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Please read our editorial note for April 27. This is a work in progress.
This is both a work that is still in the research and precursory editorial process. As we dug deeper and deeper into the story of James Dudley Wilmeth, and his reason for being sent to Moscow in 1944, it became obvious that not only does that phase of his life begin a new chapter, for us it also marked the start of new volume. Therefore we will now conclude this volume with Precursory Chapter Thirty-five, and the precursory chapter that was to have become Precursory Chapter Thirty-six in this first volume and titled "Our Man in Moscow", will now become the first chapter of the second volume in the series.
This is both a work that is still in the research and precursory editorial process. As we dug deeper and deeper into the story of James Dudley Wilmeth, and his reason for being sent to Moscow in 1944, it became obvious that not only does that phase of his life begin a new chapter, for us it also marked the start of new volume. Therefore we will now conclude this volume with Precursory Chapter Thirty-five, and the precursory chapter that was to have become Precursory Chapter Thirty-six in this first volume and titled "Our Man in Moscow", will now become the first chapter of the second volume in the series.
To understand why Lt Col. James Dudley Wilmeth would be "ordered to London for an orientation course", we turned to a website project that began in November 2000 for the sole purpose of preserving and documenting the story of 'Combined Operations' during World War II. Knowing more about the reason for Mountbatten's 'Orientation Course', and its purpose, helped us to understand why Wilmeth was ordered to attend, and then, why Wilmeth was ordered to take up his successive duty postings back in the USA.
Our initial knowledge about the posting of Lt Col. James Dudley Wilmeth to London in 1942, came from one skeleton overview of his life story that appeared in 'The Austin Statesman', which was later renamed 'The Austin American-Statesman'. This newspaper in Austin, Texas reported that: "Wilmeth was ordered to London for an orientation course in Admiral Louis Mountbatten's office of combined operations in the summer of 1942." Before we explain why Wilmeth attended Mountbatten's Orientation Course in 1942, we need to explain the reason why the man who was known as Prince Louis of Battenberg, and in 1917 assumed the name of Mountbatten, took over the command of Combined Operations. Louis Mountbatten was born on June 25, 1900, becoming the youngest son of Prince Louis of Battenberg. In 1914, Prince Louis became Admiral of the British Fleet and its First Sea Lord. In 1941, under the name of Mountbatten he was in the USA waiting to take command of a ship that was undergoing repairs at Norfolk, Virginia. That is when Winston Churchill signaled him to return to London. At a meeting held at the official country residence of the British Prime Minister called 'Chequers', which is located just outside London, Churchill gave Mountbatten a new assignment. On October 27, 1941, Mountbatten was told to replace Admiral Sir Roger Keyes who was at that time in command of Combined Operations. Churchill had created this Operation on June 4, 1940, in the wake of the disastrous British military retreat from Dunkirk. Winston Churchill ordered the British Army, Navy and Air Force Chiefs of Staff to cooperate with each other under the Combined Operations Command of Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. This project limped off the ground in a disorganized manner, and that is why Churchill got rid of Keyes and replaced him with Mountbatten. Having just received his new Command in late October 1941 and knowing that he could not follow in the footsteps of his predecessor by just picking up where Keyes had left off, Mountbatten had to first assess what he was expected to accomplish - before he could issue new directives to subordinates for their implementation. Mountbatten was to be "technical adviser on all aspects of, and at all stages in, the planning and training for Combined Operations" specifically coordinating inter-service training; running the UK Combined Operations Training Establishments; advising on tactical and technical research and development; devising the special craft needed "for all forms of Combined Operations varying from small raids to a full-scale invasion of the Continent." Because Keyes had not created an organization with planning, signals, and training staff, Mountbatten had to create it. Combined Operations Headquarters (COHQ) was located in a small building not far from 10 Downing Street in Whitehall, while the actual training of troops was accomplished within the boundaries of a huge slice of northwestern Scotland, well away from the prying eyes of spies, and generally protected from bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe. For the Allied Forces to defeat Adolph Hitler's Nazi troops, they had to first cross the English Channel and gain a foothold on the European Continent. But Wilmeth was an Army man who spent his time with heavy armor. How was this U.S. Army Lt. Col. supposed to contribute to the defeat of Adolph Hitler? During the remaining months of 1942, after Wilmeth returned to the USA from England, the answer to that question became readily apparent. He had gone to London in "the Summer of 1942", but while we do not know the exact month, we do know that in the Northern Hemisphere, "the Summer months" are comprised of June, July and August. If Wilmeth returned to the USA in the Autumn of that same year, he would have September, October, November and December to carry out his new mission. This is what that same 1956 Austin newspaper article tells us about where Lt. Col. Wilmeth went, and what he did: "From London he was ordered to Camp Carrabelle, Florida, and Camp Edwards, Massachusetts, to serve on the staff at the amphibious training centers at the posts." Those two locations were not next door each other; they are approximately one thousand and thirty plus miles apart. It should also be noted that in January 1943, Camp Carrabelle was renamed Camp Gordon Johnston. This means that Wilmeth was indeed sent to Camp Carrabelle in 1942, before it was renamed. What he did at Camp Carrabelle is not explained in the 1956 newspaper article. What we do know is that after Wilmeth's visit during 1942, the Amphibious Training Center at Camp Carrabelle which had been closed prior to his visit, was reopened in 1943 under the name of Camp Gordon Johnson. That camp was then used as the training station for American amphibious landings on D-Day. That took place on June 6, 1944 when the U.S. Army 4th Infantry Division landed on Utah Beach in France. Camp Edwards in Massachusetts was used to train both anti-aircraft and amphibious units until mid-1944, after which its amphibious training center was relocated to Camp Gordon Johnson in Florida. These 1942 visits by Wilmeth took place immediately after Mountbatten's Orientation Course in London. Mountbatten explained in the Forward to the 1950 book called 'Combined Operations; The Official Story of The Commandos', what he expected from people he orientated to his new approach for Combined Operations: "We cannot win this war by bombing and blockade alone: it can be won only when our armies have taken physical possession. If we look at the map, we find that there is no place where United States or British troops can land to fight the enemy without the probability of severe opposition. They can only be taken there in force by a seaborne expedition with air support. They cannot land unless, in fact, combined operations are carried out. Amphibious warfare, therefore, will play an even greater part in the coming year than it has in the past." That was Wilmeth's reason for going first to London for instructions, and then to Florida and Massachusetts where he put those instructions into action. However, it seems that he was only given the remaining months of 1942 to carry them out. Because in February 1943, Wilmeth was made Commanding Officer of an armored battalion of the 20th Armored Division. It was activated the following month on March 15, 1943, at Camp Campbell in Kentucky. Although the 20th Armored Division did not go into combat until April of 1945, elements of the 20th Armored participated in the liberation of the Dachau Concentration Camp located in southern Germany. The military career of James Dudley Wilmeth is now beginning to take on the characteristics of a man who starts things up; a man who applies first plans to new ventures that others will then pick-up and run with. In business he would be called an entrepreneur; a person who takes an idea and puts that idea into practice so that a manager can take over day-to-day operations. The idea-to-application man then moves on to something else. But in this narrative, Wilmeth was still a team player. He was not the originator of an idea, but one of several people who were assigned by the originator of the idea to put individual parts of it into operation. This is what Wilmeth began to do in his Army career. All military personnel carry out orders given to them by superior officers, but Wilmeth's military career took an unusual turn when he was reassigned from "just following orders" to carrying out military instructions by implementing aspects of strategic planning and turning ideas into practical application. When Wilmeth's military career took that unusual turn, is not clear. Nor is it clear who selected him to become part of such a team. Obviously he was vetted first and then given his assignment which was low profile enough not to attract too much unwanted attention. As 'Mister Start-Up', his assignments were not long term, and his activities can be explained away and glossed over by obfuscation and misdirection. However, the indications are that by 1944, Wilmeth was being groomed as an advance agent who was silently representing the geopolitical interests of the United States of America. He was no longer just an ordinary military fighting man, although he was still a member of the U.S. Army. Next: (Second Volume in this series): Our man in Moscow .... Tina Turner asked in song "So, what do we do with our lives?"
