by J. W Lateer
As Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, ex-Hitler right-hand man Alolf Heusinger had an office in the Pentagon and supervised a staff of around 400 there. His rank was equal to U.S. Service Commanders at the Pentagon.
Conserative activist William J. Gill was close to the Goldwater Campaign, the CIA-involved Buckley Brothers, the Eastland-Dodd SISS Committee and their counsel Jay Sourwine. Gill clearly had inside information about the assassination plot in order to write his biography of Otto Otepka. Gill’s wife was a German Countess and a famous female spy for Hitler’s Abwehr intelligence department. She had served as a Nazi spy in Spain in 1937 and in 1943. She was mentioned in almost all of the books about the attempt to assassinate Hitler 07-20-1944. She was mentioned in the memoirs of Allen Dulles who was also involved in that Hitler plot as well as negotiations with countless Nazis and ex-Nazis. She was living in Washington D.C. at the time of the assassination. The spy Countess Podewils, wife of William J. Gill, was apparently recruited by Allen Dulles as part of Operation Paperclip and brought to the U.S. The FBI kept a file on Countess Podewils.
The following are the final conclusions of the author based on the information which is set forth in The Three Barons.
1. The West German Government can be described as possibly involved in the assassination plot.
2. Certain former WWII Nazis were likely involved in the plot.
3. The Permindex organization was primarily a welfare fund for fugitive and other ex-Nazis.
4. James O. Eastland was likely using Lee Harvey Oswald as an agent in New Orleans in his Communist-busting role as official Chairman of the SISS committee.
5. Senator Thomas Dodd played a key role in the assassination plot.
6. The plot to kill JFK could likely have included the intention of killing LBJ as well.
7. The Civil Rights Act was the price that Civil Rights groups required in order to keep silent about the possible assassination conspiracy.
8. The Metropolitan Anastasy of the Russian Orthodox Church was likely directly involved in the plot or its promotion. Anastasy was to a large extent CIA-funded.
9. NATO and its SACEUR General Lyman Lemnitzer could have been at least tacitly involved in the plot along with NATO Secretary General Dirk Stikker and the highest NATO General Adolf Heusinger, the right-hand man for Hitler on the Russian front.
10. The plot could have been created by West German Intelligence Chief General Reinhard Gehlen and he was almost certainly involved in or very aware of the plot.
11. The British Intelligence retired agent Sir William Stephenson could likely have held a meeting of some kind regarding the plot near Montego Bay, Jamaica.
12. That Clarence Dillon, father of Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon was likely involved in the plot and was likely high up in the command of the conspiracy. Dillon owned a resort home near Montego Bay, only a mile away from the compound which was a center for Sir William Stephenson.
13. The National Security Council through members Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy and former employee W.W. Rostow were likely at the center of the plot, at least to the extent that it required highly-placed individuals in the JFK administration. Certain officials of the CIA and/or military intelligence were likely loaned to the National Security Council as was done in the Iran/Contra plot to avoid Congressional oversight.
14. Lee Harvey Oswald was involved with American Nazi Dan Burros and likely involved with the famous Federal informant and/or agent Roy Frankhouser, through Burros.
15. Some of the same people who attempted to kill Charles de Gaulle were likely involved at least in helping foment the plot to kill JFK.
16. That it is likely that Catholic activists Judge Robert Morris, former Congressman Charles Kersten, West German official Heinrich von Brentano, Senator Thomas Dodd, Mayor Richard J. Daley and possibly Speaker of the House John W. McCormack were involved (though not proven) to be involved in the assassination plot. This is based on circumstantial evidence. However the Catholic Church as an entity was not in any way involved other than some specific individuals both in Europe and the U.S. 99.99% of Catholics were devastated. There is absolutely no hint of any involvement of the Vatican and no Pope would ever dream of being party to premeditated murder, nor would have any radio preacher like Rev. Carl McIntyre. The same cannot be said of the Russian Orthodox Church hierarchy, however.
