The Bizarre Historical Omissions About America's Forgotten Troubadour, Phil Ochs
There is a missing section of Phil Ochs' life, missing from biographies often told about him, regarding his whereabouts on November 23rd, 1963, along with his alter ego. Is this omission on purpose?
I found an odd omission in two of the biographies of Phil Ochs I am reading. It claims he found out about the JFK assassination by the television and was with his wife... but his best friend, Jim Glover, claims he was in Dallas with him that fateful day and there's photographic evidence of it as well. He says that Phil told him he was there as a "national security observer", and was aware of a plot to kill Kennedy (apparently this was a bit of an open secret/rumour in certain leftist circles and the military). This is a very odd omission... the various biographies quotes and mentions Jim Glover chapters before, and he has told this information to biographers and the family of Ochs. Is this omission on purpose? Excerpts by Edward Curtain who is also perplexed by this issue from Popular Resistance Magazine, William E. Kelly, Jr. from JFKCountercoup blog, Dave McGowan, and the man himself, Jim Glover, on a forum below. As well as speculation on the real reason Phil Ochs chose the name John Butler Train…
According to Phil’s best friend from college at Ohio State, the man who taught him to play guitar, his singing partner, best man at his wedding, constant pal in their days in Greenwich Village, and life-long friend, Jim Glover, Ochs was in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963, standing outside the Dal-Tex building in Dealey Plaza when JFK was driven by to be killed. Glover says Phil told him he went there as a “national security observer.”
I had read about this on some old forums websites, but never in biographies of Ochs, or in the documentary about him, There But for Fortune. There seems to be an “official” ban on mentioning Glover’s claim, even though Glover appears in the books and the documentary, has been interviewed by the authors and filmmaker, and is considered by them, as Phil’s old and close friend, to be a reliable source.
Jim Glover, who was one half of the well-known folk duo, Jim and Jean, back in the 1960s, and is now an anti-war activist in Florida, says that he has told Ochs’s siblings and biographers all the details, has also reported it recently and as far back as the early 1990s to the FBI, and has put these claims out on some internet sites and openly spoken about it. These disclosures have resulted in silence from Ochs’s family and biographers. There have been no efforts to refute it, and so it circulates far outside the mainstream. Since Glover speaks of it openly and in great detail, and since it is a shocking claim with serious implications, one would think it worthy of response. But it is only greeted with silence. It seems perhaps like another example of what Thomas Merton called “the unspeakable” - “the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said.”1
Phil Ochs pictured at Dealey Plaza that fateful day
From William E. Kelly, Jr:
Ochs also claimed knowledge of a plot to kill the president before it happened, and according to his college room mate and best man Jim Glover, Ochs was a witness to the assassination as “a national security observer” at Dealey Plaza.
In following the assassination of President Kennedy for as long as I have I thought I had heard it all, but one of the more bizarre conspiracy theories I’ve come across is the idea that Phil Ochs had expressed foreknowledge of the assassination, was present at Dealey Plaza as “a national security observer,” and kept those facts secret in fear for his own life.
Ochs then committed suicide on April 9, 1976 at the age of 35, a death some believe should be considered suspicious.
I took a particular interest in this theory because I had started to compile a list of those who had expressed foreknowledge of the assassination, and in reviewing their backgrounds, tried to determine if they actually knew about the plot to kill the president from those who could have actually been involved. Phil Ochs was a new name to that list. [2]
I also took particular interest in this allegation because I had actually knew Phil Ochs for a few hours one night when I was a teenager, and I thought that it would be pretty simple to determine whether he was in Dallas that day or not.
Boy was I wrong.
I crossed paths with Phil Ochs at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in late August 1968 when we were both roaming among the rooms reserved for the Eugene McCarthy campaign on the 15th floor of the Conrad Hilton Hotel.
While much is lost in the fog of the riots that occurred, I clearly remember Ochs on the last night we were there, sitting on the floor in the hall playing a guitar and singing, serenading a dozen or so McCarthy volunteers, myself included. And while Ochs and I didn’t personally meet or talk, we sat a few feet from each other for a few hours while he played guitar and sang and I listened and, at seventeen years old, had my first alcoholic drink - a whiskey on the rocks. A few hours later the Chicago police raided the 18th floor and busted us all, an event that would make the news and a few paragraphs in the history books. [3]
So after I developed an interest in the assassination of President Kennedy, I was quite surprised to learn that Phil Ochs had expressed foreknowledge of the assassination and may have actually been at Dealey Plaza as a “national security observer” to the murder.
The source of this particular conspiracy theory, folk singer Jim Glover, is a free spirited musician and folksinger who still performs today. I had met Jim on John Simkin’s Education Forum, [4] and he is now a Facebook friend.
