INTERVIEW REPORT WILLIAM TURNER DECEMBER 22-24, 1977
Agency: HSCA
Originator: HSCA
Document date: 12/22/1977
Document type: REPORT

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JFK Assassination System

Identification Form

Agency Information

Date:

10/1/201

AGENCY: HSCA

RECORD NUMBER :

180-10073-10072

RECORD SERIES: NUMBERED FILES

AGENCY FILE NUMBER :

004856

Released under the John

'• kennedy

Assassination Records

Collection Act of 1992

144 USC 2107 Notel.

Case#:NU 54756 Date:

10-31-2017

Document Information

ORIGINATOR :

HSCA

FROM:

TO:

TITLE:

INTERVIEW REPORT WILLIAM TURNER DECEMBER 22-24, 1977

DATE: 12/22/1977

PAGES: 109

SUBJECTS :

"POLITICAL AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES, FAIR PLAY FOR

CUBA....

....COMMITTEE

KENNEDY, JOHN, ASSASSINATION

TURNER, WILLIAM

RACKETEERING AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITIES

RUBY, JACK, BACKGROUND, AFFILIATIONS,

OSWALD, LEE, POST-RUSSIAN PERIOD

DOCUMENT TYPE: REPORT

CLASSIFICATION: Unclassified

RESTRICTIONS: 3

CURRENT STATUS : Redact

DATE OF LAST REVIEW: 09/27/1996

OPENING CRITERIA:

COMMENTS: Box #:101.

v9.1

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INTERVIEW REPORT

WILLIAM TURNER

December 227

1977

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MEMORANDUM FOR: ROBERT BLAKEY

FROM:

PAT OA ORR/BETSY PALMERP

SUBJECT:

Trip Report

DATE: January 25, 1978

On Thursday, December 22, 1977, John Hornbeck, Patricia

Orr, and Betsy Palmer travelled to the home of william

Turner in San Rafael, California to interview Mr. Turner

and review his files which he has accumulated in connection

with a book he is writing on the assassination of President

Kennedy •

Turner is a former FBI agent and has written numerous

articles in the past fifteen years about the assassination

and activities of exiled Cubans. Section A of this report

contains a sampling of such articles compiled for us by

the staff of the Library of Congress.

Turner's manuscript, The Cuba Project, deals extensively

with Oswald in New Orleans, the activities centered around

544 Camp Street in New Orleans, and Oswald's connection

with Cubans. He is also working on an area involving Jack

Ruby and his possible connection with organized crime. A

chapter-by-chapter summary of the manuscript is contained

in Section B.

Turner is conversant on several issues involving

organized crime and anti-Castro Cubans because of his work on the

book and his investigative efforts over the years on the Kennedy

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case.

He was somewhat reluctant to turn over all portions

of his manuscript for xeroxing for the Committee, expressing

concern that his materials might be misused (1.e., leaked)

before the book is published. However, we were able to

obtain copies of substantial portions of the book and gave

him our assurance that all of his material would be kept in

security safes at this office.

Turner also promised to send

copies of his working drafts on chapters relating to Manuel

Artime, the MRR. and Operation MONGOOSE.

In addition to the manuscript, we brought back notes

on the following subjects:

The Bayo-Pawley Affair

Interview notes, Robert K. Brown, re: Abaco Island

Succession

Martin F. X. Casey Interview

Andrew St. George interview notes on Luce's Private War.

Fred L. Crisman file

George Higgenbothan interview

Interview notes about David Ferrie.from John Irion interview

Interview notes on Loran Hall

Miscellaneous handwritten Turner notes:

Our interview with Turner was far-ranging, as we attempted

to touch upon the manydifferent areas

he has researched to

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date.

Some of the points are listed below.

• Through FELIPE DE DIEGO, Turner was able to get

some information on Operation 40. De Diego had

gone to intelligence school at Fort Benning prior

to the Bay of Pigs..

He has gained more recent

notoriety following his indictment in connection

with the Ellsberg break-in. He told Turner about

Operation 40, a spin-off group of the 2506 Brigade

which was to coordinate the political transition

after the removal of Castro in the invasion. Turner

stated that Operation 40 was the intelligence branch

of the 2506 Brigade and brought along assassins since

it was believed that some of the Cuban leaders would

have to be eliminated permanently. Members of this

group included COLONEL PIEDRA, who was also

said to

be in contact with CARLOS BRINGUIER, and JOAQUIN

SANJENIS, who reputedly was with the CIA and is

alleged by Frank Sturgis to be his (Sturgis') CIA

contact officer. E. HOWARD HUNT is also supposed to

have been in charge of this group.

In connection with our interest in determining whether

ONI would have any significant information pertinent

to the investigation, we inquired about LUIS BALBUENA,

a Cuban said to have been an ONI consultant at Guantanamo

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Base.

Turner believes Balbuena sat on the council

of anti-Castro Cubans at Guantanamo (along with

ALBERTO

"EDDY" BAYO, among others) and that the

naval contingent there must have been somewhat

knowledgeable of the CIA activities that were then

taking place.

He specifically mentioned JACK

MODDESSETTE, the coordination officer of ONI at

Guantanamo as the person most likely to be helpful.

Moddessette is now in Texas. Turner said Bernard

Fensterwald is the person who connected Moddessette

with ONI.

Turner also believes ONI was involved or

knowledgeable about the CIA training camp at the

Old Algiers ammo dump near New Orleans. (The CIA

has denied that there were any CIA-sponsored camps

in Louisiana although one of the CIA's own documents,

a debriefing interview with Grayston Lynch, reveals

that the Old Algiers camp was indeed backed by the

CIA.

This document was reviewed by Team 3 members

at the CIA). ONI involvement in this camp should be

checked out. BERNARD BARKER would also probably be

helpful in

substantiating ONI involvement, according

to Turner.

SEYMOUR "SY" ELLISON, Melvin Belli's former law partner,

was also mentioned by Turner (which complemented the

Melvin Belli interview John Hornbeck had with Belli

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later that afternoon.) According to a person who

Turner considers reliable, Ellison had received a phone

call immediately after Ruby shot Oswald with a message

to relay back

to Belli. The call was apparently

from a Las Vegas lawyer, with whom Ellison was familiar,

trying to reach Belli. Belli was travelling so the

caller told Ellison that "one of our boys" has gotten

involved in the case and they wanted Belli to handle

Ruby's defense and that Belli could net a million

dollars.

The caller later called Ellison again to say

that it was not one of their men after all.

With respect to Belli, Turner also mentioned JUDY

DOWES. Dowes hired Belli to help her brother out of

a Mexican jail in 1968. She was alleged to have been

heavily involved with the soldier-of-fortune types

in Miami.

•

BRADING/BRADEN. Following the assassination, Turner

did a motor vehicle check to track down JIM BRADEN and

located him at an office in Beverly Hills. A colleague.

of Turner's, McNabb, went to the office to check it out

and found that he was receiving mail there. (This

information was turned over to Peter Noyes who sub-

sequently investigated the Braden connection rather

thoroughly. Braden is

alleged to have been connected

with Los Angeles Police Department intelligence and IRS

intelligence.)

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FRED LEE CRISMAN. Turner was interested in Crisman

because of his physical similarity to one of the tramps

and his association with the Old Orthodox Church and

Thomas Beckham. He found that Crisman had been living

with a retired Army Colonel named WHITE, who is involved

with Wide World Advertising in Seattle, Washington. To

Turner,

it seemed that Crisman

was involved in an

intelligence operation. Jim Garrison received an

anonymous letter during the course of his investigation

which pointed to Crisman and claimed that Crisman was

travelling between Seattle and New Orleans all the time.

(See Crisman portion of Turner file for copy of letter.)

It was

further alleged (source unknown) that Crisman

carried a diplomatic passport that he claimed to have

received through a Congressional committee. He also

reportedly was connected with SERGIO ARCACHA SMITH.

He had been in the Air Force, Crisman died in 1975.

Beckham, with whom Crisman was connected, was a courier

for the anti-Castro

groups and acquainted with David

Ferrie. MCNABB, a soldier of fortune who works with

Turner, has notes on CRISMAN/WHITE. McNabb lives in

St. Helena, California.

CARLOS HERNANDEZ. Turner believes that Hernandez is

most likely the person known as

"A" from the Senate

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the Castro government. Ayres was called in to

brief Artime on everything he knew. The meeting

allegedly took place at a VIP safehouse on a golf course

near Coral Gables. The briefing was interrupted by

two Cuban visitors and Artime escorted them to the

library.

Ayres overheard an argument between the two

men regarding money that was supposed to be hidden on

the island. A pirate's lair on Point Mary is the point

where the money was supposedly hidden.

Turner spoke briefly regarding OSMIT MOODY, stating

that he used Howard Hughes money for the Triple A

group in the early 1960's as was the apparent owner

of the island on which money and arms were hidden.

CARROLL JARNIGAN. A witness that Turner feels may

merit another look. Jarnigan is a lawyer from Texas,

a graduate of SMU, a chess champion, "brilliant" accord-

in to Turner. Jarnigan wrote a letter to the FBI after

the JFK assassination describing an event alleged to

have taken place on October 3, 1963 at Jack Ruby's club

where Jarnigan had taken a girlfriend. While they were

waiting to be seated, a homosexual arrived, wearing a

windbreaker and identified as Oswald. Jarnigan said

the man said he had just gotten in from New Orleans and

was overheard talking about Robert Kennedy. FBI dis-

missed the story although Jarnigan took a lie detector

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test.

They declared Jarnigan believed the "fanciful"

story.

Turner went to see Jarnigan and interviewed

him regarding these events. He found him to be

impressive and believable.

RONNIE CAIRE. An interview in early 1967 revealed

that Caire had met ARCACHA in December of 1961 when

he came to Caire's office to raise money for the

Cuban Revolutionary Front. (CRC). This led to the

formation of the Crusade to Free Cuba. Those induced

to head up the drive were: GILL MELLIN, Vice President

of the Whitney Bank and CARLOS GRIMADER, an accountant

who kept records for Cuban groups (i.e., CRC). The

money was

used to finance many different things including

acquisition of PT boats, etc. The Crusade lasted 3

months, but was a failure. Caire says he lost $10,000

and Arcacha pocketed most of it.

Caire's office on the 7th floor of the Cigali Building

in 1964 (the corner office on Canal Street side).. After

the Crusade, Arcacha worked for Caire (from 2/12/62 to

9/18/62). Then Arcacha went to Mexico around July or

August 1962, probably under an assumed name, with

NESTOR MARQUEZ-DIAZ, an attorney and economist from

Algiers, Louisiana and a teacher at Nicholl's College.

Caire was impressed with the veracity and character of

CARLOS QUIROGA. Quiroga had warned Caire early on in

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the Crusade not to trust Arcacha. MAYOR WALTER SCHIRO

also warned Caire about Arcacha. Arcacha disappeared

in late 1962, rumored to have gone to Miami, and

later Houston and Dallas. He had been working on the

Pan American Life Insurance Company account when he

left.

ERNESTO RODRIGUEZ was said to be the leader of

the anti-Arcacha faction. Arcacha was replaced by

LUIS RABEL as local front leader. Arcacha had mentioned

GUY BANISTER on occasion although Caire never saw the

two of them

together. Arcacha had told him

about

driving a truck load of plastic explosives from Houma,

LA to New Orleans prior to Caire's meeting Arcacha.

Caire said LEE HARVEY OSWALD once applied for a job

when Caire was at the Cigali Building. Oswald came

in one day about the time of the WDSU interview.

Arcacha once introduced Caire to a man from Miami

who Caire thought might have been named TONY OR MANUEL

VARONA. Caire did not know Ricardo Davis, or Ferrie.

He vaguely recalled the name MIGUEL TORRES and "runner"

for the Crusade. He remembered BRINGUIER, MIRO CARDONA,

LUIS SANCHEZ, LUIS BODEFOL, TOMAS CAMPA. Arcacha knew

MANUEL GIL of the American Sugar Can association. (Gil

had been with Alpha 66 or the CIA, Caire thought.)

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GUY BANISTER. According to Turner, Guy Banister

was

connected with the training camp in Algiers, La.

with NINO DIAZ. He trained Cuban exiles for di-

•versionary activities to be conducted during the

Bay of Pigs invasion. Turner, probably because both

he and Banister had FBI connections, showed a good

deal of interest in Banister and felt that his

activities in New Orleans in the early 1960's in-

dicated he (Banister) had connections with various

intelligence agencies.

In conclusion, it should be mentioned that William Turner

worked, for a time, on the Garrison investigation which led

to the trial

of Clay Shaw. Turner conducted witness interviews

for Garrison and spoke very favorably of Garrison when

we

visited with him. Turner felt that Garrison was oncthe

right track in his investigation, but failed to explore the

organized crime phase of the case. as well as the Cuban angle.

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December 28, 1977

Mr.

William Turner

163

Mark Iwain Avenue

San

Rafael, California

Dear Bill:

94903

On behalf of Patricia Orr, John Hornbeck and myself, I

wish to thank you for your willingness

to share your day

with

us last Thursday

We all appreciated the fact that

it was an extremely busy time for you and want you to

know that we benefited greatly from having talked to you.

We are in the process of reviewing the material from your

manuscript and will respect your desire to keep it under

security here

at the Committee.

We look forward to

receiving the additional material which you indicated you

would send to us in the near future.

Thank you again for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

Betsy Palmer

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Contemporary

Authors

A BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE TO

CURRENT AUTHORS AND THEIR WORKS

CHRISTINE NASSO

Editor

volumes 25-28

first revision

GALE RESEARCH COMPANY • BOOK TOWER • DETROIT, MICHIGAN 48226

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CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS

Van Clief, That's What Friends Are For, Four Winds, 1968

Peggy Parish, Granny and the Indians, Macmillan, 1969;

Tamara Kitt, Jake, Abelard-Schuman, 1969; Beatrice

Schenk De Regniers, Catch a Little Fox, Seabury, 1970;

F. N. Monjo, Poor Richard in France, Holt, 1973; Lydia

Marie Child, Over the River and Through the Wood, Cow-

ard, 1974; Freya Littledale, The Elves and the Shoemaker,

Scholastic Book Services, 1975; Bette Lamont, Island Time,

Lippincott, 1976.

AVOCATIONAL INTERESTS: Theater (has acted, di-

rected, and designed avocationally), music.

BIOGRAPHICALICRITICAL SOURCES: Young Read-

ers' Review, September, 1968; Lee Bennett Hopkins, Books

Are by People, Citation Press, 1969; Publisher's Weekly,

July 14, 1969; Horn Book, August, 1969.

TURNBULL, Andrew (Winchester) 1921-1970

February 2, 1921-January 10, 1970; American biographer

and literary scholar. Obituaries: New York Times, January

11, 1970; Washington Post, January 12, 1970; Newsweek,

January 19, 1970; Publishers' Weekly, February 9, 1970;

Antiquarian Bookman, February 16, 1970. (See index for

TURNER, Frederick C@air) 1938-

PERSONAL: Born October 3, 1938, in Cambridge, Mass.;

son of Clair Elsmere (a college pröfessor) and Naomi

(Cocke) Turner; married Caroline Tingey Craven, August

27, 1960; children: Frederick C. II, Elizabeth Wingate, Car-

oline: Truxtun. Education: Harvard University, A.B.

(magna cum laude), 1961; Fletcher School of Law and Di-

plomacy, M.A., 1962, M.A.L:D., 1963, Ph.D., 1965. Poli-

tics: Democrat. Religion: Unitarian Universalist. Home: 30

Timber Dr., Storrs, Conn. 06268. Office: Department of

Political Science, University of Connecticut, Stors, Conn.

CAREER: Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., assis-

tant to director of Latin American studies, 1963-64; Univer-

sity of Connecticut, Stors, assistant professor, 1965-68,

associate professor, 1968-70, professor of political science,

1970-. Visiting lecturer in political science, Yale Univer-

sity, 1967-69. Member: Center for Inter-American Rela-

tions, American Political Science Association, International

Political Science Association, Latin American Studies As-

sociation, American Association of University Professors.

Awards, honors: First place in distinguished faculty awards

program, University of Connecticut, 1968; University of

Connecticut Alumni Association award for faculty excel-

lence in teaching, 1969; grants from National Endowment

for the Humanities, 1972-73, and National Science Founda-

tion, 1972-76.

WRITINGS: The Dynamic of Mexican Nationalism, Uni-

versity of North Carolina Press, 1968; Catholicism and Po-

litical Development in Latin America, University of North

Carolina Press, 1971; Responsible Parenthood: The Politics

of Mexico's New Population Policies (monograph), Amer-

ican Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1974.

Contributor: Lewis Hanke, editor, History of Latin Amer-

ican Civilization: Sources and Interpretations, Little,

Brown, 1967, 2nd edition, 1973; Samuel Bailey, editor, Na-

rionalism in Latin America, Knopf, 1970; Roberto

Ésquenazi-Mayo and Michael C. Meyer, editors, Latin

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731

American Scholarship since World War Il, University of

Nebraska Press,

1971; Investigaciones contemporaneas

sobre historia de Mexico, University of Texas Press, 1971;

Nathaniel N. Wagner and Marsha J. Haug, editors, Chi-

canos: Social and Psychological Perspectives, Mosby, 1971;

Latin America and the Füture of lis Jewish Communities,

Institute of Jewish Affairs (London), 1973. Contributor to

professional journals.

AVOCATIONAL INTERESTS: English literature, espe-

cially the novels of D. H. Lawrence.

TURNER, Philip 1925-

PERSONAL: Born December 3, 1925, in Rossland, British

Columbia, Canada; son of Christopher Edward (a cler-

gyman) and Emma (Johnston) Turner; married Margaret

• Diane Samson, September 23, 1950; children: Simon, Ste-

phen, Jane. Education: Worcester College, Oxford, B.A.,

1950, M.A., 1962. Address: St. Francis, 1 West Malvern

Rd., Malvern, Worcestershire, England: Agent: Bolt &

Watson, 8 Storey's Gate, London SWI, England.

CAREER: Ordained priest of Church of England, 1951;

curate in Leeds, 1951-56; priest-in-charge, Crawley, Sussex,

1956-62; vicar of St. Matthews, Northampton, 1962-66;

British Broadcasting Cörp., Midland Region, Birmingham;

religious broadcasting organizer, 1966-70. Author of chil-

dren's books and plays. Military service: Royal Naval Vol-

unteer Reserve, 1943-46; became sub-lieutenant: Member:

Society of Authors. Awards, honors: Carnegie Medal for

best children's book published in United Kingdom, Library

Association, 1965, for The Grange at High Force.

WRITINGS-Children's books: Colonel Sheperton's

Clock, Oxford University Press, 1964, World Publishing,

1966; The Grange at High Force, Oxford University Press,

1965, World Publishing, 1967; Sea Peril, Oxford University

Press, 1966, World Publishing, 1968; The Bible Story, Ox-

ford University Press, 1968; Steam on the Line, World Pub-

lishing, 1968; (author of text) Brian Wildsmith's Illustrated

Bible Stories, F. Watts, 1969; War on the Darnel, World

Publishing, 1969; Wigwig and Homer, Oxford University

Press, 1969, World Publishing; 1970; Devil's Nob, Hamish

Hamilton, 1970; Powder Quay, Hamish Hamilton, 1971;

Dunkirk Summer, Hamish Hamilton, 1973...

Plays: Christ in the Concrete City, S.P.C.K., 1956; Tell It

with Trumpets, S.P.C.K., 1959; Cry Dawn in Dark Baby-

Ion, S.P.C.K., 1959; This Is the Word in "Word Made

Flesh,'' S.P.C.K., 1962; Casey, S.P.C.K., 1962; So Long at

the Fair, Joint Board of Christian Education of Australia

and New Zealand, 1966; Men in Stone, Baker Plays, 1966;

Cantata for Derelicts, United Church Publishing House

(Canada), 1967; Madonna in Concrete, S.P.C.K., 1971.

BIOGRAPHICAL/CRITICAL SOURCES: Books and

Bookmen, May, 1968.

TURNER, William W.

1927-

PERSONAL: Born April 14, 1927, in Buffalo, N.Y.; son of

William Peter (a printing executive) and Magdalen (Weyand)

Turner; married Margaret Peiffer (a registered nurse), Sep

tember 12, 1964; children: Mark Peter, Lori Ann. Educa-

tion: Canisius College, B.S., 1949. Politics: Democrat. Reli-

gion: Roman Catholic: Home: 163 Mark Twain Ave., San

Rafael, Calif. 94903. Agent: Joan Daves, S15 Madison Ave.,

New York, N. Y. 10022

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732

CAREER: Federal Bureau of Investigation, special agent in

various field offices, 1951-61; free-lance. writer in California,

1963—; Ramparts (magazine), San Francisco, Calif:, senior

editor, 1967. Investigator and consultant, National Wire-

tap Commission, 1975. Military service: U.S. Navy, 1945-

46; served in Pacific Theater. Member: Authors Guild, In-

ternational Platform Association, Press Club of San Fran-

cisco.

WRITINGS: The Police Establishment, Putnam, 1968; In-

visible Witness: The Use and Abuse of the New Technology

of Crime Investigation, Bobbs-Merrill, 1968; Hoover's

F.B.l.: The Men and the Mysh, Sherbourne, 1970; (with E.

Asinof and W. Hinckle) The Ten Second Jailbreak, Holt,

1973; (contributor) Investigating the FBI; Doubleday, 1973.

Author and editor of police science material for

Evidence Library," Bancroft-Whitney Co. Contributor to

Nation, Cosmopolitan, Saga, and Cavalier.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The Cuba Project, for Houghton;

The Death of Robert F. Kennedy: Conspiracy and Coverup,

for Random House.

SIDELIGHTS: Turner told CA that he "became interested

in writing as a career when i was sent to Dallas as an ex-FBI

mari by Saga to cover the aftermath of the John F. Kennedy

assassination. I gradually became convinced that Kennedy

was the victim of a political conspiracy. ... Am recognized

as one of the established critics of the Warren Report."

Turner ran as an "assassination conspiracy" candidate in

the Democratic primaries in California's Sixth Congres-

sional. District. He says he polled an unexpectedly large

number of votes." Andy Truskier, reviewing Hoover's FBI

writes that Turner "reveals the FBI as a highly political and

totally corrupt institution, built around the political ambi-

tions of one man, and despite its reputation, extraordinally

inept."

The Ten Second Jailbreak was made into the film

"Breakout."

BIOGRAPHICALICRITICAL SOURCES: Time, June 17,

1968; Book World, June 23, 1968; Ramparts, August, 1970;

Nation, February 8, 1971.

TUTOROW, Norman E. 1934-

PERSONAL: Born July 23, 1934, in Mishawaka, Ind.; son

of Virgil Walter (a mechanic) and Violet Evelyn (Chadwick)

Tutorow; married Sue Carol Fanning (a secretary), No-

vember 25, 1954; children: James Andrew: Education: San

Diego State. College (now University), A.B. (with high hon-

ors), 1958; Stanford University, M.A., 1960, Ph.D., 1967;

San Jose State College (now University), M.A., 1965.

CAREER: Instructor in philosophy, West Valley Jr. Col-

lege, Campbell, Calif., and Foothill Jr. College, Los Altos

Hill, Calif., 1964-67; San Jose State College (now Univer-

sity), San Jose, Calif., instructor in history, 1964-67; Univer-

sity of Santa Clara, Santa Clara, Calif., assistant professor

of history, 1967-69; Los Angeles Federal Records Center,

Bell, Calif., chief of the archives branch, 1969-70; Golden

State Realty, Sunnyvale, Calif., founder, owner and real

estate broker, 1970-; Anthony's School, Menlo Park,

Calif., instructor in real estate, 1973—; Foothill Jr. College,

Calif., instructor in real estate economics, 1973—. Consul-

ant, San Francisco Federal Records Center, 1970-71. Mili-

tary service: U.S. Marine Corps, 1952-55; became sergeant.

Member: American Historical Association, Organization of

American Historians, Society of American Archivists, Na-

НН 54756 DocId:32245514 Page 16

CONTEMPORARY AUTHORS

tional Association of Real Estate Boards, National Institute

of Real Estate Brokers, California Historical Society;

Southern California Historical Society, California Associa-

tion of Real Estate Teachers.

WRITINGS: (With Don E. Fehrenbacher) California: An

Illustrated History, Van Nostrand, 1968; The Early Years of

Leland Stanford, New Yorker Who Built the Central Pacific

Railroad (pamphlet), Dewitt Historical Society of Tomkins

County (New York), 1969; Leland Stanford, Man of Many

Careers, Pacific Coast Publishers, 1970. Contributor to Pic-

turescope, Wisconsin Then and Now, East Texas Historical

Journal, and The Quarterly Review.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Research on California politics in

the 1850's.t

TYLDEN-WRIGHT, David 1923-

PERSONAL: Born May 19, 1923, in London; England; son

of Royds (a soldier) and Constance (Abel) Tylden-Wright;

married Diana Louise Lindsay (a doctor), October 10, 1952;

children: Royds, Jenny,

Susan, Gerard. Education: Edu-

cated at Eton College, 1936-41, Oxford University, 1945-47,

and in Paris, 1948-50. Politics: Conservative independent.

Religion: Church of England. Agent: Curtis Brown Ltd., I

Craven Hill, London W2 3EW, England.

:CAREER: Times Literary Supplement, London, Engländ

staff writer, 1951-57; farming as Hereford breeder in Whit-

shire, England, 1958-68, and Northumberland, England,

1968 Military service: British Army, officer in Scots

Guards, 1942-45; invalided out with wounds. Member: Boo-

dles Club.

WRITINGS: The Image of France, Secker & Warburg,

1957; Anatole France, Walker & Co., 1967.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A book on farming experiences: a

biography of Albért Camus; revising an earlier manuscript

on war experiences.

AVOCATIONAL INTERESTS: Sports, particularly racing

and golf.

BIOGRAPHICAL/CRITICAL SOURCES: Observer Re-

view, September 3, 1967: Times Literary Supplement, Sep

tember 9, 1967; Punch, October 11, 1967; New York Times

Book Review, December 17, 1967; New Yorker, January 6,

1968; Listener, January 25, 1968. t†

*

TYSDAHL, B(joern) Johan) 1933-

PERSONAL: Born October 20, 1933, in Oslo, Norway; son

of Asbjoern (a clerk) and Nelly (Knudsen) Tysdahl; married

Bjoerg Lagset, May 30, 1959; children: Jon, Anne, Merete.

Harald. Education: University of Oslo. Cand. Philol., 1959.

Dr. Philos., 1968; Pedagogisk Seminar, Oslo, Dip: Ed..

1960. Religion: Lutheran. Home: Prost Christies v. 19, 1347

Hosle, Norway. Office: British Institute, University. of

Oslo, Blindern, Oslo 3, Norway.

CAREER: University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway, fellow, 1961-

65, lecturer, 1965-72, reader in English literature, 1972-.

Visiting lecturer, University of Sussex, 1970

WRITINGS: Joyce and losen: A Study of Literary Influ-

ence, Humanities, 1968; (co-author) Verdens Literatur

historie, Volumes XI-XII, Politiken (Copenhagen), 1974.

Contributor to English Studies, Edda, James Joyce Quar-

terly, and newspapers in Norway.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Studies on psycholinguistics and

literature, and on William Godwin's novels.

---

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MYSTERIOUS DEATHSI

000095

54756

In the Shadow of Dallas

Ex.

These are not the only ones to have died mysteriously possessing

crucial knowledge about the killings of President Kennedy, Officer®

J. D. Tippit or Lee Harvey Oswald. But this is the story of ten:

The 'Sleuths'

NYONE CAN WRITE to the Government Printing

Office and, for $76, order the 26 volumes of

testimony and exhibits. Hundreds of Amer-

icans, nagged by doubts about the complete-

ness of the investigation, did just that. For a surprisingly

large number of people, reading the volumes, establishing

card files and interviewing witnesses became an all-con-

suming avocation. Working in virtual isolation from each

"other, methodically recompiling the evidence, it was only

gradually that these amateur "sleuths" learned of one

another's existence.:

In time there developed a network of Kennedy assassi-

nation buffs, linked coast-to-coast by a bush telegraph of

manifold ramifications...When one uncovered a startling

new piece of evidence, the information spread like fire

through plains grass until, before the week was out, it was

common knowledge among all the operatives of this pri-

vate intelligence apparat:

Some, like New York author Sylvia Meagher or Mar-

jorie Deschamps, a west coast housewife, scholars of the

Warren Report and 26 volumes, can quote chapter and -

verse on almost any facet of the case. Mrs. Meagher, find.

by David Welsh & William Turner

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#52: 025%

ing the Commission's index next to useless, prepared and

#to assassinate the President, but almost invariably they

publisher her qui. Docham or to loged evalue-

would indicate they thought othèrwise: a playful smile,

a wink, a sardonic turn around the corners of the mouth.

-on different facets of the case. The "sleuth" ranks in-

Others treated the Warren Report with open contempt:

clude salesman Ray Marcus; David Lifton, a master's

We interviewed lawyers, reporters, cops, laborers, jani-

candidate in engineering; and housewife Elizabeth Stone-

tors, simple housewives, an exotic dancer; most of them

borough-all serious students of the photographic evi-

asked us not to use their names. From time to time we

i i:

dence relating to the assassination. Physicist Paul Hoch

checked in at the Midlothian Mirror to compare notes

dug into the National Archives for bidden documents.

with Penn Jones. Occasionally he would take us to his

Philadelphia lawyer Vincent Salandria did pioneer re-

"farm" a few miles away, where he keeps his collection of

search on the ballistics and autopsy evidence; writer

barbed wire, and where he has installed a waterwheel to

Harold Feldman on the direction of shots. Add to them

irrigate the hilltop ("the only working waterwheel in Ellis

the book-writers - Mark Lane, the most persistent public

County," Jones boasts). Once we were sitting in that

gadfly of the Warren Commission; Harold Weisberg, a

bucolic setting, discussing the gory details of this grisliest

Maryland gentleman farmer; and Leo Sauvage, the con-

of murder cases, when all at once the incongruity struck

servative U.S. correspondent for Le Figaro-and you

us as enormously funny- the barbed wire collection, Lyn-

have an awesome army of private citizens who are saying

don Johnson, the "Texas Mafia," the waterwheel, the

more or less explicitly: "The government lied to us about

mysterious deaths, the Grassy Knoll, the presumptuous

the Kennedy assassination.

ness of our investigating a regicide-and we threw our

Few of the sleuths are paid for their efforts, or reim-

heads back, broken up with laughter. Penn, who has a

bursed for long distance phone calls, travel and research

formidable cackle, laughed the hardest. You have to laugh

materials. Motivated by anything from an affection for

on this case, or you can begin to doubt your sanity.

President Kennedy to a plain zeal for truth, affiliated only

On another trip, we stood up and talked for. 15 minutes

in the most informal way, they are the embodiment of

with Bertha Cheek, a friend of Ruby's and sister of the

what is finest in the American tradition, and a living in

lady who kept Oswald's rooming house, while she was

dictment of goverament-by-closed-shop.

explaining why she couldn't grant us an interview-unless

At first we refused to take the sleuths seriously. Every-

we paid her $1000. "Marina Oswald is getting money for

one secretly wants to be a detective. Here was the "crime

her story," said sexy, fortyish Bertha, a prosperous realtor.

of the century," apparently unsolved, with a mountain of

"Why should I give mine away?"

poorly evaluated evidence at the disposal of anyone will-

We spent six hours over vodka and orange juice with

ing to shell out 76 bills. To the private sleuths it was

Wanda Joyce Killam, a former B-girl in Ruby's Carousel

irresistible; to us it was something of a joke. Then we

Club and widow of one of the mysteriously dead. Wanda,

reviewed their work and realized that they were doing the

an attractive bottle blonde, looked a bit frowzy, not ex-.

job the Dallas police, the FBI and the Warren Commission

pecting. visitors; and was embarrassed about it. She

should have done in the first place.

rambled on about how wonderful a guy Jack Ruby is and

And if many will treat these amateur investigators as

some minor details about her murdered husband; but

some unique breed of kook; the Dallas police take them

nothing startling, nothing we did not already know. We

seriously. When Shirley Martin, a housewife from Ho-

bid a cordial goodbye to Wanda, who is a warm, gregar-

miny, Oklahoma, made trips to Dallas to interview wit-

ious person, and talked about the apprehension that

nesses, the police would tail her, openly following her car

chilled her features during most of our visit. But by this

at short distance, and stay in her shadow until she left

time we had grown suspicious of anyone who wasn't afraid.

town. The FBI takes one of the "sleuths" seriously enough

Three years after the Kennedy assassination- and two

to tap his phone. Two San Francisco sleuths report that

years after it was allegedly "solved" by the President's

even their mail is habitually opened before it reaches their

Commission-fear still walks with the man or woman who

door. Such intimidation has become so common that the

knows even part of the truth of what really happened on

sleuths hardly talk about it any more:

November 22, 1963: If Penn Jones has done nothing else,

he has shown us that. It is a fear beyond the ken of most

NOUR TRIPS TO DALLAS, Bill Turner, I, and

editor Stan Sheinbaum interviewed many per-

sons touched in some way by the killing of

Kennedy. Some were willing to talk freely;

most were guarded. Many said there was no conspiracy

Americans, who know only the ever-present, constipating

fear of being honest and natural with one another. The

Dallas fear is a fear for life, and livelihood. We saw it in

the eyes of those who crossed paths with key figures in the

assassination. We heard it in their voices. "Please," one of

62

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Jack Ruby's strippers told us. "Don't put my name in

parents believe he was killed for other reasons. Whoever

your paper. Please Love life too much."

ransacked his apartment, they point out, was careful to re-

More than all the persuasive and well-documented

move his notes for a book hewas preparing, in collaboration

books on the subject, it was that fear that reached us, in

with two other journalists, on the Kennedy assassination.

our intestines; convinced us the Warren Commission was

Within a week a 22-year-old ex-con from Alabama

wrong. If Lee Harvey Oswald did the job all by himself,

named Larry Earl Reno was picked up selling Koethe's

then what are these people afraid of? Whom are they

personal effects and held on suspicion of murder.

afraid ot

Reno's lawyers were Mike Barclay and the ubiquitous

Jim Martin, both friends or Ruby roomie George Senator.

The Kennedy "Curse"

Martin and Senator, one recalls, were with Koethe at that

enigmatic meeting on November 24, 1963. When the Reno

ENN JONES' biggest reportorial coup is unques-

case came before the grand jury, District Attorney Henry

tionably his discovery of a series of mysterious

Wade secretly instructed the jurors not to indict-an

deaths, possibly related to the assassination of

extraordinary move for a chiel prosecuting Oicer with a

the President. That he would print it, when

strong a case as he had. The grand jury returned a no-bill

practically nobody was printing anything but kudos for

Reno, however, remained in jail on a previous charge.

Earl Warren & Co., and print it in the Dallas area, is a

When they finally sprang him, in January 1965, he was re-

sign of hope for the survival of independent journalism.

arrested within a month for the robbery of a hotel. This

Jones' first scoop was the story of a meeting at Jack

time the prosecution, led by a one-time law partner of Mar-

Ruby's apartment on Sunday, November 24, 1963, sev-

tin's, had no qualms about getting an indictment; and a

eral hours after_Ruby shet and killed Oswald in Dallas

conviction. Reno was sentenced to life for the hotel robbery.

police headquarters. In his original editorial, reprinted on

At the trial his lawyers called no witnesses in his defense.

page 32, he disclosed that three of the five present at the

meeting-Jim Koethe, Bill Hunter and Tom Howard-

[BILL HUNTER - SHOT DEAD]

have died mysterious deaths. Of the survivors, Jim Martin,

who curiously enough represented the accused killer of

Koethe and got him off without prosecution, is still prac

ticing law in Dallas. George Senator, at this writing, is

living in upstate New York. He has said repeatedly that

he fears for his life.

These were not the only ones to have died mysteriously

who possessed crucial scraps of knowledge about the kill-

ings of President Kennedy, Officer J. D. Tippit or Lee

Harvey Os'wald. At least 10 such persons are known to

have been murdered, to have committed suicide or died in

suspicious circumstances since the Kennedy assassination."

Scores of persons similarly knowledgeable have been

beaten, shot, threatened, intimidated or run out of town.

And at least a dozen others brushed by the event have

voluntarily left Dallas- quite sensibly, it would seem.

[JIM KOETHE - KARATE CHOP)

HE BODY of the young Dallas reporter was found

swathed in a blanket on the floor of his bachelor

apartment on September 21, 1964. Police said

the cause of death was asphyxiation from a

broken bone at the base of the neck-apparently the re-

sult of a karate chop.

Robbery appeared to be the motive, although Koethe's

• Editor's note: Penn Jones now has some 50 persons on his list of

mysterious deaths.

UNTER COVERED the Kennedy assassination

more or less on a lark. He was a police re-

porter for the Long Beach paper and a good

one, with a knack for getting along with cops.

He drank with them, played cards with them in the press

room- he was a sharp and lucky player —and they would

often call him at home when a story broke. Hunter was a

big man,

big sical, destined tr friends as our, chiat, "very

There was no real need for the Long Beach paper to

send a reporter to Dallas, but Hunter, who grew up there,

managed to promote a free trip for himself with the city

desk. In Dallas he ran into Jim Koethe, with whom he had

worked in Wichita Falls, Texas. Koethe asked him to

come along to the meeting in Ruby's apartment; they

arrived to find Senator and Tom Howard having a drink.

Bill Hunter was killed just after midnight on the morn-

ing of April 23, 1964-only a few hours after George

Senator testified before Warren Commission counsel that

he "could not recall" the meeting in Ruby's apartment

Hunter was seated at his desk in the press room of the

Long Beach public safety building when detective Creigh

ton Wiggins Jr. and his partner burst into the room. A

single bullet fired from Wiggins gun struck Hunter in the

heart, killing him almost instantly. The mystery novel he

was reading, entitled Stop This Man!, slipped blood-

spattered from his fingers.

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•[1966: MYSTERIOUS DEATHS]

Wiggins' story underwent several changes. His final

the next few days-until Ruby's brother Earl soured on

version was that he and his partner had been playing cops

Howard and had him relieved - he was Jack's chief attor-

and robbers with guns drawn when his gun started to slip

ney and public spokesman. Howard took to the publicity

from his hand and went off. The two officers were con.

with alacrity, called a press conference,

, wheeled and

victed of involuntary manslaughter. Sentence was sus

dealed. He told newsmen the case was a "once-in-a-life-

pended. There were so many contradictions in Wiggins

time chance" and that "speaking as a private citizen," he

testimony that Bill Shelton, Hunter's city editor and old

thought Ruby deserved a congressional medal. He told

friend from Texas, is "still not satisfied" with the official

the Houston Post that Ruby had been in the police station

verdict. He declines to comment about any possible

Friday night with a gun. He dickered with a national mag-

connection between Hunter's death and. the Kennedy

azine about an Oswald-murder story. He got hold of a

assassination. "But I'd believe anything," he says. It is a

picture showing the President's brains flying and tried to

curious footnote that Shelton's brother Keith was among

sell it to Life. Ruby's sister even accused him of leaking

the majority of Dallas newspapermen who found it ex

information to the DA. All told, it was never quite clear

pedient to leave their lobs after covering the assassination

whether Howard was working for Ruby or against him.

Keith was president of the Dallas Press Club and gave up

Howard met frequently with his client in the days im-

a promicing carees as political columnist for the Times.

mediately following the death of Oswald. From this, along

•Herald to settle in a small north Texas town. One reporter

with his ties with both police and hoodlum circles in.

who was asked to resign put it this way:'"It looks like a

Dallas, and his presence at the Ruby-Senator apartment

studred effort to remove all the knowledgeable newsmen

meeting that fateful Sunday, one would assume he was

who covered the assassination.

the repository of a wealth of privileged information about

the events of November 1963. And we know he was an

TOM HOWARD-HEART ATTACK]

irrepressible talker, privy to the intrigues of petty crimi-

nality but hardly one to be trusted with any secrets sur-

LTHOUGH DALLAS, like any other American city, is

rounding the Kennedy assassination.

slowly being taken over by the well-groomed

• On March 27, 1965, Howard was taken to the hospital

image-conscious wonders rolling off our col

by an unidentified person and died there. He was 48. The

lege assembly lines, there is still a lingering

doctor, without benefit of an autopsy, said he had suffered

appreciation for the "characters" —the Bob Thorntons

a heart attack. Some reporter friends of Howard's are not

the Jack Rubys, the Tom Howards-throwbacks to an-

so sure. They observed that for three days before his

other age when the Old West values reigned supreme.

death, the normally gregarious Howard seemed preoccu-:

Everyone around official Dallas knew Tom Howard, that

pied and uncommunicative, and did not appear to recog-

familiar figure in-the white Stetson who always seemed to

nize friends. One Dallas reporter says flatly that Howard

show up where the action was. He was a defense attorney

wasbumped off; others are morecircumspect. "Asfaras I'm

in the old rough-and-tumble Texas fashion, operating out

concerned the case is closed," one of them says. "You're

of a store-front office, devoid of the usual law books,

not going to catch me messing in that hornet's nest.

across from police headquarters. During his career he

handled about 50 murder cases, and was more than once

[EARLENE ROBERTS- HEART ATTACK)

cited for contempt of court for fist fights and shouting

matches with the prosecution.