17. Congressmen Hale Boggs and Edwin Willis of HUAC had some role in the assassination. At minimum, Boggs was involved in the cover-up before the fact and had advanced knowledge of the assassination. Willis has been implicated only by author Judyth Vary Baker in her memoir.
Many of the above conclusions are revealed for the first time in The Three Barons.
The basic fact is that the Nazi’s were not completely defeated in World War II. German intelligence and German cartels apparently viewed the JFK assassination as a way to gravely wound their former enemy, the United States and move along with their hopes of fomenting World War III.
Epilogue
Nazi Spy Countess Podewils and Hitler’s Planner,
General Heusinger of NATO
Information in this chapter about Adolf Heusinger can be found in an excellent biography titled: Heusinger of the Fourth Reich (1963) by Charles R Allen
As the engine of national JFK assassination research rumbles down the road, it passes all recognizable landmarks and enters the wilderness of historical revision and astounding and fantastic conclusions. In this new and desolate landscape, the reader will encounter a high level of discouragement with our government and the narrative which was created during World War II and beyond. This is historical no-man’s land. Yet we must push on.
The new information which is now available on the Internet continues to expand literally every day. That is why, when the above chapter on William J. Gill was written, some key information had not yet found its way to the public. We can now report shocking new information relating to William J. Gill.
As stated in the chapter on Gill, in order to write his biography of State Department employee Otto Otepka, Gill was obviously privy to some major inside information about the assassination. Gill was also co-author on a book about the Goldwater campaign in 1964. His co-author on that book was Goldwater’s campaign manager, William S. White. Through reading the Otepka biography, one can conclude that Gill was close to the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, chaired by both James O. Eastland and Senator Thomas J. Dodd.
The more recently available information on Gill indicates that probably he, (or someone with the same name) was chief of the Catholic War Veterans Association and was also active on the Committee for American-African relations. But most shocking of all was the background of Gill’s wife.
In a story which is more astounding than fiction, Gill’s wife, Countess Mechtild von Podewils had a background as a Nazi spy, working for the Nazi spy agency, the Abwehr, both before and during World War II. Countess Podewils was the daughter of Hitler’s Consul General in Calcutta and formerly the Minister in Columbia, Count Podewils.
According to sources on the Internet, she was both a spy for Hitler in Spain during the Spanish Civil War, working on the side of Franco and the fascist Falange, and then she was working in Spain for Hitler as of 1943, attempting to secure the cooperation of Franco and Hitler as of that date. While in Spain, she was associated by some with the death of famous British actor Leslie Howard, a likely British spy whose plane was shot down by the Nazis. This incident has inspired many investigations and stories since it happened in 1943.
Quoting from the memoir of Allen Dulles called Secret Surrender, we find:
…As he shook hands with [Nazi General Karl] Wolff, Gaevernitz, in order to relieve the tension, told him that they had a friend in common, the beautiful Countess Mechtilde Podewils, Gaevernitz hinted to Wolff that he knew the Countess had come to Wolff in Berlin some years before to ask his help…
Intriguingly, her name appears in at least four books on the subject of the attempted assassinat
ion of Hitler as well as in the biography of Nazi General Wolff and the Dulles memoir. There is a record of Countess Podewils traveling to the U.S. in 1960. It has not yet been possible to determine when, how and why she married William J. Gill. But it is fairly certain that she was married to him at least as of 1960 and during 1963 and until her death.
Countess Podewils had, apparently, the following: (1) experience in helping plan the assassination of Hitler, (2) a relationship not only with Allen Dulles of at least 20 years, but also with top Nazi Generals like General Karl Wolff and the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris as well as possibly many still living in Argentina and elsewhere (3) She apparently also had an association with Spain’s General Franco where many ex-Nazis had sought refuge post-World War II and who was still in iron-clad control of Spain from 1936 to 1975 (4) a strong connection to the Catholic Church since her husband had apparently served as chief of the Catholic War Veteran’s Association and also through Vatican main-stay General Franco.