Jim Glover first called my attention to the Dealey Plaza photograph that he says includes his old friend Phil Ochs, standing on the Houston street sidewalk behind a few Dallas cops peering up towards the top floors of the Texas School Book Depository with weapons drawn. [5]
PHIL OCHS AT DEALEY PLAZA
Jim Glover:
“Phil was into the investigation of the plot before Dallas. He came over to my apt when (my wife) Jean was gone to tell me that there was a plot to kill President Kennedy. He asked me if I knew anything and that he was going to the FPCC to find out more. Phil said he was working for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in order to find out more about the plot and I said I would let him know if I heard anything ... I kinda remember we were supposed to meet somebody in a subway station but they never showed so I never met the Fair Play for Cuba guys, but many years ago I called VT Lee of the Veterans for Peace and he told me ‘Oh yes Phil was working with us.’”
“Before Phil went to Dallas he said his Mom told him to get a haircut (good advise) and he said he went there with one of the Gambino boys... one his age.”
“I now believe anyone who went there to watch or report were being set up in case the ‘Oswald all alone’ thing did not pass, the next patsies would be us Castro sympathizers and then the Mob... or both. I know it sounds twisted, but that is why they had to stick to Oswald ‘the lone nut’ who I now believe…. was really working to kill Castro….”
“Phil did not say who told him to go to Dallas and it probably saved our lives because I would have talked. All my life I got in trouble because I talked, so they used me for that. Phil did say he was working for ‘National Security Domestic Division’ of ‘something like the CIA’ and that FBI Hoover was the bad guy. Soon after that two men identifying themselves as FBI came over and asked me if I knew where Phil was...Of course I thought they really knew, but I lied and didn't even tell them about the Kennedy plot to protect Phil.”
“It was a few months after Dallas that Phil showed up at our new apt at Leroy St. He asked where I was and I told him about what I saw when I was forced onto the Shadow Bus after an airport stop in Texas….Phil said ‘I told you not to go" and I said we were trying to find you but nobody knew where you were.’"
“Next he said he was in Dallas as a ‘national security observer,’ a new role to me but it made sense….About his Dallas trip he only told me once and that was that he was standing on the street and when JFK was shot he went towards the scene and saw the commotion ..... I don't remember him saying he was standing in the street keeping watch on Elm and Houston when the Limo passed but a few weeks ago I found him there, a bit blurry but it is in (the film) ‘The First Shot’. Phil did say he thought it was a Para-Military operation.”
“I asked him if he could prove he was there and he said he was being filmed standing by the garage door of the Dal/Tex building. He also went over toward the crowd and saw a lady crying….Phil told me it was a paramilitary squad that did it…Soon after I told his story during a solo set at the Gaslight and Phil found out he said ‘Are you trying to get me killed?!’ So after that I was more cautious about talking...but I never was quiet. Phil told me that he was warned - he did not tell me who, he was warned that if he talk they would say that he was crazy.” [29]”2
Finally, from Jim Glover himself over at the Education Forum:
…“I may be the only one Phil told about it [being at JFK’s assassination and being a National Security Advisor] because we shared secrets.
I found Phil's photo from the Documentary on the History Channel and almost everyone I have sent it to thinks it is Phil or his double.
Of course my Family and Phil's do not want to believe that Phil was there because since they were not aware of the secret stuff they do not want to get involved in the war over the conspiracy and like anyone do not have any control over where the truth may lead or how many other lies the government has in still secret files...or maybe truth is in those one million yet to be released documents.
I believe we were both set up to be in Texas when JFK was shot but the fact that I lived to tell the tale makes me think that maybe there were some folks in the CIA or the Mob or whatever who also thought that the truth should come out some day.”3
It seems that there is an effort to scrub this portion of Phil’s life from the official biographies and historiography of him, by either his family, or government gatekeepers. Unsurprisingly, it centers around JFK’s assassination, one of the biggest cover ups in modern America.
John Butler Train
Another rather bizarre rabbit hole is Phil Ochs’ alter ego and antithesis identity he chose later in life, John Butler Train. The official story according to the biography is that he created this name by combining John Ford, John Wayne and William Butler Yeats. This official story makes sense…
Except when one finds out that there was a real life John Butler Train, and he was a James Bond type CIA/OSS agent who founded the Paris Review magazine, was it’s first managing editor, who together with the CIA’s Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton started the magazine for the CIA under The Congress for Cultural Freedom. Who ran cover corporations for the CIA and was connected to George H. W. Bush through the CIA’s Thomas Devine, who was involved in setting up Bush’s company Zapata Offshore. Who was deeply involved with the CIA’s activities in the early 1980s backing the jihadist Mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan. But that’s just a crazy coincidence, surely?!
