Jack Alston Crichton and the murder of president John F Kennedy by CIA Operation 40. By Gualdo Hidalgo, Latin Heritage Foundation's publisher

 Colonel  John Alston "Jack" Crichton, U.S. Army Special Agent OSS in Europe, Second World War.

Jack Alston Crichton and the murder of president John F Kennedy by CIA Operation 40. By Gualdo Hidalgo, Latin Heritage Foundation's publisher.

The Killing of JFK by Operation 40

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.

"Operation 40" took its name from that of the Special Group formed by the NSC to follow the Cuban case. 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 was 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, to gather the necessary funds for the operation.

Jack Alston Crichton and the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment

In 1956 Jack Alston Crichton started up his own spy unit, the 488th Military Intelligence Detachment in Dallas. 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."

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".

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The Dallas Police preparing for the visit of President Kennedy ...

The Dallas Police preparing for the visit of President Kennedy ...

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Operation 40 Members Photographed at a Mexican Nightclub

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
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

 

 

(9) The Dallas Morning News (5th January 2008)

John Alston "Jack" Crichton passed away at his home in Dallas on December 10, surrounded by his loving family. He is survived by his wife, Marilyn Crichton, and daughter Catherine Morris and her husband Craig, and daughter Anne Crews and her husband Kyle. Jack is also survived by his sister Frances "Dinks" Atkinson and his granddaughter, Cassie Morris and his grandson, John Morris. In addition to his parents, he was predeceased by his brother, Joe Crichton. Jack graduated from Byrd High School in Shreveport in 1933, from whence he boarded a train to College Station Texas to begin a long relationship with his beloved Texas A&M University. After graduating with honors, (BS Petroleum Engineering), in 1937 from A&M, -- while also earning athletic letters in Tennis, Basketball and Cross Country Track -- Jack subsequently earned a Master of Science degree from MIT, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. Jack proudly served his country during the Second World War in the U.S. Army as Special Agent OSS in Europe, where he was awarded the Bronze Star, Five Battle Stars and numerous other Citations of Merit. He was a retired Colonel in the US Army Reserves. Jack's career as an international petroleum consultant, engineer, geologist, oil and gas executive, explorer and writer and his love for travel led him to work in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya, United Arab Emirates, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the Arctic, Alaska, Ceylon, Wales, Canada, Somalia, Egypt, Columbia, Vietnam and Brazil. He served as President of several companies, including Yemen Development Corporation, Dorchester Gas Corporation and Arabian American Development Company. He served as a Director to Florida Gas Company, Clark Oil and Refining, Whitehall Corporation. Transco Energy, Dorchester Gas Corp and Consolidated Development Corporation. He was Co-Author of the "Dynamic Petroleum Industry", published by University of Oklahoma Press. In 1964 he served his Republican Party of Texas as Candidate for Governor. Jack was a Past President of the Dallas Petroleum Engineers Club. He served his Alma Mater as President of the Association of Former Students of Texas A&M, President of the Lettermen's Association and Chairman of the A&M Development Foundation.

  Jack Alston Crichton,  Crichton, Louisiana, on 16th October, 1916. He attended the Texas A&M University. He graduated with a degree in Petroleum Engineering in 1937.
During the Second World War he served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in Europe.

In August 1953 Crichton joined the Empire Trust Company. He eventually became a vice-president of the organization. According to Stephen Birmingham, the author of Our Crowd: The Great Jewish Families of New York (1962) the company had a network of associates that amounted to "something very like a private CIA". The Empire Trust was also a major investor in the defence contractor General Dynamics.

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."

In the 1950s Jack Crichton became involved with several oil men who began negotiating with Fulgencio Batista, Cuba.. A key figure in this was George de Mohrenschildt, who at that time worked for a company called Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company (CVOVT) that had been established by William Buckley Sr. Crichton later remarked that "I liked George. He was a nice guy." It is argued by Russ Baker that Crichton's Empire Trust Company played a major role in the financing of the Cuban venture.

On 30th November, 1956, The New York Times reported that: "The Cuban Stanolind Oil Company, an affiliate of the Standard Oil Company (Indiana), has signed an agreement with the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust and Trans-Cuba Oil Company for the development of an an additional 3,000,000 acres in Cuba. This is in addition to the original agreement covering 12,000,000 acres." George de Mohrenschildt later told Albert E. Jennerthat CVOVT had managed to obtain leases covering nearly half of Cuba in the 1950s. As Russ Baker pointed out in Family of Secrets(2008): "Though now almost completely forgotten, on many days in the mid-1950s, it was one of the four or five most actively traded issues on the American Stock Exchange."

On 1st January, 1959, Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba. The following day Fidel Castro and his revolutionary army marched into Havana. The New York Times reported on 22nd November 1959, that Castro's government had approved a law that would reduce the size of claims for oil exploration and halt large-scale explorations by private companies. These claims were now limited to 20,000 acres. This was a major problem for the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company that had signed an agreement with Fulgencio Batista for 15,000,000 acres.

