From: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
Subject: Three Witnesses (Part 1)
Keywords: New Times article by Dick Russell
Date: 11 Sep 92 17:34:14 GMT
Reply-To: pcollac@pyrnova.mis.pyramid.com (Paul Collacchi)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pyramid Technologies, Mt. View, California.


This is part 1 of an article which appeared in New Times magazine
in June of 1978.

Paul Collacchi

_______________________________________________________________________


THREE WITNESSES by Dick Russell

For more than two years, New Times has explored the mysteries surrounding
the assasswination of John F. Kennedy.  At first, our articles pointed
out the holes in the Warren Commission's theory that Lee Harvey Oswald
acted alone in Dallas on November 22, 1963.  After the House of
Representatives voted -- in the wake of Watergate and the exposure of FBI
and CIA abuses -- to investigate the assassination anew, we reported
extensively on the Committee's progress.  Now, of course, that
investigation has been crippled by the forced resignation of Chief
Counsel Richard Sprague (New Times, May 13).

What we present her is an intriguing series of tales surrounding the
assassination.  It is the story of three men: a baron, a gunrunner, and a
Cuban refugee.  One was a close acquaintance of Lee Oswald: the others
say they met him before the assassination.  One killed himself the very
day a House investigator planned to interview him; another will not let
his name be used, because he fears for his life.  All three talked at
length to Dick Russell, the author of a forthcoming book on the Kennedy
assassination.  Taken alone, their stories are scenes from Raymond
Chandler, snapshots of a once-incredible netherworld that has become
increasingly familiar.  As a whole, they may form the framework to the
answer to what really happened in Dallas.?

