THE BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES: A TREASURE THAT SHOULD MAKE LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA PROUD... INSTEAD OF ASHAME

THE BLOOMFIELD-ROTHSCHILDS LINK
A FEW MORE DOCUMENTS

As reported in a previous post, the Bloomfield Archives kept at Library and Archives Canada, contain documents that exposed, for the first time, an important relation between Montreal lawyer Louis M. Bloomfield and the Rothschild family.

Previously, I have reproduced a 1960 document showing that Louis Bloomfield was, with Baron Eugene de Rothschild, one of the shareholders of Tri Continental Pipe Line Ltd, a corporation that was granted by Israel 49 years exclusivity on the use of a 16-inch pipeline between the Red Sea and Haifa port on the Mediterranean sea.

I have also explained how Bloomfield’s relations to the Rothschild dated back to the Second World War when the Montreal lawyer had for client Oscar Federer, the manager of the Vitkovice iron plant of Czechoslovakia, an industrial complex held by the Rothschilds, that produced arms for the Nazis under German occupation.

The Bloomfield Archives include many others documents from which we can understand that the relation between Louis Bloomfield and the Rotschilds was significant.

Here is an extract of a January 15, 1965 letter from Louis M. Bloomfield to Alejandro Escandon, a member of one of the wealthiest family in Mexico. In this letter, Bloomfield confirms that the Rothschilds are not only his customers but his friends.

After having introduced Oscar Federer as one of his dearest friends, Bloomfield wrote:
“I brought him to Canada on the 8th August, 1940, and it was through him that I met and acted for the various members of the Rothchild family, who are still my friends (to a certain extent) and clients.”

Elsewhere in the Archives, a passionate 1949 letter from Louis Bloomfield to Baron Eugen de Rothschild shows the importance of the implication of the Montreal lawyer in the international businesses of the powerfull family.

After WWII, the possession of the Vitkovice Mining and Iron Corporation was the object of intense negotiations between the Rothschilds and the Czechoslovakian government. Those talks were complicated because, since 1937, through a clever scheme that implicated many holdings interests (including one Frejas corporation from Sweden), Vitkovice Corporation’s ownership have been transferred, to the English, Alliance Assurance Co, in order to keep it out of reach of the Nazis. But the same maze of legalities that resisted the German invader during the War, was now opposing the legitimate Czech government that wanted to control its crucial iron industry. Thus, to claim possession of Vitkovice, the Czech state could not use his own sovereignty to fix by itself the value of this property, but had to satisfy the exigencies of international laws, that means to pay the Rothschilds the price they were willing to accept.

In August 1949, four years after the end of the war, the negotiations were still opened and, at one point, Louis M. Bloomfield, the Montreal lawyer, felt that his European colleagues were trying to oust him from this case. He then addressed a vehement 3 pages letter to Baron Eugen de Rothschild to make clear to him that he was and has always been central in the Vitkovice scheme. Bloomfield stated:

“(…) I can only assume, therefore, that it is your intention to by-pass me completely in these negotiations. I am, therefore, obliged to call the following facts to your attentions:
It was I who brought the assets wich are presently the basis for negotiation out from Czechoslovakia to London.
It was I who succeeded in making an agreement with the Czechs that their Government would not touch these assets up to the present time.
It was I who deposited with New Court over L320,000.0s.0d. to pay dividends declared for 1937 and 1938.
It was I who succeeded in bringing the shares of Freja to England and Sweden; without these shares no discussions would now be taking place.
It was I who administered Freja jointly with Wetter since 18 years, and I am the only one with full knowledge of all the details concerning Freja.
All of the above would make my participation in the present negotiations in London not only useful but necessary. Further, my connections with the parties involved would enable me to learn unofficially the maximum payment that might be expected from the Czechs and this is a very important thing in view of the amounts involved.”

Such proclamations from Bloomfield himself clearly show that his relations with the Rothschilds revolved around very serious international business and that the Montreal lawyer wasn’t a minor participant in the Rothschild family universe. Furthermore, consider that in 1959, 10 years after that 1949 direct letter, Bloomfield was still making important business with Baron Eugen, by incorporating in Canada Eugen’s Tri Continental Pipeline, and you will have a sense of Bloomfield’s true importance.

