JOHN SIMKIN ARCHIVE

John Simkin (BA, MA, MPhil)

HERE you will find collected articles and presentations by one of our most knowledgeable and respected JFK researchers: educator, essayist, and historian John Simkin. Please Bookmark this page for updates.

The AM/WORLD PROJECT

10 April, 2025 | By John Simkin

The declassification of the CIA memorandum discussing the activities of Gary Underhill and Samuel Cummings dated 19th July 1967 has allowed researchers to place both men within the highly secret AM/WORLD project in 1963. (1)

The first AM/WORLD document released (27th January 1999) was a five-page memo prepared on 28th June 1963. It was sent by Joseph Caldwell King, Chief of the CIA’s Western Hemisphere Division. “This will serve to alert you to the inception of AM/WORLD, a new CIA program targeted against Cuba. Some manifestations of activity resulting from this program may come to your notice before long… The Kennedy Administration, it should be emphasized, is willing to accept the risks involved in utilizing autonomous Cuban exile groups and individuals who are not necessarily responsive to CIA guidance and to face up to the consequences which are unavoidable in lowering professional standards adhered to by autonomous groups (as compared with fully controlled and disciplined agent assets) is bound to entail.” (2)

In his autobiography, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA (2005), Ted Shackley explained that Manuel Ray had been used in several unsuccessful operations against Fidel Castro. He had him checked out by David Sanchez Morales and Thomas Clines. After he read their reports, he “concluded by describing Ray as a far-left ideologue and as much a political and economic threat to American interests in the Caribbean as was Castro.” Instead, he chose Manuel Artime to run AM/WORLD. “Artime was different. He had solid anti-Batista credentials stemming from his early days as a captain in the Rebel Army. He was an early participant in the Movement for Revolutionary Recovery (MRR) and had helped to build the party, although his ambition had then made him a divisive force in the movement.” (3)

The document goes on to point out that the “CIA will confine itself to supporting the efforts” of Manuel Artime and his exile group. “Artime will be in touch with a senior CIA officer, operating under a fully documented alias, who is to serve as his adviser and hopefully as his sole direct link with the Kennedy Administration.” In fact, it was not Artime but Enrique (Harry) Ruiz-Williams who would be in direct contact with Robert F. Kennedy about AM/WORLD. Lamar Waldron has pointed out that the CIA was being somewhat disingenuous as Artime had been working with the CIA since 1959, when he attempted his first CIA-backed coup against Castro. “But what was different about AM/WORLD was that Artime – and the others – were now taking orders not from the CIA, but from Bobby Kennedy.” (4)

The decision to appoint Manuel Artime was confirmed in a memorandum sent by M. K. Holbik to Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security on 16th October 1964: “AM/WORLD was an autonomous operation. In theory, as I understand it, the Agency would furnish funds and materials, but the actual handling, direction, or control of the Project would be by the Project head, Manuel Artime; cryptonym, AMBIDDY-1. AMBIDDY-1 need no longer accommodate divergent political philosophies and will be able to dictate his own terms. This we realise, is an authoritarian doctrine, but we are firmly convinced that any movement which wants to challenge Fidel Castro need to be run along authoritarian lines, insists on a modicum of homogeneity in outlook and enforce strict discipline. Until AMBIDDY-1 provides unmistakeable evidence that he is not the man for the job, we intend to give him our unstinting support, in full awareness of the fact that his judgment is not infallible and that in the choice of his co-workers he may occasionally commit a blunder. As long as his batting average holds up, we won’t worry. (5)

The AM/WORLD memo (104-10315-10004) was declassified on 27th January 1999, and discovered by Stuart Wexler in 2004 who showed it to Larry Hancock. With the help of researchers such as Malcolm Blunt, Hancock obtained the names of other CIA officers involved in AM/WORLD. Hancock points out that AM/WORLD had its own separate operations staff based in Miami and Mexico City. The head of AM/WORLD and Artime’s case officer was Henry Hecksher. The ranking exile under Artime was Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero who worked closely with CIA paramilitary officer, Carl E. Jenkins, the was military advisor to the AM/WORLD project. David Atlee Phillips was designated to organize safe houses and related activities for AM/WORLD. Other CIA officers who attended AM/WORLD and AM/TRUCK (an effort to produce an internal revolution against Castro in Cuba) meetings, included Ted Shackley and David Sanchez Morales. (6)

