by J. W Lateer
On the other side of the ledger are the following arguments against including Charles Willoughby:
1. He was living in Washington at the time of the assassination. Almost all of the known, proven plotters were in Dallas or New Orleans, either residing, or there on the day of the assassination. The members of Congress such as Eastland and Dodd were not, but they were frantically traveling to either New Orleans or Germany immediately before the assassination in their respective roles.
2. Willoughby did not have an organization reporting to him as did Reinhard Gehlen, the Senate Committee Chairmen, the Dallas Police, the National Security Council and others. The “chief” of an assassination plot has to have “Indians” to do the work. Who were Willoughby’s Indians? Did certain people in the National Security Council, military intelligence and German intelligence turn to Willoughby purely for his intelligence organization experience, knowledge and skills?
For our purposes, Willoughby is in the plot, primarily, because of his Wilhelminian philosophy which he shared with kingpins John J. McCloy and the two other Barons. Birds of a feather…
Notes:
The first and most important citation in this chapter is from The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell, p. 691. This book will be cited as TMWKTM in future chapters.
Some very good general information about Charles Willoughby is on Wikipedia “Charles A. Willoughby,” retrieved 10-6-2016, last modified 5-30-2016.
The following book by von Feilitzsch provides new insight into German espionage in the U.S. starting in the 1890’s and continuing through World War I as described in the book by von Feilitzsch. The title is The Secret War on the United States in 1915: A Tale of Sabotage, Labor Unrest, and Border Troubles, by Heribert von Feilitzsch.
In TMWKTM, as cited in the text Russell, at p. 124. relates information about Willoughby’s right-wing background. At p. 131, Russell presents the story of the Far Eastern connection of Willoughby and ex-Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen.
The Jewish Threat: Anti-Semitic Politics Of The U.S. Army by Joseph W. Bendersky, is one of the two most valuable resources for in information on General Willoughby. At p. 397, Pendersky describes the connection between Willoughby and Col. Robert McCormack of the Chicago Tribune and other right-wing activists associated with the two. At page 398, he discusses the immigration to the U.S. of General Willoughby. At page 402, Bendersky relates Willoughby’s attitude of approval toward the fascist Franco Regime. Then at page 411, it is Willoughby’s connection to the John Birch Society.
Starting at page 416, Bendersky portrays the close relationship between Willoughby and Walter Becher, a West German politician and possibly a German spy. Finally, at page 420, Pendersky describes the fued between Willoughby and conservative journalist William F. Buckley.
Another source of information about Willoughby is The New Germany and the Old Nazis by T. H. Tetens. At page 106 of his book, Tetens describes the role of ex-Nazi General Hans Spiedel to all of these events involving Willoughby. Then at page 122, Tetens relates disturbing facts about the above named Walter Becher. At page 123, Tetens connects Becher to Senator Joseph McCarthy, Senator Walter Judd and other conservative U.S. politicians. Finally, at page 135 Tetens describes the position of Becher on the issue of German boundaries. This was the issue upon which the career of Becher was built and it played an important role in U.S.-German relations.
Two other authors who were connected to Willoughby and Becher and who had credibility in the U.S. based on their publications were: George Brada who wrote History of the Council of Free Czechoslovakia and of the Personnel of Radio Free Europe and Richard Sallet who wrote Russian-German Settlements in the United States, published by the North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies, 1974.
Chapter 8
Congressman Charles Kersten
We have seen in a prior chapter that former Congressman Charles Kersten sent letters to all three Kennedy brothers on November 7, 1963 warning of a Soviet murder apparatus which was allegedly designed to murder Western leaders and other people. This act by Kersten betrays two facts: first, that Kersten had advance knowledge of the assassination and second, Kersten was a person with very poor judgment, despite having a passion for anti-Communism, especially in Eastern Europe.
Charles Joseph Kersten was born in Chicago on May 26, 1902. He was the son of Charles Herman Kersten and Nora A. Gillespie. He was a resident of Milwaukee, Wisconsin as early as 1923. He was married to Mary Edith McKinnon around 1930 and the first of his six children, Edmund, was born on July 28, 1932. As of 1940, Kersten was a resident of Whitefish Bay, a pleasant and well-to-do suburb just to the north of Milwaukee on the shore of Lake Michigan.