During or following the period of the assassination and extending from the 1980’s, through the 1990’s, Mr. and Mrs. Gill ran a bookstore in Washington D.C. William J. Gill died in 2003 and she died in 2010. Knowing the above, it would be difficult to name anyone who had more of a motive, means and opportunity to be a ringleader in the JFK assassination than Countess Podewils. It may sound unfair to jump to that conclusion, but—if you don’t want to be posthumously and unjustly suspected of assassination—then don’t work as a spy for Hitler!!!
As we have discussed in an earlier chapter, some in the Jim Garrison investigation in New Orleans believed that the same interests who attempted several times to assassinate President Charles de Gaulle of France were also the murderers of JFK. There is also a story out there in the research community that French Intelligence traced the source of funds which paid for the de Gaulle attempts into and out of one of the various NATO headquarters. There were several of these in Washington, Paris and Belgium and possibly could include regional headquarters elsewhere.
The bald fact which has been largely concealed about NATO in the early 1960’s was that NATO was almost totally controlled by West Germany (and Konrad Adenauer) at that time. Of course, NATO had a SACEUR. That stood for Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. And the story went that the SACEUR was, by agreement, always to be an American. Further, the SACEUR wore “two hats,” that is, he reported both to NATO and to his US military superiors in Washington. That gave Americans comfort that their national interests were being attended to by NATO.
Apparently, this was not exactly the truth. NATO was run by The North Atlantic Council. Below that council in the organization was the Defense Committee, made up of the Defense Ministers of the member countries. And below the Defense Committee was the Military Committee which was made up of the Chief Military Commanders or Military Representatives from the members. That Military Committee was the highest military authority in NATO and it directed the SACEUR.
Beginning at least in 1950, there had been calls for West German troops to play some kind of role in the defense of Europe against the Soviets. But in the beginning, it was proposed that this could happen without actually restarting a German Army on an equal basis with the other Allies. At the time, Germany was still under Allied occupation and national sovereignty had not yet been restored.
The World War II German Wehrmacht (the name of the German Army at the time) was run by the German General Staff. This General Staff had been in continuous control of the German military dating back to 1806 basically without interruption. It had played a very large role in German government after World War I with Field Marshal Paul von Hindendburg serving as German President in 1925 under the Weimar Republic. General Dwight Eisenhower famously stated in 1945 “The German General Staff itself must be utterly destroyed.”
The German Wehrmacht was proved to be a very active participant in the war crimes of World War II, including the massacre of millions of Jews. But they also committed atrocities against a variety of other groups including Slavic people, partisans, Russians in various categories, and many other people.
There was one single, most valuable military strategist on the German General Staff during World War II and that was General Adolf Heusinger. Heusinger was in charge of planning Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941. He was Deputy Chief of Staff for planning (and for a while served as Chief of the General Staff). In his role, Heusinger worked daily with Adolf Hitler (often one-on-one) during the entire course of the campaign against the Soviet Union. On July 20, 1944, a large number of Wehrmacht officers conspired to plant a large bomb at Hitler’s “Wolf’s Lair” headquarters in East Prussia. When the bomb went off, Heusinger was standing next to Hitler and he took much of the force of the blast, in effect shielding Hitler from death. As a result, Heusinger was hospitalized for 10 weeks following this famous incident.
Following the German surrender, Heusinger was taken prisoner along with the other top Generals. Heusinger had never actually joined the Nazi Party. Many top German officers had also chosen not to join the Nazi Party, either for religious reasons or because they thought it not to be professional. An even stronger reason was they knew it would look bad after an inevitable German defeat.
