by J. W Lateer
Mr. Dinkin advised that he had undergone numerous psychiatric tests at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C. He stated that he was aware that the Army psychiatrist had declared him to be “psychotic” and a“paranotic.” He said that several of the tests given him were familiar to him from his studies in psychology at the University of Chicago. [actually it was the University of Illinois].
Because of his familiarity with these tests, and his background knowledge as to what the test answers should be, he believed it impossible that the results of these tests could have shown him to be “psychotic” and“paranotic.” He stated that if he had desired, he could have faked the answer to prove he was sane even if he were, in fact, mentally disturbed.
Mr. Dinkin stated he believed that the psychiatric evaluation given him
by the Army psychiatrist was, in fact, an attempt on their part to cover
up the military plot which he had attempted to expose.
Dinkin advised that during his detention at Walter Reed Army Hospital, arrangements had been made through his family for him to be given a psychiatric test by a private psychiatrist chosen by his family.
He stated when these arrangements were finally made, he had declined the services of this private physician. Dinkin explained that he had reached a point where his only desire was to be released from custody and discharged from the Army. He stated that in order to do this, he had felt it necessary to “go along” with the examining Army psychiatrist and pretend that he had, in fact, been suffering from delusions but was now cured. He was afraid that should an outside psychiatrist examine him and be told by Dinkin the facts as set forth herein, that this psychiatrist would probably believe Dinkin to be mentally disturbed, and this would result in further detention for Dinkin.
Mr. Dinkin stated that he was well aware that his theory and the facts surrounding his attempts to bring this theory to the proper authorities was extremely “wild” and could be construed by a person untrained in psychology to be “crazy.”
Despite this, Mr. Dinkin advised he was still of the belief that there had been, in fact, a plot perpetrated by a “military group” in the United States and aided and abetted by newspaper personnel working with this military group, which plot had to do with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
After enduring this incredible situation and more or less landing on his feet Eugene B. Dinkin was not through. In 1975 he filed a civil rights lawsuit against the United States government on the grounds that his civil rights had been violated. While testifying in that lawsuit, additional information came out. Dinkin stated that “blame would then be placed upon a Communist or Negro, who would be designated as the assassin; and believing that the conspiracy was being engineered by elements of the military, I did speculate that a military coup might ensue…”
No one will ever know what happened to the letter that Dinkin sent to Robert Kennedy. Keep in mind that, if the letter was sent October 16, 1963, it would have taken at least a week to reach Washington. By November 2, 1963, the Chicago Plot had taken place so that the White House would have known that there were serious problems at that point.
One last fact relating to the Dinkin story is this: according to some information relating to Dinkin and the Jim Garrison investigation, there was some theory to the effect that Dinkin’s duties in Metz, France included the monitoring of the telephone traffic of the French OAS. The details surrounding the French OAS can be found in the book Target De Gaulle: the True Story of the 31 Attempts on the Life of the French President (1975) by Pierre Demaret and Christian Plum.
The French OAS was only a tiny shadow of the force portrayed in the JFK literature. The French OAS was not a strong, solid, sinister, well-established and powerful organization. This is the image portrayed in the JFK research community. In fact, the French OAS, at least the ones involved in the de Gaulle assassination attempts, was a small group and constantly changing. For each assassination attempt, the leader Jean Bastien-Thiery was being paid by unknown benefactors to kill de Gaulle. Bastien-Thiery could barely scrape together 3 or 4 plotters in each of the three major attempts on de Gaulle. Bastien-Thiery himself was considered to be outside the OAS organization, operating as a lone-wolf. The make-up of the plotters’ group seemed to experience a 100% turnover after each attempt. The attempts against de Gaulle only occurred during the brief time when the status of French Algeria was up in the air. That was in 1961 and 1962. Once the independence of Algeria was established the French OAS basically disappeared.
