The Twelve Who Built the Oswald Legend

Part 7: The Hand-off from de Mohrenschildt to the Paines

by Bill Simpich, Jun 3, 2012

Oswald returned from the Soviet Union speaking Russian with a Polish accent

When Oswald and his family returned to the Dallas-Fort Worth area from the Soviet Union, they knew that they had to make contacts if they were going to put food on the table. Oswald sought out Peter Gregory shortly after his arrival. Peter Gregory described himself as an "oil consultant" who came from Russia in 1923. He was also a translator who had his son Paul take Russian lessons from Oswald's wife Marina. Gregory provided Oswald with a letter certifying Oswald's ability to serve as a translator. Gregory commented on Oswald's pronounced Polish accent, which was a result of Oswald's extended time with Legend Maker #8 Alexander Ziger and the entire Ziger family.

Dallas oilman/spy George de Mohrenschildt became a benefactor to the Oswald family, providing them with money and contacts after their return to the US from the Soviet Union. As discussed earlier, de Mohrenschildt's lawyer Max Clark was also General Dynamics' industrial security consultant and a leader within the White Russian community. Oswald contacted Max Clark's wife shortly after his return, explaining that the Texas Employment Commission had referred her to him as a Russian-speaker and that his wife would like to spend time with another Russian-speaker.

Both Peter Gregory and Max Clark displayed furtiveness and unclean hands after JFK was killed. On 11/28/63, Gregory assisted the Secret Service in translating a lengthy interrogation of Marina Oswald. On 11/29/63, both Gregory and Clark told FBI agent Earle Haley that Oswald had obtained their names from the Fort Worth Public Library, where Gregory worked. When Clark testified before the Warren panel, he changed his story to say that Oswald was referred to his wife by the Texas Employment Commission (TEC). Clearly, both men had initially tried to keep their TEC contacts away from public view. The TEC - better known as the state unemployment agency - kept extensive records on Oswald that are now available and open up all sorts of questions. After a complaint by the Warren Commission staff that these earlier reports contradicted the Warren Commission testimony, Hoover ordered Legend Maker #6 FBI supervisor Marvin Gheesling to confront them on these contradictions.

When Gheesling re-assigned the case to the Dallas FBI office, agent Earle Haley went back and re-interviewed Clark and Gregory. Haley was a personal acquaintance of Max Clark, who used to work with the man Max referred to as "Earle". Gregory wouldn't change his story and blamed it on Oswald, while Clark said he heard about the whole issue second-hand from his wife, who always knew Oswald got her name from the Texas Employment Commission. Max's wife Gali Clark was treated with kid gloves. Her maiden name was Gali Scherbatoff, born in France - an exiled Russian princess and "very much opposed" to the Communists. There's no indication that Haley or anyone else ever followed up with her.

Oswald had legend makers precisely because he and his wife presented a perceived threat to national security

De Mohrenschildt visited and exchanged cards and letters with CIA official J. Walton Moore on a regular basis during the fifties and sixties. Moore wrote a memo in 1977 claiming that he only met de Mohrenschildt twice, in 1958 and in 1961. Moore's hazy memory on the number of visits was exposed by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. In 1964, a similar memo by Moore admitted that he met de Mohrenschildt in 1957, "several times" in 1958 and 1959, and the last time in 1961. There was more than just that. De Mohrenschildt sent Moore a stack of contact reports in 1957 and 1958. In 1958, Moore used de Mohrenschildt as a "contact" with a Polish official. In 1960, Moore referred to de Mohrenschildt as a "cleared contact" for a copy of a memo on the USSR's use of petroleum.

Moore visited the de Mohrenschildts' home in late 1961 to see a movie of their "walking tour" from Mexico to Panama. Although the de Mohrenschildts said that they were tracking the mining trails of the old Spanish conquistadors, they found themselves with hundreds of Cuban exiles in Guatemala City, a staging area for the Bay of Pigs invasion that was about to begin. De Mohrenschildt revealed a few hours before his death that Moore took him to lunch in late 1961, and described to him an ex-Marine in Minsk in whom the CIA had "interest". In the summer of 1962, an associate of Moore suggested that de Mohrenschildt might want to meet Oswald. De Mohrenschildt then called Moore, suggesting that suitable payback would be a little help by the State Department with an oil exploration deal in Haiti.

