The Looting of Royster’s Office
Royster’s office at the White House was being looted Secret Service agent Harold Hill watched as Ashley Reid’s chief of staff Jennifer Thomas, carried several boxes of paper out of Richard Royster’s office before D.C. Metropolitan Police officers showed up to properly seal it off from both inside and outside traffic.
Amazing when you consider that the official identification of Richard Royster’s body by Larry Jones did not take place until 10 PM! Speaking of Larry Jones, another Secret Service agent saw him remove a lot of items from Richard Royster’s office in direct violation of the official seal placed upon Royster’s office. Witnesses also saw Matthew Greenbaum in Royster’s office as well.
Three witnesses noted that Abraham Friesen, director of the White House Office of Administration, was desperate to find the combination to Richard Royster’s safe. Mr. Friensen finally opened the safe, apparently with the help of a special”MIG” technical team signed into the White House in the late hours.
Two envelopes reported to be in the safe by Royster’s secretary Linda Jones, addressed to Julie Holmes and to Robert Klein, were never seen again. When asked the next day regarding rumors of the safe opening, Michael Miller told reporters Royster’s office did not even have a safe, a claim immediately shot down by former occupants of that office.
Later on that night, the D.C. Metropolitan Police officers arrived for the official search of Richard Royster’s office, the police officers passively sit outside Royster’s office as Greenbaum and Jones along with a bunch of White House aides freely went in and out of his office. Since Royster’s office was technically part of the crime scene, this was a gross violation of police procedures.
A few White House aides were seen pilfering as well as ransacking Royster’s office. A Secret Service agent saw Ruth Warren moving Royster’s files to her office No efforts were made by D.C. Metropolitan Police to recover this potential evidence.
Why was this criminal interference with the police investigation tolerated?
A series of conflicts channeled from through Attorney General Jamie Woods Department of Justice resulted in the D.C. Metropolitan Police merely sitting outside Royster’s office while Greenbaum continued his own search to Royster’s office. During this search, he opened and upended Richard Royster’s briefcase, showing it to be empty of its contents.
Royster’s personal secretary, Linda Jones, has testified that Royster’s file index, the document listing everything contained in his files, has vanished. Several other documents and letters, known by Jones to have been in Royster’s wall safe, have also mysteriously vanished.
The documents removed from Royster’s office at the White House and turned over to either the Reid’s private attorney or the Royster’s family attorney. According to one sole source, “This is ingenuous. For all we know, he may have seen only a handful innocuous documents. Furthermore, he makes no reference to the documents placed in the private living quarters of Ashley Reid.
The multitude of cardboard boxes full of documents removed from Royster’s office by Ashley Reid’s chief of staff, Jennifer Thomas, were taken to the private residence area of the White House! Eventually, only fifty four (54) pages emerged.
One set of billing records, under subpoena for two years, and thought to have been originated in Royster’s office, turned up unexpectedly in the private quarters of the White House, with Ashley Reid’s fingerprints all over them.
That proves that the blind trust documents were paramount importance to whoever directed the looting of Richard Royster’s office. So, who ordered the looting of Richard Royster’s office at the White House?
Which connects it to the murder.
President Thomas Jefferson Reid was unavailable at Camp David for the weekend. But Ashley Reid was on the telephone with someone at the White House in the moments before the looting took place.
The Washington Post headline read “Richard Royster, White House Counsel Murdered” on the morning of June 22, 1993. The news was sensational, feeding a frenzy lasting for several days, and investigation that may last years. The official story was Royster was clinically depressed, unable to survive in the big fish eat little fish world of Washington, DC, and was preparing to resign his position as White House Counsel to President Thomas Reid.
If Royster was depressed, he had good reasons to be as we shall see, none of which had to do with his personal life. His professional life--the secret side of it, on other hand, showed signs of unraveling at the seams, a very tangled web of intrigue and espionage.
According to William Webster, Royster was a senior intelligence officer working for the National Security Agency (NSA), holding the rank equivalent of general. Subsequent characterization by Edward Brown, one time senior editor at Forbes, described Royster as a key liaison between the White House, NSA, and Systematics-subsequently purchased by Systel--a company heavily involved in intelligence espionage. Somewhere between the two distinct profiles lays the real truth.
He was clearly involved in secretive intelligence work which certain powers wanted knowledge suppressed, in no small part because he was the homing beacon to their crimes and treachery.
Although Royster and Ashley made real sorts of dough with criminal money laundering deals reaching to the infamous BCCI scandal, it is Royster’s alleged involvement with Israeli spy James Reynolds which give the most clues explaining his demise.
Prior to entering the White House, Royster, working in conjunction with British publishing magnate and former Member of Parliament, Maxwell Murdoch (1924-1991), had been identified as an espionage agent providing Israel highly classified information. Murdoch was found dead in his office in London, but was accorded a quasi state burial in Israel.
Much of Royster’s espionage work concerned nuclear weapons and technology, with the ultimate goal of rendering Israel as a nuclear power in a gambit to deter its Arab neighbors from aggression.
