or brief the FBI on Garrison's case. According to an FBI memo the Mafia, for that matter) orchestrated a US government cover- (4-4-67), Anderson-felt that Garrison had made a convincing up of the evidence is not satisfactorily explained. Nor why case that the CIA was behind JFK's death. Castro, then secretly negotiating with Kennedy to normalize But the CIA got off clean in Anderson's recent TV special, relations, would have preferred the hawkish Lyndon Johnson as which featured the tale of gangster Johnny Roselli, one of the president. "Anderson seemed to listen to all the evidence pre- mobsters hired by the Agency to kill Castro in 1960. Although sented," one of his associates told Extra!, "but he was like a wild the death plots failed, Roselli figured he'd done well, for, in his man insisting that the show must ultimately point to Castro." words, he "now had the government by the ass." Roselli thought While Anderson's mentor, Drew Pearson, often antagonized he could avoid prosecution by threatening to expose the CIA- J. Edgar Hoover, Anderson earned high marks from the FBI Mafia alliance. chief. Hoover once described Anderson as "a good boy," "a nice In 1967, while facing racketeering charges, Roselli leaked a looking fellow," and a "smooth talker" (j. Edgar Hoover, Per- story to jack Anderson, whose columns began to refer to a Mafia- sonal Files, 7-1-69). Hoover's fondness for Anderson may have skeleton in the CIA's closet. Roselli added a new twist—the had something to do with the fact that for years Anderson tipped theory that Castro retaliated and killed JFK. A 1978 probe of Anderson's columns by the House Select Committee on Assas- sinations concluded: "The public dissemination of the details of • JFK Dies Again the plots correspond remarkably with the efforts of John Roselli If one were to list the greatest media blunders in the JFK case to prevent his deportation [and] prosecution...These coinci- (there have been many), near the top would be Dan Rather's dences plus other evidence indicate that John Roselli manipu- description of the Zapruder film, the famous home movie of the lated the facts of the plot into a retaliation theory in efforts to acqa ssination. The film, not shown on TV until 12 years after the force the CIA to intervene favorably in his legal affairs." - fact, shows the fatal shot driving Kennedy's head sharply and indisputably backwards—suggesting a bullet fired from the front, In other words, Roselli manipulated Anderson for his own and therefore a second gunman. But Rather, then a cub reporter for purposes. According to former Mafioso James ("Jimmy the CBS and the first TV correspondent to view the film, told the Weasel") Frattiano, Roselli said of the 'Castro killed Kennedy' nation that Kennedy's head was propelled forward. theory: "The whole thing has been a scam...all bullshit" (The In his 1977 book, The Camera NelICT SICCPS, Rather explained Last Mafioso, Ovid DeMaris). Roselli was murdered in 1976, but that his error resulted from a rushed report, delivered without Anderson has kept his discredited tale alive. notes, after viewing the film only once. But Rather's gaffe may have —Robert Ranftel is a FAIR research associate. more to do with how easily reporters are swayed by official stories. Authorities claimed that all shots were fired by a lone gunman from the rear, and that's how Rather saw it—even though the film footage he saw contradicted the official line. FAIR Alumni Association Forms There was also the New York Times editorial (1-7-79) shortly Andrew Breslau, FAIR's founding associate director and the after the House Select Committee on Assassinations rejected the person responsible for putting FAIR on firm financial footing, has Warren Commission verdict ofno conspiracy in theJFK case. Pon- resigned to pursue other endeavors. In addition to guiding FAIR dering the newly disclosed audio evidence of more than one from a volunteeroperation to a well-staffed organization, Breslau. gunman in Dallas, the Times suggested that perhaps two lone nuts often represented FAIR on TV, radio and in other public forums. He had fired aqCennedy: 'The word [conspiracy] is freighted withdark played a key role in the educational campaign around ABC's Cold connotations of malevolence perpetrated by enemies, foreign or War miniseries, 'Amerika.' His presence is missed. FAIR'S fun- political. Yet two maniacs instead of one might be more like it." draising is now being overseen by development director Ho& Lovelaely. Ainbinder and grantwriter Bruce Cronin. 