After the assassination, R.S. Travis at the Domestic Contact Division identified ten separate domestic contact reports prepared by de Mohrenschildt, and tipped off the staff of Legend Maker #1 Jim Angleton at the counterintelligence office. Travis referred to de Mohrenschildt as Moore's "source," and asked Moore to provide his personal evaluation of George for the CI Staff. Moore wrote an intriguing evaluation that admitted that he had sought out de Mohrenschildt as "the result of a source lead from Headquarters" in 1957, but scrambled to avoid any direct admissions of the role he played in bringing de Mohrenschildt and Oswald together. Moore's evaluation was so carefully prepared that the file includes what appears to be a far-different rough draft.

Moore's poor memory triggered internal scrutiny by the CIA's Reinvestigation Program. Moore went so far as to tell the CI staffer for Angleton "there is no White Russian 'community' in Dallas. He knows of only a couple of Russian linguists who are used by the Socony labs for translation. Jim feels the word 'community' is inapplicable. In any event he has had no contact with any such group". This memo is one of several indications that the task for Angleton's staff was to sanitize de Mohrenschildt's checkered history. Moore was a former FBI agent and college roommate of Wallace Heitman, a Soviet language specialist who played the lead role for the FBI in controlling the first-day evidence.

Although US intelligence records on de Mohrenschildt go back to at least World War II, CIA Director Richard Helms said that the agency's "initial interest" in George de Mohrenschildt was because he had been a petrochemical consultant with the International Cooperation Administration (ICA). De Mohrenschildt was appointed by the State Department as the "petroleum adviser" for the independent communist Yugoslavian government in 1957, and testified to the Warren Commission that ICA was the only US government agency that ever paid him. The ICA became part of the Agency for International Development (AID) in 1961. The AID has been cited by its former director John Gilligan as being filled with CIA agents "from top to bottom...the idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind".

In early 1963, de Mohrenschildt passed on his "babysitting duties" for the Oswald family to Ruth and Legend Maker #12 Michael Paine. Ruth's father Bill Hyde was regional director of the Nationwide Insurance Company, part of the International Cooperative Alliance founded in 1895 and still active today. This similiarity between these two ICAs is not accidental - the contracts for both groups were coordinated through AID and the State Department. Both de Mohrenschildt and Hyde were business consultants that traveled abroad working on cooperative ventures and provided reports used by the CIA.

The covert action division of Legend Maker #2 Cord Meyer sought to use Hyde as a security consultant in Vietnam back in 1957, but CI-SIG's information on Hyde resulted in the denial of any security clearance. Hyde's problem, like Legend Maker #3 Priscilla Johnson, was that he was active with progressive causes and had family members involved with the United World Federalists. Meyer, the CIA covert action chief in 1963, had got into trouble with the FBI during the 1950s for his former role as president of the United World Federalists.

Keep in mind that the CIA was not supposed to have officers handling domestic agents tracking US citizens inside the country. That job was the FBI's turf. Routing slips show that interactions between Oswald and the FBI after his return were carefully scrutinized. The rivalry between the CIA and the FBI led to CIA officers trying to work around the system. In this setting, the ideal babysitters for the Oswald family were trusted people that were denied security clearances - such as de Mohrenschildt or Ruth's father. Whether or not the babysitter knew that they were being monitored by intelligence, the operation could be kept in an officer's vest pocket and never reduced to writing.

Ruth Paine and Marina Oswald became housemates after the Magnolia party

Ruth Paine met the Oswalds and George de Mohrenschildt at the party of Everett Glover on February 22, 1963. This is known as the "Magnolia party". Glover was a chemist with Magnolia Labs, a geology lab for Socony Mobil Oil -- the same "Socony labs" that Moore referred to when he argued that there was no White Russian community in Dallas. Glover and four other Magnolia employees approached Oswald and got him to talk for several hours about life in the Soviet Union. One of these employees, Norman Fredericksen, was the son of the former director of Radio Free Europe. As discussed in the previous chapter, de Mohrenschildt had many close ties with Radio Free Europe.

