Chapter 9: A Yeti-Hunting 007, from "True Stories of Real-Life Monsters" [Excerpt]
by Nick Redfern
© 2015 by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc.
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Did the Central Intelligence Agency secretly encourage a famous pursuer of monsters to do its dark and dirty work for them in the 1950s? Is it possible that more than a few of this man's expeditions in search of the legendary Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas were nothing but ingenious cover stories to allow for clandestine espionage operations on nations that were potentially hostile to the United States? And what of this same character's untimely death in a plane crash that still provokes controversy to this very day, decades after it occurred? These and many other highly charged issues dominated the life and work of a fascinating and mysterious man named Tom Slick, a devotee of cryptozoology, an Indiana Jones-like adventurer, a figure with numerous links to the secret world of officialdom, and -- just perhaps -- the James Bond of the monster-hunting world.
A Seeker of Strange Creatures
Born in San Antonio. Texas, in 1916, when the First World War was still raging,Thomas Baker Slick, Jr., was the son of one Thomas Baker Slick, Sr., who made a mountain of money in the oil business of the 1920s, and who became known as both the King of the Wildcatters and Lucky Tom. Fate demonstrated that Tom Slick's father wasn't so lucky in the end, however: He died in 1930 at the tragically young age of only 46. Slick may have lost a parent, but in doing so, he inherited a fortune of literally millions.
Just like his father, Tom Junior proved to be a mover and a shaker. During the Second World War, after having studied at Yale, Harvard, and MIT, Slick worked with the Washington, DC-based War Production Board as well as the Board of Economic Warfare, and served with the U.S. Navy in the Pacific theater. He was the brains behind three organizations that became known as the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, the Southwest Research Institute (the focus of which was on advancing technologies), and the Mind Science Foundation, which explored the mysterious potentials of the human brain. Slick was also a big fan of modern art, and an author with world peace firmly on his forever busy mind: In 1958 he published a book on this very matter, titled Permanent Peace: A Check and Balance Plan. And then there are those monsters that so fascinated him.
Rather interestingly, it seems that Tom Slick's passion for excursions of the wildlife variety was prompted by a 1928 expedition to China that the sons of President Theodore Roosevelt -- Kermit and Theodore IV -- embarked on, during which they hunted down and killed a giant Panda. As we saw in the first chapter of this hook, Roosevelt Sr. himself was no stranger to cryptozoology, and he may very well have been the recipient of an early report of a predatory Bigfoot on the loose in the Pacific Northwest. This is interesting because, although Slick's interest in cryptozoology was wide-ranging, it was the legendary Abominable Snowman, or Yeti -- so similar to the American Bigfoot -- that attracted most of his attention. But before we get to the matter of Tom Slick's Yeti quest, let's first take a look at what the legendary beasts might actually be.
Cases, Sightings, and Theories
Depending on who you care to ask, the Yeti is thought to be a giant ape of unclassified origins and nature, a surviving example of something long thought to be extinct, or an admixture of hoax, folklore, misidentification, and myth. In Tibetan, and particularly Nepalese, culture, tales of a giant, Bigfoot-like creature existing centuries ago are still passed from generation to generation. The Rongkup people, for example, recount ancient tales of a mighty creature of the glaciers, a large and lumbering ape-like animal that used stones as weapons, and whose blood was occasionally used in religious ceremonies. In 1832 the story surfaced of a mountaineer and naturalist named Brian Houghton Hodgson, who exhibited a deep interest in Buddhist teachings and beliefs. That same story told of how a number of Hodgson's team encountered on the Himalayas a large, hairy animal that walked on two legs and that was clearly thought to be neither bear nor man. Hodgson, utterly baffled but admittedly fascinated, could only theorize that the creature was possibly an orangutan, or at least something along those lines. Similar reports would continue to surface, but it was not until 1921 that the appellation "Abominable Snowman" came into being.
