#035 - The Warren Commission Decided 11: White Russians/Black Ops pt. A

The Warren Commission Decided is back, baby! This week, our dig into General Dynamics consiglieri, and Warren Commission senior counsel, Bert Jenner, leads us to a magnificent pocket of Fourth Reich geologic accumulation. Remember, Jenner and his junior counsel, Jim Liebeler, were in charge of the chapter of the Warren Report focused on profiling Oswald and his network in Dallas.  That chapter would ultimately be perhaps THE focal point of the report, and a disproportionate amount of time and testimony was dedicated to Oswald's background and social milieu. And it gave the Jenner/Liebeler dynamic duo the rare opportunity to face some of the heaviest hitting witnesses of all.  One of those witnesses–and the person whose testimony takes up more pages of the Report than any other witness–was George de Mohrenschildt. 

George de Mohrenschildt had a life emblematic of the power that could be gained by serving faithfully as a Reichsman. His story intersects with the Texas oil industry, the military-industrial complex, and the spooked-up anti-communist White Russian community in North Texas (people keen to undermine and destroy the Soviet Union).  It should surprise no one that Bert Jenner’s chief client, General Dynamics, was well represented in de Mohrenschildt’s network.  This gave Jenner every reason to steer his nearly 3 days of interrogations with de Mohrenschildt away from the seedy and spooked-up underbelly of this world where business and crime collide. 

To have an accurate understanding of what it meant for Jenner (the man who made his nut representing General Dynamics) to lead the investigation into de Mohrenschildt (the man who made his nut representing the spooked-up oil industry leaders in North Texas), one must first understand the de Mohrenschildt family.  We spend part of this episode providing a brief origin story for Ol’ Georgie.  The son of a Russian oilman, de Mohrenschildt came of age in the European “anti-communist” (read: Nazi) scene in the 1930s and finally made his way to the United States in 1938. When he got here, he leveraged his family relationships to cultivate both his Nazi and CIA affinities.  He started out by doing a stint as a documentary filmmaker with his cousin’s film company, Film Facts. He even filmed a movie about Polish resistance to the Soviets (ahem).  After Nazism went out of vogue in the U.S., de Mohrenschildt set his sights on the oil business in North Texas. 

It is here that de Mohrenschildt immersed himself into “the colony”—the community of anti-Soviet Russians living in the Dallas metropolitan area. In 1962, the colony welcomed 22-year-old ex-defector Lee Harvey Oswald and his 20-year-old wife Marina among its ranks. 

This one has lots of hidden gems and artifacts, and given the scope and breadth of the subject matter, it is going to be another multi parter. Enjoy this one, and STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO!!!!!