Kersten attended Marquette University and was treasurer of the Marquette Glee Club for 1922-1923. He graduated from Marquette with an LLB in 1925. In 1925 and 1926 he did some postgraduate study in Washington, D.C. and spent a year of travel in Europe. In World War II, he was a member of the Coast Guard Reserve. For a period of 7 years, he was a deputy district attorney in Milwaukee.
Kersten and Senator Joseph McCarthy
In 1943, Joseph McCarthy began his political career starting a campaign for the U.S. Senate. McCarthy’s campaign committee in Milwaukee was led by attorney Arlo McKinnon and his law partner, Charles Kersten. McCarthy was on the ballot in 1946 but lost in the Senate primary to Alexander Wiley, who was the senior Senator in Wisconsin from 1939 to 1963. Wiley left the Senate in 1963 as the senior Republican member.
In the 1946 race for the Senate, there was a significant amount of scandal surrounding Joseph McCarthy’s activities as a judge in Appleton, Wisconsin, 100 miles north of Milwaukee. It was alleged by McCarthy’s opponents that he arranged for the transfer of divorce cases from Milwaukee to Appleton so that he could grant “quickie” divorces to clients of the McKinnon & Kersten law firm. Arlo McKinnon, Kersten’s law partner, was also Kersten’s brother-in-law. McKinnon was the brother of Kersten’s wife, Mary Edith. One case, Kordos v. Kordos had dragged on for months and months, but when transferred to Appleton, McCarthy granted the divorce to the plaintiff in two days. This practice is especially cynical since both McCarthy and Kersten made careers as Catholic activists and the Catholic Church has always had a fierce and well-known opposition to divorce.
In 1946, Charles Kersten ran for Congress in Milwaukee’s Fifth Congressional district.
There were various Republican candidates running for office in Wisconsin at that time who emphasized anti-Communism. Kersten’s opponent in the Republican primary, incumbent Frank Keefe, stressed the alleged Communist infiltration of the U.S. Charles Kersten, who would be known for his entire career as a radical anti-Communist, asked voters to “put Kersten in and keep the Communists out.” Kersten won election to Congress in 1946 from a district that was normally Democratic, so his hold on his Congressional seat was never secure.
The spectacular story of Kersten’s Congressional career began immediately upon his reaching Washington D.C. in 1947. Apparently, Kersten had made some important contacts when he did his “post-graduate” work in Washington in 1925-1926. Or perhaps his connections as a graduate of Marquette, an outstanding Catholic University, came to the fore.
Kersten, Nixon and JFK
For some reason which is not clear, Kersten became immediate best friends with both Congressman John F. Kennedy and Congressman Richard M. Nixon. Both of them were newly elected. The 80th Congress was the first to be controlled by Republicans since the 1920’s. As the new Congress was sworn in on January 3, 1947, John W. McCormack, the former Democratic majority leader, was replaced as leader and became minority whip. Former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn became minority leader. Both Kennedy and Nixon were assigned to the Education and Labor Committee. At that time, the number of investigative committees and subcommittees in the Congress had reached an incredible thirty-nine.
John W. McCormack had chaired the Dies committee starting in 1934. The Dies Committee was the predecessor of both the House Un-American Affair
s Committee (HUAC) and the McCarthy Committees in the Senate. The second of the two committees allowed to the freshman Kennedy was the District of Columbia Committee. For Nixon, his second committee was HUAC. Within days of joining his first committee, Nixon asked his freshman classmate Charles Kersten to find someone who could instruct him all about Communism. It’s not clear why Nixon would be making such a request of Kersten. It’s likely, just by circumstances, that anti-Communist activists and McCormack were pressuring Nixon in this regard and pointing Nixon in the direction that this would soon take. It should be noted that according to author Matthews, JFK displayed disdain regarding McCormack.