Because they shed new light on international historical matters, the Bloomfield Archives located at Library and Archives Canada definitely are one of LAC most precious collection. It is unfortunate that LAC, instead of profiting from the reconnaissance and the fame that should come from offering to the world such historical treasures, have to suffer from the bad image it give itself by hiding an important part of this collection, and that against the will of its donator.

WHY THE BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES SHOULD BE RELEASED

IN THE UNITED STATES,
THE BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES
WOULD BE PUBLIC

In its treatment of the Bloomfield papers, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) seems to be guided by an old suspect ideology according to which the purpose of National Archives is to hide documents rather than to preserve them and make them available. For the archaist archivists adhering to this vision, collecting documents is a mean to get them out of circulation, and preservation means protecting them from the public view.

Already, it is a shame to see LAC keeping secret documents that its donator wanted to make public. But, in view of the nature of the Bloomfield Archives and of the treatment they would be given by the US National Archives, we can also affirm that LAC is fantasying when it considers itself as a modern archives institution, that is as an organization where the people’s right to access historical information is a fundamental value.

The available Bloomfield Archives, and more particularly the papers dating from 1960 and that LAC kept secret until January 2010, contain dozens and dozens of letters documenting Permindex and Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC) history. Like most of the JFK Assassination researchers know, those two Italian firms, perhaps wrongly, perhaps rightly, were widely identified in newspapers, books and reports as being CIA fronts related to the JFK Assassination. Very conservatively, we can estimate that the Bloomfield files from years 1961 to 1964 that LAC are still keeping secret, may include hundreds of letters relating to Permindex, like the two below.

If that’s not enough, in files containing miscellaneous Louis Bloomfield correspondences from years 1968 to 1978, there are traces of his reaction to the allegations to the effect that he was an associate of Clay Shaw, the businessman that was at that time indicted in New Orleans by District Attorney Jim Garrison for conspiracy against President John F. Kennedy. After having first appeared in the Italian newspaper Paese Sera, , this assertion was echoed in March, 1968 in Montreal Le Devoir by its New York correspondent Louis Winitzer. Then in September 1968, Canadian Dimension, a Winnipeg magazine, published an article titled Neo-Fascism and the Kennedy Assassination, which was based on Le Devoir’s piece.
The Bloomfield Archives contain this letter from Canadian Dimension editors that is obviously a reply to a Bloomfield’s missive that may be in the files kept secret by LAC:

Altogether, the correspondence echoing Louis Bloomfield’s reaction to allegations making him an associate of Clay Shaw ant the hundreds of documents about Permindex would, if the Bloomfield Archives were in US territory, make this collection falls under the definition of JFK Assassination Records, as stated by the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, a law that was promulgated at the outset of Oliver Stone’ film. (See http://www.accessreports.com/statutes/JFK.ACT.htm )
The JFK act contains this definition :

"Assassination record" means a record that is related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, that was created or made available for use by, obtained by, or otherwise came into the possession of -- (…)

(F) the Library of Congress;

(G) the National Archives and Records Administration;

(H) any Presidential library; (…)”

According to this definition, because the Bloomfield papers are :
1) related to the JFK assassination ;
and
2) were obtained by the National Archives,
they would be regulated by the JFK act, if only they were in United Stated National Archives, instead that in the Canadian National Archives.

What would then be the effect of such regulation? The JFK Assassination Records Act is clear on the principles that should apply. The act specifies:

“(2) all government records concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy should carry a presumption of immediate disclosure, and all records should be eventually disclosed to enable the public to become fully informed about the history surrounding the assassination;”

and
“(7) most of the records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy are almost 30 years old, and only in the rarest cases is there any legitimate need for continued protection of such records.”

Thus, except if LAC would have submit solid evidence that a specific document should remain protected, every document contained in the Bloomfield Archives would be opened.
The JFK Records Act is perhaps the most modern law that have ever affected the management of a country’s archival material, and, 18 years after adoption of this act in the US, Library and Archives Canada still have to adhere to the fundamental values that were the basis of the JFK Act.

But LAC is far from that.

