Post by John Duncan on Dec 23, 2019 22:38:24 GMT -5
This compilation of threats was put together by Gil Jesus.
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1962
In January 1962, Miami detective A.L. Tarabochia was visited at his home by Secret Service agent Ernest Aragon, who revealed that Rafael Anselmo Rodriguez Molino, a naturalized citizen of Dominican ancestry, was enroute to Miami from Chicago to attempt to assassinate President Kennedy next time he arrived in West Palm Beach. Also known as Rafael Molina, he was described as a white male, 39 years old, 5'10", brown eyes, receding black hair and wears glasses. Aragon said that Rodriguez is known to disguise himself as a priest and carries a weapon concealed in a camera case. Since he had a badly infected foot, it was possible that he walked with a limp.
Aragon added that Rodriguez was to contact a Cuban male living in the Miami area before proceeding to West Palm Beach. The Cuban, Armando Pablo Lopez Estrada Quintana, was a member of the forces that attempted the invasion on April 17, 1961. Lopez was described as white male, 23 years old, 6 ft., 200lbs.. He was last seen at his previously known address, 42-26 81st St. Apartment 5H, Jackson Heights, New York on January 1st-3rd. Because of his participation in the abortive invasion of 4/17/61, Lopez received a monthly check from the Cuban Revolutionary Council.
Both of these men had slipped out of sight, and the Secret Service had reason to believe that they were going to meet in Miami. Shortly thereafter, Aragon contacted Tarabochia again, this time to advise him that the two subjects in question had been located in Chicago.
February 9, 1962: a threat by a man named Weisburg, an associate of Philly mob boss Angelo Bruno : "See what Kennedy done ? With Kennedy, a guy should take a knife, like one of them other guys, and stab and kill the fucker...someone should kill the fucker, I mean it. This is true, honest to God...I hope I get a week's notice. I'll kill. Right in the ...White House. Somebody's got to get rid of this fucker."
The threat is recorded by FBI bugs and is transmitted by Airtel to Hoover, who decides not to inform the Secret Service or the Attorney General. By the end of February 1962, Secret Service chief James Rowley was asking for more men to guard Kennedy. To justify the increase in staffing Rowley said that threatening letters to the president had increased 52 % in 1961.
Mid-April 1962: According to one Thadeus Zielonko, an electrician's technician for Arma Corporation who worked on a project at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, another Arma employee named James Troy "Hank" Hankins told him that "There is a plan in Dallas to get rid of Kennedy". When asked about the plan, Hankins said that there was at least one official in on it, and that Dallas was involved because, "That's where they make things happen". Zielonko felt at the time that Hankins was just being boastful, so he did not report this to the FBI until December 3, 1963, after JFK had been murdered. The FBI interviewed Hankins on March 4, 1964 and although he admitted working at Dyess Air Force Base, in mid April '62, he denied making any such statements and contended that he did not discuss politics. A follow-up report was done on Hankins shortly after March 30, 1964, but consisted of a background check. He had no criminal record, his credit was good and he was deemed a "talker". Despite the fact that 18 months in advance of the murder, this man had expressed his knowledge of a plot to "get rid" of the President in the EXACT city where JFK was assassinated, the matter was dropped by the FBI.
On November 22, 1963, Hankins apparently just happened to stroll up onto Stemmons Freeway with a camera and snapped a picture of JFK's limo as it went speeding by on its way to Parkland Hospital.
On September 11, 1962, from his hideaway at Churchill Farms, New Orleans Crime boss Carlos Marcello commented that he had already planned a hit on Kennedy. He was furious at being humiliatedly deported to Guatemala in 1961 on the orders of RFK. But killing RFK would only cause the president to come after the mob with all the power of the federal government. Killing the president, however, would in effect stop the attorney general, who would now be answerable to a new president. He used the analogy, " If you chop off the tail of the dog, the dog.can still bite you. But if you chop off the head, the tail dies too." Present at that meeting was Edward Becker, who worked with an ex-FBI agent named Julian Blodgett. After Becker recounted the incident to Blodgett, Blodgett notified the FBI. Hoover took the information and sat on it. He never notified the Attorney General or the Secret Service about it.