2A Tuesday, November 22, 1988 • San Jose Mercury News Some dare call it obsession Amateurs hunt the last word on JFK slaying By Jeff Gottlieb Mercury News Staff Writer Like Talmudic scholars search- ing for new.meaning in holy books, assassination buffs have spent years digging through the 26 vol- umes of Warren Commission docu- ments, hundreds of thousands of pages of government documents and assorted films and photo- graphs. The Bay Area is a sort of Assas- sination Central for the search for clues to prove Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone, if he acted at all, when he killed John F. Kennedy 25 years ago today. Says Torn Miller, who has writ- ten extensively about the assassi- nation buffs and the less scholarly enthusiasts: "The Bay Area has more of both than any other place in the United States." Miller, who paid $1 at an auction Deed Hornbeck — Mercury News for Jack Ruby's can opener, puts himself in neither camp. But, like Paul Hoch has devoted many years and several filing cabinets to, the quest the other assassination • critics, he speaks the shorthand: phrases like studying elementary particle phys- minimal mechanical firing time, let angles. "It was not what aca- ics, no one would ask about obses- demics did," he says. "It was a CE 399, 544 eamp St., the stockade sion," Hoch bristles. "The only rea- fence, the babushka lady. Most people can little bit more respectable than son people say that is because we UFOs, but not a lot more." The critics are armed, not with tell you what they aren't affiliated with universities Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano ri- or research institutions." Critics win credibility fle, but with copies of the Zapruder film, the horrible record of the were doing when Three or four times a year, Hoch With the 25th anniversary of the president's murder that fall day in sends 230 researchers a 10-page killing, he has come out of retire- Dallas. Kennedy was newsletter, "Echoes of Conspira- ment, and, like Hoch and Ranftel, "Most people can tell you what cy," which he began 10 years ago. has been interviewed on several they were doing when Kennedy killed. We can tell Asked why he continues, Hoch's television shows. Last weekend , was killed," says Robert Ranftel, a 11-year-old daughter pipes in, "Be- Thompson flew to Pittsburgh to 35-year-old Berkeley resident and you what we've cause nobody knows who did it give the keynote address at a con- assassination buff. "We can tell yet." Her father has taught her ference on the assassination. you what we've been doing ever been doing ever well. The conspiracy theorists are since." now being taken seriously. The lat- since. Critics say they keep going be- est official version of the slaying, A public mystery cause new bits of information con- from the House Select Committee — Robert Ranftel tinue to be discovered. "There is Some people say the critics' in- on Assassinations in 1978, said the frustration of not knowing who there probably was a conspiracy, terest in the Kennedy assassination did it but the fascination of always is an obsession. Not all the critics led by organized crime figures. University of California, Berkeley. finding new facts," Ranftel says. Several experts tell a story disagree. Hoch, 46, with red hair and a full "What does society expect?" Thompson, 51, has dropped in about a researcher beard, works two half-time jobs. who had been studying photo- says Josiah 'Thompson, a Haver- He gets paid for his position as a and out of the Kennedy aqcassina- ford College professor turned San lion controversy. When he started graphs of Dealey Plaza, looking for programmer and analyst at Berke- assassins on the grassy knoll. U he Francisco private eye who wrote ley. The rest of the week, he spends studying the killing in 1965, he was the book "Six Seconds in Dallas." a professor whose specialties were were successful, it would be proof on Kennedy assassination re- of conspiracy. "The president was murdered in search, buried in his small, clut- Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, not a public square with 400 people Oswald and Ruby, who killed Os- His work consumed him. He tered office off the kitchen of the would look at unrelated photo- looking on with 38 taking photos. Berkeley home he shares with his wald on live TV. And 25 years later, not only don't , graphs and spot hidden gunmen. wife and two young daughters. In the mid-1960s, Thompson When he noticed snipers hiding in we know who did it and why, but The four metal filing cabinets we don't even know what hap- headed to Dallas with a 378 Abney the trees outside his apartment, he and 20 boxes of files threaten to level and set about measuring bul- knew something wasn't right. - pened." advance on the rest of the house, Obsession, however, is a word but Hoch's wife is manning the that rankles Paul Hoch, who holds barricades against them. a doctorate in physics from the "If I had spent the last 25 years

