-Caveat Lector-
From: Clark Wilkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Clay Shaw and the Gestapo
Date: Monday, February 01, 1999 3:20 PM
>>Supporting the CIA's claim, the company [Permindex] was predominately
foreign owned.
>>Contradicting the CIA's claim, however, is the fact that the Tolstoy
>>Foundation, which obtained CIA funding, was electing directors to the
>>board in equal proportion to the directors being elected by the Italian
>>royal family. Again, Nagy's Fascist buddies were elected to the board
in
>>the exact same numbers.
>> Still others were elected to the board for no apparent political
>>reason. Many, if not all, of these latter directors were unaware of
>>Permindex's true purpose and operations. Clay Shaw falls in this group.
>
>What evidence is there that Shaw was unaware of the operations of the
company
>he co-directed?
No evidence. In fact it is easier to demonstrate that he was aware than
it is to demonstrate he was "unaware". Yet I don't have evidence he
participated in the company's "shady" operations. I admit it's a fine
line, but Shaw is a collector of economic information (Such as when
Shinley posted his 1958 speech on Soviet aluminum prices) versus a
plotter of gov't intrigue.
He had three completely different highways leading to the
>truth: one through Permindex/CMC channels, the second through USG
contacts,
>the last through Canadian and European press reports.
>
<SNIP>
>
>Centro Mondiale Commerciale, which shared directors with Permindex, was
booted out of Italy because of reports of its true activities in the Italian
press: the leftist _Paesa Sera_ newspaper and the conservative _De La Sera_.
CMC and Permindex were closely related.<
They were more than just closely related. CMC bought Permindex in 1961.
CMC was caught funding activities directed against the Communist Party
(CP) in Italy, something a foreign company is not allowed to do.
CIA records show that the CIA was funding actions against the CP in Italy
at the very time CMC was caught.
<SNIP>
>
>Thanks very much for this post.
>
>Following is additional information from _Destiny Betrayed_ by James
>DiEugenio_. This material is excerpted with the permission of the
author.
>
>
>------------------ BEGIN DESTINY BETRAYED EXCERPT -----------------------
>
>
>The origins of Permindex and the CMC lie in Switzerland in
>1956. On December 28, Ferenc Nagy, former premier of
>Hungary, announced his intent to form a "permanent indus-
>trial exhibition" named Permindex, in Basel.3
>
This follows the unsuccessful Nov/Dec 1956 Hungarian revolution in which
the Hungarians, after listening to CIA Radio Free Europe broadscasts,
threw the Soviets out - only to have them return with tanks. It got real
ugly after that.
<SNIP>
>After his announcement in December 1956, Nagy outlined
>a large, three-part construction project to include a trade
>center, a hotel, and an office center.6 He was unwilling to
>reveal the people and firms involved in financing the project,
>and denied any American backing. But he dropped the name
>of J. Henry Schroder, a New York banker. Schroder denied
>having anything to do with the enterprise.7 Nagy then men-
>tioned Hans Seligman, a Swiss banker.8 This generated some
>controversy, not only because Seligman's bank was not a
>major house, but also because he had been accused by both
>the U.S. and the U.K. of cooperating with fascists during
>World War II.9 Things got worse when it was discovered that
>George Mantello was also involved.10 Mantello's real name
>was George Mandel. His name brought about attacks in the
>Swiss papers against Permindex, its organizers, and the
>Swiss government. The Arbeiter-Zeitung accused Mandel of
>being a gold profiteer during the war and of working the
>Jewish refugee racket. He had done both while holding Sal-
>vadoran citizenship and acting as secretary at the El Salvador
>Consulate in Geneva. Mandel was a naturalized Swiss citizen
>of Eastern European origin, who had aided Nagy in his flight
>from Hungary and helped him get established in America."11
This is the Hungarian Fascist connection to Permindex I mentioned in my
post.
<SNIP>
>At this point, two things happened. In April of 1957, two
>local officials interested in getting Permindex approved went
>to New Orleans to visit the International Trade Mart.
They were not "local". One of the two men was Ferenc Nagy. Nagy had
gone to see CD Jackson (Who oversaw the CIA's Radio Free Europe for
Eisenhower) to complain about the lack of CIA and US support to back the
Hungarian revolution. It was after seeing Jackson that Nagy went to New
Orleans where he met with Clay Shaw.
12 By the
>next year, the directors of Permindex decided to move their
>company to Italy. The same people were involved: Nagy,
>Mandel, and Seligman, with one addition, Clay Shaw.13 Shaw
>later became associated with CMC, which had been formed
>in 1961 by reputed former OSS operative Major Louis
>Bloomfield.14 Curiously, CMC also moved to Rome, the next
>year.15
CMC purchased Permindex in 1961. Shaw approved the sale and was a made a
director of the combined boards.
