by J. W Lateer
Let’s go right to the bottom line with Nagell. It turns out that Nagell claimed that the Soviets had advance knowledge of the JFK assassination. Because of this fact, Nagell claimed that he was ordered by the Soviets to murder Oswald because the Soviets were against the assassination.
Nagell refused to kill Oswald. Then, rather than take the risk of being caught up in an investigation of the murder of a President, Nagell entered a bank in El Paso, Texas on September 21, 1963 and staged a fake holdup. As a result, he was jailed in El Paso. Nagell had an entire past history of getting himself admitted to various hospitals (or similar schemes) when he need an alibi. Nagell had carefully picked the crime he would commit, because the robbery of a federally insured bank would immediately involve the FBI. The Court records in El Paso contain any number of statements by Nagell which represented an obvious attempt by him to alert the FBI and other authorities of the impending assassination.
As a result of this whistle-blowing by Nagell, he was sent to the Springfield, Missouri military medical (and mental) facility. This facility was a favorite place used by the military to confine whistle-blowers like Nagell and Abraham Bolden. Bolden was the very first African-American Secret Service Agent as well as a JFK assassination whistle-blower after the fact. In fact, Bolden and Nagell were in cells opposite one another at the Springfield, Missouri facility.
And at the very end of the almost endless struggles of Nagell following the assassination, he was offered a full-salary military medical disability settlement based upon a plane crash which he survived in the 1950’s. This effectively closed down any further information which he might have provided to investigators after that.
The Prior Knowledge of Eugene B.
Dinkin
The most important thing to know about Eugene B. Dinkin is that when he found out about the assassination, he was an NSA staff person assigned to Army Intelligence and was stationed in Metz, France. Metz is a 2½ hour drive from Bonn, Germany. It sits on the German border and was an obvious listening-post for spying on Germany. Metz was actually the terminus of a cross-country communications zone operated by the U.S. Army in France and was not a NATO place. Metz was entirely controlled by the U.S. outside of any NATO command. It was on the German border, but German authorities could not arrest any U.S. spies there because it was inside France. Thus, the Army did not have to worry about interference from local authorities. This is always a concern in the intelligence field.
Eugene B. Dinkin was a young NSA cryptologist assigned to the U.S. Army, stationed in Metz in the months before the Kennedy Assassination. Like Richard Case Nagell, Dinkin was a military intelligence whistle-
blower prior to the assassination.
Somehow, apparently in the course of his work, Dinkin encountered information which led him to believe that there was a plot afoot to assassinate President Kennedy. (We will discuss further how exactly Dinkin found out). But in September, 1963, Eugene B. Dinkin became desperate to do whatever he could to foil the assassination. He told his friends about the situation, then traveled to various press rooms, United Nations offices and U.S. Embassies both in nearby Switzerland and Luxembourg to blow the whistle to various authorities.
In making this effort around Europe to blow the whistle, Dinkin had gone AWOL from his post. After a few weeks, he feared not only that he would be charged with being AWOL (which he clearly was) but that the situation would turn into one of desertion which, of course, could result in a prison term or even the death penalty. The most important issue relating to Dinkin was the question of how he found out about the assassination in advance.
Dinkin received his education at the highly regarded program in Psychology at the University of Illinois in September, 1960. This was a program which emphasized behaviorism and conditioned response. From this program, Dinkin would have specialized knowledge about how propaganda works and what are its principles. (This author earned the same degree from the same program only ten years later).
Dinkin was a cryptographer. Since he knew of the assassination in advance, the likely explanation was that he learned about it because information pointing to the plot was included in encrypted military communication. Dinkin, however, claimed he had found out in advance about the assassination because he was analyzing newspapers to spot any trend or significant information that was being published. Dinkin claimed he was using a technique called “psychological sets.” This is, in fact, an established psychological theory often used by Madison Avenue advertising agencies.
If Dinkin had been reading the Ukrainian anti-Communist Press with such publications as the ABN Correspondence, the Ukrainian Bulletin, or the Ukrainian Quarterly, then he could have been following the Stashynsky Case. Even Bogdan Stashynsky himself thought that there was something much bigger in the works than the murder of Stepan Bandera. If Dinkin was any good at his job, he could easily have connected the dots regarding the unwarranted publicity about the alleged Soviet Assassination Department.
This claim by Dinkin seems impossible on its face. However, as a graduate of the University of Illinois psychology program, it is not impossible that Dinkin had found out about the assassination just as he claimed, i.e. from newspapers. As a graduate of a program that specialized in the modification of behavior using psychology, Mr. Dinkin could easily have been recruited by the NSA for study of such things as propaganda. Studying the flow of information in the European press and similar research programs could have also have been part of his work.
But the most useful information to be derived from the case of Mr. Dinkin is that he precisely identifies the perpetrators of the JFK assassination as “certain members of the military along with some right-wing economic interests.” (Note he doesn’t say to which country the military or the economic interests belonged. Both could have been German, British or French for that matter). This assessment lines up precisely with the various facts which we have encountered at this point, or will encounter in later chapters. It is unlikely that Dinkin could have known specifically about “right-wing economic interests” being involved in the assassination without some kind of leak. There could well have been rumors or even facts about the assassination plot rampant around military intelligence headquarters in Metz.
