From: jfb200@cbnewsd.cb.att.com (joseph.f.baugher)
Subject: The Clinton Incident
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories -  Naperville, Illinois
Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1992 22:58:21 GMT
Keywords: CORE, LHO, Guy Banister, David Ferrie


The subject of this note is the September 1963  incident  in  Clinton,
Louisiana  in  which Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, and Guy Banister
(or maybe Clay Shaw) were supposedly seen together at  a  CORE  voter-
registration rally.

Early in September 1963 the Congress of  Racial  Equality  (CORE)  was
attempting  to organize the black population of the county to register
as voters.  The atmosphere was extremely tense, and several blacks had
been arrested mearly for writing respectful appeals to city officials.
On one particular morning early that month, there was a long  line  of
blacks lined up outside the registrar's office, attempting to register
to vote.   The  atmosphere  was  extremely  hostile--white  cops  were
anxiously  watching  for  the slightest sign of a breach of the peace,
and the white officials in the office did all they could to  make  the
registration process tedious and complex.

Late in the morning, a black Cadillac containing three white men drove
up  and  parked  near  the registrar's office.  The arrival of a black
Cadillac in such a small town as Clinton was rather unusual,  and  the
CORE  people were immediately suspicious of the car and its occupants.
Perhaps this might be an unwelcome visit from the FBI.  The FBI was at
that time generally regarded by most people active in the civil rights
movements as a hostile force, J. Edgar Hoover being implacably hostile
to most civil rights leaders.

One of the men got out of the car and joined the line of  registrants.
He  waited  there  patiently for several hours, a rare white face in a
long line of largely black ones.  After the  assassination,  witnesses
recognized this man as having been Lee Harvey Oswald.  When LHO got to
the head of the line, the registrar, Henry Palmer, interviewed him and
asked  for  his  ID  card.  LHO flashed a US Navy card.  It seems that
LHO's story was that he wanted to apply for a job at the  nearby  East
Louisiana  State  Hospital,  being  under the impression that he had a
better chance at the job if he was a Clinton voter.  Palmer found this
to  be  a  rather  odd  request,  quite  out of context with the black
registration drive.  Palmer explained to LHO that he had not  been  in
Clinton long enough to qualify as a voter.  LHO thanked him and left.

The registrar noticed the black Cadillac when he took a coffee  break.
He  too  thought  that  its  appearance was odd, and he asked the town
marshal, John Manchester, to check it out.  Manchester did talk to the
driver  and  was  apparently  satisfied  that  there  was  no problem.
Manchester remembered the driver as being tall and gray-haired, with a
ruddy  complexion.   Jim  Garrison  claimed  that this person was none
other than Clay Shaw, but most investigators think that is more likely
that this individual was Guy Banister, the detective who operated that
famous office on 544 Camp Street in New Orleans. Other witnesses  were
more  struck  by the other passenger in the car, who they described as
having false eyebrows and hair.  This description closely  fits  David
Ferrie.

The car and its passengers stayed there well into the  afternoon,  its
occupants  being  content to just sit there and stare at the long line
of registrants.

There is some indication that LHO spent some  considerable  amount  of
time  in  the  Clinton  area,  for some mysterious purpose.  In nearby
Jackson, the local barber remembered LHO asking him for advice on  how
to  get  an  electrician's  job at the local hospital.  He sent him to
State Representative Reeves Morgan.  Morgan later confirmed  that  LHO
did  indeed  come  to  see him.  Two secretaries at the state hospital
recalled seeing LHO coming in to apply for work there.

If the witnesses to the Clinton incident are to be believed, then this
is  reliable  evidence  that  LHO  was  closely involved with both Guy
Banister and  David  Ferrie  in  the  months  immediately  before  the
assassination.   What was LHO, a supposed pro-Castro leftist, doing in
the company of such rabid right-wingers as Ferrie and  Banister?   And
just what were they up to in Clinton? Banister was a former FBI agent,
and he had maintained close  contacts  with  the  Bureau.   Could  the
Clinton  incident  have  been  part  of  the FBI's infamous COINTELPRO
program, an attempt to play  a  "dirty  trick"  on  the  civil  rights
movement?   Or  was  the  presence  of  that  black  Cadillac with its
mysterious occupants an attempt to intimidate local blacks  and  scare
them away from attempting to register?

Another possibility is that it was not really LHO who was standing  in
that  long  registration  line,  but instead a LHO-lookalike, a "false
Oswald" designed to lay a  trail  of  phony  clues  that  would  later
incriminate  the  real  LHO?   It  does  seem  that  LHO  and  his two
companions did go out of their way  to  ensure  that  they  and  their
mysterious  car  would  be  remembered by a lot of people that day.  I
wonder if there were any newspaper or TV photographers in Clinton that
day  who  might have taken some footage showing the black Cadillac and
its three occupants?

Comments?

Source: Anthony Summers, Conspiracy

 
Joe Baugher			**************************************
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