A MOB HIT Part Two

I can sum up Joseph Stalin (above) in a single sentence. He rose to leadership in the International Communist Party as a bank robber, financing Lenin's political activities. His intended Pièce de résistance sent twenty bomb throwing Communists into a crowded Yerevan Square in the center of the Ukrainian capital of Tilfis, in broad daylight, to hijack a cash shipment. The resulting carnage killed forty people and wounded another fifty. The condemnation over the blood bath was unanimous, even from within the communist ranks. Worse, it netted just 340,000 rubles, but most of it was new 500 ruble notes, which could not be spent. An embarrassed Lenin  had then distanced himself from Stalin, and the Czars secret police arrested and banished Stalin to Siberia, where he was cut off from advancement in Communist Party politics.

The young Stalin (above) had been born Georgian, and spoke Russian with an accent, marking him as a “country bumpkin” to the party intellectuals, like Trotsky and Lenin.  He had two webbed toes on his left foot.  He was raised by an alcoholic father who regularly beat his mother. At seven he caught smallpox, which left his face scared.  Shortly thereafter, he was struck by a carriage which broke his left arm.  It was set badly, and healed permanently shorter than the right. Everything set him off as an outsider.  He fell in with street gangs, until his desperate mother secured him a scholarship to a Georgian Orthodox seminary.  But his father refused to pay a tuition hike, and abandoned his wife and son.  But Stalin persevered, and rose to replace Lenin himself in the later 1920's. But he never forgot how Trotsky had belittle him.

In the winter of 1938, Stalin personally ordered that Trotsky “...should be eliminated within a year.” The assignment, given the code name “Pato”, in English, “Duck”,  eventually fell to NKVD agent Leonid Eitingon, (above),  who was living in Spain with his Cuban mistress, Caridad Mercader. Eitingon's  budget for the murder of this one man was $300,000.  First, Leonid needed a trusted agent in Mexico, where Trotsky now lived. He recruited a Mexican veteran of the Spanish Civil War, painter David Alfaro Siqueiros.  Leonid then moved to New York City with Caridad, They were followed soon afterward by her adult son Ramon. 

 Ramnon Mercader had also fought in Spain on the Republican side,  trained as a spy in Russia and already had two NKVD developed identities.  One was a stolen Canadian passport in the name of Frank Jackson, who had died in Spain.  This easily pierced identity was used to make Ramon/Jackson  more believable when he claimed to actually be Jacques Mornard,  the Communist son of a Belgium diplomat.  Ramon had used both identities before,  in Paris,  to seduce a young American communist, whose sister was a typist for Trotsky.  The seduction had led nowhere operationally,  but illustrated Stalin's determination to infiltrate Trotsky's inner circle 

After the 1917 revolution, Lenin rewarded Stalin with the job of editor of the party newspaper “Pravda” - Truth. The Georgian used that as a base to win election to the parties' powerful Central Committee. Then, after the Red Army, which Trotsky (above) had founded and led, had defeated the last of the Czarist holdouts in 1919, Lenin saw an opportunity in the power vacuum in Poland.  In 1920 he dispatched the Red Army to spread the revolution beyond Russia's borders. Operations aimed at Warsaw were, of course,  commanded by Trotsky, while Stalin commanded troops in southern Poland. The Poles managed to defeat the Soviets, in part because Stalin refused to cooperate with Trotsky's forces. At the next party conference, Trotsky criticized Stalin in a public speech.

Once in America, Leonid  set up "Amtorg Corporation",  a Brooklyn based import-export business, which allowed him to transfer funds to Mexico City for Trotksy's assassination. Shortly after he arrived, Ramon (above)  re- reignited his affair with the young American typist.  It was a short interlude. Three months after Ramon arrived in New York,  in September of 1939,  Leonid traveled to Mexico City,  to check on Siqueiros' preparations for the assassination.  He was followed a month later by Ramon, using his old Frank/Jacques cover.

