The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

Gemstone File

The Gemstone File is the granddaddy of the meta-conspiracy, redefining 20th-century history as a vast plot to take over America. Along the way its tentacles pull in everybody from JFK to Howard Hughes to Aristotle Onassis, the villain of the piece. The Gemstone File’s impact on popular culture can be seen in movies and TV shows from Oliver Stone’s JFK to Chris Carter’s The X- Files.

The Gemstone File first surfaced in the Bay Area of San Francisco in 1969, when Bruce Roberts claimed to have had his method of synthesizing rubies (“gemstones”) stolen by the Howard Hughes Corporation. When Roberts investigated the “theft” he stumbled upon a mega-conspiracy—and wrote up his investigation in the form of letters, which he sent to various parties. One recipient was Californian conspiracy researcher Mae Brussell, who had made a minor name for herself for researching the Kennedy assassination. Although Brussell dismissed Roberts as a crank, she let freelance journalist Stephanie Caruana use the “gemstone file” for articles in Playgirl and other publications in 1974. Caruana, much impressed by the “gemstone file” and Roberts himself, determined to summarize Roberts’s investigation. She called the precis A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File (or Files; versions vary) and issued 24 photocopies of it, which were passed around the campuses of California. On the last page the Key implored:

At present the only way to spread this information here in America is hand to hand. Your help is needed. Please make 1, 5, 10, 100 copies or whatever you can, and give them to friends or politicians, groups, media. This game is nearly up. Either the Mafia goes or America goes.

With its urgent tone and its alternative “underground” style of dissemination, the Skeleton Key became a phenomenon, not only in counter-cultural California but across the world. Its content, though, was somewhat less than its form.

According to the Skeleton Key, a “Mafia” (not to be confused with those other gangsters from Sicily or Russia) headed by Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis kidnapped rival billionaire Howard Hughes, killed him, and replaced him with a double. The doppelganger was used to control the Las Vegas gaming industry. While Onassis was not counting his illicit money, he was engineering the coup by which John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy were removed from the American political scene. After JFK’s assassination, Onassis took Jackie Kennedy to be his trophy wife.

Intriguingly Roberts/Caruana proposed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the “patsy” in the JFK shooting, and that the real killers were Jimmy Fratianno, Johnny Roselli and Eugene Brading, all of whom had links with the Mafia. As for the assassination of Robert Kennedy, the Key proposed that Sirhan Sirhan’s shots went wild and the actual executioner was Thane Cesar, who was “loaned” for the occasion by Onassis to act, supposedly, as Robert Kennedy’s guard. Cesar was right behind Kennedy when the latter died.

A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File contains whispers of the truth. Onassis was linked to the Kennedys, and Nixon’s family was in financial debt to Howard Hughes. However, the Key is too riven with inaccuracies to be convincing. Howard Hughes was not buried off Skorpios, Onassis’s private island, and his handwriting could not have been faked in 1957 by a computer. President Hoover could not have been murdered by administration of “sodium morphate”.

The suppressed history of the Gemstone File is fiction. But for sheer chutzpah and cultural impact, only the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion matches A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone Files in the annals of conspiracy theory.

Greek tycoon Onassis heads Mafia-like gang which assassinated JFK and RFK: ALERT LEVEL 1

Further Reading

Stephanie Caruana, A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone File, 1974

Kenn Thomas and David Hatcher Childress, Inside the Gemstone File, 1999

DOCUMENT: A SKELETON KEY TO THE GEMSTONE FILE, BY STEPHANIE CARUANA

The gemstone file was written in many segments over a period of years by an American man named Bruce Roberts. Parts of the file were released to certain Americans beginning in 1969. The number of handwritten pages is well over a thousand, of which I have read about four hundred. I do not have the time or the research facilities to verify the entire story. Perhaps others can help.

Since the scope of the work is so large, and the events described so complex and interlocking, it may be more easily understood with this skeleton outline of the gemstone thesis. Individual papers can then be read with greater comprehension.

1932: Onassis, a Greek drug pusher and ship owner who made his first million selling “Turkish tobacco” (Opium) in Argentina, worked out a profitable deal with Joseph Kennedy, Eugene Meyer, and Meyer Lansky. Onassis was to ship booze directly into Boston for Joseph Kennedy. Also involved was a heroin deal with Franklin and Elliott Roosevelt.

1934: Onassis, Rockefeller and the Seven Sisters (major oil companies) signed an agreement, outlined an oil cartel memo: Beat the Arabs out of their oil, ship it on Onassis’s ships; Rockefeller and the Seven Sisters to get rich. All this was done.

Roberts, studying journalism and physics at the University of Wisconsin, learned these things via personal contacts. His special interest was in crystallography—and the creation of synthetic rubies, the original Gemstone experiment.

1936–40: Eugene Meyer buys the Washington Post, to get our news Media; other Mafia buy other papers, broadcasting, T.V., etc. News censorship of all major news goes into effect.

1941–45: World War II; very profitable for Onassis, Rockefeller, Kennedys, Roosevelts, I. G. Farben, etc. Onassis selling oil, arms and dope to both sides went through the war without losing a single ship or man.

1949: Onassis buys US surplus “Liberty Ships” in questionable (illegal) purchase. Lawyer Burke Marshall helps him.

1956: Howard Hughes, Texas millionaire, is meanwhile buying his way toward his own personal gain. He buys senators, governors, etc. He finally buys his last politician: newly elected V. P. Nixon, via a quarter-million- dollar non-repayable loan to Nixon’s brother Donald.

Early 1957: V. P. Nixon repays the favor by having IRS Treasury grant tax-free status (refused twice before) to “Hughes Medical Foundation”, sole owner of Hughes Aircraft, creating a tax-free, non-accountable money funnel or laundry, for whatever Hughes wanted to do. US Government also shelved anti-trust suits against Hughes’ TWA, etc.

March 1957: Onassis carried out a carefully planned event: he has Hughes kidnapped from his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel, using Hughes’ own men (Chester Davis, born Cesare in Sicily, et al). Hughes’ men either quit, get fired, or stay on in the new Onassis organization. A few days later, Mayor Cannon of Nevada (now Senator Cannon) arranges a fake “marriage” to Jean Peters, to explain Hughes’ sudden loss of interest in chasing movie stars. Hughes, battered and brain damaged in the scuffle, is taken to the Emerald Isle Hotel in the Bahamas, where the entire top floor has been rented for thirty days, and is later dragged off to a cell on Onassis’ island, Skorpios. Onassis now has a much larger power base in the US (the Hughes empire), as well as control over V. P. Nixon and other Hughes-purchased politicians. L. Wayne Rector, Hughes’ double since 1955, becomes “Hughes”.

September, 1957: Onassis calls the Appalachian meeting to announce to US Mafia head his grab of Hughes and his adoption of Hughes’ game plan for acquiring power: buying US senators, congressmen, governors, judges to take control legally of the US government. Onassis’s radio message to Appalachia from a remote Pennsylvania farmhouse intercepted (reluctantly) by FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, on the basis of a tipoff from some Army Intelligence guys who weren’t in on the plan.

Also in 1957: Joseph Kennedy takes John F. and Jackie to see Onassis on his yacht, introduces John and reminds Onassis of an old Mafia promise: the presidency for a Kennedy. Onassis agrees.

1958: Hordes of Mafia-selected, purchased and supported “grass roots” candidates sweep into office.