Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years

by Russ Baker

  The following day, agents interviewed Kearney Reynolds.

  On November 23, 1963, Mr. Kearney Reynolds, 233 Red Ripple Road, advised he is a salaried employee of the Harris County Republican Party. He advised at approximately 1:30 P.M., November 22, 1963, he went to the home of James Parrott, 1711 Park, and talked to Parrott for a few minutes. He advised he could vouch for Parrott’s presence at 1711 Park between 1:30 P.M. and 1:45 P.M. on November 22, 1963.

  What is so remarkable about all this is that at the precise moment when Poppy was calling the FBI with his “tip” about a possible suspect about whom he could offer few details, Poppy’s own assistant was at the suspect’s home, transacting business with him on behalf of Poppy. Clearly Parrott was far better known to Poppy than he let on. Why was Reynolds supposed to go to Parrott’s house at this time? The net effect was that Reynolds bailed Parrott out, by providing him with an alibi. Thus, Parrott became Poppy’s alibi, and Poppy’s assistant became Parrott’s. Everyone was taken care of. While the point was to generate two separate alibis, drawing attention to their interconnectedness was problematic. Because when the full picture emerges, the entire affair appears as a ruse to create a paper trail clearing Poppy, should that become necessary. Parrott was merely a distraction and a minor casualty, albeit a person who ought not face lasting consequences or attract undue attention.

  (Recent efforts to speak with Parrott were unsuccessful. All telephone numbers associated with the Parrott family, including James Parrott, his mother, brother, nieces, and nephews are disconnected, and no current information on any of them is readily obtainable.)

  In 2007, I interviewed Kearney Reynolds. In the interview—which did not initially touch on the FBI report—Reynolds exhibited an excellent memory for detail and extensive knowledge from that period, as the Republicans challenged the Democratic monopoly in Texas politics. He described the politics of the period, Bush’s chairmanship, and the operation of the Republican headquarters—which he said Bush had relocated into an old house in the Montrose section of Houston, a property that Reynolds said the staff dubbed “the Haunted House.”29

  With prompting, Reynolds confirmed that, due to the temporary absence of an executive director, he was the only full-time male employee, along with a secretary and perhaps a receptionist. He coordinated precinct chairpersons and other volunteers, and thus was the main person to have contact with people like Parrott.

  I asked him if he had heard or read of Bush’s call from Tyler to the FBI regarding a threat to Kennedy. Reynolds said he was unaware of it. However, he did then offer, almost as an afterthought, his recollection, not of visiting Parrott that day, but of being asked to accompany Parrott down to the offices of the Secret Service:

  There was a young man who came around headquarters . . . and somebody said that he had made a threat against Kennedy and this was, I believe, this came up after the assassination . . . The end result was, it was suggested that I contact the Secret Service, the local Secret Service, and I accompanied this young man . . . And we went down, and this was kind of a strange kid, mild-mannered, quiet, kind of seemed to be living in another world, and I took him down one day, escorted him down there.

  At that point in our conversation, I shared with Reynolds the details of the FBI report (including Parrott’s name), which stated explicitly that Reynolds had actually visited Parrott at home at around 1:30 P.M. on November 22, or precisely the time that Poppy Bush was calling the FBI.

  Well I never went to the guy’s house because, as I remember, the little episode that I mentioned—as I recall, I met him at the headquarters, and we went on downtown to the Secret Service office.30

  Asked why he would even be accompanying a man whom he said he did not know well—and whom his own boss believed to have threatened the life of the president—to the Secret Service office, Reynolds replied that he did not know, but only perhaps because Bush himself was out of town: “I worked a great deal with the volunteers and the precinct chairman, and probably on a face-to-face, name-to-name basis, probably knew more of them than almost anybody else.”

  At that point, Reynolds said his memory had been refreshed. “I knew him by name and sight . . . It was just sort of a casual [acquaintance] within the context of working at the headquarters.” Reynolds mentioned that many of the volunteers were women, so presumably Parrott stood out.

  After I read him a portion of the FBI memo, more recollections came back.