In that year, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Howard-Bury -- a British politician and a soldier with the King's Royal Rifle Corps -- led a team to the Himalayas called the Everest Reconnaissance Expedition. Its primary goal was to determine whether the northern side of the massive mountain might admit access to the peak. While mapping out the treacherous mountain at an altitude in excess of 20,000 ft. (6.1 km), Howard-Bury and his team came across a set of surprisingly large footprints that appeared to resemble those of a barefooted man -- certainly not something the group had anticipated encountering at those heights! A number of the local guides who had been hired to take part in the trek were later interviewed about their experiences by a journalist named Henry Newman (who wrote for the Calcutta-based Statesman). It was Newman who coined the term "Abominable Snowman," after hearing of their knowledge of the legendary monster. It was almost certainly a mistranslation, however. The guides described the beast as being metoh, meaning "filthy," which Newman then misinterpreted to mean "abominable." And it was out of that error (or, as some suggest, that imaginative artistic license) that the creature's most famous name was introduced to a soon-to-be captivated world.
Interest in the mythological beast seemed to reach fever pitch in the 1950s, when a number of acclaimed mountain climbers, including Eric Shipton, Sir Edmund Hilary, and a team sponsored by Britain's Daily Mail newspaper, photographed what appeared to be gargantuan footprints in the frozen heights and collected sightings of the wild man-thing said to be in their midst. While public interest in and fascination with the Abominable Snowman is certainly nowhere near what it was decades ago, the hunt still goes steadily on.
One interesting candidate for what the animal/beast might really be is the Gigantopithecus blacki, a massive ape with an estimated height of around 10 ft. (3 m) and a weight in excess of 1,000 pounds. That these creatures lived and roamed across significantly sized portions of what are today Vietnam, China, and India makes the possibility that they are responsible for Yeti reports all the more intriguing. Expect for one problem, an impediment that is just about as big as the legendary Snowman itself. According to mainstream science, Gigantopithecus blacki is thought to have become extinct more than 100,000 years ago. On the other hand, nature is undeniably tenacious and very good at clinging on against all odds, perhaps even against accepted scientific wisdom. Thus, if Gigantopithecus blacki is not so extinct, after all, we may well have the perfect explanation for the Yeti in the form of an empirically verified huge ape that dwelled in the very same area where, thousands of years after its presumed extinction, people are still seeing huge, anomalous apelike creatures.
Gigantopithecus is an extinct genus of ape from the Early to Middle Pleistocene of southern China, represented by one species, G. blacki. The remains of Gigantopithecus, two third molar teeth, were first identified in a drugstore by anthropologist Ralph von Koenigswald in 1935, who subsequently described the ape. In 1956, the first mandible and over 1,000 teeth were found in Liucheng, and numerous more remains have since been found in at least 16 sites. Only teeth and 4 mandibles are known currently, and other skeletal elements were likely consumed by porcupines before they could fossilise. Gigantopithecus was once argued to be a hominin, a member of the human line, but it is now thought to be closely allied with orangutans, classified in the subfamily Ponginae.
Gigantopithecus has traditionally been restored as a massive, gorilla-like ape, potentially 200–300 kg (440–660 lb) when alive, but the paucity of remains make total size estimates highly speculative. The species may have been sexually dimorphic, with males much bigger than females. The incisors are reduced and the canines appear to have functioned like cheek teeth (premolars and molars). The premolars are high-crowned, and the fourth premolar is very molar-like. The molars are the largest of any known ape, and have a relatively flat surface. Gigantopithecus had the thickest enamel by absolute measure of any ape, up to 6 mm (a quarter of an inch) in some areas, though was only fairly thick when tooth size is taken into account.
Gigantopithecus appears to have been a generalist herbivore of C3 forest plants, with the jaw adapted to grinding, crushing, and cutting through tough, fibrous plants; the thick enamel functioning to resist foods with abrasive particles such as stems, roots, and tubers with dirt; and teeth bearing traces of fig family fruit. It primarily lived in subtropical to tropical forest, and went extinct about 300,000 years ago likely due to climate change and the retreat of preferred habitat, and potentially archaic human activity.
-- Gigantopithecus, by Wikipedia
With all of this as context, let us now return to the mystery-filled life and work of Tom Slick, the Yeti-hunter par excellence.