------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------   		      "OF COURSE, THE TRUTH OF THE ASSASSINATION HAS NOT
COME OUT," 		        JEANNA DE MOHRENSCHILDT SAID.  "IT WILL *NEVER*
COME OUT.  BUT 		        WE KNOW IT WAS A VAST CONSPIRACY."  THE BARON
TURNED TO FACE 		        HER.  "OSWALD," HE SAID, "WAS A HARMLESS LUNATIC."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE BARON
	Like Fitzgerald's Gatsby, Baron George Sergei de Mohrenshildt was
borne back ceaselessly into the past.  In June of 1976, a sultry day in
Dallas, he had stood gazing out the picture window of his second-story
apartment, talking casually about a young man who used to curl up on the
couch with the Baron's Great Danes.
	"No matter what they say, Lee Harvey Oswald was a delightful guy,"
de Mohrenshildt was saying.  "They make a moron out of him, but he was
smart as hell.  Ahead of his time really, a kind of hippie of those days.
In fact, he was the most honest man I knew.  And I will tell you this --
I am sure he did *not* shoot the president."
	Nine months later, on March 29, one hour after an investigator for
the House Assassinations Committee left a calling-card with his daughter,
the Baron apparently put a shotgun to his head in Palm Beach, Florida.
In his absence came forward a Dutch journalist and longtime acquaintance,
Willem Oltmans, with the sensational allegation that de Mohrenschildt had
admitted serving as a middleman between Oswald and H.L. Hunt in an
assassination plot involving other Texas oilmen, anti-Castro Cubans, and
elements of the FBI and CIA.
	But how credible was de Mohrenshildt?  As an old friend in Dallas'
Russian community, George Bouhe, once put it:  "He's better equipped than
anyobody to talk.  But we have an old Russian proverb that will always
apply to George de Mohrenschildt: 'The soul of the other person is in the
darkness.'"
	Intrigue and oil were the two constants in the Baron's life.  He
was an emigrant son of the Czarist nobility who spoke five languages
fluently and who, during the Second World War, was rumored to have spied
for the Germans, Soviets, and Latin Americans (The CIA's predecessor, the
OSS, turned down his application).  After the war, he went on to perform
geological surveys for major U.S. oil companies all over South America,
Europe and parts of Africa.  He became acquainted with certain of Texas'
more influential citizens -- oilman John Mecom, construction magnates
George and Herman Brown.  In Mexico, he gained audience in 1960 with Soviet
First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan.  In 1961 he was present in Guatemala
City -- by his account, on a "walking tour" -- when the Bay of Pigs troops
set out for Cuba.
	Finally, when Lee and Marina Oswald returned to Texas from the
Soviet Union in June 1962, the Baron soon became their closest friend.
Why?  Why would a member of the exclusive Dallas Petroleum Club take under
his wing a Trotsky-talking sheet-metal worker some 30 years his junior?
	The Warren Commission took 118 pages of his testimony to satisfy
itself of de Mohrenschildt's benign intent, but among critics the question
persisted:  Was the Baron really "baby-sitting" Oswald for the CIA?  While
de Mohrenshildt told the commission he'd never served as any government's
agent "in any respect whatsoever," a CIA file for the commission,
declassified in 1976, admits having used him as a source.  In the course of
several meetings with a man from its Dallas office upon de Mohrenschildt's
return from Yugoslavia late in 1957, "the CIA representative obtained
foreign intelligence which was promptly disseminated to other federal
agencies in ten separate reports."  The Dallas official, according to the
file, maintained "informal occasional contact" with the Baron until the
fall of 1961.
	The Warren Commission volumes, however, contain only passing
reference in de Mohrenshildt's testimony to a government man named "G.
Walter Moore."  His true name was J. Walton Moore, and he had served the
CIA in Dallas since its inception in 1947.
	In two brief, cryptic interviews with me in the 18 months before
his death, de Mohrenschildt claimed he would not have struck up his
relationship with Oswald "if Jim Moore hadn't told me Oswald was safe."  
The Baron wouldn't elaborate on that statement, except to hint that it
constituted some kind of clearance.
	J. Walton Moore is now a tall, white-haired man in his middle
sixties who continues to operate out of Dallas' small CIA office.
Questioned at his home one summer evening in 1976 about de
Mohrenschildt's remarks, he conceded knowing the Baron as a "pleasant
sort of fellow" who provided "some decent information" after a trip to
Yugoslavia.  "To the best of my recollection, I hadn't seen de
Mohrenschildt for a couple of years before the assassination."  Moore
added, "I don't know where George got the idea that I cleared Oswald for
him.  I never met Oswald.  I never heard his name before the
assassination.
	For sure, the CIA did maintain an interest in de Mohrenschildt
at least through April of 1963.  That month, Oswald left Texas for New
Orleans and de Mohrenschildt prepared to depart for a lucrative
geological survey contract in Haiti.  On April 29, according to a CIA
Office of Security file, also declassified in 1976, "[Deleted] Case
Officer had requested an expedite check of George DE MOHRENSHILDT for
reasons unknown to Security."
	There is one alleged ex-CIA contract employee, now working for
an oil company in Los Angeles, prepared to testify that de Mohrenschildt
was the overseer of an aborted CIA plot to overthrow Haitian President
Francois ("Papa Doc") Duvalier in June 1963.  The existence of such a
plot was examined, but apparently couldn't be substantiated, by the
Church Committee.  Herb Atkin is sure the plot did exist.
	"I knew de Mohrenschildt as Philip Harbin," Atkin said when
contacted by telephone a few days after the Baron's suicide.  "A lot of
people in Washington have claimed that Harbin did not exist.  But he's
the one that ran me from the late fifties onward.  I'm certain that de
Mohrenschild was my case officer's real name."
	If so, the Harbin alias may have a readily identifiable origin.
De Mohrenshildt's fourth wife, Jeanna, was born in Harbin, China.
	One summer day in 1976, still in her bathrobe, she sat at a
dining room table cluttered with plants and dishes and watched her
husband begin to pace the floor.  "Of course, the truth of the
assassination has not come out, she said.  "It will *never* come out.
But we know it was a vast conspiracy."
	The Baron turned to face her.  "Oswald," he said, "was a
harmless lunatic."
	At our first interview, I had asked de Mohrenschildt what he
knew about the recurring reports of Oswald in the presence of Cubans.
He had nodded agreement.  "Oswald probably did not know himself who they
were," he replied.  "I myself was in a little bit of danger from the
Cubans [illegible] who they are.  Criminal lunatics.  "When I broached
the subject now in the presence of his wife, de Mohrenschildt said
something to her in Russian.  She then answered for him:  "That's a
different story.  But one must examine the anti-Castro motive of the
time.  After the Bay of Pigs."
	A few months later, de Mohrenschildt was committed by his wife
to the psychiatric unit of Parkland Memorial Hospital.  There were
rumors of a book naming CIA names in connection with Oswald, squirreled
away with his wife's attorney.  According to journalist Oltmans, upon
leaving the hospital de Mohrenschildt told him:  "They're going to kill
me or put me away forever.  You've got to get me out of the country."
In March, the Baron took a leave-of-absence from his French
professorship at Dallas' virtually all-black Bishop College.  He flew
with Oltmans to Belgium, wandered away during lunch, and wound up in
Florida at his daughter's home.  There, a tape machine being used to
transcribe a television program is said to have recorded his suicide.

________________

End of Part I.