Heusinger was a member of the army department known as OKH which along with OKW made up the German General Staff. The Allies named the OKH as a criminal group along with the likes of the SS, the Gestapo and the other such infamous suspects. According to journalist Heinz Pol, “…Heusinger’s name was [listed] on the first Allied list of war criminals in 1945.” Quoting the top American prosecutor at Nuremberg, General Telford Taylor, Heusinger was never “cleared” nor was he a “consultant”. Although Heusinger got some sort of immunity at Nuremberg, he was never a witness. All that it known is that he wrote an affidavit which was entered into evidence before the judges of the Allied Military Tribunal. For this apparent reason, the clemency for Heusinger was arranged. During his captivity, Heusinger lived in a “country club” style of imprisonment and was assigned the job of writing summaries and memoirs suggested by his captors during his captivity.
In a previous chapter, the life and career of Senator Thomas J. Dodd has been discussed in detail. Thus, we know that Dodd was the second-in-command among American prosecutors at Nuremberg. And we know that Dodd refused ever to discuss the topic of Nuremberg for the rest of his life. It seems likely that Dodd would have known and worked with Heusinger. Dodd could have been the person who saved Heusinger from a prison term or the gallows.
The next important period involving Heusinger was the post World War II era and the need for plans regarding West German military security. West Germany was basically unified and functioning as a country following the war. Though occupied by the Allies, West Germans obviously had to continue to survive and clean up from the utter destruction that they had experienced. The planning for restoration of security to West Germany was immediately begun by Chancellor Adenauer, ex-Nazi Intelligence leader Reinhard Gehlen and two former Wehrmacht Generals, Adolf Heusinger and Hans Speidel. Another General, Gerhard Schwerin played a role, but Heusinger and Speidel had the inside track with Adenauer when it came to military planning from 1945 to 1963 and after.
NATO was formed in 1949 by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty. It soon had 15 members. These included both the major and minor countries of Western Europe who found themselves in a postwar confrontation against the massive Soviet bloc of nations which threatened them. From the beginning, planners began looking for a way to get German troops of some kind engaged in defending postwar Western Europe. The rough estimates always considered that 50% of the defenders of Western Europe would sooner or later have to be German. This was due to both financial and economic reasons, and also because of the geography and the relative populations of the Western countries.
Though at first organized piecemeal, the German Army was officially reconstituted in the mid-1950’s and by 1958, West German troops were part of NATO
under the name Bundeswehr. The new army disclaimed any tradition or succession based on Hitler’s Wehrmacht. But, as of 1956, the newspaper Die Welt stated that a large share of officers in the new Bundeswehr were formerly of Hitler’s Wehrmacht: 31 of 38 generals, 100 of 257 colonels and 84 out of 225 lieutenant colonels had served in the Wehrmacht.
When in 1958, the Bundeswehr became a unified, official part of the NATO forces (under the first exclusively German command) certain problems began immediately. Comprising over half of the NATO troop strength, the Germans naturally wanted at least half of the control of NATO. During this same period from 1958 to 1963, there also arose problems of possible neo-Nazi proclivities appearing among U.S. troops who were in close contact with a variety of Germans in Germany, including the Bundeswehr. In the JFK assassination research, the case of General Edwin Walker is well known. He was fired in 1961 by JFK for attempting to indoctrinate his troops with extreme right-wing political propaganda in Germany.
Getting back to the NATO organization, in the period 1960 to 1963, most of the top positions in NATO were held by West Germans. As mentioned above, the NATO Military Committee controlled all military issues within NATO. In the 1950’s, the Military Committee featured a “standing” executive committee with three members: one from the US, one from the UK and one from France. This was called the Standing Group and it was a subset of the Military Committee.
In addition to the above-mentioned NATO officials, there was a Secretary-General of NATO who supposedly handled diplomatic and political issues between the member countries. His office was in Belgium. In April, 1961, a man named Dirk Stikker was named Secretary-General of NATO. Although he was Dutch, Stikker was a close personal friend of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and the two often spent weekends and vacations at adjoining villas on Lake Como in Italy. Stikker had remained in the occupied Netherlands and operated a business there during World War II.