THE BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES: IS LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA SINCERE?

It is hard to understand why Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is still refusing to open the Bloomfield archives two years after the end of the 20 years access restriction asked by its creator, Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. To justify a supplementary restriction imposed to this collection. LAC invokes its intention to respect the donator’s will. But this explanation doesn’t resist serious scrutiny, to the point where we may ask ourselves if we are just in presence of a case of poor management or if LAC is not maliciously hiding to the public archives that even its donator wanted to be released.

When an institution receives the private archives of a citizen, the first question this establishment has to resolve is to determine when those papers could be open to public.

In the event where the collection is given by its creator’s succession, the families that transmitted this collection usually have full responsibility and power to impose a timeline of its opening and, in some case, to review it.

But, naturally, when the private archives are given by its creator himself during his lifetime, the institution should respect the expressed will of the donator. We may even say that, in this situation, the institution first responsibility is to make absolutely sure that it will enforce the expressed will of the donator, even if, decades later, his succession disagrees with this original intention. In such a case, we might even consider the high probability that the donator foresaw his entourage's hesitation, and that he consciously transferred his papers to a neutral institution which he trusted to respect his will. That an establishment can fail to fulfill such will is then a grave betrayal of this donator.

Louis Mortimer Bloomfield, while he was alive, did trust the Public Archives of Canada (PAC) and versed to it a collection of papers that the PAC qualified of great national value. At the time of this donation, Louis M. Bloomfield was a prominent lawyer and president of the International Law Association. At the time of this donation, PAC had for legal mission to collect documents of national importance and to guarantee their diffusion. It can’t be reasonably argued that this outstanding lawyer didn’t know what he was doing or the consequences of his donation to an institution that had for name PUBLIC Archives of Canada. The short letter that Bloomfield addressed to the archivist on Feb. 24, 1978, was quite clear and straightforward.


On the matter of restriction, its simply reads:
“The documents which you are taking from me to form a Bloomfield section of the archives are to be held for a period of twenty (20) years after my death before any of this material is made public.”

In the second paragraph, Bloomfield designated his wife as “literary exetrix” (sic) and allow her (and three others persons) to have access to his collection, without even suggesting that she may had any authority to restrict them for longer than 20 years.

If those instructions weren’t clear enough, a year and a half later, on July 30, 1979, Louis M. Bloomfield addressed another letter to the Public Archives in which he again stated the conditions of the documents transfer.

Again, there is no interpretation to be done of Bloomfield’s will. He stated clearly:
“There will be no conditions attached to the deposit other than the original conditions that these documents be made available to the Public only twenty years after my death.”
In the following phrase he just repeated his authorization for his wife, and three named peoples, to access his collection, without any reference of entitling anybody to change the terms of his will after his death.

With his will clearly expressed in two different letters, Mr. Bloomfield was surely trusting the Public Archives to know how to act in the event of his decease.

Louis Mortimer Bloomfield death occurred on July 19, 1984. Following this event, the Public Archives first acted in full respect of this donator’s will. They contacted his widow, by letter dated November, 7. (Regardless of many request to receive copy of all papers pertaining to the Bloomfield-PAC agreement, LAC never produced this letter.) Eventually, Mrs Bloomfield answered this letter on November 19, 1984 and acknowledged her husband’s will.

That letter is merely an acknowledgment of the unique condition set earlier by Louis Bloomfield, that is a confirmation of the 20 years embargo on his papers. In that letter, there is no specific clause regarding prolongation of this 20 years restriction. The phrase "Of course we will review this matter at a future date" can even be seen as an opening to lower this restriction before its end. Citing this letter as reference, PAC prepared a Restricted Papers Form in which the restriction period was stated as being of 20 years starting on July 19, 1984.

The Restricted Papers Form didn’t say a word about any possible revision or prolongation of the restriction. Seeing that everything was taken care of as he specifically asked for, the spirit of Louis Bloomfield was ready to rest in peace, confident that his archives will be opened 20 years later in 2004.

