JFK files reveal Hoover's prurient interest in sex By The Wayne Madsen Report

 

JFK files reveal Hoover's prurient interest in sex

By The Wayne Madsen Report

While the partially-released JFK assassination files contain some nuggets of interest that fill in the gaps for some of the events that transpired before, during, and after the November 22, 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there are a few FBI memos that point to its director's penchant for gathering intelligence on prurient sexual matters. Hoover, who is now recognized by many historians as being a closeted homosexual, maintained an extensive card filing system that included information that could be used to blackmail politicians and other prominent citizens. 

FBI agents assigned to investigate Lee Harvey Oswald assassin Jack Ruby appeared anxious to whet Hoover's appetite with memos regarding Ruby's female "employees." One air telegram sent from the FBI office in Los Angeles concerned a former Ruby night club stripper named Marjorie Alice Putnam. A January 7, 1964 Airtel implies that Putnam, who went by the stage name "Syra the Dutch Doll," moved to Hollywood, California after working for Ruby in Dallas.

An earlier FBI telegram from the FBI office in Cleveland to Hoover and the FBI Dallas office, dated November 27, 1963, five days after Kennedy's assassination, concerns a former stripper named "Taffy Twist," who denied to the FBI knowing Ruby. For the FBI to be chasing down strippers appears to have been a monumental waste of resources at the time.



A January 30, 1964 Airtel to Hoover from the FBI office in San Francisco also dwells on sexual information. Dr. Walter Bromberg, a resident of Sacramento, was one of Ruby's defense team psychiatrists. After the FBI in San Francisco determined that Bromberg had not been a member of the Communist Party, the FBI San Francisco office noted that a Napa, California source, a nurse, reported that Bromberg, who was married, "conducted sex parties in which he struck women companions with a whip."



A June 21, 1967 FBI memo concerns a bureau interview with Lillie Mae McMaines, a New Orleans friend of Perry Russo, one of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's chief witnesses and an associate of CIA-linked businessman Clay Shaw, aka Clem Bertrand. McMaines used the name Sandra Moffett while living in New Orleans. After dating Russo and becoming pregnant by him, Russo told her to "get lost." During the time she dated Russo, she stated that he "photographed her on several occasions while she was engaging in the act of coitus with different men." Moffett later turned to prostitution to support herself. On another occasion, Russo wanted Moffett and a girl named Kathy to engage in a lesbian act so he could photograph it. Moffett/McMaines was used by Garrison to prove the association of Russo with JFK assassin co-conspirator David Ferrie. The FBI memo states that Moffett/McMaines "told substantially the truth" during a polygraph examination.

The newly-released files also contain a wealth of information on the activities of Ruby, aka Jacob Rubinstein, in Chicago. A November 25, 1963 telegram from the FBI office in Chicago to Hoover and the Dallas FBI office refers to "Jack Leon Ruby" being a relative of a notorious Chicago gangster named Harry Rubinstein, the owner of the Olympic Hotel on North Clark Street in Chicago's Near North Side. Harry Rubinstein killed a man at his hotel in the mid-1940s but, by paying $25,000 to a Chicago cop, was able to have the homicide charge dropped to manslaughter with one year of probation. Ruby worked for Rubinstein as a bartender at the Banker's Building in the Chicago Loop. Ruby tried to enlist in the Navy in 1942/1943 but failed the physical examination.

The FBI, relying on an informant, noted that Jack Ruby, whose nickname was "Sparky," was an "excellent fist fighter" who operated a bookie operation out of his friend Abe "Zuckie" Zuckerman's restaurant on Roosevelt Road in north Chicago during the World War II years. Because Zuckerman failed to cut Chicago hoodlum Leonard Partick in on the bookie profits, Patrick had Zuckerman shot to death. 

Due to the second page being suspiciously missing from the November 25, 1963 FBI telegram, the full context of the FBI's statement that Ruby's gangster associates provided three of the four guns used by Puerto Rican nationalists who, on March 1, 1954, opened fire from the visitor's gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives on to the House floor, is incomplete. Wounded in the attack were Alvin M. Bentley (R-MI), who was shot in the chest; Clifford Davis (D-TN), wounded in the leg; Ben F. Jensen (R-IA), also shot in the back; George Hyde Fallon (D-MD); and Kenneth A. Roberts (D-AL).

A December 12, 1964 telegram from the FBI in Chicago to Hoover and the Dallas field office provides information on a Ruby associate named Paul Dorfman, who had infiltrated, on behalf of the mob, the Waste Paper Handlers Union in Chicago. Bob Mullenix, a private investigator hired to probe Dorfman's involvement with the union, was killed in an "auto accident" in November 1962, a year before JFK's assassination. Mullenix's files on Dorfman and, presumably Ruby, were sent to his brother, John C. Mullenix, in Springfield, Illinois for safekeeping. The FBI Springfield office was tasked with reviewing those files.