Howard was a friend of District Attorney Henry. Wade,

although they often opposed each other in court, and it

was not uncommon for them to meet for a sociable drink

after court adjourned. He was also close to Ruby and

others on the fringes of the Dallas underworld.

Like, Jack Ruby, Howard's life revolved around the

police station, and it was not surprising when he and Ruby

(toting his gun) showed up at the station on the evening of

the assassination. Nor was it unusual when Howard ar-

rived there shortly after Ruby shot Oswald, two days

later, asking to see his old friend.

Howard was shown into a meeting room to see a bewl-

dered Ruby, who had not asked for any lawyer, and for

M

RS. ROBERTS, the plump widow who man-

aged the rooming house where Oswald was

living under the name O. H. Lee, was one

of the key witnesses before the Warren

Commission. She testified that "around 1 o'clock, or

maybe a little after" on November 22, Oswald rushed

into the rooming house, stayed in his room for "not over

3 or 4 minutes" and walked out zipping on a light-weight

jacket. The last she saw of him he was waiting at a nearby

bus stop. A few minutes later, one mile away, Officer

Tippit was shot dead; Oswald was accused of the crime.

Mrs. Roberts also testified that during the brief time

Oswald was in his room, a police car with two uniformed

cops in it pulled up in front of the rooming house, and that

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she did not recognize either the car or the policemen. She

manlike fashion: "He advised he is of the opinion Oswald

heard the horn honk, "just kind of 'tit-tit' -twice," and

is the person..•

after a moment saw the police car move ofi down the

Two days after talking to the FBI, Reynolds was shot

street. Moments later Oswald left the house.

in the head as he was closing up the car lot for the night;

The police department issued a report saying all patrol

nothing was stolen. Later, alter consulting at length with

cars in the area (except Officer Tippit's) were accounted

retired General Edwin Walker, he told Warren Commis-

for. The Warren Commission let it go at that. It did not

sion counsel that Oswald definitely was the man he saw

seek to resolve the question: what were policemen doing-

fleeing the Tippit murder scene.

honking. the horn outside Oswald's rooming house 30

A young hood named Darrell Wayne Garner was ar-

minutes after a Presidential assassination? Their swift

rested for the murder attempt. He had made a long dis-

departure would indicate they certainly were not coming

tance call to a relative and in some drunken bragging,

to apprehend him. It is perhaps too far fetched to imagine

admitted shooting Reynolds. But Garner-had an alibi,

that they were giving Oswald some kind of signal, al-

and her name was Nancy Jane Mooney, alias Betty:

though it seems as plausible as any other explanation of

McDonald, who used to take her clothes oft to music in

this bizarre incident.

Jack Ruby's Carousel Club: Garner was freed.,

After testifying in Dallas in April of 1964, Mrs. Roberts

Nancy Jane, a mother or four, was picked up about a !

was subjected to intensive police harassment. They visited

week later-for fighting with a girlfriend, over a man-

her at all hours of the day and night, contacted her em-

and jailed on a disturbing-the-peace rap. The girlfriend

ployers and identified her as the Oswald rooming house

was not arrested. Within a few hours Miss Mooney was

lady. As a result she was dismissed from three house-

dead. Police said she hanged herself with her toreador

keeping and nursing jobs in April, May and June of 1964

pants, in her private cell at the Dallas City jail.

alone; no telling how many jobs she lost after that. Rela-

Garner was free, his alibi witness was dead, and Rey-

tives report that right up until her death a year and a

nolds was going to pieces out of fear. A week after Nancy

half later, Earlene complained of being "worried to death"

Jane was hanged, someone unscrewed a light globe on

by the police.

Reynolds' front porch; it was clearly deliberate because

Mrs. Roberts: died January 9, 1966, in Parkland Hos-

some screws had to be removed to get at the globe. And

pital. Police said she suffered a heart attack in her home.

the same week a man stopped Reynolds' nine-year-old

No autopsy was performed.

daughter as she was walking home from school and of

fered her money to get in his car. Fortunately she had the

[NANCY JANE MOONEY - HANGED]

presence of mind to run like hell. Through all this, Rey

nolds had the distinct impression he was being intimidated.

ARREN REYNOLDS was just minding his used

Today, after giving the Commission a firm identification

car lot on East Jefferson when he heard the

of Oswald as the Tippit fugitive, he is breathing easier. "I

shots two blocks away. He thought it was

don't think they're going to bother me any more," he said.

probably somebody's marital quarrel. Then

he saw a man having great difficulty tucking ''a pistol or

[HANK KILLAM-THROẠT SLIT)

an automatic" in his belt and running at the same time.

Reynolds gave chase for a short piece, being careful to

keep his distance, then lost the fleeing man. He didn't

know it then, but he had apparently witnessed the flight of

the killer (or one of the killers) of Patrolman Jefterson

Davis Tippit. Feeling helpful, he gave his name to a pass-

ing policeman and offered his cooperation: TV cameras

zeroed in on him, got his story. Warren Reynolds, the

amiable used car man, was making history

But in one of those curious oversights which riddle the

Kennedy-Oswald-Tippit investigation, Reynolds was not

questioned by any police agency until two months after

the event. When the FBI finally talked to him on January

21, 1964, the agent's report of the interview said: " he

would hesitate to definitely identify Oswald as the indi-

vidual." The FBI report added, however, in most unpolice:

COUSEPAINTER HANK KILLAM was 6' 3" and

weighed 250 pounds-"a big hunk of man,"

said his wife Wanda, who used to push ciga-

rettes and drink with the customers at Jack

Ruby's club.

Hank and Wanda were good friends of John Carter,

another painter, who lived at Mrs. A. C. Johnson's room-

ing house at the same time Lee Haryey Oswald lived there.

Carter worked several painting jobs with Hank and used

to visit at the Killam home:

To all appearances, his wife's 15-year association with

Ruby and his friendship with John Carter, Oswald's

fellow boarder, were Killam's only tenuous links to the

Kennedy assassination. For all that, he was inordinately

interesting to the "federal agents" who visited him re-

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peatedly after the assassination, causing him to lose one

who declined his offer. Whaley said he drove Oswald to

job after another. In addition to questions about Killam's

the intersection.of Beckley and Neches-half a block

connections and whereabouts at the time of the assassina-

from the rooming house-and collected a dollar. Later he

tion, the interrogators were especially interested in his

identified Oswald as his fare in a questionable police line-

political views; Killam said he had none.*

up, although police records are confused and he may have

Certainly Killam was most absorbed by the assassina-

picked out another man.

tion, even obsessed. A few hours after the event he came

Whaley was killed in a head-on collision on a bridge

home "white as a sheet," Wanda said, and stayed up all

over the Trinity River, December 18, 1965; his passenger

night watching television accounts of the assassination.

was critically injured. The 83-year-old driver of the other

He bought all the papers and diligently clipped the stories

car was also killed. Whaley had been with the City Trans-

about Kennedy's death.

portation Co. since 1936 and had a perfect accident record.

Just before Christmas, Killam packed up and left for

He was the first Dallas cabbie to be killed on duty since

Florida, where he had family, taking his assassination

1937. When Penn Jones went to interview the general

clipping files with him. But the "agents" got to Wanda.

manager of the cab company about Whaley's death, he

"They browbeat me into telling where he was," Wanda

was literally pushed out of the office. "If you're smart,"

said. "I guess I'm just a girl that finds it very hard to say

said the manager, "you won't be coming around here

no to people."

asking questions."

Hank got a job in Tampa, selling cars at his brother-in-

law's lot. Again the "federal police" hounded him, visiting

[EDWARD BENAVIDES -SHOT DEAD]

the car lot so often that even his brother-in-law was per-

suaded to let him go. They harassed his second Tampa

employer as well, until he lost that job too.

: In mid-March he called Wanda in Dallas to say he had

D

OMINGO BENAVIDES, a dark, slim auto mechanic,

was a witness to the murder of Officer Tippit

and testified that he "really got a good view"

of the slayer. He was not asked to see the po-

a new job lined up and would be sending for her soon. "I

lice lineup in which Oswald appeared. Although he later

was all excited," said Wanda, "because I loved that man."

said the killer resembled newspaper pictures of Oswald, he

Then in the early morning hours on St. Patrick's Day

described the man differently: "I remember the back of

1964, Killam received a phone call at his mother's home.

his head seemed like his hairline sort of went square

Immediately he left the house. Not long afterward they

instead of tapered off... it kind of went down and

found him on a sidewalk; in front of a broken plate glass

squared off and made his head look flat in back." Do-

window, his jugular vein cut. He bled to death en route to

mingo reports he has been repeatedly threatened by

the hospital. His wallet and diamond ring were missing.

police, and advised not to talk about what he saw.

It is not clear whether the "federal police" who visited

In mid-February 1964, his brother Eddy, who resem-

Hank and Wanda were in fact FBI men, or whether they

bled him, was fatally shot in the back of the head in a

ever properly identified themselves as such. If the FBI did

beer joint on Second Avenue in Dallas. The police

interview Killam, there is no indication in the 26 volumes

arrested the killer, an unknown, and it was written off

or the Warren Report. A check of the index to Commis-

as one more barroom incident.

sion documents in the National Archives reveals no men-

Domingo's father-in-law, J. W. Jackson, was so unim-

tion of Killam. But then a number of FBI documents relat-

pressed with the police investigation of Eddy's death that

ing to the assassination are withheld, along with most of

he launched a little inquiry of his own. Two weeks later

the documents prepared by the CIA. What is clear is that

Jackson was shot at in his home. The assailant secreted

somebody considered Hank Killam a very important guy.

himself in the carport, fired once into the house, and when

Jackson ran outside, fired one more time, just missing his

[WILLIAM WHALEY- HEAD-ON COLLISION)

head. As the gunman clambered into an automobile in a

nearby driveway, Jackson saw a police car coming down

W

HALEY WAS THE OSWALD CABBIE, one of the

few who had the opportunity to talk alone

with the accused killer of Kennedy between

the assassination and Oswald's arrest. He

testified that Oswald hailed his cab at the Greyhound bus

station, then graciously offered the cab to a waiting lady,

* Editor's note: A few months ago, John Carter's brother, Henry

Carter, was murdered in Dallas; the case remains unsolved.

the block. The officer made no attempt to follow the gun-

man's speeding car; instead, he stopped at Jackson's

house and spent a long time inquiring what had happened.

Later a police lieutenant advised Jackson, "You'd better

lay off of this business. Don't go around asking questions;

that's our job." Jackson and Domingo are both convinced

that Eddy's murder was a case of mistaken identity and

that Domingo, the Tippit witness, was the intended victim.

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(DOROTHY KILGALLEN?)

the gossip columnist, was related to the

Kennedy assassination. Still, she was pas-

sionately interested in the case, told friends she firmly

believed there was a conspiracy and that she would find

out the truth if it took her all her life:

Miss Kilgallen was the first to make public the existence

of Acquilla Clemons, a witness to the Tippit killing whose

name does not appear once in the Warren Report or vol-

umes. She was also the only reporter ever to interview

Jack Ruby privately since the killing of Oswald. During

the Ruby trial, which she covered for the now defunct

New York Journal-American, Judge Joe B. Brown

granted her 30 minutes alone with Ruby in the judge's

chambers; the other reporters were furious.

One of the biggest scoops of Miss Kilgallen's career

came when she pirated the transcript of Ruby's testimony

before the Warren Commission and ran it in the Journal-

American. Thousands of New Yorkers were shocked at

the hopelessly inept questioning of Ruby by Chier Justice

Warren by Warren's almost deliberate failure to follow up

the leads Ruby was feeding him.

Miss Kilgallen died in her bed on November 8, 1965.

Dr. James Luke; a New York City medical examiner, said

the cause of death was "acute barbiturate and alcohol

intoxication, circumstances undetermined." Di. Luke

said there were not high enough levels of either alcohol or

barbiturates to have caused death, but that the two are

"additive" and together are quite enough to kill. This

cause of death, he observed, is not at all uncommon. Was

it suicide? Accident? Murder? -Dr. Luke said there was

no way of determining that:

As we say, Dorothy Kilgallen probably does not belong

on any list of Kennedy-related deaths. But questions do

remaini. An editor of Screen Stars magazine, Mary Bran-

num, says she received a phone call a few hours before

Dorothy's body was discovered, announcing that she had

been murdered. Miss Kilgallen's "What's My Line" make-

up man said that shortly before her death she vowed she

would "crack this case." And another New York show biz

friend said Dorothy told him in the last days of her life:

"In five more days I'm going to bust this case wide open.

[LEE BOWERS- AUTOMOBILE ACCIDENT]

EE BOWERS' TESTIMONY is perhaps as explosive as any

recorded by the Warren Commission. He was

one of 65 known witnesses to the President's

assassination who thought shots were fired from

the area of the Grassy Knoll. (The Knoll is west of the

[1966: MYSTERIOUS DEATHS)

Texas School Book Depository.) But more than that, he

was in a unique position to observe some pretty strange

behavior in the Knoll area during and immediately before

the assassination.

Bowers, then a towerman for the Union Terminal Co.,.

was stationed in his 14-foot tower directly behind the

Grassy Knoll. As he faced the assassination site, he could

see the railroad overpass to his right front. Directly in

front of him was a parking lot, and then a wooden stock-

ade fence and a row of trees running along the top of the

Grassy Knoll. The Knoll sloped down to the spot on Elm

Street where Kennedy was killed. Police had "cut off"

traffic into the parking area, Bowers said, "so that anyone

moving around could actually be observed."

Bowers made two significant observations which he

revealed to the Commission. First, he saw three unfamil-

iar cars slowly cruising around the parking area in the 35

minutes before the assassination; the first two left after a

few minutes.. The driver of the second car appeared to be

talking into "a mike or a telephone" —"he was holding

something up to his mouth with one hand and he was

driving with the other." A third car, with out-of-state

plates and mud up to the windows, probed all around the

parking area. Bowers last remembered seeing it about

eight minutes before the shooting, pausing "just above the

assassination site." He gave detailed descriptions of the

cars and their drivers.

Bowers also observed two unfamiliar men standing on

top of the Knoll at the edge of the parking lot, within 10

•or 15 feet of each other-"oneman, middle-aged or slightly

older, fairly heavy-set, in a white shirt, fairly dark trousers.

Another younger man, about mid-twenties, in either a

plaid shirt or a plaid coat or jacket." Both were facing

toward Elm and Houston; where the motorcade would be

coming from. They were the only strangers. he. remen-

bered seeing. His description shows a remarkable simi.

larity to Julia Ann Mercer's description of two unidentified

men climbing the Knoll (see Jones' editorial, p. 38)..

When the shots rang out, Bowers' attention was drawn

to the area where he had seen the two men; he could still

make out the one in the white shirt —"the darker dressed

man was too hard to distinguish from the trees." He ob-

served "some commotion" at that spot, ":.. something

out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around.. which

attracted my eye for some reason, which I could not iden-

tify." At that moment, he testified, a motorcycle police-

man left the Presidential motorcade and roared up the

Grassy Knoll straight to where the two mysterious gentle-

men were standing behind the fence. The policeman

dismounted, Bowers recalled, then after à moment climbed

on his motorcycle and drove off. Later, in a film interview

with attorney Mark Lane, he explained that the "commo-

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tion" that caught his eye may have been "a flash of light

seeing Oswald there herself. She was also "under the im-

or smoke." His information dovetails with what other

pression" that Oswald, Ruby and other individuals un-

witnesses observed from different vantage points.

known to her were involved in a plot to assassinate Presi-

On the morning of August 9, 1966, Lee Bowers, now

dent Kennedy, and that she would be killed if she gave

the vice-president of a construction firm, was driving

any information to the authorities. Later in the Secret

south from Dallas on business. He was two miles from

Service interview She became scared, changed her story

Midlothian when his brand new company car veered from

and denied any knowledge of a plot. She continued to

the road and hit a bridge abutment. A farmer who saw it

assert, however, that her life had twice been threatened:

said the car was going 50 miles an hour, a slow speed for

Harold Richard Williams was working as a cher at the

that road. There were no skidmarks to indicate braking.

Mikado, a Dallas bottle club, when it was raided in early

Bowers died of his wounds at 1 p.m. in a Dallas hospi-

November 1963. One of the arresting officers, he said, was

tal. He was 41. There was no autopsy, and he was cre-

J. D. Tippit, and seated next to him in the cop car-"so

mated soon afterward. Doctors saw no evidence that he

close you'd think they were lovers" —was Jack Ruby.

had suffered a heart attack. A doctor from Midlothian,

Williams told attorney Mark Lane he knew Ruby, who

who rode in the ambulance with Bowers, noticed some-

"used to furnish us with girls," and got a long look at

thing peculiar about the victim. "He was in a strange state

Tippit. But Harold Williams did not follow the example

of shock," the old doctor said, "a different kind of shock

of the other six known witnesses to a Ruby-Tippit associa-

than an accident victim experiences. I can't explain it.

tion; he continued to shoot off his mouth about it. Wil

I've never seen anything like it.

- liams said the police talked to him in December 1963 and

Bowers' widow at first insisted to Penn Jones that there

advised him that he had not seen Ruby with Tippit.

was nothing suspicious about her husband's death. Then

she became flustered and said: "They told him not to talk."

"Warren's in Trouble"

ALLAS IS A CLOSE-MOUTHED place. Without ques-

tion it is a city that feels uncomfortable about

all the bad publicity it has been receiving. And

it patently doesn't like all these foreigners

poking around, interviewing witnesses, dredging up more

dirt about Dallas. Still, there are so many cases of obvious

intimidation of witnesses that it appears to amount to

more than an acute case of hypersensitivity. One notes

that all of the mysteriously dead, with the exception of

Bowers, had some association with Ruby of with the

murder of Patrolman Tippit; many of the intimidations

seem to fall into a similar pattern.

Wilma Tice, a Dallas housewife, told the FBI she saw

Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital right after the assassina-

tion, when he was supposed to have been elsewhere. Her

observation was confirmed by Seth Kantor, a White

House newsman and ex-Dallas réporter who knew Ruby

well and said he talked with him at the hospital. Mrs. Tice

received threatening phone calls-"it would pay you to

keep your mouth shut"' — and once while her husband was

at work, a ladder was found wedged against her door so

it could not be opened.

Little Lynn, alias Karen Bennett Carlin, a plumpish

• 19-year-old stripper at the Carousel, Jold the Secret Serv-

ice She heard another Ruby entertainer say he'd seen

Oswald at Ruby's club, and she "vaguely remembered"

HE MOST CONSISTENT of the seeming patterns of

intimidation involves those who knew some-

thing about the murder of Jefferson Davis Tippit.

Shirley Martin of Hominy, Oklahoma, who has

been repeatedly tailed by Dallas police, is not the only

independent investigator to have noticed unusual "beat"

when checking out details of the Tippit killing. Earlier this

year Mark Lane located Domingo Benavides, a witness to

the shooting whose brother was mysteriously killed (see

above), and arranged to meet him at Lane's motel for a

filmed interview the next morning; Lane offered him $100.

That night two men from the homicide squad came to the

motel and inquiled of Lane's film crew why they were so

interested in Benavides. "What did you offer our boy $100

for?" they asked. According to the film crew, the police-

men knew the exact time of Benavides' appointment with

Lane, implied Benavides would not be there, and gen-

erally showed a great deal more concern about their

footage on the Tippit murder than about the killing of

Kennedy. Benavides never showed up.

Another witness to the Tippit killing, a nurse named

Acquilla Clemons who described the slayer as short and

stocky and said he fled with a tall, lanky man wearing

_khaki trousers-neither of whom resembled Oswald-

has been repeatedly threatened. According to Mark Lane

she was visited a few days after the event by a gun-toting

man: "He just told me it'd be best if I didn't say anything

because I might get hurt." She said several policemen

came to see her after that, and one expressed hope that

She would not be killed on the way to work

We have hardly begun to describe the intimidation 10

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which important witnesses have been subjected. Enough

vision, may have mistaken Tippit's uniform jacket, hang-

evidence is in to justify an immediats, instigation, We,

ing on a coat-hanger in his car, for another cop. The Com-

want to know why people in Dallas seem se intent an

mission should at least have investigated the possibility.

keeping the truth about Ruby and Tippit from getting out.

It is scandalous. that three years after the event we

should be reduced to this sort of speculation; that Turner,

(TIPPIT)

in one quick trip to Dallas, could learn more about Tip-

pit's movements before his death than the combined

HE TIPPIT KILLING WAS NEVER conclusively

investigative resources of the police, FBI and Warren

"solved" by the Warren Commission. The gross

Commission.

faults in its chain of evidence pointing to Os-

Even the evidence the Commission did have was scruti-

wald as the lone cop-killer have been exposed in

nized in the most perfunctory way. Tippit's last known

several recent books; we won't go into it here. Certainly,

radio transmission, for example, was at 12:54, when he

the Commission did not adequately investigate Tippit's

reported his position at Lancaster and 8th. But at 1:08,

movements prior to his death, or the curious presence

the approximate time of the shooting according to at least

near the scene of off-duty Patrolman Olsen, a close asso-

one witness, the dispatcher received two garbled trans-

ciate of Jack Ruby's (see Penn Jones' story on Olsen above).

missions from a patrol car. The FBI interpreted them as

On Bill Turner's last whirlwind trip to Dallas-acting

coming from 58 and 488, although no such call numbers

on a tip from "sleuth" David Lifton-he uncovered five

are known to have been in service. Dallas police thought

witnesses to Tippit's whereabouts in the last minutes of

they came from 78- Tippit. Yet no one made any attempt

his life. There is no indication that the Commission or any

to de-garble the transmissions, despite the existence of

police agency was even aware of them. Photographer Al

"voice-printing" techniques capable of reconstructing

Volkland and his wife Lou, both of whom knew Tippit,

garbled transmissions phonetically. Provided the tapes

said that 15 or 20 minutes after the assassination they saw

have not been destroyed, it is still possible to voice-print

him at a gas station and waved to him. They observed

those transmissions. They may provide a key to the mys-

Tippit sitting in his police car at a Gloco gas station in

tery of Tippit's death.

Oak Cliff, watching the cars coming over the Houston

Street viaduct from downtown Dallas. Three employees

[THE OVERLOOKED EVIDENCE]

of the Gloco station, Tom Mullins, Emmett Hollingshead

and J. B. "Shorty" Lewis, all of whom knew Tippit, con-

E EMBARKED on our limited investigation to

firmed the Volklands' story. They said Tippit stayed at the

get a story, not to solve the case. We are not

station for "about 10 minutes, somewhere between 12:45

cops, God knows. But we came across so

and 1:00, then he went tearing off down Lancaster at high

much overlooked evidence that we can't

speed"—on a bee-line toward Jack Ruby's apartment and

help but wonder if the Warren Commission was set up to

in the direction of where he was killed a few minutes later.

do anything but allay public fears of a conspiracy. Wit-

What could Tippit have heard or seen to cause him to

nesses who supported its Oswald-lone-assassin-and-cop-

leave his observation post at the Gloco station and roar

killer theory, like Helen Markham, Howard Brennan and

up the street? Police radio logs show no instructions to

Marina Oswald, were coddled and the discrepancies in

move. We know that cabdriver Whaley said he drove Os-

their hopelessly confused testimony ignored. Witnesses

wald across the Houston Street viaduct (past the Gloco

who told a different story, like Jean Hill and Patrick Dean,

station at the same time Tippit was reported there) to a

were impugned and browbeaten; Commission counsel

spot near the rooming house. Is it possible that Tippit

openly accused police sergeant Dean of testifying falsely

spotted Oswald in the cab, recognized him, and for some

and of falsifying his reports to the chief of police.

reason took off to intercept him? If we recall that while

The Commission even refused to take the testimony of

Oswald was in the rooming house, Earlene Roberts ob-

Governor Connally seriously, although it was supported

served a police car pull up in front and honk the horn, and

by a preponderance of evidence. Connally and his wife

the police statement that all cars in the area were ac-

both testified that they were positive that the governor

counted for-except Tippit's-then it is possible indeed

was hit by a second shot, and that the first and third shots

Earlene, who was blind in one eye and whose sight was

had struck the President. But the Commission had its own

failing in the other, said she thought the number on the

theory, the "superbullet" theory, and the Connallys' pos-

car was 107; Tippit's car number was 10. Earlene said she

itive recollection just didn't fit. The Commission's theory

saw two policemen in the car; all patrol cars in the area

held that a bullet (Exhibit 399), found under a stretcher

that day were one-man cars and Earlene, with her poor

mat in the unguarded basement of Parkland Hospital

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had pierced President Kennedy's neck from the rear on a

bullet" theory, and consider the possibility that Bullet

downward trajectory, entered Connally's back, shattered

399-the only-assassination. bullet that has been ballis-

the fifth rib, emerged from his chest, broke his wrist into

tically matched to Oswald's rifle-was a plant:

pieces, leaving fragments, entered his thigh, leaving frag-

ments, and then fell out, somehow becoming wedged in a

stretcher (never established to have been Connally's),

beautifully whole and undeformed, without even a recog-

nizable trace of blood or tissue on its surface. Unbeliev-

able? —perhaps; but because both Kennedy and Connally

were hit from the rear in less time than it takes to fire

Oswald's bolt-action rifle twice, the Commission had to

have a "superbullet" theory. Otherwise there would have

had to be two assassins firing from the rear (not to men-

tion anyone firing from the front), or, 'conceivably, one

assassin other than Oswald firing from the rear with an

automatic weapon. And this possibility, to the Commis-

sion, was inadmissible.

Before the Commission discredited Connally's testi

mony they should at least have heard all the important

witnesses. Ramparts found one the Commission never

talked to; they never even asked him for an affidavit. He

is William Stinson, an aide to Governor Connally at the

time of the assassination. Today, although officially em-

ployed by the Veterans Administration, he has an office in

the White House. Stinson told us he was in the operating

room, wearing a sterile-uniform, when the doctors oper-

ated on Connally at Parkland Hospital. "The last thing

they did," said. Stinson, "was to remove the bullet from

the governor's thigh—because that was the least thing

that was wrong with him."

It was a startling disclosure. For if a bullet was em-

bedded in Connally's thigh, then "Bullet 399" could not

have done the herculean task it is credited with, and the

Commission's theory of what happened on November 22

is knocked into a cocked hat. Intrigued, we contacted Dr.

Charles. Baxter, who assisted in the operation on Con-

lally's thigh. He told us that bullet fragments, not an entire

bullet, had been removed from the thigh— itself a startling

revelation, and a fact the Commission either never both-

ered to find out or deliberately ignored. Even with these

fragments removed, autopsy doctor Humes said the x-rays

showed too much metal remaining in Connally's thigh-

bone to have been caused by Bullet 399: Dr. Robert Shaw,

finding "more than 3 grains of metal" in the governor's

wrist, and finding Bullet 399 to have lost "literally none

of its substance," joined autopsy doctors Humes and

Finck in concluding: Bullet 399 could not have caused all

of Connally's wounds.

What went on at Parkland Hospital? Why wasn't Stin-

son called to testify? Why was Baxter, who did testify,

never asked about the governor's wounds? One thing is

clear: that someone had better re-examine the "super-

O ONE is as furious about the overlooked evi-

dence as Penn Jones. Hardly a week goes by

that he doesn't come across some startling

agent's report or police affidavit buried in the

26 volumes, only to discover the Commission ignored it

entirely. Recently he dug up an FBI interview with

Arturo Alocer Ruiz, a Mexican attorney, and was in-

trigued enough to fly south with another reporter to visit

attorney Alocer in his walled Spanish fortress in Mexico

City. Alocer confirmed what he had told the FBI, giving

additional details. Jones described him as "elderly, very

dignified and very certain of what he saw."

Alocer was in San Antonio with his wife and a friend of

hers on November 21, 1963, during President Kennedy's

visit to that city and the day before his fateful trip to

Dallas. At 9 in the morning the Alocers left the Gunter

Hotel to go shopping and noticed a particularly obese

woman standing near the entrance to the hotel. When

they returned about 1 p.m. she was still there, apparently

waiting for the Presidential motorcade which was about

to pass in front of the hotel. They took careful note of her

because of her appearance. They watched the motorcade

pass, and noted that she left immediately thereafter. The

following day the Alocers were watching IV accounts of

the assassination when the interviews at the Oswald

rooming house came on. Mrs. A. C. Johnson, the land-

lady, was on the screen, and Earlene Roberts, the plump

housekeeper. And in the background Alocer, his wife and

her friend were all startled to observe the same obese lady

they'd seen in San Antonio. Two days later, after Ruby

shot Oswald, the Alocers again saw the obese lady on TV;

this time she was introduced as Eva Grant, sister of Jack

Ruby. Eva Grant, a night club operator, was not ques-

tioned on her whereabouts on November 21. But she was

not the only Ruby clan member reported watching Presi

dential motorcades on November 21st. One scared Dallas

resident says he saw Jack Ruby himself in Houston when

the President toured that city later the same afternoon.

Ruby is unaccounted for between 3 and 7:30 p.m. on the

21st—ample time to fly to Houston, observe the motor-

cade and return.

[THE MISSING EVIDENCE)

ENN JONES and the "sleuths" have marshalled an

impressive body of evidence to show that the

Commission "solved" neither the assassination

nor the murder of Tippit. They have exposed

the Commission's religious determination not to track

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down leads pointing to other possible assassins and cop

should ask is who spliced the Zapruder film? And why?

killers. And they have shown how the time limit given by

The Stemmons Freeway sign and a streetlamp post hear

President Johnson to the shorthanded Commission-

where the President was shot have been unaccountably re

"before the '64 elections" — meant the investigation could

moved, as well as a manhole.cover reportedly hit by a

only be a frivolous one.

bullet. Where are they? Jacqueline Kennedy's freely given

A Presidential assassination can shake the very fabric of

testimony about her husband's wounds has been "de-

society. And if it is the result of conspiracy, as the evi-

leted." Where is it? An 18-page statement to police by key

lence now available indicates, then the society is endan-

assassination witness S. M. Holland; notes by Captain

gered as long as those responsible for its planning and

Fritz and an FBl agent of their interrogation of Oswald;

execution are still at large. The "mysterious deaths" and

at least two motion picture films of the assassination con-

intimidations alone are compelling enough reason for a

new investigation, if only to establish whether or not they

are related to the Kennedy assassination.

It is time to reopen the investigation. And it is high

time that the impressive quantity of missing evidence be

"found," and that the mountain of withheld evidence be

declassified and made available to the public. No matter

what Penn Jones digs up, no matter what any private

citizen uncovers about the assassination, the case cannot

be solved until the suppressed evidence is released.

Among the missing evidence are the 22 color and 18

black and white photographs taken at the President's

autopsy. Not even the Commission, nor the autopsy doc-

tors themselves, were permitted to see them; the Com-

mission saw only an artist's sketches based on an autopsy

doctor's memory of the wounds. The photographs were

turned over undeveloped to the Secret Service, according

to FBI and Secret Service reports in the National Archives.

The Secret Service states, in another Archives document,

that "every item of tangible evidence" in its possession

the Texas attorney general's office, many of them relating

to the Tippit murder-all are missing. Where are they?

More than one-third of the assassination-related docu-

ments in the National Archives are withheld by the "inter-

ested agencies." About half of the FBI reports and 90 per

cent of the CIA reports are still classined.

Much evidence has been willfully destroyed or altered.

The White House ordered the interior of the President's

limousine cut up and destroyed; Johnson now drives

around in the same car, newly outfitted, in which John

Kennedy met his death. Governor Connally's suit, which

Johnson's crony Cliff Carter signed for, was sent to be

dry-cleaned and pressed before it could ever be examined

as evidence. Navy Dr. Humes; who performed the autopsy

on Kennedy, said he burned his original autopsy notes in

his fireplace. The post office box application Oswald

ostensibly filled out in the name of "Hidell" has been

destroyed, despite postal regulations requiring they be

kept for three years. The list goes on and on.

was turned over either to the Commission during its life,

to the National Archives after the Commission disbanded,

or was "placed in the custody of individuals designated by

the late President's family." Archivist Simmons says the

photographs are not in the Archives. No one seems to

know where they are. Also missing are the X-rays of Ken-

nedy's body, which were never seen by the Commission.

Another key piece of evidence is. the Zapruder film.

Abraham. Zapruder, a Dallas clothing manufacturer, cap-

tured the assassination sequence on movie film. The

original was purchased by Life magazine-"mainly to

keep it off the market," says Richard Pollard, director of

photography. Pollard says the original is uncut in any way.

Not so with the copy of the film seen by the Commission

and placed on file at the Archives. Not only are Zapruder

frames 334 through 434 missing (showing the Grassy

Knoll), but a splice appears, just about the time the Com-

mission says Kennedy is first shot. The top of frame 208

is crudely spliced onto the bottom of frame 212; the inter-

vening frames are missing. One of the first things a new

HE WARREN COMMISSION was appointed by Lyn-

don Johnson, was responsible in Johnson and

respected a lawyer-client relationship with John-

son. It was truly "the President's Commission."

A nationally syndicated columnist for the Hearst news-

papers recently had an interview with Lyndon Johnson.

He asked if it were true that Warren had been reluctant to

head the Commission. Johnson replied in the affirmative.

Warren, he said, had sent a note through an intermediary

that he would not accept the job. "But I ordered him to,"

said the President.

The Hearst reporter asked if the President had read the

recent books about the Kennedy assassination. No, John-

son replied, but an aide had given him a full report.

"What do you think?" asked the columnist.

The President looked down for a moment, knitted his

brow, then fixed his doe eyes on the reporter and said:

"Warren's in trouble."

investigation should call for is the release of the entire

Zapruder film The second thing a new investigation

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After

J. logar,

who?

ON NovEMBER 18, 1964, J. Edgar Hoover, the old

bulldog of the FBI, held a press conference. The

occasion was, to say the least, singular - and in two

respects. For one, Hoover rarely indulged in a give-

and-take press session. For the other, he tossed aside the

usual script warning of decaying morals and Reds on

college campuses to fulminate at length against an ar-

ray of distinguished and respected American public

figures and institutions. In the span of one briefing he

managed to brand Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Mar-

tin Luther King, Jr. "the most notorious liar in the

country, label justices of the Supreme Court "bleeding

for insisting a prisoner be arraigned within

twenty-four hours, place the onus of urban crime on

the shoulders of "lenient"

judges, scold the Warren

organized crime) advocated by the late President Ken-

nedy, the late Senator Estes Kefauver, Bobby Kennedy

and many other experts.

The intemperate outburst touched off a furor. The

issue was not so much whether Hoover was right or

wrong, or whether everyone was out of step save J.

Edgar. Since the monumental boggle at Dallas it had

become increasingly clear that it was the old G-man

himself who was losing his magic touch. Rather, it was

the fact that he said it: two generations of Americans

that had come to regard Hoover as a permanent fixture

were shocked by the sudden realization that he had

unaccountably made himself a storm center of con-

66

RAMPARTS • MARCH 1965

WILLIAM TURNER

troversy - and thus terminated his usefulness

as the

nation's top G-man. But as the echo of his bitter vale-

diction faded, a question arose that no one had really

given much thought to: After J. Edgar, who?

It is indeed difficult to ponder on the fate of an FBI

without Hoover; The Man, as his associates call him.

has been widely regarded as irreplaceable and, ironi-

cally, it has been the currency of such rumors that has

helped perpetuate him in office. But General Motors

didn't flounder when its president, Charles E. Wilson.

went to Washington in 1953, nor did Ford when Rober

McNamara abdicated to become the present Secretary

of Defense. Neither will the FBI when Hoover turns

in his badge.

The FBI as an organization is one of the phenomena

of our times: no agency of government has ever been

so universally adulated and pampered yet largely un-

fathomed by the general public. The Bureau as it exists

today is solely the product of Hoover's dynamic am-

bition; it is molded in his image and reflects not only

his strong points but his weaknesses, caprices and preju-

dices as well. Yet the latter have been submerged b

publicity techniques that grossly exaggerate his - and

the Bureau's — accomplishments. The effect has been to

generate a euphoria, rendering Hoover virtually un-

touchable (he recently bragged to an aide he wasnt

"gettable".) and placing the FBI on a pedestal. Neither

condition is healthy in a democracy. Never again

should an FBI chief be permitted to become so inti-

mately identified with the organization that he is ar

institution in his own right and cannot be separate

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## Page 29

from it (at the other extreme: Britain's secret service

cloaks its chief in total anonymity). And now is the

time to partially decentralize the FBI, to reduce the

breadth and scope that has bred undue power, influence

and intimidatory potential.

The practical problem of course is how to retrench

and modernize the FBI without adversely affecting the

national security and the war on crime. To help in a

solution, it is worthwhile to trace the Bureau's growth

and acquisition of power, examine its accomplishments

and faults, and determine precisely what its role

should be.

In 1924, when Floover took over as director, the FBI

was a modest force of 402 special agents and 99 clerks,

about the size of today's Secret Service. At the time

the post of director was of such little consequence that

appointment was not subject to presidential or congres-

sional approval. Under the relentless Hoover the Bureau

has burgeoned to over 16,000 employees consuming an

annual budget of $150 million, some one-hundredfold

more than the early days. And as it flourished a natural

metamorphosis took place: a once compact elite force

(4 special agents to each clerk) became a ponderous,

sprawling bureaucracy (almost 10,000 more clerks than

This beadledom presides over a jurisdictional do-

main encompassing 170 areas of criminality - every-

thing from bank robbery and extortion to illegal use

of the Smokev Bear emblem and interstate transpor-

tation of switchblade knives - and all areas of internal

security, including subversion, sabotage, counterespio-

nage and loyalty investigations. In the past decade the

FBI has poked more and more into non-statutory fields

on behalf of the executive branch, often treading on

renuous ground as in the steel price dispute two years

ago when agents rousted reporters out of bed in the

middle of the night for interrogation. Under the last

Republican administration these inquiries reached a

peak from which they have never tapered off, and con-

sequently are referred to in the FBI as "Eisenhowers.

All of this is a far cry from the narrow intent in

which the FBI was conceived. In 1924 the Bureau was

responsible for only a modest patchwork of federal

law's. Essentially, it enforced criminal statutes not spe-

cifically assigned to Treasury Department agencies and

other special units. But Hoover was too much of an :

entrepreneur to permit of status quo: some duties he

actively proselytized, others stuck to the FBI like lint

to a flannel suit. Not all logically dovetailed, and some

vere anomalous. As a result there was a substantially

vertical expansion that saw the Bureau prying into a

larger and larger cross-section of the American society.

HOYER AND THE FBI have quite rightly earned their

niche in history. But the success story was not

68

RAMPARTS • MARCH 1965

"IN 51756 Docta:32245514 Page 29

written overnight. During the first eight years under

the young director there was little to shout about. The

FBI sat pretty much on the sidelines while Elliot Ness

and his T-men (Treasury Department) wore down Al

Capone and the prohibition era gangsters.

A wild gunman named John Herbert Dillinger

changed all that. It was the era of Wonderful Nonsense,

and Dillinger got into the spirit of things by almost

singlehandedly terrorizing the midwest. To be sure, he

had a colorful supporting cast with outrageously

hammy nicknames:

"Prettyboy" Floyd, "Babyface"

Nelson, "Machinegun" Kelly, "Kreepy" Karpis, et al.

But in retrospect they seem tawdry and garish, as out-

landish as country bumpkins (which they were) in an

erecutive suite compared with the contemporary em-

perors of million-dollar Cosa Nostra syndicates. Never-

theless they possessed a reckless stamina that attracted

lurid newspaper accounts of their escapades.

Congress responded to public clamor by enacting a

host of new federal laws, among them bank robbery,

ung them to noting,

kidnapping and interstate stolen cars. Given jurisdic-

tion, steely-eyed G-men routed the enemy with a flurry

of gangbusting, shoot-'em-up tactics that fascinated the

nation. By the time the last public enemy had been

snuffed out Hoover and his minions had captivated the

popular imagination.

At this propitious moment the FBI chief received an

urgent summons from President Franklin D. Roosevelt,

one of his staunchest admirers. War clouds were gather-

ing in Europe and there was evidence beyond doubt

that enemy agents were abroad in the United States.

What the country needed, F.D.R. told Hoover, was an

agency to assume overall liability for subversive and

counterespionage activity. The FBI, he added anticli-

mactically, was it.

With this grave burden the FBI agent force was

strengthened to over 4,000. To its credit, the Bureau

proceeded to belabor the Nazi bunds and fronts with

the same rawish skill it had displayed against the crimi-

nal public enemies. When was came it rounded up

German spies with equal energy, although some seem-

ingly sensational feats were purposely overblown to

boost civilian morale and deter the Nazis from sending

over more spies. At war's end Hoover claimed that

there had not been a single perpetration of foreign-

directed sabotage. But while the FBI had been pre-

occupied with thwarting the comparatively crude Nazi

agents, their polished Russian counterparts managed the

greatest espionage coup since the Trojan horse: the

theft of vital atom bomb secrets.

