Author Dick Russell met with Eugene Dinkin in December of 1975 at the cafeteria of the Art Students League in New York City. Ten days later, he met Dinkin again at Grand Central Station. Russell wrote up a 7 1/2-page report which I found in his papers at Baylor University.
Here is a summary of Russell's report. Because of copyright, I don't think I can post the whole interview, much as I would like to.
Dinkin brought a scrapbook of clippings to the meeting and talked about "subliminal gestalt semantic techniques."
It's not an Oct. 22 photo -- it's a November 22nd photo, and it's Trotsky, not Lenin. Here it is, once again: (see Demonstration #6)
Dinkin continues with his clippings:
Dinkin brought up Robert Lee Woodard. I can't find the exact article he was referencing, but here is one that gives you an idea:
Later in the interview, Dinkin discusses Woodard:
Clearly Dinkin has been influenced by JFK conspiracy books.
Dinkin then explains his overall theory:
Dinkin was easily influenced. There was lots of talk about American involvement with the OAS to assassinate de Gaulle. But there was nothing to it, and they were right to tell Dinkin that this was communist propaganda.
Dinkin tells Russell that the other man with him trying to warn about a supposed plot was another private, Dennis De Witt. He also says that he never changed the supposed date of the assassination from November 28th to November 22nd:
I called the 28th because I speculated that the military wanted to turn the tide in this nation and Thanksgiving was a salient way to put the blame on atheistic communism.
Of course Dinkin "speculated."
Dinkin tells Russell that he lied to the FBI and that he told them his papers were with a friend in Amsterdam, "I don't know where they got the idea my papers were stolen. I suppose that's in there to give it a whole paranoid flavor."
Dinkin then talks about his time at Walter Reed Hospital:
Dinkin tell Russell about his college courses:
I studied psychology at the University of Illinois, at seminar courses Univ Chicago. Also fascinated by media's ability to directly impinge on the subconscious mind, induce fears and ideas which would find validity in subsequent events.
He also claims that he was in the NSA:
Dinkin operated a cryptographic machine. He was not a cryptographer. I don't know if I believe his claim that it "automatically" put him in the NSA. In any case, he told the HSCA that he never saw any intercepted messages about the assassination.
Dinkin then brings up his interpretation of a map (see the first section of this post)
Yes, "only schizos see things like this."
Dinkin bring up something very telling, and Russell types this as a direct quote:
I think it was about July - August 1963, when I first started seeing that face (Oswald).
Dinkin was certain that the government was after him:
For years, everything I've done at work resulted in a hullaboloo. I think the government has given information to state civil service that I was some sort of dangerous character. I do have a certain violent flare, fistfights in streets, in army put a sergeant in the hospital. But I'm not a hoodlum and generally on the side of the law. I've a hunch the government wanted to discredit me recently. I was fired in March, am unemployed, can't find a job or even get compensation.
Dinkin actually worked in the mental health field but was fired in 1975 by the New York State Department of Hygiene's South Beach Psychiatric Center. A future post will examine his termination from that job.
The government was still trying to intimidate Dinkin:
By the way, Dinkin lived in Brooklyn Heights for a while -- one block away from where I used to live in 1985.
Dinkin then went into a diatribe about Oswald and his rifle:
He then wondered, "I find it interesting the W. Commission never explained how Oswald got that scar on his forehead. It appears on different sides in different photos."
Some of the stuff in the interview is just plain hard to understand:
"Photos doctored to show how personality can be transferred by ideology"? What? I guess some of this paragraph relates to a second Oswald.
Ten days later Russell met Dinkin again at Grand Central Station in New York and "more evidence" was produced. Russell adds a note: "Oct. 27 -- face up, gaping mouth photo."
I can't decipher this.
Dinkin's reference to Guy Patterson comes from this article:
Dinkin linked Patterson with the death of Edward Kennedy:
Here is the picture of Rodosovich that Dinkin refers to:
Those are the highlights from Russell's two meetings with Dinkin. How on earth could Russell have been impressed with any of this.
And yet Dick Russell wrote five pages about Dinkin in his 1992 book The Man Who Knew Too Much. (pages 552 - 557)
Russell makes it very clear in his book that he believes Dinkin, just as he believed Richard Case Nagell: (pages 552 - 553)
It is staggering to consider how many warnings the FBI received that something dire was being planned for President Kennedy. Besides the Milteer case, informants had revealed threats from Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante, Jr. Garrett Trapnell had volunteered an account of a Cuban-related plot. And Richard Case Nagell had provided enough information, so he figured, to warrant the arrest of Oswald, Angel, and Leopoldo.
Nor was the FBI the only government agency alerted. Through Nagell at least, so was the CIA. And, through an Army private first class stationed in 1963 in Metz, France, so was the Pentagon.
Russell notes a further similarity to Nagell: (page 553)
We saw, in Nagell's case in the Far East, how a psychiatric evaluation and removal from classified duties followed close upon his having decided to reveal certain clandestine military activities that his superior officers wanted kept quiet. With Private Dinkin, we may be looking at a similar situation -- and a far more frightening one.
I've written extensively about Richard Case Nagell and there is no evidence that he mentioned anything about the JFK assassination or Lee Harvey Oswald before Kennedy was murdered.
Russell makes a big deal out the memo that Richard Helms wrote to J. Lee Rankin. (CD 943)
In other words, someone with the CIA was aware, as least "immediately after the assassination," that Dinkin had made such "allegations" two weeks prior.
But Russell doesn't tell his readers how Dinkin came to his conclusion and says nothing about Dinkin's "psychological sets."
The message that Army code-breaker Eugene Dinkin tried to send in a variety of European capitals in October-November 1963 is the strongest, if most bizarre, indication of a possible high-level military role in the assassination.
Russell believes that Dinkin's "psychological sets" is just a cover story:
Dinkin's name first came up in the Garrison investigation, wherein interviews with some of Dinkin's former Army associates led to the conclusion that he had been hospitalized until he memorized a cover story. By the time he filed his lawsuit in 1975, Dinkin was maintaining that he had somehow discerned images in news photographs that led him to the advance conclusions he once drew about the Kennedy assassination.
As Garrison's people pierced the story together, however, one of Dinkin's duties as code breaker had been to decipher telegraphic traffic that originated with the French OAS.
Russell provides a footnote for the last statement about the OAS -- and that is the meeting Garrison held with his investigators in New Orleans in September of 1968. But Dinkin never said anything about deciphering traffic -- it was Boxley who inferred that Dinkin was telling him a cover story.
I never decoded any illicit cryptographic message which in any way appeared to relate to the JFK assassination.
Now, to be fair, Russell did not have access to Dinkin's submissions to the HSCA. But he interviewed him in person, and, according to Russell's detailed notes, Dinkins never said he intercepted any traffic. Russell refers to his first-hand knowledge in his footnotes which should have convinced him that Dinkin was not of sound mind.
His information only came from his "psychological sets."
For some reason, the Dinkin story lives on.
Coming in part six - James DiEugenio publishes three articles about Eugene Dinkin.
Previous Relevant Blog Posts on Eugene Dinkin
Dinkin's story from 1964 about his interpretation of various newspapers.
A Garrison investigator spoke to Dinkin in 1968.
Dinkin sued the U. S. government in 1975.
Dinkin writes the HSCA three times with his evidence.