The Three Barons

by J. W Lateer

  Frankhouser was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. He attended Northwest Junior High School through the tenth grade, and became active in racist causes. As a teenager, he collected Nazi paraphernalia and uniforms. He joined the Ku Klux Klan at age 14. He joined the U.S. Army on November 6, 1956 on his 17th birthday, which was the first day he could legally enlist. He served one year as a paratrooper before receiving an honorable discharge on November 18, 1957. He joined the American Nazi Party in 1960.

  What kind of a person was Roy Frankhouser? In an article published in Playboy magazine in June 1969, author Eric Norden interviewed both the leader of the Minutemen named Robert DePugh and his associate Roy Frankhouser. This article also appeared in the Twentieth Annual Playboy Reader. Norden gives a graphic description of Frankhouser at page 241 of the Reader:

  He was a slight young man of 29 with close-cropped black hair, a pencil-thin moustache and one good eye. Articulate and sophisticated, he was a type more likely to be found debating Marcuse in campus New Left salons than regaling red-necks in the satin sheets of a KKK grand dragon.

  Soon after leaving the Army, Frankhouser joined the American Nazi Party, led by George Lincoln Rockwell. He was later described as a protégé of Rockwell’s. At about the same time, he also joined J. B. Stoner’s National States Rights Party. His first recorded arrest occurred at age 22 when he kicked a policeman in the shins during a 1961 protest in Atlanta. He was often a violent counter-demonstrator in civil rights protests around this time.

  By the early 1960’s, he had become active in Robert Shelton’s United Klans of America. Frankhouser became the Grand Dragon for Pennsylvania in 1965, according to author Dennis King. At roughly the same time, Frankhouser also became active in the Minutemen organization led by Robert Boliver DePugh which had headquarters in the tiny community of Norborne, Missouri.

  He participated in Nazi party rallies and Klan demonstrations, being arrested often for disorderly conduct. Fellow Klansmen nicknamed him “Riot Roy” as reported by author Patsy Sims in her book on the Klan. According to Frankhouser, he lost his eye in an attack by pipe-wielding Jews in 1965. In another version, he lost it during a fight with blacks in a Reading bar. A third story is that he lost it during the Bay of Pigs invasion.

  There is an excellent biography of Dan Burros called One More Victim by Gelb and Rosenthal. Since Lee Harvey Oswald had Burros’ name and address in his notebook, it is important to understand who Burros was and what the activities were in which he was engaged.

  Briefly, Burros was raised a Jew but became a Nazi. He was born in 1937 and thus was two years older than Frankhouser. Like Frankhouser, Burros enlisted in the Army at age 17 or 18 and served under General Edwin Walker in the military action in Little Rock, Arkansas in integrating Central High School. There is no direct evidence that Burros had any interaction with General Walker, though he was in proximity to Walker during this action. He left the Army after three years in 1958.

  Burros was sent to a neuropsychiatric department because of three feigned suicides. Moving back to New York, Burros began to collect Nazi paraphernalia. He left a job after 1½ years in January, 1960. His reputation as a Nazi had spread to the New York Police Department. He began corresponding with lone-wolf Nazis around the U.S. and the world. He had received a letter from Nazi Colonel Hans-Ulrich Rudel who had fled to Argentina and possibly on to Egypt after World War II. As will be explained in later chapters, Hans-Ulrich Rudel was a major figure among expatriate ex-Nazis. Rudel had close associations with the most conspiratorial of the reprobate ex-Nazis scattered around the globe including Col. Otto Skorzeny and Werner Naumann. Burros joined his first Fascist party, the British National Party in early 1960. Soon after, he moved to Arlington, Virginia to join the American Nazi Party.

  In 1960, Burros took part in an action where 17 persons were arrested and Rockwell was committed to a mental hospital. In 1961, Burros met Roy Frankhouser. Frankhouser had visited Nazi headquarters on an “inspection” trip as an officer of the Citizen’s Council of America. Frankhouser found Burros to be an especially “fun” person.

