George de Mohrenschildt and his wife
The House Select Committee on Assassinations were informed of George de Mohrenschildt's return to the United States and sent its investigator, Gaeton Fonzi, to find him. Fonzi discovered he was living with his daughter in Palm Beach. However, Fonzi was not the only person looking for de Mohrenschildt. On 15th March 1977 he had a meeting with Edward Jay Epstein that had been arranged by the Reader's Digest magazine. Epstein offered him $4,000 for a four-day interview.
On 27th March, 1977, George de Mohrenschildt arrived at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach and spent the day being interviewed by Epstein. According to Epstein, they spent the day talking about his life and career up until the late 1950s.
Two days later Edward Jay Epstein asked him about Lee Harvey Oswald. As he wrote in his diary: "Then, this morning, I asked him about why he, a socialite in Dallas, sought out Oswald, a defector. His explanation, if believed, put the assassination in a new and unnerving context. He said that although he had never been a paid employee of the CIA, he had "on occasion done favors" for CIA connected officials. In turn, they had helped in his business contacts overseas. By way of example, he pointed to the contract for a survey of the Yugoslavian coast awarded to him in 1957. He assumed his "CIA connections" had arranged it for him and he provided them with reports on the Yugoslav officials in whom they had expressed interest."
Epstein and de Mohrenschildt, broke for lunch and decided to meet again at 3 p.m. George De Mohrenschildt returned to his room where he found a card from Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator working for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. George De Mohrenschildt's body was found later that day. He had apparently committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth.
On 11th May, 1978, Jeanne de Mohrenschildt gave an interview to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, where she said that she did not accept that her husband had committed suicide. She also said that she believed Lee Harvey Oswald was an agent of the United States, possibly of the CIA, and that she was convinced he did not kill John F. Kennedy. She then went onto say: "They may get me too, but I'm not afraid... It's about time somebody looked into this thing."
George de Mohrenschildt, the son of a wealthy noble, was born in Russia on 17th April, 1911. His father and uncle, ran the Branobel Oil Company in Baku on the coast of Caspian Sea.
In 1915 the government of Nicholas II dispatched another uncle, Ferdinand von Mohrenschildt to Washington to plead for American intervention in the First World War. He stayed in the country and eventually married the step-granddaughter of President Woodrow Wilson.
In 1939 he went to work for Humble Oil, a company that was co-founded by Prescott Bush.
CIA Operation 40 killed JFK and more than a hundred witnesses.
Operation 40 was the code name for a Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored counterintelligence group composed mostly by Cuban exiles. It was approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in March 1960, after the January 1959 Cuban Revolution. The group was presided over by Richard Nixon and included Admiral Arleigh Burke, Livingston Merchant of the State Department, National Security Adviser Gordon Gray, and Allen Dulles of the CIA.
CIA assembled virtually the same team that was involved in the removal of Arbenz: Tracey Barnes, Richard Bissell, David Morales, David Atlee Phillips, E. Howard Hunt, Rip Robertson and Henry Hecksher. Added to this list were several agents who had been involved in undercover operations in Germany: Ted Shackley, Tom Clines and William Harvey. Tracy Barnes functioned as head of the Cuban Task Force. He called a meeting on January 18, 1960, in his office in Quarters Eyes, near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, which the navy had lent while new buildings were being constructed in Langley. Those who gathered there included Howard Hunt, future head of the Watergate team and a writer of crime novels; Frank Bender, a friend of Trujillo; Jack Esterline, who had come straight from Venezuela where he directed a CIA group; psychological warfare expert David A. Phillips, and others. Vice-President Richard Nixon was the Cuban "case officer," and had assembled an important group of businessmen headed by George Bush Sr and Jack Crichton, both Texas oilmen, as fundraisers.
Operation 40, Mexico-City-1963. Special operation charged with assasinating Fidel Castro. Decided to kill a bunch of other people instead.