Of course this debacle was not discovered until 1949

when the Soviets detonated an atomic device years in

advance of their estimated timetable. But in 1945, Alush

with seeming success, Hoover pressed to take over the

overseas intelligence functions of the wartime Office

of Strategic Services then being disbanded. Perhaps de-

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Perhaps de-

terred by Hoover's manifest proclivity for empire-

building, then-President Harry Truman turned thumbs

down on the G-man's bid and instead created what is

now the Central Intelligence Agency.

The rebuff only temporarily stunted the FBI's

growth in the postwar period. It continued to pursue

bank robbers and kidnappers with an efficacy made

all the more remarkable by the fact that the bandits

now were largely rank amateurs unidentifiable by a

distinct modus operandi. It dramatized its efforts versus

these consistently drab adversaries by inaugurating the

Ten Most Wanted Fugitives Program and encouraging

a spate of movies, books and feature articles glority-

ing the G-men and their exploits. (Washington wits

cracked: "When other agencies blunder they make

excuses. When the FBI blunders it just makes another

On the security front FBI paid informers burrowed

deep into the ranks of the Communist Party, enabling

G-men to study the conspiratorial maze as one watches

an ant farm. Gradually the Party, enfeebled by FBI

penetration, plagued by waning appeal in a prosperous

nation and riddled by internal dissension and defection,

dwindled to but a few thousand members. Ironically,

the FBI, through dues paid by its honeycomb of in-

became the largest contributor to a Party

treasury barren of cash. Yet Hoover persisted in

trumping up the menace. The Party, he said in 1964

appropriations testimony, "wields an influence and con-

stitutes a security danger far out of proportion to its

membership." Besides, he added, the Party isn't as small

as everyone thought - there are 10,000 actual members

and at least 100,000 "state of mind" members, meaning

dupes and Comsymps. His authority for these figures?

None other than Gus Hall, the top Red. Both, it

seemed, didn't want anyone believing the Party is

merely a paper tiger.

In the late 'forties the FBI irretrievably shed its

purely criminal investigative character and became an

instrument of administrative policing. It handled appli-

cant screening investigations for the Atomic Energy

Commission and Civil Service Commission and con-

ducted loyalty probes on government employees and

employees of firms with government contracts.

As with the anarchist hysteria that gripped the coun-

try after World War I, this was a time of Red phobia,

of supposed "interlocking subversion" rooted deeply in

government. It was the heyday of the archconservative

Senator Joe McCarthy and his State Department alter

ego, W. Scott McLeod, an ex-FBI agent turned security

officer whom the Alsop brothers described as a "road-

company McCarthy. Hoover not only expressed ad-

miration for McCarthy as "a vigorous individual who

is not going to be pushed around, but he had no com-

punctions over borrowing certain of McCarthy's tac-

ics, in particular the use of faceless informants, a

H4 54756

DogId: 32245514 Page 30

When the F.B.I.

blunders it

just makes

another movie.

concept that in a later, calmer hour was to be viewed

as a dangerous abrogation of the basic American right

to confrontation of the accuser.

To th it one the he is as cald upon to

cope with the rash of aircraft hijackings, bombings,

bomb hoaxes and other exotic crimes. Still, car theft

remained the Bureau's bread-and-butter category - the

largest single source of what Hoover refers to as

"statistical accomplishments.

One of the paradoxes of the latter-day Bureau is that

its impressive conviction rate has not extended to civil

rights violations in the South, a record starkly out of

kilter with its demonstrated ability in other areas. The

Bureau has not made imposing headway in solving the

wave of home bombings, church burnings and other

acts of terror visited on Negroes. Indeed, until the firm

hand of Bobby Kennedy was laid on the FBI's shoulder,

the sight of an agent delving into civil rights matters

was a curiosity in the South. The FBI, sadly, has been

only as effective as it has been forced to be: journalists

William Bradford Huie and Louis Lomax knew early

in the game who lynched three civil rights workers in

Mississippi last summer, a formidable number of whites

in the region knew, yet FBI arrests came with pointed

timing only days after Dr. King's charge of heel-

dragging. To be sure, there is often a gap between

knowledge and proof,, but it seems incredible that a

bureau able to riddle the Communist Party with in-

formers could not have long ago duplicated the feat

with the Ku Klux Klan, known to have been implicated

in practically every premeditated act of racial violence

South of the Mason-Dixon line.

The reason is that the FBI hierarchy is sympathetic

to the segregationist, states -rights viewpoint. For ex-

ample, in 1955 a northern-bred agent based in Savannah,

Georgia, was conducting a personnel investigation of a

Negro applicant for a position at the Atlanta Federal

Penitentiary. The Negro, the agent learned, was a high

caliber person and a university graduate. The only

possible blot on his record was an account for collection

listed by the local credit bureau. The agent, a thorough,

RAMPARTS • MARCH 1965 69

---

## Page 31

incisive investigator, inquired of the woman in charge

of the credit bureau as to the circumstances of the

collection. She balked at revealing the information, but

the agent persisted, explaining that as it stood the col-

lection could be construed as disqualitying derogatory

data. Finally, the woman acknowledged that the col-

lection was merely the outgrowth of a dispute over

the purchase of a faulty radio. But she later filed a

complaint against the agent with local FBI headquar-

ters, charging he had been too determined to get the.

information. Although it turned out the woman had

recently been hospitalized as a psychopath, FBI offi-

cials summarily demanded the agent's resignation on

the vague grounds of "action unbecoming an agent.'

'HE BAS IS NOT wholly ideological. There is th

practical tact that the Fbl orces rely heavily oi

local police for statistical sustenance. But for the most

part it lies in the strong personality and peculiar orien-

tation of Hoover himself, from whom all FBI policy

ultimately flows.

Hoover is a product of the old school: straight-laced,

self-righteous, pompous, uncompromising. His class

consciousness reflects in his cool aloofness towards his

own agents and his hesitance in hiring Negroes. Until

Kennedy, Negro agents in the FBI could be counted on

the fingers of one hand. Even the title "special agent"

was nominal: one Negro was a manservant in the di-

rector's office, the others were used in servile duties

such as chauffeuring the director in his limousine while

on "working vacations" about the country. But since

the pressure has been on Hoover he has recruited a

total of twenty-seven Negro agents and claims they

have compiled a "brilliant" record. But as one dis-

gruntled white agent gripes, "if the Negro agents so

much as take a crap Hoover sends them a letter of

commendation."

This, of course, is the show business side of the Bu-

reau. However, the simple fact remains that the evan-

gelical fervor that consumes the FBl chief when he

speals of anti-Communism and ridding the city streets

of crime is not kindled by the cause of racial equality.

A Trumpet of Gideon had sounded from Ninth and

Pennsylvania, all right, but it wasn't Hoover who had

pursed his lips and blown, as he had so often in causes

closer to his heart - it was Bobby Kennedy.

Understandably, political factors underlie Bureau

policy in civil rights, and for that matter other issues.

Nobodv but a tourist from Iowa would believe that

Hoover has survived forty years and six administrations

in the Washington political

jungle through sheer popu-

larity. Not that he plays a conventional game of parti-

san politics; he does not. Hoover affinity transcends

party lines: he is drawn as if by a magnet to the phi-

losophy of ultra-conservatism, where patriotism is de-

70 RAMPARTS • MARCH 1965

HH 54756

DooId:32245514

Page

31

fined in jingoistic platitudes, xenophobia is the one true

religion, and the tides of social reform are inevitably

tinged Red

Over the years Hoover has amassed a fiercely loyal

power bloc in Congress formed of men of like persua-

sion: Karl Mundt of South Dakota, the late Styles

Bridges of New Hampshire (Bridges' secretary later

became an influential FBl official), Alexander Wiley

of Wisconsin and James O. Eastland of Mississippi. It

is not a merely doctrinaire coalition, rather it practices

political give-and-take. It is no secret that data from

confidential FBI files has occasionally leaked to a fa-

vored Congressional few. In 1957 Republican Kenneth

Keating of New York sponsored an FBI-sought bill that

rebuffed the Supreme Court decision in the Jencks case;

in 1962 Keating was acclaimed a prophet for breaking

the news of Soviet missile sites in Cuba before the Ken-

nedy administration decided to release it — the existence

of the sites was known to the FBI through its seat on

the high-echelon United States Intelligence Board.

The solidarity of Hoover's alliance with Southern

archconservatives was sharply illustrated following a

critical radio broadcast by former FBI agent Jack Le-

vine in 1962. Over the Pacifica network, a three-station

hookup noted for its unexpurgated programming, Le-

vine leveled a broadside of charges at his erstwhile

boss, Hoover, alleging everything from procrustean

personnel management and a heavy list to the political

right, to inertness in civil rights investigations.

Such impertinence was not to go unpunished. Sen-

ator Eastland, the eminent segregationist, launched

what was called in the newspapers a "Red probe" of

Pacifica, the vehicle being his own Senate Internal

Security Subcommittee. Outwardly, the Subcommittee

was troubled over the fact Pacifica had extended air

time to Mrs. Dorothy R. Healey, Communist Party

chairman for southern California. However, Eastland's

sudden concern over this exercise of free speech was

innately curious: Mrs. Healey had been broadcasting

intermittently for three years as an open Communist

spokesman. More to the point was that Eastland called

the probe only a month after Levine's dissent, and did

it so swiftly and secretively that several Subcommittee

members learned about it in the newspapers. As Ernest

Besig, Northern California director of the American

Civil Liberties Union, aptly put it: "One of the sacred

cows of the Internal Security Committee was sinned

against and now somebody's got to pay the piper."

The Subcommittee went ahead with its ritual. About

the only fresh fact it unearthed was that George Lin-

coln Rockwell, the American Nazi Fuehrer, and John

Birch Society zealots also had their say over Pacifica

airwaves. But the Red brush had been swiped over

Pacifica and, inferentially, over Levine, perpetuating

the shabby myth that criticism of Hoover and the

Bureau is always engineered by the radical left.

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---

## Page 32

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Shackled to the political old guard of the right, the

FBI has interpreted its latitude in civil rights narrowly

and failed to apply the "tricks of the trade,' as Hoover

refers to FBI techniques, quite as enthusiastically as in

kidnappings, bank robberies and other pet crimes. Thus

has the director remained loyal to the powerful faction

under whose aegis he has stood firm through the treach-

erous shifting sands of a half dozen administrations.

Indeed, it may have been these entangling alliances of

•forty years' standing that prompted Senator Everett

M. Dirksen of Illinois to introduce a bill limiting the

term of future directors to fifteen years (another pro-

vision of the 1962 bill: appointment to the post must

be confirmed by both the President and Congress).

The same sacrosanct longevity that has allowed

Hoover's parochialism to color official policy has gen-

erated serious internal difficulties in the Bureau. For

the past decade and longer, agents in the field have

viewed with misgivings a definite trend: Hoover has

grown more distant and unapproachable, more acutely

sensitive to his own image and more insensible to the

problems of the field.

As historical precedent would suggest under this con-

dition, a cult of the personality has sprung up about

the director. Traditionally, the cultists are those who

require the institution more than it requires them. It

has been their formula to isolate The Man from the

grass roots and instill a megalomania about his office.

Thus "embarrassment to the Bureau" (read: "... to J.

Edgar Hoover") has become the cardinal sin, and fear

of committing that sin, however indeliberate, has trans-

formed the Bureau into a society bordering on the

paranoiac. Every agent has witnessed its syndromes:

for example, veteran agents slipping out the back door

when a bank robbery alarm sounds, not out of fear of

facing a gunman but out of fear of a situation loaded

with potential of "embarrassment to the Bureau." Every

agent has seen its irrational wrath: the agents who had

a hand in the Oswald file were censured, suspended

and transferred despite Hoover's public protestations

that the Warren Commission was wrong and the FBI

was blameless.

As each agent knows, there have been far too many

capable men lost through this attitude, but as he also

knows, anything less than complete obsequity labels

him a "disruptive influence, the mortal culpability in

a bureaucracy. And this is economic: he simply cannot

afford to see the doors of industry and commerce slam

shut at Hoover's frown. Moreover, and perhaps more

to the quick, there is nothing to be gained by candid

expression. I once discussed this dilemma with several

members of Congress. Representative of their collective

disposition was the comment of Senator Henry Jackson

of Washington: "Congress long ago awarded Hoover

such sweeping powers it is now powerless to do

anything about it'

JIM 01756 DocId: 32215511 Page 32

Hoover has

grown more

distant and

unapproachable

TY IS THIS UNTOUCHABILITY, this realization of a supine

Congress, that is most disturbing to the agents. Cer-

tainly, they agree, a bureau chief must have full author-

ity, but it must be tempered by higher authority. It is

basic to our democratic processes that Congress eval-

uate the manner in which government agencies - par-

ticularly police agencies - discharge their public trust,

out evaluation requires information, and the looming

figure of J. Edgar Hoover has eftectively choked off

the unorthodox voice. The FBI operates at its own

pleasure, unrestrained by customary checks and

So it would be the agents' preference that the new

face in the director's chair be a moré anonymous face.

There are other reasons: they do not consider it the

place of a police chief to mold public opinion, but to

implement it, and frequently disagree with tentative

public statements of Hoover that are beyond the

bounds of FBI interest yet carry the weight of his

official position. And they are a bit chagrined by the

Hollywoodization of the FBI, feeling that constantly

trying to live up to an image detracts from investigative

objectivity.

If they had their say, the agents would insist that

their new boss be a professional law enforcement officer

- a man of substantial field experience, not merely an

organizer and administrator - so that he would be bet-

ter equipped to understand and deal logically with the

problems of the field. As they are aware, this qualifica-

tion would eliminate as candidates the so-called Anony-

mous Nine - the assistant directors reporting directly

There is not a paucity of able candidates. One who

comes immediately to mind is Richard V. Ogilvie, the

outstanding sheriff of Cook County (Chicago). Ogilvie

emerged from World War II duty as a tank commander

and Purple Heart recipient to earn a reputation as a

tough and incorruptible foe of organized crime, spear-

heading midwestern operations of the Attorney Gen-

eral's Special Group that investigated and prosecuted

the Cosa Nostra overlords who conspired at Apalachin

RAMPARTS • MARCH 1965

---

## Page 33

in 1957. Despite being relatively unknown, Ogilvie

recently was singled out by Life magazine as onc of

the hundred most important Americans under age

forty: Many others of his calibre are available.

A number of factors weigh on the FBI's future

makeup. Perhaps the most vital is whether the agency

should continue to be burdened with both criminal and

security duties. The combination is unique: no other

major power in the world houses these totally unrelated

functions under one roof. Originally they were blended

ov chance: Roosevelt found it convenient, under the

exigencies of impending war, to drop security in the

FBI's lap.

Practically, however, the two fields are as immiscible

as oil and

water. Techniques that catch bank robbers

and car thieves don't necessarily catch spies.. Coun-

terespionage is a subtle cat-and-mouse game totally

unsuited to the cop mentality that tends to be heavy-

handed and light-thinking. The FBI was designed as

a crimebusting agency and remains so orientated - 1

have seen agents detached from security duties to help

in programs to bolster lagging criminal statistics. Agents

are not selected for any particular adaptability to

counterespionage work and are frequently rotated to

different assignments.

Irue, the Bureau has thoroughly infiltrated Com-

munist Party ranks. But the CP is essentially an overt

political activist organization, not to be confused with

the cloak-and-dagger Soviet spy apparatus whose so-

phisticated operatives work under strict orders never to

risk exposure by contact with the Party. The FBI's

slate against the real pros - the "illegals" who slip into

the country surreptitiously - is not reassuring. In only

one instance has the Bureau been able to ferret out an

illegal completely on its own, without tips from the

CIA or other sources (the agent who accomplished the

feat was shortly afterward ousted from the service for

contesting personnel policy).

Another factor bearing on counterespionage efficacy

is liaison. Under current delimitations the CIA, answer-

able for worldwide intelligence and counterespionage,

cannot tread on the FBI's toes at home: theoretically,

tiniest scrap of information may crack a whole spy

ring, the inherently awkward process of liaison must

be relied upon. Obviously, all hinges on total magna-

nimity of exchange. Yet the same obstacle looms as with

Secret Service in Dallas: interagency jealousies and

friction. As veteran Washington reporter Andrew Tul-

ly puts it in his book The CIA: An Inside Story: "It

is a fact that over the years the CIA and the FBI have

not always regarded each other with the warmth of

kissing cousins.

In the long run it might prove advantageous to trans-

fer the FBI's counterespionage obligations to the CIA,

RAMPARTS • MARCH 1965

Member 'i price 11.95

HH 54756 DocId:32245514 Page 33

which specializes in the type of work and recruits its

agents because of particular qualifications. Addition-

ally, this would release the FBI to concentrate more

intently on today's Public Enemy Number One.

organized crime.

Since the thirties the face of major league crime has

changed drastically. The egomaniac Dillinger would

spin is his grave to know that housewives, plumbers,

salesmen and mechanics now infest the bank robbery

field and that auto theft is largely the sport of juvenile

joyriders. A self-respecting professional hoodlum now:

only enters a bank to deposit a bagful of revenue from

the lucrative organized rackets that range from labor

racketeering and illegal gambling to business extortion

and high-class prostitution.

The FBI, by virtue of its affluence and prestige, is the

logical agency to be thrust at the vanguard of a con-

certed program to wipe out the syndicates. But under

Hoover the Bureau has been a reluctant dragon: it is one

of the more perplexing paradoxes of history that ma-

jor crime and the FBI have flourished simultaneously.

Hoover clearly wanted no part of the fight: he alter-

nately claimed that organized crime didn't exist or

shunted it aside as a local problem.

Bobby Kennedy knew better; when he became At-

torney General he was brimful of determination that

something should be done. The something he had long

advocated was a national crime commission to direct

the effort. But out of deference to the sensibilities of

Hoover, who acted grossly offended by proposals to

create a separate agency to do the job he demeaned,

Kennedy resorted to the devious means of setting up

an anti-organized crime nerve-center within the De-

partment of Justice. It was not a very likely base, but

as a pro tem measure to resolve the stalemate Kennedy's

brainchild has been remarkably effective, hinting at

what is in store when the FBI finally sounds the clarion

call to battle.

A genuine offensive against organized crime would

entail cooperation between police groups along the bat-

tle line - federal, state and local. In turn this would

necessitate a rapprochement between the FBI and the

others, who have come to resent its highhandedness

and air of superiority. Fourteen years ago Senator Estes

Kefauver, after hearing the bleat of police officials

throughout the country in the course of his commit-

tee's rackets probe, concluded that exchange of infor-

mation was pretty much a "one-way street" running in

the FBl's direction. For the most part this feeling has

smouldered subsurface- few police officials will talk

about it openly - principally because the local agencies

depend on the Bureau for fingerprint and laboratory

services and for invitations to the prestigious FBI Na-

tional Academy. But recently it erupted in open feud-

ing: the Los Angeles police were fuming mad over the

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---

## Page 34

uits its

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ting up

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ove

, Jr.

napping; the California Highway Patrol was incensed

over tight-lipped G-men not advising of dangerous

ugitives in a patrolled area; the Dallas police, acutely

ware of their own shortcomings, didn't appreciate

being blamed for the Bureau's. Things never have been

exactly famous with the New York City police.

This Big Brother concept could be softened in sev-

eral ways. For one, the fingerprint files, used most

extensively by the local police, could be returned to

their control (the FBI took them over from the Inter-

national Association of Chiefs of Police in 1930) along

with the federal appropriation now allotted to the FBI

ior their maintenance. For another, the federal govern-

ment might yield jurisdiction in a number of overlap-

ping areas essentially local in nature, notably stolen cars,

some 80 percent of which are physically recovered by

local patrols. The FBI could then confine its activity

to large car theft rings and other cases where interstate

traffic is more than a technicality. At the same time the

appropriations committee of Congress could abet this

move by declaring a moratorium on naked statistics as

a measure of achievement, thereby soothing any linger-

ing sense of loss by the FBI and formulating a qualita-

tive criterion of performance for the future.

Finally, there is the question of the FBI's unadul-

terated files, hoarded over decades, that contain a surfeit

of black fact, gossip and rumor about every public

figure and common citizen that has crossed its path. As

political satirist Fletcher Knebel has expressed it: Suc-

cess isn't always what you know or who you know, but

sometimes, what you know about who you know.

The upshot of these files has been to grant the FiBl

a kind of uneasy immunity from official scrutiny and

censure —a devil's advocate has never materialized to

plead the case contra to Hoover's canonization. But of

more automatic concern is that the files might serve as

a bridgehead to an omniscient, authoritarian central

police. Where Hoover has shown admirable restraint,

his heir or succeeding heirs might not.

The only certain way to cancel the intimidatory

peril of the files is to dilute them; the only way to dilute

them is to disperse the myriad functions responsible for

their concentration. Several proposals in this direction

have already been mentioned. Perhaps the most urgent

measure would be to distribute non-statutory inquiries

at the behest of the executive branch among the several

federal investigative agencies, thus ensuring that no one

agency retains all the dossiers.

Centuries ago the Roman poet Juvenal asked the

ageless question: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" It was

a rhetorical question, for Juvenal well knew the an-

swer: the people. It is the people who must keep eternal

vigilance, it is the people that must draw the police

reins tight. And as they watch the watchers they must

take care that they really discern what they are seeing.

WILLIam TurneR served from February 1951 to July

1961 in the F.B.I. where he was a special agent, an assist-

ant supervisor, an inspector's aide and a technical spe-

cialist. He is currently an author and editor of police

science at the National Lawyer's Cooperative Publish-

ing Co. and Bancroft-Whitney.

RAMPARTS • MARCH 1965 73

sr 14756

DocId: 32245514 Page 34

---

## Page 35

*BRAQUETTE

MIRO-MIRO...

on the wall. ' Braquette frames

YOu,

large or small

frames most

pictures in a wink Picasso, Wyeth

or Chagall (Photos too). At leading

frame stores, or postpaid. Lucite,

Black or Stainless Steel $2.00.

BRAQUETTE

Lenux.

Massachusetts

heads, or their nerve, or their tempers,

and produced the most brutality since

the battle of the Selma Bridge two and

a half years ago in Alabama. :

The great police riot, as it is now

called, sits uneasily on the conscience of

the city. The Los Angeles Times did its

own hatchet-job on the march in its first-

day story, but the reporters who covered

it, and

were profoundly disturbed,

staged a quiet editorial revolt. A week

later, they in effect rewrote the story,

with an about-face in point of view. The

original report ended with a quote from

a press photographer: "These people

(the marchers] were like animals. All I

can say is that the police did one hell of

a good job." The revised version ended

with a line from a demonstrator: "All

the violence was initiated by the police."

The City Council, bitterly divided,

voted in midweek to support the police.

The police chief's rationalization for the

attack was that he had "inside informa-

tion" that "agitators" were planning to

rush the hotel and, presumably, threat-

8

RAMPARTS

9/67

54756

en the President. But in the Times"

vised coverage, the full report of an

undercover agent who infiltrated the

march committee makes no mention of

any such scheme. In any case, there was

no evidence of it in the behavior of the

crowd. The American Civil Liberties

Union is preparing a broad legal assault,

and the big local "rock" radio station is

raising funds for it. Governor Ronald

Reagan, on the other hand, thinks that

"the police did not use excessive brutal-

ity." Just the ordinary kind. For some

reason, police in Southern California

have always been extraordinarily ag-

gressive-the common phrase is "blue

fascism." It shows up everywhere: peo

ple strolling in Beverly Hills in the eve

ning. are often stopped, frisked and

questioned on the assumption that only

thieves, murderers and subversives don't

ride in cars.

But what aggravates even that natural

tendency of the police to aggression is

the war mood. It is not confined to Los

Angeles. Raids in New York, Philadel-

phia, Chicago, Atlanta and Newark and

a score of smaller cities suggest that

there is a "new brutalism" in the way

authority acts to put down resistance.

Some claim it is an inevitable "back-

lash," and the antidote is more caution

and moderation on the part of the re-

sisters. More likely, it is a response, per-

haps, an inevitable one; to the frag-

mentation of a national consensus; the

breaking of trust, the death of hope.

There is a sense this summer that the

society is approaching a point of crisis,

an historical moment which will divide

that which went before from that which

follows. For more than two decades, the

U.S. has known the luxury of continuity:

despite the small wars, the economic dips

and the nasty incidents, this is still the

post-war era. There has been no sharp

break, nothing like 19291932 or 1941-

1945: But the rocking and the rolling

that many now feel may be the beginning:

of the new social earthquake. The war

triggered it, but there were obviously

deeper causes. It is not inappropriate

that in California, which gave the world

Watts, the hippies and Ronald Reagan;

the major cracks are appearing.

Andrew Kopkind, Washington correspond-

ent for the New Statesman from which

this is reprinted), will write a regular col

unni for Ramparts.

Media:

THE PRESS VERSUS GARRISON

by William W. Turner

LEE HARVEY OSWALD asSasSinated

President Kennedy. "beyond a

reasonable doubt," intoned Wal-

ter Cronkite during the four-night CBS

special series on the Warren Report

which began on June 26. Presenting an

expertly blended mixture of gimmickry,

dubious experimentation and selectivity

of witnesses, CBS rubber-stamped -the

Warren Report practically point: by

point without giving its critics a chance

- for specific rebuttal. Only a week before,

NBC had broadcast its own special, a

slapdash but nonetheless damaging flat.

out attack on New Orleans District Ai-

torney Jim Garrison and his assassina:

tion conspiracy probe. The charges and

conclusions of both programs were

widely reported in the daily press; what-

Americans witnessed was a strange and

dangerous new phenomenon in which

the networks synthesized news-leaving

it to the television/radio columnists to

pass judgment on the accuracy of their

exposition of evidence.

One could sense an urgency in both

productions that betrayed any pretense

at objectivity. Why? When Mark Lane's:

Rush to Judgment and Edward Jay Ep-

stein's Inquest were published last suni-

mer, casting a national pall of doubt on

the Commission's findings, there were no

signs of panic in the Establishment. It

was only when Jim Garrison propounded

a counter theory to the Report, pro-

duced evidence tending to support il,

and indicated that he would use the full

powers of his office to prosecute the con-

spirators that beads of sweat started

rolling down Washington foreheads.

Six months in the making, at a costfof

a quarter million dollars, the CBS series

was obviously designed to revitalize

sagging public confidence in the Warren

Report-polls showed that a meager 35

per cent were true believers. The CHS

effort was not without internal struggles.

---

## Page 36

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Ine answer at a timo:

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Now

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10 RAMPARTS

Field Director Robert Richter, who ex-

haustively interviewed scores of critics

and proponents of the Report alike,

seemed genuinely inclined towards the

critics' point of view when he talked with

me, but he allowed that he was having

trouble convincing Leslie Midgley, the

executive producer in New York, that

the critics should get a fair hearing.

They didn't. The script was rewritten

four times, and when the series finally

unfolded, it was not until the end of

the third night that the audience saw a

live critic. Thirty-minute tapes had been

filmed of Mark Lane and myself, from

which were sliced one-minute segments.

Meanwhile a string of handpicked wit-

resses and "experts" were heard from,

and Cronkite donned the black cap and

pronounced Oswald guilty as charged.

Aware that the skepticism over the

Report stemmed from three major in-

consistencies -the manifestation of the

Zapruder film that the three shots (it was

assumed there were only three) had to

have been fired within S:6 seconds; the

implausible "magic bullet" theory, and

the secrecy over the autopsy x-rays-

CBS set out to dispel all doubt.

On the Zapruder film dilemma, CBS

trumped the Warren Report by stretch-

ing the time constraint to a readily be:

lievable nine seconds. At least it thought

it did. One technique was to suggest that

Oswald may have fired the first shot at

•frame 186, when the President mo-

mentarily appeared through a gap in the

tree foliage. Even the Commission had

discounted this possibility, but-CBS

discovered that the Zapruder film was

noticeably blurred at frames 190, 227

and 318. Kennedy was behind a freeway

sign at 190, but 227 and 318 are several

frames after the film shows Kennedy's

reaction to the impact of bullets. The

blurs, CBS posited, were caused by

Zapruder's reflexive "jumping" at the

crack of the rifle. A startling discovery -

especially considering that frames 195

and 203 show equal blurring, raising the

presumption of five shots.

Determined to elongate the time ele-

ment, CBS further suggested that Zap

ruder may have inadvertently flipped his

camera lever to its slow motion setting;

thus his footage represents a time span of

up to nine seconds. In point of fact, the

faster-running film would have com-

pressed the time to no more than 5:3 and

as little as 4.3 seconds.

The " magic bullet" simulation was, on

the face of it, impressive. With the help

of an outside consultant, CBS laid four

blocks of gelatin separated by Masonite

slabs end to end; the arrangement wäs

supposed to represent the muscle, flesh,

bone and fiber of the bodies of Kennedy

and Connally, the governor's wrist, and

finally the governor's thigh, all of which

the

"magic bullet" allegedly passed

through. In slow motion, the camera fol-

lowed the path of the bullet through the

four blocks. In each test, the announcer

said, the test bullet lodged in the third

block, but he quickly pointed out that

with just a bit of extra energy it would

have made it through-and therefore

the single bullet theory was possible

Büt CBS did not insert a "rib cage." lo

synthesize the one shattered by a bullet.

Furthermore, it did not announce the

distance from which the test shots were

fired (the penetrating ability of a bullet

drops off sharply as the distance in-

creases); didn't let its viewers look at the

test bullet to compare it with the almost

pristine condition of the actual "magic

=bullet" (CE 399); and neglected to dupli-

cate the eccentric path the "magic

bullet" would have had to prescribe.

As for the withheld autopsy photos

and x-rays, CBS conceded that the Com;

mission was remiss and sloppy in certain

phases of its inquiry, and elicited from

John McCloy, a Commission member,

the statement that if he had it all to do

over again, he would insist that the

material be subpoenaed

The critics' contention that shots came

from the Grassy Knoll was dismissed by

CBS with what amounted to a haughty

wave of the hand; this despite the fact

that Ray Marcus, one of the more per-

sistent critics, dropped in on CBS

Midgley when the program was in pro-

duction and showed him an enlarged

photograph of the head and shoulders of

a man against a foliage background

"Ah," exclaimed the unsuspecting Midg

ley, "that's a picture of the man who

shot James Meredith from ambush in

Mississippi.' It wasn't; it was an en-

largement from a spectator's photograph

showing the Grassy Knoll at the moment

the President was shot-and the Warren

Commission had insisted no one was on

top of the Knoll. Yet on the program

Midgley gave his viewers a quick look at

the photograph-not a closeup of the

enlargement-in effect saying there was

no one there, as any fool could plainly see

CBS's egregious talents were also put

---

## Page 37

to work on D.A. Jim Garrison, who came

off as a ruthless opportunist trying to

convert malpractice into political ad-

vantage, and Mike Wallace grilled him

with staccato questions along the line of,

"Do you still beat your wife?" Garrison,

however, happens to be unflappable;

and he didn't rise to the bait. In response

to one loaded question about a prisoner

who claimed to have been offered a deal

to say the right thing, he fired back dead-

pan, "As a matter of fact, this is part of

our incentive program for convicts. We

also have six weeks in the Bahamas. We

give them LSD to get there."

. The gross injustice of CBS' treatment

of Garrison came into focus when it

preempted considerable air time to af-

ford William Gurvich; a newly defected

Garrison aide, the opportunity to level

a broadside of charges against the D.A:

and his investigation, without giving

Garrison the opportunity to reply. Gar-

rison had "no case," Gurvich contended,

was employing "illegal and unethical

methods," and was in fact "paranoiac."

Gurvich, himself had been "sickened,"

he claimed, by the arrest of Clay Shaw it

was Gurvich who had proudly an-

nounced the arrest). The day following

his CBS appearance, Gurvich repeated

his charges to a New Orleans grand jury,

which decided they had no substance:

CBS didn't bother to interrupt its wrap

up program that night to let the nation

know.

Although Gurvich preferred to think

of himself as Garrison's chief investiga-

tor, the facts are somewhat different. He

materialized at Garrison's office just be-

fore Christmas and offered his services

in the investigation. Sorely understaffed,

Garrison accepted. Gurvich was never

on salary, but his enthusiasm was un-

questioned. At one point, when a war-

rant was obtained for the arrest of

Sergio Arcachä-Smith, a former leader

of a ClA-sponsored anti-Castro front,

Gurvich told Garrison he wanted to go

to Dallas and personally make the arrest

so he could say, "I've gotcha, Arcacha."

(Governor Connally refused to sign ex-

tradition papers, and the trip was never

made.) But Gurvich, it developed, had

never read the Warren Report and its

volumes, and had only a shaky grasp of

the investigation. Garrison kept the in-

vestigation in the hands of his actual.

chief sleuth, Louis Ivon, a police detec-

tive posted to the D.A.'s office. Gurvich's

interest began to fade, and for the six

12 RAMPARTS 9/67

Walter.

Sten don eren

weeks prior to his defection he hardly

showed up at the ofice.

During this period Gurvich was meet-

ing frequently in New Orleans with

Walter Sheridan, Bobby Kennedy's for-

mer "get Hoffa"' operative, now evi-

dently NBC's "get Garrison" ramrod.

On June 25, Gurvich had a private meet-

ing in New York with Bobby Kennedy,

and although both declined comment,

the fact that he was defecting leaked to

NBC. It was Newsday, the Long Island

newspaper for which Bill Moyers left the

White House, that broke the story.

THE HASTILY-CONTRIVED NBC

| special had been scheduled OF

June 20 in anticipation of Gur

vich's defection, but he balked past the

deadline. As a surrogate, Saturday

Evening Post writer Jim Phelan anchored

the program. His article "Rush to Judg-

ment In New Orleans" in the May 6

issue had thrown a cloud of doubt over

the testimony of key Garrison. witness

Perry Russo as to whether he was pres.

ent when Shaw, David Ferrie and Os-

wald discussed a scheme to assassinate

President Kennedy. Russo had first been

interviewed by young Assistant D.A.

Andrew J. Sciambra. Phelan contended

that Russo had mentioned nothing about

the Shaw-Ferrie-Oswald discussion to

Sciambra, that the notion of a plot had

been implanted in Russo's mind by Gar-

rison while he was under Sodium Pen-

tothal and hypnosis.

Àis prima facie evidence, Phelan intro-

duced a memorandum by Sciambra, re-

porting his initial interview with Russo

which indeed made no mention of the

plot discussion. The memorandum had

been rather casually handed to Phelan

by Garrison; and reading Phelan's piece,

one gets the impression he not only as

sumed it was a complete memorandum,

but presumed he had been cut in on all

of Garrison's case.

The full story is this. Sciambra thor

oughly interviewed Russo on Saturday,

February 25, at which time the plot dis-

cussion, was revealed. He reported the

interview to Garrison; who, realizing its

importance, had Russo come to the

office first thing Monday. At that time,

Russo repeated the entire story in the

presence of a stenographer. To settle the

question of Russo's veracity in his own

mind as far as possible, Garrison ordered

a "truth serum"' (Sodium Pentothal)

since over three years had elapsed since

the event, Russo was hypnotized to facil-

itate his recollection of details. Mean-

while. the harried Sciambra, trying. to

keep up with the tide of work engulfing

• the office, started to dictate his memoran-

dum in bits and snatches. It was half-

completed when thrust at Phelan.

Perry Russo claims he was contacted

by Jim Phelan, acting on behalf of NBC,

to persuade him to recant his testimony:

Russo also says Walter Sheridan showed

up at his residence shortly before the

NBC special and sought his help "to

wreck the Garrison investigation." Sher-

idan dangled a carrot, asserted Russo, in

the form of an offer "to set me up in

California, protect my job, and guarantee

Garrison would never get me extradited

back to Louisiana." When he stuck to

his story, Richard Townley of NBC's

New Orleans affiliate approached him

brandishing a stick. Townley threatened,

Russo says, to ruin his personal reputa-

tion. Garrison has filed criminal charges

against Sheridan and Townley for at-

tempting to suborn; but he is keeping his

fingers crossed. "Perry asked us for a

couple of hundred dollars to get started

on a job," Garrison explains, "and we

turned him down as a matter of policy.!

know it's awful hard for a young man

to turn down big offers."

The massive propaganda barrage has

been aided not only by the NBC and

CBS networks, but by the press at large.

Hugh Aynesworth of Newsweek wrote

that Garrison was shamelessly preying

on the "vulnerability of homosexuals,"

and the Associated Press disseminated i

tendentious series whitewashing the Re-

port- the longest tome in AP history. As

for NBC's slanted coverage, Garrison

offers the theory that "NBC is owned by

RCA, 'and RCA is one of the top ten

government contractors."

Jim Garrison is a duly elected district

attorney prosecuting a homicide con-

spiracy case. That his evidence is not

whimsical or unfounded has been con-

firmed by a New Orleans grand jury and

a three-judge panel. In a grotesque twist,

the networks and press have not only.

convicted the prosecutor in a trial by

newspaper," they have judged a court

case before millions of viewers and thus

possibly prejudiced venire men who will

hear the case.

Such tactics smack of desperation

and indicate there is much to hide

test, which turned out favorable: Then,

---

## Page 38

A former FBI man, now a critic of the Warren Commission,

looks at the King Assassination and finds

Some

Disturbing

Parallels

C

INTRARY TO LEGEND, THE FBI doesn't crack every

case: Many are stamped "CLOSED ADMINISTRATIVELY,"

with the explanation; "All logical leads exhausted."

It took me the first couple of years of a ten-year stint

as an FBI agent to find out what this meant. Sometimes the

case was too petty to pursue. Sometimes it couldn't be solved.

Occasionally it had been bungled from the outset. And there

were times when a case was simply not to the Bureau's liking.

There never was much inclination to probe the radical right or

much elan for solving civil rights cases, especially after J: Edgar

Hoover called Dr. Martin Luther King the "most notorious

liar in the world" in 1964, after King questioned the FBI's

zeal in pressing civil rights investigations.

Despite my misgivings about the FBI, I was not prepared to

believe that it would muff or muzzle the investigation of a

case of the magnitude of a presidential assassination. At

first, I did not share the intuitive feeling of many Americans

and most Europeans that John Kennedy was the victim of a

political conspiracy. By training and instinct I was an inves.

tigator, accustomed to dealing with forensic evidence. The

array of apparently legitimate evidence that was being stacked

up against Lee Harvey Oswald was impressive. Consequently,

I had no reason to reject J. Edgar Hoover's version, leaked to

the press barely three weeks after the assassination, that Os-

wald and Ruby had each acted alone:

The FBI version was adopted without noticeable discomfort

by the Warren Commission, which never so much as publicly

by William W. Turner

54756

DocId: 32245514 Page 38

hinted that it was far from puncture-proof. But as the Com-

mission's inquiry proceeded, the holes began to appear.

There was, for example, the film taken by spectator Abraham

Zapruder. It graphically showed that Kennedy's head was

jolted back and to the left, a reaction consistent with a shot

fired from the right and front; that Oswald would have had

to fire three shots with a clumsy bolt-action rifle in 5.6 seconds,

and that Kennedy and Governor John Connally of Texas were

struck by separate bullets within a second of each other, dic-

tating at least two shooters.

Nevertheless, it soon became evident that the Commission

was. embracing the three-shots-from-behind theory to the

exclusion of all others. Disturbed, I wrote the Commission

on July 4, 1964, pointing out that the opinions of spectators

as to the source of the shots could be misleading due to a

sound phenomenon krown as the "bow-wave effect." The

reply disturbed me even more. "The Commission has com-

pleted its investigation," wrote General Counsel J. Lee Rankin

on August 28, "and is now in the process of reviewing the

results in order to draft the Final Report as quickly as possible."

Obviously, there was a political imperative to get the report

out before the fall elections.

Once a skeptic, I became a critic: Behind the lawyers'

rhetoric, the Warren Report is riddled with contradictions, in-

consistencies and implausibilities. The alternative to the single

assassin theory is a conspiracy. If Oswald did not do it alone, it

remains that he was elaborately framed.

RAMPARTS 33

60/29/68

---

## Page 39

THE ASSASSINATION OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING ON

April 4 presents a series of striking parallels to th

veniently dropped at the crime scene. Just as the

Carcano left in the Texas School Book Depository Building

was readily traceable to Oswald, so the Remington jettisoned

outside the dingy hotel from which King was shot was readily

traceable to Eric Starvo Galt (whom the FBI subsequently

identified as James Earl Ray, a 1967 escapee from a Missouri

prison).

In both instances, also, it appears that the police radio net-

work was penetrated. Within minutes after the President was

shot, the Dallas police radio was broadcasting a description

of a suspect.— he generally resembled Oswald— that to this day

is of unknown origin. Within minutes after the King shooting,

the Memphis police radio was describing a police chase of a

white Mustang thought to be the getaway car; police spokes-

men now say the chase never took place. A white Mustang

registered to Eric Starvo Galt was found abandoned in

Birmingham, Alabama, a few days later. In the car was an

Atlanta city map with circles drawn around Dr. King's home

and church. The map was reminiscent of the Dallas city map

found among Oswald's possessions after his arrest which had

the Book Depository Building and several points along the

Kennedy motorcade route circled.