Jack Crichton also had a close association with George H. W. Bush. According to Fabian Escalante (The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62), in 1959, Crichton and Bush raised funds for the CIA's Operation 40. Originally it was set up to organize sabotage operations against Fidel Castro and his Cuban government. However, it evolved into a team of assassins. One member, Frank Sturgis, claimed: "this assassination group (Operation 40) would upon orders, naturally, assassinate either members of the military or the political parties of the foreign country that you were going to infiltrate, and if necessary some of your own members who were suspected of being foreign agents... We were concentrating strictly in Cuba at that particular time."

The failure to assassinate or overthrow Fidel Castro caused tremendous problems for the Cuban-Venezuelan Oil Voting Trust Company and other foreign oil companies that had already invested more than $30 million looking for oil in Cuba. In December 1960, CVOVT was de-listed from the American Stock Exchange.

Critchton was appointed head of the intelligence component of the Dallas Civil Defence. The conservative radio commentator Paul Harvey wrote in his syndicated column in September 1960: "The Communists, since 1917, have sold Communism to more people than have been told about Christ after 2,000 years." He urged his readers to support the "counter-attack that had been mounted in Dallas."

In 1961 Crichton joined forces with other right-wing figures in Dallas to establish a program called "Know Your Enemy". This was to combat communist influence that "was undermining the American way of life". The following year Crichton opened an underground command post under the patio of the Dallas Health and Science Museum that was intended for "continuity-of-government" operations during a communist attac

In 1963 Crichton was nominated by the Republican Party for the post of Governor of Texas. He joined forces with George H. W. Bush, who was the nominee for the U.S. Senate. As Crichton later recalled, he and Bush "spoke from the same podiums" that year. However, Crichton was defeated by John Connally.

In November 1963 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.

In the Warren Commission Report it stated that Crichton arranged for a member of the local Russian community, Ilya Mamantov, to work for the Dallas Police Department as a translator for Russian-born Marina Oswald shortly after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Crichton's volunteer translated for Oswald during her initial questioning by the Dallas authorities in the hours immediately after her husband Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested. According to Russ Baker, the author of Family of Secrets (2009), there "were far from literal translations of her Russian words and had the effect of implicating her husband in Kennedy's death."

Crichton was president of Nafco Oil and Gas. He also owned a company called Dorchester Gas Producing. A fellow director was David Harold Byrd who along with Clint Murchison, Haroldson L. Hunt and Sid Richardson, was part of the Big Oil group in Dallas. Barr McClellan (Blood, Money & Power) argues that "Big Oil would be during the fifties and into the sixties what the OPEC oil cartel was to the United States in the seventies and beyond". One of the main concerns of this group was the preservation of the oil depletion allowance.

Jack Crichton who was President of the Dallas Petroleum Engineers Club, also served as a Director to Florida Gas Company, Clark Oil and Refining, Whitehall Corporation, Transco Energy and the Consolidated Development Corporation.

Jack Alston Crichton died in Dallas on 10th December, 2007.


(1) Barnard Fensterwald and Michael Ewing, Assassination of JFK: Coincidence or Conspiracy (1977)

    Jack Crichton is a wealthy Dallas oilman who volunteered his services to the Dallas Police Department as a translator for Russian-born Marina Oswald shortly after the assassination. Jack Crichton translated for Marina during her initial questioning by the Dallas authorities in the crucial hours immediately after her husband Lee had been arrested. While Crichton's role as interpreter on that day is mentioned in at least two Warren Commission documents, the exact details of how he became involved in assisting the Dallas police are unclear. Interestingly, Jack Crichton was, by his own admission, a former Army Intelligence operative.

    Crichton was also a prominent Dallas oilman whose conservative political activities were well-known throughout Dallas. Crichton had in fact once been a GOP gubernatorial candidate in Texas.

 (3) Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1992)

These were intelligence operatives seeking out Russian speakers. Ilya Mamantov knew George Bush and spoke Russian. A geologist with Sun Oil, he received a call five hours after the assassination from Jack Crichton, who was at that time the president of Nafco Oil and Gas, Inc. and a former Military Intelligence officer then attached to Army Reserve Intelligence. Crichton was also director of Dorchester Gas Producing Co. with D.H. Byrd, who owned the Texas School Book Depository building and was a close friend of Lyndon Johnson.

