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Authors: Robert K. Wilcox

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16
Email response to my
Military
advertisement. Col. Roush, a current outdoors and military writer, said he had been near the Patton accident when it had occurred “but had no firsthand knowledge. We were all appalled to learn of the event.”
17
Conquest is one of the deans of Soviet watchers.
18
Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov, with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter;
Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness—A Soviet Spymaster
(New York: Little Brown and Company, 1994), 252-253.
19
Ibid., 249.
20
Ibid., 270.
21
Stephen J. Skubik,
Death: The Murder of General Patton
; (Bennington: self published, 1993), 118.
22
Valentin M. Berezhkov,
At Stalin’s Side: His Interpreter’s Memoirs From the October Revolution to the Fall of the Dictator’s Empire
(New York: Birch Lane Press, 1994), 315-316.
23
Ibid., 316-318.
24
Don Isaac Levine,
The Mind of an Assassin
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1959).
The Mind of an Assassin
is the story of confessed Trotsky murderer Ramon Mercader, who used every subterfuge, including love and friendship, to gain access to Trotsky and then, when opportunity presented itself, plunge an ice-axe into his head. His mother, a devout Stalinist, put him up to it.
25
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin,
The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB
(Basic Books, 1999).
26
Sword and Shield
, 74-76.; John Barron,
KGB: The Secret World of Soviet Secret Agents
, (New York: Readers Digest Press distributed by E. P. Dutton & Co., 1974), 416 says the undercover NKVD aide was with Ledov in the hospital. Donald Rayfield,
Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him
(New York: Random House, 2004), 335, names the NKVD assassin.
27
“Murder No Shock to Spooks”;
Last Hero
, 721-727, 804-816. The Holohan case became a national sensation when first publicized in 1953.
Time
, among other magazines, ran continual stories about it.
28
Death: The Murder of General Patton,
44-46.
29
Ibid., 44, 118-120.
30
This is another of the vagaries of the accident scene. Without the reports to hopefully establish definite time lines, no one really can say conclusively who did what when. Skubik infers that there was an unnecessary delay, given Patton’s obvious serious condition, between Snyder’s arrival at the accident and the ambulance’s departure.
31
Death: The Murder of General Patton
, 133-137.
32
Records obtained from the National Personnel Records Center, St. Louis, confirm this.
33
Skubik writes that he was given a Bronze Star which is not in his available military records.
34
Death: The Murder of General Patton
, 47.
35
Ibid., 47-48
36
Death: The Murder of General Patton
, 49.
37
While I was successful in locating many of those discussed in Skubik’s manuscript—or at least verifying their existence—my efforts to find Col. MacIntosh and Maj. Stone have been fruitless and it’s possible they are among the few names Skubik changed. However, Skubik’s family is very familiar with “Stoney” whom they say their father often talked about.
38
Death: The Murder of General Patton
, 50-51.
39
Ibid., 51.
40
Ukrainian Weekly,
obituary, “Stephen Skubik, consultant to Republican National Committee,” October 10, 1996.
41
Harriet Skubik Hanley, email to the author, August 18, 2004.
42
Assistant director of health policy development for a state’s health services department.
43
Death: The Murder of General Patton
, Foreword and 52.
44
Stephen J. Skubik & Hal E. Short,
Republican Humor.
(Acropolis Books, 1976). Foreword by President Gerald Ford and Introduction by Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller.
45
Harriet Skubik Hanley, email to the author, August 18, 2004.
46
Mark Skubik, emails to author, July, 20 2004 and August 24, 2005.
Chapter Fourteen: A Soldier, Not a Diplomat
1
Patton’s diaries from this time confirm this.
2
Robert Murphy,
Diplomat Among Warriors
(Pyramid Books, 1964), 174.
3
Thomas Fleming,
The New Dealers’ War: F.D.R. and the War Within WWII
(Basic Books, 2001), 190-191.