In another memorandum dated 14th November 1963, Desmond FitzGerald explained to Ted Shackley why he had chosen Manuel Artime (AMBIDDY-1) to head the AM/WORLD project: “AMBIDDY-1 need no longer accommodate divergent political philosophies and will be able to dictate his own terms. This we realise, is an authoritarian doctrine, but we are firmly convinced that any movement which wants to challenge Fidel Castro need to be run along authoritarian lines, insists on a modicum of homogeneity in outlook and enforce strict discipline. Until AMBIDDY-1 provides unmistakeable evidence that he is not the man for the job, we intend to give him our unstinting support, in full awareness of the fact that his judgment is not infallible and that in the choice of his co-workers he may occasionally commit a blunder. As long as his batting average holds up, we won’t worry.” (7)

David Sanchez Morales with his key role heading CIA Operations in Miami, had a hand in all the CIA actions against Fidel Castro in 1963. Bradley Ayers, a US Army Ranger (Special Forces) Captain who was assigned to the CIA JMWAVE station to train Cuban commandos and who worked for the Special Group Augmented (SGA), later claimed that “Morales held sway with Ted Shackley and dominated the entire operational agenda at the CIA Station…. Morales was often demonstrably irritated with changes to planned covert/paramilitary operations that were handed down by CIA headquarters at Langley or by orders from Bobby Kennedy’s Special Group that seemed to be micro-managing the secret war against Castro.” (8)

Larry Hancock has argued that “This CIA autonomous group project was part of a larger Kennedy administration multi-agency effort to produce a coup within Cuba which would internally remove Fidel and Raul Castro, allowing their replacement with a new provisional government in which exile leaders would play a key role. The CIA was not in charge of this effort but was limited to supporting Artime’s military build-up off shore and other related political actions including helping him establish contacts and infrastructure in a number of Latin America countries.” (9)

However, it is not clear that the Kennedy administration was aware of the AM/WORLD project. Arthur Schlesinger explained to Anthony Summers in 1978 why the CIA did not want President Kennedy to negotiate with Fidel Castro during the summer of 1963. He pointed out that the head of the CIA’s Cuba unit, Desmond FitzGerald, masquerading as an American Senator, had told Rolando Cubela that a coup against Castro would have the full backing of the United States Government: “The CIA was reviving the assassination plots at the very time President Kennedy was considering the possibility of normalization of relations with Cuba – an extraordinary action. If it was not total incompetence – which in the case of the CIA cannot be excluded – it was a studied attempt to subvert national policy.” (10)

In 1963 Gary Underhill and Samuel Cummings, became involved in the AM/WORLD project. (11) By the late 1950s Cummings, a former CIA officer, had become the owner of Interarmco, one of the world’s largest military and civilian arms trading companies. He travelled the world buying foreign weapons with which to supply resistance groups behind the Iron Curtain. (12)

Larry Hancock and Stuart Wexler pointed out in Shadow Warfare: The History of America’s Undeclared Wars (2014) that over $326,000 from the AM/WORLD project was spent with Cummings’ company Interarmco. “That was for everything from rifles to cannons. AM/WORLD personnel actually travelled to Europe to facilitate issues and make changes in orders for weapons not in stock with Interarmco. Cut out firms were established in Panama and Costa Rica. In Costa Rica the project used an airfield which was already being used for smuggling.” (13)

The day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Gary Underhill left Washington in a hurry. Late in the evening he showed up at the homes of friends in New Jersey, Robert and Charlene Fitzsimmons. He told Charlene: “I couldn’t believe they’d got away with it, but they did. They tried it in Cuba, but they couldn’t get away with it. After the Bay of Pigs. But Kennedy wouldn’t let them get away with it. He was about to blow the whistle on them…The country is too dangerous for me now. They’ve gone mad. They’re drug runners and gun runners. They get the intelligence and come back and tell the government how to run the country. And they’re lying. And those idiots are listening to it. Kennedy gave them some time after the Bay of Pigs. ‘We’ll give them a chance to save face,’ he said. The CIA is under enough pressure already.” (14)