There was only one associate of the French OAS who had any generally known international connections. That man was named Jacque Soustelle who was an asset of British Intelligence. He was not responsible for any known event regarding the OAS plots.
While it is true that the CIA tried to make a secret deal with the OAS behind the back of President Kennedy, it was a proposal to arm 1,000,000 Algerian-based Frenchmen to take over Algeria. It was totally fantastic and was quickly squelched by JFK as soon as he heard of it.
If Eugene B. Dinkin learned of the assassination from anyone, it was the U.S. military and not the French OAS.
The Prior Knowledge of Melba Christine
Marcades a/k/a Rose Cheramie
Possibly the most colorful character in the Kennedy assassination story is Rose Cheramie, irreverently referred to by some writers as Ramblin’ Rose.
What is most important about the case of Rose Cheramie was that she was traveling to Dallas to (in her own words) “to kill President Kennedy” and then move on to Galveston, Texas. She was traveling in the company of Sergio Arcacha-Smith. Sergio was one of the top three or four members of the anti-Castro Cuban community in New Orleans. Sergio was an associate of Carlos Bringuier who had been arrested after a fight with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans. Bringuier’s office was in the same building as Guy Banister, a consensus member of the JFK assassination plot. If Sergio Arcacha-Smith were traveling to Dallas that night, he could have been on some kind of errand in relationship to the assassination. Rose Cheramie, likely a prostitute, was in his company. This implicates Arcacha-Smith in, among other things, human-trafficking.
Just two days before the JFK assassination, the hospital in Eunice, Louisiana placed a call to Lt. Francis Fruge. Fruge was an officer of the Louisiana State Police. He was told that an accident victim had just been brought in and that she was not badly injured, but that she was on heavy drugs.
The victim told Fruge that her name was Rose Cheramie. That name turned out later to be only one of the many names she used.
Fruge placed her in jail at the City of Eunice, Louisiana. Fruge then got an emergency call and was told that Rose had started to experience extreme withdrawal symptoms and that she needed medical care. Fruge then made arrangements for Rose to be transported from Eunice to Jackson, Louisiana, to the Jackson State Mental Hospital.
Fruge testified to all of the following details as a witness before the House Select Committee On Assassinations (HSCA) in 1978.
Rose Cheramie had become much more calm as the result of a sedative administered to her in Eunice. So as Fruge was driving her to Jackson, she began to share a fantastic story.
She said she had been traveling with two men she described as Latins, and they were en route to Dallas from Miami. Their goal in Dallas was threefold: 1) pick up Rose’s child, 2) kill President John F. Kennedy and 3) proceed on to Galveston, Texas to meet an incoming ship. On the incoming ship would be a load of heroin being delivered to them by a particular seaman.
Rose was the courier for the money to pay for the drugs. Since there was no mention of Rose being in possession of any large sum of money, she must have been intending to get the money for the drugs in Dallas. Once in their possession, the drugs would be taken into Mexico. Although the intention of the plan was for the two men to accompany Rose all the way to Mexico, something went badly wrong with the plan in a nearby brothel called the Silver Slipper Lounge.
The two men traveling with Rose met a
third man at the nearby brothel.There, according to Lt. Fruge, the little gang broke up because Rose became unruly. Both men, together with Mac Manual, the manager of the place, just tossed Rose out.
Rose started hitchhiking but she was soon impacted by a car on State Route 190. The driver of that car was the one who took her to the local hospital as described above.
As Fruge later testified before the HSCA: “She said she was going to, number one, pick up some money, number two, pick up her baby, and, finally, to kill Kennedy.”
After arriving at the Jackson State Hospital, strange things began to happen. Rose had informed the nurses at the hospital that the JFK assassination was going to take place. Then as she and some nurses were watching the television she described the assassination in real time just before it occurred. She actually said “this is when it’s going to happen” before it actually took place. The nurses, in turn, told the Doctors and others about Cheramie’s prediction.”
