Fred Korth

Fred Korth
 
Let’s start this by looking at Joe Cooper. Cooper was a top notch private investigator, former cop and undercover operative for the FBI into the Klan. He had even foiled an assassination attempt on Hubert Humphrey in that undercover role.


By 1966, Joe Cooper was off on his own Kennedy investigation, focusing on Naval Intelligence. From 1966 to 1975, the detective put together bits and pieces of strange coincidences that he felt pointed to U.S. Naval Intelligence being involved in the Kennedy assassination. Looking at that angle as early as 1966 I think made him well ahead of his time.

An intensely patriotic man, Cooper felt he had to do whatever he could to help find the truth. "I love my country, but this was not the way to change it by killing a president," he said.

Cooper was convinced that Lee Harvey Oswald was a Naval Intelligence agent, and was certain that nine mysterious passengers on a cruise on the aircraft carrier Shangri-La sponsored by Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth in August of 1963 had something to do with the assassination.
 
Memo to Jim Garrison. I have bolded relevant sections:
 
From: Andrew J. Sciambra, Assistant D.A.
 
To: Jim Garrison, District Attorney
 
Re: Interview of Joseph Cooper, Baton Rouge, La. Relative to Lee
Harvey Oswald
 
I interviewed Cooper who informed me that he and Marguerite Oswald communicate with each other by telephone from time to time. He said the last time he talked to Marguerite Oswald was about a month ago after he got out of the hospital.
 
Marguerite Oswald's private telephone number in Dallas, Texas is: A/C 817-732-6839.
 
Cooper said that he has established a fine relationship with Marguerite and would be glad to go to Dallas and talk to her for us.
 
In addition to some of the information which he has given us in the past, Cooper said that Marguerite told him that she called Clem Sehrt after the assassination and asked him to help her son. Sehrt informed her that he no longer practiced law. She said she had known Sehrt and Victor Schiro when she was living in New Orleans.
 
Marguerite told Cooper that she is very suspicious of Fred Korth and told him that Lee's discharge from the Marine Corps was handled by Fred Korth. [Written in the margin in Garrison's distinctive pen is: "Great Job! General Dynamics thru bank"]
 
Cooper said he found out that the house Marguerite was living in at the time of the assassination belonged to a close friend of Fred Korth, a Mrs. Mary E. McCarthy. Cooper said Marguerite also told him that Fred Korth played a part in Lee's life but did not explain any further.
 
Cooper said Marguerite also asked him some questions about Lee's CAP outfit that he was unable to answer.

In summary, Cooper suspected that Korth planned the assassination with 9 others on board the Shangri-La in August 1963. That’s all but impossible to verify of course, though some research on the others on board may shed further light. That’s by way of saying that Korth’s involvement does not hinge on this aspect.

More telling is Marguerite’s suspicion of him and her claims that he played a role in Lee’s life including that he aided in Lee’s fraudulent early out from the Marines. I think that is extremely plausible.


Korth by the way, was on the side of the Generals during the Missile Crisis and supported military action as opposed to the blockade and back channels.

great info,Greg. Korth is quite an interesting character.

From their Shanghai page



Isolated in the group of eight on the ship for five days... who were these important folk whom had a weeks cruise off Florida?
Others got seven hour cruises....

Difficulty in nailing down its March to May 1963 Cuba Blockade or "quarantine" duties.
Most sites, or diaries dont mention it like it was unimportant. This does not bode well for the tourist disclosure.



We can always use more info on the group with Korth.




Cheers, Ed

Cooper was asking a lot of questions about things pertaining to JFK. He asks to testify before a grand jury and five days later the steering on his car falls apart and he has a crash, breaking his back in three places.
 
Roger Craig had an eyewitness account of the assassination aftermath that didn't fit with the approved narrative. He was harassed as a result, losing his job(s). IIRC, he said he had a strange car crash as well, resulting in back injuries.
 
And the connection between Korth and the Oswald family.
 
The stuff that makes you go hmm….

Agreed Stan, hmmm

http://www.archives.com/1940-census/adolph-vermont-sc-130842733

There is a South Carolina 'Vermont'.

would be 42 in '63 so a good candidate,,, unless it was an really an alias as such no searching will uncover him or Craver Jr.
Interesting both the alias-ees were both Juniors.
Did Cooper ever reveal the seven other names?
Cheers, Ed