On the Trail of the Unknown
Tom Slick was a man with a deep passion for travel, adventure, and exotic lands -- all perfect and prime ingredients for becoming a cohort of the CIA in the 1950s. In 1956, for example, Slick was in Guyana on a diamond hunt when disaster struck, and his aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing. He ended up spending time with a local tribe for two weeks before finally being rescued. His only means of survival in the harsh, primitive environment was a diet of parrot meat. Then there was Slick's excitement-filled 1950s trip to New Zealand, the site of an ambitious hunt for wild boar. These are just a two examples of the man's many and varied escapades of the alternative and entertaining kind. But it was in relation to the Yeti that Slick really made, and left, his mark.
In 1956, Slick decided that Nepal was going to be next on his list of must-see places, and the Yeti was going to be his next creature of interest. And how was he going to find the mighty, lumbering man-ape of the huge and ancient mountains? With a helicopter and bloodhounds -- what else? This was hardly well-received by local authorities, however, who immediately put a stop to Slick's plans. However, on March 17 of the following year, according to cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, an undeterred Tom Slick kicked things off in style in the Arun Valley, located in eastern Nepal.
During the next 48 hours, the Nepalese government made a public statement -- intended for the media to disseminate widely -- loudly warning all visiting adventurers and explorers that any attempts to snare, harm, or kill a Yeti would result in the wrath of officialdom coming down very hard on the culprit or culprits. Slick got the message, but that didn't deter him from roaming the mountains with a loaded gun. Nor did it prevent him and his team from taking along for the ride a number of steel traps in which to imprison a Yeti, in the event they were lucky enough to find and capture one. Although, one imagines it would not have been an easy task to try and entice a giant hairy ape into a cage it had no intention of entering!
Several expeditions were undertaken and funded by Slick in the late 1950s. His own, personal excursions, however, came to a sudden and life-changing halt when, on one such trip, the brakes failed on the vehicle that he and his team were driving through the treacherous mountains. One and all quickly leaped to safety, but for Slick the jump was a bad one: His knees were severely damaged; from then on he was forced to play the role of funder rather than participant. Nevertheless, Slick's time in Nepal had convinced him that the Yeti was a very real creature. When Slick began to expand his research to include the North American Bigfoot, his attitude toward the world's mysterious man-beasts began to change dramatically. The days of wanting to hunt down and kill such a creature were replaced by a desire to obtain definitive and irrefutable evidence in the form of photographs and then let the beasts live in peace and privacy. Sadly, as we will see later, Slick did not live to see his dreams and plans come to fruition.
Tibet in Turmoil
One of the most fascinating claims made about Tom Slick is that while he was legitimately searching for the Yeti in Tibet, he was also there at the request, or maybe even the order, of the CIA to keep a close and careful watch on the fraught relationship that existed between its population and the government of the People's Republic of China. History would seem to bear this out. Skirmishes between Tibetan rebels and Chinese armed forces in both the Amdo and Kham regions of Tibet dated back to 1956, only months before Slick popped up to allegedly do his bit of monster hunting, which may not have been entirely coincidental. Some have suggested that perhaps Slick had a secondary but arguably far more important role in Tibet -- namely, to secretly check out the area, forge links to see who was saying what to whom, secure plenty of photographs of the land, and become an influential player and a ferreter and collector of intelligence data at a local level on the growing problems that Tibet was having with China.
It was in the early spring of 1959 that the conflict in the region reached boiling point. On March 10, violent chaos broke out in Lhasa, the capital city, which was under the iron grip of the Chinese Community Party, and had been since 1951. Seen as being a potential threat to the life of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, the fighting quickly prompted secret plans to get him out of the area as fast as possible. And who was at the forefront of this clandestine operation? None other than the CIA's Special Activities Division, which successfully achieved its assignment of getting the Dalai Lama into India, where he created what became known as the Government of Tibet in Exile in Dharamshala. This clearly had the full support of the people of Tibet, as evidenced by the fact that more than 80,000 fellow countrymen eventually followed him.