Surely, Louis M. Bloomfield would be disappointed to see that, 22 years later, the Public Archives of Canada didn’t respected his expressed will.
Surely, Louis M. Bloomfield would be disappointed to learn that Library and Archives Canada (LAC), the federal body that replaced PAC, not only forgot but actively refused to make public his archives, to the point of resisting this opening in Federal Court ?
Surely, Louis M. Bloomfield, the prominent lawyer, would be disappointed to see that LAC archivists and lawyers based their refusal on the fact that they see in Mrs. Bloomfield’s letter an agreement to let her review the duration of the restriction AFTER its termination and AGAINST her husband’s will.
Surely, Louis M. Bloomfield would be disappointed to see that, instead of being opened 20 years after his death, his valuable archives will remain secret 25 years after her widows’ death. Since Mrs. Bloomfield is still alive in 2006, that means they will stay closed at least up to year 2031; that is at least 47 years after her husband’s decease.

At a first level, we can deduct morale from this story: If you are alive and have valuable archives, don’t trust Library and Archives Canada, because, like Louis M. Bloomfield, you’ll surely be disappointed.

On a second level we are justified to ask ourselves an imperative question: Is LAC just misguided in its appreciation of its donator’s intentions? Or is LAC guided by some covert intentions?

If Louis Bloomfield's intentions of having his collection opened to the public is not clear enough by now, in the next post, we will see a letter he sent to the Public Archives in which he stressed the great historical value of his papers. This will be a good reading both because it shows that Bloomfield wanted his archives to be shared, but also because he is giving us a few hints on their content.

OSWALD IN MONTREAL: MORE DOCUMENTS

Looking back in my files, I have found three more documents that were kept away from the public and that I had copied at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland.

The two first reports related to an inquiry made by the FBI on words that a Windsor attorney, Roger Desrosiers, circulated about the presence of Oswald in Montreal.





They basicly stated that:
At 2:05 P.M., November 26, 1963, Clerk ROBERT HAGER received a telephone call from Attorney RICHARD MAC RAE, 1012 (…) BuildIng, telephone Wo. ,1—9250, Detroit, Michigan.

MAC RAE advised that he had recently been in conversation with attorney ROGER DES ROSIERS, Guardian Trust Building, Windsor, Ontario, telephone CL. 3—1611, who advised that he had received information indicating that LEE H. OSWALD had been seen in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, at the time the FLQ terrorists were placing bombs in that city.

At 2:25 November 26, 1963, SA MELVILLE H. SHANNON telephonically contacted ROGER DES ROSIERS and was advised by him that above information was not accurate. DES ROSIERS stated that he had heard the rumor from unconfirmed sources that LEE H, OSWALD had at some unspecified time been at Montreal, Quebec, engaged in a “Ban-the-Bomb” protest . He advised that he could not recall his original source and had no further information in his possession regarding OSWALD or captioned matter.

Unfortunately the FBI didn't make a good job at finding the sources for this rumor and were satisfied that Desrosiers "could not recall the original source", something a little hard to swallow. Most probably- the FBI didn't want the source to be known.

Fortunately, the day after this report, on November 27, 1963, a newspaper article triggered more curiosity from many US officials. As we can see in the next document, even if the article was quicly ruled as unfounded, it was taken seriously by high ranking US officials. Look for yourself at the following telegram sent to the Departement of State by the United States Consul General in Canada.

The text of this airgram is quite interesting:

On November 27, 1963 the final edition of The Montreal Star carried a story, subsequently declared unfounded, that Lee Harvey Oswald had paraded in the ban the bomb demonstrations last summer and suggested that he may have taken part in demonstrations in front of the United States Consulate at the time of the United States quarantine of Cuba. The story was ascribed to a police officer who declined to be identified. However, there may be something to the story.

We have been informed by the Senior U.S. Customs Representative - that his office has been contacted by several persons who have advised that Oswald was seen in Montreal last summer distributing pamphlets entitled Fair Play for Cuba at St. Jacques and McGill Streets. The Senior Customs Representative informs us that Mr. Jean Paul Tremblay, Investigator, Customs and Excise, Montreal informed. him on November 27, 196) that he received one of the above-mentioned pamphlets from a man on St. Jacques Street, Montreal, believed to be in August 1963, and he is positive that this person was Oswald. Mr. Tremblay also stated that Oswald was accompanied at the time by a short, homely, heavy woman who took unusually long steps when walking and two men about Oswald’s age and weight. One of these two men is described as a little taller than Oswald and has a freckled face. Mr. Tremblay also stated that he believes he could identify the three persons that accompanied Oswald and that the reason for paying special attention to these persons was because he was working on cases involving Cuba at the time. Mr. Tremblay has asked that he be protected as a source. The Senior Customs Representative today, has reported this information to Secret Service authorities in Washington. Jerome T. Gaspard, United States Consul General