In his book “Family of Secrets” Russ Baker details how, in New York in late April 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald’s “best friend” George deMohrenschildt, met withThomas Devine, as CIA operative code named WUBRINY/1, at the offices of John Train, whose investment banking firm oversaw CIA propriety companies. [81]
When Devine ostensibly “retired” from the CIA in 1953 he formed the Zapata Oil company with George H.W. Bush, and when they sold it, Bush went into politics while Devine joined the investment firm of Train, Cabot and Associates, whose primary partner was John Train.
Train is described by Baker as “a longtime enthusiast of foreign intrigues,” who worked for three presidents.
The 1975 CIA memo reads: “Through Mr. Gale Allen…I learned that Mr. George Bush, DCI designate, has prior knowledge of the now terminated project WUBRINY / LPDICTUM which was involved in propriety commercial operations in Europe. He became aware of this project through Mr. Thomas J. Devine, a former CIA Staff Employee and later, oil-wildcatting associate with Mr. Bush. Their joint activities culminated in the establishment of Zapata Oil [sic] which they eventually sold. After the sale of Zapata Oil, Mr. Bush went into politics, and Mr. Devine became a member of the investment firm of Train, Cabot and Associates, New York…The attached memorandum describes the close relationship between Messrs. Devine and Bush in 1967-68 which, according to Mr. Allen, continued while Mr. Bush was our ambassador to the United Nations.”
Russ Baker writes: “The writer of the above-mentioned CIA memo had appended an earlier memo from agency files, describing Thomas Devine’s role in a CIA project codenamed WUBRINY. Devine was ‘a cleared and witting contact in the investment banking firm which houses and manages the proprietary corporation WUSALINE.” (BRINY was actually a Haiti-based operation engaged by a corporation, code-named SALINE, that was a whole owned by the CIA. SALINE, like many CIA proprietaries, was in turn operating inside a ‘legitimate’ corporation, whose employees were generally unaware of the spies in their midst.) In this case, the cover corporation was run by investment banker, John Train, a sponsor and longtime enthusiast of foreign intrigues, backing the Afghan rebels during the Regan-Bush years. 9 Train was enormously well connected, and received appointments from president Reagan, Bush Senior, and even Bill Clinton.” [82]
Note 9: “An article by Richard Cummings… asserts that Paris Review cofounder and editor Peter Matthiessen was a CIA agent whose literary activities served as a cover for his intelligence work. Also, the Review’s longtime editor George Plimpton ‘was an agent of influence’ for the CIA….invariably paid for (his) services.’” [83]
CIA Document, “On April 25, 1963, at three thirty in the afternoon, a CIA operative code named WUBRINY/1 held a meeting in the library of the Kinckerbocker Club, one of New York’s most exclusive men’s clubs, on East Sixty-Second Street, just off Fifth Avenue. 42.” [84]
Russ Baker Note 42: “Members of this club include David Rockefeller and John Hay Whitney, publisher of the New York Herald Tribute.”
“There were two others present. One was C. Frank Stone III, chief of operations for the European section of the CIA’s clandestine wing. The other was M. Clemard Joseph Charles, the general manager of the Banque Commerciale D’ Haiti.”
“This ‘contact report’ was declassified in 1998 but went unnoticed at the time. The purpose of the 1963 meeting, it said, was to prepare for the impending arrival from Dallas of George de Mohrenschildt, who was described as a business contact of Haitian banker…’Mr. Charles.’”
According to Baker, de Mohrenschildt arrived the next afternoon, “at the New York offices of the investment banking firm of Train, Cabot, inside an entity code-named SALINE, 44.” [85]
“This was in fact the covering organization for operation WUBRINY, and WUBRINY’s chief agent and operator, WUBRINY/1 - who was none other than Thomas Devine. 45” [86]
In January 1968, Devine (WUBRINY1) and George H.W. Bush Sr went to Vietnam together. [87]
So the real John Train was an investment banker who ran CIA propriety companies, was a co-founder of the Paris Review, and in April of 1963, (when Oswald was shooting at Gen Walker and Ochs was infiltrating the FPCC), Train was associated with both G. W. Bush’s business partner at Zapata - Thomas Devine as well as Oswald’s good friend George deMohrenschildt.4
But surely, it’s just a crazy coincidence that Phil Ochs chose the name John Train, CIA agent connected to the JFK assassination, the Bushes, and various imperialist activities across the world, and Phil never was in Dallas that fateful November day, despite his best friend being with him that day and photographic evidence.
According to the Official Story by gatekeepers…
Phil Ochs and the Crucifixion Of President John F. Kennedy ~ https://popularresistance.org/phil-ochs-and-the-crucifixion-of-president-john-f-kennedy
JFKcountercoup: Phil Ochs at Dealey Plaza? ~ https://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/05/phil-ochs-at-dealey-plaza.html?
The Phil Ochs Question - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum (ipbhost.com)
JFKcountercoup: Phil Ochs at Dealey Plaza?
Sounds like Jim Glover has lost his mind, just Like Phil did. Very Sad.