As for the CIA's Special Activities Division, as the name suggests, this is the one branch of the agency that, perhaps more than any other, takes key and decisive roles in potentially touchy operations relative to intelligence matters. Paramilitary operations are a regular part of its work, as are programs using psychological warfare against the enemy. As we have seen already, psy-war projects were used by U.S. Intelligence in two earlier cryptozoological controversies in the 1950s -- the Flatwoods Monster of West Virginia and the Aswang Vampire of the Philippines. A case of first, second, and now, with the Yeti, third time lucky? Quite possibly. Of course, if Tom Slick was involved in capers of the spying kind while roaming around Tibet, wouldn't we have some evidence of this -- something in his background, the people he mixed with, the places he went? Well, guess what? We do.
The Name's Slick, Tom Slick
There's very little doubt that Tom Slick did some work for the CIA. He certainly would have been the right person to have on board for such an ingenious project -- namely, to do a bit of localized spying under a carefully scripted ruse of looking for a bunch of Yetis. Not only did Slick have a genuine fascination for cryptozoology in general and the Abominable Snowman in particular, but he moved in a lot of powerful circles with numerous Significant people -- many of whom were linked to the secret worlds of spying, the CIA, official chicanery, and Intelligence gathering. One of those, and a good friend to Slick, was Sir Ellice Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, GBE, a resident of Shanghai who spent a great deal of time protecting and advancing Western interests in the Far East and the Orient.
Sir Ellice Victor Sassoon, 3rd Baronet, GBE (20 December 1881 – 13 August 1961) was a businessman and hotelier from the wealthy Baghdadi Jewish Sassoon merchant and banking family.Baghdadi Jews, also known as Indo-Iraqi Jews, is the traditional name given to the former communities of Jewish migrants and their descendants from Baghdad and elsewhere in the Middle East, who settled primarily in the ports and along the trade routes around the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.
Beginning under the Mughal Empire in the 18th century, merchant traders from Baghdad and Aleppo established originally Judeo-Arabic speaking Jewish communities in India, then in a trading network across Asia, following Mizrahi Jewish customs. These flourished under the British Empire in the 19th century, growing to be English-speaking and British oriented.
These grew into a tight trading and kinship network across Asia with smaller Baghdadi communities being established beyond India in the mid-nineteenth century in Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai. Baghdadi trading outposts were established across colonial Asia with families settling in Malaysia, Japan, Indonesia and Australia. Until the Second World War, these communities attracted a modest flow of Jewish emigrants from Iraq, with smaller numbers hailing from Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Iran, and Turkey.
The Second World War, brought strife to India, the Japanese occupation of Burma, Hong Kong and Shanghai, then swiftly the end of the British Empire in Asia. Dislocated by war, the violence of the Indian Partition, rising nationalism and the uncertainty of independence in both India and Burma, an exodus began to the newly founded state of Israel, Britain and Australia. Their old trade routes severed by first Communist victory in China, the ocean trade stifled in India and Burma by postcolonial nationalizations and trade restrictions, the Baghdadi Jewish had emigrated almost in their entirety by the 1970s. Families of Baghdadi Jewish descent continue to play a major role in Jewish life, especially in Great Britain where families such as the Sassoons and Reubens have enjoyed great prominence in business and politics.
-- Baghdadi Jews, by WikipediaThe Sassoon family, known as "Rothschilds of the East" due to the immense wealth they accumulated in finance and trade, is of Baghdadi Jewish descent and international renown. It was based in Baghdad, Iraq, before moving to Bombay, India, and then spreading to China, England, and other countries. It is said that the family descended from one of the court families of the Iberian Peninsula in the twelfth century. They later served as Financial Advisors to Islamic Rulers.
From the 18th century, the Sassoons were one of the wealthiest families in the world, with a corporate empire spanning the entire continent of Asia.
-- Sassoon family, by Wikipedia
Sir Ellice Victor Elias Sassoon was born 30 December 1881 in Naples, Italy while his family was en route to India. He was raised in England where he attended Harrow and Trinity College (Cambridge University). He was from a Baghdadi Jewish family who had made their fortune in the opium business. The family also had large holdings in the Indian cotton industry. Sir Victor served in the Royal Flying Corps in the First World War. He survived a plane crash in 1916 and sustained leg injuries that plagued him for the rest of his life. When his father died in 1924, Victor inherited his title and became 3rd Baronet of Bombay. He moved to India, where he managed his family's textile mills and served in the Indian Legislative Assembly.
