NEW EVIDENCE Regarding Ruth and Michael Paine

1 18 Kennedy Assassination ChroniclesNEW EVIDENCER egarding Ruth andMichael Paineby Steve JonesI would like present several new items of EVIDENCE Regarding thePaine s that I have discovered since the last Paine panel convened in1996, and also share how efforts by myself and others to get the Paine sdeposed for testimony before the ARRB fell on deaf first item of EVIDENCE regards conversations that I had with aclose personal friend of Ruth Paine . These conversations took place in thespring and summer of 1997. The friend asked me never to reveal her iden-tity due to fear of possible repercussions. This friend got to know Ruthvery well in Nicaragua during the early 90s when they both were volun-teering for the organization Pro-Nica. This was one of the various Chris-tian peace organizations that were trying to help the people of that belea-guered nation in the wake of the war between the Contras and theSandanistas.

2 Over the course of several months this friend shared with methe following information about Ruth that helped to either confirm orclarify previous leads that have been developed by other Paine research-ers and myself:1. Everyone in Pro-Nica, including this friend, thought that Ruthwas working there in some type of intelligence gathering capac-ity. Ruth would take copious notes of everything she saw or heard;she asked people many inappropriate personal questions as ifshe were trying to gather information; and she took photographsof people for supposed purposes that were later proven to befalse. She was confronted about this but consistently and vehe-mently denied that she had anything to do with the CIA or anyother governmental intelligence agency. Normally when an agentor asset was outed they would quietly leave in order to avoidfurther embarrassment.

3 But since Ruth never admitted her guiltand refused to leave, she was instead asked to take a leave ofabsence. When she was taken to a R&R camp in nearby CostaRica, she was asked to leave because they, too, suspected thatshe was an agent. Ruth returned to Nicaragua and finished hertour of duty and then left for the where she continued herrelationship with this Upon returning to the she admitted to her friend that herfather had worked for the CIA as an executive agent. Appar-ently while he was traveling abroad for Nationwide Insuranceand then later while working for the Agency for InternationalDevelopment he would gather intelligence information for theagency. Barbara LaMonica, Carol Hewett and myself had previ-Continued on page 20 Steve Jonesholds a in History from Lebanon Valley College, Annville, PA; an ordained Lutheran ministerand a Fellow in the Association of Professional Chaplains and is a chaplain at the SoutheasternPennsylvania Veterans' Center in PA.

4 Jones began studying the Kennedy assassination in 1983 afterreading Best EVIDENCE by David Lifton and has been researching Ruth and Michael Paine since1994. He has been published in Probe, The Fourth Decade, Open Secrets, and also in the : Intelligence connections for Ruth Paine , her work in Nicaragua, her ties to eastern powerstructure and the ARRB s lack of interest in securing a deposition from the uncovered documented EVIDENCE that the CIA had ap-proached her father to run an educational co-operative alliancein Vietnam in 1957, and that her father s AID field reports hadbeen routed through the CIA. Ruth s friend has now conclusivelyconfirmed our prior research. We also have documented evidencethat Ruth s sister worked for the CIA as a staff psychologist in1961, but Ruth never mentioned her sister to her The friend would often try to get Ruth to open up more aboutthe Kennedy assassination but all Ruth would say was that shehad old copies of LIFE magazine that would tell anyone all theyneeded to know.

5 There was, however, one occasion when thefriend tried to bring up the assassination when Ruth began to sayhow sad she was that her daughter (then about 40) was estrangedfrom her. Ruth said that her daughter told her that she refused totalk to her until she came to grips with the evil that she had beenassociated with. The friend said that Ruth had tears in her eyeswhen she said this and was certain that this was a veiled refer-ence to the Kennedy assassination. When the friend tried to gen-tly probe further, Ruth refused to talk about the Ruth told her friend that every summer she would take a longdriving trip from her home in the south to the northeast to visitfriends and relatives. This seems to discredit my theory that herlong summer vacation in 1963 had any clandestine purpose. I finally decided to ask the friend if she would serve as a go-between with Ruth and she agreed.

