Target by Robert K. Wilcox

Eisenhower had fired Patton from the job]. Marcuse’s efforts were (1) to undercut anyone of importance who was anti-Soviet and (2) to eliminate anti-Nazi-anti-Communist leaders like Konrad Adenauer from any role in the rehabilitation of postwar Germany.
    That’s what Toledano had written me.
    I caution that none of these good leads has been corroborated. I have only recently revisited the letter. But given Toledano’s reputation and background, I give them strong credence. As veteran journalist Wes Vernon wrote in his May 7, 2007 eulogy of Toledano—titled “Hard-nosed investigative reporting: a giant has left us”—“Ralph had covered the political landscape of the 20th Century. He was a walking encyclopedia. Mention almost any historical figure and Ralph had either interviewed him or covered him as a newspaperman.” His “shoe-leather detective work... shed . . . light on . . . dark corners where certified scoundrels and plotters of all kinds of mischief dwell.”

    The Toledano letter is one of many responses I’ve had to my research. But it was the only one of note previously not mentioned
that came before the book was published. Many have come since. I had hoped that more people with firsthand knowledge of the plot would contact me. But that hasn’t happened so far. Anyone involved, even if they’d been in their teens, would be over eighty today. Any crucial higher ups would be well over 100. And any plotters would have to deal with the possibility of prosecution or revenge, not to mention facing the implications within their own consciences of what they’d done. Most likely, those actually involved, like Bazata and Skubik—regardless of participation or innocent witness—are now dead.
    Nevertheless, I’ve received lots of reaction, some of it tantalizing in terms of possibly shedding more light. For instance, a German interpreter/typist at U.S. military headquarters in Munich when Patton was injured wrote that she and her coworkers and U.S. bosses suspected a cover-up. “Our superiors at that time had appeared equally puzzled as to the murky situation that was sparingly reported by the official press. Powerful agencies directed from on-high must have [had] ways to lose or destroy any firsthand factual reports about the accident near Mannheim. The very strict rules and regulations for military reports could not have been disregarded otherwise. This accident would never have been classified as a trivial fender-bender. It was deliberately misrepresented to deceive the rest of the world of what had actually happened.”
    Another reader wrote that he knew Arlis Vanlandingham, probably the mysterious “Vanlandingham” young Horace Woodring, Patton’s driver, said was the only investigating officer he saw at the scene of Patton’s accident. Although not closely acquainted, the reader said he and Arlis, now deceased, had attended the same church twenty-five years ago. “I was never aware that he had served in the military. One day in a conversation I mentioned that
my dad had served in Patton’s Third Army and that he considered old blood & guts to be the best general in the entire army [and that he] thought there was something fishy about Patton’s ‘accidental’ death. At that comment, Arlis looked as if he was about to become ill and quickly left the group. After that, I noticed that he always seemed to avoid me, and we soon lost contact.” Did that indicate guilt? When I contacted the reader, he could provide no more but said, “I realize this evidence is sketchy but... I believe he was.”
    The son of an Oregon personal counselor advised, “You might be interested to learn that my deceased mother was a confidante of General Bedell Smith,” Eisenhower’s “bull dog” assistant whom Patton disliked and distrusted. “When the movie ‘Patton’ came out decades ago, [she] mentioned that Patton had been assassinated to prevent a confrontation with the USSR. There is no corroborating evidence