The Paines have been described by researcher Greg Parker as pragmatic pacifists. In an amazing coincidence, they moved from Pennsylvania to Oswald's mother's community of Irving, Texas during the second week of September 1959, the very week that Oswald abruptly left his mother and went off to defect to the USSR. They had made the move so that Michael could take a job with the military contractor Bell Helicopter. Michael said that Bell manufactured 40% of all of the aircraft used in the Vietnam War. Bell Helicopter was begun and run by Michael's stepfather, Arthur Young, the most recent husband of Michael's mother Ruth Forbes Paine.

The Paines probably had a handler within the intelligence community in 1959, whether they knew it or not. Based on their background with the World Federalists and Ruth's work with the Quakers and Soviet-American friendship committees, Cord Meyer is one logical candidate.

By 1963, Meyer was the chief of the covert action division. As discussed in the Preface, Frederick Merrill at the State Department put his stamp of approval on the East-West Contact Committee program organized by the Quakers that Ruth had worked on. Merrill was comfortable in this terrain - the following year, Merrill worked on the Robert Webster defector case that was linked to the Oswald defector case. Did some combination of Meyer, AID and Merrill's allies at the State Department persuade the Paines to keep an eye on this defector family?

Or were the Paines simply manipulated into position? Ruth had other intelligence operatives in her family - such as her sister Sylvia Hoke and her brother-in-law John Hoke - who could play a role in helping to convince her.

I think the most likely path is the simplest and most direct route. Michael Paine's family also had access to talent in the intelligence arena. Michael's parents - Ruth Forbes and Lyman Paine - had a close friend named Mary Bancroft. Bancroft was an OSS spy that had a long-term relationship with Allen Dulles. Bancroft was the granddaughter of Clarence W. Barron, the owner of the Dow Jones company, the manager of the Wall Street Journal, and the founder of Barron's Magazine.

Bancroft discusses Michael's parents at length in her book, Autobiography of a Spy. Bancroft remained very close with Ruth Forbes after she divorced Lyman Paine and married Arthur Young in 1948.

Dulles provided a 12/2/63 memo "from a friend" to the Warren Commission that described the inner workings of the Paine family. It is very informative - I will mention just a few of its findings here. Alan Weberman, who prepared a transcription of the 12/2/63 memo, believed that it was typed by Abigail Schaffner, but Schaffner knew Paine until 1948 - the letter writer only knew Paine until 1935. The letter-writer was also friends with Lyman in the 1920s - not possible for Schaffner, a young girl at that time.

The 12/2/63 letter is particularly important because the FBI was under intense scrutiny for failing to add Oswald to the Security Index, which would have had the government closely surveilling Oswald on 11/22/63. However, Michael's father Lyman was on the Security Index. This set off all kinds of alarm bells at the FBI.

The letter provided to Dulles helped persaude FBI criminal chief Bill Sullivan that the Paines were unconnected with the JFK assassination.

If the FBI had taken a hard look at the Paines, it would have realized that the Paines were intelligence-driven babysitters for the Oswalds - whether Ruth or Michael realized it or not.

The main thrust of the letter writer was to provide her "own evaluation of Lyman Paine, whom I also knew well in the 1920's...he could not do anything...he was thoroughly incompetent. However, he sure could talk." She knew Lyman "well in the 20s", but now Lyman and his new wife "were active in Trotskyite circles...not real Trotskyites, but belonged to some infinitesimal splinter group that as far as I know did nothing but sit around and talk, talk about how the other Trotskyists were 'betraying the Revolution' as conceived by Trotsky."

Bancroft had more than a passing interest in Trotsky. During one of her trysts with Allen Dulles, Dulles had put his hand over her mouth when a visitor came knocking at the door. Dulles said later that the visitor was Leon Trotsky, trying to provide Dulles with some "extremely valuable information".