Mr. Dinkin came from an ordinary background. He was a graduate of Hyde Park High School in Chicago. Not very much is known about his life aside from the events that related to his role as a Kennedy assassination military whistle-blower. He was recently alive and living in Van Nuys, California, which happens to be the location of Hughes Aerospace, part of the empire of the late Howard Hughes. He was retired and died around 2010. Where he was living in his last years may be totally unrelated to the Dinkin case, but maybe not. It is not certain in which occupation Mr. Dinkin worked for the last 50 years. It should be mentioned that in 1992, Dick Russell in his monumental book TMWKTM listed Mr. Dinkin as the one most important witness who could be interviewed as of 1992, should an opportunity occur.
The conventional wisdom is, of course, that if there were a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, somebody would have talked. Well somebody did talk! All of this is even more intriguing because of the recent famous situation of NSA officer Eric Snowden. Like Dinkin, Snowden was an NSA whistle-blower motivated by his own concept of patriotism. Apparently some of the moral dilemmas in the espionage business never change.
As you read his story, it should be noted that Dinkin sent a whistle-blowing letter, not to JFK, not to J. Edgar Hoover, but to Robert Kennedy at the Justice Department. Of course, it goes without saying that as a cryptographer and codebreaker for the NSA, Dinkin would have had access to the very highest levels of top secret communications for the government and the U.S. Military. If he specifically knew the actual date of the assassination in advance, which he did, he undoubtedly would know about the relationships between JFK, Hoover, Robert Kennedy, the military command and all the rest. On top of that, add the fact that Mr. Dinkin was a very intelligent and idealistic individual.
B
ackground on all of the information in this section can be found at two excellent websites: www.educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7078 and www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/cia/russholmes//104-10438/104-10438-10154/html/104-10438-10154_0001a.htm).
There are a few more details found in government documents which add still more to the amazing story which we will quote as follows:
EUGENE B. DINKIN In December, 1963, it was reported that Beth Cox, who was residing in France with an American schoolmate, had a boyfriend named Howard C. Cowen stationed in Metz, France, with the United States Army.
Beth Cox was informed that one of Howard C. Cowen’s acquaintances “translated or decoded the G.I. paper’s headlines to read ‘Kennedy will be assassinated Thanksgiving Day,’ and that this acquaintance later changed the date to November 22, 1963, the very date of the assassination, all in advance.
On March 4, 1964, Lieutenant Colonel W. L. Adams, Jr., Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, furnished the following...: Captain Howard C. Cowen, assigned to the United States Army Depot at Metz, France, advised on February 18, 1964, that during the evening of November 22, 1963, he (Cowan) conversed with an acquaintance named Dennis De Witt. During the conversation, De Witt said that a friend of his, Eugene Dinkin, had predicted President Kennedy’s assassination for November 22, 1963.
According to De Witt, Dinkin had first predicted that the assassination would take place on November 28, 1963, but later reportedly changed the date to November 22, 1963. Captain Cowen reported the above conversation to officials of the 766th Army Intelligence Corps Detachment at Metz.
A short time later, Captain Cowen also related his conversation to a girl friend named Beth Cox. … Colonel Adams stated that Eugene B. Dinkin was the subject of a closed investigation by the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, United States Army Communications Zone, Europe. (There are also allegations that Dinkin was NSA, detailed to the Army in Europe.)
He advised further that according to local Army records at Metz, France, on February 18, 1964, PFC Eugene B. Dinkin, RA 16710292, was reassigned to Walter Reed Hospital, Washington D.C., as a patient on December 3, 1963. [note the lack of symptoms or diagnosis].
On April 1, 1964, Mr. Eugene B. Dinkin, ... advised Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he had been recently discharged from the United States Army after having been in detention for four months while undergoing psychiatric tests. Dinkin advised that while stationed in Europe with the United States Army in 1963, he had begun a review of several newspapers including the Stars and Stripes as an exercise in “psychological sets.” He explained that he had taken courses in psychology at college and was extremely interested in this subject matter. He advised that “psychological sets” was a term referring to a series of events, articles, et cetera which, when coupled together, set up or induce a certain frame of mind on the part of a person being exposed to this series.
He stated that this method of implanting an idea was much in use by the “Madison Avenue” advertising people who attempted to influence one who was exposed to these “psychological sets” to “buy” the product being advertised, whether this product was physical or an idea.
Dinkin stated that while so reviewing the newspapers for “psychological sets,” he discovered that Stars and Stripes, as well as certain unidentified Hearst newspapers, were carrying a series of “psychological sets” which he believed were deliberately maneuvered to set up a subconscious belief on the part of one reading these papers to the effect that President John F. Kennedy was “soft on communism” or “perhaps a communist sympathizer.”