Although the assassination was not reported in real time on the local TV stations, they must have been reporting in general on the president’s visit before and during the time when it happened.
Even more amazing things would follow: according to a psychiatrist named Dr. Victor Weiss, after Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald on the morning of November 24th, Rose told either he or her prior psychiatrist that day that she knew both Ruby and Oswald. She said she had seen them sitting together on occasions at Ruby’s club. In fact, Fruge later confirmed the fact that she had worked as a stripper for Ruby.
After he had discounted, naturally, the talk of killing Kennedy, Lt. Fruge later stated as follows: “When she came out with the Kennedy business, I just said, wait a minute, wait a minute, something wrong here somewhere.” He further described her in this manner: “Now, bear in mind that she talked: she’d talk for awhile, looks like the shots would have effect on her again and she’d go in, you know, she’d just get numb, and after awhile she’d just start talking again.”
By the time the assassination took place, Rose Cheramie had come completely to her senses and the heroin was out of her system. The whole story was corroborated years later by a doctor who had been an intern there at the Jackson State Hospital. This doctor was interviewed by the Madison Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin where he was working as a doctor. He stated that he and the other interns were told of the warning of the plot in advance of the assassination.
Rose Cheramie also revealed to Dr. Weiss her role as a worker at Jack Ruby’s night club and that she had been forced to make the trip to Miami to pick up the drugs, which was the thing that triggered off the whole situation.
Lt. Fruge then called the Jackson State Hospital. He said he told them: “no way in the world to turn her loose until I could get my hands on her.” So on November 25th, Fruge went up to Jackson again to talk to Cheramie.
Lt. Fruge then really got down to business. He found that the two men with whom Rose had been traveling seemed to be part of the conspiracy. After the assassination took place (there was no evidence that these men were to actually be shooters), the men were to pick up $8000 from a home in Dallas. Then they would go to Houston, then to Galveston, where the sailor was to transfer the shipment of heroin to them.
Fruge investigated and corroborated the entire story, including the facts about the ship coming into Galveston, the name of the sailor with the heroin, the name of an underworld character the trio was dealing with, and the possession by Rose of clothes for her baby.
Another important fact was that, when Rose and Fruge were traveling together, after her release from the hospital as part of the investigation, she saw a newspaper which said:”investigators or something had not been able to establish a relationship between Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald.”
When Cheramie read this headline, she said, “Them two queer sons-of-a-bitches. They’ve been shacking up for years.” She added that she knew this to be true from her experience of working for Ruby. Next, Lt. Fruge had his own boss, Colonel Morgan, call up Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police, assuming they would be very interested in all the above events, but when Colonel Morgan hung up, he turned around and told us: “They don’t want her. They’re not interested.”
When asked by Fruge, Rose declined to share her story with the FBI. Fruge, however did go back to the Silver Slipper brothel and interview the manager, Mac Manual. Through the use of mug shots, Manual identified one of Rose’s companions as Sergio Arcacha Smith. That name is important as will be shown below.
On September 4, 1965, Rose Cheramie was allegedly run over by a car. This time her skull was crushed and she was killed, near Big Sandy, Texas. This can be found in a well-respected website. (Maryferrel.org).
A recent book entitled HIT LIST: An In-Depth Investigation Into The Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination by Richard Belzer & David Wayne contains a short passage provided to the authors by Walt Brown.
This passage on page 51 states information that the second “accident” by which Rose Cheramie died occurred on the property of either Jerome Ragsdale or Paul Rothermel.
Paul Rothermel was the Security Chief for H. L. Hunt, the oil billionaire who was connected in some rather odd ways to the JFK assassination. Also, despite the fact that the death of Rose Cheramie was handled as an accidental death, the coroner’s report showed a “stellate” wound on her forehead. The stellate wound can only be caused by one thing: a gunshot. That is because when a gun is placed right on the forehead, for example, the exploding gases from the gun barrel have to have a place to escape so they rip the skin in a star-shaped pattern, hence the descriptive word “stellate” means star.