When asked by Nixon, Kersten mentioned anti-Communist Father John F. Cronin. Cronin had also tutored Kennedy on Communism at Cape Cod at some time prior to that. Incredibly, Nixon and Kennedy together began making trips to the home city of Father Cronin, Baltimore. Father Cronin had been the author of a publication “The Problem of American Communism.” One person specifically mentioned in the writing of Cronin was the now infamous Alger Hiss.
Father John Cronin was born in 1911, attended parochial schools in New York, then studied at Holy Cross College from 1923 to 1925. Two years later, he transferred to Catholic University of America, earning a PhD in 1935. His ordination as a priest took place on May 19, 1932. In 1933 or 1934, Cronin became a professor of economics at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore. During the period 1940-1941, an FBI agent approached Cronin to meet and exchange information and he agreed.
The young Congressman Richard Nixon got an opportunity to discuss foreign policy with President Harry S. Truman. Congressman Edward Devitt of Minnesota arranged a meeting with Truman on July 2, 1947 which lasted 15 minutes. The meeting included Nixon, Caleb Boggs of Delaware and Congressman Charles Kersten. The topics discussed were Russian intentions, European relief, German rehabilitation, Manchuria, the Balkans and the Dutch East Indies.
Richard Nixon spoke regularly to a radio audience on a program in California. In one segment, he invited his friend Charles Kersten to join him on the program as his guest. The two discussed foreign policy. Kersten described the takeover of Czechoslovakia by infiltration. Kersten spoke harshly about Franklin Roosevelt, saying that he had been fooled at both the Yalta and the Tehran conferences.
Kersten and Nixon had both visited seven Eastern European bloc embassies, accompanied by a reporter from the Associated Press. All of the Eastern bloc U.S. ambassadors attacked U.S. policy and refused to criticize the Soviet Union. Nixon and Kersten also partnered on a House resolution which would have required the U.S. to form alliances in Western Europe.
Nixon became involved in investigations involving Communist turncoat Whittaker Chambers. Chambers had made a secret statement regarding the Communist background of State Department figure Alger Hiss. Kersten advised Nixon to give the transcript of Chambers’ statement to John Foster Dulles to read. Nixon and Charles Kersten rode the train together to New York to present the transcript to Dulles. Both John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen Dulles were at that meeting.
Kersten, Nixon and JFK all sat together on the Education and Labor Committee. Kersten had a special cause in the area of labor, since a strike in his home district in Milwaukee had shut down a plant producing war materials in 1941.
In the Education and Labor Committee, JFK had attacked certain labor leaders in Milwaukee for being Communists. Kersten compared JFK’s attack to the opening shots of the Minutemen at Lexington and Concord. This happened in the context of a hearing on May 1, 1947. Witnesses, called to the hearing by Kersten, included two Communist labor leaders from Milwaukee named Harold Christoffel and Robert Buse.
JFK pointedly asked Buse “Would you consider Russia a democracy?” Buse: “I would not know. I do not think so.” But one of the next witnesses was a famous turn-coat Communist named Louis Budenz. Budenz testified that the Milwaukee strike was part of a Communist plan led from Moscow by Stalin. JFK moved the committee to cite Christoffel for perjury. As a result, Christoffel was indicted, convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for perjury but the conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kersten and JFK traveled together on a junket in Europe in the summer of 1947. On the trip, JFK was visiting his ancestral home in Ireland but fell seriously ill. This was when he was first diagnosed with Addison’s disease. On the return trip from Europe, traveling on the Queen Elizabeth, JFK was actually given the Catholic last rites due to the serious nature of his illness. Nixon was also embarking for Europe, on the Queen Mary. JFK left a note for Nixon with the addresses of his sister and other women he could look up in Paris. Per Nixon’s secretary, Nixon reacted only with embarrassment to this message and never followed up.
While Charles Kersten’s travels and anti-Communist indoctrination were taking place in Washington, Kersten was also deeply involved with partisan politics back in Wisconsin. Kersten was a friend and early supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Kersten was elected in 1946, lost in 1948, then won again in 1950 and 1952. He lost his final election in 1954.