The parallels come close to forming what the police would

call a modus operandi, in which a trail was laid down to point

to Oswald on the one hand, Galt on the other.-

Yet despite these compelling indications; Attorney General

Ramsey Clark insists that there is no evidence of conspiracy

Figure 1

Figure 2

34

RAMPARTS

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## Page 40

in the King case. Within 24 hours of the Memphis slaying, he

was announcing that it appeared to be the

work of one

man and that an arrest was imminent. On May 12, on the ABC

network, Clark claimed there was no evidence to support

theories that Galt had been hired by conspirators to kill

King, and that there was "no evidence to believe that he

(Galt) is nöt still alive."

The reference to the possibility that Galt was dead evidently

stems from a photograph of him on the FBI's wanted bulletin

(Figure 1). When I first saw it, it struck me as that of a dead

man. The eyes were closed (an FBI artist dubbed in open eyes

on a published.reproduction), the face seemed puffy and in

repose and the coat collar rode high, as if the man had been in a

prone position. The Bureau did not reveal where it obtained

the photograph, although there was speculation it was taken

on the occasion of Galt's graduation from a Los Angeles

bartending school on March 2 of this year. But chance

acquaintances in Los Angeles do not believe it is the Galt they

knew, and

witnesses at the Memphis hotel tend to agree.

"Unless he was wearing a wig or had had a face-lift or some-

thing, it's not the man I saw," commented hotel resident

Charles Q. Stevens, who saw the fleeing sniper. "The hair is

too full and the face is too young:"

A few days after the King slaying, Memphis police released

an artist's sketch of the suspect, reportedly prepared in Mexico

under FBI supervision (Figure. 2). It bore hardly any resem-

blance to the Galt photograph, but did have a startling

resemblance to a face I had seen before. The face appears in a

series of photographs taken by Black Star photographer

William Allen in Dealey Plaza shortly after Kennedy was

Figure 3A

Figure 3

RAMPARTS 35

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224551

4.0

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killed (Figure 3). It belongs to one of three men being marched

grandizemient." Although the Department of Justice has

by Dallas police from the area of the Grassy Knoll to the

denied that Clark made the threat, Rey Barry, a reporter for

Dallas sheriff's department cater-corner across the plaza. The - the Charlottesville, Virginia, Daily. Express who covered the

sketch and the photograph both portray a man with a sharp,

event, has publicly declared that the attorney general spoke

pronounced nose (Memphis hotel witnesses were uniformly

precisely those words.

impressed by this feature), a wide mouth with thin lips, and a

So Clark is determined to squelch any and all conspiracy

firm set to the jaw.

talk-about either assassination. And J. Edgar Hoover re-

There is no record in the Warren Report or its volumes, or

affirmed his faith in the Warren Report in 1966 when the wave

in the files of the Dallas police and sheriff's departments, as

of criticism broke. But the weight of evidence in each case

to the identity of the man in the Allen photograph, or his

points to conspiracy.

two companions. If their detention was ever recorded several

One parallel that must not be allowed to develop further in

others taken into custody and released are accounted for in

the King case is the pattern of cover-up that characterized the

the annals.of the Warren Commission-the files have been

Kennedy investigation. For instance, Richard Giesbrecht, a

stripped. The investigation of District Attorney Jim Garrison

reputable Winnipeg, Canada businessman, reported to the

in New Orleans has developed a suspect—a man who was

FBI that on February 13, 1954, he overheard two men in the

active in anti-Castro activities, had Mexican connections and

airport restaurant talking about inside details of the assassina-

checked into a Dallas hotel three days before the assassination

tion. A few weeks later, he contends, the FBI called him back

- but the DA has been unable to mount a widespread search

and told him,

• "Forget what you heard. It's too big." One of

for him due to the lack of cooperation of federal authorities.

the men, says Giesbrecht, was the late David Ferrie, an ex-CIA

New Orleans, the city that Garrison contends figured

pilot and central figure in the Garrison probe. Significantly,

prominently in the Kennedy assassination planning, also

Giesbrecht is not to be found in the National Archives, nor is

looms large in the King case. While residing in Birmingham

his name mentioned in the Warren Report or its volumes. He

last fall, Galt claimed he had formerly worked at a New

is one of a number of key witnesses who as far as the official

Orleans shipyard (the FBI was unable to find any record of his

version is concerned never existed

employment), Last December, Galt told several acquaintances

Some of those who did officially exist claim that their

-in-Los Angeles that he had.to.make.a trip to New Orleans to

testimony has been altered. Julia Ann Mercer, who saw a man

see. an "important industrialist.".-He made the trip in the

with.a rifle get.out of a truck parked near the Grassy Knoll

white Mustang. The FBI has learned that Galt had lengthy

an hour and a half before the assassination, alleges that her

meetings with a prominent industrialist at the Provincial

affidavit as published in the Warren Report volumes is a

Motor Lodge on December 17 and 19. The industrialist is also

forgery. She says that she identified Jack Ruby as the driver

missing and a search is on for him.

of the truck the day before he killed Oswald, and this has not

Obviously the FBI, despite the disclaimers of its boss Ram-

been included in the forged affidavit. Former Deputy Sherifi

sey Clark that there was no conspiracy, is operating on the

Roger Craig, who was on duty in Dealey Plaza at the time of

theory that there was. In California recently, G-men ques-

the shooting, contends that his statement has undergone 14

tioned a man who had occupied a room next to Galt in a hotel

material alterations.:

in the Mexican resort town of Puerto Vallarta last November;

Thus it has become manifest that the Department of Justice

the man relates that the FBI considered him a possible courier

(and presumably its master in the White House) is determined

or "bag man" in the conspiracy. Moreover, Galt has compiled

to keep the lid on the case and hide the truth. Therefore !

a lengthy arrest record under his true name Ray for such

would propose the formation of a citizens' committee to bring

crimes as burglary, armed robbery and forgery, and hardly

pressure to bear on the powers-that-be in Washington. The

seerns the type who would cross the street for a political killing

committee would be composed of the foremost critics of the

-unless there was money in it. Interestingly, the FBI has

Warren Report, civil rights leaders, forensic science experts

determined that since August 1967, when the Galt identity first

and others. Ideally, the Kennedy-King investigation should

materialized, he has spent some $10,000 without having a

be undertaken by a joint Senate-House select committee, with

known source of income.

its own investigative staff unbeholden to the FBI, the Secret

Service and the CIA. But Congress has shown little inclination

HUS WE ARE CONFRONTED with the dilemma of an

to take on such a controversial and politically loaded task, and

attorney general who insists that there was no con-

the citizens' committee might serve as an interim force until

spiracy in either the King or the Kennedy assassination

public opinion compels Congress to act.

while the evidence reads otherwise. But Clark's

It is said that those who do not profit from history art

credibility has already been opened to question. On the day

doomed to relive it-and the history of governments con-

after Garrison arrested New Orleans trade official Clay Shaw

temptuous of the truth is not pleasant to contemplate.

on a charge of conspiring to assassinate Kennedy, Clark

informed newsmen that Shaw had been investigated by the

FBI in 1963 after the assassination and "found clear"; three

months later, in a retraction that received little notice, he

conceded that the FBI had not investigated Shaw at all. Then

last October, Clark tipped his hand by telling a University

of Virginia law forum, "Much as I may hate to do it, I just

William Turner, for ten years an FBl agent and now a RAMPARTS

Senior Editor, is the author of three books: The Police Establish-

ment (Putnam); Invisible

Witness-The New Technology

of Crime Investigation (Bobbs-Merrill; and a forthcoming

account of New Orleans DA Jim Garrison's investigation of the

Kennedy assassination (Award Books).

might havé to prosecute Jim Garrison... he took a perfectly

fine man, Clay Shaw; and ruined him just for personal ag-

st

, fo

ult

cle

cal

YOL

dar

did

36 RAMPARTS 6/29/68

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## Page 42

The Garrison Commission

on the Assassination of

President Kennedy

uncompromising district attorney

of New Orleans, a rackets-buster without

parallel in a political freebooting state.

He was elected on a reform platform and

meant it. Turning down a Mob proposi-

lion that would have netted him $3000 a

week as his share of slot machine pro-

ceeds, he proceeded to raid Bourbon

Street clip joints, crack down on prosti-

lution and eliminate bail bond rackets.

His track record as the proverbial fight-

ing DA is impressive: his office has never

lost a major case, and no convictions

have been toppled on appeal because of

improper methods.

Garrison is angry right now—as angry

as if some bribed cops had tried to steer

him away from a vice ring or as if the the people of this country. Who has the

Mob had attempted to use political clout

' arrogance and the brass to prevent the

to get him off their backs. Only this

people from seeing that evidence? Who

time, the file reads "Conspiracy to As-

indeed?

sassinate President Kennedy," and it

"The one man who has profited most"

isn't Cosa Nostra, but the majestic might

from the assassination-your friendly

of the United States government which

President, Lyndon Johnson!"

is trying to keep him from his duty.

Garrison made it clear that he was not

"Who appointed Ramsey Clark, who

accusing. Johnson of complicity in the

has done his best to torpedo the investi

crime, but left no doubt that as far as he

gation of the case?" he fumed in a recent

was. concerned, the burden had shifted

speech before a gathering of southern

to the government to prove that it was

California newscasters. "Who controls

not an accessory before or after the fact

the CIA? Who controls the FBI? Who

"I assume that the President of the

controls the Archives where this evidence

United States is not involved,' he said.

is locked up for so long that it is unlikely

"But wouldn't it be nice to know it?"

that there is anybody in this room who

The simple probity of Garrison's

will be alive when ft is released? This is

challenge is underscored by the fact that

really your property and the property of

the government and government-oriented

by William W. Turner

DocId: 32245511 Page 42

RAMPARTS.

Photography by Matt Herron

1/68

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## Page 43

forces have concealed and destroyed

evidence, intimidated witnesses and

maligned, ridiculed and impeded Garri-

son and his investigation. In short, the

conduct of the government has not been

that of an innocent party, but of one de-

termined to cover its tracks. For the past

nine months, I have worked closely with

the DA and his staff, hoping to con-

tribute to their investigation. In my

opinion there is no question that they

have uncovered a conspiracy. Nor is

there any doubt that Jim Garrison is one

of a vanishing breed: a Southern popu-

list anchored in very traditional Amer-

ican ideals about justice and truth, who

can neither rationalize nor temporize in

pursuit of them.

By design or ignorance, the mass

mèdia-from NBC to Life— have created

an image of Garrison as.a ruthless.op-

portunist with vaulting political ambi-

tion, which naturally leads to the

conclusion that he is trying to parlay

the death of a' President into a political

tour de force. He is; in fact, neither

knave nor fool. No politician on the

make would be reckless enough to at-

tempt to usurp the findings of the seven :

distinguished men of the Warren Com-

mission. "It's not a matter of wanting to

gain headlines," says Garrison indig-

nantly. "It's a matter of not being able

to sleep at night. I am in an official

position in a city where the greater part

of the planning of the assassination of

President Kennedy took place, and this

was missed by the Warren Commission.

What would these people who have at-

PHOTOGRAPHER's NoTe: Garrison and I played a game of chess.

We thought the board looked too staid for pictures with all the

pieces in starting order, so l led off with my king's pawn and

then (foolishly) played my king's bishop to bishop four. Garrison

could have clobbered me, but instead he chose to play the game

much as he has played the investigation. First, he solidly occupied -

the center. Then he developed his major pieces carefully and

painstakingly. At first glance he didn't seem to be making much

progress nor to be taking full advantage of my obvious weak-

nesses, but when he finally launched his attack, he was so solidly

entrenched there was rothing I could do. In those circumstances

a gentleman would have resigned.

44 RAMPARTS

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## Page 44

tacked me do if they were here and had

official responsibility?. Would they be

able to sleep nights? Would they be able

to say, 'Jack Kennedy is dead and there

is nothing I can do about it?""

[THE MAKING OF A'DA]

ARRISON'S ATTITUDES were un-

Gun don Van in trope

during World War Il in Europe

where, while flying a Piper Cub as an

artillery spotter during the Allied sweep,

he came upon Dachau. The residue of

horror he witnessed there etched itself

so deeply on his conscience that in the

foreword to a collection of criminology

essays published in 1966, he deplored

the apathy that permitted Dachau. Since

man emerged from the mists of time, he

wrote, "such reason as he possesses has

produced the cross, the bowl of hem-

lock, the gallows, the rack, the gibbet,

the guillotine, the sword, the machine

gun, the electric chair, the hand grenade,

the personnel mine, the flame thrower,

poison gas, the nearly obsolete TNT

bomb; theobsolescent atom bomb

and the currently popular hydrogen

bomb-all made to maim or destroy his

fellow man." Garrison, who is fond of

allegorical example, pictured an extra-

terrestrial being happening upon a self-

desolated world and asking, "What hap-

pened to your disinterested millions?

Your uncommitted and uninvolved, your

preoccupied and bored? Where today

are their private horizons and their mir-

rored worlds of self? Where is their

splendid indifference now?"

With a diploma from Tulane Univer-

sity law school, Garrison tried the life of

in FBI agent but found the role too

circumscribed to be stimulating. A stint

with a firm specializing in corporation

law was likewise unrewarding. After

another tour of duty in the Korean War

- he is presently a Lt. Colonel in the

Louisiana National Guard-he latched

on as an assistant DA in New Orleans.

und began his public career. After two

unsuccessful tries at elective office, he

pulled an upset in the 1961 district at-

lorney race. Bucking the Democratic

machine and backed only by five young

lawyers known as the "Nothing Group"

hecause of their lack of money and

prestige, he took to television and came

on strong. Like Jack Kennedy, he pro-

jected a youthful vigor and enthusiasm

that was missing in the stereotyped poli-

ticians he was opposing.

DocId: 32245514

Page At

Garrison's current battle to get the

Justice Department,, the FBI. and the

CIA to release evidence about the as-

sassination is not the first time he has

tangled with anal retentive government

authorities. After the DA's Bourbon

Street raids, the city's eight crimina!

judges began blocking his source of

funds for the raids, a fines forfeitures

pool. Garrison took on the judges in a

running dispute that was the talk of New

Orleans. On one occasion, a luncheon of

the Temple Sinai Brotherhood, he lik-

ened the judges to "the sacred cows of

India." On another, he accused them of

goldbricking by taking

206 holidays;

"not counting legal holidays like All

Saints' Day, Long's Birthday and St

Winterbottom's Day." Outraged, the

judges collectively filed criminal defama-

tion charges: (Complained one, "People

holler 'Moo" at me.") The case escalated

to. the U.S. Supreme Court, where a

landmark decision upheld Garrison's

right to criticize public officials

He exercised that right. When Mayor

Victor H. Schiro vacillated on an issue,

he quipped, "Not since Hamlet tried to

decide whether or not to stab the king of

• Denmark has there been so agonizing a

decision." But if he was an embarrass-

ment to officials; he was a delight to the

voters: In 1965, he was returned to office

by a two to one margin-the first New

Orleans DA to be reelected in 30 years.

ARRISON'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

defies definition. He subscribes

in part to Ayn. Rand's indi

vidualist dogma, but is too much of a

traditional democrat to accept its in-

evitable elitism. He is friendly with

segregationists and archconservatives,

but bristles at the mention of the Ku

Klux Klan. Negro leaders have no

quarrel with his conduct of office, and

he häs appointed Negroes as assistant

DAs. Several years ago when the police

vice squad tried to sweep James. Bald-

win's Another Country from bookstore

shelves, he refused to prosecute ("How

can you define obscenity?") and de-

nounced the censorship in stinging

terms, thus incurring the wrath of the

White Citizens Council. He sees no vir-

tue in capital punishment, but is some-

what ambivalent on the libertarian trend

in court decisions. In a law quarterly he

predicted that increasing emphasis on

"the rights of the defendant against the

state may come to be seen as the greatest

contribution our country has made to

this world we live in"; yet on occasion

he has implied that Supreme Court de-

cisions are a factor in the rising rate of

violent crime.

But since the start of his assassination

probe, his views on many issues have

changed appreciably: *A year ago I was

a mild hawk on Vietnam," he relates.

"But no more. I've discovered the gov-

ernment has told so many lies in this [the

assassination] case it can't be believed on

anything." He fears that the us is

evolving into a "proio-fascist state."

and cites as one indication the subtle

quashing of dissent by an increasingly

autocratic central government: The mas-

sive and still growing power of the CIA

and the defense establishment, he con-

tends, is transforming the old America

into a Kafkaesque society in which

power is equated with morality.

Garrison detests being called flam-

boyant, which is the most common

adjective applied to him, and in truth he

makes no conscious: effort. at ostenta-

tion. But he is one of those arresting

figures who automatically dominates any

gathering, and his bold strokes in battle,

as deliberate as his moves in chess; seem

to dramatize his formidable personality.

He also must rank as one of the more in-

tellectual big city DAs. He avidly de-

vours history - it reflects in his metaphor

-and quotes everything from Graham

Greene and Lewis Carroll to Polonius'

advice to Laertes. But he is not exactly

a square. Once known as a Bourbon

Street swinger, he is still familiar in a few

of the livelier French Quarter spots,

where he can sometimes be found hold-

ing forth on the piano and crooning a

basso profundo rendition of a tune popu-

lar half a generation ago. But mostly he

sticks to his study at home, and his

striking blonde wife and five kids.

It may be that in the end, the rank un-

fairness of the current siege on Garrison

will be its undoing, for the American

sense of fair play is not easily trifled with.

But do the people really want the truth

about the assassination, or is it more

comfortable 10 let sleeping dogs lie?

Garrison sees this as the pivotal question

in the history of the American demo-

cratic experiment: "In our incipient

superstate it really doesn't matter what

happened. Truth is what the government

chooses to tell you. Justice is what it

wants to happen. It is better for you

not to know that at midday on Novem-

1984

RAMPARTS 45

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## Page 45

ber. 22, 1963, there were many men in

many places glancing at their watches:

But if we do not fight for the truth now,.

we may never have another chance."

(THE FBI CLEARS A SUSPECT)

N THE MORNING AFTER the assassi-

nation, as the nation lay stunned

by grief, Garrison summoned

his staff to the office for a "brainstorm-

ing session" to explore the possibility

that Lee Harvey Oswald had accomplices

in New Orleans, where the previous sum-

mer he had stumped the streets advocat-

ing Fair Play for Cuba:

The DA's men put out feelers into the

city's netherworld, and it was First As-

sistant DA Frank Klein who registered

the first feedback. A slight, furtive, some-

time private eye named Jack S. Martin

confided that a David William Ferrie

had taken off on a sudden trip to. Texas

the afternoon of the assassination. The

tipster knew Ferrie well, although there

was bad blood between them. Both

had worked intermittently for the same

detective firm, W. Guy Banister &

Associates, and were amiliated with

the Apostolic Orthodox Old Catholic

Church, a sect steeped in theological

anti-communism.Anexceptionallyskilled

pilot, Ferrie had been dismissed from

Eastern Air Lines in 1962 due to pub

licity over alleged homosexual activities

According to Martin, Ferrie had com-

manded a Civil Air Patrol squadron of

which Oswald had once been a member.

He had taught Oswald to shoot with a

telescopic sight, and had become in-

volved with his protegé in an assassina-

tion plot. Less than two weeks before the

target date, Ferrie had made a trip to

Dallas. His assigned role in the assassina-

tion, Martin said, was to fly the escaping

conspirators to Matamoros, Mexico,

near. Brownsville, Texas.

When Ferrie returned to New Orleans

on the Monday following President

Kennedy's death, he was interrogated by

the DA's office. He said his trip had been

arranged "on the spur of the moment."'

With two companions, Alvin Beauboeuf

and Melvin Coffey, he had driven straight

through to Houston Friday night. On

Saturday afternoon; the three skated at

an ice rink; that evening they made the

short jog to Galveston and hunted geese

Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon they

headed back to New Orleans, but de-

toured to Alexandria, Louisiana, to visit

relatives of Beauboeuf.

46

RAMPARTS

Garrison was unconvinced by Ferrie's

account. An all-night dash through the

worst rainstorm in years to start a mer-

curial junket of over 1000 miles in three

days for recreational purposes was too

much to swallow. "It was a curious trip

to a curious place at a curious time,"

the DA recalls. He booked Ferrie as a

"fugitive from Texas" and handed him

over to the FBI. The G-men questioned

him intensively, then released him.

Since the 40-odd pages recording the

FBI interrogation of Ferrie are still

classified in the National Archives, one

can only surmise the reasons the Bureau

(stamped its file on him "closed."

Apparently the FBI did not take the

pilot too seriously. A short Bureau docu-

ment in the National Archives reveals

Ferrie had admitted being "publicly and

privately" critical of Kennedy for with

holding air cover at the Bay of Pigs, and

had used expressions like "he ought to

be shot," but agents agreed he did not

mean the threat literally.

Most convincing at the time, the fact

that Ferrie did not leave New Orleans

until hours after the assassination

seemed to rule out his role as a getaway

pilot. Moreover, the Stinson monoplare

he then owned was sitting at Lakefront

Airport in unflyable condition.

Accepting the FBI's judgment, Garri-

son dropped his investigation. "I had

full confidence in the FBI then," he ex-

plains. "There was no reason to try and

second guess them."

For three years the DA's faith in the

Bureau's prowess remained unshaken.

Then in November 1966, squeezed into

a tourist-class seat on an Eastern jet

headed for New York, his interest in the

possibility of a conspiracy was rekindled

Flanking him were Senator Russell B.

Long of Louisiana and Joseph Rault Jr,

a New Orleans oilman. The previous

week, Long had remarked in the course

of a press conference that he doubted the

findings of the Warren Commission. It

was at the height of the controversy

stirred by publications ripping at the

Commission's methods and conclusions.

Garrison bombarded the senator with

questions in the manner, he reminisces,

"of a prosecutor cross-examining a wit-

ness." Long maintained that there were

grievous flaws and unexplored territory

in the Warren Report. He considered it

highly implausible that a gunman of Os-

wald's "mediocre skill" could have fired

with pinpoint accuracy within a time

constraint barely sufficient "for a man

to get off two shots from a bolt-action

rifle, much less three."'

The DA's mind reverted to the stränge

trip of pilot David Ferrie, and he began

to wonder how perceptive the FBI had

really been in dismissing the whole thing.

When he returned to New Orleans, he

went into virtual seclusion in his study

at home, lucubrating over the volumes

of the Warren Report. When he became

convinced that Oswald could not have

acted alone, and that at least a phase of

the conspiracy had been centered in New

Orleans, he committed his office to a

full-scale probe. He launched it quietly;

preferring to work more efficiently in

the dark.

THE PROBE REFOCUSED ON Ferrie,

and on December 15 he was

brought in for further questioning

Asked pertinent details of the whirlwind

Texas trip in 1963, he begged lack of

memory and referred his questioners to

the FBI. What about the goose hunting?

"We did in fact get to where the geese

were and there were thousands," he re

counted. "But you couldn't approach

them. They were a wise bunch of birds."'

Pressed for details of what took place a!

the ice rink, Ferrie became irritated. "Ice

skate_ what do you think?" he snapped

It didn't take the DA's men long ti)

poke holes in Ferrie's story. Melvin"

Coffey, one of his companions on thi

1963 Texas trip, deposed that it was noi

a sudden inspiration:

Q. The trip was arranged before?

A. Yes.

Q. How long before?

• A. A couple of days.

The probers also determined that no one

had taken along any shotguns on the

"goose-hunting" trip.

In Houston, the ice skating alibi was

similarly discredited: In 1963, the FBI

had interviewed Chuck Rolland, proprie

tor of the Winterland Skating Rink.

"FERRIE contacted him by telephone

November 22, 1963, and asked for the

skating schedule, a Bureau report, one

of the few unclassified documents on

Ferrie, reveals. "Mr. FERRIE stated

that he was coming in from out of town

and desired to do some skating while in

Houston. On November 23, 1963, le-

tween 3:30 and 5:30 PM, Mr. FERRIE

and two companions came to the ring

and talked to Mr. ROLLAND." Thi

report continues that Ferrie and Rolland

---

## Page 46

ne

had a short general conversation, and

that Ferrie remarked that "he and his

companions would be in and out of the

skating rink during the weekend" (Com-

mission Documents 301). When Garri-

son's men recently talked to Rolland,

they obtained pertinent facts that the

FBI had either missed or failed to report

in: 1963. Rolland was certain that none

of the three men in Ferrie's party had ice

skated; Ferrie had spent the entire two

hours he was at the rink standing by a

paytelephone— and finally received acall.

At Houston International Airport,

more information was gleaned. Air serv.

ice personnel seemed to recall that in

1963 Ferrie had access to an airplane

based in Houston. In this craft, the flight

to Matamoros would take little more

than an hour.

Ferrie had patently lied about the pur-

pose of the trip. One of the standard

tactics of bank robbers is to escape from

The scene of the crime in a "hot car" that

cannot be traced to them, then switch

to a "cold car"' of their own to complete

the getaway. Garrison considers it pos-

-sible that Ferrie may have been the pilot

of a second craft in a two-stage escape of

the: Dallas assassins to south of the

horder, or may have been slated to be a

backup pilot in the event contingency

plans were activated.

Did Ferrie know Oswald? The pilot

denied it, but the evidence mounts that

he did. For example, there is now in

Garrison's hands information that when

(swald was arrested by Dallas police, he

had in his possession a current New-Or-

leans library card issued to David Ferrie.

Keinforcing the validity of this informa-

lion' is a Secret Service report on the

questioning of Ferrie by that agency

when he was in federal custody in 1963

During an otherwise mild interrogation;

Ferrie was asked, strangely enough, if he

lent his library card to Oswald. No, he

replied, producing a card from the New

Orleans public library in the name Dr:

avid Ferrie. That card had expired.

When he realized he was a suspect in

Garrison's current investigation, Ferrie

seemed to deteriorate. By the time he

ilied an February 22, 1967, he was a

nervous wreck, subsisting on endless

cigarettes and cups of coffee and enough

tranquitizers to pacily an army. He had

sought out the press only days before his

death, labeling the probe a "fraud" and

complaining that he was the victim of a

"witch hunt." "I suppose he has me

pegged as a getaway pilot," he remarked

When Garrison delivered his epitaph

of Ferrie as "'one of history's most im-

portant individuals," most of the press

winked knowingly. The probe was, after

all, a publicity stunt, and the DA had

had his headlines. Now that his prime

suspect had conveniently passed away,

he had the perfect excuse to inter his

probe alongside the deceased pilot.

But for DA Jim Garrison, it was not

the end but the beginning.

[544 CAMP STREET, NEW ORLEANS]

"HILE THE LEGEND '544 Camp

was stamped on some of the

literature that Oswald had in his posses-

sion at the time of his arrest (for "dis-

turbing the peace"] in New Orleans,

extensive. investigation was not able

to connect Oswald with that address"

(Warren Report, p. 408). So said the

Commission. But Garrison has con-

nected Oswald with that address. His

investigation shows that Oswald func-

tioned in a paramilitary right wing

milieu. of which 544 Camp Street was a

erve center, and that Oswald's ostenta

ious "Fair Play for Cuba" advocaes

was nothing more than a facade.

The dilapidated building at 544 Camp

Street is on the corner of Lafayette Place.

Shortly after news"of Garrison's investi-

gation broke, I went to 531 Lafayette

Place, an address given me by Minute-

men defector Jerry Milton Brooks as the

office of W. Guy Banister, a former FBI

official who ran a private detective

agency. According to Brooks; who had

been a trusted Minutemen aide, Banister

was a member of the Minutemen and

head of the Anti-Communism League of

the Caribbean, assertedly an intermedi.

ary between the CIA and Caribbean in-

surgency movements. Brooks said he

had worked for Banister on "anti-

Communist." research in 1961-1962, and

had known David Ferrie as a frequent

visitor to Banister's office.

Banister had died of an apparent heart

attack in the summer of 1964. But

Brooks had told me of two associates

whom I hoped to find. One was Hugh F.

Ward; a young investigator for Banister.

who also belonged to the Minutemen

and the Anti-Communism League, Then

I learned that Ward, too, was dead. Re-

portedly taught to fly by David Ferrie,

he was at the controls of a Piper Aztec

DocId:32245514 Page 46

when it plunged so earth near Ciudad

Victoria, Mexico, May-23, 1965.

The other associate was Maurice

Brooks Gatlin Sr, legal counsel to the

Anti-Communism League of the Carib

bean. Jerry Brooks said he had once been

a sort of protegé of Gatlin and was in his

confidence. Brooks believed Gatlin's

frequent world travels were as a "irans.

porter" for the CIA: As an example, he

said, Gatlin remarked about 1962, in a

self-important manner, that he had

$100,000 of CIA money earmarked for a

French right-wing clique that was going

to attempt to assassinate General de

Gaulle; shortly afterward Gatlin flew to

Paris. The search for Gatlin, however,

was likewise futile: in 1964 he fell or was

pushed from the sixth floor of the El

Panama Hotet in Panama during the

early morning, and was killed instantly.

But the trip to 531 Lafayette Place was

not entirely fruitless. The address, I dis-

covered, was a side entrance to 544

Camp Street. Entering either at the front

or the side, one arrives via a walkup

..staircase.at the.same second floor space.

That second floor once housed the Cu-

ban Democratic Revolutionary Front

and W. Guy Banister & Associates:

Guy Banister had been in charge of.

the Chicago FBI office before retiring

in 1955 and becoming New Orleans

deputy superintendent of police for sev-

eral years. He was regarded as one of the

city's most vocal anti-Castroites, and

published the racist Louisiana Intelli-

gence Digest, which depicted integration

as a communist conspiracy. Evidence of

his relationship with the federal intelli-

gence apparat has recently surfaced. A

man who knew Banister well has told

Garrison that Banister became asso-

ciated with the Office of Naval Intelli-

gence through the recommendation of

Guy Johnson, an ONI reserve officer

and the first attorney for Clay Shaw

when he was arrested by Garrison.

A copyrighted story in the New Or-

leans States-Item, April 25, 1967, further

illuminates the Camp Street scene: The

newspaper, which at the time had an

investigative team working parallel to

the Garrison probe, reported that a re-

liable source close to Banister said he

had

seen 50 to 100 boxes marked

"Schlumberger" in Banister's office-

storeroom early in 1961 before the Bay

of Pigs. The boxes contained, rifle

grenades, land mines and unique "little

missiles." Banister, explained that "the

RAMPARTS 47

---

## Page 47

stuff would just be there overnight... a

bunch of fellows: connected with the

Cuban deal asked to leave it there over-

night." It was all right, assured Banister,

"I have approval from somebody."

The "somebody," one can surmise

from the Gordon Novel episode which

follows, was the CIA. Novel is wanted

by the DA as a matérial witness in the

1961 burglary of the Schlumberger Well

Co. munitions dump near New Orleans:

Subpoenaed. by the grand jury last

March, Novel fled to McLean, Virginia,

next door to the CIA complex at Lang-

ley, and took a lie detector test admin-

istered by a former Army intelligence

officer which, he boasted to the press,

proved Garrison's probe was a fraud. He

then skipped first to Montreal and then

to Columbus, Ohio, from where Gover-

nor James Rhodes, in one of the most

absurd stipulations ever attached to a

dormally routine procedure, refuses to

extradite him unless Garrison agrees not

to question him our the assassination.

From his Ohio sanctuary the fugitive

cryptically asserted that the munitions

caper was one of the most patriotic

burglaries in history." When an enter-

prising reporter took him to a marathon

party, Novel's indiscreet tongue loos-

ened further. According to the States-

Item article, Novel's oft-repeated ac-

count was that the munitions bunker.

was a CIA staging point for war materiel

destined for use in the impending Bay of

Pigs invasion. He is quoted as saying

that on the day. the munitions were

picked up, he was called by his CIA

contact and told to join a group which

was ordered to transport munitions from

the bunker to New Orleans.". The key to

the bunker was provided by his CIA

contact. Novel reportedly said the others

in the CIA group at the bunker were

David Ferrie, Sergio Arcacha Smith-

New Orleans delegate to the Cuban De-

mocratic Revolutionary Front-and sev-

eral Cubans. The munitions, according

10 his account, were dropped in Novel's

office, Ferrie's home and Banister's

office-storeroom.

Ferrie worked on and off for Banister

as an investigator, and the mutual affinity

was such.that in 1962, when Eastern Air

Lines was in the process of dismissing

Ferrie for publicity over alleged homo-

sexual

acts, Banister appeared at a

Miami hearing and delivered an impas-

sioned plea on his behalf. When Banister

suddenly died, the. ex-pilot evidently

acquired part of his files. shen he

realized he was a prime suspect in Gar-

rison's probe, Ferrie systematically dis-

posed of his papers and documents for

the years 1962 and 1963. But in photo-

copying the bibliography of a cancer

paper he had written (at one time he had

caged mice in his home on which he

experimented with cancer implants), he

inadvertantly overlapped the bottom

portion of notes recording the disposi-

tions. Included is the notation: "Copies

of B's [presumably Banister's) microfilm

files to Atlanta rite-wingers [sic]."

The Banister files were reputed to be

the largest collection

of "anti-com-

munist intelligence" in Louisiana, and

part were sold by his widow to the Sov-

ereignty Commission, a sort of state

HUAC, where a Garrison investigator

was able to examine them. Banister's

filing system was modeled after the

FBI's, and contained files on both friends

and foes. The "10" and "23" classifica-

tion dealt with Cuban matters; 23-5, for

example, was labeled Cuban Democratic

Revolutionary Front and 10-209 simply

Cuban File. There was a main file, 23-14,

labeled Shaw File, but someone had

completely stripped it before Garrison's

" man got there.

The Cuban Democratic Revolutionary

Front, which occupied what was grandi-

osely called Suite 6 at 544 Camp Street,

was the coalition of Cuban exile "lib

eration" groups operating under CIA

aegis that mounted the Bay of Pigs in-

vasion. Arcacha, the New Orleans dele-

gate of the. Miami-based organization,

is a dapper, moustachioed man who had

served in Batista's diplomatic corps.

There are numerous witnesses who at-

test that he was a confidant of Banister

and Ferrie, and that his office was a way

station for the mixed bag of Cuban

exiles and American adventurers in-

volved in the "liberation" movement.

Late in 1962, the Front closed up shop,

at which time. Arcacha became. a

founder of the Crusade to Free Cuba,

a paramilitary group of militant right

wingers. In March 1963, he moved to

Houston, Texas. Early in his investiga-

tion, Garrison charged Arcacha with

being a party to the munitions burglary

with Novel and Ferrie, but by this time

he was living in Dallas, where he refused

to talk to the DA's men without Dallas

police and assistant DA Bill Alexander

present. When Garrison obtained an

arrest warrant and sought to extradite

48 RAMPARTS

him, Texas Governor John Connally

would not sign the papers.

As for Oswald and 544 Camp Street;

Garrison déclares that 'we have several

witnesses who can testify they observed

Oswald there on a number of occasions,"

One witness is David L. Lewis, another

in Banister's stable of investigators. In

late 1962, Lewis says, he was drinking

coffee in the restaurant next to 544 Camp

Street when Cuban exile Carlos Quiroga,:

who was close to Arcacha, came in with

a young man he introduced as Leon Os:

wald. A few days later, Lewis saw

Quiroga, Oswald and Ferrie together at

544 Camp Street. A few days after that,

he barged into Banister's office and in-

terrupted a meeting between Banister,

Quiroga; Ferrie and Leon Oswald. It was

not until he was interviewed by Garrison

that Lewis concluded that Leon Oswald

was probably Lee Harvey Oswald. Not-

ing that the "natural deaths of Banister

and • Ferrie were strikingly similar,

Lewis has slipped into seclusion.

[CIA: THE COMMON DENOMINATOR]

NOR ABOUT THE NIGHT of Sep.

tember 16, 1963, a nondescript

Leon Oswald, the brilliant, er

ratic David Ferrie, and a courtly

executive-type man named Clem Ber-

trand discussed a guerrilla ambush of

President Kennedy in Ferrie's apart-

ment. There was talk of "triangulation

of fire the availability of exit one

man had to be sacrificed to give the other

one or two gunmen time to escape:". Es-

cape out of the country would be by a

plane flown by Ferrie. This was the nub

of the testimony of Perry, Raymond

Russo at a preliminary hearing for Clay

Shaw, accused by Garrison of conspir:

acy in the assassination. Russo identified

Leon Oswald as Lee Harvey Oswald, and

Clem Bertrand as Clay Shaw:

What would bring three such widely

disparate men together in the first place.

One possible answer: the CIA.

On the fringe of downtown New Or-

leans, the building at 544 Camp Street is

across the street from the governmen:

building which in 1963 housed the loca!

CIA headquarters. One block away, al

640 Magazine Street, is the William B

Reily Co., a coffee firm where Oswald

was employed that pivotal summer. He

worked from May 10 to July 19, earning

a total of $548:41 (Commission Exhibits

• 1154). Despite this, he did not seem

hard put to support Marina and their

---

## Page 48

child. Nor did he seem particularly con-

cerned about being fired. The personnel

manager of the Reily Co. told the Secret

Service that ' there would be times when

Oswald would be gone fer periods of an

hour or longer and when questioned he

could not furnish a plausible explanation

as to where he had been -° (CE 1154).

Next door is the Crescent City Garage,

whose owner, Adrian T. Alba, testified

that Oswald spent hours on end in his

waiting room buried in gun magazines

(Warren Report, Vol. 10, p. 226). Shortlyn

before leaving the coffee firm, Oswald

mentioned to Alba that his employmerit

application was about to be accepted

"out there where the gold is"-the

NASA Saturn missile plant at Gentilly,

a suburb (Vol. 10, p. 226).

On the face of it, the idea that Oswald

could get a job'at a space agency installa-

tion requiring security clearance seems

preposterous. He was a self-avowed

Marxist who had tried to renounce his

American citizenship in Moscow, mar-

ried the niece of a Soviet KGB colonel,

openly engaged in "Fair Play For Cuba"

activity, and attempted to join the Com-

munist Party, U:S:A: But Garrison

points out that it is an open secret that

the CIA uses the NASA facility as a

cover for clandestine operations. And it

is his contention that Oswald was a:

"witting" agent of the CIA.

There is a surfeit of indications of

Oswald's status. One is the story of

Donald P. Norton, who claims he wás

impressed into the Agency's service in

1957 under threat of exposure as a homo-

sexual: In September 1962, Norton re-

lated, he was dispatched from Atlanta

lo Mexico with $50,000 for an anti-

Castro group. He had no sooner regis-

tered in the Yamajel Hotel in Monterrey,

Mexico, per instructions, than he was

contacted by one Harvey Lee, a dead

ringer for Oswald except that his hair

seemed slightly thicker. In exchange for

the money, Lee gave him a briefcase

containing documents in manila en-

velopes. According to plan, Norton de-

livered the briefcase to an employee of

an American oil firm in Calgary, Alber-

ta; who repeated the pass phrase, "The

weather is very warm in Tulsa:"

Norton also contends he met David

Ferrie earlier in his CIA career. In early

1958, he was tapped for a courier trip to

Cuba and told to meet his contact at the

Eastern Air Lines counter at the Atlanta

airport. The contact was a singular-

DocId:32245514 Pade

48

appearing man who called himself Hugh

Pharris or Ferris; Norton now states it

was Ferrie: "Here are your samples,

Ferrie remarked, handing Norton

phonograph record. "It is in the jacket

"It" was $150,000, which Norton duly

delivered to a Cuban television perform-

er in Havana. Norton asserts he went to

Freeport, Grand Bahamas, on an Agency

assignment late in 1966, and upon his

return to Miami his contact instructed

that "something was happening in New

Orleans, and that I [Norton) should take

a long, quiet vacation."

He did, and started to fret about the

"people who have died in recent months

- like Ferrie." Then he decided to con-

tact Garrison. Norton was given a lie

detector test, and there were no indica-

tions of deception.

Garrison believes that Oswald was

schooled in covertoperations by.the.CIA

while in the Marine Corps at the Atsugi

Naval Station in Japan, a U-2 facility

(interestingly, two possibly relevant doc

uments; "'Oswald's access to information

about the U-2" (CD 931] and "Repro-

duction of CIA official dossier on Os-

wald": [CD 692) are still classified in the

National Archives). Curiously; the mis-

cast Marine who was constantly in hot :

water had a Crypto clearance on top of a

Top Secret clearance, and was given two

electronics courses. "Isn't it odd," prods

Garrison,

"that even though he sup

posedly defected to the Soviet Union

with Top Secret data on our radar nets;

no action was taken against him when

he came back to the United States?"

Equally odd is Oswald's acquisition of

Russian language ability. Although the

: Warren Report spread the fiction that he

was self-taught, and Oswald himself

falsely told a New Orleans acquaintance

that he had studied Russian at Tulane

University, the likelihood is that he was

tutored at the CIA's Atsugi station.

Marine: Corps records reflect that on

February 25, 1959, at the conclusion of

his Atsugi tour of duty, he was given a

Russian language proficiency test (Fol-

som Exhibit No. 1, p. 7). A former

Marine comrade, Kerry Thornley, de-

posed to Garrison that Oswald con-

versed in Russian with John Reine

Heindel every morning at muster.