Gary Underhill told his friends that he had become aware of this “clique” was involved in selling weapons: “This country is too dangerous for me. I’ve got to get on a boat. Oswald is a patsy. They set him up. It’s too much. The bastards have done something outrageous. They’ve killed the president! I’ve been listening and hearing things. I couldn’t believe they’d get away with it, but they did. They’ve gone mad! They’re a bunch of drug runners and gun runners – a real violence group. I know who they are. That’s the problem. They know I know. That’s why I’m here.” (15)

The journalist, Asher Brynes visited Gary Underhill on 8th May 1964. His apartment door was unlocked, he was found in bed dead from a single shot behind his left ear. The weapon used was one of his own pistols. (16) In addition to the wound behind the left-ear, the pistol was found under the left side of his body. Brynes felt this to be suspicious as Underhill was right-handed. The police investigation was minimal, and the coroner reported the death as a suicide. (17)

If Underhill was working on the AM/WORLD project was he right when he claimed that Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy and that he was murdered by members of the CIA. If so, he was suggesting that people like Henry Hecksher, Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero, Carl E. Jenkins, David Atlee Phillips Ted Shackley and David Sanchez Morales were involved in the assassination. (18)

Robert F. Kennedy also suspected that members of the AM/WORLD project might be involved in the killing of his brother. On the evening of the assassination, Kennedy spoke to Enrique (Harry) Ruiz-Williams, a Bay of Pigs veteran who was his closest associate in the Cuban exile community. Kennedy shocked his friend by telling him, “One of your guys did it.” The journalist, Haynes Johnson, was with Ruiz-Williams at the time later recalled: “Harry stood there with the phone in his hand and then he told me what Bobby said… It was a shocking thing. I’ll never forget, Harry got this look on his face. After he hung up, Harry told me what Bobby had said.” (19)

As David Talbot pointed out: “When Bobby Kennedy told his comrade-in-arms Harry Ruiz-Williams, ‘One of your guys did it,’ he might as well have been saying, ‘One of our guys did it’ or even ‘One of my guys did it’. Bobby was saying that his brother had been killed by someone in his own anti-Castro operation… He was supposed to know where the darkness fell, and how to keep his brother safe from it. His brother’s death was his fault – this is certainly another wound that his brother’s killers aimed to inflict. For they knew it would not be enough to assassinate the president – they would have to find a way to stop his avenging brother from coming after them as well, to hobble him with guilt and doubt.” (20)

Gene Wheaton gave an interview in 2005 about the AM/WORLD project. The interview was eventually posted on YouTube on 15th June 2017. Wheaton provided very important information on two important members of the AM/WORLD project, Carl E. Jenkins and Chi Chi Rafael Quintero. “I first met Carl Jenkins in Iran in 1976… In 1985 he became my Washington representative when I became Vice President of the cargo airlines National Air, this was during the Iran-Contra thing and they wanted my airplanes for the Contras… We became like brothers… Chi Chi Quintero would come up to Carl’s place in Fairfax, Virginia… from his home in Miami… We were just like a family, they would talk directly to me and to each other in my presence, as if I was one of the spook crowd, the covert crowd.”

“There was a CIA funded program to assassinate Castro and Carl was in charge of training the Cubans in Miami to assassinate Castro. They would go to Texas and Mexico and take old convertibles, stick old watermelons on the back seat, in something they called triangulation shooting teams… According to them, they were the ones that diverted the Castro funds and training for their own agenda to snuff Kennedy… They were CIA people who were training people to assassinate Castro, but if you are training people to assassinate one man, you can use that training to assassinate anybody… They were furious with JFK because he backed off at the last moment at the Bay of Pigs… There was another clique above them who were worried about Kennedy not increasing the program to escalate hostilities in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Carl was training Chi Chi and several other shooters, about five of them.”