Mar/Apr 1990 Extra! EXTRA! EXCLUSIVE: ROB ea T CIA Chief Bush Suppresses the News -Pris- — By Robert Gardner "CIA- Se-rfeeT5 HI DP e-A/ Documents obtained by FAIR, role in subverting Chilean democracy released through the Freedom of Infor- and would later be convicted of con- the (/ NDe-2 g (IS H " mation Act (FOIA), show that George tempt of Congress.) Bush, as head of the CIA in 1976, tried After investigating, Bush assistant to bottle up a news story that exposed Seymour Bolten reported back that the Tt the apparent duplicity of another former exposure of Helms' false testimony to behii CIA chief, Richard Helms. the Warren Commission would proba- & Lc The story, broken on Oct. 1,1976, by bly cause Helms "some anxious and( David Martin (now CBS Pentagon cor- moments," though not "any additional an c respondent, then with Associated legal problems." But Bush was assured Hou: Press), revealed that Helms had given that a "slightly better" story had result- grot gests LI IC cnu al II I LC I misleading testimony to the Warren ed from an Agency phone call to AP cy was involved in some Commission investigating the assassi- protesting that Martin's story was "slop- of this P ,,,, • fraud—with a cost to the taxpayer nation of John Kennedy. Helms testified py" Additionally, Bush was told that an that the CIA had not "even contemplat- in the billions. When will the rest of unnamed journalist had "advised his the media pick up the story? ed" making contact with Lee Harvey editors...not to run the AP story." Reporter Pete Brewton's investi- Oswald, the accused assassin. Through Bolten complained to Bush: "This is the FOIA, Martin obtained CIA memos gation implicated the CIA and orga- another example where material pro- nized crime in the failure of 22 showing that in 1960 the agency vided to the press and public in S&Ls. Sources told the Houston "showed intelligence interest" in response to an FOIA request is exploit- Post that "the CIA may have used Oswald and "discussed...the laying on ed mischievously and in distorted form part of the proceeds from S&L of interviews" with him. to make the headlines." One might fraud to help pay for covert opera- When Bush saw the AP story in the more accurately describe it as an occa- tions," including possible support Washington Star, he asked for an sion where George Bush's CIA pres- for the Nicaraguan contras. The internal CIA review to see if the story sured one news outlet to back away collapse of lobted 'S•Its-Witif-rifob was true _(it was) and if it would "cause from an accurate story while using an and CIA ties will cost the govern- problems for Helms." (Helms had lied asset in the press corps to suppress it ment an estimated $13 billion to a Senate committee about the CIA's in another.° (2/4/90). The ongoing series has docu- CIA Stung by revelations in the 70s about the CIA's hiring of jour- mented CIA interference in fraud nalists as spies, the Agency drafted regulations supposedly prosecutions (2/8/90), and the designed to prevent such practices. Researcher Robert Gardner involvement of President Bush's Guidelines obtained a copy of the CIA policy—"Relations With Journalists son Neil with a mob-linked thrift and Staff of US News Media Organizations"—and found that it (3/11/90). The Post's research on Contacts contains loopholes big enough to drive truckloads of contra aid has led the House Intelligence through. Committee to launch an investiga- The rules prohibit "relationships" with journalists accredited tion of its own. with by U.S. media outlets, or the use of these outlets names for intel- But national media have done ligence purposes. The policy does not prohibit the hiring of free- little to bring this story to the pub- lance journalists, and it allows the CIA to recruit "nonjournalist lic. "I can't think of a single inves- Journalists staff employees" (librarians? sound technicians and cameraper- tigative breaking story that they've sons?) of media outlets if authorization is given by senior media done on what caused the S & L cri- . • management. sis," Brewton told FAIR. "The The policy also asserts that "no person, including full-time or part-time accredited jour- papers that have the resources to nalists and stringers, will be denied the opportunity to furnish information which may be really dig into this haven't been useful to the U.S. Government. Therefore, unpaid relationships with joumalists...who vol- there. It's very disappointing." untarily maintain contact for the purpose of providing information" are kosher. What better FAIR's representatives brought way for a reporter to sweeten a foreign beat than by cozying up to the local CIA officer up the S&L/CIA story in separate and swapping stories? meetings with Washington Post The fmal paragraph of the guidelines, tided "Exceptions," seems to swallow up the pol- foreign editors (2/21/90) and the icy's few limits: "No exceptions to the policies and prohibitions stated above may be made New York Times publisher except with the' specific approval of the Director." In approving exceptions, future CIA (3/14/90); they had not yet heard chiefs mightapplithis rule of thumb: What would William Casey have done in my shoes? about it. A Keno. ad the 5.. Rua. Una.), Esenime end alveoli& * 111 * * Sunday, August 19, 1990 A-3