Webster lays out a very persuasive case that Royster, who had begun work for the National Security Agency (NSA) around 1983, had been recruited by George Lincoln to act as his intermediary between Israeli spy James Reynolds who was ultimately convicted in 1988 of spying. The core mission of the NSA are to protect United States national security and to produce foreign signals intelligence information. The values of the NSA is to protect national security interests by adhering to highest standards of behavior.
But Royster was a jack of many tracks whose many talents would not be idled with just one project. He was involved in other NSA endeavors, including one which involved in financial spying and espionage.
Ironically, it was Royster’s NSA project of tracking bank transactions using Inclaw’s PREMIS software which may led to his downfall. One source alleges that a rogue CIA used the software to hack into JEMMAD’s database where Royster’s name was inexplicably found along with links to several Swiss bank accounts holding at various times up to 20 million dollars, which is not chump change for a Tennessee lawyer-even for one making $500,000 USD per year.
Ashley Reid had a direct interest in the money due to her many and varied collaborations with Royster in delicate financial matters. One of these banks was Banca della Svizzera Italiana (BSI). BSI is the oldest in the Swiss canton of Ticino. Founded in 1873 in Lugano as the Banca della Svizzera Italiana. Today BSI is an institution that specializes in asset management and related services for private and institutional clients.
While this story of accidental discovery is plausible, we can consider it disinformation. It can be certainly believe that Royster had the accounts-why else would he make periodic day trips to Switzerland. But it is even likely this story was setup to paint Royster as a sinister traitor and to deflect attention away from his handlers who were the powers behind the treachery.
Ashley Reid: “ Dick, I have something very serious to tell you.”
Richard Royster: “What is it, you are trying to tell Ash?”
Ashley Reid: “Did you know your Swiss bank accoun
ts have been drained through the use of surreptitious software.”
Richard Royster: “Oh No!” “Say it is not so.” (He is in total shock and his face is red)
Ashley Reid: “Yes it is true.” Also, you are under investigation for treason and espionage.”(An ignominy they share in common)
Richard Royster: “Damn!” “I am deep in doggy doo-doo.”
Ashley Reid: “Dick, you need to go to Switzerland and check out for yourself.”
Richard Reid: “Thanks Ash.” (He gives her hug and walks away.)
On May 1, 1993, Royster bought a round trip an airline ticket from the White House Travel Office to Geneva in order to check-up on his Swiss bank accounts.
Almost anyone can open a Swiss bank account, even US citizens are entitled to open an account and gain the advantages of financial security that comes with it.
Switzerland is a politically, economically and geographically stable country which has built an entire industry based on this stability.
He discovered that his account of $2.8 million dollars had been emptied resulting in the hiring of legal counsel.
On May 18, he went to Maryland where he met with Jim Hubbell, William Cardozo and according to Laws, George Johnston among others including possible telephonic communications with the Reid’s to strategies on damage control about the money and reports to an explosive several should be confronted the illegality of his actions. Apparently, Hubbell showed Royster a printout of the money trail from JEMMAD to his Swiss bank accounts, a revelation which must surely conjured up substantial anxiety.
In the days preceding Royster’s murder, two interesting events occurred which were most likely related to each other. The first according to Wilson is that the Democratic National Convention sent on June 16, a wire transfer in the amount of $295,000 via Shelly Farrell, to her sister-in-law Rebecca Royster,wife of Richard. Was this payola for Richard to keep his silence and perhaps console the loss of $2.8 million dollars USD from his Swiss bank account? Or was it hush money to Rebecca to keep her silence once Royster was dead? Who really the knows the answer?
We do know what Royster initially planned had to do something which Ralph Davis, a security man whom he conducted regular business, urged him not to do. Davis was gunned down gangland style a month later for knowing too much. The late Ralph Davis owned a detective agency in Nashville. According to Rose Davis, his widow, he had often done mysterious jobs for Richard Royster. She says that shortly before , he died, Royster telephoned Ralph. She overheard Ralph’s half of the conversation. She says her husband became highly agitated. He begged Royster not to do something Royster was intent on doing. After Royster died, Ralph became extremely fearful and started carrying a gun. According to Rose, shortly thereafter, teams of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents ransacked the Davis’s house . They removed all boxes of office files, film negatives, and floppy disks. Rose says these searches happened repeatedly. The FBI thugs clearly indicating that all information was of the very highest order was a stake. Apparently, none of the searches or confiscations was legal.
In any event, Royster had overstepped his bounds and was permanently sequestered.
Royster had gotten in well over his head by taking possession of the nuclear launch codes which compromised the identification codes the President needed in order to initiate the launch of nuclear weapons. He was like a non swimmer literally drowning in the murky deep end of an information pool of files, records, declarations and blind trusts.
Royster had two 1 inch binders, one blue, one red, in the safe of Raymond Greenbaum. These binders were identified as NSA launch code and launch option books.