Far from recognizing that the JFK Assassination records contained in the Bloomfield Archives should carry a presumption of immediate disclosure, LAC is using the pretext of the possible presence of privileged information in those papers to abusively put hundreds of documents behind a veil of secrecy.

Far from considering that, after 30 years, there is only in the rarest cases any legitimate needs to hide documents, Library and Archives Canada arbitrarily applies a 50 years restriction on documents that their donator wanted opened by now.
Far from being trustworthy, far from respecting its donator’s will to have its archives opened 20 years after his death, LAC is hiding behind its walls documents that the US National Archives would have already made public.

Sure, some will argue that LAC is not in the United States and that it doesn’t have to apply US laws or standards. But, and that is far worse, keep in mind that LAC is concealing documents that any other Canadian archives institution, such as an university, a college, a museum or an historical society, would have already disclosed for the only reason that such was the expressed will of its donator. For such institution, it would have been a matter of honour.

REVELATIONS FROM THE BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES (4)

PERMINDEX, BLOOMFIELD LINKED
TO FREEMASONS AND ROTHSCHILDS


PART FOUR:
Louis M. Bloomfield and the Rothschilds



Even if the information pertaining to Permindex are of the highest interest, the Bloomfield Archives are full of other gems. One of the most precious that I would like to briefly expose concerns Louis Bloomfield’s relation to the Rothschilds.


There are in the Bloomfield papers many documents showing that Louis M. Bloomfield was acting as attorney for the Rothschild family, and particularly for Baron Edmund de Rothschild.


According to the archives, this relation with the Rothschilds was dating back to the Second World War at a time when Bloomfield had for client Oscar Federer, the manager of the Vitkovice Mining and Iron Corporation of Czechoslovakia, an industrial complex held by the Rothschilds. Vitkovice was at the time the most important steel plant of Central Europe. After Lionel Rothschild was arrested by the Nazis, both Goering and Himmler tried to gain control of the company in exchange of Lionel’s liberation. (For more on Vitkovice see: http://www.rothschildarchive.org/ib/?doc=/ib/articles/vitkovice )


Years after the War, Bloomfield was still an important attorney for the family, particularly for Baron Edmund. For instance in 1959, the Montreal lawyer was responsable for incorporating in Canada a major Rothschild company: Tri Continental Pipe Line Ltd, a corporation that was granted by Israel 49 years exclusivity on the use of a 16-inch pipeline between the Red Sea and Haifa port on the Mediterranean sea. Through the Canadian corporation, Tri Continental Pipe Line was able to save taxes that would have otherwise been paid to the State of Israel.


Interestingly enough, an April 29th, 1960 Bloomfield’s letter show that the Montreal lawyer was not only a business attorney of the Rothschilds, but was also a shareholder of Tri Continental Pipe Line. The letter lists the 15 shareholders of the new corporation, and Bloomfield’s name came second right after Baron Edmund’s.

Since 1968, since the first mention of Louis Mortimer Bloomfield’s name as a Clay Shaw’s associate, bits of information and tons of speculation have been published about him.  But to this day, the fact that Bloomfield was related to the Rothschilds was unknown from the public. 

This shows how much the information hold by Library and Archives Canada are exceptional.  For the first time, the papers in the Louis M Bloomfield Archives give a documented description of this outstanding man and of the complex secret universe he was functioning in. 

Was Bloomfield really the head of Permindex?

The documents that Louis Bloomfield donated to the National Archives are of incomparable value not only because of their international historical quality, but also for the reason that, on a national and a personal perspective, they have the potential to repair part of the damage done by decade of speculation to the reputation of Louis M. Bloomfield, a Canadian that played an important unknown role in world's affairs.


As I will expose in more details in some future posts, documents in the Bloomfield Archives clearly show that, far from being the supreme head of Permindex, Louis M. Bloomfield exchanged harsh correspondences with Freemason Georges Mantello, the “genius” behind Permindex, at times when Georges and his son Enrico Mantello weren’t acting in the best interest of Bloomfield’s clients.


For instance, in the following letter to Georges Mantello, the Freemason “genius” behind Permindex, Louis Bloomfield confronts him directly by asking : “Have you no regards or respect for my feelings in the matter, or when you make promise to me, do they mean nothing?” Bloomfield also specified: “I am finished unless you make a deal now with the Banca del Lavoro as you have promised me they will do.”

