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.

Solid links found between Rafael Cruz's employer and plot to kill JFK by Wayne Madsen Report

 May 1, 2016 -- SPECIAL REPORT -- McLean, Virginia (WMR)-- Solid links found between Rafael Cruz's employer and plot to kill JFK

by Wayne Madsen Report
A long-since forgotten dossier maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency on New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of the links between Lee Harvey Oswald, expatriate Cubans in New Orleans, and the CIA points to solid links between Rafael Cruz's ultimate oil industry employer, Schlumberger of France and the Netherlands Antilles, and the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.

Cruz's relationship with Schlumberger eventually led to the purchase by the company of Rafael B. Cruz & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that employed both Rafael, the father of presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Eleanor Darragh Wilson Cruz, Senator Cruz's mother.

The April 27, 1967 issue of the New Orleans States-Item featured a story written jointly by the States-Item and the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News that points to CIA undercover agent Gordon Novel as having played a part in the CIA's false flag "Fair Play for Cuba" operations in New Orleans that also employed Oswald and, as WMR previously reported, Rafael Cruz. While flying the "pro-Fidel Castro" flag, Fair Play for Cuba, which was headquartered in the same building and office space that also housed former FBI agent and JFK assassination co-conspirator Guy Banister, was a front for anti-Castro activities in the New Orleans area beginning as early as 1961.

Garrison issued arrest warrants for Novel and Oswald and Banister associate Sergio Arcacha Smith, the leader of a militant anti-Castro organization also working out of Banister's Newman Building office of Guy Banister Associates, a detective agency in downtown New Orleans.

By the CIA's own admission, Arcacha Smith was paid by the CIA indirectly. Arcacha Smith's Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD) office in New Orleans received funds from the FRD headquarters in Miami. The FRD was created by the CIA's anti-Castro Miami operation JMWAVE. FRD leader Dr. Jose Miro Cardona directed CIA funds to Aracacha Smith and Novel, according to the CIA's own records.

On April 1, 1967, Novel was arrested in Gahanna, Ohio, outside of Columbus on a warrant issued by Garrison that stated Novel and Archacha Smith burglarized an oil services firm's munitions bunker in Houma, Terrebonne Parish, near New Orleans, in 1961. Novel and Arachaca Smith were arrested and charged with burglarizing the Houma bunker by Terrebonne Parish District Attorney Wilmore Broussard. The records of the case were later stolen from the custody of the Houma Police Department. A declassified CIA document revealed a third person was involved in the "theft" of munitions from the Schlumberger warehouse. Like Oswald, the third man, Layton Patrick Maartens, was an ex-U.S. Marine.

Upon his arrest, Novel began "graymailing" the CIA by telling all about his role with covert CIA activities in Louisiana prior to the assassination of Kennedy. Novel said that he was a New Orleans French Quarter bar owner who also served as an electronics expert for the CIA. Novel operated a CIA front in New Orleans called the Evergreen Advertising Agency. Through the company, Novel prepared special Christmas tree radio commercials aired in late 1960 and early 1961 by 300 stations in the United States and Canada that contained code phrases designed to alert CIA agents to the date of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba on April 17, 1961. The key code phrases were "Star Christmas Trees" and "Holiday Trees." A formerly SECRET EYES ONLY dated May 31, 1967, confirmed that the coded radio messages were part of a CIA operation code named JMHOPE.

Novel's statements were determined to be factual by a psychiatrist and polygraph examiners. Novel also told the Dayton Daily News, "I think Garrison will expose some CIA operations in Louisiana."

The Washington Daily News of March 27, 1967 reported that Novel was in McLean, Virginia during the weekend of March 25-26, 1967. In McLean, Novel was administered a polygraph by the Washington, DC firm REDEX, operated by private detectives Lloyd Furr and Richard L. Bast. The CIA later accused REDEX, Furr, and Bast of being "unscrupulous and untrustworthy." Novel was determined to be telling the truth by the REDEX polygraph examiners.

