response to Paul re: George de Mohrenschildt
I'm usually the one who floats possibilities around a CIA connection in the assassination to my website partner Paul Trejo, only to have him shoot them down.
Today, however, I'm the one who's shooting down Paul when he leaves a small crack in the door for a CIA connection with de Mohrenschildt and by extension, Lee Harvey Oswald. As usual, me and Paul 95% agree. In this instance, our 5% disagreement in the matter of George de Mohrenschildt arises because there can be no possibility that the CIA provided a "reference" for de Mohrenschildt's business venture in Haiti - as Paul allows in his last blog post.
Recently released FBI and CIA documents show just exactly what the CIA thought of de Mohrenschildt.
The CIA thought de Mohrenschildt was a communist sympathizer, a petty wanna-be aristocrat who was trying to blackmail the CIA, and a security threat to the United States. George de Mohrenschildt was an intelligence target, he was not an intelligence asset. He was untrustworthy. The attached CIA memo is one of a half dozen I've found that illuminates the "relationship" between de Mohrenschildt and the CIA. I think it speaks for itself. {about the digraphs or codewords ... WUBRINY = CIA Haitian operations; WUBRINY/1 = William Devine, CIA staffer; WUBRINY/2 = unknown CIA staff}
Unfortunately for History, Lee Harvey Oswald was friendly with George de Mohrenschildt. This friendship is trivial to understanding the assassination, but it has taken on a life of its own and catastrophically helped derail research. Instead of looking at who everyone on 22 November 1963 knew must of had something to do with the assassination - the Radical Right - the presence of de Mohrenschildt in Oswald's life draws hysteric claims of CIA conspiracy, supported only by wild speculation.
Birds of a feather flock together. Oswald and de Mohrenschildt were undoubtedly among the oddest people in Dallas in 1963. They were both involved in the Russian expatriate community. They were both familiar with communism and the Soviet Union from first hand experience. They both detested General Walker (a key player in the Radical Right and undoubtedly connected to the assassination).
Most importantly perhaps, both Oswald and de Mohrenschildt were posers. George pretended to a wealth and social status his modest bank account, middling rented apartments, and lost family inheritance denied him. Oswald had dreams of becoming James Bond, or at least writing a bestselling book about life in the USSR. They both imagined themselves intelligence operatives without proper employment from the CIA, and, worst of all, without proper recognition from the CIA as to their true 007 abilities.
Once, like that other non-CIA agent Clay Shaw, the newly released files show de Mohrenschildt told the CIA about conditions in Yugoslavia. That's it.
But neither George de Mohrenschildt nor Lee Harvey Oswald were ever working on behalf of the CIA. They never received a reference or any help from the CIA. Oswald and de Mohrenschildt were oddballs, absurd intelligence curiosities bumbling around the fringe of CIA interests - not trusted contractors, not operatives, and certainly not CIA employees.