Questions About Mrs. Carmen Palma's Statement

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1) On May 29, Mrs. Carmen Palma told Colonel Salazar that on May 23 she was "completely certain that an absolutely secret meeting took place in Mr. Trotsky's office, between him and his guards. …" What is the meaning of the words "absolutely secret?" Exactly how was the conference different from the many others that preceded it?

2) In the same deposition, Mrs. Carmen enumerates the participants in the alleged conference by their names and surnames. Who made this list, the investigator or the deponent? Is it not remarkable that she could list from memory, before the judge, the names and surnames of all the participants!

3) Mrs. Carmen says that the conference "lasted from 3:30 until almost 6:00 p.m." Were the time and the length of this conference extraordinary, or were they exactly the same as those of ordinary conferences?

(The fact is that all my meetings with guards, visitors, etc., take place between 3:30 and 6:00 p.m.)

4) Mrs. Carmen’s deposition was made on May 29, that is, six days after the alleged meeting, and those six days were full of unusual events. Doesn't Mrs. Carmen think it possible that her memory is deceiving her, and that the conference she is thinking of took place on May 17 or on May 20?

5) Mrs. Carmen affirms that "both Otto and Charlie were visibly nervous, Otto more than Charlie, for they ran back and forth between their living quarters and Mr. Trotsky's office, and spoke with him discreetly, as if something were going on." At what time did these interviews take place? How could she tell that Otto and Charlie were nervous? What does it mean that we spoke "discreetly?" From what vantage point was Mrs. Carmen watching the interviews? From where did she hear the conversations? For example, did she listen at the door? How did these "discreet" conversations differ from the ordinary ones?

(The difference must have been marvelous, since she says that she retired to her quarters "preoccupied with what she had seen.")

6) The same woman affirms that she retired "to rest, at about 9:00, when Harold, Robert Sheldon, and Jake were in the guards' quarters, which seemed strange to her." In this declaration, Mrs. Carmen's bad faith is evident. She knows quite well that between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m., two, three, four, and even five guards are in the guards' quarters at the same time, because the most accurate clock in the house, the telephone, the instruction book, the visitors' book, the list of daily duties and purchases, the case of firearms, ammunition, and tools for cleaning the weapons, the electric lamps, gasoline lanterns, first-aid kit, and even food for the guards are all located in their cottage. All these things are used, taken, and returned to their place by the guards dozens of times dining the day. In the cottage they exchange observations, and divide up their work during brief improvisational meetings. When Mrs. Carmen herself would use the telephone, she would always find two or three guards in the cottage. Especially after dinner, they are in the cottage until 11:00 to talk, drink coffee or tea, discuss security matters, and prepare their work for the next day. I repeat that Mrs. Carmen knows this perfectly well, and to affirm that the presence of three guards in the cottage "seemed strange" is a deliberate lie.

7) She continues: the shift "fell to Harold until 1:00 a.m., when he would be relieved by Robert Sheldon until 4:00 a.m., according to the established procedure." The statement is correct, but where and how she learned of the "established procedure" is a mystery. Why was she interested in the "established procedure" for the night of the 23rd to the 24th? Since the procedure had nothing to do with her duties, she must have had a special interest in it. What was this interest?

8) Mrs. Carmen adds that "still settled in her bed, she heard Mr. Trotsky shout to Belem asking whether she had seen the deponent, and whether anything had happened to her. …" Why did she stay in bed after the assault, when everyone else was already up and around, exchanging impressions, etc.?

9) And she continues immediately: "… to which Belem answered 'no,' but Mr, Trotsky then said that it was his duty to make sure that she was all right …" From these words is can be clearly deduced that Mrs. Carmen heard perfectly what was being said on the patio: my conversation with Belem, my concern for Mrs. Carmen herself — but she didn't open her mouth or get out of bed. All this produces the impression that she felt ashamed. Why? Did she conceive even at that moment the idea of self-assault?

10) She declares that she could "notice with absolute certainty a spent shell on Mrs. Trotsky's pillowcase, and another one in the middle of the bed, although at the moment they didn't catch her attention because of the shock of the events, but later she thought about it and said: how could those two shells be there when … Mr. and Mrs. Trotsky always insisted that the assailants never entered their bedroom." The contradiction is indicated here correctly, but it raises the question of whether the contradiction was established by Mrs. Carmen herself qr was suggested to her by a third person. By whom, precisely? Can she state at what distance shells fall from a firearm, and whether they are from a revolver or from a machine-gun? Tell us whether she asked my wife where the shells came from or whether she kept quiet Why was she silent? Wouldn't it have been more natural to ask, to find out, to exchange impressions like the others? Isn't Mrs. Carmen's muteness a sure sign of her inward embarrassment?

