The Three Barons

by J. W Lateer

  We should at this point explain several new and important facts. James O. Eastland of Mississippi, a Democratic arch-segregationist and conservate had (as of 1962) 12 years’ experience as a member and then chairman of SISS. His Republican ally, Everett Dirksen, had also been with him on the committee since the beginning of SISS. Jay Sourwine, chief counsel of SISS and Ben Mandel, research director, had also been the staff people in charge of SISS since its beginning.

  Senator Thomas Dodd had been elected to the Senate in 1958 and by 1960 was placed in charge of SISS by James Eastland. Eastland was the official chairman, but he allowed Assistant Chairman Dodd to run SISS. This arrangement was either because of limitations due to seniority rules or limits on the number of committee chairmanships allowed to each Senator. Looking at the bigger picture, the Eastland-Dodd arrangement reflected the behind-the-scenes alliance between Southern conservatives, Republicans and the few militant Democratic Catholic anti-Communists from the Northeast who were serving in the Senate at the time.

  The list of militant Catholic Democratic Senators and staff included Joe McCarthy, Pat McCarran, Robert and John F. Kennedy. Joseph P. Kennedy had been active behind the scenes. Now the list included Senator Thomas Dodd.

  Picking up on the activities of SISS when JFK became president, we can find revealing information about this updated role of SISS at a well known website which is referred to in the notes.

  To begin this story, we have to introduce a man named Nathaniel Weyl. Weyl was a mysterious individual who we know testified before SISS as early as February 19, 1952. In that testimony, he said he had been a member of the same Communist “cell” as Alger Hiss.

  The testimony of Nathanial Weyl was “the only outside support [Whittaker] Chambers’ testimony [denouncing Hiss] ever received.” By the time he testified in 1952, Weyl, a freelance writer, had written several books about treason and espionage. Also at this time in 1952, Hiss was in jail and public support was building for a new Hiss trial. Even If there were a new trial for Alger Hiss, because the new trial could vindicate Hiss, this would be a blow to the political career of then Vice President Richard Nixon. By this time, Weyl had become a strong anti-Communist.

  Following the premature deaths of both Sen. McCarthy and Sen. McCarran, the issue of rabid anti-Communism basically went on the back burner in the Senate. McCarthy’s committee, the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was converted, as we have explained earlier, into the McClellan Committee under the leadership of chief counsel Robert Kennedy.

  Looking at the relationship of SISS and the new administration of JFK, possibly the most important sutiuation was the war for control of the State Department which involved SISS and Otto Otepka. However, SISS and another Dodd committee, (the Senate Committee on Juvenile Delinquency), were both involved in a labyrinth of plots, investigations, covert operations and other activities during the brief administration of JFK. We can pick up, for illustration, another story involving JFK and SISS during 1962. This involved another scenario which is well known to researchers in the field of the JFK assassination. That is, the Bayo-Pauley raid on Cuba.

  The Bayo-Pauley Raid

  The reader should be reminded of our premise that anti-Communist activities were generally promoted most insistently by people or “special interests” who had a particular dog in the furious fight against Communism.

  The Cuban issue escalated following the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. In late 1962 and into early 1963, JFK was working to open up a special line of communication with Castro. As always, JFK was interested in defusing explosive confrontations such as the hideously dangerous Missile Crisis where the possible destruction of the earth itself hung in the balance.

  Involved in this complicated plan were Nathaniel Weyl, (who was at that time a right-wing anti-Communist writer), John Martino (an “ex” CIA operative) and William Pawley, (a right-wing millionaire). This new, secret line of communication was an attempt by JFK to bypass the CIA in order to get unfiltered information about Castro and Cuba.

  As part of the cast of characters involved in the anti-Communist crusade were expatriate Cuban exiles along with a few soldiers of fortune, mercenaries who had traded their para-military training and skills for fame and fortune.