WARREN He then laid out the following scenario: that the government has done all it can toward resolving the nettlesome questions about the Kennedy as- IIINCKLE sassination, and that the question should be merci- fully put to rest on the basis of the best evidence available. JFK assassination: Raftel said that after all these years the govern- ment now has vastly more information about the assassination locked up than it did at the time of Wherein lies truth? the 1964 Warren Commission Report. "HOW COME Senator The irony is that the researchers' lawsuits dis- •Ted Kennedy does not lodged sufficient information from the files of the tell who killed his broth- Warren Commission to intensify the questioning ' er? The Warren Report of its arbitrary conclusions and to prompt congres- was the couerup, not Wa- sional probes, culminating in a reopening of the tergate." •case by the House Assassination committee in — Michael E. Diamond, 1976. This was propelled by the findings of a sub- Parkmerced committee of the famous Church Committee - DURING THE '60s, when I was editing Ramparts which investigated the domestic doings and Ma- magazine; I discovered a sure way to goose news- fia-related assassination plots of the CIA that the stand sales: put a Kennedy on the cover. The dead CIA had withheld key files from the Warren Com- 'ones sold better than the live ones. mission, impeding its investigation. Hearings by Bay Area Congressman Don Edwards also estab- Public interest in the assassination of President •lished that the FBI had destroyed evidence related John F. Kennedy and distrust of the official expla- to the investigation. nation remains a vital sign of the national curiosi- During the House Assassination Committee ty. Since the Warren Commission presented its probe in 1977-1978, the FBI released some 100,000 lone-assassin thesis in 1964, public opinion polls pages of its Kennedy assassination flies And _ -have registered an unflagging disbelief in that ver- searcher Raftel trudged through them all. dict. Most people think Kennedy was killed by a 'Conspiracy. The sentiments expressed by Michael "But the House Assassination Committee got E. Desmond of Parkmerced Towers were typical of 300,000 pages of CIA files and an additional the letters and telephone calls following a report in 300,000 pages of FBI files on the assassination - this space last Sunday regarding the latest Kenne- and those files are now sealed for 50 years," Raftel .4y conspiracy news: a claim by the son of a Dallas said. policeman that his dad had been one of three men Raftel said freedom of information lawsuits shooting at President Kennedy in Dealey Plaza on cannot penetrate these core assassination files be- Nov. 22,1963. cause the records of Congressional investigations, like some papal writ, are immune from FOIA suits. ' The column registered less-than-blind enthusi- asm from Bay Area Kennedy assassination ex- The bureaucratic rationale for keeping these perts on the Dallas claim staked by Ricky Don files off-limits to the very researchers who forced _White, an unemployed salesman of oil equipment, the reopening of the assassination case is to pro- On the murderous marksmanship of his late cop fa- tect intelligence agency "assets" and methods. ther, Roscoe, whose diary is said to contain proof Raftel is no conspiracy monger. He recently of conspiracy. Examiner readers had their own shot down a press report that George Bush was a theories of the assassination: One suggested it had CIA agent in 1963 and was involved in the assassi- to do with JFK's views on the silver standard. nation investigation. Raftel showed that what ' • An often-heard refrain about the assassination Bush did do was telephone the FBI and suggest as that the truth will never be known until the files J I that a right-wing Houston Republican who was a Of the Warren Commission are unsealed at a date political enemy should be considered as suspect in sufficiently far into the future as to qualify for sci- the Kennedy killing. If Oswald was the lone assas- ence fiction, circa A.D. 2039. Robert Gardner Ra- sin or, as the House Committee concluded, the ta, a JFK assassination researcher in Berkeley, mob did it, why is every agency of government put a match and powder to that shibboleth. with a need to know about the Kennedy assassin- Raftel said that more than 90 percent of the ' tion straining to suppress the facts that would sup- Warren Commission files have already been made port such elementary conclusions? public through Freedom of Information Act • • (POIA) lawsuits filed by assassination researchers. W OF BOOKS SAN cat() RFV1 PT OF BocKS (I f) Uncle Sam Reviews egy by strategy, telling the story so it can be notice that cockpit instruments indicated the understood. The longer Cocaine Politics is the plane weighed many pounds more than were F indictment, detailed and footnoted, showing entered on the manifest. But the joke wasn't Pusher Man funny. Those drugs helped ruin our cities, how the CIA became intertwined with cor- rupt governments involved in the trade it was and Eastern Airlines, even with all that money assigned to fight. Characters and connec- under its noses, went bankrupt, losing mil- DRUG WARS tions are set forth, making for a readable lions of dollars and costing thousands of jobs. BY JONATHAN MARSHALL