11) Mrs. Carmen herself says that "later on she thought about it." When, exactly? Was it on the 24th or on the 29th, the day she made the deposition, that she thought about the contradiction between the presence of the shells and the Trotskys' statement that nobody entered their bedroom? Did she herself deduce from this contradiction that the assault was a self-assault? But the self-assault means that the Trotskys themselves fired guns, on their own beds, and deliberately scattered the shells about. What reason could they have in that case for denying that the assailants entered their bedroom? This fact does not prove the theory of self-assault; it proves the absurdity of the theory of self-assault.

12) She says about my grandson that "according to other statements, he had been wounded in the foot by a ricocheting bullet, but that she had not seen any wound." (!) This statement is deliberately incomplete and, because of its omissions, deliberately false. "She had not seen any wound." Did she attend the dressing of his wound or not? Did she accompany the boy to the doctor even once? If not, how could she have seen the wound? But she could not have helped noticing that the boy spent several days on the sofa so he wouldn't open die wound, and that he was taken daily to the doctor for treatment. In addition, Mrs. Carmen could not have neglected to notice that the floor of the library was full of bloodstains, which were produced when the boy ran from his room to the library, through the patio, to look out the window, afterwards passing through the dining room. Miss Belem washed the floor and, having seen the footprints, could not have avoided mentioning it to Mrs. Carmen. If she didn't mention these facts, it was through bad faith.

13) Further on, Mrs. Carmen declared: "The Trotskys, as well as their grandson, the guards, and the French couple, maintained the most absolute calmness, as though an attempt that put all of their lives in danger had not occurred… "Absolute calmness" is a false expression. After having escaped a mortal danger, everyone was somewhat excited and relieved, disturbed only because of Bob Sheldon's disappearance Everyone was questioning everyone else about the details of what had occurred, etc. If there was a suspicious "calmness," it was on the part of Mrs. Carmen, who did not leave her room until Belem, and then my wife, visited her at my request. This indifference is made graver by the fact that after having seen the empty shells she didn't ask anything, but just kept silent

14) She adds that "later on, she met Sergeant Casas again and, while discussing the subject with him, he told her his impressions, which were that it had been a self-assault, and when she asked him what that was, Casas answered that it was an assault prepared by themselves." When did Casas make this revelation? Before Carmen thought over the empty shells or afterwards? If the statement about Casas is true, it is a very important indictment against Casas himself. It can be interpreted in the sense that Casas counseled Carmen: "since nobody was murdered, we can say that the whole thing was a self-assault." The fact that Carmen told us nothing about this disgraceful insinuation by Casas can be interpreted as complicity. When my wife asked Carmen why she concealed Casas's insinuation about the "self-assault” for several weeks, she answered that Casas forbade her to speak of it. But how can her obedience to this prohibition by Casas be explained?

I believe that a confrontation between Mr. Casas and Mrs. Carmen Palma would be of the first importance.

15) In the beginning of June, when the press publicized the fact that Otto Schüssler and Charles Cornell had been arrested as a result of Carmen Palma’s deposition, she declared on her own initiative that she had never said anything against the two of them, and that her statement, which she had never read, must have been completely false. Today it is clear that Mrs. Carmen tried to deceive the members of my household about the slander she was giving the investigators.

16) Mrs. Carmen also deduced a "self-assault" from the fact that "everyone claimed not to have fired the shots" (the same deduction, more broadly, was made by Miss Belem). But what could the self-assault consist of? Evidently, of self-shootings done by self-marksmen. If the inhabitants of the house, the "self-assailants," did not shoot, then who did shoot? To give the self-assault the appearance of authenticity, the guards must have done the shooting. If they weren't the ones, it was because they were unable to leave their rooms, being under attack from bursts of machine-gun fire Precisely the fact that the guards were paralyzed demonstrates the gravity of the assault-

Colonel Salazar and other investigators asked me several times if I did not suspect the servant women. I answered that I had no personal reasons for such suspicions, but that it was possible that the Stalinists might have acted as "sweethearts" to the servant women, as they were doing to the police. At that time I was not acquainted with the declarations of Mrs. Carmen and Miss Belem. I read them for the first time on July 5, when I received copies of them, and the two depositions impressed me profoundly, for they are almost identical and are equally dishonest.

These statements could not have been spontaneous. Either Mrs. Carmen was to a certain extent implicated in the assault, or at least there is some person who organized the depositions of the two women. The task of the investigation is to clear up this mystery.