  Like JFK, some anti-Castro leaders did not trust the CIA either. These names would include millionaire Pawley, Agent Martino and mercenary Gerry Patrick Hemming. William Pawley was a very wealth man who had owned the street railway in Havana before Castro took over. Following the pattern of the China Lobby, Pawley was one of those people who had lost property to Communists and wanted to get it back should Castro be either assassinated or otherwise deposed. The anti-Castroite Cubans and mercenaries such as Hemming were setting up meetings to solicit money from Florida conservative leaders to back a mission against Castro.

  Although there were numerous missions against Castro on the drawing board during that time, this particular one was designed to smuggle two Soviet Army colonels out of Cuba. Supposedly, these Russians knew something about nuclear missiles still being kept by the Soviets in Cuba. If true, this would be a large black eye for JFK. In reality, this story of the Soviet Colonels was probably made up for the purpose of getting money from wealthy anti-Castroites like William Pawley.

  Gerry Patrick Hemming made a trip, well known to JFK researchers, to visit California in 1963. He was accompanied by his friend and fellow mercenary Loren Hall. They picked up an expensive rifle in California and then traveled to Dallas where they picked up a trailer full of military-style weapons. In Dallas, this weapons trailer was, for a time, parked in the driveway of the assistant to oilman H.L. Hunt, another wealthy anti-Castroite (and the richest man in the world at the time). The reader should be alert to any issues of trafficking in weapons because of the presence of the ATF, in Dallas in particular. As we will see, the ATF figures into theories about the plot to murder JFK.

  From Dallas, Hemming and Hall traveled to southern Florida where a famous raid would be launched known to historians as the Bayo-Pawley raid. It was Hemming’s right-hand man Howard Davis who had gotten word to Kennedy about the Russian colonels through a New York financier by the name of Theodore Racoosin.

  As a result of a meeting with various anti-Castroites, powerful Senator James O. Eastland, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) became involved in the situation. Eastland urged Pawley to help Martino arrange the secret mission. It was code-named Operation Red Cross.

  Life magazine’s Dick Billings accompanied several men on the Bayo-Pawley mission. These included Pawley, Martino, William “Rip” Robertson, and a number of Cuban exile guerrillas, led by Cuban operative Eddie Bayo. (Billings would soon be stationed at Life’s temporary bureau at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas covering the Kennedy assassination. There he would aid Richard B. Stolley and C.D. Jackson of Life in the negotiations to buy the Zapruder film.

  One of the raiders, “Rip” Robertson, was a former World War II Marine frogman from Texas. Robertson had helped the CIA overthrow Guatemalan Dictator Jacobo Arbenz for the benefit of United Fruit Company. He was also the commander of the boat named “Barbara J” used in the Bay of Pigs landing and was one of the first two men ashore.

  Hemming and his fellow mercenary Loren Hall dropped off the weapons from Dallas, which were still in the above-described trailer, to a location on the beach in Florida from which the Bayo-Pawley raid was launched. Hemming then traveled to Washington to meet with either James Eastland personally, or Eastland and SISS.

  This case clearly illustrates how personally involved Eastland and the SISS were in the covert operations against Castro. The next important information about the secretive activities of SISS and its relationship to the murder of JFK began to surface later in 1963 immediately after the JFK assassination.

  Lee Harvey Oswald famously tried to start a chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. SISS had in
vestigated the FPCC on December 2, 1961 and again in April, May, June and October of 1962. Near the end of this book, we will wind up with an entire chapter which summarizes the work of Dr. Jeffrey Caulfield as recorded in General Walker and the Murder of President Kennedy: The Extensive New Evidence of a Radical-Right Conspiracy.

  This work, which was published in 2015, represents virtually the life’s work of Dr. Caulfield as far as historical research is concerned. From 1992 to 2015, Dr. Caulfield left no stone unturned regarding the role of the radical right in the assassination. Importantly, he essentially blames the entire assassination on James O. Eastland and the SISS, although he nominally blames General Edwin Walker.

  Your author arrived at the same conclusion as Dr. Caulfield without the benefit of any of the information uncovered by Dr. Caulfield regarding Eastland and his activities in New Orleans in the summer and fall of 1963.