During 1921 Stalin (above, left) managed to re-ingratiate himself with the boss, always siding with Lenin (above, right)  in petty squabbles with Trotsky and other party leaders. In response, in 1922, Lenin named Stalin General Secretary of the party. Shortly thereafter Lenin suffered the first of several strokes, and began to withdraw from leadership. When Lenin finally died in January of 1923, control of the Communist Party and national leadership quickly fell under Stalin's control. 

Siqueiros reported that he already had an agent inside Trotsky's villa (above) -  the cook Carman Palma. She  had supplied detailed floor plans, daily schedules and personal habits of the residents – “The Old Man”, his wife Natalia and grandson Seva, a servant girl, Trotsky's three male assistants and his two American bodyguards, as well as the newest bodyguard, Robert Harte.  But Harte was also an NKVD operative, code named “Amur”.   Leonid was impressed, but did not share with Siqueiros any information about Ramon, nor that the operation was receiving  funds and technical support from Adolf Hitler's anticommunist Nazi Germany.

It took three years for Stalin to isolate and then have Trotsky expelled from the Communist Party, and another year to have him exiled from the Soviet Union.  Over the next six years Trotsky was forced to move to first Turkey, then to France, and then Norway, always writing criticisms of Stalin, always the inspiration for the hated "fellow travelers" to the International Communist Party.   At the same time, in a series of “show trials”, Stalin eliminated all domestic opposition to his rule. Best estimates are that during the decade Stalin ordered the murder or imprisonment in Siberian “Gulags” of over 2 million Russians, and starved to death another 4 million through his collective farm programs. By the time the 57 year old Trotsky arrived in Mexico, in February of 1937,   his was the only Communist voice still critical of the paranoid 5 foot, five inch tall Stalin.  But in their article noting his arrival, Time Magazine wrote, “Today Trotsky is in Mexico — the ideal country for an assassination”.

In Mexico Leonid Etington avoided all contact with the Russian embassy. All his communications with Moscow were made through Berlin. Nazi agents kept watch on Trotsky's movements outside the villa, while two agents, Julia Barrados and Anita Lopez,  took an apartment three blocks from 19 Avenida Viena, and befriended the police officers guarding the place, often hosting parties for them. On Thursday afternoon, 23 May, 1940, a few hours before the actual assault, they even stopped by to confirm everything was as usual and no alarm had been given inside the villa.

Once in Mexico, Trotsky began writing what was to be his ultimate anti-Stalinist work, a biography of the Georgian himself.  Prophetically, Trotsky observed “Stalin...seeks to strike not at the ideas of the opponent, but at his skull.”  And in detailing Stalin's command of the Tilfis massacre, Trotsky wrote that ““Others did the fighting; Stalin supervised them from afar”.  It was this biography that finally convinced Stalin to murder Trotsky as soon as possible.

At four the next morning, 24 May, Sequeiros, code named “Horse”, and dressed in an over sized coat, and a over sized fake mustache, got the drop on the two police guards. He led the first team into the foray to capture the three sleeping guards, gag and tie up all five of them. The second team, lead by Russian, Iosif Grubgykevich, code named “Felipe”, knocked on the inner door. Hart opened the door because he recognized “Felipe's” voice.  Hart had been compromised.

Once the guards in the guest house had been pinned down, the operation turned artistic. 

It was Spanish painter Antonio Pujol who burst into the study, and fired into Trotsky's bedroom from the left side.

And Mexican painter Luis Arenal who burst into Seva's room and fired into Trotsky's bedroom from the right. 

But it was Siqueiros, the most famous painter and biggest ego of the trio, who at the end burst through the french doors and emptied his pistol directly into Trotsky's bed. Then Pujol set off a grenade in the study, intending on destroying Trotsky's biography of Stalin. But it was Arenal who drew the only actual blood, a ricochet from the bedroom wall, which struck 14 year old Seva in the toe.