Wheaton also spoke about the connection between Carl E. Jenkins, Lee Harvey Oswald and Carlos Marcello: “Carl Jenkins formed the first Marine Corps Reserve Unit in New Orleans in Louisiana and was the CIA liaison officer between CIA headquarters and Carlos Marcello and organized crime in the area. Carl helped recruit Lee Harvey Oswald into the CIA while he was a marine… Lee was just a stooge they set up as part of a Operation Security Plan for deniability when they put a real dirty operation into place.” (21)

References

(1) CIA Memorandum (19th July 1967)

(2) Joseph Caldwell King, memorandum (28th June 1963)

(3) Ted Shackley, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA (2005) page 71

(4) Lamar Waldron, Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK (2005) pages 56-57

(5) M. K. Holbik, memorandum to Howard J. Osborn, Director of Security (16th October 1964)

(6) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) pages 110-111

(7) Desmond FitzGerald, memorandum to Ted Shackley (14th November 1963)

(8) Bradley Ayers, sworn statement (3rd November 1989)

(9) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) page 507

(10) Anthony Summers, The Kennedy Conspiracy: The Truth? (1992) pages 400-401

(11) Larry Hancock, Underhill and a Clique within the CIA (22nd March 2025)

(12) New York Times (July 21, 1967)

(13) Larry Hancock & Stuart Wexler, Shadow Warfare: The History of America’s Undeclared Wars (2014) pages 212-213

(14) Robert Fitzsimmons, letter sent to Jim Garrison on the comments Garry Underhill made to Charlene Fitzsimmons (3rd May 1967)

(15) Paul Golais, The Citizen’s Voice (8th April 2001)

(16) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) page 495

(17) Jim Garrison, interview in Playboy Magazine (October 1967) page 67

(18) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) pages 110-111

(19) Haynes Johnson, Washington Post (17th April, 1981)

(20) David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (2007) page 12

(21) Gene Wheaton, interviewed by William Matson Law and Mark Sobel and posted on YouTube on 15th June 2017.

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*****

What is History?

16 April, 2025 | By John Simkin

In his book, What is History? (1961), the historian E. H. Carr wrote: “The facts are really not at all like fish on the fishmonger’s slab. They are like fish swimming about in a vast and sometimes inaccessible ocean; and what the historian catches will depend, partly on chance, but mainly on what part of the ocean he chooses to fish in and what tackle he chooses to use – these two factors being, of course, determined by the kind of fish he wants to catch. By and large, the historian will get the kind of facts he wants. History means interpretation.”

Carr points out that the historian starts out with a theory of the past and then looks for the facts to support this theory. What is more, the historian is only willing to spend a lot of time on a subject that he feels strongly about. As William H. B. Court has argued: “History free of all values cannot be written. Indeed, it is a concept almost impossible to understand, for men will scarcely take the trouble to inquire laboriously into something which they set no value upon”.

The problem is that historians tend to develop their theories too early when researching the subject. Once they have their theory about who was responsible for the assassination (Mafia/CIA/LBJ/Soviets, etc.) they look for the evidence to support this view and tend to ignore the evidence that suggests it was one of the alternative theories.

The reason that E.H. Carr was aware of this problem was that he was guilty of this in the 1930s. He was a supporter of Stalin and believed the evidence of the Moscow Show Trails that Trotsky and his followers were really fascists. After all, Gregory Zinoviev said in court: “My defective Bolshevism became transformed into anti-Bolshevism, and through Trotskyism I arrived at fascism. Trotskyism is a variety of fascism, and Zinovievism is a variety of Trotskyism.”

It was not only Carr who believed this. The mainstream press in the West also believed it. Stalin argued for “socialism in one country” whereas Trotsky supported “world revolution”. It was Trotsky rather than Stalin that posed the biggest danger to capitalist democracy.

No one believes this now. We now know that Zinoviev and other Trotsky followers made these false confessions to save the lives of their wives and children.

Maybe, in the future, probably after most of us have died, history books will say that JFK was killed as part of a conspiracy that was covered up by the state. They will also say, why did our historians and journalists let us down by promoting these false narratives?