In September 1962, Jose Aleman, an FBI informant, had a meeting with Florida mob boss Santos Trafficante. The meeting had to do with a loan from the Teamsters' Union that Aleman was looking for. Trafficante told Aleman that Kennedy was a corrupt man, a man who did not keep his bargains, adding, "this man Kennedy is in trouble, and he will get what's coming to him." When Aleman said that JFK would probably be re-elected, Trafficante said that, "No Jose', he's going to be hit." Aleman did not believe that Trafficante would be personally involved, but he did believe that Jimmy Hoffa would be. Dramatically different from previous threats, this one speaks of a specific contract to assassinate Kennedy before 11/8/64. When Hoover learned of the plot by the mob to assassinate the president, he concealed its existence from the Secret Service and the Attorney General. Meanwhile, other threats to Kennedy's life were being made.
The Secret Service, tipped off about a possible attempt on the President's life by Cuban exiles during his trip to Los Angeles, arranged for him to spend eighteen hours aboard two aircraft carriers at California's China Lake Naval Ordnance Testing Station. To stall for time, the President was "given a look at virtually every weapon in the Navy arsenal." He and Mrs. Kennedy were in LA to attend the premiere at the Beverly Hilton of the movie PT-109 starring Cliff Robertson. It is the story of how JFK saved his crew after his PT boat had been cut in two by a Japanese destroyer. For security purposes, the President and
That evening, he flew on to Hawaii to discuss civil rights issues at the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
He related that he had no intention of making a serious theat to harm the President and claimed he was "only joking." His trip to Mobile, he said, was to visit friends and relatives. On the 31st, one week after Oswald had visited there, the FBI raided a home near the camp at Lake Ponchartrain. They seized more than a ton of dynamite, bomb casing and napalm material. The home was owned by William McLaney, who was connected with organized crime. Within days, the exiles found out through Banister that Oswald had "ratted" them out.
Sometime in September, John Richard Salisbury, an engineer with the Brown & Root construction firm in Houston, visited a relative of his named Robert Norris. Norris was a law clerk employed by the Hunt Oil Company in Dallas and claimed to be close to H.L.Hunt. During the visit, Norris stated that "if Kennedy comes to Texas, he will get shot or killed." In addition, Norris said that the only way to get rid of him was to kill him; that Kennedy was taking over complete control of the government, and made other statements.
Castellanos: We're wating for Kennedy the 22nd, buddy. We're going to see him in one way or the other. We're going to give him the works when he gets to Dallas. Mr. good ol' Kennedy. I wouldn't even call him President Kennedy. He stinks.
Questioner: Are you saying that since this downfall (of democracy) came through the leader (Castro) there (in Cuba), that this might come to us?
In addition to this threat, Thomas Arthur Vallee, a vocal Kennedy critic and member of the John Birch Society, was arrested by the Secret Service in Chicago after a search of the vehicle he was driving revealed that he had an M-1 rifle,
On November 9, 1963, Miami Police informant Willie Somerset recorded a breakfast meeting with his friend Joseph Milteer, who outlined the assassination of President Kennedy. Milteer was taped by Somerset as he spoke
of Kennedy's coming visit to Miami on November 18th:
Some fives years after Kennedy's murder, Milteer also expressed specific knowledge of murder plots against the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
Quote on
1962
In January 1962, Miami detective A.L. Tarabochia was visited at his home by Secret Service agent Ernest Aragon, who revealed that Rafael Anselmo Rodriguez Molino, a naturalized citizen of Dominican ancestry, was enroute to Miami from Chicago to attempt to assassinate President Kennedy next time he arrived in West Palm Beach. Also known as Rafael Molina, he was described as a white male, 39 years old, 5'10", brown eyes, receding black hair and wears glasses. Aragon said that Rodriguez is known to disguise himself as a priest and carries a weapon concealed in a camera case. Since he had a badly infected foot, it was possible that he walked with a limp.
Aragon added that Rodriguez was to contact a Cuban male living in the Miami area before proceeding to West Palm Beach. The Cuban, Armando Pablo Lopez Estrada Quintana, was a member of the forces that attempted the invasion on April 17, 1961. Lopez was described as white male, 23 years old, 6 ft., 200lbs.. He was last seen at his previously known address, 42-26 81st St. Apartment 5H, Jackson Heights, New York on January 1st-3rd. Because of his participation in the abortive invasion of 4/17/61, Lopez received a monthly check from the Cuban Revolutionary Council.