Further study of these newspapers and the “psychological sets” contained therein made it evident to Mr. Dinkin that a conspiracy was in the making by the “military” of the United Stated, perhaps combined with an “ultra-right economic group,” to make the people of the United States believe that President Kennedy was, in fact, a communist sympathizer and further, that this same group planned to assassinate the President and thus was preparing these “psychological sets” to pave the way for this assassination to the point where the average citizen might well feel that “President Kennedy was sympathetic to communism and should have been killed.”
In addition, Dinkin believed the “psychological sets” were adjusted to present a subliminal predisposition to the effect that a “communist” would assassinate President Kennedy. Dinkin advised that he discussed his theories with certain individuals stationed with him in the Army, but had declined to furnish this information to persons of authority in the United States Army since he believed that the plot against President Kennedy was being set in motion by high ranking members of the military. He said that in October, 1963, his research into the “psychological sets” appearing in Stars and Stripes had led him to the conclusion that the assassination of President Kennedy would occur on or about November 28, 1963.
He stated that his research had not, in fact, reflected a certain date, but that he believed the assassination would take place on or about a religious or semi-religious occasion which he felt would be picked by the group behind this plot in order that the murder itself would become even more reprehensible to the average citizen because of the religious connotations.
Since he believed that the plot consisted in part of throwing blame for the assassination onto “radical left-wing” or “communist” suspects, he stated that the religious tie-in would lead the average citizen to accept more readily the theory that a “communist” committed the crime since “they were an atheist group anyway.”
As a result of his opposition to [compulsory purchases of Savings Bonds by the Military] … according to Dinkin, he was removed from his position in the code section and transferred to an Army Depot at Metz, France.
October 25, 1963, Dinkin went to the United States Embassy at Luxembourg where, he stated, he attempted for several hours to see a Mr. Cunningham, the Charge d’Affaires at the Embassy. He stated that he sent word to Mr. Cunningham by phone. He said that Cunningham refused to see him in person or to review the newspapers and research papers which Dinkin said were evidence proving his theory of the impending assassination.
Dinkin advised that he spent approximately two hours with the United States Marine Corps guard at the Luxembourg Embassy and had generally set forth his theories to this individual, whose name he did not know.
Following this incident, Dinkin was notified by his superiors that he was to undergo psychiatric evaluation on November 5, 1963. Due to this pending development, Dinkin said he went absent without leave to Geneva, Switzerland where he attempted to present his theory to the editor of the Geneva Diplomat, a newspaper published in Geneva, Switzerland. In addition to this editor, Dinkin spoke to a Mr. Dewhirst, a Newsweek reporter based at Geneva. Dewhirst would not listen to Dinkin’s theories.
While in Switzerland, Dinkin attempted to contact officials of “Time-Life” publication and succeeded in speaking to the secretary, name unknown, of this organization in Zurich. According to Dinkin, all of his efforts in Luxembourg and Switzerland were made to present to appropriate officials his warning of the impending assassination of President Kennedy.
When he was unable to accomplish his purpose in Switzerland, Dinkin advised that he then returned to Germany where he gave himself up to the custody of the military authorities. Dinkin advised that he first became aware of this “plot” to assassinate President Kennedy in September, 1963.
At first, he did not have enough facts, as taken from the newspapers, to support his theory, but as of October 16, 1963, he felt that his research into the “psychological sets” had substantiated his theory.
As of October 16, 1963, he wrote a registered letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in which letter he set forth his theory that President Kennedy would be assassinated, adding that he believed that this assassination would occur on or about November 28, 1963. He stated that he signed this letter with his own name and requested that he be interviewed by a representative of the Justice De
partment.
He stated that he never received any answer to this letter, nor was he ever contacted by any representative of the Justice Department prior to this interview with Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Dinkin advised that the following individuals would have knowledge of his theory and predictions, having been informed of these predictions by Dinkin prior to November 22, 1963:
PFC Dennis De Witt
United States Army
PFC Larry Pullen
United States Army Headquarters Company
Sergeant Walter Reynolds
Headquarters Company, WSAGD
Also listed were Dr. Afar (phonetic), a civilian psychology teacher employed by the United States Army at Metz, France and R. Thomas …Switzerland. Thomas was an Indian student attending the University at Fribourg with whom Dinkin discussed his theories immediately prior to his return from Switzerland to France.
Dinkin advised that on his return to the custody of the United States Army in November 1963, he was held in detention. While in detention, he stated he was contacted by a white male who identified himself verbally as a representative of the Defense Department. This individual asked Dinkin for the location of the newspapers which Dinkin had compiled as proof of the theory of the assassination of President Kennedy. This individual stated that he desired to obtain these proofs and would furnish Dinkin a receipt for the papers. Dinkin advised that he instructed this individual as to where the papers were located at the base, at which point this man left. Dinkin advised that on his release from detention, he discovered that all of his papers and notes were missing and presumed that the individual mentioned above had taken them.
He never received any receipt for his papers.