It is true, each human being comes and goes by birth and by death and most of us only leave a mark in the annals of governmental records where no life story shines like a light, they are all deposited in the darkness of files. There is no "we", there is only an individual life and for that individual on this Planet at this time, that individual is "the last generation" because once that life, is gone, it's gone from here, forever. But some human beings think that they can live on in pyramids and statues on plinths, or even portraits on canvas hung in galleries, until one day, a mob comes along and raids your pyramid; topples your statue and removes your portrait from the wall. Of course the human being that the pyramid; statue and portrait is supposed to memorialize won't know about that, because that person is already dead. It's not just Elvis who leaves the building, it is his entire audience, and not just that audience but all audiences and all of the so-called 'idols'. All die. What then? Tina asked in song: "Is it all or nothing?" The answer is that each person comes and goes. It is not a choice. It is a fact of life and death. You have no choice of whether to live forever, or die as a human being. You will die as a human being. But everyone does have a choice about whether to tell the truth or whether to lie. Whether to admit that which "is" or whether to invent a yesterday that never was. We decided to tell the truth, to the extent that we can uncover the truth buried under lies about the past. We are topping the past, a past which is built upon a yesterday that never happened. In doing so, pretenders memorialized in stone and on canvas by one generation of terminal human beings, are then shown up to be what they were not you see, by another generation of human beings. In the end there are only words. Words that tell the known truth, or words that lie about the known truth. Ignorance comes from a decision of whether to admit that which is true, or to lie about that which is true by repeating that which is not true. Learning is not lie, it is a task in itself, because it requires an open mind and a decision about whether to learn by discovery that which is true, or to incorporate that which is not true. The individual who tries to hide in a mob of individuals chanting that which is not true, only deceives themselves, because the truth remains a fact, while the lie remains a fiction. Finding that truth has taken us down a long and winding road of discovery which has revealed that the yesterday as believed in by the mob, never happened. Thank you for joining us in our quest in toppling the past to restore the truth, which of course should be the quest of each and every human being alive today. Thanks too go to those who put elements of our story into song: Tina, Elvis, Freddie, Barry and Paul. Our next precursory chapter will appear here tomorrow. Cadet Wilmeth had no sooner arrived at the U.S. Army's Military Academy at West Point in New York State, when he received word that his father had died in Fort Worth, Texas. Because of the importance of cattle to 'Cow Town', and his father's contribution to the economy of Fort Worth, Jo Brice Wilmeth's death received a lot of detailed coverage in the local newspaper.
The next few years passed by without any noteworthy events of consequence (that we can discover) that took place in the life of Cadet Wilmeth. Then in the Friday, June 1, 1934 edition of the 'Fort Worth Star-Telegram' this newspaper reported that on June 12 of that year, Cadet Wilmeth would be among 250 young men graduating from West Point with a Bachelor of Science degree. On that day Wilmeth officially enlisted in the U.S. Army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant of infantry. Following graduation and three months' leave, Wilmeth and his fellow graduates all reported to their first stations as officers. Wilmeth was assigned to Fort Hamilton in New York State. On Wednesday, March 6, 1935, the 'Evening Star' newspaper in Washington, D.C., reported that Wilmeth had been reassigned from Fort Hamilton to duty at the Panama Canal Department beginning on May 3, 1935. Wilmeth took the opportunity to visit his mother in Fort Worth. His arrival and departure in 'Cow Town' were noted in the April 19, 1935, edition of the 'Fort Worth Star-Telegram'. Such detailed coverage did not continue. Wilmeth's activities in the Panama Canal Zone from 1935 to 1936, are concealed from public view by a blanket of press silence. In those years the Panama Canal existed in its own 'Twilight Zone'. It was not part of the USA, and it was not covered by laws made under the protection of the U.S. Constitution, and persons born in the Zone did not qualify for an automatic right to U.S. citizenship. What we do know from official records is that in 1935, Wilmeth established his official place of residence in New York City, and so it is not clear how he divided his time between the Panama Canal Department and his leave time in the 'Big Apple'. To discover what happened to Wilmeth after 1936, we have to turn to a brief retroactive mention in 1937 that appeared on August 2, 1956, in the Austin Statesman' newspaper. In 1937, Lt. Col. Wilmeth attended "infantry and tank schools" at Fort Benning in Georgia. In 1938, James Dudley Wilmeth married Eleanor Doxey in New York. She was born the year after her husband on January 2, 1911, but there is not very much information about their marriage that we have so far come across, apart from the birth of a son who was born in 1939, and named after his father. This same 1956 newspaper report does mention that from 1937 to 1939, Wilmeth was further assigned to the Third Division Tank Company at Fort Lewis, in the State of Washington. In 1939, while the United Kingdom put its people in the gun and bomb sights of Adolph Hitler's military forces, the average American was staying out of harm's way. The USA did not want any part of yet another European War that would follow hot-on-the heels of 'The Great War'. That War was renamed 'World War I', so that the new conflict could be branded as 'World War II'. Americans had no intention of singing "Over There", all over again. But Winston Churchill had other ideas. He needed to get that wartime choir back in action as fast as possible and sing the same song with an updated schedule. Even that WWI military tune for golfers called 'Colonel Bogie' made a comeback. Churchill's predecessor in office had tied the fate of the UK to the fate of Poland, but instead of being able to "put up", Churchill turned into a bag of wind. He could not fight back because although Churchill had campaigned for rearmament in light of Nazi Germany's obvious intentions, no one listened to him. So, while Churchill did not "shut up" when he became Wartime Prime Minister, at first, he was all mouth and no muscle. He could only exclaim: "I told you so". However, when it came to doing something about Hitler's attack on Poland, all that Churchill could do was make speeches and try to stop Hitler from invading and occupying the British Isles. To achieve anything more, Churchill had to drag America's farm boys and its munitions makers back into yet another European war. Before the Japanese attacked the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941, there was only one way in which Churchill could get America to enter the War, and that was by deception. He had to con the American voter into getting their government to move from neutrality to hostility towards Adolph Hitler. To do that he had to manipulate the media and create the impression that America would soon be under attack. When Churchill's inferior military position was compared to that of Adolph Hitler, it seemed that British defeat was very possible. It was a fight for survival brought about by the previous Prime Minister who made military promises to Poland that Britain could not honor with practical measures. For Churchill this now meant that desperate times required desperate measures. Churchill decided that there was only one way out of the mess that he was now in charge of, and that was to play dirty. Hitler was waging a conventional war based upon military might, but Churchill only had words and meagre armaments. Today, the tactics employed by Churchill to fight Hitler might be classified as terrorism, and they were certainly outside the accepted 'rules of war' where military targets were to be attacked for all the world to see. This status of military inadequacy resulted in a devious plan by Churchill to avoid fighting fire with fire. Instead, Churchill decided to fight Hitler with unconventional terror tactics. To assist in his war of words, Churchill turned to Sefton Delmer who helped create the practical side of the Political Warfare Executive. While the British Broadcasting Corporation carried on as before in its post-Reithian staid manner, Sefton Delmer delved into pornography, lies and deceit in both clandestine broadcasting and in print to such an extent, that it even horrified some in Churchill's own national government. Sefton Delmer's father had taught in Berlin before the War and Sefton Delmer had personally met with Hitler. Now he was told by Churchill to use his knowledge to deceive and malign Hitler and his henchmen in any way possible. Delmer even created fake religious broadcasts in German made by a Roman Catholic priest that were aimed at the German armed forces. While Delmer's clandestine broadcasting and publishing activities plastered Nazi occupied Europe with fake news and information, Churchill used a modified American form of deceit to sway Americans away from neutrality. In New York's Rockefeller Building, Churchill authorized the establishment of British Security Co-ordination (BSC). It was controlled by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in order to manipulate U.S. print and broadcast media. Its purpose was to move American public opinion from