*****

LBJ

LBJ and Bobby Baker

17 April, 2025 | By John Simkin

The problem for LBJ was that Bobby Baker, had been getting bad headlines for a couple of years and leaking stories about JFK would not have saved him. In 1961 Baker established the Quorum Club. This was a private club in the Carroll Arms Hotel on Capitol Hill. “Its membership was comprised of senators, congressmen, lobbyists, Capitol Hill staffers, and other well-connected who wanted to enjoy their drinks, meals, poker games, and shared secrets in private accommodations.” (1)

Rumors began circulating that Baker was involved in corrupt activities. Although officially his only income was that of Secretary to the Majority in the Senate, he was clearly a very rich man. The journalist, G. R. Schreiber, asked: “How do you build a two-million-dollar fortune in eight years on a salary of less than $20,000? The answer is that Bobby found it easy because so many people were ready to help him.” (2)

Baker was investigated by Attorney General Robert Kennedy. He later recalled: The newspapers had a number of articles, The Washington Post particularly. I had always heard stories about Bobby Baker, about all his money and free use of money…. Our first involvement in it came, I suppose, in a conversation I had with Ben Bradlee… who had some information. I can’t remember exactly what it was, but they printed it in Newsweek. He asked me if we would look into it, and I said we would look into it.” (3)

Robert Kennedy discovered Baker had links to Clint Murchison and several Mafia bosses. Evidence also emerged that Lyndon B. Johnson was also involved in political corruption. This included the award of a $7 billion contract for a fighter plane, the F-111, to General Dynamics, a company based in Texas. On 7th October 1963, Bobby Baker was forced to resign his post. Soon afterwards, Fred Korth, the Navy Secretary, was also forced to resign because of the F-111 contract. (4)

8 November, 1963 LIFE Magazine cover story

Reports circulated in Washington that the White House was pushing the Baker investigation to embarrass Lyndon Johnson: “Kennedy wants to use the Baker affair to dump Lyndon from the ticket next year.” (5) Robert Kennedy later denied this: There were a lot of stories that my brother and I were interested in dumping Lyndon Johnson and that I’d started the Bobby Baker case in order to give us a handle to dump Lyndon Johnson. Well, number one, there was no plan to dump Lyndon Johnson. That didn’t make any sense. Number two, I hadn’t gotten really involved in the Bobby Baker case until after a good number of newspaper stories had appeared about it…. There were a lot of stories then, after November 22, that the Bobby Baker case was really stimulated by me and that this was part of my plan to get something on Johnson. That wasn’t correct.” (6)

On 22nd November 1963, a friend of Baker’s, Don B. Reynolds told B. Everett Jordan and his Senate Rules Committee that Johnson had demanded that he provided kickbacks in return for this business. This included a $585 Magnavox stereo. Reynolds also had to pay for $1,200 worth of advertising on KTBC, Johnson’s television station in Austin. Reynolds had paperwork for this transaction including a delivery note that indicated the stereo had been sent to the home of Johnson. Reynolds also told of seeing a suitcase full of money which Baker described as a “$100,000 payoff to Johnson for his role in securing the Fort Worth TFX contract.” (7)

Reynolds’ testimony came to an end when news arrived that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. “Reynolds was stunned. If President Kennedy was dead, then Lyndon Johnson, the man about whom he had been talking, was President of the United States.” Reynolds told his lawyer: “Giving testimony involving the Vice President is one thing, but when it involves the President himself, that is something else. You can just forget that I ever said if you want to.” (8)

As soon as Lyndon B. Johnson became president, he contacted Jordan to see if there was any chance of stopping this information being published. Jordan replied that he would do what he could but warned Johnson that some members of the committee wanted Reynold’s testimony to be released to the public. On 6th December 1963, Jordan spoke to Johnson on the telephone and said he was doing what he could to suppress the story because “it might spread (to) a place where we don’t want it spread.” (9)

Abe Fortas, a lawyer who represented both Lyndon B. Johnson and Bobby Baker, worked behind the scenes in an effort to keep this information from the public. Johnson also arranged for a smear campaign to be organized against Don B. Reynolds. To help him do this J. Edgar Hoover passed to Johnson the FBI file on Reynolds. On 5th February 1964, the Washington Post reported that Reynolds had lied about his academic success at West Point. The article also claimed that Reynolds had been a supporter of Joseph McCarthy and had accused business rivals of being secret members of the American Communist Party. It was also revealed that Reynolds had made anti-Semitic remarks while in Berlin in 1953. (10)

Joachim Joesten, an investigative journalist, wrote that there was a connection between the investigation into Bobby Baker and the assassination of John F. Kennedy: “The Baker scandal then is truly the hidden key to the assassination, or more exact, the timing of the Baker affair crystallized the more or less vague plans to eliminate Kennedy which had already been in existence the threat of complete exposure which faced Johnson in the Baker scandal provided that final impulse he was forced to give the go-ahead signal to the plotters who had long been waiting for the right opportunity.” (11)