And then there was the problem of Robert Harte. It appears that he, like many of those who helped the conspirators, had been told the object was only to destroy Trotsky's work, not the man himself.  During the escape Harte became “agitated and upset” with his handler “Felipe” because of the murder attempt.  The Russian realized he could no longer trust Harte, and so after they arrived at the farm rented by Siqueiros' sister, Grubgykevich shot the American once at the base of the skull and once into the temple, the standard NKVD execution method.  The next night his body was dumped into a grave dug along the main road.  It seems certain it was the Mexican communists did the heavy work, because Harte was covered in quick lime, under the mistaken belief it would hasten the decay. In fact quick lime preserves flesh. Any trained NKVD agent would know that. Stalin certainly did.

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A MOB HIT Chapter Two

I can sum up Joseph Stalin (above) in a single sentence. He rose to leadership in the International Communist Party as a bank robber, financing Lenin's political activities. His intended Pièce de résistance sent twenty bomb throwing Communists into a crowded Yerevan Square in the center of the Ukrainian capital of Tilfis, in broad daylight, to hijack a cash shipment. The resulting carnage killed forty people and wounded another fifty. The condemnation over the blood bath was unanimous, even from within the communist ranks. Worse, it netted just 340,000 rubles, but most of it was new 500 ruble notes, which could not be spent. An embarrassed Lenin  had then distanced himself from Stalin, and the Czars secret police arrested and banished Stalin to Siberia, where he was cut off from advancement in Communist Party politics.

The young Stalin (above) had been born Georgian, and spoke Russian with an accent, marking him as a “country bumpkin” to the party intellectuals, like Trotsky and Lenin.  He had two webbed toes on his left foot.  He was raised by an alcoholic father who regularly beat his mother. At seven he caught smallpox, which left his face scared.  Shortly thereafter, he was struck by a carriage which broke his left arm.  It was set badly, and healed permanently shorter than the right. Everything set him off as an outsider.  He fell in with street gangs, until his desperate mother secured him a scholarship to a Georgian Orthodox seminary.  But his father refused to pay a tuition hike, and abandoned his wife and son.  But Stalin persevered, and rose to replace Lenin himself in the later 1920's. But he never forgot how Trotsky had belittle him.

In the winter of 1938, Stalin personally ordered that Trotsky “...should be eliminated within a year.” The assignment, given the code name “Pato”, in English, “Duck”,  eventually fell to NKVD agent Leonid Eitingon, (above),  who was living in Spain with his Cuban mistress, Caridad Mercader. Eitingon's  budget for the murder of this one man was $300,000.  First, Leonid needed a trusted agent in Mexico, where Trotsky now lived. He recruited a Mexican veteran of the Spanish Civil War, painter David Alfaro Siqueiros.  Leonid then moved to New York City with Caridad, They were followed soon afterward by her adult son Ramon. 

 Ramnon Mercader had also fought in Spain on the Republican side,  trained as a spy in Russia and already had two NKVD developed identities.  One was a stolen Canadian passport in the name of Frank Jackson, who had died in Spain.  This easily pierced identity was used to make Ramon/Jackson  more believable when he claimed to actually be Jacques Mornard,  the Communist son of a Belgium diplomat.  Ramon had used both identities before,  in Paris,  to seduce a young American communist, whose sister was a typist for Trotsky.  The seduction had led nowhere operationally,  but illustrated Stalin's determination to infiltrate Trotsky's inner circle 

After the 1917 revolution, Lenin rewarded Stalin with the job of editor of the party newspaper “Pravda” - Truth. The Georgian used that as a base to win election to the parties' powerful Central Committee. Then, after the Red Army, which Trotsky (above) had founded and led, had defeated the last of the Czarist holdouts in 1919, Lenin saw an opportunity in the power vacuum in Poland.  In 1920 he dispatched the Red Army to spread the revolution beyond Russia's borders. Operations aimed at Warsaw were, of course,  commanded by Trotsky, while Stalin commanded troops in southern Poland. The Poles managed to defeat the Soviets, in part because Stalin refused to cooperate with Trotsky's forces. At the next party conference, Trotsky criticized Stalin in a public speech.

Once in America, Leonid  set up "Amtorg Corporation",  a Brooklyn based import-export business, which allowed him to transfer funds to Mexico City for Trotksy's assassination. Shortly after he arrived, Ramon (above)  re- reignited his affair with the young American typist.  It was a short interlude. Three months after Ramon arrived in New York,  in September of 1939,  Leonid traveled to Mexico City,  to check on Siqueiros' preparations for the assassination.  He was followed a month later by Ramon, using his old Frank/Jacques cover.

