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by greg_parker
on Tue 14 Jul 2020, 5:38 pm
 
Search in: JFK
Topic: A response to Greg Doudna regarding the Paines
Replies: 1
Views: 1243

A response to Greg Doudna regarding the Paines

I am not going to get into the habit of responding to stuff on other forums unless it is to debunk shit theories. This is a rare exception since I have done more work on the Paines than most. It is a response to a post by Greg Doudna at the Ed Forum.


As one who knew Ruth Paine in the St. Petersburg, Florida Friends Meeting in 2002 and favorably, I will use this thread to make comments on the topic of Ruth Paine.

At least he is upfront about having a past friendly relationship with her via a shared religion. But it does make him something other than a disinterested party.

My bottom line with the JFK assassination is to see the guilty convicted and the innocent acquitted. It does no service in convicting the guilty to go after and lynch the innocent. 

The trouble is, we each get to choose, wisely or otherwise, with any evidence or otherwise, who are the good guys are who are not. Doudna is playing the same game here.

I believe there was a conspiracy (because of more than one shooter; the unusual associations and activities of Oswald; the Mob-orchestrated hit of Oswald; 

The number of shooters is irrelevant to a finding of any conspiracy - unless evidence of more than one shooter is all you have. But theoretically at least, that does not rule out two  Lone Nuts acting simultaneously. There was no "mob-orchestrated" hit on Oswald. I take it he is convinced by the phone calls Ruby was making in the lead-up. Some of those were for the purpose claimed - sorting out issues with his club competitors. But at least some of those made that weekend were to try and plead for help in getting out of Dallas in a manner that looked legitimate and unavoidable (i.e. you don't say "no" to certain people). This would get him out of the POLICE ordered hit on Oswald. When the calls failed, he tried to solve the case himself - which was the purpose of the photo of the Impeach Warren billboard and the stakeout on the PO box used for the "Welcome" ad. Ruby had the people behind those as the likely culprits. Solve the case and it gets him off the hook. When that failed, he made anonymous calls to the Sheriff's Office, FBI and Dallas police very specifically saying that Oswald would be shot during the transfer, His purpose for the calls was that it would force security to be so tight, he couldn't carry out the hit. Unfortunately for Ruby, security was left with Fritz. And it was Fritz who stalled bringing Oswald down until notified that Ruby was in place and it was Fritz who broke the four-man press which allowed the kill shot.

Oswald was NOT killed to stop him talking, He didn't know anything (though he could probably guess some things). He was killed because they had a completely fabricated case that would pass the smell test locally, but not before a national and international media contingent. 

So what Doudna states others are doing to Ruth, he is doing to the "mob".  The "mob" did not intimidate witnesses. The "mob" did not plant evidence. The "mob" did not ensure that Oswald had no legal help. 


the untimely deaths of witnesses in the aftermath 

The dead witness list is bullshit. Which he might understand if he took the time to actually study some of those deaths.

and then in the context of the later HSCA investigation;

The context of the HSCA investigation was that a "mob" expert was put in charge, flagging that the "mob" was going to be the new scapegoat.  

the CIA-orchestrated attempt to tie Oswald to a false flag Castro attribution as a casus bellus combined with the seemingly-contradictory LBJ/Hoover coverup of investigation of conspiracy beyond Oswald; and that coverup), and that that terrible event involved ruling-elite involvement--i.e. it was not a wildcat operation, or Mob figures deciding on their own to declare war on and bring down on themselves the wrath of the entire US government just to get the Kennedys out of power--even if hardly anyone including in the sectors of ruling elite who benefitted from the assassination, knew the specifics. In that sense, practically everyone had deniability. As Dylan wrote, "The day they blew out the brains of the king/ Thousands were watching/ No one saw a thing/ It happened so quickly/ So quick by surprise/ Right there in front of everyone's eyes". 

Tying Oswald to Castro via Mexico City was post-assassination hijinx from certain CIA players. It could not be properly investigated because everyone had a giant ass to cover. The use of Oswald's name in MC had nothing to do with the assassination. Until post-assassination, it was made to look like not only Oswald was personally there, he was also acting like a maniac and taking money for a hit. 

What happened in DP was arranged by someone very familiar with the magician's craft, particularly misdirection. The owner of the building was a Master Magician and they had two similar buildings to use, one of which the TSBD had only recently vacated. Perfect for misdirection.


Yet though I am certain there was a conspiracy, I believe Ruth Paine, and Michael Paine, were innocent of any culpability in the assassination, and that Ruth Paine did not speak untruthfully before, during, or in the aftermath. 


Doudna is mistaken She did speak untruthfully.