Reading this letter brings one to doubt about the easy conclusion adopted by many writers and describing Louis M. Bloomfield as engineer of the JFK assassination, that mainly based on the fact that he held the majority of Permindex stocks. Together, the numerous 1960’s letters show that, at that time, those stocks were sold by Georges Mantello as participation in a real estate scheme and that stockholders, far from being bosses of Permindex, may as well have been its victims.




The Bloomfield Archives documents contemporaneous to the JFK assassination should be able to substantiate the true story behind Permindex. According to Library and Archives Canada’s decision, those documents will only be released when they will reach 50 years of age, even if Louis Bloomfield donate them on condition to make them public 20 years after his death, that occurred in 1984. LAC’s disregard for its donator’s will makes one wonder if Mr Bloomfield wouldn’t write the exacts same words to the Chief Archivist as those he wrote Mantello: “Have you no regards or respect for my feelings in the matter, or when you make promise to me, do they mean nothing?”


If LAC doesn’t change its mind, it is not before 2014 that the documents concerning Permindex’s activities at the time of the JFK assassination should be available. And other important documents may remain secret up to 2028. And remember, one of the most interesting documents of the fonds is a 1979 letter that Bloomfield wrote to a Washington lawyer in order to complain about being unjustly identify as a CIA agent. In this letter, Bloomfield expressed his belief that he may have been confused with a “Major L. Blumenfield who I was informed was an Attaché to the American Embassy in Rome.” If LAC doesn’t review its position, we won’t have access before 2028 to the other documents that may complete this piece of information.
By staying on its position, LAC is hiding the truth on one of the most important Canadian international lawyer of the Twentieth Century, a man who played many unknown roles in international politics. For instance, documents in the Bloomfield Archives shows that in 1966, years before Kissinger and Nixon, Bloomfield was a forerunner of open trade with Communist China, to the point of putting all his prestige behind this cause and his picture on some very peculiar flyers such as this one:

Other documents reveal that Bloomfield met Georges Bush Sr in China while the future US president was Chief of the United States Liaison Office in Peking between September 1974 and December 1975, at a time when the U.S. hadn’t yet established diplomatic relations with Red China. In January 1976, one month after its return from China, Bush was promoted Director of Central Intelligence. All the Bloomfield correspondence from those years will be kept secret until they reach 50 years of age.


It is truly a shame that a governmental institution like LAC, without any true obligation, take the initiative to hide --from the international public-- historical documents that their donator wanted to make public. LAC’s pretext concerning the protection of lawyer-client privilege and its abusive use of it to hide whole group of hundreds of documents without proper examination, seems to lack sincerity and consideration for both donator Bloomfield and the public.

REVELATIONS FROM THE BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES (3)

PERMINDEX, BLOOMFIELD LINKED
TO FREEMASONS AND ROTHSCHILDS

PART THREE:
The Permindex’s Genius :
a 33rd degree Freemason

The Bloomfield Archives are not only shedding new light on Louis Bloomfield activities during the Second World War, they are containing unpublished information on his relation to many post-war historical events. After all that was wrote on Louis M. Bloomfield and Permindex, and their possible link to the JFK assassination, the archives, for the first time in 40 years, bring solid, valid new information on Bloomfield’s activities, not only in relation to Permindex but also to various other historical subjects, such as the Rothschild family and opening of relations with Communist China.

For everybody interested in the JFK assassination, the information concerning Permindex are the more interesting of all. As you may know, Permindex (a contraction for Permanent Industrial Exhibition) was a subsidiary of the Centro Mondiale Commerciale (CMC), a company that had on his board of directors Louis Bloomfield and none other then Clay Shaw, the New Orleans businessman put on trial by Attorney Jim Garrison for conspiracy against President John F. Kennedy. This indictment was the subject of Oliver Stone’s film JFK.

Since 1968, Louis Bloomfield’s relation with Clay Shaw, through Permindex and CMC, was reported first in newspapers, then in books and now on the Internet. More then anything else, the fact that those Italian companies were considered as fronts for the CIA bring many to identify Bloomfield as Shaw’s co-conspirator. Furthermore, since Bloomfield was registered as Permindex’s main shareholder many saw him as the head of this shadowy corporation and, therefore, as the chief engineer of the JFK assassination.