  It hardly needs to be said that if one can conclude that SISS was largely to blame for the assassination both by examining the activities of Senator Thomas J. Dodd and the case of Ottepka and also independently from the actions of Eastland in New Orleans, then it is pretty much “case closed” regarding the guilt of Eastland, Dodd and the SISS.

  Dr. Caulfield never comes out and accuses Lee Harvey Oswald of being an, official agent for or staff member of the SISS. On page 742 of General Walker, Dr. Caulfield essentially says as much when he says that Oswald was working on tainting SCEF through the FPCC. Unless Oswald was working for an agency of the State of Louisiana for which there is absolutely no evidence, then the only official agency which was trying to taint the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF) was SISS under the direction of Senator James O. Eastland. In a later chapter, we will independently prove that Oswald was an agent of SISS from the moment he returned from Russia. This can be done purely by analyzing the actions of State Department employee Otto Otepka, who was himself an agent of SISS.

  Other Suspicious Activities of SISS Related To The Hit

  As of 1963, SISS employed an investigator named Al Tarabochia. He was formerly with the Miami Police Intelligence Department. At the moment of the arrest of Oswald, Tarabochia was contacted by Carlos Bringuier, the Cuban who helped frame Oswald in the Oswald debates.

  It is apparent that in the months before the assassination, there was almost endless intrigue surrounding the anti-Castro movement. It seems that for each and every anti-Castro Cuban living in the U.S., there was a plot or plan to rid Cuba of Castro. JFK was apparently trying to get the truth about these activities, or at least to be kept updated on what was going on. Both Kennedy brothers were walking a fine line.

  The Kennedy brothers wished to be rid of Castro, that’s clear. But they also wanted to avoid another embarrassing incident like the Bay of Pigs. And further, they wanted to avoid the danger of armed Cubans complete with bazookas, grenades, dynamite and whatever, meeting and prowling around the southeastern U.S. subject to irrational action with possibly disastrous consequences. And then there were the jokers in the deck, groups like the Minutemen and individuals like General Edwin Walker who had launched a full-blown armed insurrection already at Ole Miss in September, 1962.

  We can see from declassified records that SISS was also very involved on a day-to-day basis with these covert operations against Castro. At the same time, SISS and the Juvenile Delinquency Subcommittee were busy investigating other fringe groups like the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) and the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP). It is difficult to believe that SISS was totally surprised by the assassination of JFK. In the judgment of this author SISS may have played at least a minor, active role in the assassination plot and SISS was definitely heavily involved in the cover-up.

  SISS however, would not be able to have direct supervision over the shooters and the operatives on the ground in the assassination. To suggest that would be going too far. But it seems certain to this author that the Dodd committees at least provided significant political cover for the assassination cabal members, whoever they were.

  In Warren Commission Document #3084 headed FAIR PLAY FOR CUBA COMMITTEE, there is a paragraph which quotes the “New York Times” edition of January 11, 1961 that “at a hearing before the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on January 10, 1961, Dr. Charles A. Santos-Buch identified himself and Robert Tabor as organizers of the FPCC. He also testified that he and Taber obtained funds from the Cuban Government which were applied toward the cost of the afore-mentioned advertisement. [in the New York Times].” This document also mentions the Socialist Worker’s Party (SWP). Of course, Lee Harvey Oswald had made a virtual temporary career in 1963 based on his putative involvement with the FPCC and the SWP.

  In his book Act of Treason, author Mark North has the following quotation under the heading “7/3/63 WEDNESDAY: The Senate internal security subcommittee released today testimony by Robert Taber, former executive secretary of the Fair Play For Cuba Committee, at closed hearings held in April 1962, quoting the New York Times of that date.

  We know that Jack Ruby on the night of the assassination, famously corrected the Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade in the 11:00 p.m. press conference in the Dallas City Jail. With Lee Harvey Oswald present, Ruby reminded Wade that Oswald was involved with the FPCC, not another group which was mentioned. How did Jack Ruby know that? And why did SISS just happen to be investigating the SWP and the FPCC the same week that Oswald was being framed using these groups to connect LHO to Communism.