During 1921 Stalin (above, left) managed to re-ingratiate himself with the boss, always siding with Lenin (above, right)  in petty squabbles with Trotsky and other party leaders. In response, in 1922, Lenin named Stalin General Secretary of the party. Shortly thereafter Lenin suffered the first of several strokes, and began to withdraw from leadership. When Lenin finally died in January of 1923, control of the Communist Party and national leadership quickly fell under Stalin's control. 

Siqueiros reported that he already had an agent inside Trotsky's villa (above) -  the cook Carman Palma. She  had supplied detailed floor plans, daily schedules and personal habits of the residents – “The Old Man”, his wife Natalia and grandson Seva, a servant girl, Trotsky's three male assistants and his two American bodyguards, as well as the newest bodyguard, Robert Harte.  But Harte was also an NKVD operative, code named “Amur”.   Leonid was impressed, but did not share with Siqueiros any information about Ramon, nor that the operation was receiving  funds and technical support from Adolf Hitler's anticommunist Nazi Germany.

It took three years for Stalin to isolate and then have Trotsky expelled from the Communist Party, and another year to have him exiled from the Soviet Union.  Over the next six years Trotsky was forced to move to first Turkey, then to France, and then Norway, always writing criticisms of Stalin, always the inspiration for the hated "fellow travelers" to the International Communist Party.   At the same time, in a series of “show trials”, Stalin eliminated all domestic opposition to his rule. Best estimates are that during the decade Stalin ordered the murder or imprisonment in Siberian “Gulags” of over 2 million Russians, and starved to death another 4 million through his collective farm programs. By the time the 57 year old Trotsky arrived in Mexico, in February of 1937,   his was the only Communist voice still critical of the paranoid 5 foot, five inch tall Stalin.  But in their article noting his arrival, Time Magazine wrote, “Today Trotsky is in Mexico — the ideal country for an assassination”.

In Mexico Leonid Etington avoided all contact with the Russian embassy. All his communications with Moscow were made through Berlin. Nazi agents kept watch on Trotsky's movements outside the villa, while two agents, Julia Barrados and Anita Lopez,  took an apartment three blocks from 19 Avenida Viena, and befriended the police officers guarding the place, often hosting parties for them. On Thursday afternoon, 23 May, 1940, a few hours before the actual assault, they even stopped by to confirm everything was as usual and no alarm had been given inside the villa.

Once in Mexico, Trotsky began writing what was to be his ultimate anti-Stalinist work, a biography of the Georgian himself.  Prophetically, Trotsky observed “Stalin...seeks to strike not at the ideas of the opponent, but at his skull.”  And in detailing Stalin's command of the Tilfis massacre, Trotsky wrote that ““Others did the fighting; Stalin supervised them from afar”.  It was this biography that finally convinced Stalin to murder Trotsky as soon as possible.

At four the next morning, 24 May, Sequeiros, code named “Horse”, and dressed in an over sized coat, and a over sized fake mustache, got the drop on the two police guards. He led the first team into the foray to capture the three sleeping guards, gag and tie up all five of them. The second team, lead by Russian, Iosif Grubgykevich, code named “Felipe”, knocked on the inner door. Hart opened the door because he recognized “Felipe's” voice.  Hart had been compromised.

Once the guards in the guest house had been pinned down, the operation turned artistic. 

It was Spanish painter Antonio Pujol who burst into the study, and fired into Trotsky's bedroom from the left side.

And Mexican painter Luis Arenal who burst into Seva's room and fired into Trotsky's bedroom from the right. 

But it was Siqueiros, the most famous painter and biggest ego of the trio, who at the end burst through the french doors and emptied his pistol directly into Trotsky's bed. Then Pujol set off a grenade in the study, intending on destroying Trotsky's biography of Stalin. But it was Arenal who drew the only actual blood, a ricochet from the bedroom wall, which struck 14 year old Seva in the toe.