In the 1920s and 1930s, he transferred much of his wealth from India to Shanghai, China and contributed to a real estate boom there by investing millions of US dollars in the local economy. Sir Victor frequently traveled worldwide for business and pleasure and divided his time between Poona, India and Shanghai. He acquired the Cathay Land Company, the Cathay Hotel Company and at least 50 other companies. Sassoon built the Cathay Hotel (now the Peace Hotel) in 1929, and other large hotels, office buildings and residences, many in The Bund, a waterfront area in central Shanghai (including Hamilton House, Metropole Hotel and Embankment). At one time, he owned over 1,800 properties there. Sassoon endeavored to protect Western interests in the Orient and helped European Jews survive in the Shanghai Ghetto.
Sir Victor Sassoon loved photography and opened a studio in Shimla first called Hamilton Studios. In 1928 he established his hobby and opened a studio in Bombay State at Ballard Estate by the same name as Hamilton Studios at E.D.Sassoon Building (one of his property), Ballard Estate, and all the negatives from Shimla were brought here, to Bombay, closing down that studio completely. He was also fond of horse racing, Chinese ivories, international friendships and travel. He counted members of the aristocracy and such Hollywood stars as Charlie Chaplin, Marlene Dietrich, Basil Rathbone and Bette Davis among his acquaintances. An accomplished photographer, he made many images of friends, and of local and foreign landscapes and created numerous photograph albums. He also illustrated his diaries with his own photographs.
He lived in Shanghai until 1941, when due to China's war with Japan, he was forced to leave. After the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949, he sold his business interests in China and relocated to Nassau, Bahamas.
-- Victor Sassoon, by Wikipedia
Slick's name also appears in the address book of a certain Russian character named George de Mohrenschildt, a petroleum geologist who, upon immigrating to the United States in 1938, was put on J. Edgar Hoover's FBI watch list, following a tipoff from contacts in British Intelligence intimating that he, de Mohrenschildt, was spying for the Germans. On top of that, de Mohrenschildt was in Fort Worth, Texas, in the summer of 1962 and just happened to become pals with none other than one of the most infamous and controversial characters in American history, Lee Harvey Oswald.
De Mohrenschildt believed that Oswald had been a pawn in the shooting of President Kennedy and testified to as much before the Warren Commission. This statement was widely publicized by the New Orleans DA Jim Garrison, who later became a famed investigator of the death of JFK. Notably, James Douglass, the author of JFK and the Unspeakable -- a book that concludes Kennedy was murdered by elements of the Mafia, CIA, and FBI, acting on orders from on high as a direct result of Kennedy's plans to end the Cold War -- said of de Mohrenschildt that he had been Oswald's CIA-approved shepherd in Dallas [who] probably [had] no understanding in advance of the scapegoat role that lay ahead for [Oswald]" (Douglass, 2010).
In addition, de Mohrenschildt was also very chummy with the Bush family. Yes, that Bush family. To the extent that while at the Andover, Massachusetts-based Phillips Academy, de Mohrenschildt's nephew, a man named Edward G. Hooker, roomed with none other than President George Herbert Walker Bush.
George Sergius de Mohrenschildt (Russian: Георгий Сергеевич де Мореншильд; April 17, 1911 – March 29, 1977) was a petroleum geologist and professor who befriended Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1962 and maintained that friendship until Oswald's death, two days after the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy. His testimony before the Warren Commission investigating the assassination was one of the longest of any witness.
