19: Our Return to Haiti
I Am a Patsy! by George de Mohrenschildt
When we had received Rankin’s letter inviting us to come to Washington and testify at the Warren Commission, we knew that we would be of poor help, as we had been out of contact with Lee for over eight months prior to the assassination. We could not say what happened to him and Marina after we had left Dallas. But, naturally, I was anxious to testify in order to clear my name and to be able to work on my survey.
But the American colony in Port–au–Prince were in an uproar when they were told that we were going to Washington to testify. “How horrible!” said some. “Aren’t you afraid?” said the others. Even my old friend at the Embassy, Teddy Blaque, said: “but he was an assassin and you were so deeply involved with him.”
Many thought that we would be put in jail and would never come back to our lovely house in Port–au–Prince.
Fortunately the Haitian Ambassador in Washington was reassured by the Warren Commission that we were decent people, the Ambassador transmitted this message to the President Duvalier and we could return safely to Haiti. But my contract became hopelessly harmed by the intervening publicity and by the peculiar attitude taken by the American Embassy towards us. And President Duvalier, the astute Papa Doc, knew through his informants that our Embassy would not protect my rights any more. And the old fox was absolutely right, the payments for my survey began drying up and in later years I never received any cooperation from anyone in our Embassy or in the State Department in trying to recover the large balance of my contract still due to me.
I cannot even give a complete resumé of incongruous theories and suppositions which evolved — and are still evolving to–day– in feverish minds of various writers and reporters as a result my past friendship with Lee and the colorful excerpts from the Warren Commission depositions which were leaked out.
One theory had it that Lee was operated by me via long distance, from Haiti to Dallas. Impulses were transmitted very deviously because I, a geologist and a famous scientist, had previously inserted a transistor in Lee’s skull (either under the skin or deeper, I do not remember). A book was published in New York describing this whole operation in detail. Since Papa Doc disliked President Kennedy, we would sit in his office, surrounded by tontons macoutes — and would operate poor Lee, who would blindly obey us.
As a credit to the American reader, I may say that this book didn’t have much success and I seldom meet anyone who had bothered to read it.
However another book was published in Luxembourg — to avoid criminal prosecution — and it had an enormous success in Europe. L’Amérique Brûle — America Burns — contains over 400 pages of outrageous innuendoes against the American institutions. The writer, James Hepburn, an invented name, is actually a group of European newspapermen who had been assembling dirt about the United States. This collective James Hepburn calls both Lee Harvey Oswald and myself CIA agents. Let me translate this nonsense which appears on page 356:
Oswald was suspected, as any other agent returning from a mission in the enemy territory, of having been ’manipulated’. He was put therefore under surveillance by CIA and then interrogated and ’tested’ by one of the specialists utilized at the same time by Washington (CIA) and by Houston (oil men) and whose nom de guerre was George S. de Mohrenschildt, and whose nickname was ‘chinaman’.
This ‘well–informed’ book, which still has flashes of success in Europe, goes on describing yours truly:
The Chinaman was ‘presumed’ to have been born in the Ukraine and was an ex–officer in the Polish cavalry. He was recruited during the war by O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services) and was registered in 1944 at the University of Texas where he obtained a degree of geological engineer, specializing in petroleum geology.
The CIA used him in Iran, in Egypt, in Indonesia, in Panama, in Guatemala, in Nicaragua, in San Salvador, in Nigeria, in Ghana, in Togo, in Haiti etc. where he worked — in principle — for the Sinclair Oil Company.
George de Mohrenschildt was closely connected with petroleum circles (and member of Dallas Petroleum Club, of the Abilene Country Club, of the Dallas Society of Petroleum Geologists) and had close personal connections with the managers of the following companies: Kerr–McGee Oil Company, Continental Oil Company, Cogwell Oil Equipment, Texas Eastern Corporation and also with John Mecom (of Houston). He was a distinguished and cultured man (Mr. Hepburn obviously buried me already) who was part of the establishment and frequented the Social Register of New York. His wife, a White–Russian lady, born in China, worked frequently with him.
Another of his covers was the International Cooperation Administration (I.C.A. — sic) in Washington.
This “book” also accuses Lee of working for a photographic firm in Dallas, a cover for CIA, which specialized in making and reproduction of maps and confidential documents for the United States Federal Government.
But enough of all this nonsense. However, it let us remember, that all these idiocies and distortions were based on the Warren Report.
If I were a CIA agent, I would not have been so miserably treated by the American Embassy in Port–au–Prince, and especially by the Ambassador.
It is discouraging to say that the Warren Report contained mostly the “words which were put in our mouths,” so to say. However, there were a few good and truthful facts in this report. For instance, a friend of mine, an investment banker in Dallas, testified that he met Lee and that he found him intelligent and alert. Another young man, who had lived in Fort Worth, also had some kind of words for my friend.