neutrality to action in going once more going "over there" to save the British. But there was even more to Churchill's methodology of military mind manipulation, because a huge chunk of northwestern Scotland fell under his militaristic command. Churchill transformed the entire area into a de facto military zone for his Special Operations Executive (SOE). In its northernmost boundary area, troops were trained to become saboteurs. It was their job it was to "set Europe alight". Further down this same landscape of northwestern Scotland begin and beginning at the town of Inveraray with its eponymous castle and grounds which morphed into the lengthy shores of Loch Fyne, military camps sprang up on both of its elongated banks and on the castle grounds. This huge slice of Scotland that came under martial law and control by Combined Operations, was situated on the sector of the island of Great Britain that was furthest away from Nazi occupied Scandinavia and Europe. The purpose of Combined Operations was to amalgamate a fighting force that would eventually become capable of invading the Continent of Europe and engaging on land with Hitler's military machine. To make this invasion possible, Combined Operations had to first get its troops across the English Channel without them being attacked and sunk at sea. That would require training to turn sailors into soldiers, soldiers into sailors and airmen into soldiers. It did not take long for Combined Operations to get bogged-down and in need of a new commander to kick-start it all over again. Churchill wired Louis Mountbatten who was in the USA, to return immediately, and it was upon his return that Lord Mountbatten was then told by Churchill to take over command of Combined Operations. In 1950, five years after the Nazi machine had been destroyed, Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten described his 1941 assignment. It appeared as a Forward to a book called 'Combined Operations; The Official Story of The Commandos' written by Hilary Saunders. Mountbatten wrote: "The term “Combined Operations” is vague and does not convey more than a general meaning; but their scope is definite and precise. A combined operation is a landing operation in which, owing to actual or expected opposition, it is essential that the fighting services take part together, in order to strike the enemy with the maximum effect, at the chosen point and at the chosen moment. To help the services to do this, a Combined Operations Command was formed, whose primary function is to train officers and men of the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines, the Army and the Royal Air Force in the conduct of amphibious warfare. It is also the task of this Command to plan and execute all kinds of raids, small or large." Mountbatten continued: "Amphibious operations are a complex form of warfare. On the material side they entail technical study, the production of new machines of wear, special types of assault craft, both large and small, and the use of these and other new devices. On the human side they demand the creation of sailor-soldiers, soldier-sailors, and airmen-soldiers, who must cooperate with imaginative understanding of each other’s methods and problems. The Combined Operations Command is concerned with both of these aspects and with many others." When Mountbatten returned to the UK in 1941 to takeover command of Combined Operations, he had under his direct control, the training of not only British forces, but French, Norwegians, Czechs, Poles, Dutch, and Belgians from occupied Europe, and officers from the United States Naval, Marine, Army, Rangers and Air Corps. Therefore, Mountbatten's first task was to create a new agenda, and then to orientate everyone who would be charged with carrying out his instructions. One of those summoned to attend Mountbatten's Orientation Course held during the Summer of 1942, was Lt. Col. James Dudley Wilmeth. Next: Wilmeth's amphibious mission .... Our slogan is "forensic investigations into cultural origins", and it means that we dig deep and look for evidence of the kind that is overlooked, either intentionally, or because of sloppy research.
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been picked over by so many writers seeking fame on the back of a tragedy, that it would be difficult to name them all. In 1959, Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth, was a university professor. Two decades later, he also taught the university student who later became Professor Habil Dr Eric Gilder in a class dedicated to the Russian language. In the 1940s, James Dudley Wilmeth was attached to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. He remained there for two years. In 1962, Professor Wilmeth was also a student given a Masters degree in the Russian language, and yet it is claimed, that Professor Wilmeth who was proficient in the Russian language, called Marina Oswald one year later, and arranged for lessons in the Russian language just three days before her estranged husband Lee Harvey is said to have murdered President Kennedy. Colonel Wilmeth kept his appointment with Marina, the estranged wife of the man who is alleged to have killed President Kennedy. Then, just two days after his murder, her husband was murdered in plain sight of the press, on 'live' television, and while in police custody. Who was Colonel Wilmeth? No one asked that question in this context before now! Yes, the FBI did interview him in a superficial sort of way. So did investigators working on the Warren Report. While they all asked questioned about Wilmeth, they did so in a superficial sort of way. But no one began asking what was known about Colonel Wilmeth. Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth was a member of G2, an organization attached to the U.S. Intelligence community, and he had been for many, many years before that fateful day of November 22, 1963, and yet, no one else seems to have been investigating the life story of Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth, but us. How do we know this? Because forensic evidence has remained unexamined until now, and by this we mean that the intricate details of Colonel Wilmeth's life have remained unexamined, until now. We have been picking through a tangled mess of information encased in a series of snippets that have lacked detailed examination, until now. We will tell you more in the next precursory chapter. We have now performed a major revision of the text of precursory chapter thirty-three The grooming of a spy .... which incorporates new material. It also corrects details about the identity of James Dudley Wilmeth's father. It is possible that due to such a major edit, the text that is now Online may contain typographical errors, and we are now performing a copy edit of this text for that reason. If you spot a typo, please bring it to our attention and we will it correct it immediately.
Because there is no biography as such about the life and times of James Dudley Wilmeth, and because the people studying the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald decided to treat the involvement of Colonel Wilmeth as a nuisance, more than anything of value to consider, his life story has been swept aside. Even the commentary on his grave web site makes no sense.
Someone wrote that in 1963, Wilmeth wanted to take Russian lessons from Marina Oswarld, notwithstanding the fact that the year before Wilmeth met Marina Oswald, he had just received his Masters degree in the Russian language, or that back in 1943-4 Wilmenth was stationed in Moscow for two years. Being the capital of Russia, which at the time was part of the USSR, and being that he was attached to the U.S. Embassy in a diplomatic sense, the idea that just because Marina Oswald had grown-up speaking Russian did not offer anything of value to a scholar of the language. Wilmeth was a scholar. The story of Lee Harvey Oswald's journey from New Orleans to Le Havre to London and then, somehow to Finland and on to the USSR, makes no sense. Neither does his stay in Minsk after, which he made his way back to the USA, with no questions asked. But add to that nonsense the convoluted phone call and appointment by Wilmeth to see Marina Oswald just days away before the murder of Kennedy, which was quickly followed by the murder of Oswald, and this story gets sillier by the moment and more insulting to be asked to believe this nonsense. Then there is another thread that we are following by tracing the activities of Gordon McLendon and his interests in a radio ship project called 'Radio Nord', and the absurdity of this tale goes off the scale, no matter who tries to dress it up. The story of McLendon and'Radio Nord' is also part of the Oswald-Wilmeth tale. It connects with the same geography, time zone and people. It's as if official sources do not want to examine the life of Wilmeth, anymore than they want to reexamine the 1959 bizarre trip made by Lee Harvey Oswald to England. But when events are examined from 1959 onwards, the assassination of John F. Kennedy seems to have 'Secret Service' stamped all over it, especially since Wilmeth was a member of that secretive organization. Therefore our own revision is taking a little longer than at first expected while we search for more details. The last Precursory Chapter now Online ("The grooming of a spy") is number Thirty-three, and it is still under revision. In order to both correct and clarify some biographical details it will be updated very soon. Precursory Chapter Thirty-four will follow on after the revisions to Precursory Chapter Thirty-three have been updated and put Online..
Our storyline is the account of three people who are not related and not of the same political or religious persuasion. But circumstances, some would call it serendipity, caused their individual paths to cross and they became friends while still maintaining their individuality.