There is a fascinating radio telex message from the FBI in New York to Hoover and the Dallas field office, dated November 30, 1963, that provides information on a link between Ruby and Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry. The telex is titled "Possible Association Between Jesse Curry, Chief of Police, Dallas, Texas, and Ruby." The New York FBI source was the Polish Press Agency's New York correspondent Wieslaw Gornicki. Gornicki relayed a conversation he had with Poland's United Nations ambassador Bohdan Lewanowski. The ambassador told Gornicki that the correspondent for the Indian publication "Blitz" was in Dallas on the day of the assassination. 

The Indian reporter told Lewanowski that he had obtained documents indicating that Ruby and Curry were members of "MB KESIDE" or "MB SESILE." These appear to be CIA digraphs followed by cryptonym used to denote various covert operations. For example, "MK" denoted the CIA's Technical Services Division operations in the 1950s and 60s, while "MH" denoted the CIA's worldwide operations. MHCHAOS was the CIA's anti-Vietnam War protest surveillance operation and LITEMPO was a CIA spy operation in Mexico. [UPDATE: Among the newly-released documents is an October 11, 1963 message from the CIA station in Mexico City referring to the implementation of the program with the digraph/cryptonym combination of LCFLUTTER. The "MB" reference may be the CIA's digraph for operations targeting President Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. LCFLUTTER was a CIA program to use Sodium Amytal (amobarbital), Sodium Pentothal (thiopental), and Seconal (secobarbital) in a targeted individual to induce regression]. It is intriguing how a correspondent for a magazine in non-aligned India came to share such information with the ambassador of a Communist country in New York. However, the Indian and Polish reporters, as well as the ambassador, may have been CIA informants.


Another, much later message, dated October 6, 1975, from the FBI Dallas to FBI headquarters in Washington, states that Dallas Morning News reporter Earl Golz "came into possession of documents three years ago from Paul Rothermel, a former Special Agent, FBI, and former Chief of Security, for Hunt Oil Company, Dallas, Texas." One of the documents, dated November 4, 1963, is from "Rothermel to H. L. Hunt (now deceased) which states Rothermel was told by a reliable source that there would be violence along the parade route to be taken by the President John F. Kennedy. The communication further states Rothermel reported this information to Dallas Police Dept., and the FBI." The FBI message refers to Golz as a person who believed in a "conspiratorial plot to assassinate the president," an all-too-familiar pejorative, crafted by the CIA and used by Warren Commission junkies.

While the FBI sought to damage the credibility of journalists like Golz, it had its own informants within the news media. A December 5, 1963 memo to Hoover from the FBI office in Philadelphia concerns an effort to discover the identity of a "JHC" who "sent a letter to Dallas," and a post card to radio station WPEN in Philadelphia that concerned Ruby. The FBI telex states that Theodore Reinhart, the producer of the night talk program, the Red Benson Show on WPEN, was an "established source" for the FBI. Reinhart used the Red Benson Show to appeal to "JHC," who apparently called into the Red Benson Show sometime after January 1, 1963 and before November 22, 1963 with information concerning Ruby and the planned assassinations of JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald, to "come forward" with his or her identity. There is no indication that "JHC" ever surfaced.

A May 8, 1964 FBI memo to the FBI's third-in-charge William Sullivan reports on an interview with Ned Touchstone, an FBI informant, editor of the Citizens' Council of Louisiana publication The Councilor, and member of the Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who reported that President Lyndon Johnson "was formerly a member of the Klan in Texas during the early days of his political career." Sullivan was shot to death on November 9, 1977 in New Hampshire when a local hunter said he mistook him for a deer. Sullivan was due to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The shooter's father was a New Hampshire state policeman at the time of the incident.

A July 25, 1969 FBI memo concerns a report from Charles William Thomas, a diplomat who served as Political Officer at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City from 1964 to 1967. Thomas related how the famous Mexican play-right [sic] Elena Garro de Paz told him about a party she attended at the home of her cousin Ruben Duran sometime before the JFK assassination. At the party, she was introduced to Oswald and two other Americans. The memo stated that, at the time of the party, there was a close association between the CIA station chief in Mexico City, Winston Scott, and President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz, who served as Interior Minister before becoming president in 1964. With the CIA controlling the Mexican Interior Ministry, the so-called "surveillance" of Oswald consorting with Soviet diplomats in Mexico City is highly dubious, considering the links between the CIA, FBI, and the Mexican security services at the time. Thomas's report states that the CIA was "considerably disturbed" by de Paz's recollection of the meeting with Oswald and the two unidentified Americans and information she ascertained at the time about a plot to kill President Kennedy.

