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Pseudonym: Gold, Jon

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Definition:
Fred Lee Crisman, aka Dr. F. L. Crisman.
Category:
alias
Status:
Documented
Discussion:
Was Colonel W. D. White really the stepfather of Crisman? Crisman worked with Harold Dahl on the inception of the flying saucer phenomena, and then again on creating the legend of Thomas Beckham in the JFK assassination.
Sources:

180-10085-10264: [No Title]

1947-1963: Third Agency CIA to FBI re (Fred Lee Chrisman aka Dr. F. L. Crisman, Jon Gold): Informant suspicious of Crisman and Beckham operations. Crisman did business as "The National Institute of Criminology, Inc." and "Associated Ambulance and Tow-Car Operators, Inc." Described as "confidence game"...(in 1947) After work for state of Washington became pilot of Harold Dahl's plane. Dahl reputedly black marketeer during war. Dahl allegedly stole idea for beach patrol from Crisman and Crisman severed all ties with him...8/7/47 Dahl and Crisman signed statement that they had picked up strange rock formation and sent it to magazine editor for analysis. Dahl and Crisman said it was part of a flying disk (later admitted this to be false). 7/31-8/1 B-25 plane crashed, killed pilot and co-pilot. Supposedly the pilot and co-pilot had called Dahl and Crisman the preceding day...Fred Lee Crisman, Air Corps - Captain - Reserves - 1942-46. Army officer record...Entered service 11/3/43 Second Lieutenant...Released from active service in 1946 as a First Lieutenant...DOB 7/22/19.

180-10073-10072: INTERVIEW REPORT WILLIAM TURNER DECEMBER 22-24, 1977

1960s: FRED LEE CRISMAN: Turner was interested in Crisman because of his physical similarity to one of the tramps and his association with the Old Orthodox Church and Thomas Beckham. He found that Crisman had been living with a retired Army colonel named WHITE, who is involved with Wide World Advertising in Seattle, Washington. To Turner, it seemed that Crisman was involved in an intelligence operation. Jim Garrison received an anonymous letter in the course of his investigation which pointed to Crisman and said that Crisman was traveling between Seattle and New Orleans all the time...He also was reportedly connected with Sergio Arcacha Smith. He had been in the Air Force. Crisman died in 1975. Beckham, with whom Crisman was connected, was a courier for the anti-Castro groups and acquainted with David Ferrie...(Carl McNabb/Jim Rose), a soldier of fortune who works with Turner, has notes on Crisman/White. McNabb lives in St. Helena, California."

https://archive.org/details/GarrisonPapers/page/n61/mode/2up

1963-1968: Lavender was living in Seattle...another tenant was Wolfgang Jost whose telephone number is EA 3-6718. Meeting held at Jack Tar Hotel with Lavendar and his San Francisco attorney - arrests followed shortly after of several Seattle Minutemen. Lavender displayed Universal Life cards with Beckham's name on them. Beckham told him Ferrie would die about two weeks before he did; similar with a reporter with an unrecalled name who died in GA or AL in late 1965 or 1966. Beckham said he had set up a fundraising office in New Orleans with Arcacha and Rabel. "Crisman told Lavender he would kill Beckham if he was subpoenaed. Crisman described himself as a sexual sadist (note: same persuasion as Clay Shaw), many flights into New Orleans and Dallas; many meetings with Beckham at Roosevelt Hotel in NO. Crisman very right-wing and wrote many anti-JFK articles. Lavender saw Crisman 1-2 week during 1967. Crisman told him about a half a million dollars was raised, with Beckham as custodian. Story goes that "Arcacha and Rabel decided that the money would be used to assassinate President Kennedy. However, to throw the authorities off, Beckham was instructed to land at the Miami airport in possession of about $30K of the total amount...arrangements were made to have the FBI and CIA arrest Arcacha and Rabel and Beckham at the Miami airport and confiscate the 30K...I got the distinctive feeling that Lavender was on stage reiterating a story which he was encouraged to tell us." (Garrison writes in marginalia that it appears Boxley was an agent - now the original Crisman file is missing.) From 2/19/68 memo from William Boxley to DA Jim Garrison re interview with Bob Lavender.

Orleans Parish Grand Jury Testimony of F. Lee Crisman, 21 Nov 1968

1966-1968: Crisman testified he worked for the Riconosciuto advertising agency (Michael Riconosciuto was at the center of the Inslaw scandal). Crisman testified that he did not know Clay Shaw, that his stepfather was W. D. White (a colonel in the infantry) and that his first visit to New Orleans was in late 1966: "I came here with a young man, Tom Beckham, he has a show name of Mark Evans. It was in the vain home that we could promote a record that he was getting ready to cut...I went ahead and financed the trip and it turned out to be nothing...Do you remember the person who introduced you to Beckham? Yes, his name was Harold Dahl...(he owns) a large second-hand store of machinery, all types of books, just plain junk." He met another local citizen named "Roswell Thompson". He remembered the name "Sergio Arcacha" but not meeting him..."I don't travel much." He claims he was embarrassed by becoming a Bishop in the Universal Life Church. He said he was essentially an English teacher who wound up inside Riconosciuto's advertising agency. At p. 29 he states that he hasn't flown in military-type situations since he flew with Chiang Kaishek's air force in the late 1940s - that was the Chinese government that fell to the Chinese Communists and retreated to Taiwan.

124-10196-10385: No Title

March-April 1970: The initial page has marginalia referring to "Criminal Intelligence Program - Seattle", indicating that Crisman might have been a target of that FBI program. The second page shows Director of OS Howard Osborn stating that "a check of Agency records has failed to disclose that Crisman is or ever has been connected with this Agency or any predecessor organization."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Casolaro

1980-1991: (A) theory developed around the (PROMIS/Inslaw) case, with allegations that "back doors" had been inserted into the software so that whomever the Justice Department had sold it to could be spied upon. The major source...was Michael Riconosciuto, described by Rosenbaum as a "rogue scientist/weapons designer/platinum miner/alleged crystal-meth manufacturer... ." Riconoscuito had been introduced to a friend of Casolaro's by Jeff Steinberg, a longtime top aide in the LaRouche organization. Riconosciuto (stated) that he and Earl Brian, a director of Hadron, Inc., a government consulting firm, had paid $40 million to Iranian officials in 1980 to persuade them not to release the American hostages before the conclusion of the presidential election that saw Ronald Reagan elected president of the United States; this is the claim now known as the "October Surprise". In exchange for his helping the Reagan administration, Brian was allegedly allowed to profit from the illegal distribution of the PROMIS system, according to Riconoscuito... Riconosciuto also claimed in a (3/21/91 affidavit) submitted to the court in the Inslaw case that he had modified Inslaw's software at the Justice Department's behest so that it could be sold to dozens of foreign governments with a secret "back door," which allowed outsiders to access computer systems using PROMIS. These modifications allegedly took place at the Cabazon Indian Reservation near Indio, California. Because the reservation was sovereign territory where enforcement of U.S. law was sometimes problematic, Riconosciuto further claimed that he had worked on weapons programs there for the Wackenhut Corporation, such as a powerful "fuel air (On 3/29/91), eight days after submitting the affidavit, Riconosciuto was arrested for, and later convicted of, distributing methamphetamine and methadone", charges that he said were a set-up to keep him from telling his story."

Contributors:
Bill Simpich

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