The incident that caused their paths to become intertwined, was interaction with the person of Donald Grey Pierson, who was known as Don Pierson. He was both a Texan and the creator of three offshore radio stations during the Nineteen Sixties which were aimed at the population of the British Isles. One of those stations caused the British Government to force the British Broadcasting Corporation to revise its programming by creating a pseudo-clone of one of Pierson's offshore stations. Until 'The Trio' began to question how Don Pierson in remote West Texas got involved with a project so far away, no one had bothered to investigate the real story. Instead, journalists and scholars alike relied upon fan encounters and unreliable newspaper reports. In 1985, Don Pierson handed over his collection of financial and legal records relating to his three stations, and a lot more. Because Pierson's projects also collided with many events and lives related to headline making contemporary activities of the time, 'The Trio' embarked upon this long-running investigation. It has become, to quote Paul McCartney, a "long and winding road" for 'The Trio' to get from the beginning of this story, until now, and 'now' is not the ending because our investigations continue every day. The time period of the Nineteen Sixties includes several major events relating to both cultural and geopolitical events connecting the industrial and military affairs of the British Isles with North America. One of those events involves the murder of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and the subsequent rush to name his assassin as Lee Harvey Oswald. He was a U.S. citizen whose trail on the road to infamy, is alleged to have involved a sea voyage from the USA to England via France, and then an airplane flight from England to Finland. But after his implausible defection to the USSR, working in a radio factory at Minsk and getting married, he decided to return to the USA and got a job at a book warehouse. It is within this compact period of time that Oswald is alleged to have made plans to murder President Kennedy, who, it is alleged, Oswald said he liked. Then, on November 24, 1963, after Oswald allegedly killed Kennedy, Oswald was murdered on 'live' television, within full sight of an 'army' of journalists, and while Oswald was in custody of Dallas Police. The story gets sillier by the moment, but when you add the intervention by James Dudley Wilmeth, it becomes beyond credibility and turns into absurdity. However, there is just one problem with laughing away this tale, and that is that the sequence of events is true, and the claimed mainstream interpretation of those events is also true. What is of maximum incredulity is where professed reality is turned into absurdity, unless of course it is absurdity and not reality. We leave readers to decide. For decades conspiratorial theories involving both alternative gunman as well as alternative circumstances regarding the assassination of John Kennedy have swirled around in media stories. But there is one person who interacted with this story just three days before the killing of President John F. Kennedy, and whose connectivity to this event has been glossed over. That person is James Dudley Wilmeth. By 'glossed over', we do not mean that his involvement has been ignored, but the investigation into his explanation for that connection has been totally superficial. However, documentation of his background has also been suppressed. Yet, James Dudley Wilmeth has all the markings of a groomed American secret agent, and from our research it is possible to conclude that is exactly what he was. Because the biographical background of James Dudley Wilmeth's life has been spread around in fragments, it has never been gathered-up and presented in a sequential format to chronologically document the manner in which key events in his life entwine themselves with many key events that took place in the Twentieth Century. One of those key events involves the assassination of John F. Kennedy. James Dudley Wilmeth was born on October 30, 1910 in Ballinger, West Texas, a small town south of Abilene, and at the time of his birth, his father was 43, and his mother was 36. The identity of his father as a human being is not in doubt, but the media has created confusion over his father's given name. We cannot find his father's birth certificate, but we have located a marriage notation, census records and his death certificate, with the latter being an official Texas State Department of Health document. It is therefore the most authentic of all references to the name of James Dudley Wilmeth's father. On Certificate 41746/298 dated August 21, 1930, under 'Full Name of Deceased', it states in the handwriting of the Undertaker who filled it out, that the "full name of deceased" is: "Mr. Jo B. Wilmeth". His wife signed this document as "Mrs. Jo B. Wilmeth". But, on the 1900 United States Federal Census, it identifies this person as "Joe B. Wilmeth". Then, in a newspaper report dated Sunday, October 1, 1916, he is referred to by the 'American Statesman' newspaper in Austin as being "Joseph Wilmeth". However, there is no doubt this this "Joseph" is in fact "Jo" rather than "Joe" or "Joseph". It is possible that his parents hoped for a girl and named the baby before it was born, only to discover that their child to be a boy and not a girl. Because the name "Jo" is usually the short version of Joanne, Joanna and Josephine. So reporters may have assumed that being male, Jo Wilmeth should read "Joe Wilmeth" or even "Joseph Wilmeth". This is only of importance now due to repetition of the same initials within the same Wilmeth family, and the use of those initials by other families named Wilmeth. However, on his grave there is an inscription which reads "Jo Wilmeth 1868 - 1930". All of the notices in the press relating to his illness, death and funeral, all identify him as "Jo Wilmeth". His son who became Cadet James Dudley Wilmeth, had two brothers and five sisters. One of his siblings was named in the contemporary burial information of 1930 relating to his father as being "Jo Brice Wilmeth". He seems to have been named after his father, thus confirming his father's first name as Jo, and identifying his middle name beginning with the letter "B" as Brice. We discovered documents relating to Cadet Wilmeth's grandparents on his father's side of the family as being James R. Wilmeth and Maria Wilmeth. Therefore unless an authentic Birth Certificate can be produced, we will conclude that Cadet Wilmeth's father was given the first names of Jo and Brice. From these and related press stories we also discovered that Jo Brice Wilmeth was born in McKinney, Texas, but the exact date and even the exact year of his birth varies by reporting from 1867 to 1868. Approximately ten years after the birth of James Dudley Wilmeth, his parents moved from McKinney, Texas to Ballinger, Texas. Twenty years later, his parents moved again, this time to Fort Worth, Texas, and that is where his father Jo Brice made his home for the remaining 15 years of his life. Although Jo Brice died in 1930, his wife outlived him until 1965 when she died at age 92 from a stroke. It is perhaps of passing interest to note a detail from the Death Certificate of Jo Brice. He died at age 60, following an illness that lasted for three days and then died of"acute enteritis (food poisoning)". How he ingested the bacteria that eventually killed him is not recorded, but it is possible that it was somehow related to his financial career built upon close ties to cattle ranching. In one sense, it was that aspect of his father's life and possibly foundational cause of death, that must have made a huge impression on six years old James Dudley Wilmeth when a sensational event took place that was reported in the press of the day. It happened in October 1916 when his father escaped from captivity in Mexico. On Tuesday, August 19, 1930, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram' provided a summary of the life of Jo Brice Wilmeth and the events leading up to his captivity: After pioneering days as a cowboy", Jo Brice "became connected with the First National Bank of Ballinger." "In 1899 he left this firm to organize and become cashier of the private firm of W.C. Parks Banking Company" in Ballinger. In 1900, that firm was incorporated under the name 'Citizens National Bank of Ballinger', and Jo Brice at first served as cashier and then Vice-President. The press report noted that Jo Brice was a member of both the Masonic order and Presbyterian Church of Ballinger where he became its Sunday School Superintendent. Sandwiched into that career is this information from the 'Fort Worth Star-Telegram' of the same date: "Wilmeth was the Southern representative for the Stockyards National Bank, and was also connected with the Chicago Cattle Loan Company and was in charge of an office of that firm here. He was also vice president of the Reporter Publishing Company", publishers of the 'Livestock Reporter' newspaper. Even though his roots were in Ballinger, Texas. Jo Brice was publisher of a Fort Worth livestock publication, and in a partnership with George Miers who owned a large cattle ranch in Mexico. They exported cattle north of the Mexican border into Texas. On October 1, 1916, the 'American Statesman' newspaper in Austin reported that George Miers and Jo Wilmeth who was misnamed as "Joseph Wilmeth", had been arrested, and now they were being held in a railroad box car with little food or water. The location of their detention was in semi-arid country, too dry to support heavy vegetation, but not dry enough to be classified as a desert. In other words, the fact that the two of them were locked inside a hot railroad box car with little water to drink, was not just uncomfortable, in that climate it was also dangerous to their health. Jo Brice and his partner George Mier had not been arrested by police, but by military officials at Sabinas, Mexico which is approximately 120 miles to the border at Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. On the USA side of that border is Del Rio, Texas, and it is another 200 miles to Ballinger, Texas. Back then, journeys took place over primitive dirt roads, and that was during the time that a long-running civil was raging in Mexico, while at that same moment in time, Europe was engaged in the Great War (WWI). It was a time in Mexico when its land and wealth were mainly in the hands of a handful of families and foreign companies. It was a situation which left which the landless peasants working for long hours and low wages just to survive and George Miers had built his ranching business on this system of exploitation, with the financial assistance of Jo Brice Wilmeth. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States, and until 1918, the USA remained ostensibly neutral with regards to Europe and World War I. Nevertheless, Jo Brice and his partner George were trying to run their cattle ranch during a time of Mexico-Texas cross-border invasions, and bandits such as Pancho Villa were morphing into generals while the Mexican Civil War was turning into the Mexican Revolution. Eventually Jo was released on payment to his captors, but George continued to be held in exchange for more money. On Wednesday, October 18, 1916 in 'The Eagle', a newspaper published in Bryan, Texas, a report from Del Rio stated that: "George Miers, American cattle man, who with Jo Wilmeth, Chicago banker was arrested for alleged violation of export customs regulations in Mexico and place in jail by military officials at Sabinas, Mexico, arrived here Tuesday, having been released under a bond of $600, Mexican silver. Mexican military authorities originally demanded a bond of $10,000 gold, but through the efforts of the state department at Washington the case was transferred from military to Mexican civil courts, where bail was reduced." This report which corrected the first name of Jo Wilmeth and explained how the captivity of these two men began with the military and then passed into the hands of local civil authorities, then concluded with this explanation: "Miers was arrested Oct 2 with Jo Wilmeth. Wilmeth was released with filing of formal charges, but Miers' case assumed international proportions, and his release on bond followed diplomatic exchanges between Washington and City of Mexico." This situation prompted Jo Wilmeth to tell the press that: "I can't see any way out of it but for the United States to take charge of the situation if a substantial government is ever to be set up for that country." He added that: "The country, so far as its natural resources are concerned, is in an excellent condition." This was no idle threat because of the contemporary border raids by Pancho Villa. They resulted in the U.S. Army invading Mexico under the command of General Pershing. His pursuit of Pancho Villa began in March 16, 1916 and ended on February 7, 1917, meaning that the military incident involving Miers and Wilmeth took place within that same time period. Consequently Jo Wilmeth's geopolitical interpretation that"I can't see any way out of it but for the United States to take charge of the situation ...." and the corresponding appeal for Washington to intervene and secure the release of Miers from Mexican military capture, must have resonated with the bigger problem involving the military and Pancho Villa. Remember, when Jo Brice Wilmeth was engaging in international diplomacy, his son was barely six years of age. The capture of Miers by the Mexican military no doubt influenced and shaped his son's views of the world in its relationship to the United States of America. The proof of that influence was later reflected in James Dudley Wilmeth's own writings and views that the world was waiting to be harvested by the USA, for the benefit of the USA. Of course other nations did not share James Dudley Wilmeth's interpretation of geopolitics. But that was in the future, and at age six he was was still playing with toy soldiers. A few years later when James Dudley Wilmeth was attending High School in Fort Worth, he enrolled in the Reserve Officer's Training Corps (ROTC) summer camps program. The ROTC created a pathway for students to become officers in the U.S. Military, and Wilmeth eventually attended four such camps. After High School he first enrolled as a freshman at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth which his father had also attended. But in his sophomore year, his son James Dudley transferred to the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. On February 13, 1930, the 'Fort Worth Record-Telegram' reported that James had won acceptance to the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, and an alternative possibility for enrollment at the U.S. Army's Military Academy at West Point, New York. James was disappointed. He wanted to go to West Point, not to Annapolis. On Sunday, June 29, 1930, at age 19, James Wilmeth received word that an opening had become available at West Point, New York, and he immediately accepted the chance to attend. Unfortunately, on Monday, August 18, 1930, Cadet Wilmeth received news that his father Jo had just died in Texas. Next: Wilmeth and Mountbatten .... If you know about the NSA, CIA and MI6, then you should know about G2 and Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth in relation to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Details coming in the next precursory chapter.
Wilmeth was a member of G2, and his silly explanation that he just wanted to hear Marina Oswald speak Russian, just three days before her estranged husband allegedly shot and killed President John F. Kennedy, is ridiculous for a man steeped in Russian geopolitical affairs and language. We will be revealing the details of Wilmeth's life in the next precursory chapter.
We are now assembling details relating to the life and times of Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth.
The world does not revolve around you, or me, or anyone else. But being self-centered individuals that each human being is, and because we ae not omnipotent, we are each individually restricted in our access to knowledge. We are not unlimited in our own ability to learn about our own life, nor about our interaction with the lives of other human beings.
Each individual constantly makes choices in what to filter and what not to filter into our consciousness, and that is when we have a choice of filtering information, rather than being served-up pre-filtered input. Because there is more information available than each individual is even aware of that is relative to their own life, each individual human being has a very self-centered opinion of self, in contrast to the different individual views of other individual human beings. In a U.S. courtroom, attorneys often approach the Bench and ask the Judge to rule on a 'Motion in Limine'. This is a procedure whereby the Judge renders a decision before a trial even begins, in which a decision is made to either allow or deny the admissibility of a certain piece of evidence. If denied, it must not be referred to within earshot of a sitting jury. When we individually hold court in our minds, and we all do this many times a day, our verdicts are sometimes deemed to be prejudicial by other human beings when we then express our opinions in public. So it is when dealing with this story about the lives of three individuals as told by the filtered editing of a narrator. This storyline is not only about those individual lives, but about the lives of individuals such as Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth and Lee Harvey Oswald. Then we get involved with the knock-on effect, because when the name of Lee Harvey Oswald is mentioned, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is immediately brought to mind. Wilmeth says that he never met Lee Harvey Oswald, although he did meet Oswald's wife, and after you learn more about Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth, you may doubt whether the accepted story about the way in which he met Marina Oswald is true, or whether it is convenient fiction. Here is what we know about their meeting. It comes from various testimonies given under oath when the questioning began after the murder of President Kennedy and the name of Lee Harvey Oswald became known around the world as his assassin. Maybe he was, and maybe he wasn't, because while he was in police custody, he also became the victim of assassination. Before November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald had gained minimal news coverage by emigrating to the USSR, and then emigrating back to the USA a short time later. But this was minor news coverage compared to the big, headline grabbing news when he was accused of killing President Kennedy. How Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth came to meet Marina Oswald is quite a convoluted story which began with Wilmeth either talking to his Fort Worth neighbour, or to another instructor at the University of Texas at Arlington, (UTA). The neighbor is Clarke Benham and his wife worked at UTA. Mr. Benham worked at Bell Helicopter with Michael Paine, and Michael's is estranged from his wife whose first name is Ruth. Ruth Paine came to know Marina Oswald who was estranged from her husband Lee, so Ruth Paine invited Marina Oswald to stay in her home. The initial connection between James Wilmeth and Marina Oswald came about due to the phone call that Wilmeth made to Ruth Paine. But questions arise as to why Clarke Benham mentioned Marina Oswald to James Dudley Wilmeth, or alternatively, why his wife at UTA mentioned Marina Oswald to James Dudley Wilmeth is not clear. However, the reason why a contact was made is clear, although we find the official explanation to be not only totally unbelievable, but downright silly, because we now know that James Dudley Wilmeth is a member of U.S. Army Intelligence. Plainly stated he is a USA spy of long standing and importance. Nevertheless, after getting hold of Ruth Paine's phone number, he called and made an appointment to come on over. He wanted to talk to Marina Oswald because she grew up speaking Russia, and Wilmeth wanted to hear a native of Russia speak in the Russian language. Wilmeth met Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald just three days before Marina's husband allegedly shot and killed John F. Kennedy. So naturally, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) got involved. They interviewed Wilmeth on January 15, 1964, and their recording was typed-up on January 16 by Agents Earle Haley and Robley D. Madland. Wilmeth told the FBI Agents that he had ".... retired from the U.S. Army in 1960 and