Walking tour stop #8: A Korean War POW who worked at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club in 1963 and who bought a rifle shortly before Kennedy’s assassination but who then disappeared has something on his FBI docs that looks very much like one of Ron’s docs

Our last stop will take a little longer, since we’re going to need some background. This post has to do with Thomas Rodman Peasner, Jr., whom I’ve brought up before, most recently when we discussed his 2-d notation, which was a number-letter combination on page one of Ron’s FBI documents as well. The other two people that I could find who had the 2-d/2-D notation are James McCord and Jack Ruby, both of whom we’re familiar with.

So, who was Thomas Peasner? Tom Peasner was a musician—a pianist and a composer. He was born in Pittsburgh on October 19, 1929, 10 days before the stock market crash that spiraled into the Great Depression. His father worked in the steel industry as did most of the men in their neighborhood. His mother worked at home, as did most of the men’s wives. In the 1940s, his family moved to Dallas, Texas, where Peasner attended Bob Storey Junior High School and, later, Crozier Technical High School. 

As a high schooler, Tom Peasner was tall and slender with a flop of wavy dark hair. During his senior year, he was the accompanist for the chorus club in addition to serving as its president. Tom dated one of the cutest and smartest girls in his class, Ethyl Lackey (she went by Eve), and it doesn’t tax the brain to understand why Eve went for Tom. There’s just something about a real-deal musician, amiright?

After graduating from high school in 1947, Tom attended Oklahoma A&M University in Stillwater for a short while and also played in the Richard Walls’ Orchestra there. But then, in August 1949, Tom joined the Army. After the U.S. entered the Korean War in June 1950, Tom was sent to the front lines.  

On April 23, 1951, Tom Peasner was captured by the CCF—the Chinese Communist Forces—where he was taken to a prison camp named Peaceful Valley. He was soon moved to Mining Camp, and, in September 1951, was permanently relocated to Camp #1, on the Yalu River, which separates North Korea from China.

I’ve seen no indication that he was ever tortured. He’d lost several toes on his left foot, but according to a fellow prisoner’s account, it was Tom’s own actions that led to this. Apparently, he had a disease that caused his feet to feel intensely overheated at times. He tried to relieve the discomfort by burying his bare feet in the snow, which led to a bad case of frostbite and the need for amputation.

The foot incident notwithstanding, Tom Peasner did manage to make quite a name for himself in and around Camp #1. To summarize the words of more than 80 fellow prisoners who’d spoken with U.S. Army interrogators after they were freed, he was well known as one of the most dedicated champions for the communists—commonly referred to as “progressives” at that time—in the entire camp.

That’s right. Tom Peasner, with the dark, wavy hair and the mad piano skills, had turned into a hardcore communist.

Before we judge, let’s put his situation into context. When Tom Peasner was captured by the Chinese in April 1951, he was all of 20 years old. In those days, the Armed Forces hadn’t been training soldiers on what to do if they were captured by their communist foes—they were generally operating under the “don’t get caught” playbook. At the time of their capture, American POWs in Korea were left to their own devices. So there he was, a scared 20-year-old without a clue of what to do or say and probably thinking less about his country’s national security and more about getting through this nightmare alive. 

Before the Chinese entered the war in October 1951, the North Korean People’s Army was in charge of the prison camps. They treated prisoners ruthlessly. Of the roughly 3000 American prisoners who died in captivity, many if not most were during the “death marches” that were conducted by the NKPA.

By the time Tom Peasner was captured, the Chinese had taken over the camps, and they had a different philosophy regarding the treatment of its prisoners. When a prisoner was brought to a camp, the Chinese would offer him their hand in friendship as opposed to a bayonet to the ribs. Prisoners would be rewarded with special privileges when they cooperated (such as cigarettes, better food, and the ability to leave camp on occasion) and punished when they didn’t. Many of the Army POWs chose to cooperate with the communists, some ostensibly converting to communism, and others just pretending. 

Tom did pretty much everything that a soldier could do in order to become a turncoat: he was writing letters and newsletter articles advocating for the interests of the Chinese, he was making recordings to be broadcast by Radio Peking, he sat on Camp #1’s leadership committee called the Peace Committee, he attended voluntary lectures and study groups, and he was occasionally singled out to go on walks with party leaders, which was reserved for only the truest and bluest of reds. It was honestly as if he was vying for MVP of Camp #1. If they’d had a marching band, he probably would have tried out to be drum major.

Now, imagine what it would have been like to be Tom Peasner on the day of his release from captivity from the Chinese, on August 16, 1953, as part of Operation Big Switch. Do you think Military Intelligence would have liked to have a word with him? Um, yeah, I think so.

Just like the other POWs, Tom went through several interrogation sessions. In one momentous session conducted on August 24, 1953, aboard the USNS Marine Adder, his Phase II interrogator, a man by the name of George H. Rodgers, described him as “apparently successfully brainwashed,” which is…interesting. Because you guys? Returning POWs who’d been described as “brainwashed” were exactly the sorts of people that the CIA had wanted to speak with as possible human subjects for Project Artichoke.