  In March of 1961, an English Fascist named Michael Slatter who headed a small Nazi “cell” in New Orleans, told Rockwell he could raise money for a Nazi expedition to New Orleans. Burros took part in the expedition, which is famously known to historians as the “Hate Bus.” Rockwell was arrested in New Orleans on this expedition.

  Since Lee Harvey Oswald had the name of Dan Burros in his notebook, this Hate Bus expedition would have put Dan Burros in New Orleans near the time when Oswald lived there, although Oswald would have still been in the Soviet Union at the specific time that the Hate Bus arrived. Oswald returned to the U.S. in June, 1962. This Fascist New Orleans group was known as the National States Rights Party and Rockwell soon washed his hands of them. Author Dr. Jeffrey Caulfield in his book General Walker presents reams of information on these right-wing organizations and their role in the JFK assassination, such as it was.

  On November 5, 1961, Dan Burros deserted the American Nazi Party and moved back to New York with fellow Nazi John Patler. The two started a magazine. The first issue was July, 1962 and it featured a noose with the words “Impeach the Traitor John F. Kennedy.” It was Burros’ address in New York in particular that Lee Harvey Oswald had in his notebook, which would fit time-wise with the time Burros was there and with the date when Oswald returned to the U.S.

  The new party which Burros and Patler started in New York was called the American National Party and they lived in a neighborhood of New York which was almost entirely German-American. The bars there were frequented by former German soldiers.

  Burros was associating with Roy Frankhouser at this time. Burros also was in contact by mail with racists in the U.S., U.K., South Africa and West Germany. It was also in 1961 that General Edwin Walker was forced to resign his command in West Germany by President John F. Kennedy for distributing radical right-wing propaganda to his troops. Recall that Burros served under Walker at Little Rock.

  Burros was also an associate of James H. Madole. Madole founded and led the National Renaissance Party from 1948 to 1981. This party was a full-fledged Nazi Party of the Hitlerite variety. On July 24, 1964, Burros and others were sent to New York’s Sing Sing Prison but Burros stayed only two weeks because of an appeal bond posted by his mother’s uncle.

  In 1965, Burros and Roy Frankhouser resumed their friendship from American Nazi Party days. Frankhouser tried to interest Burros in KKK activities. Almost immediately, Burros became the Grand Dragon of the KKK in New York. At virtually the same time, Burros was apparently being set up for disgrace as being both a Nazi and a KKK leader who was actually Jewish. The New York Times featured this story on the front page. Burros, upon finding this out, took up a carbine and shot himself both in the heart and in the head a total of three times.

  Was this set up as just a convenient way to eliminate someone whose name and address was known to Lee Harvey Oswald? Since Roy Frankhouser was a confirmed agent of the National Security Council and claimed to have worked on the JFK assassination for the NSC, there was clearly a confluence of events here. Let’s list them out.

  At times during the period when he was friends with Roy Frankhouser, Dan Burros could have been acting as an intelligence “cut-out” for purposes of relaying mail between overseas Nazis, Frankhouser and the NSC, New Orleans right-wing people and Lee Harvey Oswald himself. This could explain why Oswald had the current address of Burros in his notebook.

  This defamation of Burros in the New York Times coincides with the desire of the European-based Nazis to defame and disgrace Jews in the eyes of the American people. This is clearly an “old-world,” European concept which was (and is) alien to the thinking of people in the U.S. We will also see this in their attempt to defame Jack Ruby and Bernard Weissman of the U.S. Army in Dallas at the time of the assassination.

  In 1962, Oswald returned from the USSR. In 1961-62, Gen. Edwin Walker came back to the U.S. from West Germany. He was Burr
os’ former commander in Little Rock. He came back after being fired by JFK. At the same time, Burros was corresponding with persons in West Germany and associating with former German soldiers in a German neighborhood in New York City. Burros was an associate of veteran U.S. Nazi cult figure James Madole. And Frankhouser began his association with Burros in New York at the same time.

  Burros had ridden the Hate Bus to New Orleans and met up with New Orleans Nazi’s just months before Oswald returned from Russia. The hate bus riders met with members of the National States Rights Party. Oswald was soon to live and operate as an agent in New Orleans himself. And Oswald had Burros’ New York street address in his notebook when arrested. And Burros published a magazine threatening JFK.