Other members: William King Harvey; Thomas G. Clines; Porter Goss; Gerry Patrick Hemming; David Sanchez Morales; Carl Elmer Jenkins; Bernard Barker William Robert “Tosh” Plumlee; William C. Bishop; Ted Shackley – CIA station-chief in Miami after the Bay of Pigs invasion; Jose Sanjenis Perdomo – former Chief of Police during Cuban President Carlos Prio’s regime; Frank Sturgis; Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia; Antonio Veciana; Luis Posada Carriles; Orlando Bosch; Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quinterol Roland Masferrer; Eladio del Vallel Guillermo Novo; Carlos Bringuier; Eugenio Martinez (‘Musculito’); Antonio Cuesta; Hermino Diaz Garcia;m Juan Manuel Salvat; Ricardo Morales Navarrete; Isidro Borjas; Virgilio Paz Romero; Jose Dionisio Suarez; Felipe Rivero; Gaspar ‘Gasparito’ Jimenez Escobedo; Nazario Sargent; Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz; Jose Basulto; Alvin Ross; William “Rip” Robertson; Ricardo Morales Navarrete; Bernard Barker; Paulino Sierra; Barry Seal
During this period de Mohrenschildt met George H. W. Bush. According to Bush: "I first met him in the early 40s. He was an uncle to my Andover roommate (Edward Hooker)." He also met Jacqueline Bouvier, who called him "Uncle George" and would sit on his knee.
In 1957 George de Mohrenschildt met J. Walton Moore, the local CIA man in Dallas. According to Russ Baker, the two men had several meetings over the next few years. During this period he worked for a company called Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company (CVOVT) that had been established by William Buckley Sr. During this period he got to know Jack Alston Crichton, who was one of several oil men who began negotiating with Fulgencio Batista, the military dictator of Cuba. Crichton later remarked that "I liked George. He was a nice guy."
Colonel Jack Alston Crichton was a founder members of CIA Operation 40, a CIA' Asassination Squad.
In 1956 Crichton started up his own spy unit, the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment. Crichton served as the unit's commander under Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, who was in overall command of all Army Reserve units in East Texas. In an interview Crichton claimed that there were "about a hundred men in that unit and about forty or fifty of them were from the Dallas Police Department.
Crichton was so plugged into the Dallas power structure that one of his company directors was Clint Murchison Sr., king of the oil depletion allowance, and another was D. Harold Byrd, owner of the Texas School Book Depository building.
In November 1963 Jack Alston Crichton was involved in the arrangements of the visit that President John F. Kennedy made to Dallas. His close friend, Deputy Police Chief George L. Lumpkin, and a fellow member of the the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment, drove the pilot car of Kennedy's motorcade. Also in the car was Lieutenant Colonel George Whitmeyer, commander of all Army Reserve units in East Texas. The pilot car stopped briefly in front of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lumpkin spoke to a policeman controlling traffic at the corner of Houston and Elm.
As Russ Baker points out in Family of Secrets (2008) Crichton served as the "intelligence unit's only commander... until he retired from the 488th in 1967".
Operation 40 was approved by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in March 1960. The group was presided over by Vice President Richard M. Nixon and included Admiral Arleigh Burke, Livingston Merchant of the State Department, National Security Adviser Gordon Gray, as well as Allen Dulles, CIA director.
Richard Nixon, the case manager of Operation 40 was in Dallas the day JFK was killed
According to Gregory Burnham George de Mohrenschildt was an "active member of 2 CIA Proprietary Organizations: The Dallas Council On World Affairs and The Crusade For A Free Europe." Other members included Abraham Zapruder, Clint Murchison, David Byrd, George H. W. Bush, Neil Mallon and Haroldson L. Hunt.
In 1961 George de Mohrenschildt was invited to lunch by J. Walton Moore. According to Edward Jay Epstein, during the meeting Moore told de Mohrenschildt about Lee Harvey Oswald living in Minsk. However, in his book on the case, I'm a Patsy (1977), he gives a different version of events: "Early in the summer of 1962 the rumors spread out among the Russian-speaking people of Dallas and Fort Worth of an unusual couple-the Oswalds. He was supposedly an ex-marine, an unfriendly and eccentric character, who had gone to Russia and brought back with him a Russian wife. He had lived in Minsk where I had spent my early childhood. And so I was curious to meet the couple and to find out what had happened to Minsk. Someone gave me Lee's address and one afternoon a friend of mine, Colonel Lawrence Orloff and I drove to Fort Worth, about 30 miles from Dallas."