(1) Bobby Baker, Wheeling and Dealing: Confessions of a Capitol Hill Operator (1978) page 79

(2) G. R. Schreiber, The Bobby Baker Affair (1964) page 23

(3) Robert Kennedy was interviewed by John Bartlow Martin in April 1964. The interview appeared in Robert Kennedy: His Own Words (1988) page 389

(4) Richard D. Mahoney, Sons and Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy (1999) page 277

(5) G. R. Schreiber, The Bobby Baker Affair (1964) page 32

(6) Robert Kennedy was interviewed by John Bartlow Martin in April 1964. The interview appeared in Robert Kennedy: His Own Words (1988) page 389

(7) Clark Mollenhoff, Despoilers of Democracy (1965) pages 294-296

(8) Phillip F. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination (2011) page 262

(9) B. Everett Jordan, telephone conversation with Lyndon B. Johnson (6th December 1963)

(40) The Washington Post (5th February 1964)

(41) Joachim Joesten, The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson (1968)

ADDENDUM:

While on the subject of LBJ, throughout his presidency, he surreptitiously recorded his telephone conversations. All told he recorded over 800 hours of discussions on the telephone. He told close aides that he did this for two main reasons. (i) It would help him write his memoirs; (ii) He could use this information to apply pressure (blackmail) on politicians and businessmen.

Johnson informed his longtime personal assistant Mildred Stegall that if he died unexpectedly, she must destroy the tapes and their transcripts). However, when died of a heart attack at San Antonio, Texas, on 22nd January, 1973, Stegall did not carry out his instructions. Instead, she placed them in sealed boxes and sent them to the LBJ Presidential Library with the instructions that they must not be opened until at least January 2023.

However, in 1992 Congress passed legislation requiring release of most available information on President Kennedy’s assassination. In response, the LBJ Library released President Johnson’s phone conversations on this topic in 1993. However, at the time it was said that some were withheld for national security reasons.

 *****

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES, POSTS, ESSAYS

Robert F. Kennedy was America’s First Assassination Conspiracy Theorist

JFK Assassination: What Happened in the Trauma Room

The Lyndon B. Johnson Tapes and the JFK Assassination

The Death of Bernardo De Torres

Kennedy and King Family Members and Advisors Call for Congress to Reopen Assassination Probes

The Secret Files of James Jesus Angleton

Ben Bradlee and the death of Mary Pinchot Meyer

Yuri Nosenko and the Warren Report

The KGB and the JFK Assassination

The History of Fascism: Are Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump Fascists?

 *   *   *

10 September, 2025 – On the Death of Ruth Paine

Education Forum – JFK Assassination Debate

I have held back on commenting on this thread as I wanted to reassess the evidence on Ruth Paine and update my page on her before making a final judgement on her.

Max Good makes this very important point: “Ruth Paine is a Rorschach test, and people who see a conspiracy will continue to see her as a key part of a wider plot, whether witting or unwitting. Those who believe the official story will, by default, laugh off suspicions of Ruth’s dissembling as the paranoid fantasies of conspiracy freaks. In fact, defenders of the official story seemed eager to utilize Ruth’s character as a virtuous elderly Quaker woman to show the ridiculous and delusional nature of those who could suspect her.” (1)

There is no doubt that Ruth Paine was indeed devoted to good works throughout her adult life. According to Priscilla Johnson McMillan: “When she was only thirteen, Ruth spent a summer on a truck farm in Ohio as her way of contributing to the effort to win World War II. The next summer she was with a travelling Bible school, teaching in Ohio and Indiana. (2)

Ruth became a committed Quaker while studying at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with a bachelor’s degree in elementary and secondary education, Ruth taught physical education at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia. Ruth also became an active member of the American Civil Liberties Union. (3)

Ruth Paine remained committed to her Quaker beliefs throughout her life and was a passionate believer in peace and human rights. However, does this mean that she could not possibly be a CIA asset. In fact, it is the kind of background that a lot of CIA assets had. Tom Braden, head of the CIA’s International Organizations Division (IOD), admitted in a 1975 interview that they were more likely to recruit people on the left as assets than any other group. There were two main reasons for this. Firstly, people would be less suspicious of them as being CIA assets. Secondly, in the case of politicians and trade union officials, the objective would be to move them to the right. (4)