  The biographers of Dan Burros, Gelb and Rosenthal, did not believe there was evidence that Frankhouser murdered Burros, in part because there was a suicide note written by Burros, who had a medical history of threatening suicide. But was he deliberately driven to suicide by those who had access to the front page of the New York Times, just months after the Warren Commission had published their findings? Keep in mind that Roy Frankhouser was involved with Burros off and on from 1961 to when he died in 1965. Frankhouser at various times was a proven National Security Council operative, although he “officially” began in that role in 1972. There is no doubt, however, that Frankhouser was a government informant at the time he was a associating with Burros. Burros himself was an informant for the NYPD.

  In 1966, Frankhouser appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee as part of its investigation of the Ku Klux Klan. He reportedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment more than 30 times rather than answer their questions, according to the Washington Post.

  Many of the questions from the Committee involved the suicide of Klan member Dan Burros. Dan Burros, a prominent member of the American Nazi Party as well as the Klan, committed suicide in Frankhouser’s apartment in 1965.

  It is significant that Frankhouser was one of the few defendants at the HUAC hearings who was not sentenced to prison for contempt of Congress. Shortly after this, Frankhouser became an informant for the FBI. He was almost certainly an informant or government operative of some kind before this.

  His role as an FBI informant lasted until 1971. Frankhouser had a close working relationship with another Klan figure, Robert Miles, who lived in the Detroit area. Miles was also an FBI informant who bombed school buses in Pontiac, Michigan in 1971. At the trial of Robert Miles, the relationship of Roy Frankhouser to the FBI became public and his cover was lost.

  In the Robert Miles case, Frankhouser was charged with stealing dynamite for Miles. He pled guilty to this offense and received two five-year terms but only on probation. When this happened, Robert Shelton of the Klan dismissed Frankhouser from the United Klans of America.

  In 1972, he marched down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan wearing a black storm trooper’s uniform to defy a city ban on wearing Nazi outfits in public. That same year, Frankhouser approached the FBI about working as an informant, offering information on groups such as black militants, the Jewish Defense League, the Irish Republican Army and Black September.

  The National Security Council approved a mission in which he was sent to Canada to infiltrate Black September, but he was unsuccessful. To the knowledge of this author, this agency of Frankhouser with the NSC is the only reported instance of an NSC agent in all of the JFK literature. That’s how private and secretive the covert activities of the NSC were and, of course, the NSC was not subject to Congressional oversight or any accountability to anyone except the President himself.

  Frankhouser was also an organizer of the Minutemen and a member of the National States’ Rights Party, the National Renaissance Party, the Liberty Lobby, and the White Citizens Council.

  Frankhouser was convicted of conspiring to sell 240 pounds of stolen dynamite in 1975. The charges included selling explosives which were used in the bombing of a school bus in Pontiac, Michigan that killed one man. During the trial he revealed he was a government informant, saying he was acting on behalf of the ATF. The government denied his assertion. Though he faced up to fifty-one years in prison, he was sentenced to two concurrent five-year probation terms as part of a plea agreement. Lyndon LaRouche initiated a legal defense on behalf of Frankhouser. When the LaRouche movement learned that Frankhouser was an informant, it saw that as evidence of the “FBI-CIA-Rockefeller-Buckley” control of the extreme Right, and an example of how government connections could immunize criminal behavior.

  Frankhouser became a security consultant for Lyndon LaRouche in 1979. We will examine the LaRouche organization in a separate chapter, including the role of Frankhouser in that organization.

  As a result of his relationship with the LaRouche organization, Frankhouser was found guilty on December 10, 1987 of obstruction of a federal investigation into credit-card fraud committed by LaRouche and his followers. He was sentenced by US District Judge Robert E. Keeton to three years and a $50,000 fine. After his conviction, he was granted immunity against further prosecution and compelled to testify against LaRouche. Frankhouser appealed his conviction on April 3, 1989, arguing that his case should not have been severed from the main case, that his counsel had inadequate time to prepare, and that he was not provided with allegedly exculpatory evidence. The appeal was rejected in July.