In the opinion of the author, the most significant part of the Rose Cheramie evidence is the implication of Sergio Arcacha Smith. Smith was one of the two or three most important Cuban exile leaders in New Orleans and was an associate of Carlos Bringuier. Bringuier was, of course, the Cuban who set up Oswald in the FPCC fracas in New Orleans. Bringuier was also the one who phoned in information to authorities about Oswald the very moment when Oswald was apprehended.
The Prior Knowledge of Joseph
Milteer
In his monumental book, General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy, Author Dr. Jeffrey Caulfield devotes more attention to Joseph Milteer that almost anybody else, including General Walker himself.
What is most important to know about Joseph Milteer is that, not only did he have detailed advance knowledge of the assassination, but he was in Dallas watching it. Probably the best theory about the role of Joseph Milteer in the assassination is that he was a backup patsy if Lee Harvey Oswald somehow botched his crucial role as patsy. Milteer knew that the Secret Service was complicit. The Secret Service was micro-managing the paperwork as to the whereabouts of Milteer. One minute he was officially in Dallas on 11-22-63, the next minute he was in Quitman or Valdosta, Georgia. Then he was officially back in Dallas. The Secret Service couldn’t seem to make up their minds about the location of Milteer. This could well have been because he would have been somehow blamed for the assassination if the need occurred.
In TMWKTM, Joseph Adams Milteer in 1963 was described as a 61 year-old wealthy individual who lived in Quitman, Georgia.
Milteer was active in ultra-right causes. He was regional director of the Constitution Party which was backing Strom Thurmond to run for president of the United States.
Also in the Constitution Party was William P. Gale, formerly with General MacArthur in the Philippines and active in 1963 in the Minuteman movement. Gale was friends with General Edwin Walker of Dallas and had stayed as a guest at Walker’s home in July, 1963. Milteer was active in the National State’s Rights Party which was involved in dynamiting an Atlanta synagogue.
According to Russell, Milteer traveled constantly. At a New Orleans gathering, Milteer ran into an old friend his age named Willie Somersett, a union organizer from Miami and a member of the Ku Klux Klan. What Milteer did not know was that Somersett had been acting as
an FBI informant for nearly a decade. In February, 1962, Somersett also became an informant for the Miami police. After meeting with Joseph Milteer, Somerset would present testimony to a judge, where he described Joseph Milteer as “the most violent man I know.”
In June, 1963, Milteer was in Dallas. He would meet there with a widely read right-wing journalist, Dan Smoot, author of the Dan Smoot Report.
Willie Somersett ran into Milteer again in early October, 1963, at a meeting in Vero Beach, Florida. According to Somersett, Milteer helped formulate “plans to put an end to the Kennedy, King, Khrushchev dictatorship over our nation.”
In mid-October, 1963, Judge Gelber of Miami suggested that Willie Somersett secretly tape recorded his next meeting with Milteer.
The following transcript, [which has been heavily edited by your author], reveals some very disturbing information relative to the events of November 1963 in Dallas.
This is a transcript of a tape-recorded conversation on 9 Nov 1963 by Miami Police informant William Somersett, with right-wing extremist Joseph Milteer. The transcript is taken from Harold Weisberg’s essay “The Milteer Documents” in the book The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond.
(In this version, INFORMANT has been replaced with SOMERSETT, and SUBJECT with MILTEER).
MILTEER: Just like me at home there folks want to know, “Joe, where do you get all of your information?” “Well, I get it, that is all you are interested in.” That is the way you have got to operate.
SOMERSETT: Well, that is what I say, if you are going to take Brown in, and Brown is going to be one of the head men, the man behind you, then you have got to talk to Brown a little bit, and tell him, you know, “You have got to be a little more conscientious, especially on these bombings, and killings,” after all he comes right out with it.
MILTEER: We have got to let him understand, that, that is his operation, and not ours.