Oswald's "defection" to the

Soviet

Union also smacks of being CIA-initi-

ated. In retrospect, the clearance of U.S

departure and reentry formalities seems

unduly expeditious. When the Marine

Corps post facto downgraded his dis-

charge to less than honorable, Oswald

indignantly wrote Secretary of the Navy

John B. Connally, "I have and allways

[sic] had the full sanction of the. U.S

Embassy, Moscow USSR and hence the

U.S. government" (Warren Report, p

710): When an interviewer on a New

Orleans radio station asked him on

August 21, 1963, if he had had a govern-

ment subsidy during his three years in

Russia, the normally articulate Oswald

stammered badly: "Well, as I'er, well, I

will answer that question directly then

as you will not rest until you get your

answer er, I worked in Russia, er, 1 was

er under the protection er, of the er, that

is to say I was not under protection of

the American government but I was at

all times er, considered an American

citizen." (This is the original version

as disseminated by the Associated Press.

The version released by the Warren Com-

mission. has been edited to delete the

hemming and hawing and the apparent

slip of the tongue, "I was under the pro-

tection." [Vol. 21; p. 6391.

Possibly the most cogent suggestion of

Oswald's. mission in the Soviet Union

can be found in the testimony of Dennis

H. Ofstein, a fellow-employee at Jag

gars-Chiles-Stovall Co. in Dallas (this

is the photographic/graphic arts firm

where Oswald worked upon his return:

from Russia; it receives many classified

government contracts). Ofstein's smat-

tering of Russian evidently set the usu

ally phlegmatic Oswald to talking. "All

the time I was in Minsk I never saw a

vapor trail," Ofstein quotes him "He

also mentioned about the disbursement

(dispersement?) of military units," Of.

stein continued,"saying they didn't in

termingle their: armored divisions and

infantry divisions and various units the

way we do in the United States, and they

would have all of their aircraft in one

geographical location and their tanks in

another geographical location, and their

infantry in another::." On one occa-

sion; Oswald asked Ofstein to enlarge a

photograph taken in Russia which, he

explained, represented "some military

headquarters and that the guards sta-

tioned there were armed with weapons

and ammunition and had orders to shoot

any trespassers " (Vol. 10, p. 202). Os-

wald's inordinate interest in the contrails

of high fying aircraft, Soviet military

deployment and a military facility in-

volving an element of risk to photograph

RAMPARTS 49

---

## Page 49

On the left is the entrance to 544 Camp' Sr. On the right; 531 Lafayette, Pl.

libraries on Thursday. The possible im-

plication of his visits was not overlooked

by the FBI, which confiscated every book

he ever charged out, and never returned

them. A pjece that may fit into the puzzle

is the discovery by Garrison of an adult

borrower's card issued by the New Or

leans public library in the name Clem

Bertrand. The business address shown is

the International Trade Mart [Shaw's

former place of employment], and the

home address 3100. Louisiana Avenue

Parkway, a wrong number; but conspic-

nously close to that of David Ferrie at

The Reily Bldg. (See map opposite)

hardly seems the natural curiosity of a

hapless ex-Marine private.

An intriguing entry in Oswald's ad-

dress book is the word ""microdots"

appearing on the page on which he has

notated the address and phone number

of Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall (CE 18, p. 45).

Microdots are a clandestine means of

communication developed by German

intelligence during World War Il and

still in general use among espionage

agencies. The technique is to photograph

the document to be transmitted and

vastly reduce the negative to a size that

will fit inside a period. The microdot

can be inserted in an innocuous letter or

magazine and mailed, or left in a "dead

drop"-a prearranged location for the

deposit and pickup of messages.

Thus it may be significant that Oswald

obtained library cards in Dallas and

New Orleans, and usually visited the

3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. There

may be a pattern here, since Oswald sup-

posedly carried a card issued to Ferrie

when arrested in Dallas.

Still another hint of Oswald's intelli-

gence status is the inventory of his prop

erty seized by Dallas police after the

assassination. Included is such sophisti

cated optical equipment as a Sterio

Realist camera, a Hanza camera timer,

filters, a small German camera, a Wol-

lensak 15 power telescope, Micron 6X

binoculars and a variety of film- hardly

the usual accouterments of a lowly ware-

houseman (Stovall Exhibits)

Upon his return from Russia, the man

who subscribed to Pravda in the Marine

Corps and lectured his fellow Marines

on Marxist dialectics set about insti-

tutionalizing his leftist facade. He wrote

ingratiating letters to the national head-

quarters of the Communist Party, Fair

Play for Cuba Committee and Socialist

Photographs by

William W. Turner

Workers Party (a copy of the famous

snapshot. of Oswald with a revolver on

his hip, a rifle in one hand and the Party

organ, the Militant, in the other was

mailed to the SWP office in New York

in April 1963). Garrison believes the

facade was intended to facilitate. 'his

entry into communist countries for spe

cial missions.

Ferrie's involvement with the CIA

seems to stem mainly from his anti-

Castro paramilitary activity, although

there is a suggestion that he was at one

time a pilot for the Agency. In the late

1940s and early 1950s he flew lighi

planes commercially in the Cleveland

Ohio area, and was rated by his col-

leagues as an outstanding pilot. In the

middle 1950s there is an untraceable gap

in his career. Then he turns up as an

Eastern Air Lines pilot. Although he

supposedly obtained an instrument rat

ing at the Sunnyside, Flying School in

Tampa, Florida, there is no record that

any such school ever existed.

A clue to Ferrie's activities may lie in

the loss of hair he suffered. A fellow eni

ployee at Eastern recalls that when

Ferrie first joined the line he was "hand-

some and friendly," but in the end be

came "moody and paranoiac afraid the

communists were out to get him.". The

personality change coincided with a

gradual loss of hair. First a bald spot

appeared, which Ferrie explained was

caused by acid dripping from a plane

battery. Then the hair began falling out

Map by John Williams

---

## Page 50

SOUTH

CHURCH

•POYDRAS

CAPDEVILLE

GIROD

BOARD OF

TRAD

PE

TANCE

CRO

WELLS

IMMERCE

NOTRE

WATER

as an

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nt rate

ool ins

d thạt

lie in

iw emi

when

hand-

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be-

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po

ng

CARONDELE

ES AVE

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CHAI

NORTH.

DORS

DECA

AN ASSASSIN'S GUIDE TO NEW ORLEANS

1. The old. International Trade Mart. During the summer of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald

passed out "Fair Play for Cuba" literature at its entrarice. Some of the literature was

stamped with the address "544 Camp St., New Orlears, La."'

2.

The building at 544 Camp Street. In 1961-63, the building was a beehive of activity by

anti-Castro groups, some sponsored by the ClA. A side entrance at 531 Lafayette Place

was used by the late Guy Banister, a private detective who employed David Ferrie. Garrison

has linked Oswald to the building's occupants.

3.

The old U.S. Courthouse across from 544 Camp Street. In 1963 the ClA had an office in

the

Courthouse.

The William B. Reily Co. at 640 Magazine Street, a coffee firm where Oswald was em-

ployed during the summer of 1963.

5.

The Crescent City Garage, next door to the Reily Co. Owner Adrian Alba told the Warren

Commission that Oswald frequently visited the garage to read his gun magazines, and once

mentioned that he would soon be obtaining a job at the Space Agency facitity at Gentilly, a

New Orleans suburb.

6.

The new International Trade Mart, opened in 1965. Clay Shaw, accused by Garrison as

an assassination conspirator, was executive manager of the Mart until his retirement in

1965.

---

## Page 51

in clumps-Ferrie desperately studied

medicine. to try to halt the process-

until his body was entirely devoid of

hair. One speculation is that he was

moonlighting and suffered a physiolog-

ical reaction to exposure to the extreme

altitudes required for clandestine flights.

Chinese Nationalist U-2 pilots report-

edly have suffered the same hair-loss

phenomenon.

Oneot Ferrie's covert tasks in the New

Orleans area was to drill small teams in

guerrilla: warfare. One of his young

proteges has revealed that he trained

•some of his Civil Air Patrol cadets and

Cubans and formed them into five-man

small weapons units, this under the

auspices of the Marine Corps and State

Department. Coupled with this is the

information from another former pro-

tege that Ferrie confided "he was work-

ing for the CIA rescuing Cubans out of

Castro prisons," and on one occasion

was called to Miami so that the ClA

could "test him to see if he was the type

of person who told his business to any-

body,". In a speech before the Military

Order of World Wars in New Orleans in

late 1961, Ferrie rejated that he had

trained pilots in Guatemala for the Bay

of Pigs, and professed bitter disappoint-

ment that they were not used.

Clay Shaw, an international trade

official with top-level contacts in Latin

Amertea and Europe, would nave been a

natural target for CIA recruitment.

Gordop Novel, who was acquainted

with Shaw, was quoted by the States-

Item as venturing that Shaw may have

been asked by the CIA to observe the

traffic of foreign commerce through New

Orleans. More persuasive is Shaw's

membership on the board of directors of

a firm called Centro Mondiale Commer-

ciale in Rome. According to the news-

papers Paese Sera of Rome and Le De:

voir of Montreal, among others of the

foreign press, CMC was an obscure but

well-financed firm that was ousted from

Italy by the police because it was sus-

pected of being a CIA front. It trans-

planted its operation to the more friendly

climate of Johannesburg, South Africa,

where it still functions:

The same group that incorporated

CMC also set up a firm called Permidex

Corporation in Switzerland, but that

company was dissolved by the Swiss

government when it was proved to be a

conduit for funds destined for the Secret

Army Organization (OAS), a group of

right-wing French officers dedicated to

"keeping Algeria French"' by force of

arms. The composition of the CMC

group with which Shaw was associated

is of more than cursory interest, since it

includes a former U.S, intelligence off-

cer, now an executive of the Bank of

Montreal; the publisher of the neo-Nazi

National-Zeitung of Germany; Prince

Guitere de Spadaforo, an Italian in-

dustrialist related by marriage to Hitler

'finance minister Hjalmar Schacht; and

the lawyer to the Italian royal family and

secretary of the Italian neo-Fascist

Party: Through his attorney, Shaw has

stated he joined the CMC board of di-

rectors in 1958 at the insistence of his

own board of directors of the Interna-

tional Trade Mart of New Orleans.

page of the States-Item carried

two news stories which, Garri-

son asserts, symbolize the bitter end.of

the paramilitary right's tolerance of John

F. Kennedy. "A-Treaty Signing Set On

Monday" was the lead to one story, dis-

closing that the test ban treaty was

about to become reality and that a

NATO Warsaw bloc nonaggression pact

was in the wind. "Explosives Cache

Home Lent to Cuban, Says Owner's

Wife,"' announced the lead to another

story, telling of an FBI raid on a military

training site and arms cache on the north

side of Lake Pontchartrain. Agents had

seized more than a ton of dynamite, 20

100-pound bomb casings, fuses; napalm

ingredients and other war materiel.

The whipsaw developments-Kenne-

dy's patent determination to effect a

rapprochement with the communist na-

tions on the one hand, his crackdown

under the Neutrality Act on anti-Castro

paramilitary groups on the other-trig-

gered a rage against the President that

would find vent in his assassination.

The true nature of the group raided at

Lake Pontchartrain was not evident

from the story. The FBI announced no

arrests, and the wife of the property

owner, Mrs. William J. McLaney, gave

out the cover story that the premises had

been loaned to a newly-arrived Cuban

named Jose Juarez as a favor to friends

in Cuba. (McLaney had been well-

known as a gambler associated with the

Tropicana Hotel in Havana before being

ousted by Castro in 1960.)

According to information leaked to

Garrison by another government agency,

the FBI had in fact arrested 11 men, then

quietly released them: Among those in

I the net was: Aceto Pedro Amores, be

lieved to be a former Batista official who

slipped out of Cuba in 1960. Also

caught was Richard Lauchli f, one of

the foundertof the Mintemen, Lauchh,

who possessed a federal license to manu-

facture weapons in his Collinsville, Illi

nois machine shop, was arrested again

in 1964 when Treasury investigators,

posing as agents of a South American

country, trapped him in a deal to sell a

huge quantity of illicit automatic arms

The others arrested were American ad

venturers and Cuban exiles.

Garrison believes that the assassina

ion team-at Deatey Plaza included rene-

gade Minutemen operating without the

knowledse ofthe group's central head

quarters. Free-lance terrorism has

plagued Minutemen national coordina-

tor Robert DePugh since the organiza

tion's inception, and there have been

several abortive assassination schemes

hatched by individuat cliques.

For example, in 1962, a Dallas ex

-tremist using the pseudonym John Mor

ris was given money by a Minutemen

clique at the Liberty Mall in Kansas

City to subsidize the sniper slaying of

Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkan-

sas. The plan called for Morris to escape

in a plane flown by a Texas man, büt

DePugh got wind of it and aborted it

And a Cuban exile close to Guy Banister

has told Garrison that in 1962 Minute

man Banister seriously discussed "pur.

ling poison in the air conditioming ducts

in the Havana: Palace and killing al

oçeupans..

The latest plot to surface was formu-

lated in-Dallas in September 1966; its

target was Stanley Marcus of the Nei

man-Marcus department store, a pro-

United Nations liberal who somehow

has managed to thrive in rigidly con-

-servative Dallas: According to an in-

formant who was present, several

Minutemen decided to ambush Márcus

outside of Dallas,

because

another

assassination in Dallas would be too

much." Again, there was a leak and the

plan fell through.

However, as the

Warren Report might phrase it, such

schemes "establish the propensity w

kill" on the part of the radical right:

"Minutemen" has become an almost

generic term for the paramilitary right,

a far from homogenous movement

Some elements are driven primarily by

52 RAMPARTS

---

## Page 52

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race hatred and anti-Semitism, others by

perfervid anti-communism, still others

by a personal interest in overthrowing

Castro and regaining property or sine-

cures in the Cuban bureaucracy. There

is considerable cross-pollination, espe-

cially in the South. A graphic example

can be found in rural St. Bernard

Parish, near New Orleans. A state police

undercover investigator relates that in-

side a farmhouse which serves as à Ku

Klux Klan regional headquarters äre

Nazi emblems and a shrine to Horst

Wessel, and in back, behind a copse of

trees, a rifle range and large cache of

guns belonging to Minutemen.

There is intense factionalism inside the

paramilitary right, and in recent years a

power struggle for hegemony over the

inovement raged between DePugh of the

Minutemen and the late George Lincoln

Rockwell of the American Nazis. In a

recent public statement DePugh com-

mented that "fascism is the number one

danger in this country today," and that

the "fascists" are using anti-communism

as a smokescreen to.cover.their own rush

for power. I had. occasion to talk to

DePugh, and suggested to him that the

guerrilla team that bushwhacked the

President included Minutemen who had

drifted into the Nazi orbit. "I'm inclined

to agree," he said

One of the most inexplicable entries in

Oswald's address book is "Nat. Sed

Dan Burros, Lincoln Rockwell, Arling-

con, Virginia" (CE 18, P. SS). Other

right-wing figures in the address book

are Carlos Bringuier of the Cuban Stu-

dent Directorate in New Orleans and

retired General Edwin Walker of Dallas,

Bringuier told the Commission that Os

wald had approached him and ofiered to

-train Cuban exiles in Marine tactics, but

he suspected Oswald was a plant.

An anti-Castro adventurer who trained

in the Florida Keys prior to the assassi

nation claims that by November 22

1963, there was not one but several para-

military teams gunning for Kennedy.

They had been in contact, he said, with

wealthy: backers who wanted to see

Kennedy dead and had been given

money to do the job.

[THE MAKING OF A PATSY)

N JANUARY 20, 1961, TWO MEN

approached Oscar W. Deslatte,

assistant manager of the Bolton

Ford Truck Center in New Orleans, and

identified themselves as members of the

32245514 Pane 52

Friends of Démocratic Cuba. To help

their cause, they wanted to purchase ten

trucks at cost. Deslatte filled out a bid

form, recording their names as Joseph

Moore and Oswald. The young man call-

ing himself Oswald said that if the trucks

were purchased he would be the one to

pay for them. This is the gist of an inci-

dent recorded by the FBI immediately

after the assassination and dug out of

the obscurity of the Archives by Garri-

son researcher Tom Bethell (CD 1542).

Garrison has located the former Bo!-

ton Ford manager who was present at

the time, Fred A. Sewell. He recalled that

the younger "skinny" man gave the full

name Lee Oswald, and that "Joseph

Moore'' actually was a Cuban who gave

a Cuban name on the bid form. What is

puzzling about the incident is that Lee

Harvey Oswald was in Minsk, Russia

in 1961, thus raising the question of who

was impersonating him and why

Any answer must necessarily be con-

jecture, but it may be significant to recall

that Lee Harvey @swald spent four days

in New Orleans in September 1959 be-

fore departing on the first leg of his jour-

ney to the Soviet Union aboard the SS

Marion Lykes (CE 1963). Garrison has

picked up indications that Oswald's de-

cision to embark via ship from New

Orleans was dictated by intelligence con-

siderations. It is not beyord the realm of

possibility that during the four-day

period in the city he was inducted into a

CIA group, an anti-Castro member of

which would later use Oswald's name,

The genesis of the Friends of Demo-

cratic Cuba is not inconsistent with this

theory. One of the incorporators of the

organization was Guy Banister, the

Minutemen/CIA type. Another was

William Wayne Dalzell who knew Ferrie

and Arcacha, and was still another in the

Banister coterie of sleuths. To a States-

• Item reporter he admitted he was CIA.

The Friends of Democratic Cuba was

founded January 9, 1961, less than two

weeks before the Bolton Ford incident.

It was intended as a kind of American

auxiliary to Arcacha's all-Cuban Revo-

lutionary Front, and Arcacha was instru-

mental in its creation. Government ad-

visors to the Friends, says an informant

who was closely involved with the

group, were a CIA man named Logan

and the FBI's Regis Kennedy, who in-

voked executive privilege when ques-

tioned not long ago by the New Orleans

grand jury looking into the assassina-

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54 RAMPARTS

tion. The Friends were short-lived, and

the Front slowly dissolved after the

abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. The die-

hard remnants of these moribund groups

formed the Free Cuba movement.

The Secret Service stumbled upon the

Free Cuba group in its hectic post-as-

sassination inquiries at 544 Camp Street,

but apparently the T-men were com-

pletely sold on Oswald's left-wing orien-

tation and never thought to connect him

with a right-wing outfit. Learning that

"Cuban revolutionaries" had occupied

space at that address, Secret Service men

talked to a Cuban exile accountant who

said that "those Cubans were members

of organizations known as 'Crusade to

Free Cuba Committee' and 'Cuban Rev-

olutionary Council.'" Arcacha, the ac-

countant related, was authorized to sign

checks on both

accounts (CE 3119).

He said that. Arcacha continued with the

Free Cuba group even after he had been

ousted from the CRC (CE 1414). There

is no record that the Secret Service

questioned Arcacha about Oswald.

*It was a grievous omission, for it is

now manifest that Oswald' was inti-

mately involved with the Free Cuba

group. One indication is implicit in the

testimony of Mrs. Sylvia Odio, an

aristocratic Cuban refugee. When Lee

Harvey Oswald's picture was flashed on

television after the assassination, she

fainted. She explained to the Warren

Commission that in late September 1963,

three men appeared unannounced at her

Dallas apartment seeking assistance for

the anti-Castro movement. The spokes-

man gave a "war name" that sounded

like Leopoldo; a second man was intro-

duced as something like, Angelo. The

third man was introduced as Leon Os-

wald, and Mrs. Odio was certain he was

the accused assassin:

Unsure of the trio's true allegiance,

Mrs. Odio was noncommittal: They left;

after commenting that they had just ar-

rived from New Orleans and were leav-

ing shortly "on a trip."' The next

morning Leopoldo telephoned Mrs.

Odio with a new sales pitch: "Leon" was

an ex-Marine, he said. "He told us we

don't have any guts, you Cubans, be-

cause President Kennedy should have

been assassinated after: the Bay of Pigs

..: It is easy to do. He has told us."

When his listener became upset at talk of

killing Kennedy, Leopoldo remarked

that it would be just as easy to kill the

Cuban Premier. Leon was an expert shot;

he said, a man who "could do anything

like getting underground in Cuba, like

killing Castro" (Vol. 11, pp. 367-389).

• Just before the Warren Report went to

press, the FBI located three men possibly

identical with Mrs. Odio's provocative

visitors. Some three weeks after the visit,

Loren Eugene Hall and William Sey-

mour had been arrested by the Dallas

police on a technical narcotics charge.

Significantly, their arrest record bore the

notation: "Active in the anti-Castro

movement... Committee to Free Cuba."

G-men traced them and a companion;

Lawrence Howard Jr, to the west coast.

Hall admitted to the FBI that he,

Howard and Seymour had been to see

Mrs. Odio, whose apartment he correctly

located on Magellan Circle, "to ask her

assistance in the movement," presum-

ably the Free Cuba movement. But

Howard, although conceding he was

with Hall in Dallas in late September.

flatly denied being at Mrs. Odio's. Sey-

mour alibied that he was working in

Miami Beach at the time; the FBI veri-

fied that pay records of a Miami-Beach

firm showed him at work from Septem-

ber 5 through October 10.

In a second session with the FBI, Hall

recanted his admission and claimed hi

had been mistaken, a turnabout that did

not seem to be viewed too skeptically by

the G-men. The Bureau closed its inquir

by observing that Seymour bore a strik.

ling resemblence to Oswald, a meaning:

Ness footnote considering that the piy

records had been accepted as prima fucir

evidence that he was in Miami Beach

at the relevant time.

With Seymour "out of the way," thi

Warren Commission had only to dispose

of the possibility that it was Oswald it

Mrs. Odio's. It did so by declaring il

improbable that Oswald could have

traveled to Dallas in the limited time he-

tween his departure from New Orleans

and his crossing of the Mexican border

But the Commission reckoned from sur-

face transportation timetables, and there

is a suggestion he flew at least part of ilic

way. Mrs. Horace Twiford of Houston

stated that in late. September, when (s

wald telephoned her husband, he coin-

mented that he "had only a few hours"

before "flying to Mexico" (CE 2335)./

The post-assassination search at the

Irving premises of Ruth and Michel

Paine, with whom Marina had been

staying, yielded another tie to the Frei

Cuba movement. Among Oswald's i-

---

## Page 54

B: 11

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lem-

Hal

d- he

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longings in the garage was a barrel that

had, said Deputy Buddy Walthers, "a

lot of these little leaflets in it, 'Freedom

for Cuba'" (Vol, 7, p. 548). And at his

celebrated press conference the night of

(lie assassination, DA Henry Wade let

it slip that "Oswald is a member of the

•Free Cuba Committee."" He was im-

mediately "corrected'' by Jack Ruby

who had mingled with the press: "No;

he is a member of the Fair Play for Cuba

Committee.'"

Deputy Walthers added a final link. In

it "Supplementary Investigative Report"

dated November 23, 1963, he stated that

he had advised Dallas Secret Service

Chief Forrest Sorrels that "for the past

few months at a house at 3128 Harlen-

dale some Cubans had been having

meetings.on the week ends and were

possably [sic) connected with the 'Free-

lom For Cuba Party' of which Oswald

was a member." Three days later, when

the Secret Service had evinced no inter-

est, he wrote a wistful addendum: "*I

learned today that sometime between

seven days before the President was shot

and the day after he was shot these Cu-

hans moved from this house. My in-

formant stated that subject Oswald had

been to this house before" (Decker Ex-

hibit No. 5323):

•Why Oswald's anti-Castro comrades

decided to make him the patsy is open to

conjecture. Perhaps he balked at going

through with the assassination. Perhaps

they did not trust him and suspected he

was an infiltrator. The most likely ex-

planation is a pragmatic one: they

needed a patsy and he was the ideal can-

didate. To make the assassination look

like the work of an avowed Marxist and

Castro sympathizer would have been a

propaganda tour de force. "Even so,"

offers Garrison, "I think the big money

backers of the plot were a little disap-

pointed. Oswald was supposed to be

killed trying to escape, and if those Cu-

ban and Soviet visas he applied for but

didn't get could have been found on his

body, public opinion against Russia and

Cuba would have been incited to a

dangerous pitch."

In the weeks preceding the assassina-

ion, there are a number of instances o

an Oswald double in Dallas whö prob-

ably was instrumental in "setting him

up." Gunsmith Dial D. Ryder told the

Commission that in early November,

someone giving the name Oswald

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brought in a rifle to have a telescopic

sight mounted; he produced a repair tag

in that name as confirmation (Report,

p. 315). Garland G. Slack and other

target shooters patronizing the Sports

Drome Rifle Range reported that a man

resembling Oswald had practiced there

as late as November; the man made him-

self obvious, at one time incurring

Slack's displeasure by firing on his tar-

get (Report, pp. 318-319).

An incident at Downtown Lincoln-

Mercury is highly revealing. Immedi

ately after the assassination, salesman

Albert Guy Bogard reported to the FBI

that a man giving the name Lee Oswald,

who closely resembled the accused as-

sassin, came into the showroom on No-

vember 9. Remarking that in several

weeks he would have the money to make

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model on the Stemmons Freeway at 60

to 70 miles an hour. Both Bogard and

another salesman, Oren Brown, wrote

down the name Oswald so that they

would remember him if he called back.

Ä third salesman, Eugene M. Wilson,

recalled that when the man purporting

to be Oswald was told he would need a

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going to have to go back to Russia to

buy a car" (Report, p. 320).

Given a lie detector test by the FBI,

Bogard's responses were those "normally

expected of a person telling the truth."

Nevertheless, the Warren Commission

dismissed the incident by noting that

Oswald supposedly could not operate an

automobile and that on November 9 he

allegedly spent the day drafting a

lengthy letter to the Soviet Embassy. It

evidently never considered the possibility

someone might be impersonating Os-

wald. But Bogard will never identify the

impersonator. He stuck to his story in

news interviews, and subsequently was

beaten to within an inch of his life by an

unknown assailant and arrested by the

Dallas police on seemingly trumped-up

bad check charges. He retreated to his

native Louisiana, where on St. Valen-

tine's Day: 1966, he was found dead.uf

exhaust fumes in his automobile.

The main ingredients of the patsy

theory are wrapped up in a story that has

gradually filtered out of Leavenworth

Penitentiary. The story is that of inmate

Richard Case Nagell, and paradoxically,*

the most cogent confirmation for it is the

manner in which he wound up sentenced

to ten years in federal custody.

\ Nagell was a highly decorated infantry

captain in the Korean War who, he

claims, subsequently became a CIA

agent. It is a matter of record that in

1957 he was seriously injured in a plane

crash in Cambodia, which tends to sup-

port his contention, since Cambodia was

not exactly a tourist playground. Un

September 20, 1963, Nagell walked into

a bank in El Paso, Texas, fired a gun into

the ceiling, and then sat outside waiting

to be arrested. He says he staged the

affair because he wanted to be in custody

as an alibi when the assassination took

place. It was a desperate measure, he ad-

mits. But he had sent a registered letter

to J. Edgar Hoover warning him of the

impending assassination, which he sis

was then scheduled for the latter part of

September (probably the 26th in Wash-

ington, D.C.), and the letter had gone

unanswered

There is an incredibly brief FBI inter-

view report stating, in part, that on De

cember 19, 1963, Nagell advised; *For

the record he would like to say that his

association with OSWALD (meaning

LEE HARVEY OSWALD) was purely

social and that he had met him in Mexico

City and in Texas" (CD 197). Another

---

## Page 56

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RAMPARTS

report states that when the prisoner was

being led from court on January 24,

1964, he "made wild accusations to news-

paper reporters, accusing the FBI of not

attempting to prevent the assassination

of President Kennedy.." (CD 404).

That the charges may not be so wild is

indicated by the fact that the government

threw the book at Nagell, a first offender

who says he expected to be charged only

with discharging a firearm on govern-

ment-protected property. Since his sen-

tencing, he has been shuttled between

Leavenworth and the federal medical

center (a euphemism for mental institu-

tion) at Springfield, Missouri. While the

government has suggested in court that

his airplane crash mentally affected

Nagell, the fact remains that he was

given intelligence training after the crash.

What Nagell alleges is damning not only

to the FBI, but to the CIA. In briet,

he says that the motive for the assassina-

tion was Kennedy's move in the direction

of a rapprochement with Castro, which

was a rank betrayal in the eyes of

anti-Castro elements. As he puts it, an

anti-Castro group in New Orleans and

Mexico City, code name Bravo Club,

decided to give Kennedy a "Christmas

present" to be delivered September 26, a

date that was postponed. 'A party. was

required. Two members of Bravo Club

approached Oswald while he was work-

ing at the Reily colfee firm in New Or-

leans in the summer of 1963, and ap.

pealed to his ego in setting him up as the

patsy. When the "delivery" site was

shifted to Dallas, Bravo Club enlisted

the aid of a Dallas "subsidiary," Delta

Club:

Meanwhile the CIA got wind of the

plans and sent several agents into the

field to ascertain whether they were "for

real." Nagell says he was one of the

agents dispatched. Within a short time,

he claims, he was pulled in. It had been

verified that the plans were authentic,

that "gusanos. (anti-Castroites) were

making the watch tick," and that the

sum of the plot was right-wing in nature.

Nagell says that he was instructed.to:

"arrow" the patsy, that is kill him, after

the assassination. At this point, he con-

tends, he got cold feet and bailed out. "I

would rather be arrested than commit

murder and treason," he declared in a

self-prepared petition for habeas corpus.

In the petition, Nagell asserts that he

used the pseudonyms Robert Nolan and

Joseph Kramer in the U.S. and three

foreign countries under the authorization

lof the Defense Intelligence Agency: He

states that the files of the FBI and the

CIA contain information that Oswald

was using the aliases Albert Hidel and

Aleksei Hidel. He charges that the FBI

illegally seized from him evidence crucial

to his defense, such as notebooks con-

taining the names of certain ClA em-

ployees, photographs, two Mexican

tourist cards (one in the name Joseph

Kramer, the other in the name Albert

Hidel), and receipts for registered mail,

including. the one for the letter sent

Hoover warning of the assassination.

When Nagell complains he has been

salied away" because of what

knows, he just might be making the un-

derstatement of the year.

(THE ELIMINATION OF A PATSY]

DIDN'T KILL ANYBODY I'm jus

a patsy," Oswald shouted to news-

- men while in police custody. A

marked patsy, contends Garrison-one

who was not supposed to have lived long

enough to utter his cry of innocence. But

something had misfired, and Oswald fell

not into the hands of his would-be exe-

cutioners, but into the comparative

safety of the Dallas jail. The denouement

presented a crisis that the conspirators

could solve only by pressing police buff

Jack Ruby into service.

Although the Warren Commission

concluded that Oswald ducked into his

Oak Cliff rooming house to pick up the

.38 revolver, later confiscated from him

in the Texas Theater, it did not explain

why, if he had gone to work at the Schoo!

Book Depository that morning intend

ing to kill the President and escape,

he did not take the revolver with him

That he made a beeline to his rooming

house for the sole purpose of getting the

revolver speaks of a man who desper-

ätely wanted to protect himself fron

treacherous comrades rather than from

the police: Notwithstanding the mild re-

sistance he put up in his refuge in the

Texas Theater, Oswald's demeanor in

custody gave every indication that he

would resolve the great riddle-given.

the time.

Oswald does not appear to be the only

double-cross victim of that bloody after-

noon: the evidence is persuasive. that

someone other than the accused assassin

killed Officer J. D. Tippit, a friend of

Jack Ruby, whose patrol area included

the Harlandale Street section headquar

---

## Page 57

ters of the Free Cuba group. The Com-

mission's star witness in fingering Oswald

was Mrs. Helen Markham, a billing that

precipitated strong dissent among some

staff members, notably Wesley Liebeler

who called her testimony "contradictory"

and "worthless" (Inquest, p. 109). Al-

though ballistics tests.could not posi-

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tively match the bullets in the dead off-

cer's body with Oswald's revolver, they

did determine that three bullets were of

one manufacture; the fourth of another,

while the four recovered shell casings

were evenly divided between the two

manufacturers. The Commission wrig-

gled out of this dilemma by wildly

speculating that five shots were fired, one

completely missing (Report, p. 172).

Moreover, the police radio logs de-

scribe a killer other than Oswald. Ser-

geant Gerald Hill alerted all cars that

"Shells at the scene indicate the suspect

is armed with an automatic 38 rather

than a pistol" (presumably, Hill noted

the distinctive marks made by the ejector

of an automatic). In the same vein,

Patrolman H. L. Summers announced,

"He's apparently armed with a .32 dark

finish automatic pistol...." First flashes

had the killer with "black wavy hair"

and a "white shirt," certainly not a de-

scription of Oswald that day (Sawyer

Exhibit No. A, pp. 396-397). And the

best placed eyewitness, Domingo Bena-

vides, described a killer quite different

from Oswald: "I remember the back of

his head seemed like his hairline sort of

went square instead of tapered off-it

kind of went down and squared off and

made his head look flat in back."

Garrison posits that the real killer hid

in a cavernous building at the corner of

Tenth and Crawford which in 1963 was

known as the Abundant Life Temple. In

an aerial view of the area; the Commis-

sion traced the killer's escape path from

the scene near Tenth and Patton to Jef-

ferson Boulevard one block south,

thence to the Texaco service station one

block west at Jefferson and Crawford. A

"white jacket" was found at the rear of

the station, which the Commission said

was Oswald's. Consequently, it had the

killer reverse his path so as to bring him.

back onto Jefferson and proceeding in a

westerly direction toward the theater

(CE 1968).

Rejecting this arbitrary reconstruction,

Garrison points out that the killer could

have proceeded straight ahead from the

rear of the Texaco station, across an

alley and into the rear door of the Abun-

dant Life Temple. This view is corrob-

orated by police radio logs. Shortly after

1:40 p.m., Sergeant Hill came on the air:

"A witness reports that he last was seen

in the Abundant Life Temple about the

400 block. We are fixing to go in and

shake it down." On an alternate channel,

Car 95 ordered, "Send me another squad

over here to Tenth and Crawford to

check out this church basement."

At this point Car 223 burst in excited-

ly, "He's in the library on Jefferson east

500 block .:. I'm going around back,

get somebody around the front, get them

here fast." The dispatcher complied, and

Car 19 soon affirmed, "We're all at the

library." There was no suspect at the

library, but the Abundant Life Temple

had been spared a shakedown.

The grave problem, of course, was

how to eliminate Oswald; who knew too

much. This was where Jack Ruby came

in. Although the Warren Commission

pictured Ruby as a blustery night club

operator with a soft spot in his heart for

dogs and dames, who killed Oswald on

an impulse of one-man justice, the real

Ruby was no buffoon. The fiction that.

he executed Oswald out of compassion

for the Kennedy family was conjured up

by his first attorney, the late Tom How-

ard. "Joe, you should know this," Ruby

scribbled to-a succeeding-attorney,..oe

Tonahill: "Tom Howärd told me to say

that I shot Oswald so that Caroline and

Mrs. Kennedy wouldn't have to come

to Dallas to testify. OK?"

In a memorandum dealing with his

background, Ruby specialists on the

Commission compiled a list of persons

seemingly "the most promising sources

of contact between Ruby and politically

motivated groups interested in securing

the assassination of President Kennedy"

(CE 2980). Included were Ruby's sister,

Eva Grant, and a brother, Earl, of

Detroit, who sent "a telegram of undis-

closed nature to Havana, Cuba, April 1,

1962' and made "calls to Welsh [sic]

Candy Company" in Belmont, Massa-

chusetts; then owned by Birch Society

founder Robert Welch. Also listed by the

Commission was Thomas Hill, an "off-

ciat of the John Birch Society" in Bel-

mont whose name was in lack Ruby's

notebook, and Lamar Hunt, the son of

H. L. Hunt, who subsequently denied

knowing Ruby.

Ruby was an admirer of General Ed-

win A. Walker. He told former Okla-

homa City police detective Cliff Rob-

erts, who had been hired by Walker to

investigate the potshot taken at Walker

in April 1963, that Walker was "100 per

cent right" about Castro's Cuba and it

should be "blown out of the ocean.""

William McEwan Duff, who served as

the retired general's "Batman" from

RAMPARTS 59

---

## Page 58

Peoples World Paniament

Switzerland, August, 1968

For irformation and stamps, send $1.00 to

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60 RAMPARTS

late 1962 to early 1963, advised the

Secret Service that Ruby, who was ad-

dressed only as "Jack," visited Walker

"on the basis of about once a month,

each'time in the company of two uniden-

tified white males" (CE 2389).

A cross-section of Ruby's acquaint-

ances can be found in the list of 66 per-

sons he favored with permanent passes

to the Carouse! Club. There is of course

a passel of local businessmen. But there

is also W. F. (Bill) Alexander, the hard-

bitten Dallas assistant DA, and three

men pegged by a Garrison investigator

as Dallas Minutemen. Since no facet of

the investigation seems complete without

a strange coincidence, it can be noted

that when Cärousel Club passholder Sue

Blake vacated her apartment, 10746D

Lake Gardens, the next occupant was

Sergio. Arcacha Smith, formerly of S44

Camp Street, New Orleans.

¡ Also on the pass list is H. H. (Andy)

Anderson, at the time manager of the

Adolphus Hotel: Last May, Garrison

sought to explain the legal materiality of

Clay Shaw's notebook in terms of an

entry, "Lee Odom, PO Box 19106

Dallas, Tex." He pointed out that it cor-

responded to "PO 19106" in Oswald's

address book,

and theorized that il

might be a coded version of Ruby's

unlisted telephone number. Within i

few days a Lee Odom came forth in

Dallas to explain away the coincidence

In 1966, he was in New Orleans "trying

to promote a bull fight" and asked the

manager of the Roosevelt Hotel who

might put him in contact with the right

people. "He suggested Mr. Shaw," said

Odom, "so I called him— or the manager

called him ... He came over to the hotel

and we talked." The manager of the

Roosevelt

was Anderson, who had

moved from Dallas. In subsequent

versions of the story, including the one

(told to a national audience on CBS tele-

vision, Odom left Anderson completely:

but of it and maintained he and shaw.

had introduced themselves at a bar.

Ruby's affinity for Cuba is well-docu-

mented. The Warren Report advises that

in January 1959, just after Castro took

power,.

"Ruby made preliminary inqui

ries, as a middleman, concerning the

possible sale to Cüba of some surplus

jeeps located in Shreveport, La, and

asked about the possible release of pris-

oners from a Cuban prison" (p. 369).

Ruby had telephoned a Houston mait

named Robert Ray McKeown, known

TE

ab

On

me

Bet

Las

Cit

cred

fees

---

## Page 59

throughout. Texas as a friend of Castro,

offering a total of $15,000 to use his

influence to obtain the release of three

• Americans held in Havana. The money,

Ruby told McKeown, would come from

a Las Vegas, Nevada source (CE 1689).

McKeown heard nothing more about

the prisoner deal, which may be ex-

plained by the news report on January 6,

1961, that three Americans had made

their way out of jail and back to the

United States. But a few weeks after the

telephone call, Ruby contacted Mc-

Keown in person, this time offering him

$25,000 for a letter of introduction to

Castro. According to McKeown, Ruby

"had an option on a great number of

jeeps which were in Shreveport, Louisi-

ana, and he desired. to sell them to

Castro at a very profitable figure."

McKeown agreed to arrange the intro-

duction, but once again Ruby failed to

follow through. The reason may have

been that Maurice Brooks Gatlin of the

New Orleans-based Anti-Communism

League of the Caribbean scotched the

deal: Minutemen defector. Jerry Brooks

discloses that the minute Gatlin found

out that Ruby proposed to sell Castro

100 jeeps, he warned the venturesome

night club owner to call it off. Gatlin

may have detected signs that the new

Cuban Premier was about to surface as

a communist.

The Warren Report observes that dur-

ing the period of the jeep negotiations,

gambler Russell D. Matthews, described

is a "passing acquaintance". of Ruby's,

returned to Dallas from Havana, then

several months later went back to the

Cuban capital for a year. It also makes

the correlation that Matthews' ex-wife

in Shreveport received a lengthy tele-

phone call from Ruby's Carousel Club

on October 3, 1963. But with a denial

from Matthews that he knew anything

about the "jeep deal," and an inability

on the part of Mrs. Matthews to re-

member the long distance call, the Com-

mission ran out of curiosity. Matthews

is no lightweight: in the heyday of the

Dallas rackets a couple of decades ago

he ran with a crowd whose luminary was

Benny (Cowboy) Binion, who moved to

Las Vegas and founded the Horseshoe

Club.

The account given by Ruby of his trip

10 Cuba in September 1959 also strains

credulity. "Ruby traveled to Havana as

guest of a close friend and known gam-

bler, Lewis J. McWillie," the Report

По11:32246614

59

declares (p. 370). "Both Ruby and

McWillie state the trip was purely so-

cial." Ruby gulled the Commission with

a story that he stuck close to the hotel,

got bored stiff, and left within a week.

But Thayer Waldo, an old Latin hand

with sources inside Cuba, reports that

Ruby boasted to at least two Americans

that he was "in with both sides" while

sitting in Castro's domain. Among the

Cuban exiles he claimed to be close to

was Rolando Masferrer, a former Ba-

tista official who had

headed "The

Tigers," a dreaded private army during

the dictator's regime.