Mohrenschildt began life as Jerzy Sergius von Mohrenschildt in Mozyr, in the Russian Empire, now in Belarus, born on April 4 in the old-style Russian Julian calendar. He had an older brother, Dimitri. His wealthy father, Sergey Alexandrovich von Mohrenschildt, was of German, Swedish, and Russian descent. Mohrenschildt's mother, Alexandra, was of Polish, Russian, and Hungarian descent. Sergey von Mohrenschildt was claimed by his son to have been a Marshal of Nobility of the Minsk Governorate from 1913-1917, and a civil rank of Actual Civil Councilor corresponding to Major General. In 1920, some years after the Russian Revolution, Sergey von Mohrenschildt was arrested by the Bolsheviks for anti-communist activities. He was sentenced to exile for life in Veliky Ustyug, a town in the north of Russia. Mohrenschildt later testified to the Warren Commission that while awaiting transport to Veliky Ustyug, his father had become ill. Two Jewish doctors who treated him in jail advised him to stop eating so he would appear more sickly. The doctors then told the Soviet government that Sergey was too ill to survive the trip to Veliky Ustyug and he should be allowed to stay at home to recover, under the condition that he check in weekly until he was well enough to be sent to Veliky Ustyug. The Soviet government agreed. After his release, Sergey, his wife and the young Mohrenschildt then fled to Poland in a hay wagon (Mohrenschildt's older brother Dimitri was awaiting execution, but was later released in a prisoner exchange in Poland). During their journey, Mohrenschildt, his father and mother Alexandra contracted typhoid fever. Alexandra died of the disease shortly after the family entered Poland.
After the death of his mother, Mohrenschildt and his father made their way to Wilno, where the family had a six-acre property. Mohrenschildt graduated from the Wilno gymnasium in 1929 and later graduated from the Polish Cavalry Academy in 1931. He went on to earn a master's degree at the Institute of Higher Commercial Studies. Having completed a dissertation on the economic influence of the U.S. on Latin America, he received a doctor of science degree in international commerce from the University of Liège in Belgium in 1938.
George von Mohrenschildt migrated to the United States in May 1938, after which he changed the nobiliary particle in his name from the German "von" to the French "de". According to Mohrenschildt, he and Fraiss, among their other duties, gathered information about people involved in "pro-German" activities, such as those bidding for US oil leases on behalf of Germany before the US became involved in World War II. Mohrenschildt testified that the purpose of their data collection was to help the French outbid the Germans.
Mohrenschildt spent the summer of 1938 with his older brother Dimitri von Mohrenschildt on Long Island, New York. Dimitri was a staunch anti-communist, member of the OSS and one of the founders of the CIA's Radio Free Europe and Amcomlib (a.k.a. Radio Liberty) stations. His contacts included top officials of the CIA.
While in New York, Mohrenschildt became acquainted with the Bouvier family, including the young Jacqueline Bouvier, the future wife of John F. Kennedy. Jacqueline grew up calling Mohrenschildt "Uncle George" and would sit on his knee. He became a close friend of Jacqueline's aunt Edith Bouvier Beale.
Mohrenschildt dabbled in the insurance business from 1939 to 1941, but failed to pass his broker's examination. In 1941, he became associated with Film Facts in New York, a production company owned by his cousin Baron Maydell, who was said to have pro-Nazi sympathies. (Mohrenschildt denied any Nazi sympathies of his own, claiming that he had helped raise money for the Polish resistance.) Mohrenschildt made a documentary film about resistance fighters in Poland. According to a memo by former CIA director Richard Helms, Mohrenschildt "was alleged to be a Nazi espionage agent."
In 1942, Mohrenschildt married an American teenager named Dorothy Pierson. They had a daughter, Alexandra (known as Alexis) and divorced in early 1944. In 1945, Mohrenschildt received a master's degree in petroleum geology from the University of Texas.
After the end of World War II, Mohrenschildt moved to Venezuela, where he worked for Pantepec Oil, a company owned by the family of William F. Buckley. In 1947, he married Phyllis Washington, the daughter of a diplomat with the State Department. They divorced in 1949. That same year, Mohrenschildt became a U.S. citizen. In 1950, he launched an oil investment firm with his step-nephew Edward Hooker, with offices in New York City, Denver, and Abilene. In 1951, Mohrenschildt's third marriage was to the physician Wynne "Didi" Sharples. The following year, the couple settled in Dallas, Texas, where Mohrenschildt took a job with oilman Clint Murchison as a petroleum geologist. Mohrenschildt and his third wife had two children, a son and a daughter, both of whom were born with cystic fibrosis (the couple's son died of the disease in 1960, as did their daughter in 1973). Mohrenschildt and Sharples were divorced in 1957.