A Freemason Genius

Whatever was Permindex connection with the JFK assassination in 1963, Bloomfield’s documents dating from years 1959 and 1960 show that, at their beginning, CMC and Permindex were trying to capitalize from the real estate boom provoked by the 1960 Olympics held in Rome.

Those documents expose that, at that time, Louis Bloomfield was acting more as private banker than as lawyer and was trying to interest investors in the Permindex real estate speculation. But while he was doing that from Canada, the real head of the company wasn’t Bloomfield, but a man with connections to the Savoy Italian Royal family, that after World War II was expelled from Italy.

Correspondences exchanged between Bloomfield and various potential investors show that Permindex’s Italian director, George Mantello, was the real head of the corporation, or to quote a Bloomfield’s letters from March 24, 1960: “the guiding genius in this whole operation”.

An historic figure, Mantello, A.K.A. George Mandel, was a Romanian Jew who during World War II worked for the Salvadorian consulate in Geneva and opposed Nazi deportation of Jews by furnishing them false immigration papers. Mantello is also credited for having made public, in1944, the Auschwitz Protocol, the first reliable report on the operation of the concentration camp.

Mantello’s role in Permindex was known since the Sixties. But what was unknown before now is his connection to Italian Freemasonry. This revelation is found in the same March 24, 1960 letter where Louis Bloomfield wrote that George Mantello was a Freemason of the 33rd degree, the highest rank of this secret society.

Bloomfield, in order to reassure an investor on the profitability of the Permindex real estate deal, explained why Mantello was able to buy some land from the exiled Savoy Italian Royal Family for a price that was “dirt cheap”. As Bloomfield explained: “(this) price was obtained through a curiously personal and exceptional situation between Mantello and the Royal Family, (inter alia, (a) he financed the Queen Mother in Switzerland during their entire stay when they were completely penniless; (b) he organized and financed the expedition which rescued Count Calvi, the King’s brother-in-law, just prior to his scheduled execution; and (c) he is a 33rd Degree Mason with the closest connections in the highest aristocratic circles.”


What is the meaning of such a connexion between Permindex, a suspected CIA front, and Freemasonry is still a matter of discussion. Some, who consider Masons as a social club will see nothing of interest in this fact. Others who know that CIA is full of members of Skull & Bones, a secret society of Masonic type, will find this revelation most significant. And the few that believe that President Abraham Lincoln assassination was the result of a conspiracy involving Confederate Albert Pike, a 33rd degree Freemason related to the Italian masonry, will be amazed to see that history seems to repeat itself.

Whatever is our evaluation of this revelation, the fact is that, for the first time in more then 40 years, the Bloomfield Archives reveal a documented connection between Permindex and Italian Freemasonry, and not an insignificant one since what we do learn from this document is that the “genius” behind Permindex was a Freemason of the highest possible rank.

The March 24, 1960 letter containing this exclusive revelation is enclosed in one of two bonded books containing copy of Louis Bloomfield 1960 outgoing correspondence. This letter and many others detailed how the Permindex real estate deal was built in a complex fashion involving other corporations such as CMC, and Marina Reale, a Panama front.

On pretext that some individual letters in those books may possibly contain privileged lawyer-client information, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is holding from the public the entire letters books dating from year 1961 and more. By this abusive procedure, LAC is keeping secret hundreds of Bloomfield letters related to Permindex and dated from the crucial years 1961 to 1964.

It is quite possible that this LAC course of action was due to some low level decisions from civil servants ignorant of the true historical significance of the Bloomfield Archives. I do hope that LAC’s direction now understand the importance of those documents and will take the decision to make them available. By doing so LAC will not only respect the right of the public to access this historical information, but also the will of its donator, Louis M. Bloomfield, that LAC is knowingly disrespecting.

(To be continued.)