From the Consul text, it appears that there would be two differents sources to the story: the police officer that was at the origin of the Montreal Star article and Jean-Paul Tremblay the Canadian Customs investigator. It is possible that Tremblay was referred by the Montreal Star as a police officer and was the source of the newspaper story, but it seems more likely that there was more than one official agent that remembered having seen Oswald in Montreal during a pro-Cuba manifestation.

It is interesting to note that the American Consul in Canada expressed the opinion that "However, there may be something to the story." We already saw that the Jean-Paul Tremblay's report was took seriously enough by Lawrence Fleishman and Aurelien Chassé, of the US Treasury department and that both the FBI and the RCMP meet and investigate the case. Now this last document shows us that even the United States Consul General was under the impression that "there may be something to the story".

Since at that time peoples from Montreal -high placed in US government offices- gave credence to those reports, maybe researchers should open their mind to the possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald came up north in the Spring of 1963.

For readers of this blog, many interesting exchanges on the subject can be found on the Education Forum at: http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6548

WHY THE BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES SHOULD BE OPENED TO PUBLIC

In 1968, Louis Mortimer Bloomfield, a Montreal prominent lawyer, was named as an associate of Clay Shaw, the New Orleans businessman indicted of conspiracy in the JFK assassination by District Attorney Jim Garrison. According to Italian newspapers articles, Bloomfield would have been the major shareholder of Permindex, a shadowy corporation to which Clay Shaw was related.

Since both Clay Shaw and Bloomfield were intelligence veterans of World War II, and since Permindex was suspected of funneling money for intelligence operations, including assassination attempts on General De Gaulle, Bloomfield eventually became the victim of his supposed association with Shaw, to the point where he was perceived by some as the architect of the assassination plot against President John F. Kennedy.

First of all, it must be stressed that the allegations against Louis Mortimer Bloomfield, even his hypothetical relation with Clay Shaw, never were documented. The more explicit accusations against him (in Torbitt's Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal) was even coming from an unpublished manuscript written under pseudonym and giving for source two anonymous US federal agents. Most of the other speculations about Bloomfield took roots in this unsubstantiated and uncorroborated text, and never bring any solid evidence against Bloomfield.

Why was the rumor mill so hard with Bloomfield? Because, regardless of any JFK assassination connection, he was a character related to the world of espionage during World War II, and that, well after WWII, he still played some important historical part in international politics, that up to the 1980's. In many aspects, Louis Mortimer Bloomfield was comparable to William Stephenson, the man called Intrepid, except that his story was never made public.

Before its death, Bloomfield donated his personal papers to Canada National Archives, under condition that they are made public twenty years after his death. However, nearly two years after the end of this delay, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) refuses to make available the Bloomfield documents, even after legal procedures were taken on this matter in Federal Court.

Even -and furthermore- if Bloomfield have nothing to do with the JFK assassination, it is more than time that his archives become opened to the public and that his true story finally been told.

There is one overwhelming argument in favor of this: that his personal archives been open to the public -twenty years after his death- was the clear expressed will of this eminent attorney. Whatever was Bloomfield intention in giving his archives and in asking that they become open to the public, he deserves this will to be respected, just as much as the public deserves to know the truth about him.

Will the content of his archives clear him of any connection with the JFK assassination? Or will this content show what really happened in Dallas? We don’t know but Louis Mortimer Bloomfield knew and asked for it to be revealed.

This two dimensions conviction is the reason I took action in court to get those papers released, and I convey everyone to support their opening.

LOUIS MORTIMER BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES : THE ADMINISTRATIVE BACKGROUND

In order for readers to understand the administrative background of the Louis Mortimer Bloomfield archives, held secret by Library and Archives Canada (LAC, the Canadian National Archives), here are copies of the documents pertaining to the management of this collection. I include a few basics comment on my attempt to access the archives.