One of the many Dallas police officers

who frequented the Carousel Club has

told Garrison that in mid-1962 Ruby

left on a two-week trip, saying he was

going to New Orleans and then to Cuba

"to pick up an act for the club." When

he returned he was uncharacteristically

tight-lipped about his trip-and without

an act. Whether Ruby circumvented the

travel ban and got to Cuba is a moot

question. However, there remains Earl

Ruby's unexplained telegram to Havana

on April 1, 1962. And word that circu-

lated through Cuban emigre circles in

1963 had Ruby visiting Havana via

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The 'Dear President Johnson' Campaign

COPYRIGHT 1967

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---

## Page 60

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Mexico City that year (e.g. CE 3055).

If Ruby did go to Cuba in 1962, it may

have been on narcotics business. As long

ago as 1956, a woman named Eileen

Curry told the FBI that her paramour,

James Breen, had become cozy: with

Ruby and had "accompanied RUBY to

an unnamed location; where he had been

shown moving pictures of various.bor-

der guards, both Mexican and Amer-

ican." Curry said that Breen "was

enthused over what he konsidered an

extremely efficient operation in connec-

tion with narcotics traffic."' Curry went

to the FBI after Breen failed to return

from a trip to Mexico, and repeated her

story in 1963 after the assassination

(CE 1761, 1762):

Texas editor Penn Jones Jr has delved

into a story consistent with Eileen Cur-

ry's. On November 20, 1963, a woman

named Rose Chermi was thrown from a

moving automobile near Eunice; Louisi-

ana. Hospitalized with injuries and nar-

cotics symptoms, she said she was a

Ruby employee traveling to Florida with

two men to pick up a load of narcotics

for Ruby. She told the attending physi-

cian that Kennedy and other officials

were going to be killed on their impend-

ing visit to Dallas. Shown a news story

after the assassination in which Ruby

denied knowing Oswald; Miss Chermi

chortled, "They were bed mates." When

his probe got underway, Garrison at-

tempted to locate her but was toe late.

On September 4, 1965, she was killed by

a hit-and-run driver white walking along

a highway near Big Sandy, Texas.

•It is also possible that Ruby's alleged

1962 trip to Cuba concerned gun-

running. Nancy Perrin Rich told the

Commission that she and her late hus-

62 RAMPARTS

band, who had ties to organized crime,

attended a meeting in Dallas in 1962, in

which plans were discussed to smuggle

guns into Cuba and refugees out. The

key planners were Ruby, an Army "light

colonel,"

and a heavy-set "Cuban or

Mexican," and she gathered that Ruby

was the "bag man" who handled the

funds. She said the. guns were to be pro-

cured through a Mexican contact (Vol.

14, p. 330f). Garrison has additional

evidence of gun-running by Ruby which

cannot be divulged at this time.

The allegations of narcotics trafficking

and gun-running should be put in some

perspective. In 1962, Cuba and Red

China reportedly had entered into a

barter agreement in which Cuban sugar

would be exchanged for narcotics, but

the narcotics were a white elephant until

sold for U.S. dollars. This is where buck-

hungry organized crime elements came

in, and just possibly Jack Ruby. In this

context his claim that he was playing

both sides of the street may not have

been sheer braggadocio. In the strange

accommodations of international in-

trigue, Ruby may well- have been smug-

gling narcotics into the United States

and guns into the hands of Cuban in-

surgents.

It is fair to say that not much in the

way of Caribbean intrigue went on in

those days without the CIA, or at least

CIA operatives, having a finger in it.

Thus the allegations of Gary Underhilt,

a weapons expert and sometime CIA

"umperson," may be quite plausible

(RAMPARTS, June 1967) Immediately

after the assassination, a distraught Un

derhill told friends that a semi-auton-

omous CIA clique which had been profit-

gering in narcotics and gun-running. was

implicated in the assassination. Several

months later, Underhill was found dead

of a bullet wound in the head; although

-police decided it was self-inflicted, the

circumstances indicatedotherwise_When

an old friend wrote to Under hill's widow

asking about his demise, the reply came

from an official of a now defunct Washi-

ington firm, Falcon Aeronautics, Inic.,

which smacks of having been an ad hoc

CIA front. The official dismissed Under-

hill's allegations with the comment that

they were "similar to those flights of his

imagination which he had during the last

year or so of his life."

The question remains whether or not

newsmen in the police basement had

flights of imagination when they thought

they detected a flicker of recognition on

Oswald's part just before Ruby shot him:

We have already examined the report of

attorney Carroll Jarnagin [RAMPARTS,

November 1966] - who claims that he

eavesdropped on a Ruby-Oswald conver-

sation in the Carousel Club the right of

October 4, 1963, in which the desire of

organized crime to do away with Gov-

ernor Connally was discussed — and the

statement of Wilbryn "Bob" Litchfield

that he sat next to Oswald in the Carou-

sel Club office in early November while

both were waiting to see Ruby RAM-

PARTS, June 1967).

In addition, there is the cogent state-

ment of Harvey L. Wade, a Chattanooga

building inspector who dropped into the

Carousel Club the night of November

10, 1963. Wade said that a club photog

rapher snapped a shot of a customer and

in the background were three men sitting

at the bar. Ruby strode over to the

photographer and "yelled that the

photographs did not turn out." One of

the men in the background was identified

by...Wade as Oswald. He described the

others as a young man of "very fair pale

complexion," and an older, stocky Latin

man who had "numerous bumps.on his

face and was believed to have a one-inch

scar in the eyebrow of his left eye" (CF

2370). The two match the descriptions

of prime suspects in Garrison's investi

gation, the latter of the bull-necked

Cuban who tagged around after Oswald

in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.

Further indication of a Ruby-Oswald

link appears in the statement of the Rev.

Clyde Johnson which was filed by Garri-

son in answer to a Clay Shaw defense

motion. Rev. Johnson, a candidate for

governor of Louisiana

in 1962, who

ranted against Kennedy in his campaign,

said that he twice attended meetings that

fall at which Oswald, Ruby, Shaw and

an unknown Cuban were present. The

first was in the Roosevelt Hotel in New

Orleans, the second on September 29 in

the Capitol House Hotel in Baton

Rouge. He recalled that Oswald was in-

troduced as Leon, Ruby as Jack, ind

Shaw as Alton Bernard. On the latter

occasion, he said, Shaw passed mania

envelopes to Oswald and Ruby which

purportedly contained money.

While such eyewitness accounts must

be weighed with the credibility of the

witness in mind, there is documentary

evidence of a Ruby-Oswald link as well.

Oswald's address book contains the en-

---

## Page 61

ield

late

ода

s the:

nber

itog-

and

(ting

the

the

ie of

tified

I the

pale

his

inch

(CE

tions

vesti-

scked

wald?

1963,

wald

Re

try "Midland 2550"; Ruby's hasothe

entry "Newton 25S0." While their sig-

nificance is unknown-Garrison specu-

lates they may be communications sig-

nals of some sort-the odds against the

same four-digit. numbers preceded by

the names of Texas cities being in two

unrelated persons' address books by

sheer happenstance are astronomical. It

was, in fact, just this kind of mathemat-

ical improbability that was instrumental

in the recent convictions of a mugging

team in Los Angeles County:

And there are other "coincidences'" as

well. In his address book, Oswald twice

jotted down the number of a Ft. Worth

(elevision station, PE 8-1951; in June

1963, Ruby twice called that number

• (CE 1322, p. S17). On September 24;

1963, David Ferrie's telephone was

charged with a call to Chicago number

WH 44970; on November 20, 1963, this

number was cälled from Kansas City by

Lawrence Meyers, a Chicago business-

man and close friend of Ruby's. Meyers

arrived in Dallas from Kansas City that

same night, and was in touch with Ruby

through the traumatic post-assassination

hours (Vol. 25, p. 335).

The Dallas number FR 5-5591 appears

twice in the last pages of Oswald's book,

which leads to another correlation. The

number is listed to Kenneth Cody, a

Continental Trailways bus driver on the

Shreveport run and an uncle of Dallas

police officer Joe Cody. A homicide

bureau detective, Cody was the partner

of Detective James R. Leavelle, one of

the pair of _officers escorting Oswald

through the police basement when he

was shot by Ruby.

In an FBI interview, Joseph Cody

acknowledged having

known Ruby,

"12 or 13 years.". He met Ruby at one of

his clubs during the Korean War, when

Cody was "assigned in the Counter In-°

telligence Corps"' and stationed for a

time in Dallas. Cody related that he en-

joyed ice skating at Fair Park, as did

Ruby, and "there had been at least a

half dozen times in the last two or three

years that RUBY had arrived at Fair

Park while he, CODY, had been skat-

ing " (CE 1736):

Garrison contends that Ruby's stagey

behavior between the assassination and

his slaying of Oswald was a way of dis-

associating himself from the plot by

"reversing the magnetic field" - drawing

attention to himself as the opposite of

what he actually was. Andrew Arm-

strong, a Carousel employee, told the

Commission that hisiboss was crying on

the alternoon of the 22nd. In the early

morning

hours of Saturday, Ruby

rousted a club flunkey, Larry Craford,

who watched while his boss took a

Polaroid picture of a Birch Society "Im-

peach Ear! Warren" billboard. That

afternoon, Ruby displayed the picture

in Sol's Turf Club, his favorite haunt,

with suitable expressions of indignation.

He went to the post office with com-

panions; peered at the box receiving re-

sponses to the black-bordered "Wanted

for Treason" ad in Friday's° Dallas

Morning News, and uttered words of

outrage.

Ruby's survival as a "little big

shot" in Aryan Dallas depended upon

his obsequiousness to powerful masters.

Some of those whose boots he licked

were Nazis, and subliminally hè became

one of them. As Garrison put it, The

connecting link at every level-ef opera-

tion, from the oil-rich sponsors of the

assassination down to the Dallas police,

department, down through Jack Ruby

and including art-Castro adventurers,

at the operating level were Minutemen,

big

Those with superhuman will power might find

il possible to look directly at these posters for

more than 5 seconds. However. we will not he

held responsible for detached retinae,

DEALERS, KEPS. INQUIRIES WELCOMED.

to be re

duced in colo

sen

advin colors the

WHYTE STUDIOS Dept. A 291 Delaware Avenue

Buffalo, New York 14202

$2.98 each, any twồ - $5.00

POT (rd, bl, gr) "

_ LOVE (pk, bl, yel)

SEX (gid, rd)

— MAFIA, (pk, yel, blk)

SEX (gr; cher)

— MAPIA (or, lav, blk)

---

## Page 62

Just Published

How 88,648

Heavy Smokers

Stopped

Smoking

NEW YORK - The Anti-Tobacco

Center of America has just pub.

lished a booklet which explains how.

88,648 heavy smokers (of whom

many are physicians) have stopped

smoking without straining their will

power. This booklet is available free

of charge to smokers. All you need

to do, to obtain it, is to send your

name and address to The Anti-

Tobacco Center of America, Dept.

A.41-R, 366. Fifth Avenue; New

York. 1, New.York. This offer is open:

while the supply of these booklets

lasts.

Nazi oriented.ar was essentially a Nazi

_Operation."

Ruby's letters, smuggled out of jail by

a trusty, reveal that towards the end, ne

realized what his masters really were

[RAMPARTS, February 1967). The letters,

sold by the reputable New York docu-

/ ment auctioneer Charles Hamilton, por-

tray a man acutely aware of his Jewish-

ness who realizes with anguish that he

has served not ultraconservatives but

Nazis. "They are going to come out with

a story that it was the Minutemen who

killed the Jews," he wrote, "don't you

believe it. they are using that to cover up

for the Nazis.... Oh the way I fücked

up this world who would ever dream

that the motherfucker was a. Nazi and

found me the perfect setup for a frame.

I was used to silence Oswald. 1

walked into a trap the moment I walked

down that ramp Sunday morning,"

[RECONSTRUCTING THE CRIME]

N. OCTOBER 1963, a number of key

figures in. Garrison's probe con;

verged upon Dallas. The Free Cuba

group was installed in the house on Har-

landale, which is in south Oak Cliff past

Ruby's apartment. On October 3, the

evening he returned from Mexico, Os-

wald checked into the YMCA on North

Ervay and remained two days. The same

two days the room next to him was oc-

cupied by a Cuban-appearing young

man who registered as R: Narvaez. On

the night of October 17, Loren Hall and

Lawrence Howard jr arrived at the

YMCA; they checked out on October

22. The arrival of Hall possibly dovetails

with the story of a new witness located

by Garrison. The witness stated that in

1963. Hall was short of funds and peti-

tioned him for assistance in the anti-

Castro movement. He declined, but lent

Hall $50, holding a 30 caliber rifle as

collateral. About a month before the

assassination, the witness says, Hall re-

deemed the weapon, commenting that

he was going to Dallas to meet with a

wealthy oilman-the same oilman who,

Garrison knows, posted bail for Hall

and William Seymour when they were

arrested in Dallas in mid-Octöber (in

September 1966, the FBI stripped Dallas

police files of all pertinent material con-

cerning the arrests). As will be recalled,

the record shows that the FBI did not

locate and interview Hall; Howard and

Seymour until just before the Warren.

Report went to press. But what makes

these belated interviews seem dissem-

bling is that the new witness swears that

he wäs questioned by the FBI about Hall

and the .30 caliber rifle on the day after

the assassination.

Coupled with this development is the

statement of joseph Roland Hummel,

who resided at the YMCA thit October.

Hummel has told. Garrison that he had

been casually acquainted with Oswald in

New Orleans, änd saw him again at the

Dallas YMCA in late October. On two

occasions he saw Oswald with a "skinny,

thin-haired" young Anglo, on one oc-

casion on the sun roof of the YMCA

with Jack Ruby.

What was Ruby's role before he was

pressed into service to do away with

Oswald? A Houston Secret Service re-

port prepared within days of Ruby's

shooting of Oswald synopsizes: "Nu-

merous witnesses identify Jack Leon

Rubenstein, alias Jack Ruby, as being

in Höuston, Texas on November 21, for

several hours, one block from the Presi-

dent's entrance route and from the Rice

Hotel where [the President] stayed." The

Houston report was countermanded by

a Dallas SS report that flatly declared:

"Ruby was in Dallas on November 21,

64 RAMPARTS

1963." The Dallas version was predi-

cated upon two alibi incidents furnished

by Ruby, plus the inconclusive state-

ment of Andrew Armstrong that "he did

not know of Ruby having made any long

trips away from Dallas recently" (CE

2399).

Garrison points out that there was a

4-1/2 hour gap in accounting for Ruby's

presence in Dallas that day, giving him

adequate time to fly back and forth that

afternoon to "case" the Presidential

motorcade in Houston. Complementing

this is the report of a Mexico City ai-

torney that Ruby's sister, Eva Grant.

was in San Antonio that same morning

watching the motorcade there [RAM-

PARTS, November 1966]. Arturo Alocer

Ruiz, his wife and her woman friend

were in San Antonio on vacation. They

noticed an obese woman rooted to a spot

near the Gunter Hötel-she was there at

least two hours-waiting for the Presi-

dent's entourage to pass on its way to thi

airport and the short hop to Houston.

After Ruby shot. Oswald and Eva's

picture was shown on television, the

Alocer party immediately recognized her

as the obese woman they had seen in San

Antonio. Although the FBI sloughed off

the report, Garrison considers it reliable.

Shortly before and after the assassin:-

tion, Ruby was placed by witnesses in,

the Dallas Morning News building.

which commands a view of Deale!

Plaza. Around 1:00 p.m. he was spotte

at Parkland Hospital by housewile

Wilma Tice and newsman Seth Kantur

(in one of its more disingenuous mo-

ments, the Commission claimed that

Mrs. Tice was mistaken and that Kantor.

who knew Ruby well, had seen him

somewhere other than Parkland-even

though Kantor graphically described

being collared by the night club owner

at the bottom of a hospital staircase).

Was it Ruby who planted the so-called

magic bullet on a stretcher outside thi

trauma room? Since no one saw hin do

it, we can only speculate. But as we hav

seen,, Ruby's actions were hardly im

tional, and it was that bullet which

forged the final link for the Commis.ion

between Oswald and the assassinano:

(di did not seem to bother the Commis-

sion that the bullet was in near-pristin

condition, looking more like it had heet

fired into a stuffing box than through th

sinew, muscle and bone of Kennedy and

Connally [CE 399].)

For a bachelor of casual habits, Sun-

di

---

## Page 63

er

nd

ley.

Si-

the

on

the

her

san

ofi

ble:

na:

ing

aley

ited

wife

tor

mo

that

tor

älled

p the:

n. do

have

irra

/hích

ssion

tion.

SuD

day morning, November 24, was possibly

the most synchronized in Ruby's life. At

11:17 a.m. by automatic time stamp, he

wired $25 to Mrs. Bruce Ray Carlin, stage

name Little Lynn, one of his performers

who lived in Ft. Worth (surely a pretext:

the night before; Little Lynn and her hus-

band had made a special trip to the

Carousel - Ruby lent him $5-and Ruby

was carrying several thousand dollars in

casti). Then he strode from the Western

Union office across the street from the

police department to the Main Street

entrance of the police basement. How he

slipped through the guard is open to

question, but his timing was exquisite.

Listening to the sound tracks of video-

tapes made in the basement about the

time the elevator carrying Oswald ar-

rived at basement level, one hears the

hollow-sounding "honk"' of a car horn

(only police vehicles were in the base-

ment), then a pause of some four sec-

onds, then another "honk" closely fol-

lowed by the crack of Ruby's pistol.

Were the "honks" signaling to Ruby the

progress of his victim so he could sud.

denly push through the press ranks? In

one of his letters smuggled from jail

Ruby wrote,

"If you hear a lot of horn-

blowing, it will be for me, they will want

my blood!"

B

ASED ON THE FRESH evidence in

Garrison's possession, we can

now partially reconstruct the op-

cration and getaway on November 22

As previously reported [RAMPARTS,

June 19671, the DA contends that the

issassination bore the classic earmarks

of a guerrilla ambush in which the Presi

dent was caught in converging fife. The

filtal head shot, he says, was fired from

ile Grassy Knoll area, a quartering angle

from the front. The operation was co-

ordinated by radio.

To recapitulate, railroader S. M. Hol-

lind, standing on the Triple Underpass,

insists to this day that "there definitely

Wils a shot fired from behind that fence

lon the Knoll]." The late Lee Bowérs;

who was in the railroad tower directly

north of the Knoll, testified that three

tills, one radio-equipped, prowled the

parking lot between his tower and the

Knoll shortly before the shooting; he

sild they definitely were not law enforce-

ment vehicles. Bowers stated he saw two

hen behind the picket fence on the Knoll

just before the shots were fired, one

"middle-aged" and "heavy-set," the

other "about midiwenties

in either a

I010A344-14

Pame

HELP THESE YOUNG

PEOPLE MAKE

MOVIES NOT TROUBLE.

An open letter from Otto Preminger

Dear Ramparts Reader:

Several months ago, I was shown a film titled, "You Dig It," made in

New York-under the Mobilization for Youth program-by a group of

young men and women from poor Negro and Puerto Rican homes. It was

an outstanding effort, in my opinion.

"You Dig It" was made without professional guidance. The script was

written by a 16-year old; directed and filmed by two 20-year olds; with a

cast composed of 50 youngsters between 15 and 20 with no previous film-

making experience.

- I was so excited about "You Dig It", that I met with the young film

makers. Outwardly, they looked just like any other group of similar age

and background. But inwardly they glowed. These young people-who were

born to failure and had only hopelessness ahead of them-suddenly and

dramatically achieved success. Not money, not fame-not yet. But seeing

themselves and their films on TV. and at Lincoln Center ... hearing their

work praised by seasoned professionals ... winning a first prize (the Plaque

of the Lion of St. Marc) at the 1967 Venice Documentary Film Festival...

has given them pride, purpose-and almost fulfillment of their dream.

But-and there is always a but- the Mobilization for Youth program can-

not provide any more money. The group has appealed to various founda-

tions, but their decisions often take so long that these teen-agers may be in

wheelchairs before the red tape is cut and the money comes in

Knowing that Ramparts readers share many of my views and concerns, I

ask you to join me in supporting this talented group. They need a total of

$80,000 to continue their work for another year, which includes produc-

tion of a feature film and two half-hour shorts.

Please take a moment now to fill out the coupon below, then mail it with

your check today. Whatever you can afford to give will be deeply appre-

ciated. Your contribution is tax-deductible, of course:

01o

" геін,

Otto Preminger

Cultural Arts Dept., Mobilization for Youth. 214 E. Second St., N.Y., N.Y. 10009

Here is my contribution of $.

to enable the young men and women

who made "You Dig It" to continue their movie work for another year:

NAME.

ADDRESS_

CITY-

STATE

ZIP.

Please make checks payable to: Cultural Arts Department, Mobilization for

Youth. Contributions are tax-deductible.

R

RAMPARTS 65

---

## Page 64

plaid shirt or plaid coat or jacket." Al-

though the men were partly obscured by

foliage when the shots rang out, Bowers

said that in their vicinity there was

"some unusual occurrence-a flash of

light or smoke or something . :." (Vol.

6, pp: 228ff). Postal employee J. C.

Price, who had a bird's-eye view of the

scene, picked up from there: "I saw one

man run towards the passenger cars on

the railroad siding after the volley of

shots [the parking lot is bisected by a

railroad spur]. This man had a white

dress shirt, no tie and khaki-colored

trousers. His hair appeared to be long

and dark and from his agility in running

could be 25 years of age. He had some-

thing in his hand. I couldn't be sure but

it may have been a head piece" (CE

2003, p. 222).

A new witness of Garrison's (he is

afraid to have his name made public),

who had the same vantage point as

Price, states that after the shots were

fired, two men dashed from behind the

Knoll fence and headed behind the De-

pository Building, where they were

roined by a third man. Two of them got

in a Rambler station wagon and drove

north, away from the scene. The third,

a "heavyset, dark-complexioned" man,

proceeded back toward Dealey Plaza

and disappeared. It is quite possibly this

third man whom James R. Worrell de-

scribed to the Commission. When the

shooting started; said Worrell, he sought

cover across Houston Street from the

rear of the Depository Building. "I was

there approximately three minutes be:

fore I saw this man come out the back

¡ door….. the way he was running, I would

say he was in his late twenties or middle

-I mean early thirties. his coat was

open and kind of flapping back in the

breeze." Worrell asserted the man ran

alongside the building back toward the

Dealey Plaza area (Vol. 2, pp. 190-201).

Although his questioning by the Com-

mission was less than exhaustive, there

will be no more interviews: Worrell died

in a traffic accident on November 9, 1966.

About 15 minutes after the assassina-

tion, Deputy Sheriff Roger D. Craig

testified he "observed an individual run

down the grass area from the direction

of the Texas School Book Depository.

He heard this individual whistle and a

white Rambler station wagon, driven by

a Negro male, pulled over to the curb

and said individual got in ..

" (CE

1967). The incident is corroborated by

66 RAMPARTS

Marvin C. Robinson, who told the FBI

he was driving past the Depository some-

time between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. when

*a light-colored Nash station wagon

suddenly appeared before him.. He

stated this vehicle stopped and a white

male came down the grass-covered in-

cline between the building and the street

and entered the station wagon after

which it drove away in the direction of

the Oak Cliff section ...". (Dallas FBI

report 89-43)

Robinson paid no attention to the

man, but Craig said it was Oswald. The

Commission rejected his identification

"because of the overwhelming evidence

that Oswald was far away from the build-

ing at that time." Once again, the Com-

mission ignored the possible manifesta-

tion of an Oswald double, this time one

who may have been one of the assassins,

shooting from the Depository Building.

Recently Craig went to New Orleans to

confer with. Garrison. Among other

things, he told the DA that he had not

said that a Negro was driving the Ram-

bier, but a "dark, swarthy man, possibly

a Cuban." On his return to Dallas, Craig

noticed that he was being shadowed. As

he came out of a restaurant after lunch,

a bullet whizzed by his head.

A possible getaway plane was spotted

at Red Bird Airport some few miles

south of Oak Cliff at about 1:00 p.m.

Two women have reported that they saw

a twin-engine plane, engines idling, sit-

ting well away from the paved access

strips and runway, and close to the high-

way from Dallas via Oak Cliff. Coupled

with this information is the assertion of

a Garrison informant that a Minuteman

in Arizona boasted to him that one of

the Cubans on the assassination team

was flown to Arizona and hid out in his

home before slipping across the border

into Mexico.

There is a sequel to this flurry of move-

ment; it took place in the restaurant of

the Winnipeg, Canada airport February

13, 1964. Richard Giesbrecht; a business-

man whom Garrison's staff has inter-

viewed, was waiting for a luncheon

partner and overheard a conversation

at an adjacent table between a man of

about fifty who wore a hearing aid and

spoke with a Southern, accent and a

younger man with "bushy hair and

bushy pronounced eyebrows." Both ex-

pressed concern over how much Lee Os:

wald had told his wife about the assassi

nation plot. In their conversation, they

brought up an unidentified man named

Isaacs; they found it odd that "Isaacs"

would become mixed up with a "psycho"

like Oswald. In their conversation, a

man referred to as Hoffman or Hock-

man was to "relieve" Isaacs and destroy

his 1958 model automobile. "We have

more money at our disposal now than

at any other time," the older man re-

ported. He disclosed that the group of

which both men apparently were a part

would hold a meeting in a Kansas City

hotel in March with reservations made

in the name of a textile concern. At this

point the pair noticed Giesbrecht, who

started to a phone to notify police. A

third man materialized and blocked his

way. The trio quickly disappeared.

The FBI checked on the incident- but

the results of this investigation are also

"classified." However, a classified docu

meiit captioned "Harold Isaacs" does

exist. A Garrison investigator has lo

cated a Harold Isaacs in Texas, and

isaacs acknowledges that he owned a

958 Ford which was "crushed in a

wrecking yard." It is also noteworthy

/that Kansas City is the headquarters of

the national Minutemen organization.

Recently witness Giesbrecht was shown

an assortment of photographs. "That's

the man with the bushy eyebrows,"' he

explained, picking out a mug shot of

David Ferrie.

[THE POWER PLAY!

T

THE CLOSER GARRISON comes to fit-

ting together all the pieces of the

assassination mosaic, the more

desperate the attempt to squelch him be-

comes. Long ago the "national security"

curtain was dropped on over 200 doçu-

ments in the National Archives that

- range from "Allegation Oswald in Mon

treal, summer 1963," to a teaser like "re

Charles Small, aka Smolikoff (Mexican

trip)y Many of these documents now

appear relevant to his investigation, but

despite the fact that he is a duly consti-

tuted law enforcement officer, he cannot:

gain access to them.

And how do items turn up missing

front a citridet of security ike the Na-

tional Archives? Twenty-six items con-

nected with the assassination are so

listed, including Jack Ruby's notebooh

maintained by Larry Craford [his Carou-

tion):" Moreover, Garrison loserves

that shere was *an incredible incidence

---

## Page 65

of spontaneous, combustion"' in Wash

ington the day: alter the assassination

when autopsy notes went up, in flames

and a secret CIA report on

Oswald's

activities prior to the assassination was

singed beyond recognition in a i hermo-

-Tax machine:

Coupled with the secrecy has been an

aggressive drive to intimidate and dis-

credit witnesses. Abraham Bolden, the

first Negro Secret Service agent, accused

his brother agents.of carousing into the

wee hours of November 22, and stated

that while in custody Oswald blurted out,

"Ruby hired me"; Bolden was subse-

quently. charged by his superiors with

bribery and convicted, and he protests

to no avail that the charges against him

were a frame-up. A Dealey. Plaza eye-

witness who in 1963 told the FBI that

two men ran from behind the Grassy

Knoll fence was brusquely warned, "If

you didn't see Oswald shoot from that

sixth floor window, you'd better keep

your damn mouth shut."" A New Orleans

man with pertinent information about

a local Minuteman was admonished by

the FBI not.to tell the DA anything.be-

cause "District Attorney Garrison was

trying to overturn the findings of the

Warren Report."

The affair of Jules Rocco Kimble il-

lustrates how governmental pressure has

induced potential witnesses to slip from

Garrison's grasp. 'A self-avowed member

of the Ku Klux Klan who got in trouble

over bombings in Baton Rouge, Kimble

approached the DA's men in the appar-

ent hope of gaining mitigation. He said

that on the day after David Ferrie died,

he droxe a top.KKK official; Jack Helm,

to Ferrie's apartment. Helm came out

with a satchel crammed with papers,

which he placed in a bank safe deposit

box. Kimble alse divulged that in 1962,

he had flown to Montreal with Ferrie

on what was purported 10 be Minuteren

business. He promised the DA's inves-

tigators that he would garner further in-

formation and report back.

He didn't come through Shortly after-

ward, he phoned his wife from Atlanta,

saying he had met a CIA contact.

"They Il never get me back to New Or-

leans," he vowed: A few days after that,

he called from Montreal, Fer reasons

unknown, Kimble backtracked to Tam-

Da, Florida, where he was arrested by

local police. Interviewed by Garrison's

men, he said that he had once worked

special assignments for the CIA, and in

68

RAMPARTS

1/68

verification named his Agency contacts

and the box. number. at the Lafayette

Street station they assigned him. He

averred he had recontacted the CIA after

Walter Sheridan had counseled him to

Hoffa" crusade, is now with NBC News

and has been instrumental in that tele-

vision network's extraordinary enort to

abort the assassination investigation.

Sheridan-wasse-everseaters-thar he-was

subsequently indicted by a grand jury for

public bribery in attempting to mduce

witnesses to make statements, against

Garrison. However, the network does

not consider this newsworthy.

NBC's special on the Garrison case

broadcast last June exemplifies their ef-

fort. One of the stars of the program was

Dean Andrews Jr, who has since been

convicted of perjury by a New Orleans

jury in connection with his testimony

about the Clay Bertrand phase of the.

investigation. Andrews lent an ethereal

quality to Garrison's probe by saying

that he invented the name Manuel

Garcia Gonzales and watched the DA's

men frantically look for him as a suspect.

There is a Manuel Garcia Gonzales. I

have seen the nasty Llama pistol con-

fiscated from him by New Orleans police

in September 1966, shortly before Gar-

rison became interested in him, and the

immigration file documenting his ad-

mission to the United States. Another

canard fabricated by NBC was the as-

sertion that the network had located the

real Clay Bertrand, and that he was not

Clay Shaw. The man's name had been

turned over to the Justice Department,

the narrator said. The man turned out

to be bar owner Eugene Davis, who

loudly protested that he had never used

the name— and indeed, he did not fit the

description- of "Clay Bertrand."

Another medium that has been par-

ticularly shrill in its anti-Garrison in-

vective is Newsweek, which at times

seems to parrot the administration line

as faithfully as Izvestia hawks the Krem-

lin's. The magazine's "expert"' on the

case is Hugh Aynesworth, who at the

time of the assassination was an ace re-

porter for the Dallas Morning News,

which saw fit to print the black-bordered

"Wanted for Treason: John F. Ken-

medy" ad on November 22nd. In his

Garrison put-down (May 15, 1961),

Aynesworth reported the charges of Al-

vin Beauboeuf, Ferrie's companion on

the Texas trip the afternoon of the as-

sassination, that two DA investigators

tried to bribe him. What Aynesworth

didn't report was that the tape recording

of the conversation made by Beauboeuf's

attorney had been carefully edited to

delete the investigator's emphatic warn-

ings to Beauboeuf that they sought only

the truth, and that they would subject

him to lie detector testing to verify as far

as possible that he was telling the truth.

The tandem attack on Garrison, with

much of the press copy sounding like it

had been ghostwritten by Richard Helms,

seems to be the preliminary to legal

. moves aimed at removing the DA from

office or even jailing him.

The behavior of U.S. Attorney Gen-

eral Ramsey Clark has been most sug-

gestive that such a play is in the works

On March 2, 1967; the day after Clay

Shaw was arrested, the attorney gen-

eral announced that Shaw had, been

investigated by the FBI in 1963 and

"cleared" of any complicity in the as-

sassination. Three months later, after

the world had been noisily advised that

the prestigious FBI had found Shaw in-

nocent, Clark sheepishly admitted there

had been no investigation at all. The

retraction hardly caused a ripple in the

press. Then on October 14, UPI quoted

Clark as telling an audience of law stu-.

dents at the University of Virginia that

Garrison "took a perfectly fine man,

Clay Shaw, and ruined him just for per-

sonal aggrandizement," and that the

Department would prosecute the DA.

Clark promptly issued a denial, and a

Department spokesman lamely explained

that the boss had "discussed this matter

hypothetically in response to a question:"

But the most reasonable interpretation

is that Clark let slip precisely what was

on his mind. The notion is reinforced by

the affidavit of Gordon Novel's former

wife, Marlene Mancuso, who told Gar-

rison that Richard Townley of NBC'S

New Orleans affiliate tried to get her to

testify against the investigation.

"He

said they were not merely going to dis

credit the probe," she swore. "He said

Garrison would get a jail sentence."

When news of the assassination probe

first broke, Garrison declaimed in a

burst of rhetoric, "Let justice be done

though the heavens fall!" The heavens

are still there, but Washington has come

crashing down upon him.

---

## Page 66

Continued from page 6

I asked Sirhan's mother why she

thought her son had shot Kennedy.

"Everything in this country was helping

Sirhan," she maintained. "It was push-

ing him to the danger point. Everything,

the propaganda of the Zionists, every-

thing, was against his country, against

his people."

Adel described Sirhan's current state

of mind: "He feels he has done a terrible

thing, but he feels now it is too late to be

sorry. Now he wants Americans to listen

to something they häve never listened

to."

And at their first meeting in the jail,

Sirhan's mother said to him, "Shame on

you. Why have you done such a thing?"

He replied, "It's too late to speak of it.

But all the Americans will know why."

- MAHMOUD ABDEL-HADI

[Assassinations]

EPSTEIN'S GARRISON

TWO SUMMERS AGO a tandem attack

gated that work to the fiction

section of your local library. The first

was Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment,

which convincingly demonstrated-us-

ing the Warren Commission's own evi-

dence— that Oswald could not have done

it alone, and drew the first dim outlines

of the conspiracy theory. The second

was Edward Jay Epstein's Inquest, which

exposed the rather shoddy inner work-

ings of the Commission and laid bare the

tortured logic it finally employed to dis-

pel notions of a conspiracy.

Both books became best sellers, but

their authors have since gone different

ways. Lane, who shuttered his law präc-

tice and struggled for years to get his

manuscript published

in the United

States (it was first published in Britain),

has stumped the country in support of

District Attorney Jim Garrison's theory

that the assassination was carried out by

an anti-Castro paramilitary team super-

8 RAMPARTS

9/7/68

vised by persons with ciA affiliations:

Epstein, whose book was a converted

Cornell University master's thesis-the

subject was urged upon him by his men-

tor, Andrew Hacker-has emerged as

one of Garrison's most fervid accusers.

His vehicle is The New, Yorker: in the

issue of July 13, he delivered a 25,000-

word blast at Garrison, calling the DA's

investigation a fraud.

The New Yorker article had its genesis

over a year ago, when the author showed

up at Garrison's office in New Orleans.

According to Chief Investigator Louis

• Ivon, Epstein spent about 48 hours in

town, some three hours at the office, and

hasn't been seen since. Much of what he

writes about has occurred since this

touch-and-go visit and is obviously hear-

say on his part, yet he writes with the

authoritative tone of a participant. Un-

doubtedly this technique is convincing

to his audience, which assumedly is un-

familiar with the intricacies of Garrison's

investigation. But to those familiar with

the facts, the article is badly slanted.

For example, Philosophy Professor

Richard Popkin of the University of

California at San Diego, author of the

book: The Second Oswald (propounding

the theory of an Oswald double) and

"Garrison's. Case"' in The New York

Review of Books (September 14, 1967),

recently commented on the article:

"I found it a queer mix of facts, half-

facts, rumors and very dubious informa-

tion from people hostile to Garrison.

Epstein has compressed all this to make

it look like everything's on the same

level. I think it would take an awful lot

of work to disentangle what he's saying

on almost any page as to how much of

it has a factual base, how much of it is

rumor that he has heard from people,

how much of it are charges that have

been made by people like (William] Gur-

vich [who volunteered to work on the

investigation without pay, passed him-

self off as the Chief Investigator, then

turned on Garrison] against Garrison,

which haven't been substantiated any-

where except by Gurvich's statement of

them. And also that he tends to take:

facts and information and rumors and so

on, that occurred over a year and a half's

period, and compress them all into

simultaneous events, so that a statement

made by Garrison at one time is

pounced upon on the basis of informa-

tion or statements he made a year and a

half later in a totally different context.

So I think it's a quite unfair presenta-

tion, which has some factual base, hut

which also has a lot of very dubious

elements in it."

One of the dubious elements is Ep.

stein's version of the testimony of Dean

Andrews. Jr., a colorful attorney who

numbers among his former clients Os.

wald (who wanted his undesirable dis

charge from the Marine Corps rectified)

and the late David William Ferrie, i

central figure in the Garrison investiga-

tion. The day after the assassination,

Andrews told the Commission he re-

ceived a phone call from a man he knew

as Clay Bertrand, whom he described as

"lawyer without a briefcase" for local

homosexuals. Bertrand asked him to go

to Dallas and defend Oswald. Garrison

contends Bertrand is Clay Shaw, whom

he has charged with conspiracy.

According to Epstein, Andrews ini-

tially gave the fBi "several different cle-

scriptions" of Bertrand, and finally. i-

mitted that Bertrand "was merely a

figment of his imagination." Later, lie

fore the Commission," Andrews stated

that he had recently seen Bertrand in i

bar and, Epstein says, described him is

"a boy" who was "five feet eight inches"

and had "sandy hair." "No other clues

to. Bertrand's identity turned up, how-

ever," writes Epstein, "and Wesley J

Liebeler, a Commission lawyer who con-

ducted the investigation in this area, silid

he was convinced that no such person

existed."

An objective reading of Andrews

testimony, however; reveals that he

told the FBI that Bertrand was"approxi-

mately six feet one inch to six feet wo

inches in height, brown hair, and well

dressed" —a description that closely

matches the tall, aristocratic Shaw. As

for Bertrand being a figment of his

imagination, Andrews declared, "That's

what the Feebees (FBi] put ori." He re-

counted that G-men had pestered hin

to the point where he told them, "Write

what you want, that I am nuts. I don't

care." As for his later remark. to.the

Commission's Mr. Liebeler that Ber-

trand was only five feet, eight inches.

Andrews explained that. "this time I was

looking for the fellow; he was sitting

down." Nowhere does he refer to.:Ber-

trand as a "boy." Epstein was perhaps

confused by his exclamation: "I don't

play Boy Scout and measure them."

In his superficial examination of Gar-

Continued on page 12

Sketch by Mary Morhol!

---

## Page 67

Continued from page 8

rison's case, Epstein evidently failed to

check the police records prepared upon

Shaw's arrest. Thoroughly shaken by the

arrest, Shaw blurted out, according to

Patrolman Aloysius Habighorst, that he

had used the alias "Clay Bertrand." The

alias was duly entered on the fingerprint

card and booking sheet.

One of the most fascinating charac-

ters in the conspiracy drama is Richard

Case Nagell, a former U:S. Intelligence

agent who claims he encountered Oswald

in Mexico City in 1963, and had been

instructed by his spy superiors to deter-

mine if the rumors of an assassination

attempt had any foundation. Nagell says

he learned that the first attempt against

Kennedy was scheduled for September

26 in Washington, D.C., and that Oswald

(who crossed the border into Mexico the

day before) was to be set up as the

"patsy" and shot in front of the Cuban

"HERE COME DE JUDGE"

ONSIDER THE REVOLT ON THE LEFT

if the following occured:

The President, on the eve of

his abdication, arranged to accept the

resignation of the chief justice of the

United States Supreme Court in order

to replace him with the President's

former lawyer; then an associate justice;

As a parlay, the President submitted

to the Senate the name of his oldest hand-

holding crony to fill the vacancy created

by the promotion of his former lawyer;

The chief justice, who had written a

famous report designed to satisfy the

people that the assassination of the

President's predecessor was sans. con-

spiracy and the sole act of a demented

mind, conditioned his resignation on the

Senate's approval of the appointments;

The President's ex-lawyer; when called

to testify before a Senate committee,

conceded that during his three years on

the high court he had continued to act

as the President's advisor;

That pursuant to this role, he had sat

in on numerous cabinet-level meetings,

but that he had merely "summarized"

the views of others for the benefit of the

President;

That as a justice he had dressed down

a prominent businessman who had criti-

12 RAMPARTS

Embassy in Mexico City. When the anti-

Castro paramilitary team could not

penetrate the Presidential security in

Washington, Oswald got a reprieve. But

Nagell, who says he was sure the attempt.

would come off but failed to get the FBI

to listen, faked a bank robbery in El

Paso on September 20 so that he would

be arrested and in federal custody when

the assassination occurred.

