by Russ Baker
Thus, in November 1963, Bush and Crichton were essentially working in tandem. Given that alliance, Poppy would need to explain not only where he was on November 22 and why he tried so hard to hide that, but also what he knew about Crichton’s activities that day and about Crichton’s Army Intelligence colleagues in the pilot car of the motorcade.
In his oral history, Crichton couches his relationship with Bush in benign and casual terms. He says that he and Poppy “spoke from the same podiums and got to be fairly good acquaintances.” Their appearances on behalf of the Texas Republican Party evolved into a private friendship that continued over the years. “When he was head of the CIA, I called him one day and I said, ‘George, I’m coming to Washington, would you have time to play tennis?’ And he said ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘How would you like to play at the White House?’ And I said ‘Man, that’d be a real deal.’ So he said, ‘Well, I’ll have you a partner.’ ”9
A Crime of Commission
The Warren Commission’s official mandate had been to conduct “a thorough and independent investigation” of the assassination.10 However, along with subsequent investigative bodies, it failed to assemble, much less connect, even the most obvious of dots. Virtually everybody on the commission was a friend of Nixon’s or LBJ’s—or both. The members shared another characteristic: they were, almost without exception, from the conservative establishment and definitely not Kennedy admirers who would have gone to any length to find the truth about JFK’s death. Along with Allen Dulles, members included Republican congressman Gerald Ford and John J. McCloy, a top operative for the Rockefeller family. No doubt coincidentally, McCloy had been best man at the wedding of Henry Brunie, head of Empire Trust, which employed Jack Crichton and invested in de Mohrenschildt’s Cuban oil project.
Transcripts of the panel discussions produce a sense that the commission members and investigators were either incredibly naïve or else walking on eggshells.11 At an early executive session, Earl Warren told his colleagues, “We can rely upon the reports of the various agencies . . . the FBI, the Secret Service, and others.” But commission member Senator Richard Russell, a conservative Georgia Democrat who headed the Armed Services Committee on which his friend Prescott Bush had served, made at least a brief stand. “I hope,” he said, “that you’ll get someone with a most skeptical nature, sort of a devil’s advocate, who would take this FBI report and this CIA report and go through it and analyze every soft spot and contradiction in it, just as if he were prosecuting them.”
Many were already wondering whether CIA personnel might themselves know something about the assassination and how helpful they would be to the investigation. In one executive session, Russell turned to Dulles and expressed his doubts about Dulles’s compatriots: “I think you’ve got more faith in them [the CIA] than I have. I think they’ll doctor anything they hand to us.”12
During the commission’s investigation, Dulles and his colleagues sometimes traveled to Dallas, especially to hear witnesses who could not come to Washington. When they did, they set up their temporary conference room in the boardroom of the Republic National Bank. The decision to do so is revealing, if nothing else than of a striking lack of concern for appearances. The Republic National Bank board was wired into the heart of the anti-Kennedy elite. The bank building itself stood out from other Dallas towers as an important symbol: the headquarters of Dresser Industries and of a number of corporations, law firms, and trusts connected with the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as being the building in which de Mohrenschildt himself had had offices.13
A Fascinating Tan
Members of the commission were often absent during testimony. But George de Mohrenschildt’s appearance caused a stir.14 Among those present were Dulles, Ford, McCloy, and two commission attorneys. As de Mohrenschildt would recall in an early draft of his unpublished memoirs:
The late Allen W. Dulles, former head of CIA, and a scholarly looking man, was there. He was, by the way, a friend of Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss [Jackie Kennedy’s mother] and he came over to talk to us amicably . . . What amazed me, looking backward at my testimony, was that whatever good I said about Lee Harvey Oswald seemed to be taken with a grain of salt as if the decision regarding his guilt had already been formed.15
Commission assistant counsel Albert E. Jenner Jr. was the staffer who conducted the interrogations of George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt, which lasted two and a half days. As he did with several other key witnesses, Jenner had private conversations with George de Mohrenschildt both inside and outside the hearing room. Perhaps to ensure that he would not be accused of something underhanded, he went out of his way to state the fact of those outside consultations for the record.16 Aside from asking de Mohrenschildt, on the record, to verify that everything they had discussed privately was reiterated in the public session, Jenner never made clear what the subject matter of those private conversations was.
The transcript of the de Mohrenschildts’ testimony runs 165 pages.17 It reveals George to be a remarkably interesting, dynamic character, whose life resembled that of a fictional adventurer. But numerous points of his testimony, especially relating to his background and connections, cried out for further scrutiny. Instead, Jenner consistently demonstrated that he was either incompetent or deliberately incurious when it came to learning anything useful about de Mohrenschildt.
To wit, here is an exchange between Jenner and de Mohrenschildt, in Washington, on April 22, 1964, with a historian, Dr. Alfred Goldberg, present. Jenner, who had already read extensive FBI reports on de Mohrenschildt, could be forceful when he wanted answers. But most of his moves were away from substance. He seemed determined to reach the commission’s conclusion that de Mohrenschildt was a “highly individualistic person of varied interests,” and nothing more. In fact, Jenner stonewalled so assiduously that even de Mohrenschildt registered amazement:
MR. JENNER: You are 6'1", are you not?
MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT: Yes.
MR. JENNER: And now you weigh, I would say, about 195?
MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT: That is right.
MR. JENNER: Back in those days you weighed around 180.
MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT: That is right.
MR. JENNER: You are athletically inclined?
MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT: That is right.
MR. JENNER: And you have dark hair.
MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT: No gray hairs yet.
MR. JENNER: And you have a tanned—you are quite tanned, are you not?
MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT: Yes, sir.
MR. JENNER: And you are an outdoorsman?
MR. DE MOHRENSCHILDT: Yes. I have to tell you—I never expected you to ask me such questions.
Why was Jenner even on the commission staff? Chairman Warren offered an oblique justification for his hiring that perhaps was more revealing than the chief justice intended. He was a “lawyer’s lawyer,” Warren said, and a “businessman’s lawyer” who had gotten good marks from a couple of unnamed individuals. Commission member John McCloy timidly inquired whether they shouldn’t hire people with deep experience in criminal investigations. “I have a feeling that maybe somebody who is dealing with government or federal criminal matters would be useful in this thing.” Warren then implied that this was unnecessary because the attorney general (Robert Kennedy) and FBI director (J. Edgar Hoover) would be involved, totally ignoring the strong personal stakes of both officials in the outcome—and the strong animosity between them. Allen Dulles said little during this discussion of Jenner.
Company Man
Albert Jenner was truly a curious choice for the commission staff. He was fundamentally a creature of the anti-Kennedy milieu—a corporate lawyer whose principal work was defending large companies against government trust-busting (which came under the aegis of the slain president’s brother Robert). His partner specialized in trust accounts on behalf of the super-rich. Jenner’s most important client was Chicago financier Henry Crown, who was the principal shareholder in General Dynamics, then the nation�
��s largest defense contractor and a major employer in the Fort Worth area. At the time of the commission hearings, General Dynamics was struggling to recover from legal and financial problems under the new leadership of Roger Lewis, who had been assistant secretary of the Air Force in the midfifties. Lewis also was a former executive vice president at Pan American Airways, the CIA-connected company on whose board sat Prescott Bush.18
At the time of the assassination, Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth was under investigation for corruption in the awarding of a seven-billion-dollar contract for a fighter jet, the TFX, to General Dynamics’ Fort Worth facility. Korth was a Texan, named to the post by JFK at LBJ’s request, to replace another Texas friend of LBJ’s, John Connally, when Connally resigned to run for governor. Just a few months before his appointment, Korth had authorized the bank he headed to make a loan to General Dynamics. Then, as secretary, he overruled the Pentagon’s Source Selection Board, which had recommended the contract go instead to Boeing. In November 1963, Korth resigned when it became known that he was soliciting business for his bank on Navy Department stationery.19
Korth and his family were friends of the Bushes. Penne Korth, his daughter-in-law, would become cochair of Poppy Bush’s inaugural in 1989 and be named by him as ambassador to Mauritius.20
The bottom line is that the Warren Commission did not assign a seasoned criminal investigator to figure out de Mohrenschildt’s relationship with Oswald and his larger circle of connections. Instead, they turned the job over to a man whose principal experience and loyalties were firmly planted in the very circles most antagonistic to Kennedy.
THE WARREN COMMISSION had been pressed to wrap up its inquiries quickly and neatly. But George de Mohrenschildt, whose wife described him as a man who didn’t know how to shut up, was not always a compliant witness. Commission transcripts contain some tantalizing admissions, which, in the hands of a determined truth-seeker, would have led to important revelations. But whenever de Mohrenschildt let something slip, Jenner would quickly push it aside. He’d even mix up dates, thus creating a hopelessly jumbled chronology of the de Mohrenschildts’ lives.
Among the leads Jenner did not pursue was one from George Bouhe, the Russian community leader who had served as Oswald’s first handler before passing him on to de Mohrenschildt. In his own testimony, Bouhe told Jenner that he had been wary of Oswald at first. He said he had even worried about attending an initial welcome dinner for the Oswalds thrown by Peter Paul Gregory, Oswald’s first White Russian contact on returning from the USSR.21 So Bouhe called a lawyer friend, Max Clark, who happened to be married to a Russian princess, to ask his advice. “And after a couple of days, I don’t remember exactly Mr. Clark’s answer, but there were words to the effect that since he was processed through the proper channels, apparently there is nothing wrong, but you have to be careful. I think these were the words. Then I accepted the invitation for dinner.”
Jenner did not pursue what this reference to “proper channels” meant. And he did not then ask for more information on Max Clark. Not that he was likely to have needed the answer. Max Clark had previously been head of security for General Dynamics, Jenner’s top client, and was aware of the Kennedy administration’s ongoing investigation of the company.