obtained a master's degree from Texas University, majoring in the Russian language, in 1962. He has been teaching Russian at Arlington State College, Arlington, Texas, since 1962." This FBI Report continues: "During the early part of November 1963, he learned that a lady from Russia was staying with a family by the name of Paine in Irving, Texas. He called Mr. Paine who works for Bell Helicopter, and obtained the address and telephone number of Mrs. Paine and also obtained the name of this Russian woman as Mrs. Lee Oswald." "On or about November 11 or 12, 1963, he telephonically contacted Mrs. Paine and explained to her that he would like to meet Mrs. Oswald and to talk to her about the Russian language. Colonel Wilmeth was a member of the U.S. Military Force in Mexico (sic) for two years during World War II. He learned a great deal about the Russian language at that time. He was interested in talking to someone who might help him in appearing before his class to discuss the modern Russian language." The typed report was corrected with a side note in pen that was allegedly made by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The word 'Moscow' was circled, and a line was drawn to the typed word 'Mexico'. This FBI Report continues: "He made arrangements to visit Paine and Mrs. Oswald for about an hour and a half on November 19, 1963. This was strictly a social visit and he talked Russian with Mrs. Oswald and Mrs. Paine and also made arrangements to come back for another visit on November 26, 1963. Mr. Lee Oswald was not present, and his name was not mentioned." "After the assassination occurred on November 22, 1963, he called Mrs. Paine on November 26, 1963, and advised her that in view of present circumstances he would make no attempts to contact Mrs. Oswald any further." "Wilmeth has not seen or talked to Mrs. Oswald any more, but did send her a Christmas card at Post Office box in Grand Prairie. He has never seen or met Lee Harvey Oswald and knows nothing of the background of Oswald or his family." What this FBI Report does not say is that Wilmeth had been groomed as a career spy to serve as a member of G2, Army Intelligence. In 1942 he was ordered to London "for an orientation course in Admiral Louis Mountbatten's office of combined operations." In 1944 Wilmeth was sent to Moscow, Russia for two years. His mother told the 'Fort Worth Star Telegram' for its edition of Sunday, July 1, 1945, that "Lt. Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth, stationed in Moscow on a U.S. military mission with the American Embassy, has been awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service in connection with military operations from February 16 to March 28, 1945." That mission, which we will explain in the following precursory chapter, was the subject of such secrecy that details only began to emerge in the Nineteen Eighties, and some of the original documents were intentionally destroyed, while a cover story was invented to obfuscate the truth by misdirection. Now this is the teacher who just happened to arrive in Arlington, Texas where he taught Russian, and he wanted to meet the obscure Marina Oswald in order to hear her speak the Russian language. No one referred to G2 and Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth was not going to volunteer the possibility that he already knew who Marina and her husband were. Next: The grooming of a spy .... Here is the story of a man who once taught the Army top brass about geopolitics during the height of the Cold War, and then, as the years rolled on, he ended-up teaching the Russian language to students at a Texas university. One of those students was Eric Gilder.
A few days before Lee Harvey Oswald is alleged to have murdered John F. Kennedy, Wilmeth tracked down and made a phone call to Mrs Oswald. Then he met her just three days before her husband allegedly pulled a trigger and killed the President of the United States of America. Wilmeth, who spent two years in Moscow during World War II, told investigators that he just wanted to hear the voice of a genuine Russian language speaker, and so he called Marina Oswald. During the course of this investigation, members of its 'Trio' have been given unbelievable explanations by government officials similar to Wilmeth's own reason for calling Marina Oswald. (See the story of Special Agent Conrad by clicking this link.) Our own prior experiences have in one instance related to an investigation seeking to uncover crime and corruption swirling around the offshore station called Radio Newyork International. That discovery took us down a trail leading to Panama City in Panama; to the fourth tower of the World Trade Center complex that also came crashing down with the taller twin towers; to the head of the U.K. Radio Investigation Service of Britain's D.T.I., and to an investigator tied to an obscure Crown office with amazing powers that had been left over from the days of King Henry VIII. We dig deep. We do not believe in fairy tales, nor do we blindly accept wild and unfounded conspiracy stories. We did not believe the government official who tried to use a cover story that we had made a telephone call a year before to a U.S. government official, and that we had not received a proper answer to our enquiry. So a Special Agent called us out of the blue as a courtesy call (he said), one year later to set the record straight. We did not believe his stated reason for calling and so he eventually told us the true reason for his call. Now here is Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth with one of the silliest cover stories of all time, and the official enquiry into the murder of President Kennedy believed him and no more was said. We find Wilmeth's explanation very lame indeed, and we think you will too, when we put the next sequential precursory chapter online! It is just taking a little longer than we thought that it would, but it will be worth your wait and so you should keep checking back to see if it is online. It's almost as if what this man did has been intentionally downplayed to the point that few know his name, and even fewer know what he did, but you will know very soon ....
Wilmeth makes a phone call will be our next precursory chapter. The reason this Colonel gave to investigators why he made that phone call and what he did next will make you wonder ....
In 1979, Wilmeth was just a figurative ship passing in the night, as far as student Eric Gilder was concerned. In fact, many people had fleeting interactions with Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth.
In 1963, one of those people was Marina Oswald, wife of Lee Harvey Oswald. This was before the name Oswald shocked the world. That was after John F. Kennedy lost his life, allegedly due to a volley of rifle shots fired by a man with that eponymous surname. But this is not about the culpability of Lee Harvey Oswald. Neither is it a debate about fuzzy photographs of individuals standing on the steps of the Texas School Book Depository. Nor is it a debate as to who was on the sixth floor of that building, nor who was behind a grassy knoll wooden fence, or anywhere else for that matter. It is about a period of time beginning in 1959 when many different events began to converge and entangle themselves into one storyline, even though the press and those reviewing past events have treated them as individual and unrelated news items. It was a series of events that began in 1959 that resulted in Colonel James Wilmeth seeking out Marina Oswald in 1963, a few days before her husband's name became infamous. In 1959 Mervyn Hagger, the oldest member of 'The Trio' was working halfway down Berners Street in the West End of London. He had just left art college and he had been guided or rather pushed into interior design at one the most prestigious firms of its kind in the United Kingdom. But Hagger's real interest was in journalism centered upon broadcasting. At the top of Berners Street was one of the entities that was stifling independent radio broadcasting in the United Kingdom. In 1959 British broadcasting was in part controlled via a back-door methodology built upon a rationing system which had been created in Mussolini's fascist Italy by the major record companies who were being manipulated from the United States. So Hagger's interest was directed towards investigative research trying to find the legal basis for this system of censorship, rather than merely accepting it 'as is' and then trying to work around it. The year 1959 was the line in the sand which marked the beginning of many major and sequential events in this story, and the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald must certainly be considered as creating one of the most memorable events a few years later in Dallas, Texas. But back in 1959, Lee Harvey Oswald was considered to be a non-noteworthy former U.S. Marine who had served in Japan and then decided to study at Albert Schweitzer's college in Switzerland. Or so he claimed. At 3:15 p.m. Central Standard Time on September 19, 1959, Lee Harvey Oswald (or his 'double') boarded the freighter SS 'Marion Lykes' destined for France. He was one of four passengers that this cargo ship was transporting across the Atlantic Ocean from Army Base Berth 2 within the port city of New Orleans. The vessel departed the following day at 6:24 a.m. On October 5, 1959, the ship docked at 9:00 a.m. Greenwich Meridian Time at La Pallice, La Rochelle on the coast of the Bay of Biscay. At 1 p.m. that same day, one of the four passengers disembarked. The next day at 6:18 p.m. GMT, the SS 'Marion Lykes' departed La Pallice after clearing the lock and dropping the pilot. On October 8, 1959, at 6:30 a.m. GMT, the vessel docked at Berth 3, Cotton Dock, Le Havre, facing the English Channel. At 12:06 p.m the same day, the remaining three passengers disembarked. All of Oswald's fellow passengers were later interviewed by investigators attempting to discover what they had individually learned on that voyage about Lee Harvey Oswald. One of those four passengers was George B. Church, Jr. who was accompanied on the voyage by his wife. On page 115 supra, the following information appears in the printed edition of the 'President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy': "The following affidavit was executed by George B. Church, Jr., on June 27, 1964."