Let us look at first her family connections to the CIA. Jim Garrison pointed out that Paine’s father “had been employed by the Agency for International Development, regarded by many as a source of cover for the C.I.A. Her brother-in-law was employed by the same agency in the Washington, D.C. area.” He also claims that he had tried to “examine the income tax returns of Ruth and Michael Paine, but I was told that they had been classified as secret…. What was so special about this particular family that made the federal government so protective of it?” (5)

James DiEugenio has argued that Ruth Paine had a long history of a possible relationship with the CIA. “Ruth’s father, William Avery Hyde, and her brother-in-law, John Hoke, worked for US AID, which was closely tied to the CIA…. Sylvia Hyde Hoke, worked on a joint CIA/Air Force project… Michael Paine’s mother, Ruth Forbes Young, was best of friends with Mary Bancroft. Bancroft was both an agent and girlfriend of CIA Director Allen Dulles. As author Bill Simpich notes in the film: could Mary have noted to Allen the utility of the Quaker/Unitarian couple in performing surveillance duties on the left? ” (6)

Of course, just because family members are working for the CIA does not mean she is. However, as Bill Simpich points out, this family or friend link, could explain how she was recruited. KGB used the same method to infiltrate MI5/MI6 in the 1930s. There is also evidence that the Paines were involved in collecting evidence on left-wing activists. Buddy Walthers took part in the search of the home of Ruth Paine after the assassination of JFK. Walthers told Eric Tagg that they “found six or seven metal filing cabinets full of letters, maps, records and index cards with names of pro-Castro sympathizers.” (7) James DiEugenio has added: “This is absolutely startling of course since, combined with the work of Carol Hewett, Steve Jones, and Barbara La Monica, it essentially cinches the case that the Paines were domestic surveillance agents in the Cold War against communism.” (8)

If the Paines were CIA assets their behaviour in 1963 becomes more understandable. In September 1962 Michael Paine left the family home but the couple continued to spend a lot of time together. Ruth continued to live in Irving and at a party and February 1963 she was introduced to Marina Oswald and Lee Harvey Oswald by George De Mohrenschildt. On 24th April 1963, Marina and her daughter went to live with Ruth Paine. The reason she gave for wanting to have Marina and her child move in with her was that she wanted to learn Russian, even though she knew the language well enough to teach it. (9)

Barbara La Monica has pointed out: “The Paines are significant in several ways. First, they insured the continued separation of Lee and Marina, allowing Lee to live unencumbered, and with no witnesses to his activities or associates during the principal time leading up to the assassination. Secondly, they provided a storage space for evidence that would be used against Oswald. Almost everything that would convict him in the public mind, including the alleged murder weapon, came out of the Paine’s garage. Also found in the garage, among other things, was the Walker photograph, the backyard photograph, the Klein’s Sporting Goods tear-out order for the rifle, among other things… there was also some radical magazines. One wonders why someone intending to commit a crime would allow such items to be stored in another’s garage, instead of destroying the incriminating evidence. Michael Paine’s testimony is used to confirm that Lee had a rifle, and indeed it had been stored in their garage – in retrospect, of course, because Michael Paine said he never realized it was a rifle… It’s hard to believe that a man like Michael Paine, who had been in combat artillery in Korea, and then in the Army Reserves for six years, could not recognize the feel of a rifle. Especially since it belonged to someone who he considered a person who advocated violence.” (10)

According to the Warren Commission Report, Ruth Paine “always accompanied Marina Oswald whenever Marina left the house with the children.” (11) Lee Harvey Oswald rented a room in Dallas but stored some of his possessions in Ruth Paine’s garage. Ruth also helped Oswald to get a job at the Texas School Book Depository. Upon hearing of a job opening at the depository, Paine personally called the superintendent and heartily recommended Oswald for the position. Oswald was hired within 24 hours. Within the same time period, two calls came in about another position, an airline cargo loader, which paid more than the depository job. The calls came to the Paine household. Oswald never got word of them. (12)