On March 29, 1967, Novel called the FBI New Orleans office from an unknown location and reported that he had "not furnished Garrison with any information about "Double Check" of Miami. Operation Double Check was a CIA "cover and funding" mechanism for recruiting and paying American pilots participating in the Bay of Pigs operation.

Novel again called the FBI office on March 29 to report that Walter Sheridan, a former FBI and National Security Agency operative who joined NBC News to shred Garrison's investigation of the Kennedy assassination and trial of Clay Shaw, was present during the polygraph of Novel in McLean. McLean is adjacent to Langley, Virginia, the home of the CIA's headquarters.


Rafael B. Cruz, third from left, carrying pro-Castro poster at demonstration at University of Texas in January 1959. Other pro-Castro CIA agents in 1958 included David Ferrie and Donald Norton. Norton hid out in Calgary, a CIA safe city for JFK assassination conspirators.

On May 22, 1967, Novel and a friend Gary Edwards were sitting in a WKDA-AM radio truck in downtown Nashville, Tennessee while preparing to do an interview that "would blow the New Orleans investigation wide open." A sniper opened fire on the truck and Novel and Edwards were injured by flying glass. Edwards immediately returned to Washington, DC and it was determined his real name was Gerald Mundy. Novel returned to Columbus. Nashville police discovered five bullet indentations on the truck's right side.

What Novel revealed to the press was that the CIA unit in New Orleans transferred munitions from the oil services company's bunker, leased by Schlumberger Well Services Company of Houston, to three destinations in New Orleans: Novel's Evergreen Advertising Agency building, the home of CIA contract pilot David Ferrie, and the office of Guy Banister in the Newman Building on Lafayette Street. In early 1961, an associate of Banister revealed that he saw as many as 100 boxes of munitions in Banister's storeroom. They were all marked "Schlumberger," the same firm with which Rafael Cruz had a contractual relationship. Inside the boxes were rifle grenades, land mines, and small missiles. The munitions from Schlumberger were eventually transported by boat to Cuba.


CIA's use of highly-restricted EYES ONLY caveat in document on Schlumberger's Bay of Pigs weapons smuggler Gordon Novel.

Garrison charged that the director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart, Clay Shaw, who Garrison also indicted for conspiring to kill President Kennedy, was ultimately in charge of the weapons movement from Schlumberger to Cuba. Shaw was also the director of a CIA front company called World Trade Center Corporation, which moved its headquarters from Switzerland to Rome and then to Johannesburg, South Africa, after Kennedy's assassination. The World Trade Center Corporation and George H. W. Bush's Zapata Corporation, whose ships moved weapons to Cuba for the Bay of Pigs invasion, were under the control of a CIA foreign commercial operations program code-named WUBRINY/LPDICTUM.

Rafael Cruz's eventual employer Schlumberger has always been a virtual CIA front in its own right. As late as 1986, the CIA's proprietary airline charter company Stern Air of Dallas, flew explosives for Schlumberger to such locations as Pakistan and Qatar. Stern Air also flew CIA missions to such countries as Chile, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Scotland, Ireland, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, South Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Angola, Rhodesia, South Africa, Libya, and Zaire.


Schlumberger used CIA proprietary airline Stern Air to ship explosives around the world. Rafael Cruz sold his consulting firm to Schlumberger subsidiary.

One of Schlumberger's major stockholders was William Casey, who served as Reagan's CIA director. The husband of the heiress to the Schlumberger fortune, Jean de Menil, was a board member of one of Clay Shaw's other CIA front companies, Permindex Corporation of Montreal. De Menil's wife, Dominique Schlumberger de Menil, a member of Houston's oil elite, was tied to French Secret Army Organization (OAS) plots to assassinate French President Charles De Gaulle in the early 1960s.