REVELATIONS FROM THE BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES (2)

PERMINDEX, BLOOMFIELD LINKED

TO FREEMASONS AND ROTHSCHILDS

PART TWO:

Louis Bloomfield: A very uncommon WWII soldier

Even if Montreal lawyer Louis Mortimer Bloomfield claimed in 1979 to have been confused with a "Major Blumenfield" of the CIA, and that he had no connection at all with intelligence, documents in the Bloomfield archives corroborate that his official biography, giving him as a simple major in the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps (RCASC), at the time of the Second World War, is hiding intelligence activities.

According to some sources, Louis Mortimer Bloomfield was an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) agent during WWII. Even if there is no solid evidence to this fact in the Canadian National archives, all the wartime letters and documents available shows that during this period, Bloomfield wasn’t a conventional RCASC Canadian Army Major.

First, while the RCASC was an army corps engaged on most of the battle fronts, particularly at Dieppe, in Hong Kong and in Sicily (see http://rcasc.org/rcasc_hist_breif.html for more details), lawyer Bloomfield, during all the conflict, was active in his Montreal law office, representing international clients trying to escape from the Nazis to relocate in America. Those included customers such as King Carol from Romania, Oscar Federer, manager of a Czechoslovakian iron plant controlled by the Rothschild, and Paul-Louis Weiller, a French aviation pioneer and industrialist fleeing France. That wasn’t exactly the common assignments of a RCASC Major or of any Canadian Army officer.

The archives contain two interesting documents casting doubt on Bloomfield’s official biography. The first one, is an August 20, 1943 introduction letter written in Spanish by the General Consul of Mexico in Montreal and requesting from “All Civilian and Military Authorities of the Mexico Republic” their attention and help toward Senior Bloomfield.

This letter clearly proves that Major Bloomfield, in addition to doing business from his Montreal office, was also working in Mexico during WWII, a country that wasn’t a usual destination for our Canadian militaries during the war. One year before this letter, on August 19, 1942, more then nine hundreds Canadians soldiers lost their lives on the beaches of Dieppe. Then, one year later, on June 6, 1944, hundreds of Canadian militaries were again sacrificed on Normandy’s beaches. But Canadian militaries on Mexico beaches, that’s really something unheard of.

Another document show that Major Bloomfield wasn’t a usual soldier and that his rank in the army was most likely a complaisance title and covertures. This paper is a letter dated June 13, 1961, in which the Canadian Department of National Defence informs Louis Bloomfield of his retirement date that occurred in August 1946, fifteen years before.

It is doubtful that any conventional army officer wouldn’t know his retirement date from military career. For some soldiers, the date of such an important life change is more memorable then their wedding's date. Furthermore, that an attorney didn’t knew the date when he was personally relieved of such important legal obligations as those of a soldier toward his country, is also incredible. In all likelihood, Bloomfield had no relation with the regular army, and without commiting desertion, just walk out of it.  Fifteen years later, when he wanted to file his biography in Who's Who, he had to check with the Defence what was his official retirement date. 

Since Bloomfield’s name was never mentioned in any books about the Office of Strategic Services and neither found in any OSS’ archives, it is doubtful that he was an intelligence “agent”. But obviously, he was acting as an attorney for the OSS and was granted his complimentary rank of Major by the Canadian Department of National Defence in order to fulfill his assignments that required knowledge of top secret files.

For intance, in 1979, Bloomfield wrote to the National Archives a letter praising the historical importance of his archives. In one paragraph, he revealed his knowledge of secret details of a bombing operation against a military target.  He wrote: "There are also files dealing with Mr. Oscar Federer who was the Managing Director of the Witkowitze Steel Mill of Czechoslovakia (detailed information was furnished to the Allied Governments so that bombers could put the plant out of commission)". 

This letter show that Mr Bloomfield had knowledge of secret operations that he could only have because he was in the intelligence circles.

Mr Bloomfield finished this letter by writing: "I have other documents of great historical significance".
It is truly a shame that Library and Archives Canada opposes the divulgation of such documents after their donator clearly expressed his will to see them public twenty years after his death, a period that is expired since five years.  In view of the historical nature of the Bloomfield Archives, we have to wonder if LAC’s argument about the protection of lawyer-client privilege is sincere or is not only a false pretext.

(To be continued.)