The evidence is here The Washing Machine Conspiracy

 
She also lied in regard to the kid who went to the barber shop 3 times, twice with Oswald.

the FBI investigation of the kid in the barbershop was token. It consisted of asking Ruth Paine if she had any idea about who it was. Her recorded response was classic Ruth. The FBI report reads  “she has no child even as old as school age and knows of no boy of about 14 with whom Oswald was ever associated in the neighborhood. " A true but misleading statement indeed because Hootkins was not from that neighborhood.

 The Barber Shop Kid was none other than Ruth's Russian student. 


And to get out front on one other matter (although distinct), I also am certain that Clay Shaw had nothing to do with the assassination, and that Garrison went after and sought to judicially lynch an innocent person there (innocent of complicity or involvement in the assassination). But back to the Paines.


Doudna may or may not be right about Shaw. I do think this is enough smoke around Shaw to suggest he was at least peripherally involved with intelligence agencies and perhaps some of the same people he knew in that sphere were peripherally involved in the assassination. Either way, it's not enough for a lynching.


It seems almost bedrock belief in much discussion that Ruth and Michael Paine were criminally sinister figures. For purposes of clarification there are three classes of nature of the charges in this perception of the Paines:

Doudna's choice of words is unfortunate here. "Criminally sinister"? What does that even mean? It implies that you can be "criminally good". And "law-abidingly sinister". 

Having family members working for the CIA does not make you "sinister" or "criminal". Being an informant does not make you "sinister" or "criminal". Being an asset to intelligence agencies does not make you "sinister" or "criminal". 


Class #1: witting and proactive involvement in conspiracy to assassinate JFK.
Class #2: witting operative involved with framing Oswald as the assassin, e.g. manufacture or witting conveyance of fabricated evidence.
Class #3a: professional informant for an intelligence agency, covert and compensated.
Class #3b: unpaid provider of information, considered by an intelligence agency in an asset relationship, for informational purposes to keep tabs on and track Oswald and Marina.

Okay. that seems to cover it.

There could be further subvariants, but for purposes of discussion this may be a working taxonomy. A further distinction needs to be made between Ruth and Michael Paine. My focus is on Ruth Paine whom I knew, liked, and respected as a fellow Friend. I never met Michael Paine, but as a working assumption I see no reason to see Michael Paine's status as significantly different in principle from whatever assessment is actually correct for Ruth. I am uninterested in allegations that Michael Paine may have had an unappealing personality, if he did. That is of no relevance here. 

Good, Likewise, Doudna's positive vibe around Ruth also has no relevance here. He cannot be both an admirer and friend and a dispassionate judge of her culpability. 

I see absolutely no hard evidence of any kind for #1 or #2 and am certain neither of those is correct. 

No hard evidence and maybe never will be. There is however, enough circumstantial evidence to make the case. 

A much-circulated essay asserting this by Vincent Salandria is in my opinion hallucinatory, with forceful impassioned conclusions asserted and no evidence establishing any conclusion related to #1 or #2 [https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/FalseMystery/ThePainesRoleInHistory.html].) I am not open to or interested in discussion of suspicions on either #1 or #2 in the absence of provision of actual hard evidence of any specific point. If there were hard evidence at any one point, I would entertain argument from suspicion on others. But in the absence of hard evidence for any specific point establishing #1 or #2, I have no interest or time for argument from suspicion concerning #1 or #2 at all.

It is always a good move when you know there is no "hard" evidence, only circumstantial, to not only fail to acknowledge any circumstantial evidence, but to demand only "hard" evidence before any discussion can take place. 

My discussion from this point forward (in the absence of specific hard evidence shown relevant to #1 or #2) will therefore address only and entirely matters related to #3a and #3b.
I will take up some matters point by point in following posts, starting with this, a CIA document, declassified in 1996, which I discovered only several days ago following an exchange with James DiEugenio, a document that does not appear in George Michael Evica's 2006 book A Certain Arrogance nor do I see it discussed elsewhere to my knowledge: "The Intelligence Hand in East-West Exchange Visits", https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/vol2no3/html/v02i3a09p_0001.htm. 

It was not in Evica's book because it was not his source on this particular area. His source was me. Or rather a post I made at the Ed Forum  The research made freely available in that post was then  stolen for use in his for-profit book. 