https://newspaperarchive.com/lowell-sun-dec-07-1961-p-10/

Publication: Lowell Sun
Location: Lowell, Massachusetts, United States Of America
Issue Date: December 7, 1961
OCR Text
"Lowell Sun (Newspaper) - December 7, 1961, Lowell, Massachusetts 10 THE LOWELL SUN, Thursday, DECEMBER 7, 1961 Two Councilors Silent About Bribes SPARTANBURG, S. C., cny councilmen, accused of accepting bribes, were free under bonds of each today. They remained silent about the case. The officials, Lewis T. Amlck, 50, and Shea West Thomas, 41. were arrested yesterday by Chief 1. P. Strom and other agents of the state law enforcement division. Thomas, mayor protern of the city, told newsmen at the jail he would have a statement "in a half hour." But he left after bond was posted, said nothing, and could not be located later. Callers at the home of Amick last night were told he was asleep.
A Spartanburg real estate man, Adolphe Vermont, Jr.. co-operated with police in setting up the arrests. The Vermnonts left their home last night after a disturbance and a telephoned threat Irom an anonymous caller. VERMONT SAID he was told on the telephone he "wouldn't live through the night." He classed the caller as a crank. Police were called to investigate a loud noise under a window of the Ver- mont residence, but found nothing to indicate an ex- plosion. The Vermonts spent the rest of the night at an undisclosed location. Strom said Vermont, acting under police instructions, passed S10.000 in and S20 bills to Amick and Thomas yesterday afternoon. The men were arrested with the money in their possession. Strom said serial numbers of the bills had been recorded before the transaction. Vermont said he had been told that "two members of the council who iiad expressed themselves as opposed to the city's paying any portion ol street improvements were waiting for a payoff or bribe" as an inducement to changing their positions. Strom explained that under the plan allegedly advanced by the councilmen, they would deliver from the municipal governing body enough votes to have the city take part In a subdivision development. Strom said that under this arrangement, a substantial part of the development' costs would be returned to the developers."


Same Spartanburg SC "Vermont"

Wow! What a read!
So was it ADOLPHE VERMONT JR. aboard the Shangri-la with Fred???
Could explain Cooper not finding a "Louisiana" business man.
Hmmm

I can't believe the lack of intellectual curiosity by the mainstream JFK research community on the link between Secretary of the Navy Fred Korth and Lee Harvey Oswald. (Well, I can, but that's another story.)

There's a hell of a lot more to this beyond any mere coincidence. When I was in the Navy I was told the Department of the Navy was one of the largest organizations in the world. SECNAV is a very powerful, hugely prominent position to be appointed to. And a man of this stature has connections to the Oswald family?!

Absolutely Stan. It's a huge connection. Another elephant in a room where they're just picking at the peanuts.

If we can pin the Dolph to the Elephant I'd be very intrigued.

Dolph Vermont would be a prominent business man in Real Estate and Construction.
He was using two way radios in Nascar races before anyone, very...coordinated.
Also had a panel van with radio equipment for two way comms.
(Interesting eh Bart Kamp???)
I'm 50% convinced this is the Shangri-la tourist Aug. 26th 1963.

Im guessing when Cooper 'went' so did his papers
Hmmmm,
Tie between Korth and Dolph is needed to make it 100%
Cheers, Ed

Wowzers, and a hmmmm
Cheers, Ed

Congressman Fuqua gets involved,
Cooper's info is redacted.



Cheers, Ed

"The detective, William H. (Joe) Cooper, 50, of Baton Rouge, La., also a former paid FBI informant, may have put together a thick packet "

Wonder where his papers went.... could be more clues he did not connect at the time.

"Oswald was more probably in the Jackson-Clinton area to claim the body of his aunt. Pearl Whitaker, who died on Aug. 15, 1963, in the state hospital where Mrs. Kemp worked."

Any support for this claim?

The Kemp's were players! Plain and simple. I'd buy the Aunt story before anything Mrs Kemp offers.

I find it odd the black lincoln, Jackson, the Aunt, another lady showing up in a big black lincoln... so did Cooper.

What Cooper found is connections, a trail, and was likely fed misinformation by Mr. Kemp (etc.) just as Mrs Kemp had done in Jackson.

Top Cop Cooper had Korth in his sights.
A side show to distract was employed.
Then they went after Joe, said he bombed his own home, bombs found were his. Accusing Joe of planning to off a councilman.

Sounds like they got Joe afterall.
RIP Joe.

Ed



Cheers, Ed

I'm currently reading a three volume history of the Navy Nuclear Power program. In volume two, in the wake of the loss of the nuclear submarine Thresher, this passage caught my eye (emphasis mine):

Shortly after the loss of the Thresher, the navy took several steps to improve the safety of its submarines. To Conway it was part of the joint committee's responsibility to know what those measures were. Moreover, he was not satisfied with all the information that had been developed at the hearings of June and July 1963. Particularly startling was the revelation that radiographs for the non-nuclear portions of the Thresher and Tinosa had disappeared at Portsmouth. Furthermore, he was deeply convinced that the navy owed itself, the families of the men who had died, and the nation a public account of the disaster. He and Bauser had been greatly disappointed with Korth's decision that none of the transcripts of the joint committee hearings could be declassified and that to release excerpts would run the danger that these might be read out of context and damage public confidence in the navy. Senator Clinton P. Anderson, chairman of the committee's subcommittee on security, found the navy's position astonishing, particularly since an article by Hanson Baldwin in the New York Times dealing with the influence of the Thresher loss on submarine design contained information that could only have come from naval sources. As time went by, the situation remained unsatisfactory to the joint committee; the hearings were still classified, and the navy was silent on what it was doing to prevent another disaster.
 