Garrison's investigation of the CIA's New Orleans links to the Kennedy assassination were stymied by the fact that several witnesses sought by Garrison fled Louisiana to other states and countries, one of which was Canada. Rafael Cruz left New Orleans for Calgary, Alberta in 1967, the same year Garrison indicted Clay Shaw. Cruz was not the only New Orleans resident tied to the Kennedy assassination to flee to Calgary. CIA agent Donald P. Norton, who claimed he delivered an attaché case containing $50,000 in cash to Oswald in Monterrey, Mexico in exchange for documents handed over by Oswald. Norton, a musician, said he was instructed by the CIA to proceed to Calgary where he played the piano in a well-known Calgary restaurant. The Vancouver Sun and The Albertanconfirmed Norton's activities on behalf of the CIA. Norton also took on a public persona and even appeared on CHCT-TV in Calgary. Norton also worked for the Alberta Piano Company, Ltd., where he gave piano lessons. Norton claimed his CIA contact was a well-known oil company employee in Calgary.

Norton, who had owned a record production company in Athens, Georgia, said he worked for Ferrie in 1958 and was ordered to deliver $150,000 to pro-Castro revolutionaries in Havana. Rafael Cruz also claims to have supported the Castro revolution before he left Cuba in 1957 and later, while attending the University of Texas in Austin in 1959. Oswald, Ferrie, Shaw, and a photographed man said by imagery experts to be Rafael Cruz, were all involved with the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba operation in New Orleans in 1963. Norton said Ferrie used the alias Hugh Pharris. Norton said he met with Shaw in Alabama in 1962 before traveling to Monterrey to meet one "Harvey Lee," a CIA alias used by Oswald. Norton was questioned by Garrison's investigators and they concluded that his information largely matched up with their investigation's results. Norton said he moved to Calgary and ultimately to Vancouver for peace of mind. He said the CIA fired him in 1968.

The CIA documents shine a light on CIA activities related to the Kennedy assassination in New Orleans and Calgary. As much as the Cruz campaign denies any connections between Rafael Cruz and the Cuban-CIA conspirators in New Orleans, the document trail linking the elder Cruz to the presidential assassination plotters grows longer.

SPECIAL REPORT. Mysterious "Mr. X" in photo with Lee Harvey Oswald -- FBI couldn't identify him By Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. Mysterious "Mr. X" in photo with Lee Harvey Oswald -- FBI couldn't identify him By Wayne Madsen Report
Significant questions have surfaced about not only the father of Texas Republican senator and presidential contender Ted Cruz, Rafael B. Cruz, Sr., but now also the senator's Cuban grandparents, Rafael and Emilia Cruz.

WMR has been at the forefront of asking questions about the Cruz family from Cuba and our recent report about a male bearing a striking resemblance to Rafael Cruz, Sr. appearing handing out "Fair Play for Cuba" pamphlets at the International Trade Mart in New Orleans in August 16, 1963, has generated a firestorm of comments on the web.

In 1957, Rafael Bienvenidos Cruz, the son of an employee of the U.S. intelligence-linked RCA Corporation with the same name, Rafael Bienvenidos Cruz, left Cuba for the United States. Cruz claims he fought with Castro against the fascist government of Fulgencio Batista but soured on the revolution. However, Cruz left Cuba two years before the Castro revolution and there is no solid evidence that Cruz fought with Castro's forces. However, in from the early days of the Cuban revolution in the early 1950s to the time before Castro took power, some in the CIA supported Castro against Batista while the United States officially backed the Batista regime. One of these was Bob Chapman, the CIA station chief in Santiago in eastern Cuba where the Castro forces were strongest. He and his predecessor, Bill Patterson, allegedly steered covert U.S. aid to Castro against the wishes and without the knowledge of Earl Smith, the pro-Batista U.S. ambassador in Havana. In any event, Ted Cruz's father's story about supporting Castro against Batista could have been told by any CIA agent operating in eastern Cuba at the time.

RCA, which employed Rafael B. Cruz, Sr.'s father, was a major player in CIA operations throughout the world, and especially in Latin America, where it helped install CIA clandestine radio stations and operated signals intelligence bases for the U.S. National Security Agency. RCA's chairman and CEO, General David Sarnoff, was involved in a number of anti-Communist fronts linked to the CIA. Sarnoff also directed his NBC network to help train CIA agents in developing anti-Communist propaganda. The grandfather Cruz's links to RCA may have helped him and his wife obtain visas to enter the United States in 1966. Sarnoff supported supplying anti-Communist guerrilla forces behind the lines in the Baltic States, China, Poland, Hungary, Albania and "other areas" with clandestine radios and other equipment.