The letter-writer referred to Ruth Forbes in the third person: "I have also heard, but not from his mother, that Michael had homosexual tendencies - although he did marry and have children." Who else was also intimately familiar with Lyman, his Trotskyist beliefs, and the nature of Trotskyist splinter groups? Like the letter writer, Bancroft probably didn't see Michael after the divorce between Lyman and Ruth in 1934.

This was characteristic of the relationship between Dulles and Bancroft. In the middle of an unhappy marriage, Bancroft was very attracted to Dulles and the culture of espionage. Dulles' biographer indelicately described Bancroft as "randy and ready". Dulles made a proposal to her. "We can let the work cover the romance, and the romance cover the work."

Later on, the writer made a point of providing a clipped resume of Ruth Forbes' third husband, Arthur Young, the inventor of the Bell helicopter: "His researches have been extremely complicated and esoteric and he has worked with the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton -- consulted with them -- and also with Bell Laboratories."

Bancroft, a veteran spy and Ruth Forbes' close friend, was probably the mysterious author of the 12/2/63 memo. She proceeded to give it to Dulles - who gave it to Jim Angleton - who gave it to FBI liaison Sam Papich. None of them disclosed the letter writer's name. On 12/12/63, the hottest items went to FBI's Division 5 chief Bill Sullivan as part of a package exonerating the Paines from any connection with the assassination.

It seems evident that Allen Dulles was the main mover behind introducing de Mohrenschildt to the world of oil intelligence and the Paine family to Lee and Marina Oswald. Like Robert Wester and Lee Oswald, both de Mohrenschildt and the Paines appear to have been "co-optees" to the world of intelligence - the main question is whether they were witting or unwitting.

The best way to close this chapter is to look at what happened after the Magnolia party.

Ruth asked Marina Oswald if she would like to live with her so that she could improve her Russian. Lee was about to leave Marina while he went to his hometown of New Orleans to find steady work. Michael and Ruth were broken up and living in different houses - but Michael was always at Ruth's house.

Was this break-up for real? If Michael had been living with Ruth when Marina moved in, he would have been opening his home to a Soviet defector. He would have lost his Bell Helicopter security clearance in a heartbeat.

The more you look at the situation, the more remarkable it is. Michael and Ruth separated in late 1962 - but they were not legally divorced. Michael was still the owner of the home where Marina was living - and Marina was living with his children. Didn't Michael have an affirmative duty to report this situation to the security supervisor at Bell Helicopter? At a minimum, Bell Helicopter security would want to know what was going on.

Thanks to Barbara LaMonica, Greg Parker, Bill Kelly, and many other researchers for their insights on de Mohrenschildt and the Paines.

- Bill Simpich

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ENDNOTES

Peter Gregory...was also a translator who had his son Paul take Russian lessons from Oswald's wife Marina. Gregory provided Oswald with a letter certifying Oswald's ability to serve as a translator: Warren Commission Document 5, p. 290; SA Earle Haley interview with Peter Gregory, 11/29/63. Also see Secret Service report, below.

Gregory commented on Oswald's pronounced Polish accent: Secret Service report of Leon Gopadze, 11/29/63, p. 3, FBI - HSCA Administrative Folders/NARA Record Number: 124-10369-10062.

Oswald contacted Max Clark's wife shortly after his return: Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Max Clark, Volume 8, p. 344.

On 11/28/63, Gregory assisted the Secret Service in translating a lengthy interrogation of Marina Oswald: Secret Service report of Leon Gopadze, 11/29/63, p. 3, FBI - HSCA Administrative Folders/NARA Record Number: 124-10369-10062.

On 11/29/63, Clark and Gregory told FBI agent Earle Haley that Oswald had obtained their names from the Fort Worth Public Library, where Gregory worked: Warren Commission Document 5, p. 256, SA Earle Haley interview with Max Clark, 11/29/63; p. 290, SA Earl Haley interview with Peter Gregory, 11/29/63.