One disturbing aspect of this story is that Royster did not have clearance, even as a high rank NSA emissary, to see codes which are directly delivered to the President in his quarters. Thus the only way Royster could have obtained them is through Reid. Tom Reid was not the subject of espionage investigations; his wife was. We thus why she took charge of Royster’s office immediately following his death. At this point, it is hard to know who gave the orders to murder Royster, but a good guess is that Hooks and Ashley closed ranks to silence him.
There is strong compelling evidence that Ashley and Royster were lovers but there are also intriguing tasty morsels about a White House lesbian clique with which Ashley may have been involved as well. It is one of the more reasonable claims made about the case in particular, although the credibility of these rumors is somewhat lessened by the fact that the people making the charge usually follow a few minutes later with a claim that Ashley was a lesbian. Who would questioned Ashley Reid’s sexuality in the first place?
Carnegie Andrew Miller, the wealthy heir to the Miller publishing fortune was asked by the New York Times about his devotion to the Royster murder. Miller said “The death of Richard Royster: I think that’s the Rosetta Stone to the whole Reid administration. There are just too many questions that have no answers.”
Rebecca Royster arrived at the morgue at George Washington University Hospital (GWUH) to claim her husband’s body dead on a cold slab. She is grief stricken at the sight of Richard being dead and cries profusely comforted by her sister-in-law.
Richard Royster body is picked up by a local mortuary and transported to their facility for embalming. Royster had requested his funeral to be held in Nashville,
Tennessee.
That evening, at 8:30 p.m., Tom Reid was waiting to be interviewed by Larry King. As Reid was being prepped at Camp David by a makeup artist, he chatted with Mike Lewis. At 9:00 p.m., President Reid appeared via satellite from Camp David as a guest on CNN’s “Larry King Live” to discuss the recent appointment of William Freeman to run the FBI and the Senate confirmation hearing of Jane Anderson Rosenberg to the United States Supreme Court.
Both developments had been well-received in the press and Reid was having such as good interview that King asked him to stay on past the scheduled show time. Yet there also had been victories early in the Reid administration but that was not a good reason to celebrate them at the moment.
Reid agreed, until John Watkins, Chief of Staff contacted the President at Camp David during the commercial break regarding the shooting death of Richard Royster.
President Reid’s answered the call, a devastating look came on his face, learning of Royster’s death in the White House. He later recalled. “Royster was overwhelmed, exhausted, and vulnerable to attacks by people who didn’t play by the same rules he did.”
President Reid, said “ John, please call Rebecca Royster,Richard’s spouse as soon as possible.”
Watkins said, “I will call her Mr. President after our conversation Sir.”
The call between the President and John Watkins ended. Now the sequences of events gets very interesting, say to least.
President Reid told his wife of the news of the murder of Richard Royster,
Tom Reid, said “ Ashley, Dick Royster is dead, he was murder in his office at the White House.”
Ashley Reid replied sobering with large tears in her eyes, “ I am so sorry to hear of Dick’s death Tom.”
Tom Reid: “We are leaving now for Dick’s house to comfort Rebecca and the kids.”
Ashley Reid: “Okay Tom sounds like a plan to me in light of the current situation.”
On the evening of June 21, President and First Lady left Camp David via Marine One traveling back to Washington, disembarking the helicopter to the waiting presidential limousine riding over to Royster’s Georgetown home, The First Family arrived in a melancholic and saddened state to console his grieving wife Rebecca and children.
Reid recalled “sad for all my friends from Tennessee who had come to Washington wanting more than to serve and do good, only to find their every move second-guessed.”
President Reid and First Lady Ashley Reid attended the funeral services along with Royster’s immediate family consisting of his wife, Rebecca and two children: Jessica and Robert. Jessica was the oldest and she was a junior at Georgetown majori
ng in Sociology with Social and Criminal Justice emphasis. Robert was in the 12th grade, senior at St. Albans who enjoying playing lacrosse. Also, William Webster and Webster Kennedy attended the funeral as well.
President Reid gave the eulogy of his good boyhood friend Richard Royster. He described his good friend with humorous anecdotes in light of being a subdue and melancholy setting at the church.
Royster was born in Nashville, Tennessee on February 14, 1946, the same city as Tom Reid. It wasn’t strange for the President to call Royster with offers to catch a movie, the men had know each other for years.
Kindergarten classmates, they only lived a few houses away from each other in Nashville, TN., before Reid’s family had moved to Knoxville. Richard and Ashley were good friends. He joined the Hart Law Firm in Memphis and in 1973 was made a partner. Royster had recruited Ashley to join the firm after working with her on legal aid issues. Among his partners were Ashley Reid, William Bell and Webster Kennedy. Royster’s office at the White House was located on the second floor of the West Wing which was a office suite. A few weeks after arriving he hired Linda Jones as his secretary.
Just a few weeks before Reid’s Inauguration, Royster complained to his Memphis doctor that he was feeling down and anxious.
Murder at the President's House Page 5