  “I seem to remember that some of this did brew up before the Kennedy assassination . . . Kennedy came to Houston, I think on a Thursday night, and he was assassinated on Friday morning.”

  Reynolds says he was asked to attend an event Thursday night at the home of a party activist named Marjorie Arsht.

  “There was some kind of little social-political thing at her house, and I was asked to be there and watch Parrott, which I think I did. And again this is conditional because my memory is just not that good. Now, but I do remember the following day or the day after or whatever after the assassination, that somebody called me and asked if I was with Parrott that night or Whatever, and I answered yes. I think I remember that.”

  I asked him why they wanted him to watch Parrott.

  “I don’t know,” said Reynolds hesitantly. “He was just—he wasn’t your everyday campus guy. He just seemed kind of distant and remote—quiet, polite, soft spoken, but didn’t talk much and just seemed distant. Now who or to what extent other people talked to him or perceived him to be a little on the edge, I don’t know.”

  He went on to describe people who would come into the headquarters and rant for two hours on some pet topic, like a return to the gold standard, and why you might want to keep an eye on such a person. But then he agreed that Parrott was not such a person.

  In fact, as the FBI report reveals, he was quite harmless—barely able to fend for himself. He had only a seventh grade education, had been discharged from the Air Force by a psychiatrist, gone into sign-painting, lived with his mother, and apparently volunteered regularly with the Harris County GOP quietly and without incident.

  Until the Bush phone call.

  No Harm Done

  The cumulative result was that Poppy was listed in government files as having been in Tyler on November 22, 1963—while Parrott faced no long-term consequences for having been secretly accused.

  In the aforementioned 1993 interview, Parrott would insist that for many years he had been unaware that it was Bush who had made the accusation against him. He also noted that he had actually gone on to work for Bush’s unsuccessful presidential reelection campaign in 1992.31 In an article covering the frenzied GOP-convention podium attacks on the Clinton-Gore team over family values, Parrott is described as passing out flyers saying, “No queers or baby killing,” while wearing a plastic shield over his face, explaining that it was protection against the AIDS virus.32

  As time passed, Parrott increasingly told a story that meshed with Bush’s, inflating his own significance along the lines of what the Bush forces were putting out. “It was mainly a rumor put out by those trying to neutralize us,” he said in the 1993 interview, claiming that he and other conservatives were in the middle of a bitter struggle with Bush and other “moderates” over the need to go after those suspected of Communist activities.

  That said, the notion that Parrott was active in any sort of aggressive rightist circles seems either untrue or irrelevant to what actually happened on November 22. More likely, Parrott was simply set up, his right-wing ideology used as a red herring by Poppy to legitimate his phone call. After all, if Parrott did not have an ideological motivation to kill Kennedy, why would he be considered a threat?

  Another curiosity: either the FBI agent who took Bush’s call, or Bush himself, misspelled the surnames of the two supposed witnesses whom Bush said would know more about Parrott. To be sure, if the phone numbers provided for them in the memo were correct, the FBI would be able to find them. But years later, researchers who tried had difficulty figur
ing out who those people were—or how to track them down. In fact, only extensive cross-referencing reveals that “Mrs. Fawley” is actually a Mrs. Thawley. And “Arline Smith” turns out to be Aleene Smith.

  These were either mistakes or deliberate errors; in any case, it is reminiscent of the way Barbara Bush mangled their friend Mr. Zeppa’s name in her letter. George Bush knew both of these women well. Nancy Brelsford Thaw-ley was vice chair of the Harris County Republican Party, and Aleene Smith was a well-known Texas Republican activist who worked for Bush at Zapata Offshore; both women remained with Bush for many years thereafter, accompanying him to Washington. Bush should have at least known how to spell their names.

  The background of the FBI agent is also of note. Graham Kitchel was unusually close to J. Edgar Hoover, and his record is full not only of commendations from the head of the vast organization but also of personal notes, including a get-well card in 1963 from Hoover after Kitchel underwent surgery. In addition, in a 1990s interview, Kitchel’s brother George, an offshore oil engineer, explained that he, George Kitchel, was an old friend of George H. W. Bush.