4
Diplomat Among Warriors
, 173.
5
New Dealer’s War,
165-170.
6
Diplomat Among Warriors,
175-176.
7
Anthony Cave Brown,
The Last Hero:Wild Bill Donovan
(Vintage, 1984), 262.
8
Robin Winks,
Cloak and Gown: Scholars in America’s Secret War
(London: Collins Harvill, 1987), 183-184.
9
The Last Hero,
269.
10
Ibid., 270.
11
Stephen E. Ambrose,
Ike’s Spies: Eisenhower and the Espionage Establishment
(University of Mississippi Press, 1999) (originally published by Doubleday 1981), 54-55.
12
David Irving,
The War between the Generals
(Congdon & Weed, 1993).
13
Ibid., 14-15.
14
Ibid., 15.
15
February 3, 1943 letter, in
The Patton Papers,
168.
16
Patton’s Diaries, February 5, 1943 entry, Library of Congress.
17
New Dealer’s War
, 174.
18
Fred Ayer Jr.,
Before the Colors Fade
(Dunwoody: Norman S. Berg, publisher, 1971), 209-210.
19
Diplomat Among Warriors
, 261.
20
Allen Weinstein, and Alexander Vassiliev,
The Haunted Wood
(Modern Library, 2000), 23; Jerrold Schecter and Leona Schecter,
Sacred Secrets: How Soviet Intelligence Operations Changed American History
(Washington DC: Brassey’s, 2002), 156-160.
21
See the March 29, 1943 issue of Life magazine on the Soviet Union featuring a glowing centerpiece article by Davies for a glimpse of the distorted view Americans received. Donald Rayfield,
Stalin and his Hangmen: The Tyrant
and those who killed for him (New York: Random House, 2004). According Rayfield, Davies reported show-trial victims guilty when it was obvious to the world at large they were innocent. S.J. Taylor,
Stalin’s Apologist
(Oxford University Press, 1990).
22
Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin,
The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB
(Basic Books, 1999), 107; also Sacred Secrets, 156-160.
23
The Last Hero
, 417.
24
Joseph E. Persico,
Roosevelt’s Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage
(New York: Random House, 2001), 299-300.
25
Sword and Shield
, 112. The authors cite Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (Simon and Schuster, 1995).
26
Diaries,
The Patton Papers
, 157.
27
The Patton Papers
, 168.
28
A new book, M. Stanton Evans,
Blacklisted By History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy
(New York: Crown, 2007), director of the National Journalism Center and a former commentator for CBS, argues McCarthy has been wrongly vilified by the Left and stories used to impugn him are untrue.
29
Stephen J. Sniegoski, “The Reality of Red Subversion: The Recent Confirmation of Soviet Espionage in America,”
The Occidental Quarterly
Volume 3, Number 3. shows how large was the infiltration.
30
Pavel Sudoplatov and Anatoli Sudoplatov, with Jerrold L. and Leona P. Schecter;
Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness - A Soviet Spymaster
, (New York: Little Brown and Company, 1994), 227.
31
Sword and Shield
, 133
32
Sacred Secrets
, 131
33
Jonah Goldberg, “Recovering Yalta,”
National Review
, May 11, 2005
34
Herbert Romerstein and Eric Breindell,
The Venona Secrets: Exposing Soviet Espionage and America’s Traitors
(Washington DC: Regnery, 2000),153.; also
Roosevelt’s Secret War,
374.
35
Harvey Klehr, “Spies Like Us,”
The Weekly Standard
, July 8, 2002.
36
Ibid.
37
Craig’s remark was made in an address at the International Spy Museum, Washington, D.C., broadcast on C-Span2 July 15, 2004.
38
Sword and Shield
, 130. See the footnote as well.
39
The Last Hero
, 438-442.
40
FBI message from “Boardman” via “Thornton” to “Director” marked “Urgent” and dated “June 30, 1953.” It can be found in Donovan’s file with the FBI.