REVELATIONS FROM THE BLOOMFIELD ARCHIVES:

PERMINDEX, BLOOMFIELD LINKED
TO FREEMASONS AND ROTHSCHILDS

PART ONE:
The Bloomfield Archives : Secret gold mine of historical information

Since four years, I have remained silent on this Blog. This absence was partly due to the exigencies of my professional occupations but mainly to the fact that I considered appropriate to refrain from publishing anything while I was taking legal action against Library and Archives Canada (LAC) to have access to the archives of the late Montreal attorney Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. At the time I filed a first review against LAC, I didn’t know that I’ll have to file a total of five different procedures and that this period of legal battle will be five years long.

Today, I consider that this silence can be broken not only for the reason that an important stage in those procedures is completed but also because they have gave results that I’m eager to share.

Claiming the gold mine: Five years of legal battle
I shall expose in more details in future posts the legal actions that took place around the Louis Bloomfield Archives. Some of you may be aware of the result of the first procedure I have introduced in Canada Federal Court in 2005. In this judicial review, Judge Simon Noël ruled that Louis M. Bloomfield clearly expressed his will to have his archives opened 20 years after his death and that this condition should be respected. Consequently, Justice Noël declared invalid LAC’s decision to extend for 25 years the restriction on those documents and ordered the National Archives to make a new decision taking in account the reason of his judgment. (Details of this case were reported in the press and can be read at : http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=54a1746c-a136-4fbb-8b40-288d337b8f0c&k=23786&p=1 )
Following Justice Noël decision, the National Archivist, Ian E. Wilson, didn’t hurry at all to make his new decision. After six months of waiting, I registered a complaint for contempt of court against Mr Wilson and two LAC directors. This new procedure motivated him to move on and in July 2007 he finally announced his decision in which he applied a five years extension on the original restriction finishing in 2004.

This decision had the effect to open most of the archives in July 2009, with an important exception for files that may contain information protected by lawyer-client privilege. Those documents were to be closed for 50 years from the last date in the file where they were located. On this arbitrary procedure, LAC was keeping behind closed doors nearly 40% of the collection and particularly those pertaining to the Sixties, and for durations that may finish only in 2028.

Again, I did contest in Federal Court this decision and, after a first judge declared LAC’s new decision correct, I filed an appeal on this judgement before the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal. The audition on this case has been held in Montreal on March 22, 2010, and, a week later, on March 29, the three judges published their decision rejecting this appeal on some petty peculiar argument that I may expose in a future post.

However, even if I didn’t win this last appeal, all those legal procedures had three interesting results:
1) 60% of the Bloomfield archives were effectively released in July 2009;
2) An additional 15% of the Bloomfield papers, consisting of documents dating from year 1960, were opened on January 2010;
and
3) The remaining of the documents should be released by parts, in January of every year between 2011 and 2028.

Digging the gold mine

As you can guess, in July 2009 and January 2010, each time some documents were released, I went to Ottawa to consult them. If I had to resume in a single word my impression of what I saw in the reading room of LAC, I would say that those documents are astonishing!

The Bloomfield Archives are really a gold mine of historical information on many international affairs dating from World War II to the 1970’s. But a gold mine isn’t the same as a hidden treasure full of gold bullions. The gold in the Bloomfield Archives have to be extracted out of the dirt and bring out in pieces of ore. After such extraction and accumulation, this ore still have to be refined with the help of other historical material. In other words, the archives are not an Eldorado in which one will find stamped gold coins or documents such as a written contract for JFK assassination. But still, there are in those archives pieces of hard documented information that may complete what was known otherwise. More precisely, the Bloomfield Archives for the first time in 40 years, bring solid, valid new information on Louis M. Bloomfield’s activities particularly in relation with Permindex, the Italian firm that was described as a CIA front used to finance JFK assassination.

Permindex and the Ilalian Connection to the JFK assassinationBecause the main media didn’t report it, very few peoples are aware of the last important information available on the JFK assassination, and even less are conscious of how this information should renew the interest in Permindex.

In 2007, Saint John Hunt, the son of notorious CIA agent E. Howard Hunt, made public a tape of his father deathbed confession.