  In summary, then, Bush called in a pointless tip about an innocent fellow to an FBI agent whom he knew, and whom he knew could be counted on to file a report on this tip—out of what may have been hundreds of calls, some of them not even worthy of documenting. And, after a cursory investigation, the tip was confirmed as useless. But the call itself was hardly without value. It established for the record, if anyone asked, that Poppy Bush was not in Dallas when Kennedy was shot. By pointing to a seemingly harmless man who lived with his mother, Bush appeared to establish his own Pollyannaish ignorance of the larger plot.

  While Parrott had eyewitnesses to his being in Houston before, after, and at the time of a shooting that took place 240 miles away, Bush had Kiwanis eyewitnesses to where he was at around 12:30, the time of the shooting and the scheduled time of his luncheon speech.

  The big mystery, of course, is the call to the FBI. Bush clearly made the call; Parrott clearly was never any threat. Therefore, Poppy Bush was willing to divert the investigative resources of the FBI on one of the busiest days in its history. Beyond that are the baffling particulars: Why did Bush have one of his people visit Parrott’s house almost exactly as Poppy was fingering Parrott as a possible suspect? And why was Bush so determined to establish his presence in Tyler that day—and to document, as it were, his concern for Kennedy’s well-being? Why was Parrott so unperturbed to have been falsely accused by Poppy Bush?

  The answer may lie in Poppy’s mention to the FBI that he would be traveling next from Tyler to Dallas, and that he would be staying at the Sheraton. This was, in fact, akin to a magician’s trick—drawing the audience’s attention slightly from the real action. In truth, Poppy had already been at the Sheraton in Dallas—the night before, speaking to the AAODC convention. By telling the FBI that he was planning to go there, he created a misleading paper trail suggesting that his stay in Dallas was many hours after Kennedy’s shooting, rather than a few hours before.

  In fact, although he did travel from Tyler to Dallas, he stayed only briefly, did not stay at the Sheraton this time, and went right back to Houston. The Parrott call served no purpose besides manufacturing a reason to create a government record of his presence in Tyler and his plan to go to Dallas later on the 22nd. Once Parrott had served, however unwittingly, his purpose, there was no reason for him to suffer—hence, Reynolds’s visit to Parrott’s house around the time of the assassination, which effectively created an alibi clearing Parrott. In other words, no harm done.

  As for the reference to the Ulmers in Barbara’s letter, why risk introducing so controversial a person? Like Bush’s use of Joe Zeppa’s plane, it helped establish that Bush had in fact spent time with Al Ulmer. Better to include Ulmer’s wife’s name (but not his) and Zeppa’s name (misspelled) so that should a rare hardy investigator bother to figure out the sequence of events, Bush could claim that he obviously had nothing to hide—after all, there it was (in a way) in Barbara’s letter.

  In fact, Poppy Bush had good reason to obfuscate the details of his relationships and his conduct because they would, at minimum, lead to further inquiry at a time when an investigation into the death of a president was—or should have been—open-ended. The secrets themselves, and the urgency of keeping them hidden, would become a principal rationale in the family’s political efforts. And, as we shall see, they go a long way toward explaining the unprecedented information lockdown and seeming paranoia of the George W. Bush administration—whose earliest acts included an effort to put his father’s records under lock and key forever.

  CHAPTER 5

  Oswald’s Friend

  IN 1976, MORE THAN A DE CADE AFTER the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a letter arrived at the CIA, addressed to its director, the Hon. George Bush. The letter was from a desperate-sounding man in Dallas, who spoke regretfully of having been indiscreet in talking about Lee Harvey Oswald and begged Poppy for help:

  Maybe you will be able to bring a solution into the hopeless situation I find myself in. My wife and I find ourselves surrounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged; and we are being followed everywhere. Either FBI is involved in this or they do not want to accept my complaints. We are driven to insanity by this situation . . . I tried to write, stupidly and unsuccessfully, about Lee H. Oswald and must have angered a lot of people . . . Could you do something to remove this net around us? This will be my last request for help and I will not annoy you any more.