After a complaint by the Warren Commission that these these earlier reports contradicted the witnesses' Warren Commission testimony, Legend Maker #6 FBI supervisor Marvin Gheesling was forced to confront them on these contradictions: Memo from Warren Commission counsel J. Lee Rankin to FBI Director, 5/7/64; Memo from Gheesling to SAC, Dallas, FBI, 5/11/64, 105-82555 Oswald HQ File, Section 151, p. 49.

After Gheesling re-assigned the case to the Dallas FBI office, agent Earle Haley went back and re-interviewed Clark and Gregory: Warren Commission Exhibits 1888, 1889, 5/14/64.

Haley was a personal acquaintance of Max Clark, who used to work with "Earle": Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Max Clark, Volume 8, pp. 349, 352.

Gregory wouldn't change his story and blamed it on Oswald, while Clark said he heard about the whole issue second-hand from his wife: Warren Commission Exhibits 1888, 1889, 5/14/64.

The Washington Post and other papers ran a UPI article on 6/9/62 announcing the Oswalds' impending arrival to Dallas: "Third American in 2 Months Leaves Soviet 'Home'", Washington Post, 6/9/62.

The FBI has got him tagged and is watching his movements: Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of Max Clark, Volume 8, pp. 351.

Marina's uncle and surrogate father Colonel Ilya Prusakov was with the MVD, the parent intelligence organization to the KGB...: William Hood, Mole, (W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1982) p. 305. See memo of Richard Helms to Warren Commission staffer J. Lee Rankin, 1/25/64, for the time period "18-31 March 1961".

...stationed in the Soviet embassy in New Delhi: Reel 13, Folder R - Marina Oswald, pp. 97-98.

De Mohrenschildt visited with CIA official J. Walton Moore and exchanged cards and letters, on a regular basis in the 1950s and 1960s: FBI memo by W. James Wood re meeting with George de Mohrenschildt, 3/7/64, Russ Holmes Work File/NARA Record Number: 104-10414-10179.

In 1964, a similar memo by Moore admitted that he met de Mohrenschildt in 1957, "several times" in 1958 and 1959, and the last time in 1961: Memo by J. Walton Moore, 5/1/64, Russ Holmes Work File/NARA Record Number: 104-10406-10105.

De Mohrenschildt sent Moore a stack of contact reports in 1957 and 1958: Contact reports, Reel 5, Folder L - George de Mohrenschildt, pp. 88-98, 100, 102, NARA Record Number: 1994.04.25.14:01:26:660005.

In 1958, Moore used de Mohrenschildt as a "contact" with a Polish official: J. Walton Moore, Process Sheet for OO/C Collections, 2/11/58, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm - reel 5: Conte - De Mohrenschildt)/NARA Record Number: 104-10244-10184.

In 1960, Moore referred to de Mohrenschildt as a "cleared contact" for a copy of a memo on the USSR's use of petroleum: Memo from J. Walton Moore to Acting Chief, Contact Division, Houston, 4/28/60, Reel 5, Folder L -- George de Mohrenschildt, NARA Record Number: 1994.04.25.14:01:26:660005.

Moore visited the de Mohrenschildts' home in late 1961 to see a movie of their "walking tour" from Mexico to Panama: HSCA Report, Volume 12, p. 54.

Although the de Mohrenschildts said that they were tracking the mining trails of the old Spanish conquistadors, they found themselves with hundreds of Cuban exiles in Guatemala City, a staging area for the Bay of Pigs invasion that was about to begin: Warren Commission Hearings, Volume 9, Testimony of George de Mohrenschildt, pp. 213-217.

De Mohrenschildt revealed a few hours before his death that Moore took him to lunch in late 1961, and described to him an ex-Marine in Minsk in whom the CIA had "interest"...: Dick Russell, The Man who Knew Too Much (1992), p. 274.