It is true that Bloomfield was former OSS but he had been loaned to them
by British intelligence in order to set up the FBI's office in Mexico
City. It is interesting to note that Bloomfield's WWII Mexico City "spy"
operation turned up George deMohrenschildt.
>
>Nagy was on the CMC board. Another director was Gutier-
>rez di Spadaforo, a wealthy Italian with considerable inter-
>ests in oil and the arms trade. He had worked in Benito
>Mussolini's fascist administration, and was related through
>marriage to Hjalmar Schacht, the notorious economic wizard
>whose fiscal policies had financed Hitler's Third Reich and
>who was tried at Nuremburg for war crimes, though later
>released. Another director was Giuseppe Zigiotti, president
>of the Fascist National Association for Militia Arms.
Hjalmar Schact became acquainted with Shaw via Permindex.
>CMC's board was representative of the paramilitary right
>in Europe. It formed a small cross-section of the aging roy-
>alists with whom Shaw liked to hobnob on his European
>jaunts and whose names and phone numbers were kept in his
>address book.
The "royalists" mentioned here are the Italian royal family who was
opposed to the CP in Italy for the obvious reason of self preservation.
16 The organization was described by one writer
>as 'a shell of superficiality ... composed of channels through
>which money flowed back and forth, with no one knowing
>the sources or the destination of the liquid assets."17
One director, when he requested an audit of where this money was coming
from, resigned when his request was refused.
>In 1967, the Canadian newspaper Le Devoir, following up
>on an extraordinary expose of CMC that had just appeared in
>Italy, noted:18
>
> [H]ere is where the affair assumes stranger and stran-
> ger characteristics. It has just been learned that the name
> of Clay Shaw was found among that of the eleven direc-
> tors of a company, which up until 1962 had its headquar-
> ters in Montreal ... in Rome it is known as the Centro
> Mondiale de Commerciale....
>
>In Italy, when the papers--both the liberal Paesa Sera and
>the conservative De La Sera--exposed CMC's personnel,
>practices, and policies again, as in Switzerland, the company
>was swept out of the country.
This part is incorrect. Permindex was not kicked out of Switzerland.
Jacque Soustelle had been forced out of Switzerland and Permindex moved
with him. Small difference but possibly important when defending
yourself against LNers.
It then found corporate head-
>quarters more sympathetic to its fascist leanings in Johannes-
>burg, South Africa.19
>
>CMC was described in some detail in the series of articles
>in Paesa Sera that led to its expulsion from Italy. Here are
>two excerpts:20
>
> Among its possible involvements is that the Centro
> was a creature of the CIA ... set up as a cover for the
> transfer of CIA ... funds in Italy for illegal political-es-
> pionage activities. It still remains to clear up the pres-
> ence on the administrative board of the CMC of Mr. Clay
> Shaw....
>
> It is a fact that the CMC is nevertheless the point of
> contact for a number of persons who, in certain respects,
> have ties whose common denominator is an anti-commu-
> nism so strong that it would swallow up all those in the
> world who have fought for decent relations between East
> and West, including Kennedy.
>
>Permindex was of the same order. Reportedly, it was incor-
>porated in 1958 by Bloomfield, then residing in Montreal,
>and Nagy. Both Bloomfield and Nagy were on the board of
>Permindex along with Shaw.
I believe this is incorrect. Bloomfield did not become associated with
Permindex until 1961. BTW, British intelligence did not become involved
with Permindex either until 1961.
The Italian press revealed that
>it had been accused of channeling funds to the Secret Army
>Organization (OAS), a clandestine paramilitary group op-
>posed to President de Gaulle's support for Algerian inde-
>pendence.21 Later, the OAS attempted to assassinate de
>Gaulle.22
I have connected Permindex to two plots to kill DeGaulle. This was the
purpose of the British led coalition.