On the Trail of the Assassins -- Second Stop, New Orleans

On the Trail of the Assassins -- Second Stop, New Orleans

When New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison said that Lee Harvey Oswald, who shared a now-demolished office building, called the Newman Building, with retired FBI agent and noted right-winger Guy Banister, ran his "Fair Play for Cuba" Committee smack dab in the middle fo the U.S Federal government presence in New Orleans, he wasn't kidding.

Banister, who was close to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and various right-wing politicians in New Orleans, maintained the office for his private investigative firm at 531 Lafayette Street. In the same building, but using a different entrance on 544 Camp Street, just around the corner, was Oswald's Fair Play for Cuba Committee. It is clear that Oswald, from the outset, was a CIA operative who took part in a "fake defect" program that saw a number of U.S. Marine Corps veterans like Oswald, as well as those from the Army and Air Force, "defect: to the USSR and East Germany, Many, like Oswald, later returned to the U.S. where they faced no prosecution. Some of the fake defectors, as was the case with Oswald, brought home Russian wives.

Not only was 544 Camp the location for the "pro-Fidel Castro" Fair Play for Cuba Committee but it had previously served as the office for the anti-Castro Cuban Revolutionary Council headed by Carlos Bringuier, an old friend of Oswald who helped stage a "confrontation" between anti-Castro Cuban "pedestrians" and Oswald as the former Marine handed out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets on Canal Street. It was clear that Banister was establishing Oswald as a noted "Marxist" for some future operation. Garrison caught on quickly, however, the district attorney was subjected to a barrage of personal attacks by those who wanted to cover up the CIA's and mob's role in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Some of the assassins present on Dealey Plaza had passed through New Orleans, where they purchased rifles with the cash handed to them by Santo Trafficante in Tampa. The guns were bought at a gun store in Slidell, north of the city and across Lake Pontchartrain. While briefly in New Orleans, the gunmen were under the protection of New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello.

Oswald also used an alias for his Fair Play for Cuba leaflets, "A.J. Hidell," or Alex James Hidell." Oswald maintained a post office box in New Orleans under "A.J. Hidell." However, other Fair Play for Cuba leaflets listed Oswald as "L.H. Oswald, 4907 Magazine Street." The Magazine Street address is several blocks due west of the Banister/Oswald/federal government enclave surrounding Lafayette Park. Also located within the Lafayette Park sphere was the W. B. Reily Coffee Company. Oswald worked at the company's headquarters, located at 640 Magazine Street, just a few blocks from 544 Camp and the Newman Building -- all within the shadows of the U.S. federal building, where the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, and Office of Naval Intelligence maintained offices, and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Ironically, the Newman Building at 544 Camp and 531 Lafayette has been torn down. Reily Coffee, founded at the turn of the last century by Bastrop, Louisiana businessman William Reily. In addition to selling coffee and tea, the company was rumored to allow the CIA to use its premises for certain covert activities.

Standing in its place is the one-block Hale Boggs Federal Building and U.S. Court House. The building is located at 500 Poydras Street and is bounded by Poydras, Camp, and Magazine Streets. Boggs was one of three dissenting members of the Warren Commission who doubted the commission's conclusion that Oswald was the sole gunman who killed President Kennedy. Boggs, the House Majority Leader, died in a mysterious plane crash over Alaska in October 1972, weeks before the presidential election pitting Richard Nixon against George McGovern.

The editor asked a couple of federal security guards about the history of the Boggs building, including when it was built. They were clearly unwilling to say anything about the building with one of the guards telling me that there were two Camp and Lafayette intersections, when, in fact, there was only one where the Newman Building had been located. I was under the distinct impression that they had both been pre-briefed by their superiors on anyone asking questions about the infamous 544 Camp/531 Lafayette address. The guards were totally uncooperative and were suspicious of the questions. Fifty years later, New Orleans continues to keep its ugly secrets about 1963.

One businessman from St. Louis I met near the old location of 544 Camp -- who will remain nameless because he was a one-time colleague of former HealthSouth chairman Richard Scrushy (Scrushy was jailed, along with Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, in a trumped up GOP political pogrom) said he was 19 years old and in the Army stationed at Fort Belvoir in November 1963. He recounted how all students at the command were dismissed and sent back to their barracks only to be called to an all0hands formation on the morning of November 23. The commanding general announced that Lyndon Baines Johnson was now president and commander-in-chief. There were no prayers for Kennedy and not even a mention of his name. Fort Belvoir was the location of a number of U.S. Army Intelligence and CIA activities. Former Colonel Fletcher Prouty always contended that the conspirators who killed the president included a number of Pentagon special operations personnel, including his boss General Edward Landsdale.

