I was in Dallas last weekend for the screening of this film. It was very well done. I was with two other researchers and we picked up Ruth Paine from the airport Friday evening (the 19th). We were Ruth's transportation for the entire weekend, even taking her to the airport Monday morning. In addition to the screening on Sunday night (the 22nd), she also spoke for about an hour and a half at an event hosted by the Irving Public Library. Everywhere Ruth went last weekend, we took her; breakfast, lunch and dinner. I spent almost three days riding around in a van with her. There's no chance in hell that she had anything to do with "setting up" Lee Oswald.
IOW, you and two other unnamed Ruth Paine "fans" acted as her "body men" and PR flacks? Actual researchers would not seek access to Ms. Paine merely to obtain and preserve a rapport with her (access for the sake of access). Real researchers would exhibit some sense of obligation to history. You do not, and so the following troubling contradictions are preserved for all time. Nice work, unreasonable Bill and the unnamed duo.
Richard, that's just too much common sense for Caprio and Cakebread. You're going to make their heads explode. Be careful.
Thoughtful (students of JFK Assassination controversy capable of wiping their own and who are otherwise reasonable
people) posters do have to admit that, although it is 55 years later and the agency is larger now, MOST have never met
a CIA agent or even a former or current CIA employee.
Bill and Richard, the core problem here is neither of you demonstrate reasonable behavior or level of suspicion
in reaction to the unreasonable....too many spooks in the mix!
Ruth's sister was a CIA employee, sister's husband was a AID (a CIA cloaked agency) employee, the Hyde girls' father
William Avery Hyde was recently considered a useful candidate by the CIA, a college friend of both mom and pop
Hyde, who had roomed in NYC in 1930 with the Hyde couple and their two young daughters was later a CIA analyst
reporting to his supervisor Bruce Solie on his specific contact with Ruth's parents.
https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=162099&relPageId=1
Quixotic Joust: Communists and Anti-Communists Meet Under Ground
http://quixoticjoust.blogspot.com/2015/01/hyde-family-and-central-intelligence.html
Nov 10, 2014 - William A. Hyde was in Washington this last week-end, visiting his ... Talbot was reporting to Bruce Solie, of the CIA's Security staff, about a ...
Quixotic Joust: Hyde Family in the CIA and USAID
quixoticjoust.blogspot.com/2015/01/hyde-family-and-central-intelligence.html
Jan 5, 2015 - In attempting to determine what role, if any, Ruth Paine's Hyde .... A report by Bruce Solie of the CIA generated on December 5, 1963, stated:
......
....and Ruth
formed a, and was writing to the State Dept. manager of that sort of intelligence gathering
program.:
https://aarclibrary.org/the-jfk-case-the-twelve-who-built-the-oswald-legend-part-11-the-paines-carry-the-weight/
.....Ruth also worked on an American-Russian student exchange organized by this committee in 1958, taking an active role in making the travel arrangements for the Russian visitors. The Paines told the Warren Commission that Ruth was a prominent committee member, but never addressed who was Ruth?s contact with the State Department to get the travel arrangements done.
I think she had such a contact, and the contact?s probable identity tells us a lot. The Director of East-West Contacts within the State Department, Frederick Merrill, stated his approval of this 1958 exchange. [xxviii] Merrill worked with the Free Europe Committee, which funded Radio Free Europe and other projects to ensure the flow of funds to Soviet exile groups. [xxix] Michael Paine allowed that Ruth may have written the State Department to set up this exchange. [xxx] The next year, Merrill informed the chief of CIA East-West Contacts that the Rand Corporation was asking the State Department about Robert Webster?s whereabouts when he defected to the Soviet Union. [xxxi] Oswald was to follow in Webster?s footsteps just days later.
.....
FREDERICK MERRILL, DIPLOMAT, 69, DEAD - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/1974/12/02/archives/frederick-merrill-diplomat-69-dead.html
Dec 2, 1974 - 1 ?Frederick T. Merrill, who was the State Department's Director of East‐West Contacts from 1956 to 1960 and deputy chief of mission in ...
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/paine_m1.htm
..Mr. LIEBELER - Do you know whether your wife engaged in a writing campaign or a pen pal campaign between people in the United States and people in the Soviet Union?
Mr. PAINE - That was another part of this East-West contacts committee's duties or tasks they took upon themselves and I think she was chairman, accepted the chairmanship of that committee.
For a while, it was almost moribund, very inactive.
Mr. DULLES - Which committee was that, the committee to stimulate letters between Russia and the United States?
Mr. PAINE - Yes; to find names and addresses on each side to connect people together.
Mr. LIEBELER - Did you yourself ever take part in any activity of that group?
Mr. PAINE - No; I didn't.
Mr. LIEBELER - You spoke of the East-West contacts committee as being active in trying to bring a group of Russians to the United States. Did they engage in any activities other than this attempt to bring Russians to the United States that you know of?
Mr. PAINE - That is the only one I know of, yes.
Mr. LIEBELER - Did they succeed in bringing some Russians to the United States?
Mr. PAINE - Yes; they did. They brought three Russians, and then the Russians reciprocated by taking a group of Quakers who knew Russian on a tour of Russia.
Mr. LIEBELER - Were you married to Ruth Hyde Paine at the time these Russian people came to the United States under the auspices of the East-West contacts committee?
Mr. PAINE - I might have been; I don't know.
Mr. LIEBELER - Do you know whether she actively participated in the program to bring the Russians to the United States?
Mr. PAINE - Well, she participated insofar as going to the meetings. I don't believe she did most of the writing to the State Department and what-not to try to arrange clearances and itineraries and things like that, but she was at the meetings at which those things were discussed.
Mr. LIEBELER - Did she ever discuss them with you in any detail?
Mr. PAINE - We, I would often--I went to several of those meetings myself....
......This is the obit of the father of Robert E.Webster's employer's (H. James Rand's) business partner.:
It seems Jim Rand's father thought highly of the father of Ruth Paine's State Dept. contact that she could
not recall the name of.........
The Diamond of Psi Upsilon - Volume 20, Issue 1 - Page 47
https://books.google.com/books?id=pJ5MAAAAMAAJ Psi Upsilon - 1933 - Full view - More editions
William Fessenden Merrill 1933....Resigning both positions in June, 1928, he was named vice- president and general manager of Remington Rand, which had previously absorbed his old company, the Library Bureau. .Two months after joining the company, Mr. Merrill was promoted to the presidency of the organization, succeeding James H. Rand, Jr., who became chairman of the board. More than a year ago Brother Merrill retired because of ill health, but retained many directorships until the time of his death. He was a ... He is survived by a widow, a son, Frederick T. Merrill, and a brother, Oliver B. Merrill, Gamma '91. Charles
......
