Perhaps most CIA-did-it CTers believe that George De Mohrenschildt (hereafter DeM) was a CIA officer that the CIA sent to "babysit" Lee Harvey Oswald (hereafter LHO) in late 1962, to allegedly prepare LHO for the JFK Assassination.
According to this common CIA-did-it fantasy, George DeM then "handed over" LHO to Ruth Paine in February 1963, shortly before he moved to Haiti in April. That's been the urban myth since 1992, since it was printed in a favorite CIA-did-it venue, PROBE Magazine.
Yet we get a more accurate -- and equally colorful -- portrait of George DeM from two solid sources: (1) the full set of CD-ROM files on the life of George DeM, by Bruce Campbell Adamson (1996); and (2) the brilliant book, The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell (1992).
Bruce Adamson scoured the life of George DeM in a thorough biography, in his search for the key to the JFK Assassination, and he found no smoking gun. Let's see what he found. George DeM was born into an aristocratic family in White Russia in 1911. While very young the Communists seized his family's estate. They escaped to Germany where they had a bank account -- so George and his older brother got a solid education.
During World War 2 the DeM family supported the Germans, hoping to defeat the Communists and get their ancestral estate back. The Germans not only lost the war, they also lost the respect of George and his brother, because of the horrible way the Germans treated the White Russian allies -- like an inferior race. So, the DeM brothers transferred their loyalties to the USA and supported US Troops in Germany as translators of documents in Russian and other languages. They hated both Communists and Fascists.
They eventually moved to the USA. George became a professor of Geology in Texas, making peanuts compared with his brother. He hoped for riches through an oil exploration contract with a Dallas oil baron. He got an official reference for a Haiti oil exploration contract, possibly from the CIA, possibly in exchange for a report on whether LHO was a Soviet spy. So, George spent several months near LHO from August 1962 to April 1963. It ended up ruining his life.
Here, in my reading, is how it happened.
LHO, the American Marine, would complain about the Bay of Pigs to anybody who would listen (says Volkmar Schmidt in multiple interviews). In 1962, through the Russian Expatriate community in Fort Worth, LHO met George DeM, a braggart who put on airs of being a CIA officer. Believing George might help him get a job in the CIA, young LHO clung to old George like glue. When George DeM made it clear to LHO that George passionately hated General Walker (an alleged Fascist) LHO made a surprise plan to please George DeM by killing General Walker on April 10, 1963.
George DeM and his young engineer pal, Volkmar Schmidt, had both bad-mouthed General Walker to LHO, and even compared Walker to Hitler. But they certainly didn't want to kill General Walker. Even though LHO and his accomplice missed the shot, the attempt was all over the airwaves in Texas from April 11 to April 15.
On the late night of Saturday, April 13, 1963, George and Jeanne DeM got the Oswalds out of bed with the ruse of bringing baby June a toy Easter bunny from the local drug store. They secretly wanted an answer to the question nagging at them for four days whenever hearing a news report about the Dallas police seeking the shooters at General Walker on that previous Wednesday.
Jeanne DeM asked Marina to show her around her apartment, and Jeanne snooped around until she found it -- a military rifle with a scope on it, there in the Oswald closet.
Jeanne shouted out to George, "Here is a rifle!" George asked Lee, "Lee, did you take a pot-shot at General Walker?" Lee froze and did not answer. He looked at Marina, who also froze. Marina looked back. They looked at George. George started laughing. Then they all started laughing. Then they politely said goodnight, and left -- never to see the Oswalds again in their lives.
Early the next morning, George DeM visited his best friends in Dallas, Igor and Natasha Voshinin, and over coffee, he told them his deep suspicions about LHO. Igor and Natasha never liked the Oswalds. They advised George to instantly tell the FBI. George said he could not do that, and he left. The moment George left them, however, Natasha picked up the telephone and called the Dallas FBI, telling them everything that George DeM had just told the Voshinins.
Soon after this incident, LHO moved to New Orleans, taking a job on Magazine Street, within walking distance to 544 Camp Street, and an apartment on Magazine Street. Here in New Orleans, LHO would begin his FPCC period right away, which would frame him for the rest of his short life.
Let's ask the Warren Commission for the personal opinion of George DeM about LHO. Here is a small part of his testimony:
Mr. JENNER. Did there go through your mind speculations as to whether Oswald was an agent of anybody?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. No...I never even thought about it. I will tell you why...because he was too outspoken...in his ideas and his attitudes...If he were an agent, I thought he would have kept quiet...
Mr. JENNER. You say he was outspoken. What do you base that on?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. ...Well...he was a semi-educated hillbilly. And you cannot take such a person seriously. All his opinions were crude, you see....
Mr. JENNER. Did you have the feeling that his views on politics were shallow and surface?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. Exactly. His mind was of a man with exceedingly poor background, who read rather advanced books, and did not understand even the words in them. He read complicated economical treatises and just picked up difficult words out of what he has read, and loved to display them. He loved to use the difficult words, because it was to impress one.
Mr. JENNER. Did you think he understood it?
Mr. De MOHRENSCHILDT. He did not understand the words--he just used them. So how can you take seriously a person like that? You just laugh at him...
After the Walker shooting, the De Mohrenschildts moved to Haiti, and put the Oswalds out of their minds. They probably never would have thought of them again, if not for the JFK Assassination that happened seven months later. George was subpoenaed by the Warren Commission, lost his job in Haiti, then lost his marriage, and then fell into a deep depression from which he never recovered.
In my reading, the core reason that George DeM committed suicide in 1977 was because of LHO's shooting at General Walker on 10 April 1963. When the HSCA in 1977 sent a subpoena to George DM, he was penniless and desperate. Yet even in his 1977 manuscript, he refused to come clean. His real sin was his passive role in the shooting at General Walker on 10 April 1963, by goading LHO for the entire month of February, 1963. George DeM was also guilty because of his moral failure to call the police when he realized that LHO was a prime suspect.