The Secret Service Gave Mayor De Blasio's Mom's Boss Access to its Secrets in 1957.
The kid's book that Ferdinand Kuhn wrote and published should have been called "How to Kill the President."
This updated article was originally published November 2021 - D-State Analytics.
It’s the 58th Anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy and professional and arm-chair researchers are still arguing whether Lee Harvey Oswald was wearing a Haines or Fruit-of-the-Loom t-shirt in his mugshot.
OK, that is an exaggeration, nevertheless, an awful lot of resources still seems to be going in to the effort to prove Oswald did not kill the President. I thought the “science” was settled years ago, that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill the President.
There are plenty of books and theories that do focus on the conspiracy and those that were possibly involved. There are “the Mafia did it” conspiracies, and rogue CIA operators and Texas Oil Men and Occultists and elements of the Mossad and pro-Castro Cubans and anti-Castro Cubans and many more.
We do not think a finger can be pointed at any single one of the cabals listed above, and other cabals not listed. Rather, we think they were all someway involved (some more than others) under the direction of a grand cabal.
That is, there existed a core group of individuals that ordered and managed the entire assassination from initial planning to making sure the media stays on message, even decades later.
We would even argue that the assassination plans probably existed before JFK was elected President. The plans might have a title like “Rogue President Assassination Plan for [insert name of President here.]”
Whatever group of conspirators are your favorite suspects, or if a “Grand Conspiracy” seems more likely, the idea that the Secret Service had to have been compromised seems like a must.
The capacity and time required to compromise the Secret Service seems unlikely to have existed for most of the individual cabals like pro-Castro Cubans.
That is why we think Ferdinand Kuhn deserves more attention.
Ferdinand wrote a book about the Secret Service in 1957 (published early 1958) and,
He is connected to a number of the sub-groups of suspected conspirators, if not the Grand Cabal itself.
The Story of the Secret Service, by Ferdinand Kuhn (Random House – Copyright 1957.)
The original hardcover version was 174 pages. It was published by Random House under its U.S. Landmarks Books Series (75th in the series.) There are 122 books in the series by a variety of authors.
“The Voyages of Christopher Columbus”, by Armstrong Sperry was the first in the series (published 1950.) Other titles in the series include “Paul Revere and the Minute Men”, “The Erie Canal” and “The Texas Rangers.” (Classics like “Guadalcanal Diary” and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” were also re-published as part of the series.)
The target audience for these mass produced book series were sixth to eight graders who were required to read at least one non-fiction book over the Summer.
As one can surmise from the titles in the series, the authors of the different subjects did not have access to the historical figures that they wrote about. Luckily, for Ferdinand Kuhn, the Secret Service granted the author access when he asked, as noted in the Foreword by U.E. Baughman, Former Chief, U.S. Secret Service.
The book itself is a quick, one-hour, read and it mostly details past Secret Service cases involving counterfeiting rings and threatening letters written by mental patients to the President.
If one did not know what the Secret Service did, like probably most people in 1958, the book would probably be useful as a general overview of the services daily duties.
We would not say that The Story of the Secret Service is a “how to book” for penetrating the President’s protection detail, however, if one did not know all that much about how the Secret Service goes about protecting the President, it would not be a bad primer on the subject.
For, example, page two has some pretty useful information about the services slow-moving motorcade formation.
The book also contains useful information for when the President travels by train (sometimes a lead train is used) and what happens to food when it is delivered to the White House.
To reiterate, the author’s description of the methods used by the Secret Service might seem quaint now, but the book was written six years before President Kennedy was murdered and everyone quickly learned what a Presidential motorcade looked like.
Ferdinand Kuhn knew a Spook or Two
We came across Ferdinand Kuhn way before we came across his book. Absent his Deep State bonafides, we would not have had the motivation to look at the book from the perspective of an assassination planner.
The first time we saw the name Ferdinand Kuhn, was when we were making notes from the FBI file of Maria DeBlasio Wilhelm, the mother of New York City Mayor “Bill DeBlasio” (real name, Warren Wilhelm Jr.)
The FBI file on Maria DeBlasio was assembled in Spring/Summer 1953 as part of the broad look at Communist infiltration within the US Government. Ferdinand is listed by Maria as one of three references. In 1953, Maria had known Ferdinand about 9 years.
Maria DeBlasio had numerous connections to intelligence agencies. She worked for the OSS. Her husband, Warren Wilhelm Sr. (aka Kingsley Wilhelm) and his brother George Wilhelm Jr. played a roll in the CIA’s 1953 Coup in Iran (George was commissioned by Richard M. Helms in 1961 to ghost write the memoirs of the Shah of Iran.) This post goes deeper down the DeBlasio Deep State rabbit hole.
Ferdinand Kuhn was likely Maria DeBlasio’s boss when they both worked at the Office of War Information (a section of the OSS) during World War II, starting in 1943. Mr. Kuhn’s 1978 obituary in the Washington Post implies he had any number of connections to Central Intelligence Agency progenitors.
He was assigned to The NY Times London bureau in 1928.
Chief London correspondent 1936 to 1939. (He returned to the United States in 1939.)
1940 – 1943 – Assistant to Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau from 1940 to 1943.
1943 – 1945 – Deputy director of the Office of War Information and chief of its British division.
1945 – 1946 – International information service of the State Department.
1946 – 1953 – First full-time diplomatic correspondent of The Washington Post.
I’m Ferdinand Kuhn. I’m just an author of kids books. Don’t mind me Secret Service Man.
Ferdinand is also the author of “Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan”, another book in the Landmark Book Series targeted at kids (published 1955.)
His Secret Service book would be pretty innocuous if Ferdinand was not already well acquainted the intelligence industry and was ensconced in espionage circles. If his book is not a communique for planners of some future Presidential assassination, whether JFK was already the target or not, then imagine all of the intelligence Ferdinand would have acquired to compromise the Secret Service (should the need arise.)
Ferdinand could have found out who, in the Secret Service drinks too much. He could have made a list of honeypot targets, or who preferred the company of men, or who had a gambling problem. The blackmail possibilities would be endless if an author like Ferdinand was given access to the Service charged with protecting the President.
We have actually barely scraped the surface of Ferdinand’s biography. We hope to answer the question as to whether Ferdinand Kuhn is a member of the Kuhns of the investment bank Kuhn Loeb and Co. We would not bet against it. (We found the connections to Kuhn Loeb and wrote a follow up article, which is linked here.)
Addendum Items:
When we originally published this article, we noted that Ferdinand also wrote "Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan" but did not attach any significance to the subject matter. In retrospect, Ferdinand’s interest in Commodore Perry might be a deeper rabbit hole than the JFK Assassination, if that is possible.
Briefly, the Commodore married Jane Slidell, the daughter of US Senator from Louisiana, and Confederate States Ambassador to France, John Slidell. The Slidell family were reportedly Sabbateans or Frankists, alternatively Sabbatean Frankists.
We found one reference to Ferdinand Kuhn in the JFK Assassination Files on the Mary Ferrell Foundation website. (There maybe other references that have not been indexed, nevertheless, this is all we have for now.)
As shown in the Warren Commission Log Book, Ferdinand sent a letter requesting a copy of the Warren Report, which was received July 2, 1964.
The 888-page final report was presented to President Johnson on September 24, 1964, and was made public three days later.
Follow Up Article: Ferdinand Kuhn at the Secret Service. As Job Bluth would say “Come on!” – Update
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