reference work and a staggering story. Cocaine Politics also describes how, when TH COHAN & COHEN Described is the awful ebb and flow of a bank in the Bahamas which laundered UN 90 PAGES: SI6.95 drugs and guns: planes taking guns to an monies for drug deals and held funds for DO COCAINE POLITICS: army (sometimes the military, sometimes the American intelligence agents collapsed, a new ED DRUGS, ARMIES AND THE rebels) in one country, and then, rather than bank, the Nugan Hand of Australia, emerged BA CIA IN CENTRAL AMERICA flying back to America empty-handed, load- to perform the same function. Involved in FO BY PETER DALE SCOTT ing up with drugs for the return trip—per- Nugan Hand was Richard Secord, who worked DU AND JONATHAN MARSHALL haps as payment for the munitions, perhaps with Colonel Oliver North and was deeply BL UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA just for criminal efficiency. involved in Iran-Contra. There was a chain of 25 279 pAGES: 524.95 But as Drug Wars points out, it is more contact from drugs to money-laundering to rogue intelligence agents to government offi- than an exchange of goods. It has been im- Re Reviewed by Robert Gardner bued with politics, with drug users and some cials. If we were talking about a disease all these men would be infected. But the daisy IAN THE LARGEST drug bust in history—one ton of suppliers painted as enemies of the United chain of drugs and enforcement doesn't make In f narcotics—took place recently in Hayward, States, while friendly governments were show- everyone indictable—yet. an California. One might view it as a victory in ered with arms and aid—to fight against suppliers, or against insurgent movements in Someday, though, the chain must be fol- cen Amenca's war on drugs, until one realizes it their own countries. Where cartels competed, lowed or broken. Drug Wars concludes that def represent:A only a month's supply for all some were targeted, some ignored. So many our law-enforceMent officiats Must sooner or of' • users. Despite decades of declarations of war political factors entered in that the war on later see that shoring up corrupt govern- era on drugs, from several presidents, it is clear drugs became no more about drugs than the ments, pouring funds into corrupt militaries, alit we are nowhere near winning one. Drug Hundred Years' War was about calendars. making deals with criminal elements, is not mo Wars by Jonathan Marshall and Cocaine Poli- Drugs were a commodity, drug enforcement the way to win the war on drugs. And sooner COI tics by Marshall and Peter Dale Scott are a tool of counterinsurgency and control. or later, the US must hear what countries like Foi fascinating and frightening views into these int Deals were made and corruption flour- Colombia and Peru are saying: that as long as wars, and show why drug enforcement is ished. Incompetent drug dealers were caught, demand for drugs exists on our streets, the Ins remarkably ineffectual. prc while canny ones corrupted the police, army, supply will be there to meet it. In the 1960s. in one of the most cel- or governments with which they had to deal. Perhaps the chain-of-contagion metaphor eqt ebrated drug busts in history. the French the (All the drugs seized in the French Connec- holds an answer. If addiction were viewed as Connection, dozens of pounds of narcotics tion disappeared from the evidence locker a behavioral problem and not just a criminal sht a were seized (a large amount then) and and were no doubt sold on the street). one, if treatment and prevention raised the thi network that brought drugs through France Both books point out that if the US is same fervor as ineffectual attempts to lock up fas to the United States was destroyed. But as the sincere about halting the destruction wrought pushers for too-short terms in too-crowded sib French Connection closed, the Golden Cres- by drug dealing, it must look at the corrup- prisons, then maybe some drug battles could be cent Connection opened and drugs contin- tion that has touched the CIA. This argument be won. Ar ued to flow, now through Hong Kong instead comes not only from the countries that grow In the 1980s, the spread of AIDS was as WE of Marseilles. Both Drug Wars and Cocaine the substances, but also from allies in finance threatening to human life as the drug epi- ce Politics are world tours of doors opening and and politics. White-collar prosecutions for demic. Programs to stop AIDS emphasized th, closing, one cartel replacing another, and an white-powder crime will have to take place. abstention and safe practice, rather than out- oll incredible spread of corruption sabotaging One of Cocaine Politics' startling tales is lawing sex and imprisoning homosexuals. to the war from within. about an Eastern Airlines pilot who testified Today, AIDS still spreads, but more notably its The pages of Drug Wars read like the to Congress that commercial flights regularly now through IV drug use than unsafe sex TI closing argument to a jury, sorting through brought in cocaine from Colombia, hidden in alone. Did not Surgeon General Koop do Drug Czar Bennett? lit namesand histories country by coun try. st rat- a compartment in the front of the plane. It better in his war than ur was a standard joke, he said, for pilots to Robert Gardner is a Bay Area writer.

