The Passing of Ruth Paine, Pt 1

Why it was important and should be noted

If you do not know by now, Ruth Paine died recently; to be exact on the night of August 31^st. She was 92 and about to turn 93 in 72 hours. She passed on in Santa Rosa, California, the retirement community where she had lived since 2006.

To put it mildly, Ruth was a rather controversial figure in the John Kennedy assassination case. She and her former husband Michael, who predeceased her, became very close to Lee and Marina Oswald in 1963. At the time of Kennedy’s assassination, Marina was actually living with Ruth at her home in Irving, Texas. Lee had come to visit his wife the night before. That morning, Lee walked over to Wesley Frazier’s house—Frazier also worked at the Texas School Book Depository—to hitch a ride to work. Frazier had already obliged, and from this a mythology arose. It went something like this: Oswald visited the Paines that night to pick up his rifle. Frazier drove him to work with that rifle in tow. Oswald used that rifle to kill Kennedy.

When Oswald was then murdered live on TV, the White House—under pressure from men like Eugene Rostow and Joe Alsop—formed the Warren Commission. No one testified before that body at the length Ruth did. She sat in the witness chair for six days, five in March and one in July. According to author Walt Brown, she was asked well over 5,000 questions: 5,236 to be exact. (The Warren Omission, p. 263)

From almost instant one, Ruth thought that Lee Oswald was the guilty party. (ibid). She also thought that no intelligence agency would be interested in Oswald. (ibid, p. 264) Which is really kind of a bizarre statement in its completeness. Because even at the time of the Warren Commission, there were suspicions about Oswald’s relationship with the FBI. (See Harold Feldman’s article in The Nation, 1/27/64 “Oswald and the FBI”)

As much as the excessive use of Ruth Paine by the Warren Commission should take notice, it is almost as notable that the House Select Committee on Assassination (HSCA) never examined her. But, according to the late Jerry Policoff, Ruth was at the National Archives at this time looking at records. He knew since he was there also covering the HSCA for the periodical New Times. Also notable is the fact that, even though they were urged to do so, the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) did not call in her or her husband for a deposition.

One of the reasons that the ARRB was encouraged to do so was that Probe Magazine had published a series of articles on the Paines at the time the Board was in session. These articles were written by the three-person team of Carol Hewett, Barbara LaMonica and Steve Jones. There were many fascinating facts that this triumvirate brought into the open. I cannot hope to do their work justice here. But we will mention just a few.

When Oswald returned from Russia, he befriended a man named George DeMohrenschildt. This was strange on its face because DeMohrenschildt came from upper class White Russian stock and was, in fact, nicknamed The Baron. Why would such a person then become buddies with a supposed poverty stricken communist like Oswald? It later turned out that The Baron had been instructed to visit Oswald by the Dallas CIA station chief J. Walton Moore. George also added that he would have never met Oswald unless he had been asked to do so my Moore. (Destiny Betrayed, second edition, by James DiEugenio, p. 153)

DeMohrenschildt left Dallas in April of 1963. But before he did so, he was responsible for introducing Ruth and Michael Paine to Lee and Marina Oswald. Once this occurred, Ruth wasted little time in becoming fast friends with Marina. She first wrote her a note, then visited her, and then invited the Oswalds to dinner at her home. Michael was there even though the couple was separated.(ibid, p. 155)

The capper in all this bonding is that on April 7^th Ruth wrote a note to Marina, which she insisted she never sent. It was an invitation that Marina come live with her! (Probe, Vol. 3 No. 4, p. 15, article by Hewett, Jones and LaMonica) This is not just surprising in its alacrity, but also because the Paines were Quakers and yet they seem to be attempting to separate the Oswalds.

There was then a shared picnic and near the end of April, Marina is staying with Ruth. At the time Lee was in in search of a job and apartment in New Orleans. After he had both, Marina joined him and Ruth began a correspondence with her. (DiEugenio, pp. 155-56) During that correspondence , Ruth again brought up Marina moving in with her.

That summer, Ruth went on a long journey around the country, visiting friends and relatives. She got a letter from Marina saying Lee was unemployed. So she swung around to New Orleans and stayed for three days. The two decided that Ruth would bring Marina back to Dallas so she could deliver her second child at Parkland Hospital. What makes this interesting is that, it was not as impromptu as it looked. According to FBI interviews, Ruth had told the people she visited she was going to pick up a Russian woman in New Orleans and bring her home to live with her in Irving. (Op. Cit, Probe) In other words, what Ruth Paine appeared to be trying to do since early April-- separate Lee from his wife at her home--had now been achieved. And it would stay that way until Lee was killed at the hands of Jack Ruby.