  So we see that the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee had a continuing relationship with a witness who was an organizer of Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba Committee. SISS was dealing with the topic of the FPCC off-and-on at least from the period January 10, 1961 until July 3, 1963. For some reason, SISS under chairman Senator Thomas Dodd chose to release 15 month-old testimony regarding SISS within a couple of weeks of the time that Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in New Orleans.

  On Feb. 20, 1967, Sen. Dodd introduced the transcript of “Oswald Self-Portrait in Red” into the record. (Cong. Rec. pp. S2262-2266) He also made the following remarks:

  …Mr. Butler, who was known to me prior to the assassination, called my office immediately after it to inform me of his debate with Oswald. At my request he came to Washington to testify before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, and he did so on Sunday, November 24, 1963 … I intend to speak at some length on this general subject soon, and I hope to make public the testimony of Mr. Butler before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee on November 24, 1963.

  Quoting from the above-cited website, “In response to a letter which cited part of these remarks by Sen. Dodd, J.G. Sourwine, Chief Counsel of SISS, advised in a letter dated October 10, 1967 as follows: “No testimony of the nature described in your inquiry of October 5, 1967 as been released by the Internal Security Subcommittee.”

  It should also be added that, in addition to Mr. Ed Butler, Dr. Alton Ochsner (the MD working with Judyth Vary Baker and David Ferrie on weaponized cancer) testified to SISS at the same time as Ed Butler. The testimony of Ed Butler has never been released, as of this writing in 2016.

  One can only draw a single conclusion from the timing of events as described above. Sen. Thomas Dodd and Rep. Hale Boggs were both involved in the frame-up of Oswald. Sadly, or should we say boldly, Dodd and Boggs were not even subtle in their ridiculous in-your-face claims.

  How could all this travel, information and testimony before SISS happen within the hour when Kennedy was shot?

  Senator Dodd, as we will see in a later chapter, had been a professional prosecutor. He was the assistant prosecutor for the U.S. Government at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials after World War II.

  At a time before Oswald was killed, why would any prosecutor be taking official testimony from a potential witness in a murder case at the very time the suspect had been caught. And remember, it would be almost two days later when Oswald was killed. Dodd, as a veteran prosecutor would have to assume that, when caught, Oswald was presumab
ly going to be tried for Kennedy’s murder.

  Senator Dodd even boldly admits that he knew Ed Butler prior to the assassination. Why would Butler be testifying to SISS so close to the moment when Oswald was killed?

  In a separate document which is part of the assassination evidence, there is a statement that says Mr. Carlos Bringuier called Al Tarabochia, the investigator for SISS at the moment when Oswald was arrested. Bringuier, along with Butler, were the ones who went the farthest toward framing Oswald as a Communist. This was before the assassination, in the summer of 1963.

  Why were these operatives calling Boggs, Dodd and Tarabochia instead of the Dallas Police or the FBI? Why would Carlos Bringuier, a militant Cuban exile (independently) call SISS investigator Al Tarabochia? The President had just been murdered.

  Did Boggs, Dodd or Tarabochia ever get around to calling the FBI or the Dallas Police? We don’t know. And if it was so important, why has Ed Butler’s testimony not been released after 50 years? Butler, in his testimony to SISS, either said something to incriminate himself, others, or he must have given away the most sensitive secret in American history. Maybe some day his testimony will be released to the public and we will know the answer.

  None of the above makes any sense at all, unless you assume that Boggs, Dodd and SISS had at least some involvement in the assassination plot, either before (as seems likely) or at least after the fact.

  And then Boggs was appointed to the Warren Commission. Folks, to this author, the question of a high-level assassination conspiracy just isn’t a mystery anymore.

  There is one final issue that comes out of the theory whereby the leaders of the Senate were somehow involved in the JFK assassination. That issue is this: if the Senate were implicated, wouldn’t this point toward LBJ, since LBJ was the “master of the Senate?” This is a very serious point. This question about the possible complicity of LBJ will be analyzed in depth in other chapters.