  The writer signed himself “G. de Mohrenschildt.”1

  The CIA staff assumed the letter writer to be a crank. Just to be sure, however, they asked their boss: Did he by any chance know a man named de Mohrenschildt?

  Bush responded by memo, seemingly self-typed: “I do know this man DeMohrenschildt. I first men [sic] him in the early 40’3 [sic]. He was an uncle to my Andover roommate. Later he surfaced in Dallas (50’s maybe) . . . Then he surfaced when Oswald shot to prominence. He knew Oswald before the assassination of Pres. Kennedy. I don’t recall his role in all this.”

  Not recall? Once again, Poppy Bush was having memory problems. And not about trivial matters. George de Mohrenschildt was not just the uncle of a roommate, but a longtime personal associate. Yet Poppy could not recall—or more precisely, claimed not to recall—the nature of de Mohrenschildt’s relationship with the man believed to have assassinated the thirty-fifth president.

  This would have been an unusual lapse on anyone’s part. But for the head of an American spy agency to exhibit such a blasé attitude, in such an important matter, was over the edge. At that very moment, several federal investigations were looking into CIA abuses—including the agency’s role in assassinations of foreign leaders. These investigators were heading toward what would become a reopened inquiry into Kennedy’s death. Could it be that the lapse was not casual, and the acknowledgment of a distant relationship was a way to forestall inquiry into a closer one?

  Writing back to his old friend, Poppy assured de Mohrenschildt that his fears were entirely unfounded. Yet half a year later, de Mohrenschildt was dead. The cause was officially determined to be suicide with a shotgun. Investigators combing through de Mohrenschildt’s effects came upon his tattered address book, largely full of entries made in the 1950s. Among them, though apparently eliciting no further inquiries on the part of the police, was an old entry for the current CIA director, with the Midland address where he had lived in the early days of Zapata:

  BUSH, GEORGE H. W. (POPPY), 1412 W. OHIO ALSO ZAPATA PETROLEUM, MIDLAND.

  When Poppy told his staff that his old friend de Mohrenschildt “knew Oswald,” that was an understatement. From 1962 through the spring of 1963, de Mohrenschildt was by far the principal influence on Oswald, the older man who guided every step of his life. De Mohrenschildt had helped Oswald find jobs and apartments, had taken him to meetings and social gatherings, and generally had assisted with the most minute aspects of life for Lee
Oswald, his Russian wife, Marina, and their baby.

  De Mohrenschildt’s relationship with Oswald has tantalized and perplexed investigators and researchers for decades. In 1964, de Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne testified to the Warren Commission, which spent more time with them than any other witness—possibly excepting Oswald’s widow, Marina. The commission, though, focused on George de Mohrenschildt as a colorful, if eccentric, character, steering away every time de Mohrenschildt recounted yet another name from a staggering list of influential friends and associates. In the end, the commission simply concluded in its final report that these must all be coincidences and nothing more. The de Mohrenschildts, the commission said, apparently had nothing to do with the assassination.

  Even the Warren Commission counsel who questioned George de Mohrenschildt appeared to acknowledge that the Russian émigré was what might euphemistically be called an “international businessman.” For most of his adult life, de Mohrenschildt had traveled the world ostensibly seeking business opportunities involving a variety of natural resources—some, such as oil and uranium, of great strategic value. The timing of his overseas ventures was remarkable. Invariably, when he was passing through town, a covert or even overt operation appeared to be unfolding—an invasion, a coup, that sort of thing. For example, in 1961, as exiled Cubans and their CIA support team prepared for the Bay of Pigs invasion in Guatemala, George de Mohrenschildt and his wife passed through Guatemala City on what they told friends was a months-long walking tour of the Central American isthmus. On another occasion, the de Mohrenschildts appeared in Mexico on oil business just as a Soviet leader arrived on a similar mission— and even happened to meet the Communist official. In a third instance, they landed in Haiti shortly before an unsuccessful coup against its president that had U.S. fingerprints on it.