In fact, at a CIA Artichoke conference held four days before Peasner’s Phase II interrogation, agenda item 2 says:

[REDACTED] opened the Conference by stating that Mr. [REDACTED] of the SO [CIA’s Security Office] and [REDACTED] were on a trip involving interrogation of returning POWs from Korea. The purpose of the trip was twofold—[REDACTED] was primarily interested in learning what had been applied in the way of so called “brain washing” techniques by the Communists, planning to use this information in connection with an operation in his office. It was explained that [REDACTED’s] interest was along similar lines and, in addition, anything that might be developed would be of interest to the ARTICHOKE program. These interests were explained in more detail by [REDACTED] who stated that the ARTICHOKE program was interested in any techniques or methods which could be used offensively or defensively.

What do YOU think? Do you think that the CIA’s Project Artichoke people would have had any interest in speaking with Thomas Peasner, who was characterized by his fellow POWs as being one of the most ardent supporters of communism and by an interrogator as being “apparently successfully brainwashed”? I’d bet my life on it.

Fast forward to 1963. Tom Peasner has moved on with his life. He and Eve had married after he was honorably discharged from the Army, though, unfortunately, they’d split several years later. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree with honors in music from North Texas State College, and he was working as a pianist at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club. According to an FBI report, on November 9 (a Saturday), he’d left his employment there—which sounds as if he quit—and immediately went to a Sears and Roebuck to purchase an automatic rifle with a check that would later bounce. That was 13 days before JFK’s assassination.

Here’s the February 16, 1964, report, written after an Arlington police officer contacted the FBI’s Dallas Field Office with the tip. As it so happens, the officer had direct knowledge of the incident, since he worked part-time at Sears as a detective.

My favorite line in the report is the last one: “Peasner purchased this automatic rifle prior to the President’s assassination, and has since disappeared.”

Allow me to summarize the scenario thusly: A POW who’d been labeled as brainwashed by Army intelligence and who (I’m quite sure) had been “interviewed” by someone from the Project Artichoke team at some point was working at Jack Ruby’s Carousel Club in November 1963. Then, less than two weeks before Kennedy’s assassination, he quit his job, went straight to Sears and Roebuck to write a bad check for an automatic rifle, and disappeared.

Questions? Concerns? 

If you attempt, like I did, to obtain information from the FBI regarding what they did in response to receiving this potentially explosive lead, they will likely tell you what they told me. They destroyed it. Here’s their exact wording:

“Records potentially responsive to your request were destroyed.”

They also checked the box that said “Records potentially responsive to your request were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration, and they provided file number 100-HQ-405298 as a reference.

Let’s put the above development in perspective. The write-up on Thomas Peasner and his rifle was included in the Warren Commission Report, on page 44 of Commission Document 736, FBI Clements Report of 03 Apr 1964 re: Ruby/Oswald, to be super specific. If the FBI had investigated that lead and discovered any information that would either support or refute its potential relation to JFK’s assassination, wouldn’t you think they’d hang onto it or send it to the Warren Commission? But no. Whatever they did or didn’t do as follow-up has (ostensibly) been destroyed. As for what’s at NARA, I know all about file number 100-HQ-405298. Here’s a list of what’s available on maryferrell.org for that file number. I’m sure NARA is no different. Most are dated from the 1950s. Unless the FBI record is dated after February 16, 1964, it doesn’t pertain. Other than requests for documents on Peasner from the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 and from the Assassination Records Review Board in 1998, I’ve located nothing after February 16, 1964.

This concludes our backgrounder on Thomas Peasner. I’d now like to show you an FBI document on Peasner that has a scribble in the left margin that resembles one of Ron’s scribbles. That scribble is, “see index,” which refers to the FBI’s Security Index.

Here’s Peasner’s:

Here’s Ron’s again:

And here’s the “see index” on the document discussing the planned burglary of Hank Greenspun’s safe, of which James McCord is one of the persons who was implicated. We’ve discussed how this “see index” resembles Ron’s, but now we can see that it resembles Peasner’s too:

You guys, they look to me as if they were written by the same person. There’s the same lowercase s in cursive but also, look at how the slash of the x is so long, it looks like a y. They also look as if they were written at roughly the same time.

And now, my announcement:

I think that the FBI believes Ron Tammen and Tom Peasner and James McCord have something in common. And because James McCord was doing Project Artichoke work for the CIA, and Ron Tammen has a tie to Project Artichoke through St. Clair Switzer, and Tom Peasner has a probable tie to Artichoke through his POW interrogation experiences, I think Project Artichoke may very well be what links them to each other. 

I just wonder what—if anything—this might have to do with the assassination of JFK.

Coming next: The Walking Tour After-party

Thanks to maryferrell.org and TheBlackVault for making these documents available.