Cruz arrived in Austin where he enrolled in the University of Texas. This is a strange story since he claimed he left Cuba with only $100, which he said was sewn into his underwear. Cruz eventually gained U.S. permanent residency and a degree in mathematics from the University of Texas. In 1959, Cruz married Julia Ann Garza on January 1, 1959, and, after Cruz graduated from the University of Texas in 1961, the couple moved to New Orleans from Dallas after the birth of their second daughter on November 18, 1962.



Cruz, Sr. maintains that he moved to New Orleans from Dallas after his divorce from Julia. However, a 1967 New Orleans phone book listing for Cruz, Sr. lists him and Julia living in the same residence in New Orleans. Cruz is listed with the profession of "geophysical computer" technician and residence of H201 French Street. It is but one of several anomalies in the official Cruz biography.



The FBI analyzed the news footage of accused John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald passing out pro-Castro pamphlets on August 16, 1963. The photo of a group of supposed pro-Castro activists was taken on August 16, 1963 in front of Clay Shaw's International Trade Mart in New Orleans. An FBI New Orleans memo dated November 26, 1963, states that WDSU photographer Johann Rush did identify Oswald and spoke to him. Rush said he could not identify "Mr. X," the man standing behind Oswald to his left as one Barry Baguglia.
The Baguglia name arose with U.S. Secret Service agent John Rice who sauid WDSU TV news people told him that Mr. X might be one Barry Baguglia. Rush denied he mentioned Baguglia and that he never heard of him. WDSU's John Corporon, Jim Mitchie, Bill Slatter, and Mike Lala told the FBI they never heard of a Barry Baguglia. It turns out that the Secret Service's Special Agent Garretts was the one who passed on the name Baguglia. Garretts claimed he received the Baguglia name from Herman Kohlman, Assistant District Attorney for Orleans parish. Kohlman later told the FBI that he never mentioned the name Baguglia to Garretts. What Kohlman told Garretts was that his Orleans detectives had arrested Alvin Roland Beauboeuf at David Ferrie's apartment and that Garretts may have confused the name Beauboeuf with Baguglia. The FBI concluded that the man present with Oswald wearing a white shirt and narrow tie was not Baguglia: ". . . it does not appear that there is any basis for the comment made by RICE that one of the five or six people handing out literature in front of the International Trade Mart was a person who might be BARRY BAGUGLIA."



The individual who bears a resemblance to Rafael B. Cruz, Sr. was never identified by the FBI or the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations. This "Mr. X" -- who resembles Rafael B. Cruz, Sr. -- remains an enigma. However, all those appearing in the photo at the trade mart, including Oswald's Cuban assistants, were identified by Chauncey Holt, the man on the far right, as being members of the CIA's Mongoose operation to overthrow Fidel Castro's government. On August 17, 1963, the day after the pamphleteering at the trade mart, Oswald appeared on an interview program at WDSU-AM radio called "Latin Listening Post" with host William Stuckey.

On August 21, 1963, Oswald appeared with Stuckey and WDSU-TV's Bill Stuckey on an interview program, Conversation Carte Blanche, that also included Ed Butler, the Executive Vice-President of the Information Council of the Americas (INCA), headquartered in New Orleans and involved in distributing anti-communist educational materials throughout Latin America, and Carlos Bringuier, Cuban refugee and New Orleans Delegate of the Revolutionary Student Directorate (DRE), one of the more active of the anti-Castro refugee organizations. Bringuier had gotten into a physical altercation with Oswald on August 9, 1963, during a Fair Play for Cuba pamphleteering operation in downtown New Orleans. But Oswald and Bringuier actually worked in the same ground floor offices of the infamous Newman Building, where Guy Banister Associates was located 5312 Lafayette Street while Oswald's "pro-Castro" Fair Play for Cuba Committee was located around the corner but within the ground floor office, but with an address of 544 Camp Street. Between September 6 and 9, 1963, Oswald was seen in the company of Clay Shaw, according to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison.