In 1955, in a plan to get access to intelligence inside the Soviet Union, the CIA and State Department formed a plan, approved by the President, to launch organized Soviet-US exchanges with that specific objective (in which groups from each country would be hosted by and visit the other country). As this and other documents make crystal clear, this was all about getting Americans physically into previously inaccessible areas of the Soviet Union for intelligence objectives. That is what, from the CIA's perspective who proposed and started this program, it was all about. The publicly stated rationale--and for most of the participants in this program their actual reasons--of breaking down barriers, encouraging better understanding, world peace, etc and etc (or as CIA might internally put it among themselves, blah blah blah), was, from CIA's point of view entirely beside the point. For the CIA, and the reason the President approved this program which would be done through the State Department, it was all about getting on-the-ground intelligence access physically inside the Soviet Union.  
The key strategy used by CIA to accomplish this objective was what was called a policy of "reciprocity". Soviet groups would be invited and generously hosted in the U.S. Then the State Department would negotiate, with their Soviet counterparts, "reciprocity" in which US groups would visit the Soviet Union.
In that same year in which this State Department program was approved by the President and begun, 1955, at a conference of North American Young Friends gathered at Quaker Haven, Indiana, an initiative was begun by Friends (Quakers) to initiate exchange visits and contacts with youth groups in the Soviet Union, for the purpose of lessening East-West tensions. This North American Young Friends conference adopted the following resolution, below. As is the manner of Friends, any corporate action of Friends is decided not by voting or authority of officeholders, but is proposed, considered in a "meeting for worship in which business is conducted" (meeting for worship conducted on the basis of silence in which anyone can rise to speak, with spaces of silence between speakings), and approved by, and only if there is, consensus. (The way this works is a "clerk" of the Friends Meeting--a person generally approved for that function along with other Friends' committee assignments annually [also at a business meeting by consensus]--does not himself or herself speak and advocate or influence the direction of the sense of the meeting, but is tasked to compose and frame accurately in words a statement expressing the "sense of the meeting" that has emerged on a certain topic or decision--that is then read, and if voices in the meeting approve it and there is no objection, the clerk then records that in the written minutes as "the sense of the meeting" and the decision is done.) 
"We are united in believing that if we are to express our Christian love most fully, we have no alternative but to seek out every possible way for expressing such love to the youth of Russia and of other countries where the need for understanding is greatest."

Ruth Paine attended a Young Friends meeting at Earlham College in 1947, 4 years prior to becoming a Quaker herself. The college is located in Richmond, Indiana; the heartland of Conservative Quakerism.  Among the Earlham alumni was Bonner Fellers who twice worked with MacArthur coming over from from OSS. His specialty was interrogation and psychological warfare. He later became a prominent member of the John Birch Society. His daughter Nancy Jane, was an Earlham graduate in '52. Ruth Paine met with two professors from Earlham just prior to her final few months of involvement with the Oswalds. Another alumni from Earlham was Von Peacock, acting Director of the Casa de los Amigos in Mexico City at the time of the FBI assassination investigation. Additionally, Von Peacock and the Hydes had ties to Wood County, Ohio. Von Peacock retired to Northern Virginia... CIA country.  

The fact that the Friends, in initiating the exchange program, referred to the Soviet Union as "Russia" is very telling. It was denial of Communism - because they were Anti-Communists and willing participants in programs that would help Communism be brought down. I do not condemn her for that. But to deny that reality shows that there is something to hide by the admission.

Following on from the Earlham College/Conservative Quaker leads, we can put Ed Duckles, the founder and president of the Casa de los Amigos, in a similar category. [url=https://books.google.com.au/books?id=qfzHfon31AIC&lpg=PA18&ots=NQnJxI9MFd&dq="duckles" speaking anti-communist]He was a follower of Bertram Wolfe[/url], an ex-Trotskyist turned professional Anti-Communist. In particular, he thought Wolfe was correct in writing that the Soviets would inevitably subjugate more and more people, and that this would lead to WWIII. Wolfe, who helped develop the policy of American Exceptionalism, was taken by Duckles on a lecture tour of AFSC functions.  

So the Friends had a very good reason to be WITTINGLY involved in these CIA operations. Fear of WWIII. 

Funnily enough (or maybe not) this is the very reason proffered by LBJ to stop any real investigation of the assassination. 

At that 1955 conference an East-West Contacts Committee was organized for that purpose--to bring exchange visits into being in an organized form. Three Young Friends are named in FBI interview documents as constituting the East-West Contacts Committee: Wilmer Stratton, Paul Lacey, and Ruth Paine, then known by her maiden name as Ruth Hyde (she married Michael in 1957). Each of these, young at the time (early 20s), went on to have careers of honorable standing among the Friends. Ruth was active with this at the outset and was the organizer of a pen pal program between citizens of the US and the Soviet Union writing each other, as part of the larger scope of this Friends initiative. The purpose of the Friends program started in 1955 was explicitly understood to be the objective of organized exchanges of visits between young persons of the two countries, which over the next several years came to fruition. According to Stratton, chair of the East-West Contacts Committee, there was no paid staff. They corresponded with a Soviet youth organization called the Committee of Soviet Youth Organization.
Other documents relevant to this: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v24/d111, and especially this, NSC 5607: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v24/d104. 
And so this raises the question: how did this coalescence of CIA objectives and a Young Friends of North America initiative undertaken by members of a religious group work exactly? Were the Friends of the East-West Contacts Committee knowledgeable of the CIA objectives and hand behind this State Department sponsored program with which the East-West Contacts Committee of the Young Friends was involved in implementing?