Epstein dismisses Nagell as being

mentally unbalanced, noting that "court

records indicated that Nagell had suf-

fered brain damage in an airplane crash

in 1957"' and that, following the bank

episode, he was "an inmate of a federal

institution for the criminally insane in

Springfield, Missouri." As he does so

frequently throughout the article, Ep-

stein delivers a version which if devel-

oped fully would throw a different light

on the matter. Nagell was in a plane

crash, but he was given Intelligence

cized war spending, though whether his

call was made at the President's request

he could not say and remain faithful to

the Separation of Powers;

That the businessman had retracted

his statement, though

in the end it

That the justice could not answer

questions concerning his judicial opin-

ions since the Constitution specifies that

members of Congress may not be ques-

tioned about their acts in any place other

than in Congress;

That despite this asserted Constitu-

tional bar, the justice pointed to his dis-

senting vote against extending the one-

man-one-vote principle to local govern-

ment as proof of his devotion to State's

That although he had been at the

President's disposal as advisor-summar-

izer, he had never been involved in dis-

cussions that could conceivably reach

the Court;

That the issues under discussion at the

top-level meetings had ranged from the

Vietnam War to riots in the cities;

That the justice had voted to jail draft

card burners and had voted against

taking up for consideration the legality

of the war;

That he voted to give the police sweep-

ing rights to stop-and-frisk suspects on

training after his recovery, indicating

that he had no permanent brain injury.

Moreover, the fact that he stood trial

implies that he was legally sane. Re-

cently, he was released from Leaven-

worth

Penitentiary-he had been at

Springfield only temporanly.

The publication of the Epstein article

came at an opportune time for Clay

Shaw. Obtaining advance copies, his at-

torneys entered it as evidence before a

three-judge federal panel which was hear

ing arguments that the DA was "cons

ducting a reign of terror" and "perse-

cuting" the defendant. Apparently the

panel was unimpressed, for it unani-

mously rejected the defense's argument

and ordered the case to trial.

If Garrison does get his day in court-

a day Epstein has struggled to deny him

-chances are his case will hold up better

thạn The New Yorker's brief for the

defense.

- WILLIAM TURNER

suspicion alone;

That within two months of his pro-

posed elevation he had authored a book-

let, "Concerning Dissent and Disobedi

ence," which limited the moral right to

disobey laws to those "basically offensives

to fundamental values of life or the Con-

stitution" and held that even in such

cases no legal defense could be urged:

but jailing must be willingly accepted;

That shortly after that book was pub.

lished, the justice denounced, in a rare

interview from Washington, the activities

of some of the Columbia University

protestors as "totally inexcusable from

the point of even primitive morality"

That during his first term on the

Court, he cast the deciding vote uphold-

ing the conviction and five-year sentence

of Ralph Ginzburg for "pandering"" i

non-obscene magazine;

That during each of his three terms he

nearly always voted for business interests

and against efforts to cut down the

trusts;

That throughout his years on th

Court he was widely rumored to have

been one of the President's most hawkish

advisors on the Vietnam War.

Consider the revolt on the left if any-

thing like this happened in 1968.

-SIDNEY E. 2I0%

---

## Page 68

(1966: FBI SPYI

Iwas a

burglar,

wiretapper,

bugger,

and spy

for the F.B.I.

RAMPARTs staff writer Willlam W Tuner served as an FBI

special agent from 1951 to 1961, receiving several personal

commendations from Director J. Edgar. Hoover. He has

also served as consulting editor to the Police Evidence LI-

brary' series:

His Las Vegas minions were caught bugging a number of

gambling casinos, a contretemps that brought the FBl a

S4.S million damage suit and probably contaminated

gambling connected prosecutions for some time to come.

And in Washington, the discovery that in 1964 the FBI

planted a listening device in the hotel suite of lobbyist

ON'T FORGET guipped the FBI's top burglar"

Fred Black Jr., threatened to topple his conviction of in-

who had been my instructor in the ine art of

come tax evasion. Worse still, it developed that both Black

break-and-enter," possession of burglar tools

and Edward Levinson, one of the casino operator-victims,

in the State of Washington can get you up to;

had been busimess associates of Robert G. "Bobby"

ten years* I. yas, 1958, and I was about to retum to the

Baker, Lyndon Johnson's erstwhile protege. As a conse

Seattle FBI office outitted with a set of Buread-furnished

quence, the impending federal prosecution of Baker stood

lockpicking tools. The courne in cueputious cntry had

in danger of being lost on a technical knockout.

been part of a concentrated three week course in the

The chain reaction added up to an acute case of "em-

theory and practice of wiretapping and "bugging" euphe-

barrassment to the Bureau" — a phenomenon I knew only

mistically referred to as Sound School. Recently, when a

too well to be the FBI's Private Enemy Number One.

Nevada district attorney announced he would criminally

Reportedly, Hoover is locked in a bitter quarrel with his

prosecute Las Vegas FBI agents caught violating the

nominal superiors in the Justice Department over who is

state's anti-listening device law, l was rudely reminded of

to blame. Neither, it seems, had the blessing of John F.

my instructor's wry repark- and of the illegal acts I was

Kennedy, who, according to his aide Kenneth P. O'Don-

subsequently to commit in the holy name of justice.

nell, "despised that kind of thing and never authorized

It was a chapter in my career Iwould just as soon forget.

it." On the horizon looms a showdown between the ne'er-

And now it appears that FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover would

do wrong director and the popular young senator from

just as soon forget he ever authorized electronic snooping.

New York, Robert F. Kennedy, who was attorney general

756

Illustration by Bei

DocId: 322455125 BAuel 63

by William Turner

RAMPARTS 47

6/69.

---

## Page 69

1966: FBI SPY

at the time that theill-fated Las Vegas installations were

wiretap habit took it upon themselves, unbeknownst to

made. But the pragmatic Kennedy, undoubtedly aware of

headquarters, to install what were known, for obvious

the ultimate futility of extra-legal methods (he had at-

reasons, as "suicide taps." From my experience, I suspect

tempted to persuade Congress to legalize wiretapping

the practice was widespread

against organized crime under strict court supervision)

has already indicated that the FBI cavorted on its own.

The tiff was another example of the old aphorism,

"You're only wrong when you get caught." More than

that, it illustrated the FBI's growing contempt for demo

cratic frills that stand in its way. During my more than ten

year stint I became increasingly conscious of a cynical

belief that the end justifies the means. The faceless in-

formers of the McCarthy days did what the legal process

could not do. Padded statistics on recovered automobiles

and fugitives were winked at because they helped Hoover

get ever larger appropriations from Congress. And elec

tronic snooping, whatever its odium, was invaluable

because it penetrated impenetrable walls.

The current FBI predicament is not without irony, for

a much younger Hoover had once denounced wiretapping

as a lazy man's tool and an obstacle to the "development

of ethical, scientific and sound investigative technique."

But those were the days of Dillinger and "Ma"" Barker,

and the other flamboyant criminals who could be disposed

of with the burst of a machinegun. Today's organized

crime is slick and subtle, and somewhat of a phantom

enemy. In trying to cope with it, the FBI has experienced

headaches and nightmarish headlines it has never experi

enced before. The resort to illicit eavesdropping has been

largely a desperate measure.

At one time wiretapping was at least legal if not a

gentleman's sport. And since no trespass was necessary to

install a tap, the Supreme Court had ruled that it was not

a violation of the Fourth Amendment guarantee against:

unreasonable search and seizure. Nevertheless, Hoover

scoffed at the practice, and most wiretapping was done by

local police, private detectives and Treasury agents on the

spoor of tax and narcotics offenders.

In 1934, Congress passed the Communications Act

which outlawed wiretapping. Several years later, as war

clouds gathered, Hoover reversed his stand. Backed by

Congressman Emanuel Celler, he pushed for authoriza.

tion to wiretap in matters involving "the national secur

ity." The legislation was tabled, but President Franklin

D. Roosevelt, who admired Hoover's tough posturing,

gave executive authority for the attorney, general "to

approve wiretapping when necessary involving the defense

of the nation." By this time the prestigious FBI chief was

functioning autonomously, and the attorney general's

approval became in eflect a rubber stamp gesture. But the

official ledger only hinted at the extent of Bureau wire

tapping. Some agents in the field who had acquired the

HE BND OF THE WAR emergency did not end FBI

wiretapping. Hoover, a leading protagonist of

the Cold War, took to announcing the number

of taps never in excess of a modest 100- that

he had in operation at any given time to thwart the red

menace of espionage, sabotage and grave risks to internal

security." For those with the temerity to point out that

FDR's sanction might have died with him, there was a

stock answer the Bureau mercepts communications but

does not divulge them outside the Justice Department;

ergo, it is technically within the law.

This metaphysical viey of thousands of persons acting

as one was vindicated in the Bureau's mind by the notion

that the law was intended for others, but not for it. "The

Act was directed against telephone company employees,"

a Sound School instructor rather emphatically told us.

That the FBI taps on the one hand and is responsible

for enforcing the law on the other has forced à take-it-

easy policy permitting wholesale tapping by police and

unscrupulous private detectives. In my 1958 Sound School

notes are these instructions on what to do upon receipt of

a wiretapping complaint. "No investigation. Send Air-

Tel (an airmail communication in telegram form) to the

Bureau, If investigation authorized, haye telco (telephone

company) employee inspect the tap." Authorization to

proceed was fare. For example, in the year's period of

1959:60, a total of 691 complaints were received, yet since

1934 there has been only a handful of prosecutions. One

of those singled out for prosecution was the FBI's old

antagonist, James Riddle Hoffs of the Teamsters (he was

acquitted). The hypocrisy of the situation was no better

illustrated than by the fact that on the very day Justice

Department attorneys were asking for Hoffa's conviction,

J. Edgar Hoover was telling a nationwide television aud-

ience that his Bureau had 90 wiretaps in operation.

My own exposure to FBI, wiretapping started in 1952

when I was assigned to two central monitoring plants for

the Bay Area operated by the San Francisco division.

Known to initiates as the clubs, "the elaborately equipped

premises functioned behind a, business facade. One

fronted as a marine architect's office, and blueprints of

ship hulls were scattered convincingly about the front

room. But the police were not convinced. Evidently at-

tracted by the furtive coming and going of personnel, they

staged a raid thinking they had discovered a bookie joint.

The "clubs?" listened in on a dozen ok so tapped lines

which were fed into a bank of recorders I suppose I

48: RAMPARTS

ta

891082999

---

## Page 70

11966: FBI SPY

heard thousands of converaton and I began to wonder

Learned Hand observed that while Miss Coplon's "guilt

whether all the effort was worth it, Most were idlechatter,

was plain," the government had sabotaged its own case.

teenage talk, on intimacies be ween husbands and wives

It was a hard lesson but it hardly fazed the FBI:

or lovers. On party lines totally unrelated talk was inter.

Hoover went right on proclaiming the number of taps in

cepted. Cocasionally e apposedl pryieged exchange

operation. Wiretapping, however; was fast becoming ob-

between a lawyer and client came on.

soleted by the surging technology of concealed micro-

At'a San Francleco cocktall party recently I had the odd

phones. The "bugs" were far more insidious-they heard

sensation of hearing a voice from the past that 1 couldn't

everything, not just guarded telephone conversations. And

quite place. I studiod the face was totally unfamiliar.

unlike wiretaps, their installation usually required the

Then it suddenly dawned on me, the voice was one I had

heard many times while monitoring the taps in the

surreptitious invasion of a man's office or his home.

"clubs." It belonged to Robert Trenhat, a promment

civil liberties lawyer and husband of noted author Jessica

PART 1

КОЗ9 ВСТІМ ОН

Mitford

S FAR AS I KNEW, virtually all of the FBl's wire

A

tapping during the early 509 was at least

remotely related to "national excurity" It was

in fact an abortive espionage investigation

that might have, in a calmer time, ended FBI tapping once

and for all. In 1949, Judith Coplon, a Justice Department

secretary, was accused of passing classified documents to

a friendly Soviet United Nations official. She was trie

OD

one count in Washington and convicted. During the

an FBI officer denied that wiretaps had bech used. I

a key point, since the Supreme Court had long since

88

led

that the "fruit of the forbidden tree," iê, any evidence

Rowing from wiretaps, was illegal.

In a hearins prior to a second trial in New York.

FBI employee unwilling to perjure himselt admitted

th

8 8

he had monitored wiretaps in the case. It developed

that

taps had been placed on Miss Coplon's Washingtor

and

New York phones and on the phone of her parents

anc

that they had been continued through the legal pre

eed

ings, thus permitting the FBI to overhear privileged

versations belien the defendan and he atoney

A3:18

normal procedure, the information had beca attributed

reports to a "confidential informant of down relability

- in this case a code nime Tiler Recording made of

the taps had been precipitously destroyed on the orders

of Howard Fletcher, a top aide to Hoover 3 e

In a flap remarkably smitar to the cument one over who

instigated what, Justice Department prosecutors professed

astonishment at the existence of the taps while, the FBI

tried to exonerate itself by claming it had authorization

from the attorney general. "Such anthorization," fired

back New York trial judge Sylvester Ryan, *does not

clothe with legality the unlawful activities of the wie

tappers nor detract at all from the interdiction of the

Supreme Court on evidence secured by this type of inves

tigation." As both the New York and Washington convic

tions went down the drain, the venerable appeals judge

IDK: DUME

SOPHONE INSTALLATION EMPLON

COUSTICAL IMPEDANCE MATC

FOURI S

Instructions on installing a baseboard "br

om the Burcan't Handbook of Technical Equipm

Since no covenant with the attorney general governed

bugging, the FBI had a free hand. My Sound School

notes, while stressing that wiretaps must be approved by

the attorney general, bear the cryptic entry: "Authority

for mikes: Bureau authority only.",

Capitalizing on the lacuna, the FBI installed a plethora

of bugs while maintaining full public docorum. Once, for

example, ) yas instructed by headquarters to disconnect a

wiretap whose allotment was niceded in a more urgent

case; in the next breath I was ordered to put in a bug in its

place. Thus the books were primly in balance as far as the

public was concerned--Hoover could in all half-truthful.

ness state that he had not more than 100 taps going. But

the under the table switch required that I pick a lock and

RAMPARTS

4756

DoçId:32245514

---

## Page 71

{1966: FBI SPY-

sneak inside a man's home in order to plant the bug Mr.

devastating assault to annihilate this mortal enemy."

Hoover was impressed with my feat and sent me a letter

The perfervid call to arms cicarly failed to impress

of commendation: (See below.)

attorney Edward Bennet Williams, who labeled the FBI's

Las Vegas bugging caper "a studied, well-organized,

amply inanced criminal conspiracy." If the FBI itself

ever thought of the practice in such harsh terms, it was

UNITED STATES

THENT Of jUSTICE

PEDERAL BURZAO OF INNESTICATION

not conveyed to those of us in Sound School. The curricu-

lum consisted of matter of-fact discourses on electronic

eavesdropping and on countertechniques to preserverthe

security of Burcau space, and was not encumbered with

ethical considerations.

lodeed, the Dinay, technical program is thoroughly

administered. Sound Schools arc held regularly when the

supply of quelifed sound men - there must be at least one

in each of the S feld officers in need of replenishment.

Deer sir. Threes

Your

In the session lattended there were about a dozen agents,

N0 OCCAT

ail with come degrea of clectronic background. Presum-

pass vi

ably I had been drafted because of my entirely technical

education. s

For the course we were sequestered to a room high in

the Bureau's Identification Building, away from random

eyes. The subject matter ves fairly sophisticated, include

ing a permutation method of finding a subject's wire loca-

tion in the event an uncooperative telephone company

refused to release the information. There was, I recall, a

jerry-built room where we practiced hooking up con-

cealed bugs, a feat that required some skill in carpentry

and plastering. On Saturdays, when the Justice Building

The promiscuous use of bugs in criminal cases dates to

1957 and the Apalachin conclave of organized crime.

That it took a solitary New York State police sergeant to

detect the crime czars converging from all over the nation

profoundly embarrassed the vaunted federal sleuths. It

underscored, in dramatic fashion, a shameful fact: the

FBI and organized crime had flourished simultaneously.

In an overnight attempt to make up lost ground, the

FBI pulled out all the stops in launching a hush-hush

"Top Hoodlum Program" aimed at putting the syndicate

Mir. Bigs under the magnifying glass. One important facet

of the program was bugging. In a 1959 inspection trip to

the Los Angeles office, I noted that bugs had been se

creted in the homes of several gangland igures

was practically deserted, ve experimented in finding a

particular wire out of the spaghetti-maze traversing the

conduits.

We were issued telephone installers' tool kits and trans-

ported to the FBI radio station in the Virginia countryside

to learn the knack of pole climbing. At the site there is a

cluster of towering radio antennas that completely dwarls

a solitary wooden practice pole. Once I "flared out" when

both spikes missed and went plummeting painfully down

the pole.

One of the foremost responsibilities of a sound man,

we learned, was to develop close ties with telephone com-

pany special agents and operating personnel. The cozier

the arrangement; the caster it was to get confidential data

on subscribers linesland to lease lines without question

LTHOUGH BY THB TIME Bobby Kennedy became

attorney general in the spring of 196l the

Fil's ardor for the organized crime fight had

cooled, the brash young racket buster lost no

time in pushing his aging subordinate into the pool and

making him swim for it. Before long Hoover, who once

belittled the existence of an American Mafia, was trum-

peting: "The battle is joined. We have taken up the gaunt.

let flung down by organized crime. Let us unite wa

In most Jocales - New York City is the most notable excep

tion this was no problem. For example, on one occasion

an agent handling a prostitution investigation importuned

me to place a temporary suicide tap * When a telephone

¡ lineman accidentally discovered it, 1 received a call from

one of the telco special agents. Know anything about

some wires in the Bellard area? he inquired. "Guess I

do,: I, replied. "OK. forget I called, he said. The tap

stayed in:

50

RAMPARTS

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## Page 72

- 11966: FBI SPY-

Now it appen that let one phone comany

Probably because of the FBI's formidable image and its

may pay a suf price for playing aloug with the FBI. In

ability to cry "national security" when confronted, its

February 1964, the Cenual Telephone Company or Ne-

illegal activities have not been challenged by a timid Con-

vada was socked wich a So milion suit by Las Vegas

gress. A case in point is the Subcommittee on Adminis-

casino operators charging breach of contract, conspiracy

trative Practice and Procedure headed by Senator Edward

and invasion of privacy. Company offcials grudgingly

V. Long of Missouri. For over & year now the subcom-

admitted that during the: 1961-63 pcriod they had filed

mittee has been busily exposing a thicket of electronic

FBI orders for 23 leased lines which were used to channel

snooping by government agencies, mainly the much-

wires connected to bugs in the Stardust, Riviera, Dunes,

maligned Internal Revenue Service, But when Long's

Desert Inn, Fremont and Sands hotels, in preparine to

group cautiously peeped inside the FBIs closet in Miami

pay the fiddler, the officials might have seen sardonie

(where it heard testimony from a private detective that he

humor in the fact that the FBI hid behind the cover of the

had bugged under FBI hire) and Kansas City (where the

Henderson Novelty Co. Or musical rental service.

The most tight-lipped subject on the Sound school

G-men had tuned in on the conversation of suspected

racketeers), it gingerly shut the door.

agenda was lockpicking. At the tag end of the three week

For one thing, Long was sternly taken to task by his

session, we were herded into a small room in the attic of

home state newspapers for triling with the sacrosanct

the Justice Bulding, given non-inventory sets of lock.

FBI. For another, in December 1965, he received a visit

picking tools and severat days istruction to hoy to use

at his Missourt home from no less a personage than

them. The purpose of all this was assumed to be self.

Nicholas deB. Katzenbach. The attorney general's mis-

evident.

sion, reportedly undertaken at the behest of the President

Breaking and entering a subject's premises to install a

himself, was to prevail upon the senator to lay of the FBI.

bug of photograph documents is known in the trade as a

Evidently he agreed. When San Francisco hearings opened

"bag job," a term derived from the equipment kit that is

after the first of the year, the FBI had been quietly re-

taken along. An actual bag oblis not unlike the one

moved from the agenda and the stentorian senator con-

described by mystery witter Ret Stout in The Doorbell

centrated instead on eliciting admissions of bugging and

Rang, with the exception that agents never carry badges,

illegal entry from agents of the beleaguered IRS.

credentials or other items that might identify them with

Yet the Las Vegas casino operators are not vulnerable

the FBI. All possible precautions are taken to preclude

to suasion, and the issue will shortly come to a head in the

surprise discovery. It is ventled that the normal occupants

courts. Already the preliminary sparring is underway. On

are well away from the premises, and an FBI agent sits

July 13, 1966, U.S. Solicitor General Thurgood Marshall

with the police radio dispatcher to ensure that prowler

stepped before the Supreme Court to advise that the bug

calls from the target neighborhood are ignored.

found in the suite of Fred Black Jr., the convicted lobbyist,

During my career I went on a number of bag jobs and

had been installed on the express authorization of J. Edgar

I didn't relish any. It wasn't a fear of compiling a criminal

Hoover himself. Marshall acknowledged that, until re-

record il caught the FBI lo the national Leeper of crim-

cently, the FBI chief had possessed a blank check from the

inal records: It was more a visceral thing like the time l

Justice Department to bug whenever he unilaterally de

narrowly missed being discovered bee friend of the sub-

cided that "the interest of internal security or national

ject who had a key to the house, it was one of those dis

lemmas that agents on bas jobo dread: discovery and

safety" was at stake or whenever combatting organized

crime required it. There was no indication of how much

arrest or... the alternativo sano ac

ack like a burglar. by

previous attorneys general had known about the scope of

knocking the man out and flocing, It is the alternative that

FBI bugging:

most old hands recommend, Yell never intended to resort

July 13th shaped up as one of the most unlucky days

to it. Perhaps I would have compromised by throwing a

for the FBI in its recent history. But before the day was

body block and dashing out.

out G-men had closed in on the principals in a couple of

Although the FBI high muckamucks keep their hands

penny ante spy cases that had been kept simmering on

clean of break and enter dirty work, they are quick to

the back burner, and stories of FBl prowess once again

acknowledge the fruits of a successful bag job when sub-

commanded the headlines.

mitted to Washington in carefully paraphrased form,

As the bugging controversy heats up this fall it will be a

Often the risk taking agent is rewarded with an "incentive

fascinating game to see if Hoover has enough spy cases

award"' of $500 or $1000 in cash. A few recidivist "badge:

up his sleeve to go around.

less burglars of the Bureau'* make à steady supplementa!*

income this way.

RAMPARTS 51

756. DocId:32215111

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hmer Serei groups headed by Son Ngoc Thạnh in both

Thailand and South Vietnam operating along the borders.

There was a group of about 100 people captured in Bat-

tambang province just over the Thai border in Cambodia

about June or July of 1969 who were allegedly Khmer

serei and recruited, as far as I know, into the Royal

Army, conceivably even into the police as well... The

special forces have for years helped train, organize and

lead irregular forces used, among others, in areas along

the Cambodian border. Many of the Cambodians re-

cruited for this may have had Khmer Serei affiliations."

On April 6, the Philadelphia Inquirer-published an ac-

count of an interview with Prime Minister Thanh whịch

confirmed what he had told me the previous year. Ac-

cording to the Inquirer, "Beginning in 1965 the U.S.

paid millions of dollars to train, arm and support his

(Thanh's] forces, most of whom were recruited from

the Cambodian minority living in South Vietnam's delta

Large-scale Khmer Serei defections to the Cambodian

Government were reported in 1969 and may have been

part of Thanh's invasion plan to overthrow Sihanouk. Ac

cording to reliable sources, the repatriated Khmer Serei

units were serving in the Royal Army under Lon Nol and

spearheaded political demonstrations in Phnom Penh just

before the coup. After checking with his American

friends, Thanh committed his U.S. trained and financed

forces to the Lon, Nol coup. The CIA, he said, had

promised that the U.S. would do everything possible to

help."

Nixon's assertion that the United States practiced

complete respect for Cambodian neutrality does not ac-

ord with the facts. And these inaccurate inteypretations

of U.S.-Cambodian relations led to incorrect predictions

of what would happen after the coup and the American

invasion. Three major factors upset the Administration's

game plan for Cambodia. These were described to me at

length in a June 1970 interview in Hanoi with Xeng An,

the Ambassador from Sihanouk's Royal Government of

National Union, which now controls most of Cambodian

territory. Mr: An potated our that the peasants had had

a great loyalty and respect for Sihanouk because he had

kept war from their lives. They had known perfectly well

what the war was doing to the people across the border

in" Vietnam, Secondly, the Americans guessed wrong or

Sihanouk's behavior. They had expected bim to retire t

France, as did the Emperor Bao Dai, the last Royal

Vietnamese ruler, Instead, the Prince joined his former

enemies the Indochinese. Marxiste and set up the

United National Froat of Cambodia and the Royal Gov-

mment of National Union which he now heads. Thus

American actions forced a devout Buddhist and anti

Communist ruler. Sihanouk, into the hands of Nixon's

Indochinese enemies; and the Prince brought with him

the support of the vast majority of Cambodian peasants.

If the Nixon Administration" had left Sihanouk's Cam-

bodid alone, I believe i would have been difficult, if not

impossible, for the yolutionary farges of Indochina io

launch the massive offcasive with tanks that erupted from

the so called canctuartes that Nixon had sworn to clean

The third factor that the Americans failed to predict

correctly was thexeffect of inciting anti-Vietnamese feel.

ings among Cambodians Xeng VAn, during his interview,

- concil be one it in in the her can policy ton

Cambodia. He stressed that, in order to arouse the Cam-

bodians against the so called Vietcong and North Viet

namese, the U.S: supported Lon Nol clique had needed

to arouse them against Vietnamese in general. To expect

then that they would Welcome the Saigon Vietnamese as

Liberators from the Communist Vietnamese was quite in

rational, is events ofirecent months have shown. Pitched

battles have been fought between Cambodian troops and

their so called South Vietnamese Saigon allies. And the

relationship between the Saigon regime and the Phnom

Penh regime grows increasingly strained,

All. of this must now be known to the Nixon Admin-

istration and that, probably, is why we hear so little to-

day about Cambodia,

PATRICK GRAY

NIXON'S MAN AT THE FBI

AT 12S

WILLIAM W. TURNER

Mr. Turner, a former FBl agent, is the author of Hoover's

FBI (Sherbourne Press; Dell paperback) and Power on the

Right (Ramparts Press).

In a recent press interview, acting FBI Director L. Patrick

Gray. III struggled to minimize the financial wheeling-

dealing of Wesley G. Grapp, whom he had just deposed

as head of the large Los Angeles office. Gray insisted

that Grapp's downfall had resulted from failure to accede

updated codes of personal grooming and from tapping

-gents' telephone conversations, and had nothing to do

with the wangling of some $265,000 in bank loans. "We

524

have to protect the institution," he said. "It would be

the first case of corruption in the FBI, and it isn't that

at all:"

53r20s

Gray was sounding like his boss, Richard Nixon, who

can't want to be the first President lo lose a war. And

he was acting in a perfectly Nixonian manner, keeping

the lid on potential scandal. In tits frst six months of

omce, the retired Navy captam has given every indica.

tion that he is not his own man ar all but a Nixon politi-

cal "heutenant assigned to the FBI. His'secretive handling

of the Grapp affair, which might otherwise have incon-

venienced some of the President's biggest political angels,:

is one example His conduct of the Watergate inquiry,

November 27, 1972

and

G

---

## Page 74

steering it well, clear of the White, House his. another.

When he selected Gray, Nixon, declared it was ran

verim appointment, to keep the FBl out of politics

until after the election. And in truth, the, President was

hardly eager for another showdown in the Senate of the

Haynsworth-Carswell-Kleindienst.gtypes.while.the..cam-

paign was on. As the, undoubtedly igured it, no one

could be expected to make an issue of the grayish Gray,

who wouldn't be there long in any case.

But now it looks as though Gray will be the first man

10. sit in the director's chair of the huge new FBI head-

quarters rising across from the Justice Department on

Pennsylvania Avenue, where the, space allotted to files

and dossiers is roughly equal, to eight football fields.

Buoyed by a favorable press that describes him as shak-

ing up" and "modernizing" the encrusted bureau, Gray

gives every sign that he intends to stay permanently, and

there has been no clear signal from the White House to

the contrary.

Los Angeles personnel bearing word of. Wesley Grapp's

financial shenanigans. Within weeks; the Watergate file

was resting heavily on his desk.

From the

start the GOP tried to portray the

Watergate burglary as a fumbling caper by overenthusi-

astic supporters who had no oficial authorization. It was

decided to place the investigation in the hands of the

FBI, thus borrowing on its above-politics reputation,

rather than bring in a special prosecutor or commission.

There Gray became a political spear carner. In April

1971 he headed a team of assistants who obtained

whole afiair and the.manner; in/which&tehas been han

handled. worse.'

Gray played a less visible role in the drawn-out hear.

ings on the nomination of Richard Ga:Kleindienstas

Attorney General in early 1972. It was he, who decided.

which requests by the Senate Judiciary Committee for

data on the nominee's position in' several antitrust cases'

against International Telephone & Telegraph would be:

honored. He proved extremely stingy. Not only did he

keep all of the Department's ITT files out of the com.

mittee's grasp; he wouldn't even release a list of the ma-

terials deemed unfit for public disclosure.

This kind of fealty may have been rewarded by Nixon's

surprise selection of Gray over a host of candidates who

seemed better qualified to head the FBI. The Adminis-

lion must have known that, after forty-six years of

it-man rule, there were plenty of skeletons in the bureau

closet, and Gray had demonstrated an ability to keep

doors shut. He was soon put to the test again. Within

days of his appointment, letters began to arrive from

THE NATION/ November 27, 1972

54756 DocId: 32245514 Vageloan

Gray

At the time, no one seemed to notice that giving this task

to Gray's FBI might be akin to asking a rabbit to de.

liver a carrot.

Yet Gray was making no eftort to disguise his partisan-

ship. He roamed the country voicing support not only for

Nixon's tough law enforcement stand but for his policies

on a strong military establishment as well. As a concrete

example of his partiality, he sent out a teletype message

to, twenty-one field offices seeking up-to-the-minute crime

data which was prefaced: "In order for John Ehrlichman

to give the President maximum support on campaign

trips during the next several weeks, the following infor-

mation is required."

---

## Page 75

Gray severely circumscribed the Watergate probe. He

ordered agents not to follow leads without Justice Depart-

ment permission,' an exercise in red tape certain to cause

delay and frustration. When G-men. met a wall of

silence at the White House Trying to interview these

people was like trying to interview members of the Black

Panther Party," an FBI source was quoted by The Wash-

ington Pos/- Gray refused to intercede with the President

to force cooperation; instead, he told his men to perse-

vere through normal channels.

In response to Sen. George McGovern's chalge that the

FBI investigation appeared less than encompassing, Gray

fired off a barrage of statistics 333 agents used up 14,000

man-hours in covering 1,800 leads that rivaled J. Edgar

Hoover at his numerical best. And even before the in-

vestigation was terminated, Gray asserted that it "strains

the credulity" to believe that Nixon could have perpe

trated a "con job" on the American people. In the end,

it was only by the dogged digging of reporters that the

sordid story of political espionage, sabotage and dirty

tricks" was uncovered. Watergate turned out, to be but!

one component of a widespread network whose lines led

directly to the White House.

It was not Gray's fault, of course, that the story was

too big to be contained, and he tried diligently to mini-

mize the damage. In seemingly unrelated moves; he trans-

ferred the head of the sensitive Washington field office,

Robert G. Kunkel, to St. Louis, and Assistant Director

Charles W. Bátes to San Francisco as agent in charge.

On the surface, Kunkel was in trouble for altering, the

report of a scufile involving an FBI agent during an anti-

war rally, and Bates had been shifted in line with a new

policy permitting "top-ranking bureau officials to have

fours of duty in the field." What the two fien had in

common was not mentioned. As chief of the general in

vestigative division, Bates had been in overall charge of

the Watergate investigation; Kunkel had worked directly

under him, deploying his agents to do the legwork. Both,

it is said, talked too freely with journalist friends.

The Wesley Grapp affair also threatened to get out

of hand until Gray diverted it away from the $265,000 in

loans and toward such amusements as mustaches and

office bugs. A South Dakotan, Grapp had gotten off to a

winging start in the FBI as the political godson of Sen

Karl Mundt. But he quickly made his own mark as a

Captain Queeg, a breed the FBI's ancient martinet had

appreciated. As a Hoover favorite, he became so power.

ful that in 1968 he flatly refused a transfer from Los

Angeles to Boston. And when an inspection team showed

up later that year in response to a battery of allegations

leveled by agents, Grapp sent them back to Washington

empty-handed. "I don't have anything to fear from the

inspectors," he boasted at an agents' conference. "They

can't touch me."

Grapp was persistently on the make with the rich and

the influential. In Oklahoma City, for instance, he fre

quented the Petroleum Club and cultivated the oil elite.

In Los Angeles, he accepted an honorary membership in

the swank Lakeside Goll Club (regular memberships cost

$13,000), and penetrated the inner sanctums of such ex

clusive businessmen's.groups as the Hundred Club. Hei

526

once told an aide, "Im just using the bureau as a step

ping stone to bigger things.",

Apparently Grapp achieved his "bigger things" with-

out leaving the FBI On a salary which would peak at

$36,000 a year, he accumulated assets totaling some

$360,000. 01 this, $125,000 was in real estate holdings,

and he had some $200,000 in common stocks, which he

used as collateral in borrowing $265,000 trom five lend-

ing institutions. si

How could a career bureaucrat amass this small for-

tune? The question was first asked in the form of "certain

allegations: received by the FBI on May 10, eight days

after Hoover's death, When a two-day inquiry brought

no action, fresn allegations came in. An inspection squad

spent close to three weeks in Los Angeles, turning in its

report on August 17. On August 25 Grapp was cen-

sured, suspended wthout pay for twenty-five days, and

banished to the small PI Paso office. But not for financial

improprieties According toGray. he; had defied

newsrooming standards by punishing several agents

for stowing mustaches Cone had been sent on a non-

mission into the desert, where he was felled by heat pros-

tration) Stil the complain poured in On September

15 Grapp was demoted from agent in charge and trans-

ferred tO Minneapologen ordinary sleuth, assertedly

for recording agents. phone conversations in violation of

regulations The sticky affair ended in compromise shortly

thereafter, when Gray rescinded the demotion and al

lowed Grapp to retire at his highest pay scale.

Still, waspish reporters pressed the FBI chief on

the financial angle. He refused to release what his inspec-

tors had found and insisted that no laws or rules had

been violated But the reporters had ferreted out some

details on their own, Following a 1968 kidmapping in

which the young victim was returned unharmed, Grapp

had obtained a S37,500 Toan from the Fidelity Bank,

whose president was the victim's father. At the same time

he came into possession of 20,006 shares of First Fidelity

Co., the bank's holding company. Thereafter, Grapp

secured two loans totaling $135,000, plus a home mort-

gage of $SS,000, from the City National Bank of Beverly

Hills. As it turned out, he didn't simply walk through

the doors and apply to the nearest loan officer. City Na-

onal is run oy Alfred Hartylan old crony of J. Edgar

Hoover who accompanied the G-man on his annual pil-

grimages to the Del Mar race track near San Diego (Hart

once was an officer of Gold Seal Liquors in Chicago,

cited by the Kefauver Committee as a mob front domi-

pated by Joey Fusco), Grapp met Hart through Hoover.

Earlier this year, the smallish Fidelity Bank hit finan-

National wrote oir as uncollectable $5 million in loans

floated by Fideity, among them the Grapp note (Grapp

maintains he is not in arcan. on any loan payments):

United States Natlonal is part of the business empire of

C. Amholt Smith, a major Nixon contributor and central

Agure in, the abortve TT payof which would have

brought the Republican convention to San Diego. Smith,

in company with convicted tax dodger and heavy Nixon

contributor John Alessio, headed a cyndicate that sev-

CAS NATION/November 27, 1972

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## Page 76

eral years ago held the ease on, heave var, race trac

notine, i no wonder co paral poe road

"We're trying to guard against saying we know all or

Grapp's financial dealings Weve investigated as far as

we can.". Under Gray, politicalization of the FBI is out

in the open. That is the only substantial cuterence be

tween him and Hoover, who, despite" his right-wing, bias

insisted that the bureau was above politics.

At least Gray, as a transparently political creature, has

unwitney performed a service. For now the FBI has

been identined as a political arm of the current Admin-

istration, just as is its parent organization, the Justice

Department This means that any overdue reshaping of

the oureau, any chlution, of its police state powers,

any

turning of its prowess toward laying bare Republican

scandals, must await the election of a more progressive

administration.

In the meantime, the job of watching the watchers fails

by default to the press.

4414

POPULATION & POLLUTION

DO WE DARE TO GROW?

Mr. Singer Is professor of entronmend edences and mem-

ber of the Center for Advanced Studies a the Universio

of Virginia in Charlottesville. He is editor and co author of

Is There an Optimum Level of Population? (McGraw-Hil).

- Vi

Earlier this year, the papers carried an interesting sta-

tistic about our economic progress. the median family

income had just exceeded $10,000 per year. To be clear

about the jargon, this means that one half of the families

had an income of more than $10,000 per year and one-

half were making less. In 1950, the median family incom

had been about $3,300. Even taking inflation into ac

count, real income has more than doubled in a little more

than twenty years. The proportion of families considered

poor by the criteria that the US. Govemment uses has

decreased gradually; from 18 per cent in 1959 to 10 per

cent in 1968; and the proportion of consumer income

spent on food dropped steadily, from 24 per cent in

1950 to 18,5 per cent in 1968, That last is, yet anothe

way of indicating/that.things have bcen.getting.detter

for the average individuali he can spend al larges part

of his income on housings fecreation.andtuxunies..nota

bad record for economic crowb issuer

If we are so rich, then shy arent we bappy? Why

didntiwe celebratega couple off years, backwheny the

gross national, product for the first, time exceeded Sl til

lion? Most of our politicians, a good many coonomist

and the Japanese still beliere in the GNP But lately, #c

have witnessed a wave. of disillusionment, particularly.

among the young and afiuent, which has expressed itself

in a variety of ways, from protests and bombing, to drop.

ping out and returning to the simple lfe.? While pros:

to economic growth should be kept separate from that to

open relate to often un ho le the to gro sero are

can, and maybe should, proceed without population

The attack on economic growth is based on three

propositions all of them superficially correct. (1) The

GNP does not represent quality of life. (2) The resources

of the earth, on which our prosperity is based, are finite.

(3) Environmental pollution has been getting worse. My

purpose here is to look at these points a little more

closely.

The GNP doesn't measure quality of life and can't tell

us how happy we are: Of course not—it was never in-

tended to do anything but measure the yearly output of

all goods and services that are paid for in what econa

mists, refer to as the marketplace. Liberated economists

like Kenneth Boulding, have long realized and exten-

sively preached that the GNP should not be used as an

indicator of national well-being, or "welfare" in the eco-

nomic sense of the word. The GNP is a reasonably good

way to aggregate apples and oranges and haircuts and

medical costs. But it cannot tell you how atträctive your

haircut was of whether the medicine improved your

health, It simply counts how much you paid the barber

and the doctor. And it you got something really good,

like home-cooked meal with home-grown ingredients,

under increasing attack. at

To a large extent the severity of the attack is produced

by what one might call the muliplier effect"

of the

mass media. But when the faddish aspects are stripped

away, there would still seem to have occurred a decided

swing away from "growth-mania," the one-before latest

fad. In this context, one distinction is essential; opposition

THE NATION/November 27, 1972

54756. DocId: 32245514 Page 364

not paid. The easiest way to raise the GNP is to star

paying your wife a salary. But 'the GNP does includ

other: things; like espenditures for Vietnam, repair cost

for shoddy automobiles, and the cost of replacing all the

windows that were broken by juvenile delinquents. It

includes the cost of commuting to work, which is a kind

of "regrettable necessity," and the price of controling

pollution.

The GNP is a mixed bag and it is surprising that people

are just now beginning to wake up to this fact. As for

an index of happiness, we don't have one. Research is

being done to devise an index that would at least be a

more accurate measure of the real welfare than is the

:527

---

## Page 77

SUMMARY OF WILLIAM TURNER MANUSCRIPT

Prepared by Betsy Palmer

January 23, 1978

PART FIVE:

THE SECOND BAY OF PIGS

Released by Castro one year after the Bay of Pigs invasion was

Enrique "Harry" Ruiz-Williams.

He met with Roberto San Roman.

and together they flew

to Washington and met with

Bobby Kennedy.

Williams was a Castro supporter in the beginning -- he was a

mining engineer in Oriente Province and came in contact with

units of Che Guevara and Raul Castro.. He later became a friend

of Eloyo Menoya of the Second Front of the Escambray. Williams

left Cuba in 1958, because he felt Batista was angry with him.

He returned in mid-1959 and became anti-Castro.

Came to the

United States to find a hired assassin -- talked to someone in

New York and got a price but doesn't know what group the assassin

was connect with

(Mafia or CIA) but the price was too high.

Williams enlised in Brigade 2506.

After President Kennedy's

appearance at the Orange Bowl, Williams taked to Robert Kennedy

who told him he (Williams) was

their most trusted of the exiles

and that the White House was still interested in returning Cuba

to the exiles. Williams gets direct contact with Cyrus Vance,

Under Secretary of the Army - also Joseph Califano.

Brigade

veterans sent to Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, for training.

Felipe de Diego bacomes intelligence officer

for this group

because of his experience in Operation 40.

At this time, Williams is assigned to CIA contacts Howard Hunt

and James McCord.