Photo from WDSU-TV New Orleans footage of the August 16, 1963 pro-Castro demonstration in front of the International Trade Mart. Man in sun glasses at far right is Chauncey Holt, said to have been the accountant for mobster Meyer Lansky. Mr. X [the man in the white shirt and necktie to Oswald's left rear], according to an FBI New Orleans memo dated November 25, 1963, never handed out Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets but was merely holding them.  The annotations on the identities of two of the men -- Bud Belcher and Leroy Young, both CIA agents involved with MONGOOSE -- came from Holt.


Left-to-right: Comparison photographs of Rafael B. Cruz, Sr. taken sometime in the late 1950s; "Mr. X" seen with Oswald in New Orleans on August 16, 1963; and Cruz now.

Oswald, earlier during the day of August 16, 1963, is said to have walked into the state employment office and offered to pay anyone who would help him hand out pamphlets during the noon lunch hour at the trade mart. One was Charles Hall Steele, Jr., who told the Warren Commission that Oswald paid him $2 to hand out pamphlets at the trade mart for 15 to 20 minutes. Steele, after dropping off his girlfriend, met Oswald and Mr. X on Canal Street. According to Steele's testimony, Mr. X was already with Oswald and would have likely been one of the Cuban MONGOOSE agents that was coordinating Oswald's pro-Castro street activities. The fact that the FBI memo states that Mr. X never handed out pamphlets, as did Oswald, indicates that the individual was serving as a coordinator of the activity at the trade mart. It is known that MONGOOSE involved CIA assets in Louisiana and Houston, Texas, places where Rafael B. Cruz, Sr. had resided.

The height of Rafael Cruz, Sr. listed on his draft registration form from 1967 is also curious. He claimed he was 6 foot. In recent photographs of him standing next to his son, Ted, the elder Cruz is shorter than Ted, who is 5' 7". Individuals do grow shorter with age but not by six inches. The elder Cruz's Selective Service form does show signs of the height entry being altered. The 1967 form also lists Cruz's address as 2246 Carondelet Street in Apartment 2-B, not the French Street address listed in the phone directory listing Cruz along with his wife, who he was reported to have divorced prior to leaving Dallas.



The draft registration form also lists Cruz's employer on July 26, 1967 as "Geophysics & Computer Service, Inc." This company is the French-based Compagnie Générale de Géophysique(CCG). The date July 26, 1967 is also significant for Cubans. Castro called his revolutionary popular front the "July 26 Movement." CCG is linked to the large Schlumberger oil conglomerate, which, along with Halliburton, is one of the two largest oilfield drilling companies in the world. Schlumberger had been active with the CIA and Zapata Offshore Company, which was owned by George H. W. Bush. Moreover, Jean de Menil, the son-in-law of Schlumberger founder Conrad Schlumberger, was a key figure in Permindex, the New Orleans-based CIA front headed up by Clay Shaw that was a key target of Garrison's investigation of the New Orleans connection to JFK's assassination in Dallas. The year 1967, when Rafael Cruz, Sr. departed New Orleans, allegedly with his second wife (and Ted Cruz's mother) Eleanor Darragh Wilson, was the same year that Garrison's official investigation of the New Orleans connection to Kennedy's assassination commenced with an indictment of Shaw, the same man whose office was located inside the International Trade Mart where Oswald and Mr. X were involved with handing out Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets on August 16, 1963.

Ted Cruz's mother Eleanor also reportedly worked for the Schlumberger affiliate. When the Cruzes left for Calgary in 1967, they worked under the aegis of Rafael B. Cruz & Associates, Ltd., which was owned by Rafael B. Cruz, Sr.