Mohrenschildt joined the Dallas Petroleum Club, was a member of the Dallas Council on World Affairs, and taught at a local college. One of his longtime friends, offshore oil engineer George Kitchel, told the FBI that Mohrenschildt counted among his good friends oil barons Clint Murchison, H.L. [Haroldson Lafayette] Hunt, John W. Mecom, Sr., and Sid Richardson. Mohrenschildt also joined the right-wing Texas Crusade for Freedom, whose members included Earle Cabell, Everette DeGolyer, Harold Byrd and Ted Dealey.
In 1957, Mohrenschildt went to Yugoslavia to conduct a geological field survey for the U.S. State Department-sponsored International Cooperation Administration. While in Yugoslavia, he was accused by the authorities there of making drawings of military fortifications. After returning to the United States, Mohrenschildt was debriefed by the CIA, both in Washington and in Dallas.
Following his divorce in 1957, Mohrenschildt married his fourth wife, former dancer and model Jeanne LeGon, in June 1959. LeGon (née Eugenia Fomenko) was the daughter of a director of the Chinese Far East Railway who was later killed by communists. From late 1960 and into 1961, he and his wife toured Central America and the Caribbean. His "walking trip" through Central America was made to recover from the grief of losing his only son in 1960 to cystic fibrosis. However, Mohrenschildt submitted a written report of his trip to the U.S. State Department, and a photograph shows him meeting the American ambassador to Costa Rica.
Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian-born wife Marina Oswald were introduced to Mohrenschildt in the summer of 1962 in Fort Worth, Texas. Mohrenschildt testified to the Warren Commission in 1964 that he had met the Oswalds through a prominent member of the local Russian-American community, oil accountant George Bouhe. When asked whether it was safe to help Oswald, Bouhe said that he had checked with the FBI. Mohrenschildt also believed that he had discussed Oswald with Max Clark, whom he believed was connected with the FBI, and with J. Walton Moore, whom Mohrenschildt described as "a Government man — either FBI or Central Intelligence", and who had debriefed Mohrenschildt several times following his travels abroad, starting in 1957.(According to a CIA classified document, obtained by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, J. Walton Moore was an agent of the CIA's Domestic Contacts Division in Dallas.) Mohrenschildt asserted that, shortly after meeting Oswald, he had asked Moore and Fort Worth attorney Max E. Clark about Oswald to reassure himself that it was "safe" for the Mohrenschildts to assist Oswald. Mohrenschildt testified that one of the persons with whom he had discussed Oswald told him that Oswald "seems to be OK," and that "he is a harmless lunatic." However, he was not exactly sure who had who told him that.... After returning home from a weekend trip to Houston, Mohrenschildt became aware that someone had broken into his home and copied his personal papers and other documents. At the time, he also had a manuscript that Oswald had given him to read, and realized that the document might also have been photocopied in the search. His primary concern was that the CIA was behind the break-in. According to Mohrenschildt, Moore flatly denied that the CIA was involved in any way....
On April 14, 1963, Mohrenschildt and his wife Jeanne visited the Oswalds' apartment. As Marina was showing Jeanne around the apartment, they discovered Oswald's rifle leaning against the wall inside a closet. Jeanne told George that Oswald had a rifle, and George joked to Oswald, "Were you the one who took a pot-shot at General Walker?" (General Edwin Walker was a conservative activist about whom George de Mohrenschildt said he "knew that Oswald disliked.") When later asked by the Warren Commission about Oswald's reaction to his question, Mohrenschildt said that Oswald "smiled at that." In an interview with Edward Jay Epstein, Mohrenschildt claimed to have been in touch with the CIA about Oswald's attempted assassination of Walker. "I spoke to the CIA both before and afterwards. It was what ruined me." The Warren Commission concluded that on April 10, 1963, Oswald had attempted to kill General Walker.