63 Robert Gardner Ranftel Box 7892 Berkeley, CA 94707-0892 510- 525-1980 (msg) ET/ W. gef

Les Gripkey Box 8024 Santa Cruz, CA 95061

Dear Les:

Nice to meet you the other night.

Here's a brief summary of some of my views and labors on the Kennedy case:

In the 1970s I was active with the Assassination Information Bureau, a grassroots lobbying and lecture group that pushed (successfully) for a new Congressional investigation of the crime.

When, in 1977, through a series of Freedom of Information lawsuits, the FBI opened its files on the assassination, I moved to Washington D.C. to read them. While the mainstream media (NBC, UPI, et al) were quick to announce that there was no new evidence to be found in the more than one hundred thousand pages of memos, I spent two years, going to the Bureau every day. While no smoking gun was found, much new evidence was uncovered.

Perhaps the most newsworthy discovery was the existence of an hitherto unknown film of the assassination by a witness named Charles Bronson (no relation to the awful movie star). In its concluding report, the Congressional committee urged further study of this film. Several frames of the film focused on the sixth floor window where Oswald was supposedly lurking alone. Several people think the figures of two people can be seen on the sixth floor, suggesting conspiracy.

"Discoverer of the Bronson Film" was for some years my investigative claim to fame.

Concurrently, I served as researcher for David Lifton's Best Evidence, a very successful book about the medical evidence. I am.767-longer enamored with Lifton's thesis.

I worked as a researcher/interviewer with , author of Conspiracy, one of the better books about the assassination.

I served as a consultant to Thames Television, Channel Four (a British network), NOVA, and to the series produced by Sylvia Chase and Stanhope Gould for KRON in San Francisco.

I was researcher for John Davis on his book Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of President Kennedy.

But by far my richest experience in the study of the crime was my time spent as Executive Director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center [pronounced "Ark" for short]. AARC is privately funded and the largest collection of research material concerning political assassination. It is a repository fcr most of the available government files released under the FOIA, as well as the private papers of independent citizens who have investigated or written about the case.

I am also the author of the Rollin Stone article "Did Lee Harvey Oswald Dropc id?"

I consider Jim Garrison a disturbed and dangerous man, and Oliver Stone a scoundrel for making a hero out of him.