First of all, readers should know that the Louis Mortimer Bloomfield collection was transferred to Public Archives Canada (PAC) in 1978-1979 by Bloomfield himself, under the Cultural Property Program. This program entitled him to special tax deductions if he irrevocably alienated his archives to a designed cultural institution. There was no specific contract between Bloomfield and PAC except letters exchanged between the parties and Bloomfield received two tax certificates. In one letter (that I will post later on this site), Bloomfield stated that there wasn't any other condition to the transfer except that the documents been opened to the public only 20 years after his death. Bloomfield died on July, 19, 1984.

Following his death and according to this condition, PAC thus determined that the restriction on Bloomfield's paper should be of 20 years starting on July, 19, 1984. This is the 1986 restriction form that PAC which was available in 1996 in the database of the Canadian National Archives.

According to this restriction the Bloomfield collection should have been opened in July 2004.

In 2002, National Archives of Canada (NAC), PAC’s latest appellation, put a new version of this restriction form online on its website:

Even if the wording of this form didn't make reference to July, 19, 1984, still, just two years before 2004, the National Archives were confirming that the collection should be open in 2004. (Note: As I learned later, according to internal procedures, documents restricted until a specific year should have been opened on January 1st of that year.)

In August 2004, after the 20 years period stated in the first restriction file, I contacted Library and Archives Canada (LAC), successor to NAC, in order to access the Bloomfield collection. My request was put on hold for a month, and then on September 3, I received a short answer saying only that the collection was “still restricted”. Since the wording of the last restriction form could mean that the National Archives may restrict the documents for the whole year 2004, I decided not to contest this answer and to wait a few more months until January 2005. At this moment, I contacted again LAC and asked access to the documents. The answer I received was astonishing: the collection was now restricted for ten more years. When did that restriction occured? On September 8, 2004, right after I asked access to the collection.

Here is the new access restriction form that was prepared at this date:


Note that in this form, the "Authority for restriction" is referring to a letter dated August 31, 2004, that is a correspondance that was received after my August request.
Naturally, I inquired about the reasons of this decision and asked the Librarian and Archivist of Canada to reverse it. In order to debate the matter, I eventually file a Freedom of Information request to obtain copy of the original agreement between Louis M. Bloomfield and the Public Archives. This request was handled by a section of LAC called Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP). On April 18, 2005, ATIP send me a few pages including copy of the letters from Bloomfield.

At first, I was quite please to see in those letters that Bloomfield asked that his archives been released 20 years after his death. On this ground, for a very short moment, I believed that I may convince LAC to respect Mr Bloomfield's will. But, I quickly lost this optimism. Doing a routinely check of the Bloomfield collection statute on LAC's website, I had the surprise to find that a new restriction form as just been released 2 days after ATIP answered me.

As you can see, the new form was describing an access restriction ending only 25 years after the death of Mrs. Justine Stern (Bloomfield) Cartier, Bloomfield's widow. That is a restriction 120% longer than the original one asked by the donator.

As I learned later, by obtaining, through FOI, 385 pages of documents pertaining to the treatment of my demand, this new 25 years restriction was a direct result of my first Freedom of Information request.

According to the archivists I did consult on the matter, such a behavior is highly irregular from any archives institution. But nevertheless, that is the course of actions Library and Archives Canada elected to take with regards to the Louis Mortimer Bloomfield archives.

OSWALD IN MONTREAL: A CONCLUSION

Is there any reality behind Jean-Paul Tremblay’s report? Why was the FBI report on Oswald’s apparition in Montreal suppressed for so many years?

At first view, when we know how much effort the Warren Commission and the FBI have investED to study Oswald every moves, we would think that the answer to Tremblay’s report would be: “We know as a fact that Oswald wasn’t in Montreal at this date, we had reports placing him in New Orleans.” But, even if the FBI tried to discredit Tremblay’s report with affirmation that Oswald, in June 1963, was working in N.O., at William Reily Coffee Co., the problem that still persist is that: 1) the FBI made, voluntarily or not, a poor job at determining the time of the Oswald in Montreal sighting; and 2) the FBI information about Oswald’s activity at the most probable time for his Montreal presence is quite weak. If we pay attention to those 2 points, we may find that there is indeed a possibility that Oswald’s known whereabouts doesn’t rule out the possibility that he might have traveled to Montreal in spring 1963.