Both of these men had slipped out of sight, and the Secret Service had reason to believe that they were going to meet in Miami. Shortly thereafter, Aragon contacted Tarabochia again, this time to advise him that the two subjects in question had been located in Chicago.
February 9, 1962: a threat by a man named Weisburg, an associate of Philly mob boss Angelo Bruno : "See what Kennedy done ? With Kennedy, a guy should take a knife, like one of them other guys, and stab and kill the fucker...someone should kill the fucker, I mean it. This is true, honest to God...I hope I get a week's notice. I'll kill. Right in the ...White House. Somebody's got to get rid of this fucker."
The threat is recorded by FBI bugs and is transmitted by Airtel to Hoover, who decides not to inform the Secret Service or the Attorney General. By the end of February 1962, Secret Service chief James Rowley was asking for more men to guard Kennedy. To justify the increase in staffing Rowley said that threatening letters to the president had increased 52 % in 1961.
Mid-April 1962: According to one Thadeus Zielonko, an electrician's technician for Arma Corporation who worked on a project at Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, another Arma employee named James Troy "Hank" Hankins told him that "There is a plan in Dallas to get rid of Kennedy". When asked about the plan, Hankins said that there was at least one official in on it, and that Dallas was involved because, "That's where they make things happen". Zielonko felt at the time that Hankins was just being boastful, so he did not report this to the FBI until December 3, 1963, after JFK had been murdered. The FBI interviewed Hankins on March 4, 1964 and although he admitted working at Dyess Air Force Base, in mid April '62, he denied making any such statements and contended that he did not discuss politics. A follow-up report was done on Hankins shortly after March 30, 1964, but consisted of a background check. He had no criminal record, his credit was good and he was deemed a "talker". Despite the fact that 18 months in advance of the murder, this man had expressed his knowledge of a plot to "get rid" of the President in the EXACT city where JFK was assassinated, the matter was dropped by the FBI.
On November 22, 1963, Hankins apparently just happened to stroll up onto Stemmons Freeway with a camera and snapped a picture of JFK's limo as it went speeding by on its way to Parkland Hospital.
On September 11, 1962, from his hideaway at Churchill Farms, New Orleans Crime boss Carlos Marcello commented that he had already planned a hit on Kennedy. He was furious at being humiliatedly deported to Guatemala in 1961 on the orders of RFK. But killing RFK would only cause the president to come after the mob with all the power of the federal government. Killing the president, however, would in effect stop the attorney general, who would now be answerable to a new president. He used the analogy, " If you chop off the tail of the dog, the dog.can still bite you. But if you chop off the head, the tail dies too." Present at that meeting was Edward Becker, who worked with an ex-FBI agent named Julian Blodgett. After Becker recounted the incident to Blodgett, Blodgett notified the FBI. Hoover took the information and sat on it. He never notified the Attorney General or the Secret Service about it.
In September 1962, Jose Aleman, an FBI informant, had a meeting with Florida mob boss Santos Trafficante. The meeting had to do with a loan from the Teamsters' Union that Aleman was looking for. Trafficante told Aleman that Kennedy was a corrupt man, a man who did not keep his bargains, adding, "this man Kennedy is in trouble, and he will get what's coming to him." When Aleman said that JFK would probably be re-elected, Trafficante said that, "No Jose', he's going to be hit." Aleman did not believe that Trafficante would be personally involved, but he did believe that Jimmy Hoffa would be. Dramatically different from previous threats, this one speaks of a specific contract to assassinate Kennedy before 11/8/64. When Hoover learned of the plot by the mob to assassinate the president, he concealed its existence from the Secret Service and the Attorney General. Meanwhile, other threats to Kennedy's life were being made.
1963
On April 4, 1963, a Miami Police informant reported on plans by Cuban exile groups to direct their acts of violence, previously reserved for Castro, (including murder) against members of the U.S. Government. The exiles were responding to Kennedy's crackdown which started on March 30th.
Believing that the United States Government had "turned against them", the exiles were regrouping into new factions and proposing a series of "actions", including "a complete disregard for Federal, State, and local authority" and "the bombing of Federal agencies".
According to the Miami PD informant, "all violence hither-to-directed toward Castro's Cuba will now be directed toward various government agencies in the United States".