 (4) Fabian Escalante, The Secret War: CIA Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-62 (1995)

In late November 1959, James Noel, CIA station chief in Havana, met with his closest collaborator to analyze the evolution of the political situation in Cuba. He had received instructions from Colonel King to prepare this analysis. His years with the Agency had taught him that when his boss personally asked for a report, big issues were involved and since nobody could swim against the current, he took great care. Noel believed that there were still individuals in the Cuban government that could be won over to the cause of the United States; that everything had not ended with the capture of Huber Matos and his associates; and that men such as Sori Marin had definite influence. However, he knew he should be cautious when offering his opinions, since an error could cost him his career. Therefore he adopted a dual position, giving King the report that he wanted to hear, while at the same time - with his pawns - continuing to play the game. The document that the CIA specialists drafted concluded: "Fidel Castro, under the influence of his closest collaborators, particularly his brother Raul and Che Guevara, has been converted to communism. Cuba is preparing to export its revolution to other countries of the hemisphere and spread the war against capitalism."
With these words, they pronounced a death sentence on the Cuban Revolution. Days later, on December 11, Colonel King wrote a confidential memorandum to the head of the CIA which affirmed that in Cuba there existed a "far-left dictatorship, which if allowed to remain will encourage similar actions against U.S. holdings in other Latin American countries."
King recommended various actions to solve the Cuban problem, one of which was to consider the elimination of Fidel Castro. He affirmed that none of the other Cuban leaders "have the same mesmeric appeal to the masses. Many informed people believe that the disappearance of Fidel would greatly accelerate the fall of the present government ."
CIA Director Allen Dulles passed on King's memorandum to the NSC a few days later, and it approved the suggestion to form a working group in the Agency which, within a short period of time, could come up with "alternative solutions to the Cuban problem." Thus "Operation 40" was born, taking its name from that of the Special Group formed by the NSC to follow the Cuban case. 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.
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 the eccentric Howard Hunt, future head of the Watergate team and a writer of crime novels; the egocentric 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.
The team responsible for the plans to overthrow the government of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954 was reconstituted, and in the minds of all its members this would be a rerun of the same plan. Barnes talked at length of the goals to be achieved. He explained that Vice-President Richard Nixon was the Cuban "case officer," and had assembled an important group of businessmen headed by George Bush [Snr.] and Jack Crichton, both Texas oilmen, to gather the necessary funds for the operation. Nixon was a protégé of Bush's father Preston, who in 1946 had supported Nixon's bid for congress. In fact, Preston Bush was the campaign strategist who brought Eisenhower and Nixon to the presidency of the United States. With such patrons, Barnes was certain that failure was impossible.
They set to work immediately. They had to come up with a plan to destabilize the Cuban government and extinguish the expectations of social justice which had been ignited in the hemisphere. They created several teams with specific goals and concrete short- and medium-term plans. They assumed that the Cuban Revolution could not resist a combined assault of psychological warfare, diplomatic and economic pressures and clandestine activity, all of this backed up by a political structure made up of men in exile. When the time came, these men would declare themselves a rebel government which the United States and its allies could publicly recognize and assist.
There were several problems, however. The main one was the deeply rooted support for Fidel Castro among the Cuban population. Therefore, from the very beginning, the physical elimination of the Cuban leader was considered one of the CIA's highest priorities.
There was also the fact that Cuba, being an island, had no borders from which invasions could be organized and directed. The task force analyzed this problem in detail, and finally proposed a strategy of general uprising, which consisted in stirring up the whole Cuban population in order to legitimize a military intervention. Two key elements in the plan were the organization of a "responsible opposition in exile" and the infiltration of several dozen agents into the island, properly trained to deliver the mortal blow.

(8) Russ Baker, Family of Secrets (2009)

    If Poppy Bush was busy on November 22, 1963, so was his friend Jack Crichton. Bush's fellow GOP candidate was a key figure in a web of military intelligence figures with deep connections to the Dallas Police Department and, as previously noted, to the pilot car of JFK's motorcade.

    Crichton came back into the picture within hours of Kennedy's death and the subsequent arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, when a peculiar cordon sanitaire went up around Marina Oswald. The first to her side was Republican activist and precinct chairman Ilya Mamantov, a vociferous anti-Communist who frequently lectured in Dallas on the dangers of the Red menace. When investigators arrived, Mamantov stepped in as interpreter and embellished Marina's comments to establish in no uncertain terms that the "leftist" Lee Harvey Oswald had been the gunman-the lone gunman-who killed the president.

    It is interesting of course that the Dallas police would let an outsider - in particular, a right-wing Russian emigre-handle the delicate interpreting task. Asked by the Warren Commission how this happened, Mamantov said that he had received a phone call from Deputy Police Chief George Lumpkin. After a moment's thought, Mamantov then remembered that just preceding Lumpkin's call he had heard from Jack Crichton. It was Crichton who had put the Dallas Police Department together with Mamantov and ensured his place at Marina Oswald's side at this crucial moment.

    Despite this revelation, Crichton almost completely escaped scrutiny. The Warren Commission never interviewed him. Yet, as much as anyone, Crichton embodied a confluence of interests within the oil-intelligence-military nexus. And he was closely connected to Poppy in their mutual efforts to advance the then-small Texas Republican Party, culminating in their acceptance of the two top positions on the state's Republican ticket in 1964.