My Dinner with Mrs. Auchincloss
When the Warren Commission released transcripts of its interview with George de Mohrenschildt, the Associated Press remarked on the “strange coincidences,” particularly that de Mohrenschildt was a friend of both Lee Harvey Oswald and the “family of President Kennedy.” The latter assertion was not quite accurate. In fact, he was a friend of the family of President Kennedy’s wife.
De Mohrenschildt had known Jackie’s family since the late 1930s. During the summer following his arrival in the United States, he, his brother, and his sister-in-law, along with Poppy’s Andover roommate Edward Hooker, headed for the Hooker summer cottage in Bellport, Long Island.22 In Bellport they had some houseguests: Janet Bouvier and her daughter, the future Jacqueline Kennedy. A long-lasting friendship ensued. Jackie grew up calling de Mohrenschildt “Uncle George” and would sit on his knee. According to some accounts, de Mohrenschildt was at one point engaged to Jackie’s aunt Michelle.
“We were very close friends,” de Mohrenschildt explained to Jenner. “We saw each other every day. I met Jackie then, when she was a little girl. Her sister, who was still in the cradle practically. We were also very close friends of Jack Bouvier’s sister, and his father.”
This revelation seemed not to interest Jenner, who snapped, “Well, bring yourself along.”
Though Jenner did not find the Jackie Kennedy coincidences even remotely interesting, her own mother did. After the assassination, when de Mohrenschildt wrote Mrs. Auchincloss, offering his condolences, she wrote back: “It seems extraordinary to me, that you knew Oswald and that you knew Jackie as a child. It is certainly a very strange world.”23
So close were de Mohrenschildt and Jackie’s family that even after the assassination, Oswald’s friend was still welcome in the Auchincloss home. Indeed, immediately after their Warren Commission depositions concluded, George and Jeanne de Mohrenschildt had dinner with Mrs. Auchincloss and her current husband, Hugh. There, de Mohrenschildt would later recall, “The overwhelming opinion was that Lee was the sole assassin . . . I tried to reason—to no avail.”24
Jeanne de Mohrenschildt added her recollections of that evening: “Well, the one thing struck me [was that] Mrs. Auchincloss . . . didn’t want any investigation, she didn’t want to know who killed Jack, why and what for. All she kept telling me was that Jack is dead and nothing will bring him back . . . I couldn’t possibly understand how the person, a woman, being so close to the man that was so . . . killed so horribly, having no interest whatsoever to continue the investigation and finding a person who did it.”
This story should be taken with a grain of salt. The de Mohrenschildts might have been self-serving in casting themselves as more interested than Jackie’s mother in getting at the truth. Still, if they accurately characterized her preferences, Mrs. Auchincloss’s lack of interest in getting to the bottom of things is striking. In any case, at the end of the dinner, according to the de Mohrenschildts, Janet Auchincloss informed the couple that, because of the awkward circumstances, Jackie never wanted to see them again. No reason was given. Did Jackie believe that the de Mohrenschildts knew something, or were even in some way involved? Or was she just concerned for appearances?
Regardless, the simple fact that de Mohrenschildt knew Jackie and was the central figure in the life of the man believed to have assassinated Jackie’s husband surely deserved more attention. That the Kennedy marriage had never been as happy as the public was given to believe, that it had deteriorated badly in the last few years, and that Jackie had gone off, over White House objections, to spend time on the yacht of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis—these did not necessarily add up to anything meaningful. That Onassis, who was seriously at odds with Bobby Kennedy, had nearly entered into a Haitian investment venture with George de Mohrenschildt may have been no more than coincidence.25 Nor does the Bush-Hooker-Bouvier-de Mohrenschildt interweave mean anything in and of itself. But a credible investigation into the assassination of a president would necessarily have probed more deeply into all these matters. Yet a credible investigation is precisely what the Warren Commission wasn’t.
There is yet another piece still to this maddening puzzle. It turns out that at least one other guest joined the Auchincloss–de Mohrenschildt dinner that night following the commission depositions: Allen Dulles.26
Poppy’s Moment
Although the mysteries behind the Kennedy assassination were not resolved by the Warren Commission, the rest of the world began to move on. Certainly, Poppy did. Though he lost the 1964 Senate election—as did his friend Jack Crichton the governor’s race—Poppy had helped set in motion events that would get him to Washington in two short years. Bush wanted to carve out a new congressional dis
trict from that of Representative Albert Thomas, a New Deal Democrat who had played a key role in bringing NASA’s Space Center to Houston. By the time of Kennedy’s assassination, Thomas was showing signs of early senility. A key reason for President Kennedy’s visit to Texas that fateful week was to attend an event honoring Thomas, and generally to boost Democratic prospects for 1964.
In a watershed moment, Poppy and the GOP won a lawsuit they had filed in the fall of 1963 to force the state of Texas to redraw its gerrymandered congressional districts.27 This victory would play an important role in the state’s gradual shift from the Democratic to the Republican column, which would affect the balance of power in American politics for decades to come. Moreover, it would pave the way for Poppy’s election to the House of Representatives, and later his son’s political rise.28