In their call to "all our fellow countrymen", "The Fort Jackson Commandos", Cuban exiles who had received special training and courses under the CIA and the Army, said that "we are already organized and fighting again for the liberty of Cuba."
They weren't the only ones threatening violence. Wealthy right-wing extremists from across the United States met for the annual Congress for Freedom in New Orleans on April 4-6. At that meeting was another Miami PD informant who reported that the COF membership included "ranking members of the Armed Forces that secretly belonged to the organization". The informant went on to report that in various speeches, "there was indicated that the overthrow of the present government of the United States" was necessary. To achieve this, "criminal activity" was proposed "to assassinate particular persons". Those "particular persons" were the Kennedys and Dr. Martin Luther King.
The Anti-Communist Liaison seminar was held on April 26-27 at the Washington Hotel. Speakers at the seminar included Edward Hunter, an ex-CIA man who made "brainwashing" part of the American lexicon. Retired General Charles Willoughby was part of an afternoon panel discussing "psywar" (mind control) tactics. General Bonner Fellers, former chief of General MacArthur's joint planning section, discussed "State Department Aims". Soldier of fortune Alexander Rorke was a speaker, reporting on a recent "bombing mission of Cuban oil refineries and tanks". Madame Anna Chennault, whose husband fought alongside Chiang-Kai-shek against the Chinese Communists, remarked that, "In fighting Communism, we should not aim at peace but aim at victory. We are making the same coexistence policy mistakes in the United States that we formerly made with China, Laos" and many other places. On the same panel was Sarah McClendon, a veteran news correspondent in Washington, who complained about Kennedy's attempts at controlling the news and plugging intelligence leaks, by saying that the "American mind was being taken over by managed news."
Also, in April 1963, a George Harding informed the FBI that he was being recruited to become part of an eight man team to assassinate three hundred public officials in high positions of government. According to WCD 39 and WCD 1107, Harding claimed that the leaders in the group were " Dr. Wesley Swift, James Shoup, and others, and that the second in command was Col. William Gale.
Gale was the founder of the California Rangers, a violent minuteman-type.para-military group bent on preventing a communist takeover of the United States. Gale was friendly with General Walker and stayed at his house sometime in July 1963. Gale was also friendly with American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell, whose name was found in Oswald's address book.
When Kennedy visited Nashville, Tenn, on May 18, 1963 another threat materialized. At Overton High School, a man approached the president with a gun underneath a sack--he was grabbed by the Secret Service and the incident was kept quiet to keep from encouraging similar attacks. (Nashville Banner 1/23/92)
On June 5th, President Kennedy, headed for the West Coast, stopped off to meet with Governor Connally and Vice-President Johnson at the Cortez Hotel in El Paso. A Texas political trip had been stalled by the Governor and the conservative machine in the state, which didn't want him there. But the President was persistent and the Governor was forced to yield to his wishes. The final decision to go to Texas was agreed upon. After the final plans were made, right-wing extremist Colonel Chesley Clark told ultra right professor Revilo Oliver of a likely "communist" conspiracy to kill the President before Thanksgiving. The "psywar" had begun.
First Lady were flown from China Lake to the preview by helicopter, which landed on the roof of the Hilton.
On July 24th, a group of anti-Castro Cubans arrived in New Orleans from Miami and joined a training camp off Lake Ponchartrain. Members were from the International Anti-Communist Brigade, (IAB) established by Frank Sturgis and Gerry Patrick Hemming. They joined members of the paramilitary right-wing Minutemen. Oswald joined Dave Ferrie at the camp with this group. It was here that he met Arnesto Rodriguez, a Cuban exile who ran a Spanish language school, who acted as an interpreter and was one of the controllers of funds for the Free Cuba Committee, the group financed by William Reilly.
On the 26th, a 22-year old unemployed Richmond, Va. man named James A. Hawkins was arrested in Mobile, Alabama on a charge of threatening bodily harm to President Kennedy. On the previous Friday, he had been walking in Laurel, Md. with a bag when he stopped at a service station for directions to Washington. During a conversation with the station attendant, Hawkins criticized Kennedy's civil rights program and said that he was going to Washington "to blow up the White House and kill the President." The attendant then called the state police, who stopped Hawkins and searched his bag, to find that it contained only clothing. They released Hawkins and reported the matter to the U.S. Secret Service, who obtained an arrest warrant from a federal judge in Baltimore. Hawkins apparently changed his mind about going to Washington and instead fled south to Mobile. When the Secret Service learned of this, it issued a "pickup order" on Hawkins. He was arrested two days later at a Mobile Bay service station by SS agent Forrest Guthrie and held in the Mobile County Jail in lieu of a $ 5,000 bond. At his removal hearing before U.S. Commissioner Alex Howard, Hawkins made no plea.