While the testimony in this Affidavit made by Lieutenant Colonel George B. Church, Jr., adds nothing of value to our knowledge about Lee Harvey Oswald and that voyage, it does add an interesting detail about one of his fellow passengers: he was a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army who had became a teacher. Unfortunately the complete testimony in his Affidavit reads like the words of Sergeant Schultz in the 1965 television series called 'Hogan's Heroes' when Schultz replied to questions by answering:
Perhaps it was just coincidence that Colonel Wilmeth of the U.S. Army was not the only member of that branch of the U.S. military who the Warren Commission questioned about the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald. After Lee Harvey Oswald disembarked at 12:06 p.m. GMT on October 8, 1959, from the freighter SS 'Marion Lykes' at Le Havre, his U.S. Passport was stamped by French Customs. Oswald then made his way to where the French liner 'Liberté' was docked. French Customs at Le Havre again stamped his U.S. Passport when he boarded the ship. Both the entry and exit stamps are dated October 8. The French liner 'Liberté' was built in Germany before WWII and given the name 'Europa'. When WWII ended, this ship was taken by the French as war reparations, and renamed 'Liberté'. While the precise details of Oswald's voyage from the USA to France are precise, that is because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) asked Lykes Brothers Steamship Company, Inc. of New Orleans for the information, and the company provided meticulous details. But there does not seem to be a corresponding record regarding Oswald's voyage on board the Liberté'. We do know that Lee Harvey Oswald disembarked on October 9, because his U.S. Passport is stamped by a U.K. Immigration Officer at Southampton authorizing a visit of up to three months. Note that he boarded the Liberté' on October 8, 1959 for a voyage across the English Channel, and he disembarked at Southampton on October 9, 1959. But it is the next two stamps in Oswald's U.S. Passport that cause problems. The first stamp is an oblong that is so feint as to be mostly unreadable. The part that can be discerned are two numerals "10". Next to this stamp is another stamp that is triangular in shape, and it is sharp in its imprint. It reads on the left flank of the triangle: "IMMIGRATION". On the right flank it reads: "OFFICER". On the base it reads: "LONDON AIRPORT". In the middle of the triangle reading downwards, it reads: "(144) - "EMBARKED" - "10 OCT 1959". This last stamp raises several questions. The first one has to do with Oswald's arrival at Southampton on October 9, 1959, time unknown to us at the moment. The departure stamp is dated October 10, 1959, time unknown to us at the moment. So what happened to Lee Harvey Oswald after 12:06 p.m. GMT on October 8, 1959, when he disembarked from the freighter SS 'Marion Lykes' at Le Havre? We know that he boarded the liner Liberté', but while we know that it was on the same day that he left the cargo ship, but we do not know the time of day that he boarded the liner. Nor do we know the time of day that he arrived at Southampton, England on October 9, 1959, or where he went, or what time of day he departed from "London Airport" on October 10, 1959. We do know that when Oswald arrived at Southampton, he told U.K. Immigration that he had $700 with him and that he planned to stay a week as a tourist, after which he planned to cross back over the English Channel to attend a college in Switzerland. But there was a problem with his announced schedule. He arrived on the day after British citizens went to the polls for the United Kingdom General Election. On the day of his arrival, excitement was high, and according to news reports, hotels were full because viewing parties were being held to watch the first BBC Television coverage of ballots being counted while famous political figures were being interviewed from all over the country. It was a unique event because there had never been an election program like it on British television. The count went on into the very early hours of the next day and television coverage paused at 04 a.m., only to resume at 8 a.m. So where did Lee Harvey Oswald stay? He had not booked any accommodation in advance, and he told several people that he planned to make a reverse trip across the English Channel in order to make his way to Switzerland. But what he really did, and what really transpired, remains a mystery. The question which then arises is where did he spend that night of October 9, because he did not depart until October 10 from 'London Airport'. Now add to these questions the missing details of the flight that he took to arrive in Helsinki, Finland. By now, with all of the investigations that have taken place into the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald, someone, somewhere should have stepped forward with the proof that he spent the night at a definitive location and that he departed from a specific airport on a specific flight. But no such report has surfaced. On July 1, 1964, Richard Helms, CIA Deputy Director for Plans wrote and signed a letter with the subject line: "Lee Harvey Oswald's arrival time in Helsinki on 10 October 1959." Helms was responding to the "General Counsel of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy," and he wrote:
But if Oswald (or his 'double') did fly from England to Finland with the assistance of some officially unnamed person or persons, then this undermines the "lone gunman" story right from the word "go!" As is patently obvious due to the mountain of published books on this subject, there are many speculative theories as to who Lee Harvey Oswald was working for, and many of them are contradictory. At least one unofficial investigator claims to have solved this riddle with details of a commercial flight plan that officials have been unable to find. This person reporting this information claims that he derived it from a second-hand source. Then he posted it on a Blog relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But that information does not appear to have been verified because it has not made its way into any officially accepted record of what actually happened. In fact, regardless of the several post-Warren Report official investigations, no real attempts have been made to resolve these mysteries of which there are many. Another enigma concerns Oswald's documented arrival in Finland when he checked into an expensive hotel. Now a little geography is called for. Looking at a standard map, Helsinki, Finland is on the northern coastline of the Baltic Sea. Its eastern coastline is controlled by the Baltic States, and its west coast is controlled by Sweden. But, the Baltic Sea is almost an inland body of water that is fed by entry and exit to the North Sea, and that is via a 'choke-point' that is controlled by Demark and Sweden. In 1959 the President of the United States of America was Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower who would remain in office until January 20, 1961 when he was succeeded by President John F. Kennedy. Just before he left office, President Eisenhower delivered a warning on January 17, 1961 about America's 'military-industrial complex' and its growing political influence over elected government and geopolitical affairs. In 1959, the temperature of the Cold War was constantly indicating that it might suddenly switch from 'cold' to a 'hot' nuclear World War III, because the USSR was continuing with a drum beat message that its nuclear weapons would soon annihilate the West. In the United Kingdom, constant pressure from America's military-industrial complex caused the U.K. to give up its aspirations to create its 'Blue Streak' independent nuclear missile system, and so it bought a nuclear umbrella from the USA. By 1961 the U.S. Navy began to provide nuclear 'cover' from its own Polaris submarines that were serviced from a floating base which was towed over from Texas to Holy Loch in north west Scotland. By 1961 the Scandinavian chokehold separating the North Sea from the Baltic Sea was guarded by one of the Polaris submarines from the U.S. floating base in Holy Loch. It is against this backdrop of escalating threats of nuclear war with the USSR, that the strange story of Lee Harvey Oswald's 1959 arrival in Finland played out. His story also became more enigmatic by the moment, because Oswald (or his 'double'), began to make it very clear that he was going to Russia, and not Switzerland. But to do that he would need a tourist visa to enter the USSR. That was usually a lengthy process, and there was only one place that could offer him a fast track visa. That was in Stockholm, capital city of the neighboring country of Sweden. The geopolitical interactivity between the USA and Sweden which on the surface claimed to be neutral in the broadcast shouting match between the USA and the USSR, was in reality a sham. Sweden was a well armed nation carrying out an apparent political balancing act, when in reality, below the surface, its military geopolitical balancing