Let see a few excerpts from the FBI report:
“(…) Jean Paul Tremblay, Investigator, Customs and Excise, Montreal said on November 27, 1963, that he, Tremblay, had received one of the above—mentioned pamphlets from a man St. Jacques Street in Montreal. He said he believed this incident occurred in August, 1963, and he, Tremblay, is positive this individual was LEE OSWALD. According to Mr. Chasse, Tremblay said OSWALD at the time was accompanied by a short, homely, heavy woman who took unusually long steps when walking and by two men about the same age and weight as OWALD.”

“Photographs of persons participating in the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace in Montreal on June 7 and 8, 1963, were shown to Mr. Tremblay and he positively identified two of them as having been engaged in the distribution of leaflets on the day in question. One of the persons he positively identified was the woman referred to by Chasse in his letter to the Secret Service. The other person identified by Tremblay was believed by the agency making the above inquiry to be a Mr. Fred Moore of San Antonio, Texas.”

In the second excerpt there is a clever deception (or a embarrassing mistake) that you can detect only if you look at the photographs and if you have more background information on the QWG walk. The photos were not taken in Montreal, but in some countryside at an unspecified location. They may show persons that have participated at some events in Montreal, but the pictures were not taken during those events. The reality is that the pictures in the countryside were taken on June 7 and 8 but the QWG leaved town days earlier, around May 26. So inferring that Oswald was seen at the date the picture where shot is grossly deceptive.

So, even if Tremblay guessed he saw Oswald in August 1963, and even if the FBI placed this sighting in June, according to the chronology of the Québec-Washington-Guantanamo Peace Walk the only time when Tremblay could have seen Oswald leafleting with Fred Moore or Erika Enzer (the lady that Tremblay identified on picture) would be prior to the walk, thus before May 26, 1963.

The interesting thing is that this is one of the rare periods where Oswald whereabouts are poorly accounted for. In May, Oswald had left Dallas for New Orleans and had supposedly start to work for William B. Reily Coffee Co on May 15. But there is not a lot of witnesses and reports to corroborate Oswald was in New Orleans all of the time in May. John Newman, in Oswald and the CIA made a good case of showing that it is unclear exactly when the FBI knew of Oswald presence in N.O. at that time and that at least in one instance they were wrong on the date of his employment with Reily.

Newman wrote on page 288 of his book:
“Then something strange happened : the FBI lost track of Oswald for two months, from April 24, through June 26. These dates cover Oswald’s move to New Orleans and his first month of FPCC activity there.”
Newman also noted that there is at least one instance in which a FBI report about Oswald employment with Reily was giving a false date. At page 348, Newman wrote:
”On September 10, 1963, Special Agent Hosty sent a report to the Bureau and to New Orleans. (…) Hosty then said Oswald had been working at the William Reily Coffe Company on August 5. He apparently did not know that Oswald had been fired from his job at Reily Coffee on July 19.”

In addition of this foggy period in Oswald's chronology, another curious fact tends to give credibility to the possibility that Oswald took a trip to Montreal at this time. On May 29, just after his hypothetical return from Montreal, Oswald used the name “Osborne” when ordering FPCC handbill in New Orleans. The curious things are that: 1) Osborne was the name of Oswald’s companion on his us trip to Mexico, and 2) that Osborne was from Montreal. That opens many questions: Did Oswald knew Osborne during his spring trip to Montreal? Did Osborne travel to Montreal with Oswald just as he did when Oswald got to Mexico to visit the Cuban embassy? Was Osborne, in Montreal, an handler of Oswald in his FPCC penetration activities?

In conclusion, given Jean-Paul Tremblay’s credibility as a witness (he was a professional investigator); given Aurelien Chassé and Lawrence Fleshman’s endorsement of Tremblay’s account (they were U.S. treasury high officials); given the fact that both RCMP and FBI have not dismissed Tremblay’s account and had made investigative works on its basis; given the hole in Oswald’s whereabouts and his use of the Osborne name that seems to corroborate his contact with this Montrealer; I am on the opinion that Oswald was indeed the man seen by Tremblay in Montreal. Obviously, such a trip wasn’t initiate on his own and had intelligence purposes.