>This is intriguing, to say the least. First, we saw earlier that
>Kennedy had been one of the leading American sympathizers
>with Algerian independence.23 Second, in the 1961 Houma
>arms raid (see Chapter 3), the arms heisted and then trans-
>ported to Guy Banister's office were CIA-stockpiled weap-
>ons on loan to the OAS.24 Third, in tracing the money used
>to finance the de Gaulle assassination plots, French intelli-
>gence discovered that about $200,000 in secret funds had
>been sent to Permindex accounts in the Banque de la Credit
>Internationale. In 1962, Guy Banister had dispatched to Paris
>a lawyer friend, Maurice Gatlin, a member of Banister's
>Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, with a suitcase
>full of money for the OAS, reportedly around $200,000.25
>Finally, the French authorities accused the CIA of encourag-
>ing French generals to try to get rid of de Gaulle, a charge
>the Agency has never convincingly denied.26
>
>What makes the Permindex connection even more fascinat-
>ing is that four of its directors are knit into the events in
>Dallas or surrounding the assassination. Besides Shaw, there
>is Nagy, who lived in Dallas at the time.27 Jean DeMenil of
>Schlumberger Corporation, which owned the ammunition
>dump at Houma raided by Ferrie and Novel, was also on the
>board. Another director was Paul Raigorodsky, a millionaire
>Texas oilman and a prominent figure in the Dallas White
>Russian community, who was a friend of George DeMohren-
>schildt and a director of the Tolstoy Foundation, a CIA front
>that helped Eastern European exiles get to America.28 The
>Tolstoy Foundation, which aimed to use those exiles against
>the Soviet Union, was the brainchild of Reinhard Gehlen.29
>
The Tolstoy Foundation had elected directors to the board of Permindex in
equal numbers to the directors of the Italian Royal family and the
Hungsarian Fascists.
Permindex directors Jean DeMenil participated in, and Paul Raigorodsky
was invited to participate in, George deMohrenschildt's Haiti venture.
<SNIP>
Although I do not believe that either Shaw or Permindex assassinated JFK,
shown below is a footnote that describes a lead that I have not been able
to dismiss. It says:
>
>23. See Chapter 2. Gary Shaw and Bud Fensterwald have explored the possi-
>bility of OAS involvement in the assassination. In a 1981 paper, "A
Possible
>French Connection," they revealed that OAS terrorist Jean Souctre was
report-
>edly in Dallas on November22, 1963. So was fellow OAS renegade Miebel
Roux.
>Souetre denies it and says a French intelligence agent Michel Mertz may
have
>been there using his name. The FBI actually questioned a Dr. Alderson
of
>Houston who knew Souetre from his military service in France. The agent
>implied that Souetre may have been a suspect in the assassination.
>
>Souetre is interesting because the OAS tried to kill French President
de
>Gaulle numerous times during the Algerian War, and they hated Kennedy
also,
>for his support of Algerian independence. If Souetre, Roux, or Mertz
were not
>involved in the plot, they may have been called to Dallas to serve as
one of
>the "false fronts" that figure 50 clearly in the conspiracy. See Chapter
14
>for a discussion of this phenomenon. See also, Garrison, On the Trail,
pp.
>283-289. For a summary of the Shaw-Fensterwald essay, see Hurt, pp.414-
419.
>
Who is Jean Souetre? He was the OAS's liasion officer assigned to the
CIA in Madrid. His job was to try and sell the CIA on backing the OAS in
assassinating DeGaulle. These Madrid "sales" meetings were routinely
attended by four people, three of whom were Souetre, Nagy, and our own E.
Howard Hunt.
Although the CIA never accepted Souetre's offer, they did allow Souetre
to tour several anti-Castro CIA training camps in the US which were
engaging in assassination training. He seems to have met with, and
sought the support of, General Walker during this tour.
Souetre, as mentioned in the above footnote, denied being in Dallas on
11/22/63 and said it was OAS Captain Michel Mertz. A description by the
INS agent who deported the Frenchman fits Mertz over the other
alternatives.
And who is Michel Mertz? In August, 1961 the OAS exploded a bomb under
Charles DeGaulle's car but without killing him. Because DeGaulle made it
hard for the OAS to kill him by traveling in three identical limousines
A game of "Guess which one I'm in, guys?"), it was necessary for the OAS
to monitor DeGaulle's cars in order to know which one he was in and,
therefore, which one to blow up. The OAS officer in charge of tracking
DeGaulle's movements was Michel Mertz. After the bombing attempt failed,
Mertz fled arrest and escaped to Montreal, home of Permindex's Bloomfield
and their recent HQ. Captured OAS files have connected Permindex to this
plot.
Now, it seems that Mertz showed up in Dallas on 11/22 and Fort Worth
the day before. Was Mertz following JFK the same way he had followed
DeGaulle?
Interesting question and I don't know the answer. I did check to
see if Michel Mertz could be the CIA's WI/ROGUE and determined he was not.
That's where the trail dead ended.
Just a thought.
.Clark
Thanks for posting the Destiny Betrayed excerpt.
>-------------------- END DESTINY BETRAYED EXCERPT ----------------------
>
>_Destiny Betrayed_ is copyright © 1992 by James DiEugenio. The excerpt
>reprinted here appears with Mr. DiEugenio's permission.
>
>--Jim Hargrove
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