It seems that Ruth Paine was very keen for Lee Harvey Oswald to be in the Texas School Book Depository on the day JFK visited Dallas. That of course does not mean that Ruth Paine knew about the conspiracy to kill JFK. In fact, this is indeed highly unlikely. However, she would have quickly realised that she had played a role in setting him up. No doubt she felt very guilty about this and there are signs that she tried to make amends. For example, after the assassination of JFK she gave a couple of interviews that undermined the case against Oswald. She told the Washington Post: “Marina Oswald felt very favorably toward the President and his family. Most of what she learned of American news was provided by Lee, who translated from newspapers and news magazines. Marina said he never transferred any negative feelings toward President Kennedy.” (13) Paine stated in another interview that, “As far as I know Oswald had never been critical of Kennedy. He had been critical of General Walker, but I never heard him say anything against the President. In fact, it was my impression that he respected him.” (14)

Ruth Paine was an important witness at the Warren Commission and on a couple of occasions she said things that undermined the idea that Oswald was the lone gunman. The Warren Commission concluded that it was at the Paine’s house, in her small garage that Oswald stored his rifle and that he retrieved his rifle the night before the assassination, smuggling it into the Texas School Book Depository the next morning, disguised as “curtain rods”. However, during her testimony she argued that the sling on the rifle in her garage looked quite different from the alleged sling on the rifle found in the Depository building. (15)

Paine also told the Warren Commission that on 31st October 1963, an FBI agent, James Hosty visited her home to discover where Oswald was living. He spoke to both Paine and Marina Oswald about Lee Harvey Oswald. When Oswald heard about the visit he went to the FBI office in Dallas. When told that Hosty was at lunch Oswald left him a message in an envelope. The contents of the envelope have remained a mystery. A receptionist working at the Dallas office claimed it included a threat to “blow up the FBI and the Dallas Police Department if you don’t stop bothering my wife.” Hosty later claimed it said: “If you have anything you want to learn about me, come talk to me directly. If you don’t cease bothering my wife, I will take appropriate action and report this to the proper authorities.” (16)

Ruth Paine might have been protecting the CIA but the same could not be said about the FBI. Her testimony showed that the FBI was fully aware that Oswald was living in Dallas and would be working in a building on the route of JFK motorcade. Yet, they did nothing about making sure that he did not pose a danger to JFK.

Max Good got to know Ruth Paine very well during the making the documentary, The Assassination and Mrs Paine (2022). I think his comments are probably very close to the truth: “Ruth Paine remains an enigma. People see her in completely opposing ways depending on their perspective. I never wanted to demonize Ruth Paine, and I want to emphasize that if we think she was being less than completely honest, we must admit that we also couldn’t know all the details or her true motivations. If Ruth was keeping secrets, could she be doing it out of loyalty to an oath of service, threats of retribution, personal values, or protectiveness over the legitimacy of the government? I had a lot of respect for Ruth’s strength of character and her willingness to speak to people with different perspectives on the assassination. As I’ve said elsewhere, I sometimes suspected that she secretly wanted the truth to come out, but she was under such a burden that she couldn’t say anything too revealing.” (17)

References

(1) Max Good, statement (8 September 2025)

(2) Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Marina and Lee (1977) page 214

(3) Richard Sandomir, New York Times (7th September 2025)

(4) Tom Braden, interview included in the Granada Television program, World in Action: The Rise and Fall of the CIA (June 1975)

(5) Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins (1988) page 62 and 315

(6) James DiEugenio, The Assassination and Mrs. Paine (18 June 2022)

(7) Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked (2006) page 552

(8) James DiEugenio, Larry Hancock: Someone Would Have Talked (22nd March 2008)

(9) Joachim Joesten, Marina Oswald (1967) page 72

(10) Barbara La Monica, Coalition on Political Assassination’s Conference (21st October, 1995)

(11) Ruth Paine, testimony to the Warren Commission (19th March 1964)

(12) James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba and the Garrison Case (1992) page 59

(13) The Washington Post (28th November 1963)

(14) New York World Telegram (25th November 1963)

(15) Ruth Paine, testimony to the Warren Commission (19th March 1964)

(16) Time Magazine (3rd November 1975)

(17) Max Good, statement (8 September 2025)

https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKpaine.htm