The Assassination of Gen. George S. Patton

by
Tim Shipman
Daily Telegraph



The newly unearthed
diaries of a colourful assassin for the wartime Office of Strategic
Services (OSS), the forerunner of the CIA, reveal that American
spy chiefs wanted Patton dead because he was threatening to expose
allied collusion with the Russians that cost American lives.

The death of
General Patton in December 1945, is one of the enduring mysteries
of the war era. Although he had suffered serious injuries in a car
crash in Manheim, he was thought to be recovering and was on the
verge of flying home.

But after a
decade-long investigation, military historian Robert Wilcox claims
that OSS head General “Wild Bill” Donovan ordered a highly
decorated marksman called Douglas Bazata to silence Patton, who
gloried in the nickname “Old Blood and Guts”.

His book, Target
Patton
, contains interviews with Mr Bazata, who died in
1999, and extracts from his diaries, detailing how he staged the
car crash by getting a troop truck to plough into Patton’s Cadillac
and then shot the general with a low-velocity projectile, which
broke his neck while his fellow passengers escaped without a scratch.

Mr Bazata also
suggested that when Patton began to recover from his injuries, US
officials turned a blind eye as agents of the NKVD, the forerunner
of the KGB, poisoned the general.

Mr Wilcox told
The Sunday Telegraph that when he spoke to Mr Bazata: “He
was struggling with himself, all these killings he had done. He
confessed to me that he had caused the accident, that he was ordered
to do so by Wild Bill Donovan.

“Donovan
told him: ‘We’ve got a terrible situation with this great patriot,
he’s out of control and we must save him from himself and from ruining
everything the allies have done.’ I believe Douglas Bazata. He’s
a sterling guy.”

Mr Bazata led
an extraordinary life. He was a member of the Jedburghs, the elite
unit who parachuted into France to help organise the Resistance
in the run up to D-Day in 1944. He earned four purple hearts, a
Distinguished Service Cross and the French Croix de Guerre three
times over for his efforts.

After the war
he became a celebrated artist who enjoyed the patronage of Princess
Grace of Monaco and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

He was friends
with Salvador Dali, who painted a portrait of Bazata as Don Quixote.

He ended his
career as an aide to President Ronald Reagan’s Navy Secretary John
Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission and adviser to John McCain’s
presidential campaign.

Mr Wilcox also
tracked down and interviewed Stephen Skubik, an officer in the Counter-Intelligence
Corps of the US Army, who said he learnt that Patton was on Stalin’s
death list. Skubik repeatedly alerted Donovan, who simply had him
sent back to the US.

“You have
two strong witnesses here,” Mr Wilcox said. “The evidence
is that the Russians finished the job.”

The scenario
sounds far fetched but Mr Wilcox has assembled a compelling case
that US officials had something to hide. At least five documents
relating to the car accident have been removed from US archives.

Read
the rest of the article

May
6, 2013

Copyright
© 2013 Daily Telegraph

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