And then there was the problem of Robert Harte. It appears that he, like many of those who helped the conspirators, had been told the object was only to destroy Trotsky's work, not the man himself.  During the escape Harte became “agitated and upset” with his handler “Felipe” because of the murder attempt.  The Russian realized he could no longer trust Harte, and so after they arrived at the farm rented by Siqueiros' sister, Grubgykevich shot the American once at the base of the skull and once into the temple, the standard NKVD execution method.  The next night his body was dumped into a grave dug along the main road.  It seems certain it was the Mexican communists did the heavy work, because Harte was covered in quick lime, under the mistaken belief it would hasten the decay. In fact quick lime preserves flesh. Any trained NKVD agent would know that. Stalin certainly did.

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SOMEBODY SHOOT THAT SON-OF-A-BITCH

I find it meaningful that Huey Pierce Long was murdered on the ground level 2^nd floor of the building he inspired. At 34 stories, the $5 million ($81 million today) limestone clad skyscraper remains, 80 years after its Depression Era construction, the tallest state capital building (above) in the nation.  Along with this singular monument, “The King Fish” built highways, bridges, charity hospitals, schools, sewers, electrical power grids and housing for the poor. He provided free text books for every child in the state, and dragged Louisiana into the twentieth century -  all in the face of fierce corporate opposition and propaganda.  And if the state's metamorphoses was ruthless and ugly, then Huey's critics must bare part of the blame, because their crimes fueled his. One critic publicly complained, “Good God, I wish somebody would shoot that son-of-a-bitch.”

Standard Oil funded the impeachment of Governor Long back in 1929, after he slapped a five cent a barrel tax on oil profits in Louisiana. The impeachment  failed, but Huey vowed to make his attackers pay, saying, “Now,...I dynamite 'em out of my path.” Even after he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1933, he imposed himself on state politics with an unrelenting vindictiveness. Typical was his assault on the Pavy family.  Patriarch Benjamin Pavy (above)“a large jovial man with a gray mustache and a full main of silver hair”, had been a district judge in St. Landry Parish for 25 years, and had threatened to arrest Long's poll workers in the election that saw his brother, Dr. Felix Pavy, win the district's seat in the the Louisiana House.

In retaliation the Kingfish (above) had Pavy's youngest brother, Paul, fired from his job as the principle of Opelousas High School, and then had Pavy's eldest daughter, Marie, removed from her job as a third grade teacher in Eunice. And when even that failed to convince Benjamin Pavy to fall into line, the first bill Huey shepherded through the special session of House that September of 1935, “House Bill Number One”, was to redistrict Judge Pavy out of his judgeship. And to make his defeat certain, Huey even threatened to resurrect an old smear.

Back in 1910, the first time Benjamin Pavy had run for judge, his infamous opponent, Sheriff Marion Swords,  had reminded voters that Pavy's father-in-law, Edward Veazie, had produced several children with a black mistress. Now, according the Huey's close aide Joe Fisher, “Huey had warned Pavy...for six months to lay off or he would say Pavy had “coffee blood”. Huey (above, right)  was like a rattlesnake" said Joe, "He always warned first.”

Such “black familes”, like Veazie's, were far more common in the hypocritical “Jim Crow” south than anyone on either side of the divide would publicly admit. Pavy had lived half  his life under the threat of being made a social pariah. But just three months earlier his youngest daughter, Yvonne, had given birth to a son. And Pavy's son-in-law, 29 year old Dr. Carl Weiss (above) -  “unassuming, successful...apolitical” -  was unprepared when this insidious racial smear threatened his innocent son.

Just after nine that Sunday evening of 8 September, 1935, Huey Long left the House chamber, trailing a small retinue of supporters, reporters and his six state trooper bodyguards.

Huey had been receiving death threats since the impeachment trial, but lately the volume and tenor of the threats had ramped up. In January some 200 armed “Square Dealers”, an anti-Long militia, had occupied the East Baton Rouge Courthouse. The Louisiana Nation Guard had been called out. There was an exchange of gunfire and tear gas at the airport. No one had been killed, but clearly tempers were rising.