41
Venona Secrets
, 211-215.
42
See Sharing Secrets with Stalin, Sword and Shield, Special Tasks, and Sacred Secrets, each of which discusses this.
43
Haunted Wood
, 14.
44
Ronn M. Platt,
News & Observer
, “Red Scare or Red Menace?” (Raleigh, NC) January 31, 1999.
45
Haunted Wood
, 140-150.
46
For a list of some of the material, including communications to and from Eisenhower, Roosevelt, Morganthau, Truman and other high-level Allied leaders, see
Haunted Wood
, 270-271.
47
Venona specifically references 349 people in the government, industry and media as being “engaged in clandestine activities” or “approached” to be Soviet spies, John Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona:
Decoding Soviet Espionage in America
, (Yale University Press, 2000), 339. Fleming in
New Dealers’ War
, 459, writes, “Roosevelt had no less than 329 communist spies in his administration.”
48
Douglas Botting and Ian Sayer,
America’s Secret Army: The Untold Story of the Counter Intelligence Corps,
(London: Fontana Publishers, 1990), 42-47.
49
Before the Colors Fade,
184.
50
Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer,
Wedemeyer Reports
(New York: Henry Hold & Company, 1958), 87-88, 140, 345.
51
John Barron,
KGB: The Secret World of Soviet Secret Agents, (
New York: Readers Digest Press distributed by E. P. Dutton & Co., 1974), 228.
52
The Haunted Wood
, 283-284
53
Several books, including Persico’s
Roosevelt’s Secret War
, include this alarming fact.
Sword and Shield
authors Andrew and Mitrokhin attribute it to historian Harvey Klehr, who answered my emailed query thusly: “The comment on White is found in a newspaper article written by Malcolm Hobbs, ‘Confident Wallace Aides Come up with Startling Cabinet Notions,’ an Overseas News Service Dispatch of April 22, 1948 that is reprinted in the McCarran Committee Hearings, ‘Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments.’ My notes have it in volume 20, 2529-2530.”
He said he was “absolutely sure” about the Duggan projection but couldn’t find the citation in his notes and so had left the story out of his own writings.
54
Patton diary, April 12, 1943, Library of Congress.
55
Eric Ethier, “General George S. Patton’s Race to Capture Messina,”
American History Magazine
, April 2001.
56
Carlo D’Este,
A Genius For War
(HarperPerennial, 1996), 539.
57
General Eisenhower to Patton, August 17, 1943, reprinted in
Patton Papers,
329-330.
58
Genius For War,
540-541.
59
Last Days of Patton
, 23.
60
Ibid., 536.
61
Charles Whiting,
Patton’s Last Battle
(New York, Stein and Day, 1987), 39.
62
Genius For War,
543.
63
The Patton Papers,
340-341, 380-381.
64
November 28, 1943.
65
The Patton Papers,
440.
66
Ibid., 441.
67
Stanley P. Hirshson, General Patton: A Soldier’s Life (Harper Perennial, 2003), 460.
68
Ibid.,461.
69
The Patton Papers,
449.
70
Ibid.
71
Genius For War,
590.
72
The Patton Papers,
452.
73
Ibid., 451.
Chapter Fifteen: A Tale of Two Drivers
1
Fred Ayer Jr.,
Before The Colors Fade
(Cherokee Publishing Company, 2007), 261.
2
Denver Fugate, “The End of the Ride: An Eyewitness Account of George S. Patton’s Fatal Accident,”
Armor
, November-December 1995.
3
Alice Thompson to the author, August 2005.
4
“Woman, gunman die in shootout,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, December 9, 1982,
5
Beck could not remember its name.
6
For example, a UPI story on the accident, datelined “Mannheim, Dec. 10,” was headlined “Both Drivers Called Careless in Auto Crash.” There were others.
7
Stars & Stripes told him they no longer had the picture or the files that would give them the information.

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