Willem L. Oltmans - Reporting on the Kennedy Assassination

University Press of Kansas

2017 by the University Press of Kansas All rights reserved

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Oltmans, Willem L., author. | Rinella, Michael A. (Michael Anthony), editor.
Title: Reporting on the Kennedy assassination / Willem L. Oltmans;
edited and annotated by Michael A. Rinella; translated by David
Stephenson.
Other titles: Reportage over de Kennedy-moordenaars. English
Description: Lawrence : University Press of Kansas, 2017. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016051184
ISBN 9780700623785 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 9780700623792 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 19171963
Assassination. | Mohrenschildt, George de.
Classification: LCC E842.9 .O3713 2017 | DDC 973.922092dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016051184.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in this publication is recycled and contains 30 percent postconsumer waste. It is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials z 39.48-1992 .

Appendix A: Executive Session, House Select Committee
on Assassinations, April 1, 1977

The editor would like to express his gratitude to Arendo Joustra and the board of the Willem Oltmans Foundation for making the original text of Een reportage over de Kennedy-moordenaars available and to the Dutch Foundation for Literature for their generous support in producing this English translation. In addition thanks are owed to Dartmouth College Library for the photo of Dimitri von Mohrenschildt, the Times-Picayune/NOLA Media Group for the photo of Clay Shaw, the US National Library of Medicine for the photo of Dr. John K. Lattimer, and the Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law for the photo of Dr. Cyril H. Wecht.

When he penned this sentence in the final days of April 1977 Willem Leonard Oltmans felt he was closing the door on a decade of investigative reporting. Dallas petroleum geologist George de Mohrenschildt, who had been the lynchpin of his investigation concerning a possible conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy, had died just a few weeks earlier. His apparent suicide had set off a firestorm in the American media and, arguably, saved the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) from oblivion just as its congressional funding was due to expire. Oltmans had met with the HSCA three times since the beginning of the year and, so he believed, told them everything he knew. It was time for the authorized investigation, with its necessary resources and... desired experts, not one lone reporter, to come up with new revelations aboutas Oltmans often referred to itthe Dallas affair.

Four decades have passed since the death of George de Mohrenschildt. He is remembered today, if at all, for three things: his brief friendship with Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy; the provocative statements he made during the final months of his life when he was in declining mental health; and his violent death in Palm Beach at the end of March 1977 . In my introduction to the first edited and annotated edition of de Mohrenschildts unpublished manuscript, Lee Harvey Oswald as I Knew Him , I argued that the historical George de Mohrenschildt had all but vanished from view, with Kennedy assassination researchers having transformed him into a tabula rasa onto which almost any kind of interpretation of his life, however inaccurate or imaginary, could be superimposed.

Though he did not know it at the time Een reportage over de Kennedy- moordenaars went to the printers in June 1977 , Willem Oltmans was destined to be remembered, certainly in the English-speaking world, for three things as well: the brief time he and the mentally ill de Mohrenschildt spent together in February and early March of 1977 , the media feeding frenzy that raged around him in the aftermath of de Mohrenschildts passing, and his executive session testimony given to the HSCA on April , 1977 . Their preceding ten years of friendship within these narratives is conveniently ignored.

While producing the first critical edition of Lee Harvey Oswald as I Knew Him was an important task, it was equally important, I argued, to begin recovering the historical George de Mohrenschildt. In this introduction to the first English translation of Een reportage over de Kennedy-moordenaars I hope, in addition to explaining how and why this book came to be, as well as what it is and is not, to begin recovering the historical Willem Oltmans. For decades assassination researchers have relied on the same handful of sources in their effort to understand Oltmans, most dating to the late 1970 s, written in English and published in the United States. The end result cannot help being anything but a caricature of the real Willem Oltmans and the complete body of work he undertook investigating the Kennedy assassination. Now, for the first time, a text by Oltmans himself, composed in his native language, may help begin the process of setting the record straight. In addition to making the book available to English-speaking readers the text will be annotated throughout, drawing on a variety of sources including Oltmanss personal notebooks, now being published as the Memoires . This does not mean the content of the Memoires ought to be considered true in a way the content of the book is not, but these volumes do serve a useful purpose in detecting simple mistakes arising from the extreme haste with which the Dutch edition was written (dates, locations, individuals present during particular conversations, and what they said) as well as providing a wealth of additional detail and information that both enriches the book and expands upon its contents.