6 I sent her several articles thatCarol, Barbara, and I had written on the Paine s (and some keydocuments) and asked her to show this material to Ruth. Ruthwas due to visit her friend in the near future. Suddenly, out ofblue, the friend called me and told me that Ruth had cancelledher planned visit. From then on the friend seemed very reluctantto talk to me anymore. I eventually cut off contact with her, sens-ing fear and apprehension on her second line of EVIDENCE regards an FBI document dated 12-3-63, stating that the FBI had interviewed two friends of the Paine s whovouched for their innocence in having anything to do with the assassina-tion. The friends were Fred and Nancy Osborn. It just so happened thatFred s father, Fred Osborn Sr., was a friend and associate of Allen , Issue 4, Winter 1998 19 Michael Paine -A Life of Unanswered Paradoxesby Nancy WertzWhen speaking of Michael Ralph Paine , researchers usually haveto immediately add, the husband of Ruth Paine .

7 It is as if he had noimportant identity of his own, instead being considered merely as an ap-pendage to the more important personage of his wife. If Ruth Paine wasconsidered to be the darling of the Warren Commission inquirers, in es-sence, their Queen, then her husband Michael Paine was, in contrast, treatedas the court jester. His testimony rambles in many areas. He starts toanswer and is cut off and then exhibits an astonishing lack of recall onmany subjects of a personal nature. He jumps back and forth over theOswald is guilty/not guilty fence several times. And, of course, whenfollow-up questions are needed, they are nowhere in sight. It is this indi-vidual however who may hold more keys to Lee Oswald s character andactions than has been suspected. In essence, the spotlight to date mighthave been shining on the wrong Paine !

8 Michael was the product of an interesting and eclectic family back-ground. His mother was Ruth Forbes with ancestors of two diverse cul-tures in her lineage. On one side, there was the artistic faction datingback to Ralph Waldo Emerson. This background was coupled with thefinancial empire building family -- the Michael s father, George Lyman Paine Jr. s side, his paternalgrandfather was a well-known Boston preacher with a lineage dating backto Robert Treat Paine , signer of the Declaration of Independence. In aletter submitted to Allen Dulles during his stint on the Warren Commis-sion, an anonymous friend of Michael s mother provided revealing tid-bits about Reverend Paine and his antics in Boston during the 20s Paine , Michael s father, was a promising architect in NewYork who had graduated from Harvard, like many of the Paine men in hisfamily tree before him.

9 The early years of his marriage to Ruth Forbesproduced two children: Michael in 1928 and Cameron (Ronnie) in impressed by the experience of the depression, Lyman rejectedthe capitalist system and drifted into Marxist viewpoints. This major philo-sophical change ultimately caused the dissolution of his marriage. Helater moved to Los Angeles and became actively involved in a socialistsplinter group, espoused Trotskyte principles and married a like mindedwoman named Freddie Drake. This geographical and philosophical shifteffectively cut off any type of on-going relationship with both of his s father remained an elusive shadow filtering in and out ofContinued on page 20 Nancy Wertzbecame interested in political violence in the mid 1960s. Since that time, she has dedicated her time toresearch the JFK assassination.

10 During the early 1970s, she had a weekly radio college talk show inCalifornia. She has provided assistance to authors and researchers, and together with Gordon Winslow,created the first Researchers Directory in the early 90s to foster sharing in the research has specialized in the examination of Marita Lorenz and Ruth : Michael Paine and his family background and influence, his political persuasions, his work atBell, his lost summer of 1963, and his actions on November life. When Michael was only 13 years of age, Lyman had begun totake him along to meetings of the Communist Party in New York City. Atthis time, Michael became aware of intense political discussion, as threeseparate groups vied for membership in the area. His family life drifteduntil his mother met and married Arthur Young, when Michael was 18years of age.