act was tilted in the direction of the USA. Meanwhile the airwaves of the world were filled with a shouting match between the USA and the USSR. One of the players advising the USA on its broadcasting activity was Gordon McLendon, a Texan from Dallas. Back on April 2, 1952, McLendon been the subject of a "covert security clearance" requested by the Chicago field office of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Most people knew McLendon as 'The Old Scotchman' (not 'Scotsman'), who had been the narrator of recreated sports games over his own radio network. He was also known for having adapted juke box repeat selections to create his own 'Top 40' radio stations, and then there was his reputation for making dreadfully scripted low budget films, which were then shown on the screens of the chain of theaters that he owned with his father. Gordon McLendon also had political aspirations, and while he failed to get elected, he had more success behind the scenes as an influencer of public opinion. One of McLendon's closest friends was David Atlee Phillips from Fort Worth, Texas. Phillips was the doyen of CIA "dirty tricks", and just as McLendon had invented a sports theater of the mind with his re-created sports commentaries, Phillips had used this same technique to create a staged uprising in Guatemala to bring down its president. Phillips achieved his regime change by broadcasting from a 'pirate' transmitter the sounds of a rebel army moving in on the presidential palace. While Phillips' radio performances were a U.S. CIA success story, they really owed their achievements to the work of Sefton Delmer and his 'Aspidistra' 'black radio' transmissions aimed at Nazi Germany on behalf of Winston Churchills' WWII government. By 1958, McLendon was advising 'Radio Free Europe'. He was also in Ireland attempting to obtain a license for a powerful radio station capable of covering not only the British Isles, but also of reaching deep into the continent of Western Europe. The U.S, interests that McLendon represented were political, but they were backed by 'washed' monetary streams emanating from the U.S. taxpayers via their government. With fellow Texans Robert F. Thompson and Clint Murchison Jr., McLendon then began to formulate plans for a 'pirate' radio station to be based aboard ship. It would be anchored off the coast of Sweden in the Baltic Sea having Stockholm as its apparent commercial target. However, because the signal of this offshore station called 'Radio Nord' was omnidirectional, it was also an influencer of the younger population of the eastern Baltic States which were under the censored control of the USSR. McLendon was a member of the U.S. Democratic Party which had the up and coming team of John and Robert Kennedy in its ranks. While John would eventually play the roll of 'Mister Innocent', his brother Bobby would be working with a faction of the CIA. This would include the person of Robert F. Thompson in Dallas. At first, CIA attention was drawn to Swan Island in the Caribbean as a suitable audio rallying call for its overt war on Cuba using the 'Bay of Pigs' as its place of invasion in order to topple Fidel Castro from power. That is why'Radio Swan' later came to the attention of Eric Gilder as the subject for his thesis. It is also the reason why he was warned off from focusing upon 'Radio Swan' as a topic. The subject of clandestine broadcasting threads throughout this entire storyline. While the subject of offshore broadcasting appears on the surface to be about broadcasting more recorded music into the British Isles and other countries, it is really about broadcasting polemical messages in conjunction with military and commercial activity. It is also a story which threads from Dallas to Havana to London, and one which intertwines with the activity of Colonel Wilmeth and Marina Oswald in the days leading up to the assassination of President Kennedy. Next: The mysterious Colonel Wilmeth .... You might be responding to the question posed by the title of this precursory chapter about Colonel J.D. Wilmeth, with another question after reading our previous precursory chapter: In search of answers ....
"Why?" When Professor Dr Habil Eric Gilder recounted his own beginnings down the path of academic higher education in 1979, he remarked that he was the only non-Russian degree major in that class when he began his study of the Russian language. Then, after one year he switched to Latin. Eric noted that the Russian language class was part of the Soviet and East European Studies Center at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), and that this Center was known to have 'Intelligence' links. For part of the brief period that Eric was taking his class in Russian, his lecturer was Colonel Wilmeth, and Eric remarked that "the Russian language material was often from Russian sources and technological in nature." In context with the overall scope of this storyline, Eric's idea to use 'Radio Swan' as the subject of his thesis at the University of North Texas (NTU), was discouraged "for his own safety" by his friend Dr Ross of UTA. At first glance these two issues seem to be unrelated, but further investigation by a member of 'The Trio' has now uncovered a connectivity that was not apparent in 1981 when the subject of 'Radio Swan' was under consideration by Eric. To understand how and why these two issues are related it is necessary to know more about Colonel Wilmeth, and more about 'Radio Swan'. We now have enough material to provide a biographical outline about the life and times of Colonel Wilmeth, and the first item of importance is to note that his full name is James Dudley Wilmeth, and to establish his identity because there is more than one person by that name which a quick Google search will bring to your attention. The person we are interested in was born on October 30, 1910, at Ballinger, which is a small town about the size of Eastland, Texas where Donald Grey Pierson lived. Eastland is approximately sixty miles due south of Abilene where Don Pierson was born on October 11, 1925. This means that Wilmeth was fifteen years older than Pierson who died on March 30, 1996, at age of 71, and Wilmeth died on July 20, 1997, at age 86. While the lives of both of these men interacted with the life of Eric Gilder, it is not known if they ever interacted with each other, and yet both Wilmeth and Pierson were engaged in missions with geopolitical connectivity regarding the external interests of the United States of America. Wilmeth had a long association with U.S. Army Intelligence which involved international diplomatic negotiations, as well as public relations and then higher education. Pierson was a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Corps that later emerged as the U.S. Air Force. After his military service, he engaged in various international activities that paralleled the interests of U.S. Intelligence operations. However, it is uncertain whether Pierson was ever aware of the extent to which his activities were of interest to U.S. government. In retrospect it appears that he was an expendable 'asset' which resulted in his own life having a frustratingly unfulfilled conclusion. On the other hand, Wilmeth seems to have played his part to the end as a military man who simply retired as a private citizen. Eric Gilder first met Wilmeth as a student in his Russian language class at UTA, and he then met Pierson as a student writing a thesis about 'pirate radio' while at UNT. Eric's first meeting with Mervyn Hagger and Genie Baskir followed that chain of events. But it was not until Don Pierson handed over his financial and legal records relating to his interests in offshore radio, that anyone began to peer behind the curtain to see who was really pulling the strings. The person who nudged and urged 'The Trio' to take a closer look was a distant party from an unlikely background, and he happened to have a side-hobby-interest that was focused upon the second of Don Pierson's offshore radio station ships. It was the legacy of that ship that became known as the motor vessel 'Olga Patricia' , which opened the door to a major investigation. The 'Olga Patricia' was built and completed for the U.S. Army in 1944 to serve as a cargo vessel during World War II. Before the war ended, the ship was dry-docked at Finschhaven, in what is now Papua New Guinea. That location is approximately sixty miles from the university where Eric is presently teaching. This same vessel was transferred to the U.S. Navy in 1947, and it was finally mothballed in 1955 at Portland, Oregon. At that time is was known as the 'USS Deal'. The ship was sold in 1961, and soon after, it was renamed 'Olga Patricia'. At that time, it was discussed as a likely vessel to serve the interests of the U.S. Intelligence community in its continuing secret war against Fidel Castro's Cuba. This is where the story of offshore radio broadcasting collides with the story of Colonel James Dudley Wilmeth, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Next: Colonel Wilmeth and Marina Oswald .... |
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