After the assassination, R.S. Travis at the Domestic Contact Division identified the file numbers of ten separate domestic contact reports prepared by de Mohrenschildt, and sent a copy to the staff of Legend Maker #1 Jim Angleton at the counterintelligence office: Memo by R.S. Travis, Contact Division, to Paul Hartman, CI Division, 4/20/64, Reel 52, Folder C - George de Mohrenschildt, pp. 32-33, NARA Record Number: 1994.04.26.09:19:10:570005.

Travis referred to de Mohrenschildt as Moore's "source," and asked Moore to provide his personal evaluation of George for the CI Staff: Id., at p. 31.

Moore wrote an intriguing evaluation that admitted that he had sought out de Mohrenschildt as "the result of a source lead from Headquarters" in 1957, but scrambled to avoid any direct admissions of the role he played in bringing de Mohrenschildt and Oswald together: Memo by J. Walton Moore, 5/1/64, pp. 1-2, Russ Holmes Working File/NARA No. 104-10406-10105.

Moore's evaluation was so carefully prepared that the file includes what appears to be a far-different rough draft: Id. pp. 3-4.

Moore's poor memory triggered internal scrutiny by the CIA's Reinvestigation Program: Investigative Transmittal Sheet for Moore, 4/29/64, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 44 / NARA Record Number: 104-10124-10286; Processing Sheet, NARA Record Number: 104-10124-10284.

Moore went so far as to tell the CI staffer for Legend Maker #1 James Angleton that "there is no White Russian 'community' in Dallas. He knows of only a couple of Russian linguists who are used by the Socony labs for translation: Handwritten note by R.S. Travis, 5/27/64, Reel 52, Folder C - George de Mohrenschildt, p. 10.

Moore was a former FBI agent and college roommate of Wallace Heitman, a Soviet language specialist who played the lead role for the FBI in controlling the first-day evidence: Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2010 edition), p. 326.

Although US intelligence records on de Mohrenschildt go back to at least World War II, CIA Director Richard Helms said that the agency's "initial interest" in George de Mohrenschildt was because he had been a petrochemical consultant with the International Cooperation Administration: Memo by Richard Helms to Warren Commission counsel J. Lee Rankin, 6/3/64, Warren Commission Exhibit 1012.

De Mohrenschildt was appointed by the State Department as the "petroleum adviser" for the independent communist Yugoslavian government in 1957...: Memo of SA Raymond Yelchak, 3/4/64, documenting receipt of de Mohrenschildt resume in 1958.

...and testified to the Warren Commission that ICA was the only US government agency that ever paid him: Warren Commission Hearings, Testimony of George de Mohrenschildt, Volume 9, p. 212.

The AID has been cited by its former director John Gilligan as being filled with CIA agents "from top to bottom...the idea was to plant operatives in every kind of activity we had overseas, government, volunteer, religious, every kind": George Cotter, "Spies, Strings, and Missionaries", The Christian Century (Chicago), March 25, 1981, p. 321, cited in William Blum's Killing Hope (2003), p. 235.

Ruth's father Bill Hyde was regional director of the Nationwide Insurance Company, part of the International Cooperative Alliance founded in 1895 and still active today: See this linked website of the International Cooperative Alliance.

This similiarity between these two ICAs is not accidental - the contracts for both groups were coordinated through AID and the State Department. Both de Mohrenschildt and Hyde were business consultants that traveled abroad working on cooperative ventures and provided reports used by the CIA: See Barbara LaMonica, "William Avery Hyde", Fourth Decade (November 1997), pp. 8, 11.

Meyer's covert action division had considered using Hyde as a security consultant in Vietnam back in 1957 , but CI-SIG's information about Hyde led to denial of any security clearance: 4/8/64 memo by Elizabeth Mendoza, Re: LHO Address Book (FBI Report 12/31/63) Oswald 201 File (201-289248)/NARA Record Number: 104-10300-10025. On the role of CI-SIG, see 12/5/63 memo by Chief, Research Branch/OS/SRS to Files, re William Avery Hyde.

Hyde's problem, like Legend Maker #3 Priscilla Johnson, was that he was active with progressive causes and had family members involved with the United World Federalists: Ruth Forbes Paine Young (Michael Paine's mother) was an influential member of the United World Federalists. George Michael Evica, A Certain Arrogance (Xlibris, 2006), p. 234. Also see the Arthur M. Young website section for Ruth Forbes Paine Young].