There are some political roles which Kersten played in Wisconsin which shed light on his character. Some of his issues also involved national politics, chiefly the epic confrontation between his friend Joe McCarthy and the 1952 Republican candidate, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
There were only a few candidates in Wisconsin who were unabashed McCarthyites, and one of the most adamant was Charles Kersten. In 1952, seeking election after a gap of two years, Kersten boasted of his friendship with McCarthy. In his largely Democratic district, however, Kersten won by only a small margin in 1952. According to the Milwaukee Journal, Kersten won in 1946 but was defeated in 1948 because the State Department of Taxation revealed that he paid no taxes over a period of three years.
As the McCarthy-Eisenhower relationship unfolded in the 1952 election, a major Republican convention took place in Milwaukee. At this convention Senator McCarthy spoke of “tragic blunders and high treason in the nation’s foreign policy.” For his part, Charles Kersten claimed that there was bitterness and disagreement in Russia identical to the split in the Republican Party. Kersten claimed that without this disagreement, the people of Russia would eagerly throw the Communists and the Stalin regime out.
Veteran progressive Republican Senator Alexander Wiley refused to attend this convention and he was criticized by the McCarthyites for praising Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson.
It was at this juncture that Charles Kersten made probably his most important contribution to national partisan politics. At the 1952 Republican convention, John Foster Dulles drafted the platform plank on foreign policy. But the most controversial passage in that plank came from Congressman Charles Kersten. The Kersten language spoke of the importance of giving hope and encouragement to the “captive” peoples of Eastern Europe. It committed the United States to taking some sort of action to liberate all of Eastern Europe or, failing that, to liberate at least some portion. This part of the Party plank was widely known to have come directly from Kersten and it was considered a concession on the part of the Eisenhower forces in favor of the McCarthyites. As would happen more than once, Kersten’s addition to the Republican Party platform in 1952 would prove to be by far the most controversial item in the entire platform. Kersten was not a person who did things half-way.
In a pro-Ike speech in 1952, Charles Kersten lambasted Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. who was an advisor to Ike’s opponent Adlai Stevenson and was also a Harvard professor. At the convention, Kersten and the McCarthyites attacked Secretary of State George C. Marshall. Ike quickly had to speak up in defense of his friend and fellow general. On September 3, 1952, McCarthy made his first appearance in Wisconsin. In his speech there he railed against Alger Hiss and related topics. In Peoria Illinois, Ike and Joe McCarthy spent half an hour in Ike’s hotel room hammering out some of their differences. According to some who were there, Ike spoke to McCarthy “with white-hot anger;” however, Ike then went directly to Milwaukee
and delivered a pro-McCarthy speech.
In 1956, Charles Kersten attempted to gain the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate. In the eyes of some, Kersten disgraced himself by alleging a “miserable plot” by a GOP party faction against another faction. Kersten named the state GOP chairman as part of this plot. In the 1956 primary campaign, a pamphlet published by Kersten attacked sitting Republican incumbent Senator Alexander Wiley as a “one-worlder and an internationalist.” It also said the GOP had been taken over by “pro-Communists.”
Another major role of Congressman Kersten was his chairmanship of the House Select Committee to Investigate Communist Aggression and its various hearings which were targeted toward specific countries in turn, such as the Baltic States, Poland and others.
When one reads and examines the exhibits in Kersten’s Committee Report on the Baltic States, it is the outstanding document, in the opinion of this author, for the justification not only for McCarthy’s crusade, but indeed for the entire Cold War following World War II. The report features page after page of photographs of priests, murdered and martyred. Then there are photographs of the butchered corpses of the murdered priests piled up like logs or sides of beef.
This publicity, which was provided to the public is on a higher level than any other such relevant information known to this author. And the intensity of feeling, indeed the abject horror shown provides a hint as to the true stakes in the bitter feud between certain Catholic factions surrounding the issue of Communism. This unfortunate feud led to the perhaps unintended consequence of the murder of the first Catholic President, John F. Kennedy.
The CIA was established under the National Security Act of 1947. In 1950, the fourth director of the CIA, General Walter Bedell Smith listed its duties as 1) psychological warfare 2) paramilitary operations 3) denial of strategic materials 4) stockpiling for war preparation 5) organizing sabotage teams for resistance operations and 6) planning stay-behind networks in case of invasion or military occupation of an area.