Rickover and the Nuclear Navy: The Discipline of Technology, Francis Duncan, page 94.

 
There's a lot more to the story concerning the loss of the Thresher and it mainly has to do with poor quality control practices of the non-nuclear components of the ship, but even as a former navy nuc with a security clearance myself, I was always perplexed why so much behind the loss of the sub remained classified. And the decision to keep so much under wraps apparently was Korth's. I don't know if this was: 1) due to the man himself, 2) was a typical response of any governmental organizational head who wanted to keep problems/poor decisions from seeing the light of day, or 3) a combination of both.

Just FYI.

Stan that seems to fit Korth's mo in the TFX scandal.

I read Greg's thread on Navy League, ran into it while doing a search for info on Baton Rouge Council of Navy League.
It seems it was put together just before 1965
Here is press photo.



Have not located anything about Engelhardt being a president and nothing in '63 to suggest he was.
A Marine named Duchein is possibly the first president and likely in the picture above.
He was elected League's national president in 67.



Was there a Baton Rouge Council in 1963 and was Engelhardt ever associated?

Cheers, Ed

Thats Herman G. Engelhardt.

Oh the pic is of Duchein.

Herman G Engelhardt was regional director of an insurance firm, and asked FBI about a case.

optional FO«M NO. 10
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Memorandum
to Mr. DeLoach
date: 10-11-61
FROM

subject: HERMAN ENGELHARDT
BATON RQUGE ^LQUISIANA
WILBURN J>PITTS '>‘\-

CLAIM OF’*ASSISTANCEJLJN
THE ARREST OF ALVINTCARPIS
/ ) Tolton
f B«Lmont|^.
Mohr
Callahan
Conrad _
D* Loach
Sullivan —
Tavol
Trot tor
T«l#. Room
Ingram
Gandy


We received on October 9, 1961, an undated letter from Herman Engelhardt
stating that a close friend, Wilburn J. Pitts, had told him of having unwittingly
assisted the Director in the capture of Alvin Karpis in New Orleans about 1935.

Engelhardt requests the Director to confirm Pitts’ story since he (Engelhardt) plans
to offer the incident in Pitts’ name to the Garry Moore television program, 'Tve Got A
Secret. ”


Briefly, Pitts, described as aged 61 at this time, claimed that he was about to enter the apartment building at 3341 Canal Street, in New Orleans to sell magazines
when the Director personally accosted him and requested that he not enter. Pitts asked
for an explanation and when it was not given, entered the building and knocked at the
first door which was Karpis’ apartment. He claimed the Director observed his contact
at the Karpis apartment and when he left the building again was stopped by the Director
and showed a picture of Karpis which he identified as the man he had spoken to in the
first apartment. He alleged that after Karpis was arrested the Director invited him
to the New Orleans FBI Office for a discussion and explanation.

REG- 32? ' 5 y £ '/■/; /

Pitts’ claim, of course, is not true. The Director and other members of the

I apprehension party arrived at the apartment building in which Karpis was residing at
approximately 5:30 p.m., on May 1, 1936, and before they even had a chance to leave
their cars, Karpis and an associate came out of the apartment building. The actual apprehension was made at an automobile in front of the apartment building. The address of this building was 3343 Canal Street instead of 3341 as indicated l»y Pitts.
Facts of the arrest are set out on page 109 of ’’The FBI Story. ”


MS OCT 13 1961

There is a possibility that Pitts may have had an encounter with an Agent prior to the apprehension since the apartment building in which karpis resides was under observation for several hours prior to the arrest. There is no information tn
Bufiles, however, to confirm this. /

Bufiles contain no identifiable record on Pitts or Engelha

RECOMMENDATION:
V i Enclos ur e n , '■/
04>^jkm£S ( ?961 %

That the enclosed inabsence letter be sent to Engelhardt.

October 11, 1961
Mr. Her man Engelhardt

Regional Director
Continental life Insurance Company
Suite 825, Commerce Building
Third and Laurel Streets
Baton Rouge, ^Louisiana '

Dear Mr. Engelhardt:
your letter postmarked October 1, 1961,
was received Just before Mr. Hoover was called out of the city, and he asked me to acknowledge It for him.
The Information furnished you by Mr. Pitta
'Regarding the capture ox Alvlin Karpls Is not correct. The facts of this arrest are stated on page 100 of the book by Don Whitehead entitled "The FBI Story. "
Sincerely yours, Helen W. Gandy

■ •' * ■ - Secretary ;■<••• . ■■..'v

1 - New Orleans - Enclosure V - ■

NOTE: See Jones to DeLoach Memo same date captioned " Herman Engelhardt,
Baton Rouge, Louisiana. . W ilburq J. Pitts,. Claim of "Assistance” in the Arrest
of Alvin Karpis

The suspects per Cooper.
Cheers, Ed

From the Harry Livingstone archives. thanks to Malcolm Blunt