I describe myself as an "assassination buff" (in contrast to "conspiracy buff"), consider myselT a conservative amongst the critics, but will vigorously agree that the government. has lied to us, destroyed evidence, and that the question of "Who killed JFK?" remains unanswered in any satisfactory way.

As I said, I will try to send you an outline of what I'd like to cover in my brief talk, and -- if you haven't seen it -- for your entertainment I'll send along a copy of "Did LHO Drop Acid?"

Sincerely,

What Do We "Know" About the J.F.K. Assassination? (and what can we do about it?)

PANEL DISCUSSION with:

Robert Ranftel - former director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (largest private depository of released assassination files); researcher for the books, CTCu~Cs3 -Conspiracy. by Anthony Summers, Best Evidence by David Lifton, and Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of President Kennedy.

KILLED Dave Ratcliffe - long-time local researcher has conducted extensive interviews with Col. L. Fletcher Prouty (consultant to Oliver Stone for JFK and basis for the "Mr. X" character in that JFK movie.) Questioners to the panelists: WHAT DO WE KNOW? WHAT CAN WE DO? Mark Zepezauer - author of The Nixon Saga and co-editor of the Comic News.

Les Gripkey - recently returned from the J.F.K. Assassination Symposium in Dallas. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12 7:30 p.m . (1 9(12)

LOUDEN NELSON CENTER Rm. 3 (301 Center St.)

Sponsored by the New Society Bookstore/Resource Center for Nonviolence (423-1626) and the Christie Action Group (426-3254) JFK panel dealt a fatal blow JFK panel Continued from Page Al Select Committee on Assassina- ly no evidence of foul play, but of Berkeley — was found dead on a tions to reopen the investigation 'suspect' would not be an unrea- Berkeley street in the early morn- into JFK's death in 1974. He re- sonable term to use.... It's not out ing hours Jan. 29. Ranftel was dis- leased to the media in 1987 a Nixon of bounds to question It." is dealt covered slumped against a curb administration document seeking Ranftel's obituary in a San Fran- near his Berkeley home, a bicycle information on suspected homo- cisco newspaper Feb. 6 said he was by his side. sexuals in Capitol press corps. receiving medical treatments for fatal blow The cause of Ranftel's death is Many conspiracy theorists con- depression, but Grant Wilson, local By GREG BEEBE unknown pending completion of a tend that since 1963, various re- coordinator for event co-sponsors Sentinel staff writer toxicology report, said a spokes- searchers and key witnesses in the the Christic Action Group, said man for the Alameda County Coro- JFK assassination have been sys- Ranftel's untimely death seemed SANTA CRUZ — A panel discus- ner's Office. tematically killed because of what "strange.... sion on the JFK assassination was David Ratcliffe, a Santa Cruz re- they knew about the slaying. And "It is rather disturbing. It's hard abruptly canceled because of the searcher who has conducted exten- some local conspiracy buffs to know what (caused his death).... death of a key participant. couldn't help but question the cir- Maybe he took an overdose of pills. The event, ti- sive interviews with Col. L. Fletch- er Prouty — inspiration for the Mr. cumstances of Ranftel's death. What's strange is that we had got a tled "What Do X character in Oliver Stone's con- "You gotta wonder," said Mark We 'Know' • CIA, FBI won't troversial film "JFK" — was slated Zepezauer, a local author and edi about the JFK to join Ranftel on the panel. for who was scheduled to be a Assassination disclose ip RolguRr WE'RE ALIvE Ranftel is the former director of questioner at the forum. 70 READ MS, (and What Can files - the Assassination Archives and Re- "Suspicious, I guess, is a subjec- We Do About HE L.VVt.D TIAN, /N Page A5 search Center in Washington D.C., tive term, but if you have any incli- N'S 6.141./S' It?)" was sched- the nation's largest private collec- nation in that direction one just uled for Yo) DoAfir tion, of material on political assas- has to wonder," said Zepezauer, GOrt-A WaYJDER . Wednesday night at the Louden sinations. He worked as an adviser author of "The Nixon Saga" and Nelson Center. and researcher on such JFK assas- co-editor of the Comic News. It was scrapped late last week sination books as "Conspiracy" by "It's not unreasonable to assume when organizers were informed that heart attacks can be induced that one of the event's two speak- Anthony Summers and "Best Evi- dence" by David Ligon. and certainly the CIA has been do- ers — prominent JFK assassina- ing that sort of thing since the ear- . tion researcher Robert Hanna 39. Ranftel also was among the re- searchers who urged the Senate ly '60s." he said. "There is certain- Please see JFK PANEL —