 
Garrison's major quarry was centered on the suspected CIA activities of Clay Shaw, a key member of New Orleans wealthy and influential gay community, and a colleague of Canadian Jewish businessman and noted Zionist and Israel supporter Louis Bloomfield. Shaw, who was also known as Clay Bertrand and Clem Bertrand, was associated with Oswald and two others who were part of Oswald's immediate circle, David Ferrie, a bizarre and hairless homosexual who conducted "cancer research" on caged rats and mice at his rundown apartment at 3330 Louisiana Avenue, and Perry Raymond Russo.

Although Garrison's prosecution of Shaw for involvement in JFK's assassination ended in a jury acquittal in 1967, the presiding judge, James Haggerty, never bought the jury decision. Speaking of Shaw and his friends, Haggerty said, "I am personally convinced that -- from people I've spoken to and what I've heard over two years -- I am convinced that Shaw knew Ferrie. I am convinced  . . .  queers know queers! In New Orleans -- they've got a clique better than the CIA."

Hoover did everything he could to derail Garrison's investigation, even planting FBI confidential informants within Garrison's team of investigators. Although it is not known whether Garrison knew Hoover was a closeted homosexual -- few in federal law enforcement were unaware of that fact in 1963 -- nothing was apparently done by Garrison to link Hoover to Shaw's "Queen Network" in New Orleans. In any event, Hoover was too powerful to come under investigation by a city D.A. like Garrison

.
Looking at old U.S. Federal Building from Lafayette Park. Oswald, Banister, Bringuier, and other CIA assets worked in the shadow of this building, which houses offices of the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and ONI.


The Newman Building once occupied the right of the photograph. It was torn down and replaced by the Hale Boggs Federal Building named after the most vocal dissenter on the Warren Commission. Boggs disappeared in a plane over Alaska in October 1972.

In 1963, 544 Camp and 531 Lafayette, along with Elm and Houston in Dallas - location of the Texas School Book Depository -- were among the most notorious intersections in the United States.



640 Magazine Street, literally around the corner from the old Newman Building site. 640 Magazine is still the location of Reily Foods, the former Reilly Coffee Company that employed Lee Harvey Oswald and other CIA covert operatives under its corporate cover.


This intersection of Lafayette and Magazine Streets, with Reily Coffee across from the street from the US Appeals Court Building and just around the corner from 544 Camp Street.



The US Court of Appeals (above) sat between 544 Camp and Reily Coffee (bekiw), two of Oswald's business addresses in New Orleans and right in the middle of a large federal enclave in the city.



544 Camp and 531 Lafayette. Now the Hale Boggs Federal Building. The Newman Building and Warren Commission dissenter Boggs were lost to history:

On the Trail of the Assassins, Dallas

 

November 22-24, 2013 -- On the Trail of the Assassins, Dallas


After driving some eight hours from New Orleans, WMR's "On the Trail of the Assassins" series of reports finally brings us to Dallas. Some of the Mafia- and CIA-linked gunmen who participated fifty years ago in the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 took this same route by car, although their trip likely took longer, considering the fact that the Interstate highway system was still in its infancy.

After purchasing their sniper rifles from a gun store in Slidell, Louisiana, the assassins, who had begun their trip in Miami, passed through Tampa where they received cash from mob boss Santo Trafficante, Jr., traveled through New Orleans under the protection and with the support of New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, and on to Dallas.

According to a former CIA operative who now lives in Houston, on the night of November 21, 1963, the mob snipers, local mob bagman and night club owner Jack Ruby, CIA  and FBI informant Lee Harvey Oswald, CIA embedded Dallas "policeman" J. D. Tippit, CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, and a few other conspirators representing the mob and a rogue element of the CIA met at Campisi's Egyptian restaurant on Mockingbird Lane, 4.2 miles from Dealey Plaza.

Campisi's was owned by Joe Campisi, who the present-day manager of the restaurant admitted was a close family and business friend of her uncle Joe Campisi. WMR and a few local Dallas JFK assassination specialists gathered on the evening of November 21 at Campisi's, which has not changed much in fifty years. Joe Campisi's niece explained how close her uncle was to Carlos Marcello and made a special point of pointing out the round table in the back of the restaurant where she said Jack Ruby dined fifty years ago to the very night. Now sitting under a large portrait of Joe Campisi, the table sits against the back wall of the restaurant, near the kitchen and rear exit. Anyone entering the restaurant through the padded red door would have been immediately seen by Ruby and Joe Campisi, allowing them to either monitor all the activity in the dining room or make a hasty exit out of the back door.