Of course they were knowledgeable of it and WITTING partners in it. They could not even bring themselves to acknowledge the Soviet Union, still referring to it as "Russia". And they had Wolfe in their heads feeding them fear of the Communist Domino menace coming to a town near them real soon.

What is the moral verdict on participation in a world peace initiative that major powers on both sides are using for their own strategic objectives? Where do lines get drawn

It gets drawn at owning it, instead of continually attempting to downplay it as some innocent involvement.


, and to what extent does cooperation with a State Department sponsoring international exchanges become morally objectionable? 

It becomes objectionable when you hide behind a religion as somehow proof of virtue, especially when the real history shows that the Friends in that part of the world were full-on Anti-Communists living in fear of WWIII unless something was done to bring them down. 

OK that is a start. To spell out my own position clearly: I do not see specific evidence that Ruth Paine (or Michael Paine) had an informant role in the 1962-1963 period with respect to her dealings with Marina and Lee Harvey Oswald. If there was I want it to come to light. 

Doudna does not seem to understand that providing information and evidence to the FBI makes you an informant. Surely he is not denying that she did this, both pre and post assassination?


If not I want that to be known too. In any case I want to see Ruth's name cleared from all unjustified smearing, in which innocent people are pilloried on the basis of suspicion alone. I recognize that the case of Oswald and Marina is unusual, even if there had been no assassination. I just assume US intelligence was monitoring Lee and Marina in the background, in terms of surveillance, more than the occasional interview visits from the FBI. In this context I do not fault scrutiny cast on the significant persons in Oswald's and Marina's circles, and recognize the reasonable grounds for such questions.
I have not been in contact with Ruth either directly or indirectly via intermediaries since 2003, though in the small world of Friends, I know people who know Ruth. Based on what I know of Ruth Paine from the past personally, if I ever were to renew contact with her directly, I will say privately to her that which I say now publicly: if she tells me, as a Friend to a Friend, something specific is true or is not true, I will believe her. I believe she has been truthful in her testimony related to the JFK assassination, and I believe her walk as a Friend has been real.

Since Doudna brings up truthfulness among Friends, let's look at the reality.  From Quakers and Affirming

When you swear to do something, you're saying you will do it. This can be interpreted as a religously backed oath or as a sincere promise. [1] Either way, quakers object because they believe they're supposed to tell the truth at all times, and so they "do not swear, but we 'affirm' that we are being honest, as always". [2] The word of a quaker, however, has lost a lot of its reputation. People no longer trust arbitrary statements by most quakers more than those same statements made by non-quakers. This is because quakers have, over time, become less serious about telling the truth. Quakers have become much more integrated into society than they used to be, and now mostly have accepted the prevailing norms on truth telling. Which isn't to say that quakers lie all the time any more than most people lie, but that requesting promises not to lie from quakers makes sense.

Further, you're being asked to tell the "whole truth". Quakers who take not lying very seriously have traditionally still occasionally used not telling the whole truth as a way around that strictness. There are stories about people giving intentionally misleading but not technically false responses to questions like "why would you think that?" and non quakers warning each other to force a quaker into giving a straight answer and not to be misdirected by apparent denials that aren't actually making any claim. So even if you do believe that you should be always telling the truth and nothing but the truth, I'm not sure about the whole truth.

--------------
I gave one example above of Ruth using these techniques when asked by the FBI if she knew who the  14 year old was who went to barbers with Oswald, with her reply being that Oswald did not know any local (Irving) 14 year old boys - a statement that was true, but completely and utterly misleading. And she framed her answer that way to avoid the truth. The boy was her Russian language student who lived in Dallas - not Irving. The advice from the Quaker above that Quakers should be forced to tell the truth without the slippery answers absolutely has to be applied to the very slippery Ruth Hyde Paine.

The following is from a newsletter of Jan 2004 circulated to family and friends written by my wife, Anne Caroline, shortly after my return with her from Denmark where I had been on a research fellowship for one year during which we were married. The writing reflects English as a second language for her. In the middle of the left column she tells of meeting Ruth Paine. 

Topics tagged under 3b on REOPENKENNEDYCASE Img549.thumb.jpg.9cbb3c9dbda796997eb09bdeb29a55c9

Touching. But entirely irrelevant. 


#Paine

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