In June 1963, Mohrenschildt moved to Haiti. He never saw Oswald again.
After Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, Mohrenschildt testified before the Warren Commission in April 1964. According to Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, then chief Pentagon-to-CIA liaison officer, Mohrenschildt had several private lunches with former CIA director and Warren Commission member Allen Dulles while testifying before the commission. In November 1966, Mohrenschildt left Haiti and returned to Dallas. During 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison interviewed Mohrenschildt and his wife as part of Garrison's prosecution of Clay Shaw. Garrison said that both of the Mohrenschildts insisted that Oswald had been the scapegoat in the assassination. Garrison concluded from his conversation with them that George de Mohrenschildt had been one of Oswald's unwitting "baby-sitters ... assigned to protect or otherwise see to the general welfare of Oswald."...
On September 17, 1976, the CIA requested that the FBI locate Mohrenschildt, because he had "attempted to get in touch with the CIA Director." On September 5, 1976, Mohrenschildt had written a letter to the director of the CIA, George H. W. Bush, asking for his assistance. He was acquainted with the Bush family; George H.W. Bush had roomed with Mohrenschildt's nephew, Edward G. Hooker, at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. The letter said:You will excuse this hand-written letter. Maybe you will be able to bring a solution to the hopeless situation I find myself in. My wife and I find ourselves surrounded by some vigilantes; our phone bugged; and we are being followed everywhere. Either FBI is involved in this or they do not want to accept my complaints. We are driven to insanity by the situation. I have been behaving like a damn fool ever since my daughter Nadya died from [cystic fibrosis] over three years ago. I tried to write, stupidly and unsuccessfully, about Lee H Oswald and must have angered a lot of people — I do not know. But to punish an elderly man like myself and my highly nervous and sick wife is really too much. Could you do something to remove the net around us? This will be my last request for help and I will not annoy you any more. Good luck in your important job. Thank you so much.
George H. W. Bush responded:Let me say first that I know it must have been difficult for you to seek my help in the situation outlined in your letter. I believe I can appreciate your state of mind in view of your daughter's tragic death a few years ago, and the current poor state of your wife's health. I was extremely sorry to hear of these circumstances. In your situation I can well imagine how the attentions you described in your letter affect both you and your wife. However, my staff has been unable to find any indication of interest in your activities on the part of Federal authorities in recent years. The flurry of interest that attended your testimony before the Warren Commission has long subsided. I can only speculate that you may have become "newsworthy" again in view of the renewed interest in the Kennedy assassination, and thus may be attracting the attention of people in the media. I hope this letter had been of some comfort to you, George, although I realize I am unable to answer your question completely.
— George Bush, Director of Central Intelligence. [CIA Exec Reg. # 76,51571 9.28.76]
On November 9, 1976, Jeanne had Mohrenschildt committed to a mental institution in Texas for three months, and listed in a notarized affidavit four previous suicide attempts while he was in the Dallas area. In the affidavit, she stated that Mohrenschildt suffered from depression, heard voices, saw visions, and believed that the CIA and the Jewish Mafia were persecuting him. However, he was released at the end of the year....
On March 16, 1977, Mohrenschildt returned to the United States from his trip. His daughter talked with him at length and found him to be deeply disturbed about certain matters, reporting that he had expressed a desire to kill himself. On March 29, Mohrenschildt gave an interview to author Edward Jay Epstein, during which he claimed that in 1962, Dallas CIA operative J. Walton Moore and one of Moore's associates had handed him the address of Lee Harvey Oswald in nearby Fort Worth and then suggested that Mohrenschildt might like to meet him. He suggested to Moore that he would appreciate some help from the U.S. Embassy in Haiti. "I would never have contacted Oswald in a million years if Moore had not sanctioned it," Mohrenschildt said. "Too much was at stake." On the same day as the Epstein interview, Mohrenschildt received a business card from Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, telling him that he would like to see him. The HSCA considered him a "crucial witness". That afternoon, Mohrenschildt was found dead from a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head in a house at which he was staying in Manalapan, Florida. The coroner's verdict was suicide.
-- George de Mohrenschildt, by Wikipedia