Campisi's niece explained how Marcello, like all Sicilian crime families, were just trying to make it in the United States amid all the anti-Italian and anti-immigrant pressures of their era. She did not know, or was not willing to say, who joined Ruby at the special "round table" the night of November 21, 1963.

One thing is clear. The gunmen who drove from Tampa through New Orleans to Dallas spent some of their time at fine dining establishments. We previously described their visit to the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City in Tampa where they mere met by Trafficante, who was a silent partner in the restaurant's operation. While in New Orleans, the assassins met with Marcello. Although it is not known where they ate, the Campisi restauranteurs originated in New Orleans before moving to Dallas and the Marcello and Campisi mob families had connections to some of the finer restaurants in the city. In Dallas, the assassins capped off their mission by eating at Campisi's, which serves traditional (and very good) Italian fare.

While at Campisi's, one local area politician described a conversation he once had with Winston Smith [the name is ironic], the son of Jack Ruby's attorney, Hubert Winston Smith. The younger Smith described how Trafficante had hidden a large cache of gold, made from his various business ventures, including illegal gambling in the United States and legal casinos in Cuba, in a secret underground vault somewhere in Havana. The Tampa-based mob boss moved the gold from Florida to Cuba to keep it from falling into the hands of federal law enforcement who were trying to prosecute Trafficante for racketeering.

After the fall of the Fulgencio Batista regime in Cuba and the coming to power of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, Trafficante continued to keep the location of the gold cache in Havana secret. Wen the CIA began planning the Bay of Pigs invasion by the Cuban exile paramilitary Brigade 2506, Trafficante trained is own special team that would accompany Brigade 2506, not to assist in the overthrow of Castro, but to secure the cache of gold and remove it from Cuba. Trafficante placed in charge of the operation his son, who ended up being one of the 4000 killed or wounded among the ranks of the invaders. The Trafficante gold was never secured and, more astounding, according to the story related by Smith, remains hidden in Havana to this day!

After hearing of his son's death, Trafficante vowed to kill President Kennedy in retribution. One of the CIA team leaders for Brigade 2506 was E. Howard Hunt, who would figure prominently in the assassination of Kennedy and the Watergate break-in.

Campisi's Egyptian restaurant on Mockingbird Lane in Dallas. November 21, 1963 saw Jack Ruby, Lee Oswald, J.D. Tippit, and Mafia-hired snipers gather for a final meeting on the eve of the fateful day of the assassination of President Kennedy. Ironically, President Kennedy's motorcade would pass by Campisi's on its route from Love Field to Dealey Plaza.



Just as in New Orleans where ex-FBI agent and assassination plotter Guy Banister shared his office building with Fair Play for Cuba Committee FBI informant Lee Oswald, in the shadow of the U.S. Federal Building, the Federal Building annex, which housed the offices of federal law enforcement agencies, had a commanding view of Dealey Plaza and the assassination scene. This photo of the Federal Building across Elm Street is taken from the "Grassy Knoll."




This spot in front of the Texas School Book Depository, where the editor is standing, is where CIA operative George H W Bush stood while the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza. Bush [right photo, farthest to the left] is looking directly at the location of President Kennedy's limousine when he was hit by the gunfire.





Spot on Elm Street [around area of the two adjacent orange cones] where the fatal bullet struck President Kennedy in the front right side of his head. Several people gathered on the evening of November 21. The mayor of Dallas closed the area on November 22 to all but 5000 special ticket holders. Radio host Alex Jones led a protest march against the mayor's decision as an abridgement of constitutional rights. On the evening of November 21, at around 5:30 pm (CST), the editor witnessed Dallas police arrest one man on Commerce Street across from Dealey Plaza. The man, who appeared to be in his twenties, was carrying an automatic rifle.


Bullet hole in windshield of Lincoln Continental limousine. The Warren Commission suspended all laws of universal physics to support the contention that all the bullets fired came from Oswald's cheap male-order bolt-action rifle from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
Two reflections on Dealay Plaza. The assassination area -- te School Book Depository, the Grassy Knoll, the Dal-Tex building where another sniper's nest was reportedly located, the railroad overpass, and, to the editor's surprise, the Dallas Federal Building, are all in close proximity to one another. The spot where Abraham Zapruder took the video of the President being hit was only 165 feet from the limousine. It has often been said that President Kennedy was caught in a "turkey shoot." In the case of Dealey Plaza, the shooting took place in a virtual cage.