  Frankhouser’s next notoriety came in the 1980s when he appeared regularly on Berks County, Pennsylvania public-access television with his own white supremacist shows called “Race and Reason” and “White Forum”.

  Then in April, 1993, Frankhousr was arrested for stabbing a KKK guard at a KKK event He was acquitted of that crime on the grounds of self-defense.

  Next, in 1995 Frankhouser was convicted in Boston for helping to destroy evidence relating to desecration of synagogues and attacks on blacks. Frankhouser had been sought by the FBI for nine months. At the time, Frankhouser was allegedly the leader of the Pale Riders faction of the KKK. He was sentenced at that time to 25 months in prison. He won a partial victory on appeal.

  In 1997 Frankhouser, then Grand Dragon of the United Klans of America in Pennsylvania was accused of harassing a woman named Bonnie Jouhari and her daughter. She worked at the Reading-Berks Human Relations Council on issues of discrimination. After failing to get redress from government agencies, Jouhari convinced the Southern Poverty Law Center to take her case. Frankhouser eventually settled this case with terms set by the Judge. He had to complete 1000 hours of community service and make public apologies to Jouhari and her daughter on his white-oriented TV show and through local newspapers. But further, Frankhouser had to pay the two 10% of his income for a decade, and undergo “sensitivity training”. This settlement was supported by HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo and Reverend Jesse Jackson and by the President of the NAACP.

  But some experts on civil liberties such as David Bernstein43 use this case as an example of unfair curtailment of free speech.

  Next for Frankhouser was a role as pastor of the Mountain Church of Jesus Christ which was a branch of a movement led by Frankhouser’s friend Robert E. Miles. Frankhouser held services in his home and tried to qualify for a tax exemption for his residence. The house apparently had a tiny room for worship with a small altar. Along with this were Klan flags, Hitler pictures and pictures of crosses burning. However, as of 1998 County tax officials refused to recognize it as a church because Frankhouser was not an actual ordained minister.

  Still actively engaged in his lifetime of illicit protests and anti-social activities, Frankhouser fought for freedom for the KKK to demonstrate in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 2001. He labeled himself a spokesman for the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan although the group did not recognize any role for him in their organization.

  Frankhouser died of a heart attack in West Reading, Pennsylvania in 2009, where he had lived since 2006. He left no known spouse, children, heirs or other descendants.

  Notes:

  The following references are the main source
s for the information in this chapter. There are many sources too numerous to mention for the various and sundry facts regarding the amazing career of Roy Frankhouser.

  Information provided by Dr. Jeffrey H. Caulfield can be found in his iconic work General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy: The Extensive New Evidence of a Radical-Right Conspiracy.

  Mentioned in the above text is One More Victim: The Life and Death of an American-Jewish Nazi by A. M. Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb.

  Information on Frankouser and LaRouche is found in Dennis King, Lyndon LaRouche and the New American Fascism, Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-23880-9 (1989).

  Also cited in the above text is The Klan by Patsy Sims, University Press of Kentucky. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-8131-0887-2.(1996).

  Another source is John Mintz, (December 18, 1987). “Defense Calls LaRouche, Followers ‘Most Annoying’; Trial Begins for Leesburg Group Accused of Obstructing Probe Into Its Fund-Raising”. Washington Post. p. A18.

  And last, on the issue of Roy Frankhouser and free speech, see David Bernstein. You Can’t Say That! The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws. Cato Institute, 2003. page 74.

  Chapter 15

  The Torbitt Document:

  “The Nomenclature of The Assassination Cabal”

  The Torbitt Document, subtitled “Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal” is considered by some to be the foundation stone of accurate research on the JFK assassination. It appeared in the decade of the 1960’s and was published under the pseudonym William Torbitt in 1970. This document was covertly circulated, since it was not officially published by any publishing company, and it was attributed to a pseudonym. No one knows for sure, since the source of the Torbitt Document has never been proved although various theories have been proposed.