WhoWhatWhy Bush And The JFK Hit, Part 9

Bush and the JFK Hit, Part 9: Planning a Nightmare on Elm Street

The Potomac Two-Step

De Mohrenschildt had just spent the last half year in almost constant contact with Lee Harvey Oswald, who had recently returned from several years in Soviet Russia. De Mohrenschildt had done so, moreover, at the CIA’s request, or so he claimed. It seems unlikely that the sole topic of the New York meeting with WUBRINY/1 would have been sisal in Haiti. Nevertheless, in the minds of these people, sisal was apparently enough to hang a legend on.

Now there was a documented and apparently benign reason that Thomas Devine (and by implication, Devine’s longtime associate George H. W. Bush) knew a man about to be under fierce scrutiny for his own ties to the alleged killer of the president of the United States.

In case the “sisal” document of April 1963 was not enough, de Mohrenschildt next traveled to Washington, DC where he and his friend Mr. Charles met with other government figures, ostensibly to talk about sisal.

Here the story gains a more intriguing layer – namely, the suggestion that de Mohrenschildt’s real purpose was to secure U.S. government backing for a coup d’état against the Haitian dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier. De Mohrenschildt and Charles appear to have obtained an audience with none other than Howard Burns, military adviser to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, with the prospect of meeting LBJ himself.

As noted in correspondence dated April 18, 1963:

Dear Mr. Mohrenschildt:

Your letter has come in the Vice President’s absence from the office . . . I would like to suggest that you see Colonel Howard Burris, Air Force Aide to the Vice President, when you come to Washington. Should Mr. Johnson happen to have any office hours here during our stay, we will be happy to see if a mutually convenient time can be found for you to meet . . . With warm wishes, Sincerely, Walter Jenkins, Administrative Assistant to the Vice President.

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