The Warren Commission never delved into the backgrounds of Ruth and Michael Paine. Nor did they explore who The Baron really was. George’s brother Dimitri was writing letters to CIA Director Allen Dulles back in 1953. Dimitri was involved with one of the CIA’s pet projects, Radio Free Europe. Dimitri was also co-editor, with William Chamberlin, of a journal called Russian Review. Chamberlin was also friends with Dulles. He advised him when Dulles was on the Warren Commission. One of the things he advised him on was how to steer clear of exposing the intelligence ties of Dimitri and George. (Steve Jones, Probe, Vol. 5 No. 3 p. 9)

In fact, in 1954, a petroleum attorney named Herbert Itkin met with Dulles. The Director advised him to meet with DeMohrenschildt. What makes this even more interesting is that Dulles knew the Baron well enough to understand he used an alias back then, one Philip Harbin. DeMohrenschildt had a give and take relationship with the Agency, and he actually hosted Moore at his home for dinner a few times. (DiEugenio, p. 194) To some, it appears that George agreed to shepherd the Oswalds in return for a lucrative arrangement in an attempted overthrow of the Duvalier regime in Haiti. For that is where he went after he arranged for the Paines to meet the Oswalds in late February of 1963.

Until the work of Hewett, Jones and LaMonica, very few people ever delved into the hidden associations of the Paines. They were generally depicted as that kindly Quaker couple who were doing the Good Samaritan work of William Penn. But yet, rather quickly, and seemingly out of the blue, someone in the Eastern Establishment volunteered to vouch for the couple. In December of 1963, the FBI talked to Frederick Osborne Jr and his wife. According to the Bureau they attested to the Paines’ “… religiosity, good character, and innocence in having anything to do with the assassination of President Kennedy.” At that point, who was accusing them of being so involved? It turns out that Osborne’s father was a friend of Allen Dulles. (DiEugenio, p. 195)

Michael Paine’s family is Boston Brahmin; he is a descendant of the Forbes and Cabot first families of America. For example, his grand uncle, Cameron Forbes, was an ambassador to the Philippines. And Cameron later served on the board, along with the Cabots, of United Fruit. Thomas Dudley Cabot, Michael’s cousin, was a former president of United Fruit. Thomas’ brother, John M. Cabot, was in the State Department at the time of the CIA/United Fruit overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala. He reportedly was exchanging information with Maurice Gatlin, a CIA related lawyer who knew Guy Banister. (DiEugenio, p. 196) In the early sixties, Thomas was president of the Gibraltar Steamship Corporation, which leased Swan Island off the coast of Central America. It was on that island that David Phillips established Radio Swan. It was used to broadcast propaganda during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. (Probe, Vol. 5, No. 5, p. 7)

Ruth’s family was from New York before moving to Ohio. Her father was an executive for Nationwide Insurance. William Avery Hyde did work for the OSS in World War II. (Probe Vol. 3 ,No. 4 p. 16) He then ended up being a regional director for the Agency for International Development, which became known as a cover for CIA agents. As we also know, Elon Musk recently eliminated this Agency.

But there is more. And Allen Dulles used to joke about it. When Dulles was an OSS officer working in Switzerland during the war, he got to know a woman named Mary Bancroft. It was both a personal and professional relationship. He ran her as an agent and had an affair with her. Later the relationship cooled, but they remained friends and Mary was also acquainted with publisher Henry Luce. Bancroft’s closest friend was Ruth Forbes. As Mary said, she “knew the mother of Michael Paine where Oswald stayed. She was Ruth Forbes, a very good friend of mine.” Dulles realized how his associations with Chamberlin and Bancroft might have looked rather compromising. According to one of his biographers he thought it was funny:

Dulles joked in private that the JFK conspiracy buffs would have a field day if they had known …he had been in Dallas three weeks before the murder and that one of Mary Bancroft’s childhood friends had turned out to be a landlady for Marina Oswald… (George Michael Evica, A Certain Arrogance, p. 230)

What Dulles is referring to when he says he was in Dallas about three weeks prior to the assassination is that he was doing a book tour for his volume The Craft of Intelligence. That book happened to be ghost written by Howard Hunt. As Mark Lane clearly suggests in his book Plausible Denial, Hunt likely was in Dallas on the day of the assassination.

There is one more association that should be made evident about Ruth Paine. Something it looks like she tried to conceal. Before she came down to pick up Marina, Ruth made a visit with her sister who was allegedly living in Falls Church, Virginia. (I say allegedly, because other sources say she lived in Maryland.) New Orleans DA Jim Garrison was interested in this since Falls Church was close to Langley, Virginia which was the home of the CIA. In her grand jury appearance, Garrison complained that her sister’s occupation was being withheld from him. So the DA asked her what agency of government her sister worked for. Ruth replied that she did not know. (Ruth’s Grand Jury statement of 4/18/68, pp. 57-58)

It turns out that Ruth was the younger sister of Sylvia Hyde Hoke. Sylvia had been employed by the CIA for a number of years as a psychologist. (Security File of Sylvia Hyde Hoke of 7/30/71, file number 348 201) Ruth was apparently never aware of this, even though her sister’s association with the Agency had been printed in the City Directory. What makes it even worse is that Sylvia’s husband John worked for AID. Ruth did mention this before the grand jury.

Isn’t it rather odd that she would know who John worked for, but not her sister? From the evidence adduced above, one could make the case that the Paines stemmed from a family---actually more than one-- of spies.

Next: In Part 2, the Evidence against Ruth and Michael