Banister had received his information from FBI Agent Warren DeBrueys, who had been assigned to the New Orleans field office and was monitoring the movements of both pro- and anti-Castro Cubans in that area. Being in the FBI office, DeBrueys was in perfect position to know what Oswald had been informing on. He.notified Banister that Oswald was a security risk. If Oswald got to know the right people within the exile community, he may discover the plot to kill the President.
With his connections in the Office of Naval Intelligence, Banister was able to examine Oswald's military intelligence file. In addition, DeBrueys was able to provide him with copies of Oswald's two FBI files, his security file and his informant file which indicated that Oswald had been an FBI informant since June 1962. Angered over what they perceived as Oswald's betrayal of their cause, the exiles and Banister decided to set Oswald up in an operation designed to publicly portray him as being a Castro sympathizer.
Oswald, who had no idea that they were on to him, was told that this "publicity campaign" was part of the plan to weed out the Castro agents within the exile community. A White House memorandum prepared for the President and dated August 15, 1963 estimated that the radical right spent as much as $25 million annually, supported by about 70 foundations, 113 corporations, 25 utility companies, and 250 identifiable individuals. It went further on to examine the Conservative Society of America (CSA), organized by Kent and Phoebe Courtney of New Orleans in June, 1962. Kent Courtney, a personal friend of Guy Banister, had been the National States' Rights party candidate for governor of Louisiana in 1960. The memo noted that the Courtney's CSA "claims a membership of several thousand, located in 47 states" and that among those said to be associated with the CSA was "Major Charles Willoughby of the District of Columbia". It also went on to describe H.L. Hunt as being "a frank champion of plutocracy, and reputed to be the richest or second richest man in America ...In a Texas speech, he said, "It is just as well that the Cuban invasion failed, because it was just one communist government taking over another."
Garrett Trapnell was another person with foreknowledge of a plot to kill the President. At the time, he had been incarcerated in the Kent County Jail in Chestertown, Maryland for writing bad checks. Hoping to work a "deal" for his freedom, he decided to contact the FBI and supply them with some information that he had.
A document in the National Archives records that on August 19, 1963, Trapnell notified the FBI that he had been solicited by a Cuban group to participate in what he then described as a kidnap\assassination plot against Attorney General Robert Kennedy, scheduled for September.
Later, Trapnell would reveal that the President was the actual target. Warren Commission Document 196 recounts that during his August 19th interview with FBI agent Francis L. Pearthree, Trapnell said that in May or June 1963, he had met with four Cuban exiles in Miami's "Little Havana" section. They smoked marijuana, sniffed cocaine and drank. They talked freely and told Trapnell that the four of them had planned to kidnap and kill Robert Kennedy in an attempt to sabotage any relationship between Castro's Cuba and the United States. The group displayed gasoline company maps of Virginia and floor plans for a house that they said was RFK's. In addition, the group showed him a closet where at least 14 rifles, four .38 caliber revolvers, fragmentation and concussion hand grenades, and plastic explosives were stored. The group also gave Trapnell one of the rifles, a 7.62 millimeter semi or full automatic rifle with ventilated ribs extending the full length of the barrel, a tripod under the muzzle, with the wood stock removed and replaced with a metal stock. The rifle was allegedly of Russian make, resembled the U.S. Browning automatic rifle.
But Trapnell wasn't finished. He dropped names. According to the FBI, they checked records at the Miami Immigration and Naturalization Service and came up "negative for all individuals" whom Trapnell had named, except one. But the FBI had "determined through interviews with those who knew him, that he could not possibly have been the MIGUEL AMADOR FUENTES who Trapnell said was a party to the plot." The FBI never brought Fuentes in for questioning and never reported him to the Secret Service. They just took the word of friends and relatives. Remarkable.