A WORD ABOUT THE BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES

First of all, one word to explain my lack of follow up on this topic.

In the last weeks, I had a few professional and personal family matters that needed (and still need) a lot of my time. Even if I had opened a series of posts on the subject of Oswald’s presence in Montreal, I had to put it aside for those personal matters.

But mainly, the principal reason why I didn’t have spare time for those posts was that I also had to give priority to another demanding timely task. This other subject wasn’t a personal thing, and, in fact is something that would be of interest to anybody following this blog : writing and filing court papers relating to the opening of Louis Mortimer Bloomfield’s documents at Library and Archives Canada.

I did write a little about this topic on one of my first posts named “Things to come in this Blog”. At the time, I wrote this text:

“Louis Mortimer Bloomfield

ARE CANADA NATIONAL ARCHIVES HIDING THE KEY OF THE JFK MYSTERY?

OSS veteran, Louis-Mortimer Bloomfield is perceived by some as the architect of the assassination plot against President John F. Kennedy. Before its death, this Montreal lawyer donated his personal papers to Canada National Archives, under condition that they are made public twenty years after his death. However, more than one year after the end of this delay, Library and Archives Canada refuses to make available the Bloomfield documents. Will a legal battle carry out revelation of new information on the JFK assassination?”

Recently, members of the Education Forum http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=6556&st=60 have reacted to this article, the firsts with genuine interest and one with unfounded negativism. I have tried to register and answer on this forum, but somehow my registration validation didn’t clear yet. So, knowing that some members will eventually read the present blog, I’m posting here my answer to the last post I have read on this topic. As soon as my registration clear, I will post this text on the forum. If in the meantime, members of the forum want to cut and paste this text in the Education Forum, they are welcome to do so. The best place to put it would be in reply to post #74.

=================================

Hi Lee Forman,

Congratulation for your research on the Canadian National Archives. In reaction to Len Colby’s negative post I was about to reply to him, but I’m glad that you were able to show Len that my information on the Bloomfield archives are somehow founded in fact and reality.

I should admit that I resented a little that Len called me a "semi-literate anonymous blogger". Even more since my name is quite easy to find on my blog and that any "semi-literate" reader should be able to deduct it. Here, understand that I don’t want to be insulting to Len, but I can’t resist to be a little sarcastic, Really, when I see somebody reading a blog where the author’s name is quite evident, concluding that this author is an anonymous blogger –really I wonder how this kind of highly deductive mind can solve the JFK assassination mystery…

Anyway, I'm not in this to engage in personal conflict, but I'm willing to give information for those who really want to do serious research.

Even if Google is a fantastic tool to do research, one has to use his brain when he wants to find something new, and, please, Len and everyone else, don’t say it doesn’t exist because you don’t find it on a simple search in Google.

For instance, in Google, if you just type "Bloomfield archives" you won't find anything on the Canadian National Archives, except for my blog. But, if you type "National Archives Canada" you will eventually find their sites. There, at: http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/02012302_f.html , you can type the name "Bloomfield". In the results, you will find the LM Bloomfield collection.

Following the links in this page you will find that a new access restriction was made in April 2005 (http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/pdf/pdf001/r000000675.pdf ) and you'll also find a fascinating description of the fonds at: http://data2.collectionscanada.ca/pdf/pdf001/p000000813.pdf . (For one thing, you’ll have confirmation in this listing that Bloomfield had correspondence with George Bush Sr…, something that you won’t find on the web or in any JFK book. )

Now if you want confirmation that there is indeed a legal battle on this subject in Canada, you can eventually find the Canadian Federal Court website. There at: http://www.fct-cf.gc.ca/IndexingQueries/infp_queries_e.php , yyping my name "Philipps" as a party, you'll find out that there is indeed a "MAURICE PHILIPPS c. BIBLIOTHECAIRE ET ARCHIVISTE DU CANADA" judicial review process filed there.

I'm in this case since 2 years now and its takes lot of energy. That's the main reason I didn't post regularly on my blog.

Now, I should add that I'm looking toward Bloomfield's papers in order to find out the historical truth about him. I'm quite critical on what was said about Bloomfield: the sources on him are dim and even the simplest facts about him have been distorted. To give you a basic example, it was said that Bloomfield was an American, but the bio from the National Archives will show you that he was a Canadian.

