The agency helped arrange for Mr. de Mohrenschildt to win a government contract with Haiti, deploying him there with the express purpose of gathering intel on the movements of Francois Duvalier’s relatively new government. Anybody cozying up to Fidel Castro in those days came under intense scrutiny from the agency.
Just before Mr. de Mohrenschildt moved to Haiti in June of 1963, I met with him and Helms in Washington to go over protocol for delivering intelligence. Mr. de Mohrenschildt moved away and never reported much of anything until he returned to the United States in 1967.
Officially, Mr. de Mohrenschildt never met Oswald again. That’s agency speak for “yes they did meet, but I’m not going to tell you about it.” In mid September, Mr. de Mohrenschildt took a trip to Mexico City and just so happened to run into Lee Harvey Oswald. I have no idea what they discussed, but I do know other more well known assassins were rumored to be present at the meeting.
Ultimately, because of Mr. de Mohrenschildt’s detailed knowledge of the events and activities that happened around the President’s assassination, the CIA resurrected Project Artichoke to keep him from talking. Under the influence of a special cocktail of drugs, Mr. de Mohrenschildt took his own life before he could speak with the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1977.
This is not something I’m proud of, but I couldn’t go to my grave without telling the truth, something Mr. de Mohrenschildt never had the opportunity to do himself.
Thank you for your time.
The screen faded to black, but Flynn, mouth agape, still stared at it. It was easily the most powerful admission he had ever seen or heard. Shocking Flynn was not easy to do. He carried more secrets than he ever had time to divulge, some of which could start wars between nations. But this? This deathbed confession supplanted anything at the top of his list for jaw-dropping moments.
“Has anyone else seen this?” Flynn asked.
“Nope. And I was under specific instructions to show it to you first,” Mr. Moore said. “My brother was hoping that maybe you’d be able to use this during one of your television appearances when you talked about it. He even made a copy for you.”
Mr. Moore shoved a DVD into Flynn’s hands along with a written transcript and some other background information that he felt might come in handy while writing his story.
Flynn thanked Mr. Moore but remained in a daze, his brain whirring over the implications of what he just heard.
“Do you know what this means?” Flynn asked.
“Not much other than the CIA killed a man,” Mr. Moore answered. “You really think that’s a big deal?”
“Well, it’s much more than that. Conspiracy theorists have long since believed that the CIA had a hand in killing JFK. Now we’ve got an agent admitting that the CIA coerced a man to kill himself before he could share any information about JFK’s assassination.”
“I thought everyone believed that, Mr. Flynn,” Mr. Moore replied. “The bigger questions are who else was behind it and why.”
Mr. Moore’s response deflated any excitement Flynn had over the deathbed admission. He still found it significant — a witness testimony confirming that the CIA really was involved in JFK’s assassination plot. Or at the very least, had knowledge that something was happening. Mr. Moore may not have been impressed, but Flynn trusted his gut that this story was huge, the biggest he’d ever covered. He trusted his editor would agree with him along with the cable news shows. This had “book deal” written all over it.
Despite his exuberance, Mr. Moore was right. The admission did nothing more than confirm suspicions and raise old questions again. Why would the CIA want JFK dead? Was it over his reluctance to engage in the Vietnam conflict? Were they scared he would divulge important state secrets during one of his trysts with a foreign spy posing as a model? Or was Lyndon B. Johnson pulling the CIA’s strings to find his way to the White House in a more prominent position?
The why was nearly as interesting as the who on a mystery that was now a half century old. Everyone believed the Warren Report was flawed. Now Flynn had proof.
He needed to pull on one more thread, one he hoped would unravel these secrets with the ever-elusive smoking gun.
CHAPTER 12
Flynn sat in his car outside Mr. Moore’s house for a few minutes. He needed to calm down and think. Up until now, every new shred of evidence Flynn collected came from private citizens divulging some family secret. The web of lies proved the CIA’s culture of deceit still thrived. But the conscience of a few people weighed heavily upon them, so much so that they had to get the truth out there.
The fact that it took a half a century for these confessions and pieces of evidence to start coming out led Flynn to believe that the job of providing information and misinformation by the CIA was intentional. They wanted the media and the public to believe that almost anyone associated with JFK had motive to forcibly remove him from office. Over the years, Flynn met scores of people with a variety of theories. The mob did it. J. Edgar Hoover did it. LBJ did it. Russia did it. Cuba did it. Some people even suspected shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis did it. The last one was Flynn’s personal favorite, even though it was outlandish. The rumor was Kennedy was about to enact a crippling tax to the foreign import industry in the U.S., which would all but ruin Onassis. Yet Flynn liked it because if it were true, Onassis not only offed Kennedy but married his widow Jacqueline as well. The ultimate “up yours.” But the people who believed that conspiracy were a special kind of crazy, the kind Flynn avoided at all costs.
Ultimately, the plan of leaked information and misinformation achieved the CIA’s desired result. While some people still suspect the agency’s role in JFK’s assassination plot, there were far more plausible — and titillating — theories that abounded.
Flynn liked the direction of his investigation thus far, particularly since it centered around de Mohrenschildt. Easily Flynn’s favorite suspect, de Mohrenschildt led a colorful life that bordered on the unbelievable if not fanciful. Born into a wealthy shipping family in Russia in 1911, de Mohrenschildt found his silver-spoon life turned upside down when his father was imprisoned during the Bolshevik Revolution. But in 1921, his father managed to escape a prison camp in Siberia, leading his family to freedom in Poland. As a young man, he spent time all over Europe, even claiming to become involved in a Nazi plot to assassinate Joseph Stalin.
In 1938, de Mohrenschildt came to the U.S., seeking his fame and fortune — at least, that’s what he told everyone. From the moment he stepped on U.S. soil, the FBI began compiling a detailed dossier of his movements and liaisons. Long suspected as a Nazi spy, then later, KGB, de Mohrenschildt lived his life under the watchful auspices of American spies. Yet it didn’t deter him from growing his network of questionable contacts in the U.S. and abroad. In the meantime, de Mohrenschildt — ever the opportunist — built a sizeable wealth by preying on wealthy widows. It wasn’t until he married his fourth wife that he actually found a woman he deemed worth keeping, albeit a rocky marriage that even included a secret divorce while the couple continued living together.
Flynn loved the delicious irony over a Russian national and suspected Nazi spy being turned and deployed as an asset by the CIA. Yet he scratched his head over how anyone could conceive that de Mohrenschildt could be trustworthy. Weren’t his self-serving actions as obvious to the agency then when it approached de Mohrenschildt about becoming an asset as they were now, fifty years later? It befuddled Flynn how they could miss such glaring problems.