Unable to locate any of the men whom he had named, the FBI turned its investigation on Trapnell himself. The day after supplying the FBI with this information, Trapnell was admitted to the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital in Jessup, Maryland "for observation and study". On August 21st, the agent in charge of the Secret Service office in Miami, John Marshall, reported that in January 1962, an FBI informant named Aaron Paul Wilheit accused Garrett Trapnell and Jose Antonio Lanusa, both of whom were in jail at the time, of plotting to kidnap the children of President Kennedy. The Secret Service interviewed both men and both denied it.
Lanusa was the secretary for American Affairs in Miami for the exile group, the DRE. Warren Commission Exhibit 1138 briefly notes that "Oswald known to one Jose Lanusa, Miami". On August 29th, two FBI agents "re-interviewed" Trapnell in an attempt to get him to change his story. Instead, he repeated his story and "protested that he was telling the truth." On December 4, 1963 they paid him another visit. He told them that he had first met "Fuentes" while both were stationed with the Army at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and then again when both were in the mountains with Castro. He added that someone in the group had said, "We're going to get Kennedy in the fall", but he thought that they were referring to Robert Kennedy.
A final FBI report on Trapnell dated February 11, 1964, indicated that he had "admitted" that he had "invented the story to confuse and complicate the facts surrounding local criminal charges against him in Chestertown, Maryland."
In 1977, Trapnell called the FBI reports about him "doctored". He claimed to have "admitted" to making the story up when he was threatened by "five or six" FBI agents on the day after the assassination. They told him, "if there's any more of this, we'll know how to handle you" and added, "just be crazy and everything will be alright". He agreed. A few months later, he was released from the hospital. Trapnell was never called to testify before the Warren Commission.
An associate of Col. William Gale, named George King Jr. was arrested in August of 1963 for the sale of illegal firearms. Prior to his arrest, King was overheard discussing the possibility of assassinating the president. An FBI field report (CO2-26104 #6419) stated that "King is extreme right-wing, hates Jews,and had been arrested by ATF agent O'Neil. Emotionally unstable."
During he last week of August, Jerry Russell Craddock, a graduate student of the University of California, Berkeley, met with a friend named Robert Brown, who would later become famous as founder of Soldier of Fortune magazine. At the time, Brown was a captain with the School Brigade located at Fort Benning, Georgia. Brown told Craddock that while in California raising money for anti-Castro activity, he was in contact with the National States' Rights Party. It was during this period that he became acqauinted with a Dr. Stanley Drennan, who was active in the NSRP. Brown told Craddock that while a guest in Drennan's home, he and the doctor spoke about the possibility of killing Kennedy and that Drennan stated that although he could not do it himself, what the organization needed was a group of young men to get rid of Kennedy, the cabinet and all of the members of Americans for Democratic Action.
The bitterness of the Cuban exiles against Kennedy was illustrated in a tape recording of a meeting between members of the extremist John Birch Society and Cuban exiles in the Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch on October 1, 1963. The guest speaker was a Cuban identified as Ernesto "Nestor" Castellanos, a pilot during the Bay of Pigs invasion, who vehemently criticized Kennedy's policy of "non-interference" with regard to the Cuban issue. Holding a copy of the September 26th edition of the Dallas Morning News, featuring a front-page account of the President's trip to Texas in November, Castellanos vented his hostility without restraint:
Questioner: Are you saying that since this downfall (of democracy) came through the leader (Castro) there (in Cuba), that this might come to us?
Castellanos: Yes ma'am, your present leader (Kennedy). He's the one who is doing everything right now to help the United States become Communist.
Little did Castellanos know that his comments were being taped by an informant for the Dallas Police Intelligence Unit.
In March 1962, Army private first class Eugene B. Dinkin was assigned to the 529th Ordinance Company in Metz, France as a cryptographic code operator. After enlisting in the Army in 1961, he had received his training at Fort Gordon, Georgia. His assignment made him part of the National Security Agency. One of his duties as a code-breaker involved deciphering telegraphs which had originated with the French right-wing paramilitary organization which had tried to kill DeGaulle, the OAS.
On October 22, 1963, Dinkin wrote to Attorney General Robert Kennedy warning that "an attempt to assassinate the President would occur on November 28th; that if it were to succeed, blame would be placed upon a Communist or a Negro, who would be designated the assassin; and believing that the conspiracy was being engineered by the military, I did speculate that a military coup might ensue. I did request of the Attorney General that he send a representative of the Justice Dept. to Metz, France to discuss this warning......"