Mystery also surrounds Ted Cruz's mother Eleanor. She was married to Texas native Alan Wilson and lived with him in London from 1960 to 1966. In 1965, their infant son Michael died from crib death. Alan Wilson, who still lives in London, told McClatchy News Service that Michael was not his son. In his autobiography, Senator Ted Cruz not only claims Michael was the son or his mother and Alan but also claims the baby died in 1965. In fact, Michael, according to London vital statistics records, died in 1966 and well after the Wilsons were divorced. Eleanor Cruz, who lives in Houston, has been mum on her marriage to Wilson and her marriage to Cruz, which lasted from 1969 to 1997. Rafael B. Cruz, Sr., a Canadian citizen, became a U.S. citizen in 2005. Ted Cruz did not renounce his Canadian citizenship until 2013.

Enter a small London-based British firm called Strategic Communications Laboratories, Ltd. (SCL). Specializing in mass deception, psychological warfare, influence operations, and behavioral modification, the firm, thought to have ties with British intelligence and the CIA, has been in business since 1993. The firm's U.S. subsidiary, Cambridge Analytics, is now advising the Cruz for President campaign. SCL has proudly admitted that it has influenced elections in Ukraine, Romania, India, Kenya, Thailand, Latvia, Nigeria, and South Africa. 

Was the father of presidential hopeful Cruz involved in the JFK assassination? by Wayne Madsen Report

Was the father of presidential hopeful Cruz involved in the JFK assassination?
by Wayne Madsen Report
Previous questions have surfaced about the 1960s activities of Rafael Cruz, Sr., the father of GOP presidential hopeful Rafael Cruz, Jr. (Ted Cruz). Based on the presence of the elder Cruz, an anti-Castro activist, in Dallas and New Orleans before the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there is a strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with Central Intelligence Agency's anti-Castro operations.

Furthermore, a Cuban hired by alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and who bears a striking resemblance to Cruz is seen in an iconic photograph of Oswald and a group of Cubans Oswald hired who were distributing "Hands off Cuba!" pamphlets in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The photo of Oswald and other Cubans he hired for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was taken outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans on August 16, 1963. WMR has been informed by a source that the individual to Oswald's left is none other than Rafael Cruz. The photograph at the trade mart was favorably compared to a 1957 photograph of Cruz attached to an official Cuban Ministry of Education document.


Photo of Rafael Cruz, Sr. attached to a 1957 Cuban Ministry of Education secondary education graduation certificate.


Man to Oswald's left, in center with tie, is reportedly Rafael Cruz, the father of the man who wants to be the next president of the United States. Photograph taken on August 16, 1963 outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans.


Another view of the purported Cruz [far left].

   
Blown-up photo of Rafael Cruz with Fair Play for Cuba in New Orleans in 1963 [left]. Rafael Cruz today with his son at a FreedomWorks event in Salt Lake City in 2013 where Rafael Cruz falsely stated he fled Castro-led Communist Cuba [right]. What else has the elder Cruz lied about?


Someone should print this original pamphlet in color and hand it to Rafael Cruz, Sr. and ask him if he handed them out in New Orleans on August 16, 1963.

Oswald was arrested along with three Cubans on August 9, 1963, not necessarily the same Cubans he was later photographed with at the trade mart, after he got into what is considered to have been a "staged" fight with anti-Castro Cuban activist and lawyer Carlos Bringuier. Before Oswald's very public fight with Bringuier and Oswald's subsequent arrest, the ex-Marine offered to help the DRE train its commandos to fight against the Castro government in Cuba.

G. Robert Blakey, the Special Attorney at the Department of Justice in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section from 1960 to 1964 and the chief counsel of the House Special Committee on Assassinations, affirmed that the men seen with Oswald passing out pamphlets at the trade mart on August 9 were never identified. In fact, Blakey told PBS's Frontline in 1993, "when he [Oswald] distributed the literature, one of the two people was hired. The other person we've never been able to identify."

On August 9, 1963, Oswald was found guilty of disturbing the peace and he was fined 10 dollars. It is known that Oswald worked with Bringuier and Clay Shaw in anti-Castro activities linked to the CIA. Bringuier's Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE), an anti-Castro organization, used the same 544 Camp Street address as Oswald's Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Moreover, Bringuier had in his possession Oswald's personal copy of the book, Guidebook for Marines.