letter from him saying that he was also was to ask questions at the the Assassination Archives and Re- looking forward to doing this event event. A close friend of Ranftel's search Center in Washington, D.C., Santa Cruz Sentinel — Thursday, Feb. 13, 1992 in Santa Cruz," said Wilson. did not sound suspicious when he said, "I know no basis for any sus- "It didn't appear to us that he passed the word by telephone that picion, but I don't know a great was depressed. He was looking for- Ranftel had died, said Gripkey. deal at this point.... I've been get- ward to coming down. It sounded Gripkey said Ranftel had recent- ting conflicting reports on his age. like he was pretty motivated," Wil- ly turned his attention to other Was he 39 or 46? son said. "It's definitely caused us pursuits, including the plight of "I don't know of anything that some concern." the homeless. "If there was ever Bob was working on that put him Les Gripkey, a local activist who going to be a time (for Ranftel to in jeopardy. I heard that he was recently returned from a JFK as- die suspiciously) it was when he investigating the murder of a for- sassination symposium in Dallas, was going through hundreds of mer girlfriend. That would proba- was not as hasty to question Ranf- thousands of pages of documents bly be more likely a cause of any tel's death. in the National Archives," re- foul play," said Lesar, whose "I don't think he was in that searching JFK's death. brother, Keith, is a lawyer in great of health," said Grikey, who Attorney Jim Lesar, president of Aptos. ClAr6tItci THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 1992

Robert Gardner Ranftel

Robert Gardner Ranftel, an ex- pert on the assassination of John F. Kennedy who pressured Congress in the 1970s to reopen its inquiry into the president's death, collaps- ed and died January 29 near his home in Berkeley. He was 39. In 1984, Mr. Ranftel worked for the Assassination Information Bu- reau in Washington, D.C., and later as executive director of the Wash- ington-based Assassination Archiv- es and Research Center, the larg- est private collection of material on political assassinations. At the time of his death, Mr. Ranftel was receiving medical treatment for depression. Autopsy results are awaiting the comple- tion of a toxicology report. Mr. Ranftel was one of several researchers who in 1974 pushed the -SesatcSelect Committee on Assassination to reopen an investi- gation of Kennedy's shooting. He also contributed to several books on the Kennedy assassination. In 1987; Mr. Ranftel obtained and released to the media a Nixon administration memorandum that contained evidence that Nixon had sought FBI information on known and suspected homosexu- als in the Washington press corps. Friends described Mr. Ranftel as a highly respected free-lance re- searcher who had recently redi- rected his efforts to the plight of the homeless and mental health advocacy. "He felt hd wanted to begin working on something that had more to do with life than death," said Julia Gilden, a friend from San Francisco. "His death is a real loss to the investigative communi- ty." Mr. Gardner was born in Syra- cuse, N.Y. Information on surviv- ing family members was not avail- able. His body was flown to Syra- cuse, and burial services were held ._ there Tuesday. Friends ask that donations be made to the Assassination Archiv- es and Research Center in Wash-. " ington, D.C. fravreNotow "Curiosity."

• •

Ovrtiwity FaoM THE THIRD DECADE ToVRAM 1.. oP RFS F4reCii JAW- M4A 192 OA/ ME .7-Ftc /I-SSA-UM/A flew

Death. From Les Gripkey in California comes the sad news of the death of Robert Riiiffel, one of the "quiet men" of assassination research. Robert died in Berkeley, CA on January 29, 1992 while bicycling, an apparent heart attack victim. A native of Syracuse, NY, he was an advisor or consultant on such research projects as Litton's_ Best Evidence and Summers' Conspiracy as well as numerous TV documentaries. At one time ITIWT—Executive Director of AARC. His work was largely responsible for the discovery of the important Charles Bronson film. He will be missed. 41

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R.I. P.