A few days later, Dinkin began to wonder if his warning would reach RFK or be intercepted. On October 25th, he attempted to contact several European ambassadors who he had hoped would carry his message. No one replied, which increased his paranoia. He had heard through the grapevine that he was to be locked up as a psychotic. On November 2, after already receiving stamped approval for a leave, he was called back to the Commanding Officer's office, where he was told that his leave was cancelled. Concealing the stamped pass, he tore up a blank one.
The following day, he used the stamped pass to leave Metz by train bound for Switzerland. On November 6, unable to get his warning through diplomatic channels, Dinkin told his story to the owner-editor of the Geneva Diplomat, warning that "they" were plotting against Kennedy and that "something" would happen in Texas....That evening, Dinkin left Switzerland for Frankfurt, West Germany, where he again told the story, this time to the editor of Overseas Weekly, who didn't believe him. The editor advised Dinkin to return to his unit before his AWOL charge was converted to a desertion charge. Dinkin journeyed to Bonn, arriving at the U.S. embassy, where he was asked for his military ID and to prove the authenticity of his leave. Unable to do this because of his AWOL status, he then left the embassy without conveying his message. Unable to warn Kennedy of the danger, Dinkin returned to his unit in Metz. He attempted to deceive the military with a story that he had attended a "political" matter in Switzerland. His attempts failed, however, and he was arrested and spent the next five days in jail, until it was decided what to do with him. On November 13th, he was transported to a closed psychiatric ward in Landstuhl General Hospital.
At the end of October, the Chicago Secret Service received an FBI teletype detailing a plot by four Cuban gunmen to kill Kennedy in Chicago with "high-powered rifles" during a motorcade. The President was scheduled to visit there on November 2nd to attend an Army-Navy football game. Two suspects were arrested and detained by the Secret Service in Chicago on November 1st. Kennedy cancelled out of the trip.
a handgun and three thousand rounds of ammunition. Vallee had asked his employer for the day of Kennedy's motorcade off. When arrested, he had been driving a car with New York plates, number 311-ORF.
of Kennedy's coming visit to Miami on November 18th:
Somerset: "I think Kennedy is coming here on the 18th to make some kind of speech. I imagine it will be on TV."
Milteer: "You can bet your bottom dollar that he (JFK) is going to have a lot to say about the Cubans, there are so many of them here."
Somerset: "Yeah, well, he'll have a thousand bodyguards. Don't worry about that."
Milteer: "The more bodyguards he has, the easier it is to get to him."
Somerset: "Well, how in the hell do you figure would be the best way to get him?"
Milteer: "From an office building with a high-powered rifle."
Somerset: "Do you think he knows he's a marked man?"
Milteer: "Sure he does."
Somerset: "Are they really going to kill him?"
Milteer: "Oh, yeah, it's in the works. Brown (Jack Brown, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan) himself, Brown is just as likely to get him as anybody in the world. He hasn't said so, but he's tried to get Martin Luther King, Jr."
Prodded for more information, Milteer continues:
Milteer: "Disassemble a gun. You don't have to take a gun up there, you can take it up in pieces. All those guns come knock down, you can take them apart."
Somerset: "Boy if that Kennedy gets shot, we have to know where we are at. Because you know that will be a real shake.."
Milteer: (An investigation) would leave no stone unturned there, no way. They will pick up somebody within hours afterward....just to throw the public off."
Somerset: "Oh, somebody is going to go to jail if he gets killed."
Milteer: "Just like Bruno Hauptmann in the Lindbergh case, you know."
Somerset asked when such an assassination would take place, to which Milteer replied:
"It's in the works....there ain't any countdown to it. We have just got to be sitting on go. Countdown, they can move in on you, and on go they can't. Countdown is alright for a slow, prepared operation. But in an emergency situation, you have got to be sitting on go."
Captain Charles Sapp of the Miami Police Intelligence Bureau was concerned enough with Milteer's remark about the President's assassination being "in the works" to notify both the FBI and the Secret Service of the threat. Miami Police provided both agencies with copies of the taped conversation two weeks before the assassination. Despite the fact that this threat was perceived as significant enough to cancel the motorcade, both the FBI and the Secret Service failed to pass the information on to those responsible for the President's Dallas trip.
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