According to Hunt, the JFK assassination was the product of CIA’s people working on the instigation of Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson. The principal man in charge of what was called “the Big Event” was William Harvey a CIA agent whom President Kennedy has expelled to Rome CIA office after he secretly took unauthorized dangerous initiatives during the Cuban missiles crisis. As Hunt also revealed, Harvey recruited in Europe Corsican shooters. (More info available at: http://www.saintjohnhunt.com/background.html )

Thus, if we give credence to Hunt’s confession, the JFK assassination would have been planned from Rome. Since nearly 40 years, writers and researchers that have studied the Jim Garrison investigation of New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw, suspected exactly the same thing. More precisely, they alleged that Permindex and CMC, two Italians shadowy corporations to which Clay Shaw was related, were used to finance the Dallas crime.

Since 1968, after some researchers found out that Canadian Lawyer Louis M. Bloomfield was acting as Permindex’s majority shareholder for unknown third parties, the rumours’ mill started to grind to the point where Mr Bloomfield was not only associated to Permindex and Clay Shaw but was also described as a CIA agent that may have been the engineer of the JFK assassination.
Mr Bloomfield never made any public comments on those charges and his version of the whole affair never reached the press. In fact, the first echoes of his reaction to those charges were given in 2007 by his nephew Harold Bloomfield to Montreal Gazette journalist Elizabeth Thompson, at the outset of the first legal procedure in this case. "There was this amazing world of conspiracy theories that somehow landed on my poor late uncle who was completely ... horrified that anyone would ever (suspect that), after an amazing, long, highly prestigious, highly proper, fine career as a lawyer in Canada and the world." (Do lawyer's files hide JFK secrets? The Gazette, Saturday, January 27, 2007)

Incidentally, one of the most interesting documents of the Bloomfield Archives is a 1979 letter that Louis Bloomfield wrote to a Washington lawyer in order to complain about being unjustly identify as a CIA agent. In this letter, Bloomfield expressed his belief that he may have been confused with a “Major L. Blumenfield who I was informed was an Attaché to the American Embassy in Rome in 1966 or 1967.” And he further wrote: “I understand that he probably was a CIA man attached to the Embassy in Rome.”

How was Bloomfield informed of the existence of this CIA man? Did Bloomfield receive any answer to this letter? Nobody knows because many of the documents dating from 1978 and 1979 are still kept secret by Library and Archives Canada. And if LAC doesn’t review its position, we won’t have access before 2028 to the other documents that may complete this piece of information.

As it will be exposed in the second part of this expose, many letters in the Bloomfield Archives show that, far from being the head of Permindex, Montreal lawyer Louis Mortimer Bloomfield had sometime very harsh words to address to George Mantello, Permindex’s acting director in Rome, a man that Bloomfield described as a Freemason of the 33rd degree. Those letters were found among the 1960 documents that were released by LAC in January 2010, and, again, the Canadian National Archives are holding secrets the letters of the followings years that may give a better knowledge of the true relation between Louis M. Bloomfield and Permindex. Those documents have the potential to clear Mr Bloomfield’s reputation and, in all likelihood, he donated them to the National Archives in the hope to shed some light on his life.

At least, according to Elizabeth Thompson’s article cited above: “Harry Bloomfield said he has no doubt his uncle's papers would be of interest to scholars. "People lead interesting, fascinating, complicated lives. My uncle was delighted and honoured to leave his papers to the Canadian archives," he said”.

Unfortunately Library and Archives Canada, by betraying their donator’s will to make public his archives 20 years after his death, is not only depriving Louis Bloomfield to see posthumously his reputation redressed, but is hiding from the international public the complete truth about one of the major event of the Twentieth Century: the JFK assassination.

It is truly a shame that a governmental institution like LAC, without any true obligation, take the initiative to hide --from the international public-- historical documents that their donator wanted to make public. LAC’s argument concerning the protection of lawyer-client privilege and its abusive use of this unsubstantiated pretext to hide whole group of hundreds of documents without proper examination, seems to lack sincerity and consideration for both donator Bloomfield and the public. One has to wonder if LAC is not acting like it does on pressure of Bloomfield’s widow or of more important pressure groups.

Doing that, LAC is hiding the truth on one of the most important Canadian international lawyer of the Twentieth Century, a man who played many unknown roles in international politic.

(To be continued.)