Halfway down the ornate, ten foot wide hallway (above), Huey stepped into the reception area of Governor Alvin Olin "OK" King's office, (nicknamed “O.K.” because that was invariably his response to instructions from Huey). In twelve hours the Senator wanted a meeting of “the boys” in O.K.'s office, and the governor's secretary assured him “Yes, they were all informed, and they’ll meet you at 9 o’clock.” Observed another of Huey's aides, the Governor “was in a very good humor that night.” Senator Long then resumed his lopping walk toward the Senate Chamber further down the hall, where the King Fish intended on pushing his agenda, first thing in the morning. It was just 9:20 pm.

Abruptly, a small bespectacled man stepped out from behind a decorative pillar. Dr. Weiss held a Belgian automatic .32 caliber pistol in his hand, with six rounds in the magazine and one the chamber. At four feet from Senator Long, Weiss fired his first round. It struck Huey in the right side of his abdomen, just below his rib cage, ripping through his intestines, and exited through his back. Huey yelled, and jumped away from the gun. Weiss tried to shoot again, but the empty cartridge from his first shot had jammed in the ejector. A terrified Huey escaped down the hall, past the entrance to the Senate chamber, and down the stairs.

Behind him, Officer Murphy Roden grabbed at the smoking pistol, and began to wrestle with Weiss. Both men fell, but Roden was up first, stepping back, drawing his own .38 caliber pistol, and firing ten shots into the crouching doctor. At the same time three other officers emptied their .45 guns into the assassin.

 Less than ten seconds after firing his only shot at Huey Long, Dr. Carl Weiss was dead, his corpse perforated with some 62 bullets, including a single shot through the forehead and one through the right eye. Weiss probably felt only the first of them, and not even that one for very long.

Surprised at seeing Senator Huey Long, alone, staggering off the stairs onto the first floor, Public Service Commissioner James O'Connor rushed to his side. Huey blurted out, "Hell, man, take me to the hospital.” O'Connor led Long out to the rear of the building, where they flagged down a private car.  It sped them north, to “Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium” (above), just a mile away. The hospital checked the Senator in at 9:30 pm 

Two of the best surgeons in the state were sent for. Speeding to Baton Rouge, they were forced to detour around work on one of Huey's new highways, and had an accident. They never made it to Baton Rouge.

About eleven that night, the still conscious King Fish agreed to undergo the surgery, preformed by Dr. Edgar Hull, a faculty member of the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans. The operation successfully repaired most of the damage to Huey's intestine. 

But in this per-antibiotic age, bacteria from his gut had already infected his other organs. Huey never regained conciseness. He spent the last 29 hours of his life “practically moribund:”, feverish, choking and coughing, until he died at 4:10 am., on Tuesday, 10 September, 1935. He was all of 42 years old. 

The day before Huey died, Dr. Carl Wiess had been buried in Baton Rouge's Roselawn Cemetery. Hundreds attended his funeral, including members and leaders of the “Square Dealers” Their numbers made his funeral “the largest ever held for an accused political assassin in the United States”.  Carl's wife and son, his father and mother, also attended. When two press photographers tried to take pictures of the family, they were assaulted, and their cameras were smashed. Carl's father-in-law, Judge Benjamin Pavy was “too sick” to attend.

They buried Huey Long in his tuxedo. As he lay in the rotunda of “his” building, 200,000 people filed past his coffin. Another 100,000 attended his funeral, on 12 September, 1935. 

He was buried in the gardens in front of his statehouse

Initially his grave was marked by a simple stone, but in 1940 the state erected a 35 foot tall memorial to Huey. 

Atop the stone stands an 8 foot bronze version of the King Fish, gazing upon his building. 

On the back is the inscription, “Here Lies Louisiana's Great Son Huey Pierce Long, An Unconquered Friend of the Poor Who Dreamed Of, The Day When the Wealth of the Land, Would Be Spread Among All the People.”

 

Huey Long was far from perfect. But then, so were his enemies. And in that regard, it was at least a fair fight.

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