On February 11, 2016, WMR provided a history of Cruz's ties to New Orleans during the time of the CIA's and organized crime's plot to kill Kennedy:
In 1957, Rafael Cruz, a former salesman for the U.S. intelligence-linked RCA Corporation, left Cuba for the United States. Cruz claims he fought with Castro against the fascist government of Fulgencio Batista but soured on the revolution. However, Cruz left Cuba two years before the Castro revolution. 

Cruz arrived in Austin where he enrolled in the University of Texas. This is a strange story since he claimed he left Cuba with only $100, which he said was sewn into his underwear. Cruz eventually gained U.S. permanent residency and a degree in mathematics from the University of Texas. In 1959, Cruz married Julia Ann Garza and, after Cruz graduated from the University of Texas in 1961, the couple moved to New Orleans from Dallas after the birth of their second daughter on November 18, 1962. 

Cruz was in New Orleans during 1963, the year that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claimed his city was the focal point for the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. The plot involved a number of Cuban exiles. Accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald claimed, as part of his "fake defector" persona developed by the Central Intelligence Agency, to be a member of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The committee just happened to share an office address with Guy Banister's private investigation agency. 

Guy Banister Associates was located on the ground floor of the Newman Building at 5312 Lafayette Street while Oswald's "pro-Castro" Fair Play for Cuba Committee was located around the corner but on the ground floor of the same building but with an address of 544 Camp Street. Banister was a retired FBI agent who continued to carry out tasks for the bureau and the CIA. The Newman Building housed a number of anti-Castro groups, including the Cuban Revolutionary Council, Crusade to Free Cuba Committee, the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, and Friends of Democratic Cuba. While living in New Orleans, Cruz was also active with anti-Castro movements and the chances that he did not cross paths with Banister and the other anti-Castro activists, including CIA agent Sergio Arcacha Smith, are highly unlikely for such a close-knit community at the time.
While living in New Orleans with his wife and two young daughters, Cruz claimed residency at two addresses, one a low-rent apartment building off of Jackson Avenue. Cruz worked for an oil company in New Orleans. He has been less than forthcoming about the details of his time in New Orleans and the time line that included his move from Dallas.

Cruz and his wife Julia divorced in New Orleans or Dallas, allegedly in 1962 or 1963, but this detail is also clouded in mystery. Cruz apparently registered for the draft in 1967 claiming the New Orleans' Jackson Street address. Draft registration was a requirement for resident aliens like Cruz. Cruz apparently waited until the age of 28 to register for the draft, which, because he waited so long, was a criminal offense at the time. While liable for the draft and possible service in Vietnam, a country where fellow Cuban immigrant Otto Macias gladly volunteered to serve, Cruz took off for Calgary, Canada with his second wife, Eleanor Darragh. Darragh, a native of Delaware who graduated from Rice University in Houston, worked for the same oil company in New Orleans that employed Cruz. Their son, Rafael "Ted" Cruz, Jr., now a candidate for president of the United States, claims that his mother and father worked for the same company in New Orleans but there is actually no record of an Eleanor Darragh Wilson Cruz living in New Orleans at the time.

Eleanor Wilson, married to Fort Worth, Texas native Alan Wilson, lived in London from 1960 to 1966. In 1965, their infant son Michael died from crib death. Alan Wilson, who still lives in London, told McClatchy News Service that Michael was not his son. In his autobiography, Senator Ted Cruz not only claims Michael was the son or his mother and Alan but also claims the baby died in 1965. In fact, Michael, according to London vital statistics records, died in 1966 and well after the Wilsons were divorced. Eleanor Cruz, who lives in Houston, has been mum on her marriage to Wilson and her marriage to Cruz, which lasted from 1969 to 1997. Ted Cruz was born in Calgary in 1970 and there is a major question about his eligibility to serve as president since Cruz maintained Canadian citizenship until 2013.