Over the next few months George de Mohrenschildt took Oswald to anti-Castro meetings in Dallas. De Mohrenschildt later told Edward Jay Epstein that he was asked by J. Walton Moore to find out about Oswald's time in the Soviet Union. In return he was given help with an oil deal he was negotiating with Papa Doc Duvalier, the Haitian dictator. In March 1963, De Mohrenschildt got the contract from the Haitian government. He had assumed that this was because of the help he had given to the CIA
In February, 1963 George de Mohrenschildt introduced Marina Oswald and Lee Harvey Oswald to Ruth Paine. On 24th April, 1963, Marina and her daughter went to live with Paine. Oswald rented a room in Dallas but stored some of his possessions in Ruth Paine’s garage. Ruth also helped Oswald to get a job at the Texas School Book Depository.
George de Mohrenschildt was recalled to America to testify before the Warren Commission. He was asked about the claim of Marina Oswald that he knew about Oswald's attempt to kill General Edwin Walker. After giving evidence he returned to Haiti.
On 5th September 1976 De Mohrenschildt sent a message to George H. W. Bush, who was at that time director of the CIA: "Maybe you will be able to bring a solution to the hopeless situation I find myself in. My wife and I find ourselves surrounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged; and we are being followed everywhere. Either FBI is involved in this or they do not want to accept my complaints. We are driven to insanity by the situation. I have been behaving like a damn fool ever since my daughter Nadya died from (cystic fibrosis) over three years ago. I tried to write, stupidly and unsuccessfully, about Lee H Oswald and must have angered a lot of people I do not know. But to punish an elderly man like myself and my highly nervous and sick wife is really too much. Could you do something to remove the net around us? This will be my last request for help and I will not annoy you any more."
Two months later George de Mohrenschildt was committed to a mental institution. According to his wife, Jeanne de Mohrenschildt, he was suffering from depression. He was taken to Parkland Hospital and underwent electroshock therapy.
In February 1977, Willem Oltmans, met George de Mohrenschildt at the library of Bishop College in Dallas, where he taught French. Oltmans later told the House Select Committee on Assassinations: "I couldn't believe my eyes. The man had changed drastically... he was nervous, trembling. It was a scared, a very, very scared person I saw. I was absolutely shocked, because I knew de Mohrenschildt as a man who wins tennis matches, who is always suntanned, who jogs every morning, who is as healthy as a bull."
According to Willem Oltmans, he confessed to being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. "I am responsible. I feel responsible for the behaviour of Lee Harvey Oswald... because I guided him. I instructed him to set it up." Oltmans claimed that de Mohrenschildt had admitted serving as a middleman between Lee Harvey Oswald and H. L. Hunt in an assassination plot involving other Texas oilmen, anti-Castro Cubans, and elements of the FBI and CIA.
Oltmans told the HSCA: "He begged me to take him out of the country because they are after me." On 13th February 1977, Oltmans took de Mohrenschildt to his home in Amsterdam where they worked on his memoirs. Over the next few weeks de Mohrenschildt claimed he knew Jack Ruby and argued that Texas oilmen joined with intelligence operatives to arrange the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Willem Oltmans arranged for George de Mohrenschildt to meet a Dutch publisher and the head of Dutch national television. The two men then travelled to Brussels. When they arrived, Oltmans mentioned that an old friend of his, a Soviet diplomat, would be joining them a bit later for lunch. De Mohrenschildt said he wanted to take a short walk before lunch. Instead, he fled to a friend's house and after a few days he flew back to the United States. He later accused Oltmans of betraying him. Russ Baker suggests in his book Family of Secrets: "Perhaps, and this would be strictly conjecture, de Mohrenschildt saw what it meant that he, like Oswald, was being placed in the company of Soviets. He was being made out to be a Soviet agent himself. And once that happened, his ultimate fate was clear."
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