I think that researches on Louis Bloomfield should follow a factual trail starting with the fact that, as a lawyer, he was said to be a major stock holder of Permindex "FOR PARTIES UNKNOWN". Finding out who were those parties for whom attorney Bloomfield was acting is the first thing to find out, and I believe the Bloomfield archives can give you this information. In fact, I think that the Bloomfield archives description is pointing toward some new names in the case. Google a few of them, Namebase them, go to library and look for books about them and you may find something new pointing to the.. Corsican trail. Speaking of books, Googling and Namebasing, I’m surprised to see that nobody ever reported a Lansky-Bloomfield connection that is documented in a book that had nothing to do with the JFK assassination. Still, it is written in a book easily accessible on the internet. You can’t just find it on Google, but if you look in some other of the Google services, you will learn something new.

Now, if Len wants to apologize for calling me a "semi-literate anonymous blogger", I will gladly pardon him. Except for being French speaking and for having a less than perfect English, I don't think I deserve this kind of name calling and I hope that this forum is not a place for that.

Thanks for everyone that have linked my blog to this Education Forum, if I had more time I would participate in it and answer a couple of questions. (Incidently, the source for the Mertz-Mondolini connection is in Jean-Pierre Charbonneau "La filière canadienne", page 295 of the French 1975 first edition, both Mertz and Mondolini were implicated in the Bousquet affair.)

If anyone wants to know more or support me in the Bloomfield archives legal battle, please get in touch with me through my blog at: http://somesecretsforyou.blogspot.com/ . As soon as there is relevant development, I will post them in that blog.

Thanks again,

Maurice Philipps
===========================

Now, on the subject of Oswald in Montreal, I would like to share some comments on the Tremblay sighting and on the FBI report about it. But that will have to wait tomorrow or later, if time doesn’t permit. For today, I’m leaving you with the transcript of the most relevant passages of the FBI reports that I have reproduced earlier.

“Aurelien Chasse, Senior Customs Representative, United States Treasury Department, Montreal, Canada, advised the United States Secret Service, Washington, D. C, that several persons had contacted his office and stated that LEE OSWALD had been seen distributing pamphlets entitled “Fair Play for Cuba,” on St. Jacques and McGill Streets in Montreal during the summer of 1963. In this letter, a copy of which was furnished to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by the Secret Service on December 11, 1963, Mr. Chasse also advised that Jean Paul Tremblay, Investigator, Customs and Excise, Montreal said on November 27, 1963, that he, Tremblay, had received one of the above—mentioned pamphlets from a man St. Jacques Street in Montreal. He said he believed this incident occurred in August, 1963, and he, Tremblay, is positive this individual was LEE OSWALD. According to Mr. Chasse, Tremblay said OSWALD at the time was accompanied by a short, homely, heavy woman who took unusually long steps when walking and by two men about the same age and weight as OWALD. Mr. Tremblay described one of the men as a little taller than OSWALD with a freckled face. He said he believed he could identify the three persons who accompanied OSWALD and the reason he paid special attention to these persons at the time was that he Tremblay was working on cases involving Cuba at that time.”

“Tremblay, on contact by the above agency, said on the date he had been given the pamphlet by the person he positively identifies as OSWALD, he also saw approximately six other people handing out leaflets. He said he is uncertain about the dates the incident took place butt believe it occurred in August, 1963, Photographs of persons participating in the Quebec—Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace in Montreal on June 7 and 8, 1963, were shown to Mr. Tremblay and he positively identified two of them as having been engaged in the distribution of leaflets on the day in question. One of the persons he positively identified was the woman referred to by Chasse in his letter to the Secret Service. The other person identified by Tremblay was believed by the agency making the above inquiry to be a Mr. Fred Moore of San Antonio, Texas. Mr. Tremblay could not identify any of the other people in the photographs as having been present on the date in question nor could he point out the person who gave him the leaflet and whom he believes to be OSWALD.”

“All additional efforts by the above agency to locate anyone who could state that LEE HARVEY OSWALD had been in Montreal in the Summer of 1963 were negative. The agency pointed out that while Mr. Tremblay believes the incident took place in August, 1963, it would appear on the basis of his identification of the photographs that the event more probably took place in June, 1963.”