Glover was a chemist with Magnolia Labs, a geology lab for Mobil. Glover and four other Magnolia employees encircled Oswald and asked him to tell them about life in the Soviet Union for several hours. One of these employees, Norman Fredericksen, was the son of the former director of Radio Free Europe: This circle was described to Edward Epstein in his book Legend (1977), pp. 206-207, in interviews with participants Betty MacDonald, Norman and Elke Fredricksen, and Richard Pierce. This meeting was corroborated by Richard Helms, based on a report by J. Walton Moore. Memo of March 1964 by Richard Helms to J. Lee Rankin, Reel 44, Folder J, Lee Harvey Oswald Soft File, NARA Record Number: 1994.04.13.14:58:27:500005.

In an amazing coincidence, they moved from Pennsylvania to Oswald's mother's community of Irving, Texas during the second week of September 1959, the very week that Oswald abruptly left his mother and went off to defect to the USSR: Memorandum for file by SA Raymond C. Eckenrode, on March 25, 1964, p. 2, CD 849, p. 6.

They had made the move so that Michael could take a job with the military contractor Bell Helicopter. Michael said that Bell manufactured 40% of all of the aircraft used in the Vietnam War: A.J. Weberman interview with Michael Paine, circa 1993, found in Weberman's Coup D'Etat in America, Nodule 16.

Bell Helicopter was begun and run by Michael's stepfather, Arthur Young, the most recent husband of Michael's mother Ruth Forbes Paine: "Arthur Young with model helicopter", JFKCountercoup, 12/20/09].

By 1963, Meyer was the chief of the Covert Action staff: Cord Meyer, Memorandum for the Record, 4/17/63, pp. 1-4, Miscellaneous CIA Series/NARA Record Number: 104-10302-10000.

...and had worked on the Robert Webster case: Memorandum for the Record, by REDACTED, SR/COP/FI, 10/8/59, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection (microfilm - reel 17: Ruiz - Webster) / NARA Record Number: 104-10181-10128.

Note: The author of this Webster memo, still only known to us as SR/COP/FI, is the same individual who helped stop the second known effort to make Priscilla Johnson a CIA officer: See Memo from Director to REDACTED, 6/19/58, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 43 / NARA Record Number: 104-10119-10287.

In a heavily redacted document, the FBI was informed by a "reliable" source that Ruth's sister Sylvia Hyde Hoke was Naval Intelligence and was trying to obtain a top secret clearance: Commission Document 508 - FBI Mansfield Report of 06 Feb 1957 re: Hoke.

A CIA memorandum indicated that Sylvia Hoke was a CIA employee in 1961: Security File on Sylvia Hoke Hyde, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 43 / NARA Record Number: 1993.07.24.08:39:37:560310.

Washington Post obituary for John Hoke states that he was fired from AID in 1962: Emma Brown, "A Local Life", 3/19/11. Ruth Paine testified to the Orleans Grand Jury that Hoke was working for AID in 1963: Ruth Paine's testimony to the Orleans Grand Jury, 4/18/68, p. 57, Orleans Parish Grand Jury Transcripts.

These documents show Hoke was working for AID in 1963 and 1964: Request for Approval of Liaison, re John Hoke, 8/22/63, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 43 / NARA Record Number: 104-10120-10304; 8/13/64, HSCA Segregated CIA Collection, Box 43 / NARA Record Number: 104-10120-10303.

Michael Paine's family also had access to talent in the intelligence arena. Michael's parents - Ruth Forbes and Lyman Paine - had a close friend named Mary Bancroft: Mary Bancroft, Autobiography of a Spy (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1983); also see Evica, A Certain Arrogance, p. 248.

Michael and Ruth had ostensibly split up, and were living in different houses: Memo by SA James Hosty, 4/1/64, FBI - Ruth and Michael Paine Files / NARA Record Number: 124-10065-10356