HH 54756

DooId:32245514 Page

77

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## Page 78

PART FIVE

ALPHA 66 ANNOYS THE RUSSIAN BEAR

Morris Bishop in contact with Antonio Veciana, political leader

of Alpha 66.

Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo one of the co-founders.

Menoyo flees Cuba in January 1961 -- CIA suspicious of this

belated defection - held for 10 months in detention center.

Alpha 66 began hit-and-run coastal raids and CIA tended to

green-light their missions.

Morris Bishop convinced that Kennedy and Krushchev had made

a secret pact to do nothing about Cuba when they were negotiating

during the Cuba missle crisis in October.

Bishop decides to

act on his own to force Kennedy's hand. Alpha 66 and Second

Front fired on Soviet freighter Ivov and attack Russian commando

camp on March 18, 1963. Kennedy offered conciliatroy statements

about damage inflicted by Bishop instigated raids.

Jose Miro

Cardona of CRC charged the Administration with policy of

"peaceful coexistence"

HH 54756

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78

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## Page 79

PART FIVE

NELLI HAMILTON'S BOARDING HOUSE

Nelli Hamilton operated a boarding house at 1925 S.W. 4th St.,

Miami, in the heart of Little Havana, where the freelance

adverturers, such as Gerry Patrick Hemming, "little Joe" Garman,

Robert K. Brown, William J. Dempsey, Martin Francis Xavier Casey,

etc., stayed in

the early 1960's.

Howard K. Davis recalled the night Rolando "El Tigre" Masferrer

sent over a truck.

to pick up a few of Nelli's boys for an

action. He also recalls the night when six of them stole a

40-foot vessel named

the Polo and pulled a raid on Cuba. Guns

for this raid were supplied by Frank Sturgis. The raid was

thwarted.

Dick Whattley was among the boarders -- also Ed Collins, who

reputedly had ties to the Canadian Mafia. Nelli's was

a kind

of command post.

The missle crisis brought increased surveillance of the action

groups: Customs agents in south Florida increased from

two

dozen to over 200..

Navy pilots made photo reconnaissance runs

over Cuba and also over

No Name Key.

First of President Kennedy's crack-down victims was Frank Sturgis

and

the International Anti-Communist Brigade. Major Evelio Duque

and 15 Cubans set out from Naples, Florida in Alex Rorke's

cabin cruiser, Violyn III, the the idea of sinking a Soviet

tanker.

Jerry Buchanan was also along. They were arrested by

British marines and Bahamian police, tipped off by the FBI

according to Sturgis.

Were released a day later and guns

re-

turned to them.

Rorke soon after landed in Cuba with the idea of assassinating

Castro outside a cemetery in Santiago. Did kill his bodyguard

but Castro. was riding in the next-to-last jeep and was unharmed.

Rorke was lost in a plane off Yucatan Peninsula off Mexico.

Also aboard was Enrique Molina Garcia and Geoffrey Sullivan.

Sturgis believed Molina was a double agent who kidnapped Rorke

and Sullivan, took them to Cuba in retaliation for earlier attempt

on Castro's life -- Hemming agrees.

HH 54756 DocId:32245514 Page 79

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## Page 80

SUMMARY - PART FIVE

THE "HITS" THAT MISSED

Bill Harvey, CIA, was dumped in June 1963 as head of Cuban

Task Force W and transferred to Rome station as a result

of his clash with RFK over the missle crisis...Johnny

Roselli gives him a farewell dinner.

Roselli's "poison pill" plan to kill Castro had failed. He

also was using sniper teams based at a CIA safefhouse

at Point Mary on upper Key Largo. Captain Bradley Ayers,

an Army officer posted to JM-WAVE, recalled that during

orientation tour of CIA facilities in May, 1963, "Rip"

Robertson took him to Point Mary satehouse for

overnight

stay. Ayres "said Colonel" John

Roselli was, like.

"Rio"

Robertson, one of the few Americans authorized to actually

go on commando missions into Cuba.

Harvey gave Roselli a special radio tuned to Cuban security

channels.

Roselli project remained in an active status

during spring and summer of 1963.

Robert Plumlee, contract pilot, said several times during

May and June he flew Roselli to Bimini Island for meetings

that included Bob Rogers and Bill Carr of the CIA and anti-

Castro leader Carlos Prio. Ayres says his Army colleague,

Major Sterling "Wes" Estrum, was involved with Roselli

as late as mid-August.

"At this stage Robert Kennedy still believed that the CIA

had discontinued its Mafia plots, and CIA Director John

McCone had never

learned that they even existed.

With

Harvey in Rome, it was Richard Helms who was

keeping the lid

FBI learns of CIA-Mafia link and also tries to

penetrate, but Roselli would not work with them.

McCone

learned of involvement in August when Chicago Sun-Times

reported a CIA connection with Sam Ginancanna.

Helms

convinces McCone that operation had ceased before McCone

took over.

CIA has connection with Rolando Cubela who had defected

from Castro and wished to assassinate him. Cubela associated

with Federation of University Students. CIA contacted him,

possible in Madrid, where James A. Noël was station chief.

CIA lost contact with Cubela at time of missle crisis but

reestablished in September 1963. Cubela pushed for firm

assurances of American support - wanted to meet with RFK.

Desmond Fitzgerald

agreed to meet with Cubela and hola him-

self out as

a personal representative Öf RFk - Ted Shackley

öpposed this scheme. Fitzgerald did meet with him and

promised him

a high-powered

l rifle with a scope.

HN 54756 DocId:32245514 Page 80

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## Page 81

SUMMARY - PART FIVE

THE "FLYING TIGER" CAPER

Bayo-Pawley raid began on early June morning in 1963-

when the Flying Tiger II left Biscayne Bay and headed

for Straits of Florida.

Aboard the boat was the owner,

Ambassador William D. Pawley, Rip Robertson and two other

CIA paramilitary supervisors, Richard K. Billings of Life

magazine - object to kidnap two Russian missle officers

and take them back to the U.S. and put on a press display.

Eduardo Perez began showing a letter in early

weeks of

1963 supposedly written by undergraound unit in Cuba which

claimed the Russians wanted to defect and could verify that

Russian missles were installed in Cuba.

Perez was nicknamed

"Eddie Bayo" because he resembled General Bayo and also

had been a ferocious fighter with Castro's rebel army.

Turned against Castro and made numerous incursions

into Cuba -- reportedly involved in post-Bay of Pigs

assassination attempt against RAul Castro.

Became involved

with Haitian exiles who wanted to overthrow Francois

Duvalier.

Howard Davis, of Interpen, tried to help Bayo solicit

funds for Haitians -- contacted Theodore

• Racoosin in

New York to ask for funds.

Davis tells Racoosin about the Russian

defectors.

Racoosin checks out the story, convinced it

is true.

Later doubts that Bayo wants anything but

equipment.

New groups takes over (had been White House interest at

first). John Martino become catalyst of Flying Tiger caper.

Martino reportedly linked to New Jersey Mafia- had strong

Author at this point restates

Loran Hall story that he met with Giancana and Trafficante

in Florida in Feb. 1963 where $30, 000 was offered as a

bounty on Castro's head).

Florida newspaper personages get involved in planning

Bill Baggs, editor of Miami News, Jack:Gore, editor of Ft.

Lauderdale News, Mrs: Johnu. Perry, Jr. wife of publisher

of Palm Beach Post-Times and Congressman William Kramer.

Raid becomes known as Operation Red-Cross.

Senator James O. Eastland briefion defector project by

Martino.

Pawley checks with Bayo to evaluate the details

and tells Eastland that it was a high-risk operation.

Pawley arranges meeting between Eastland and Lt. Gen. Pat

Carter, deputy director of CIA.

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## Page 82

The "Flying Tiger" Caper (continued)

Page 2

Carter did not consider it necessary to inform CIA Director

John McCone that the Agency was providing logistical support

and author claims President Kennedy and McCone did not learn

of CIA involvement until a year later.

According to Gerry Hemming, Pawley arranged for Dwight

Eisenhower and Jimmy Doolittle to debrief the Russian

defectors. This was designed to embarrass President Kennedy.

By early June, Henry Luce had entered the picture and in-

volved Life magazine

-- gets them to agree to send photo-

grapher Andrew St. George on mission but no pictures to

be published without Pawley's approval. «Life magazine deeply

involved in what author describes as Henry Luce's private

warragainst: Castro.

Pawley felt that Life's involvement

"blew" the mission - agreed to talk to Life managing editor

George P. Hunt -- and they struck the agreement about no

publication without Pawley's consent:

•Flying Tiger set out with 3 .CIA men and Billings aboard and

to rendezvous with amphbian carrying Pawley, Martino, Bayo

and nine commandos, and free-lance photographer Terrence

Spencer, who had been hired by Life.

Bayo and his men set off for shores of Cuba in late afternoon

of June 8. Boat reportedly overloaded. Bayo expected to

return in

two days.

Suspicion that he intended.not only to

get Russian defectors but also to make a hit on Castro.

No one returned from raid. All participants remained

silent

about the thwarted raid and it was families of those missing

that broke the story a year later to Kennedy and McCone.

Story forced into the open in early 1976.

This brought

Bob Plumlee, CIA contract pilot, to the author with story

of other raids sponsored by CIA using private yachts--

unknown to the Kennedy administration.

Tells of a mission

into Cuba with Manuel Rojo to bring out five men from Cuba,

including Juan Martinez and another Alpha 66 man.

HH 54756 DocId:32245514 Page 82

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## Page 83

"ART FIVE - THE COUNTERFELI CURRENCY PIOT

Chapter deals with scheme of Mario Garcia Kohly, an exiled Cuban

leader, to enlist the help of powerful people in the United States

in an effort to flood Castro's Cuba with counterfeit currency and

thus destroy Castro's economy.

Kohly presents his plan to Vice President Richard Nexon, and General

Charles Cabell, deputy director of the CIA. Nixon requested

thạt

CIA:cooperateswith:Kohly..

Kohly had a round of meetings with CIA and felt the Agency would

install him as the number one person among the Cuban exiles.

But

CIA soon was asking him to

merge with the CRC weing formed

under

the incoming Kennedy Administration. Claims the CIA offered him

$500,000 "under the table" money for consent to merge.

Robest We Morrow:- an aerospace engineer and connected with CIA

proprietary, comcoor,.....

Inc., becomes involved with Kohly. He was

inducted into the secret war by General Cabell and Ed Kendricks and

given cover identity of Robert Porter. Morrow is the one who

actually worked out the counterfeit plan, as Kohly had become

preoccupied with political maneuvering.

Morrow had plates made

assertedly with the aid of engravers of U.S? Bureau of Engraving

andprinting.

Kennedy administration was not aware of plan --

•General Cabell apparently working independently. This took place

in the summer of 1961.

Cabell shows Morrow a letter from then Vice President Johnson who

disclosed that he had learned that President Kennedy secretly

had instructed Robert MacNamara to bring CIA under control, in-

cluding formation of Defense Intelligence Agency.

Also claimed

Kennedy working through Senate Appropriations Committee

to curtail

CIA power.

Cabell decides information about

counterfeiting scheme was leaked

to Castro, who, on August 5, 1961, ordered all pesos

to be exchanged at par for newly-printed ones. The Kohly scheme

was thwarted.

Kohly was out of favor with the Kennedy's due to his free lancing

Kohly proposed going into

Cuba to forcibly free the Bay of Pigs prisoners. Kendricks re-

jected the plan but Kohly meets two other CIA agents through a

friend, Commander Miguel Pons Goizueta. They come up with the

idea of ransom being paid to Castro -- approximately $25 million.

Kennedy rejects plan and sends two of his aids to go to Cuba and

make a deal with Castrol.

Kohly continues to scheme - envisions an operation based in a Latin

@American country - freedom fighters.

Through Senator Brewster,

Kohly contacts General Maxwell Taylor who purportedly said that

project would be recognized by the Pentagon if Kohly could get

private financing. Kohly finds Louis Berlanti, a wealthy Miami

contractor who was willing to finance. They cannot get a meeting

with General Taylor.

HH 54756 DocId:32245514 Page 83

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## Page 84

• Page

The Counterfeit Currency Plot

Counterfeit scheme resurfaces - operating out of 6324 Hazelwood

Avenue, Baltimore,

Md.

Wm. Morrow and his wife involved -- got

financing from Louis

Berlanti. They contact a commercial printer

in New York -- met with a man named Martin.

General Taylor tries

to persuade Berlanti to drop his financial support of Kohly but

Berlanti refuses.

On evening of August 16, 1963, Berlanti and

• son Fred killed in a plane crash (private Plane) - mystery still

surrounds circumstances - reportedly had

$30 million in plane.

William Martin meets with Kohly and at time plates were turned over,

Martin, a Secret Service undercover operative, arrests Kohly.. Morrow

and wife given suspended sentences

and Kohly conviced and sentenced

to two years. Kohly supporters maintain he was victim of entrap-

ment because he had not knuckled under to the Kennedy Administration.

Arrest was in October 1963.

Kohly died in 1975.

HH 54756 DooId:32245514 Page 84

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## Page 85

PART FIVE

THE CIA'S "GOLDEN BOY" AND THE

SECOND NAVAL GUERRILLA

Chapter deals with Manuel Artime, the MRR, and Artime's very

close association with Robert F.

Kennedy.

Author states that

it was REK personally who had raised the last $1 million to get

Artime ransomed from Modelo Prison - a Castro prisoner. Artime

vacations with the Kennedy's in New Hampshire and returns. to

Miami with a special portfolio from RFK to draw funds from the

CIa at the rate of $1,500 per month to revive the MRR.

The

figure soon grows to $250,000 per month and, between 1963 and 1966,

totalled $9 million.

MRR project targeted on Cuban shipping and shore installations --

given code name Second Naval Guerrilla. CIA provided funding,

logistical support, intelligence data and guidance. Each operation

of Artime's had to get CIA clearance.

Second Naval Guerrilla was to be launched from Central America.

Artime approached Luis Somoza, Nicaraguan, and he agreed -- met

with Carlos Prio and Artime in July 1963.

Somoza solicits help of

President Francisco J. Orlich, Costa Rica.

Two MRR jungle camps set up on lands belonging to Colonel Vico

•Starki Jimenez -- friend of Orlich's brother.

Recruitment high

in Miami office. CIA money flowed into operation..

MRR purchasing

agents were Sixto R. Mesa, exile business man and William K. King,

former oilman in Havana.

They employed Bernard Barker as a

courier. Bought only the best in equipment -- much of it German:

made.

MRR "navy" led by two attack cargo vessels fitted with 20mm

naval cannon, .50 caliber machine guns and recoilless

rifles. Ships flew Liberian flag and carried an assortment of

flags that could be hoisted as situation dictated. CIA/lent:

Tejana: TIl tosthe MRR.

Also a number of smaller boats.

Central American bases ready by November.

First contingent of

commandos trained at CIA facilities in Virginia and No. Carolina

sailed from Norfolk.. At peak of buildup, 300 men under arms at

the bases.

Pepe San Roman in charge. .

MRR volunteers exempted

from usual Imigration rules regarding travel outside the U.s.

HH 54756 DooId:32245514 Page 85

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## Page 86

9,

PART FIVE

THE COMMANDOS MAMBISES: A TRIAL BALLOON

Led by Major Manuel Villafana, the Commandos Mambises were an

elite group formed especially to be a trial balloon to test

this nations reaction

to a renewed anti-Castro movement.

Trained at CIA amphibious base in Louisiana -- quartered in

safehouse in South Florida - subsidized solely by CIA.

One

of the few married men in group was Remigio "Cucu" Arce.

Mambises would mount a spectacular commando raid on vital Cuban

costal installation -- press release would be issued simultaneously

in Guatemala and relayed to Miami radio station WMIE (now WBQA) .

Creation of Commandos Mambises stemmed from discussions of

Standing Group during spring of 1963.

Robert Kennedy expressed

opinion that U.S. needed to do something against Castro even

though actions would not bring him down.

At this time, Harry

Williams was still meeting with Hunt and McCord to plan an

expeditionary force to be based in Dominican Republic and Artime

was training troops in Central America..

On June 19, JFK authorized a sabotage program aimed at petroleum

facilities, railroad and highway transportation, electric power

communication lines and manufacturing plants. It was coupled with

effort to develop internal resistance elements which could carry

out sabotage.

This is first time CIA was allowed to target

installations that had previously been American owned.

Guatemala City "press agent" for Mambises was Rafael Martinez Pupo,

bank executive. His Miami contact was Salvador Lew, correspondent

for Latin American News Agency-

Mambises first materialized on evening of August 18, 1963 when

Pupo made rounds of Guatemala City press offices handing out

release about strike against oil storage tanks at strategic port

Their leader, Angel Orozco Crespo was captured and

later executed. Other raids carried out on October I on Cayo Guin

and October 22 in port of Isabela de Sagua.

Also on October 22, Mambises unit attempted a landing from the Rex

on Pinar del Rio Province. Set off a firefight and

straffing of

freighter J. Louis by MIGs.

U.s. charged that Cuba had attacked

the J. Louis without provocation, but Castro reported that four of

Rex crew had been captured, described the Rex and named her home

port in West

Palm Beach.

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## Page 87

10,

ART FIVE

THE NAVY NOBODY KNEW

Section deals with the ships allegedly used by the CIA as

support vessels and attack boats for raids into Cuba in the

early 1960's.

The Rex was harbored at West Palm Beach and:the Leda. at Port

Everglades. Captains..of. the vessels were brothers Alejandro

Brooks (Rex) and Gaspar Brooks. (Leda) • Both flew the flag

of Nicaraga, had radar and electronic gear, were registered

under names of companies the author feels were CIA fronts,

and came in and out of harbor without any interference from

the INS.

Turner goes into detail about the raid in which four of the

RexCrewmen were captured by Castro. - briefly mentioned in

the previous section, Commandos "Mambises. Those captured

were: Alberto del Busto, Luis Montero Carranzana,

Dr. Clemente Inclan Werner and one not identified by name.

Turner said CIA purchased ships from the Navy's mothball

and reserve fleet and were purchased as government surplus by

CIA's dummy companies through commercial

ship brokers.

A gunner's mate on the Rex stated that the crew were all Cubans.

Gordon Campbell, JM WAVE

assistant station chief, would go to

the ship just before a mission and had Captain Brooks sealed

orders to be opened at sea. After the Rex cleared the harbor,

the guns would be taken from the magazine and fastened

to the

deck mounts.

Rex would rendezvous at sea with the commando,

frogmen and infiltration teams.

Would replenish her stores

and

ammunition at Stock Island near Key West, where there was a CIA

warehouse:

A good portion of this section is a recounting of various raids

reported in the book The War That Never Was by Bradley Ayers.

It is good adventure reading, but not necessary to summarize.

HH 54756 DocId: 32245514 Page

87

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## Page 88

11.

PART FIVE

THE KENNEDYS' DOUBLE SECRET

Once again, Turner draws heavily from the text of the book

by Bradley Ayers, giving an account of Ayers meeting REK

at a hunting camp in the Florida Everglades where Gordon Campbell

was briefing REK on a planned CIA sponsored

raid into Cuba.

Campbell tells Ayers that they had received permission

some raids which had been a long time in gaining White House

approval - raids involved the use of two-man submaries to

attack Cuban ships in harbor, airborne commando raids, etc.

to hit a major oil refinery in mid -December 1963.

Campbell

tells Ayers that "---the Agency cannot allow this mission to

fail. Everybody from the President and Special Group on down

has his eyes on this one."

Turner then discusses the apparent incongruity of the situation.

While the Kennedy administration

seemed to be giving a lot of

support to the CIA raids, at the same time it was considering

detente with Castro. McGeorge Bundy presented the possibility

of communicating with Castro

as early as January 1963.

In

June the Special Group agreed it would be wise to explore the

possibilities of establishing

a communication with Castro and

yet, two week later, the President authroized an intensified

sabotage program.

This section gives a view of the politics of the times, an in-

sight into the frustrations experienced by Cuban exiles, and

ends with an account of the cessation of activities on November22,

1963.

HH 54756 DocId:32245514 Page 88

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## Page 89

12.

SUMMARY

THE LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN BUST AND

THE "BOMB CASTRO" PLOTS

This chapter is incomplete - at least, we do not have it in

its entirity.as evidenced by the fact

that the last page in our

possession ends in the middle of a sentence.

The chapter begins with an account from the New Orleans Times-

Picayune, August 1, 1963, of the cache of material for bombs

that were seized on the property of William McLaney. Mrs.

McLaney explained that their summer cottage on Lake Pontchartrain

had been lent to a Cuban friend, Jose Juarez, and they knew

nothing of his activities there.

The raid was condacted by

the FBI and eleven arrests were made (Sam Benton, Richard

Lauchli, Victor Dominador Espinosa Hernandez, Carlos Eduardo

Hernandez Sanchez, Antonio Soto Vasquez, Acelo Pedros Amores,

Miguel Alvarez Jimenez, Byron Chiverton, Earl J. Wasem, JI., and

Ralph Folkerts.)

The FBI

hastily freed these men and Turner

states that it was because they learned that the group was

involved in

schemes to assassinate Castro sponsored by the

Mafia-CIA.

Sam Benton was the connection between Cuban exiles and gambling

interests.

Benton had been employed by McLaney (Mike) at

Nacional Hotel casino in Havana. Mike and William McLaney are

brothers.

Benton's principle exile link was

Sanchez Arango and his Triple A

organization.

After the Bay of Pigs, Sanchez broke with the

CIA and formed a junta of splinter groups, travelled to San

Juan and Caracas eliciting support from social democrats Munoz

Marin and Roman Bentencourt.

Ed Arthur, a military veteran from Ohio, was in Miami to join

the counterrevolutionaries. He came into contact with Jim

Buchanan, and later Frank Sturgis.

Jim and Jerry Buchanan took

him to a MIRR meeting attended by Orlando Bosch.

Arthur became

armaments advisor and procurer for Commandos I.

Discussion of Orlando Bosch Avila, indicates that by the summer

of 1963 he claimed that MIRR was conducting regular air raids

on Cuba with three twin-engine planes based in Central America.

Carl M. Davis, an American pilot who flew for Bosch, advised that

the country was Guatemala, where an airstrip was carved out of

an isolated seciton of a United Fruit Company plantation, and

also Costa Rica was occasionally used as a base.

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## Page 90

The Lake Pontchartrain Bust and

the "Bobm Castro" Plots (continued)

Page 2

Turner states that apparently the McLaney property in Louisiana

was being used as a home base for Cuba overflights. Sam Benton

was commuting between Miami and New Orleans. Existence of the

base was a tightly held secret.

According to Turner, Ed Arthur was taken to a Miami home on

Pine Tree Drive by Sam Benton. Arthur was offered $90,000

to assassinate Castro. Arthur turned down offer because

he felt it was from the Mafia and he did not want any involvement

with them.

Turner says it was "natural to suspect" that the

person making the offer to Arthur might be Mike McLaney.

Turner

says there is little doubt but that a call from Chicago that

night authorizing the offer. to Arthur was from Sam Giancana or

one of his lieutenants.

End of Summary - Part Five

HH 54756

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## Page 91

SUMMARY

PART

6

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION COVER-UP

544 CAMP STREET - 1

Author begins with discussion of Guy Banister's activities

on the night that Kennedy was assassinated - his pistol

whipping of his part-time investigator, Jack S. Martin, who

refused to bring charges against Banister.. Turner claims

that Banister's office at 544 Camp Street was a "nervecenter

fox CIA-sponsored operations against Fidel Castro" and Banister

was also aware that Oswald had stamped 544 Camp Street on the

pro-Castro literature he had handed out in August of 1963.

Turner thinks that Banister was on edge, realizing that a

thorough investigation in New Orleans, re: Oswald connections,

would expose the clandestine network he had erected behind

his detective agency, which would implicate David Ferrie and

lead to the CIA's all-Cuban Operation 40, collaborators,

fronts and money conduits, training operations, etc.

The morning after the assassination, Secret Service agents

were investigating the 544 Camp Street building, because the

address had appeared on Oswald's literature.

Agents were trying

to find out whether Oswald had occupied space there. Their in-

quiries did not extend to

Banister's office.

There was a large

supply of "Hands Off Cuba" handbills in Banister's office.

On this same day, Jack Martin contacted the District Attorney's

office and alleged that David Ferrie was involved in the

assassination.

He told Dist. Att. Kohlman about Oswald's

Civil Air Patrol association

with

Ferrie. Martin claimed

that

Ferrie involved in the assassination with the role of piloting

an escape plane across the border from Brownsville, Texas.

A network correspondent, Robert Mullholland, claimed in a

personal interview that he had overheard FBI agents talking about

a relationship between Ferrie and Oswald - the Saturday after

the assassination.

Author states that on the Monday after the assassination, FBI agent

Ernest C. Wall, Jr. called Guy Banister, presumably because the

Secret Service had connected Banistér to Sergio Areach Smith and

Wall, who had helped organize the Frieds of Democratic Cuba.

This piece of information was never called to the attention of

the Warren Commission according to the author.

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## Page 92

SUMMARY - Part 6.

THE MAN WHO SHOT A BANK - 2

Richard Case Nagell, age 32 in 1963, had graduated with

honors from the Army Military Intelligence School and served

in the Counter Intelligence Corps, who considered him a

"perennially calm and level-headed officer of superior

intelligence."

On the afternoon of September 20, 1963, Nagel entered the

State National Bank in El Paso, Texas, shot an automatic

weapon into the ceiling and then sat in his car until police

officers arrested him. He claimed he wanted to be detained

by federal authorities. Also claimed that since August 1962,

he had been on CIA payroll as an agent, had met Lee Harvey

Oswald during this time, and learned of a domestic-inspired

plot to assassinate Kennedy.

When he reported what he had

learned to his CIA contact, he was instructed to "take care"

of Oswald, but refused and sent a letter to v. Edgar Hoover

warning him of the plot. Nagell thought the plot was to take

place on September 26.

Turner learned of this story in 1967 when Nagell was in Leaven-

worth Federal Penitentiary.

Turner published an account of

Nagell's story in Ramparts magazine in January 1968.

Chapter deals with Nagell's background and activities in the

1960's. Much of the information reported was told by Nagell

to a former inmate.

Nagell claims to have explored "an.

alleged connection between Eladio Del Valle, Sergio Arcacha

Smith;", and checked on leads of adavid Ferrie associate and

tailed

a man who supposedly was an ex-CIA employee, who was

observed talking to Manuel Artime and Rolando Masferrer.

Nagell claims he has

a snapshot of himself and Oswald taken in

the French Quarter of New Orleans -- but has not produced same.

Also claims Oswald was a "patsy" and states reasons why in this

chapter (page 11).

Nagell asked to talk to a Secret Service agent when news of

Kennedy's assasination reached him in jail. Did not talk when

agent arrived because FBI was also present and Nagell upset that

FBI had ignored his previous warning.

Nagell ordered to Spring-

field for psychiatric observation on January 24, 1964. He was

convicted of bank robbery and given 10 year sentence. Freed in

April 1968. Claims CIA contacted him and sent him on a mission

to East Germany in June of 1968.

Author says final verdict on Nagell must wait until Nagell

produces snapshot of he and Oswald. Turner does state that

Nagell's story does seem

"quite plausible, and there aft no

contradictions in it."

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## Page 93

SUMMARY - PART 6

THE LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN LINK - 4.

Withheld from the Warren Commission was an FBI memo out of

Miami on October 3, 1963 which reported that Sam Benton had

been intercepted by Customs as he was ready to fly to Cuba

on a bombing mission as well as the FBI raid on the McLaney

property in Louisiana two weeks earlier. The Senate Intelligence

Committee cited this as an important example of the FBI efforts

to protect its image by hiding factsabout its alleged laxity

in the surveillance

of Oswald prior to Kennedy's assassination.

The Committee did note that Rolando Cubela (AMLASH) was linked

to the Lake Pontchartrain group by a man referred to in the

Committee report as "A".

The information "A" revealed raised

the possibility that organized crime figures may have been

aware of the AMLASH operation.

Turner suggests that "A" was Carlos Hernandez, who, with Sam

Benton, was detained in the Miami and Lake Pontchartrain raids.

Hernandez and Benton became business partners in a Miami gun

shop in 1964. The author discusses the Senate Intelligence

Committee report which discusses

the connection of the ousted

gambling bosses and the Cuban exiles. Suggests there was an

abundance of motive and that Bobby Kennedy was the person they

were after, through the assassination of his brother, the

President.

Jose Aleman, a Miami exile businessman, was an FBI source of

information. Aleman reported

a Santos

Trafficante prediction

that Kennedy was going to be "hit" but was ignored by the FBI.

Shortly after the assassination (within hours) the FBI were

quizzing Aleman as asked him not to say anything to anybody.

Turner contends that if the mob was involved; Oswald would

qualify in their eyes as the kind of "nut" to set up to do the

He also notes that on August 5, 1963, Oswald unaccountably

became an "interchangeable man"

-- working both the pro and anti

Castro sides in New Orleans.

on the McLaney property.

Turner says Bringuier was connected

with

the training camps in that

area.

When Oswald was jailed after his confrontation with Bringuier on

Canal Street (FPCC literature handouts), Oswald requested to see

an FBI agent -- Agent John Quigley went to the jail and talked

to him for an hour and a half.

Tuner discusses the stamping of 544 Camp Street on Oswald's hand-

outs - suggesting (1) Oswald may have been working for Guy

Banister who had a

"stable" of young men that inflitrated

leftist groups, or (2) Oswald may have been drawn to Camp Street

through David Ferrie, his old CAP commander.

• HH 54756 DooId:32245514 Page 93

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## Page 94

The Lake Pontchartrain Link

Page 2

David Ferrie was in contact with key personnel of the Cuban

Revolutionary Council from Miami and New Orleans.

sergio

Arcacha Smith wrote to the Chairman of the Board of Eastern

Airlines (by whom Ferrie was employed as a pilot) uring

him to grant Ferrie "an extended leave with pay so that

the

work at hand can be completed."

Ferries activities training

units in guerrilla warfare near Lake Ponchartrain is discussed

on the basis of

a statement of John Irion on May 3, 1967.

Through the Garrison investigation, Thomas E. Beckham is linked

to Ferrie through the Apostolic Orthodox Old Catholic Church.

Also linked, at this point in the manuscript, is Fred Lee

Crisman, a former Army pilot living in Tacoma, Washington.

Chrisman, subpoenaed by Garrison, said he knew Beckham had

Sergio Arcacha Smith and Clay Shaw.

Turner states that since

the testimony of Perry Russo to the effect that he, Oswald and

Ferrie had discusses a JFK assassination plot could not be

corrobraberated, the Garrison investigation of Clay Shaw was "struck

a mortal blow".

Turner also states, based on the statement of

former CIA employee Victor Marchetti, that the CIA wanted to

give Shaw all the help they could, since Shaw had been an

agency contact and Ferrie had been a contract agent at the time

of the assassination.

H# 54756

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## Page 95

SUMMARY - PART 6

OSWALD AND THE CUBANS - 5

Nearly the entire chapter is drawn

from previous published

material (properly footnoted) dealing with Oswald's connections

with the Cuban community and Jack Ruby's associations with

Ray McKeown.

McKeown was a known gunrunner, arrested in 1958 and Carlos

Prio for smuggling

weapons into Cuba for Fidel Castro's

revolution against Batista.

McKeown served six months in

Jail, returned to Houston,

Texas and wished to stay away

any further gunrunning activities.

Turner suggests that.Irom

McKeown was contacted by CIA and Miami "intelligence officers"

for various assignments.

About

a week after Castro assumed

power in Cuba, McKeown was approached by Jack Ruby who wanted

him t

him to use his influence with Castro for the release of three

persons jailed in Havana (Warren Commission, Vol 23).

Turner discusses the alleged McKeown/Oswald contact of late

August 1963 which was reported in the CBS special report on

the JFK assassination on December 7, 1975 (Three Witnesses".

Turner said CBS did not air McKeowns account of his Ruby

contacts and no one asked him, but a friend of his, Sam Neil,

corroborated his story about meeting with Oswald.

Also mentioned

is a visit by George deMohrenschildt to McKeown soon after

the Oswald visit in which de Mohrenschildt advises McKeown

not to take Oswald seriously.

The story involves a visit

to McKeown's home by Oswald

and

a Cuban KcKeown believed to

be "Hernandez"

• The two wished to buy four unregistered

• 300 Savage semiautomatic rifles with telescopic sights.

Turner

suggests these would be appropriately used in hunting or assassi-

nation, but not for guerilla warfare.

Turner discusses next Oswald's five-day trip to Mexico City, the

photo mistakenly identified as Oswald by the CIA, and the way

the Warren Commission handled the entire episode. He also deals.

with the WC handling of the Sylvia Odio incident.

Turner in-

dicates both incidents indicate impersonation of Oswald.

Turner questioned several Miami paramilitary and exile sources

as to the identify of the man pictured in front of the Cuban

embassy in Mexico City. He suggests the person is Johnny

Mitchell Devereau, aka Johnny Mitchell who fought in Castro's

revolution and was in contact with Frank Sturgis when they were

in Cuba. Turner's Miami sources think Devereau did contract

assignments for the CIA.

Turner suggests two Oswald impersonations after his return from

Mexico City.

One--in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by a man giving

his name as Oswald, trying to rent an apartment - is contained

in the Orleans Parish District Attorney files, interview of

Mrs. Alvene Magee.

HH 54756 DocId:32245514 Page 95

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## Page 96

OSWALD AND THE CUBANS - 5

Page 2

The second incident, reported in the Warren Commission, in-

volves the statement of a Dallas car salesman who wrote Oswald's

name down as a prospective customer, after showing him a car.

Turner states unequivically that Oswald could not drive.

Turner next discusses

the fact that Tony Veciana appeared before

the House Select Committee on Assassinations -- behind closed

doors.

Turner gets his information from Jack Anderson column

of January 19, 1977. This information about Veciana testifying

before this Committee is incorrect, but the published article

by Anderson follows an internal memo about an interview with

Veciana.

Turner next summarizes the recent publicity of Frank Sturgis's

arrest at the request of Martia Lorenz and suggests that the

ensuing publicity attracted this Committee's investigators.

This, also, is incorrect information as our investigators were

interviewing Lorenz two days prior to the Sturgis arrest in

New York City.

In a "Supplementary Investigative Report" dated November 23,

1963, Dallas deputy sheriff Buddy Walthers advised the Secret

Service that some Cubans had been using a Dallas residence

for meetings.

Secret Service showed no interest in this but

a recently released FBI report indicates the address on

Harlendale was the local branch of Alpha 66.

Turner also

discusses the FBI memo which stated that the bullet that struck

Kennedy and Gonnally would not fit USMC weapons and "gives

rise to the obvious speculation that it is a contract for

ammunition placed by CIA with Western under a USMC cover for

concealment purposes. "

HN 54756

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96

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## Page 97

SUMMARY - PART 6

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION COVER-UP

JACK RUBY AND THE CUBA MAFIA - 6.

Begins with the Ruby eight-day visit to Cuba as the guest of

Lewis J. McWillie, craps table supervisor at the Tropicana in

1959. Ruby told the Warren Commission that this was a pleasure

trip and this was accepted by the WC.

Turner points out that the trip does not seem too innocent for

the following

reasons:

During his Havana stay, Ruby boasted to two American tourists

that he was "in with both sides" according to Thayer Waldo.

Ruby claimed friendship with Rolando Masferrer& Hamleto

Batisti.

Ruby did not return directly to Dallas as claimed by the

WC.

He actually proceeded to Miami and

then doubled back

to Havana. A Miami Beach bartender, Meyer R. Panitz, said

Lewis McWillie called him in the summer of 1959 advising

that "Ruby had visited him in Cuba and was then in Miami

Beach".

U.S. Immigration documents show that Ruby flew

back to Havana from Miami on Sept. 12 on Pan Am flight 415.

The next day, he boarded Delta flight 750 to New Orleans

and presumably flew on to Dallas from New Orleans.

According to a cargo pilot, Blaney Mack Johnson, he told

FBI that Ruby had been engaged in gunrunning and was part

owner of 2 planes used for this purpose.

Also alleges that

Ruby purchased a substantial share in a Havana gambling

house in which Carlos Prio was principle owner.

An account recorded about three women who met Ruby in

1958 when they were staying with a relative,

James Woodard,

on Islamerada in the Florida Keys. FBI verified that

Woodward was implicated in weapons smuggling for and against

Castro. Women say this. "Jack" had some crates supposedly

containing arms and ammunition to be smuggled into Cuba.

Blaney Johnson also alleges that Ruby was associated with

Edward J. Browder, Jr. who was involved in gunrunning to

Castro.

Browder denied knowing Ruby but Turner points out

that Browder was tied in with the same Tropicana Casino

crowd as Ruby.

Turner says the WC neglected to ask Jack Ruby if he knew Norman

Rothman, who had

worked at Tropicana and was involved in gun-

running. Ruby did claim acquaintanceship with Martin and William

Fox, principle owners of the Tropicana.

HH 54756 DocId: 32245514 Page 97

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## Page 98

Summary - Part 6

The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up

Jack Ruby and the Cuba Mafia

Page

2

Turner writes that the contention that Ruby was involved in gun-

running is hardly dimmed by his friendship with Lewis McWillie

and the Fox brothers.

His remard at the Tropicana that he was

"in with both sides"

was entirely consistent with the

situation

at the time.

Nancy Perrin Rich, a former barmaid at the Carousel Club, claims

she and her husband encountered Ruby in summer of 1962 when they

were asked to become involved in a gunrunning operation into

cuba.

A tormer Dallas policemen, Harry N. Olsen, was interviewed by.

Turner in 1968 and he claimed that in the

summer of 1962,

Ruby left on a two-week trip to New Orleans and Havana to pick

up an act for the club. He returend "tight-lipped" and without

an act.

Ruby's brother, Earl, sent a telegram to Havana on

April 1, 1962.

Turner says that likelihood of Ruby going to

Havana just before. the missle crisis is "remote"

Rumors in the Cuban community in Miami after the assassination

were to the effect that Ruby had been in Havana fairly

recently;

and was the owner of a tourist office in the Seville Biltmore

Hotel. Claimed he was a friend and client of a person named

Praskin who owned a shop in the hotel.

Ruby remarked, in con-

nection with his 1959 visit, that he was

a friend of Hamleto

Batisti, once the owner of the Seville Biltmore.

Turner discusses Ruby's possible connection with the Chicago mob.

Jack Wilner, of Chicago Daily News, pegged Ruby as being

volved in 1947 with Nick De John, Paul Labriola, Marcus Lipsky

th ok Do Jong man

"in-

and Paul Roland Jones, in an effort to take over gambling in

the Dallas area."

Those cited by Wilner were members of Chicago

outfit.

Dallas.'

Jones admitted he knew Ruby and visited him when in

Joe Civello, Dallas regional capo, claimed to have

seen Ruby only a few times prior to 1958.

Bobby Gene Moore,

Civello family acquaintance and part-time piano player at Carousel

Club, said Ruby was a

"frequent visitor and associate" of Civello.

Moore report was published only briefly in the WC report --

the remainder in the Archives.

Tuner discusses Ruby's possible connection with the Teamster's

Union and quotes an organizer, Leopoldo Ramos Ducso as saying

that around September 1961, Frank Chavez told him that he (Chavez)

had appointment to meet Richard Kavner, International Vice Pres.

of Teamsters and Jack Ruby. Chavez was Sec-Treas. for Teamster-

local in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

HH 54756 DooId:32245514 Page 98

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## Page 99

Summary - Part 6

The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up

Jack Ruby and the Cuba Mafia - 6.

page 3

Turner cites several instances which indicate that Chavez wished

to kill Robert Kennedy •

Chavez was, himself, murdered in 1964.

Turner discusses theory of W. R. Morris, author of Twelfth of

August, who tells of a contact with a former CIA man now in

California who links Eladio del Valle (who has smuggling

ties with Trafficante) to David Ferrie and Jack Ruby.

Morris

and CIA former employee give gtory to Rockefeller Commission

in form of affidavits which were rejected. Also went to NBC

television and taped

an interview which was never aired.

Also discussed in this chapter is the possible role of Jim

Braden in the assassination -- Peter Noyes theory is reviewed.

Discussion of Carroll E. Jarnagin story that he had seen Oswald

and Ruby together at Carousel Club.

Discussion of Hugh A. Morrow story that Oswald had applied for

a job at the Allright Parking System next door to the Carousel

Club about a week prior to the assassination.

14 54756

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## Page 100

CONTRACT ON KENNEDY -7

The author relates an incident alleged to have taken

place hours after Ruby killed Oswald. A phone call was

placed to Seymour Ellison, a law partner of Melvin Belli,

from a

Las Vegas attorney who stated that there was a

million dollars in it if Belli would defend Ruby, described

as "one of our guys". Ellison knew that the firm of this

attorney represented organized crime figures who had been

ousted from Cuba by Castro.

Shortly after the first call,

the attorney again called Ellison and stated that Ruby was

in with another element and his clients didn't want to get

involved in any way.

Turner suggests this other "element"

might have been a Mafia cabal pursuing the assassination

of Fidel Castro.

Turner continues at this point to discuss the inadequacies

of the investigative work done by the CIA and FBI immediately

after the assassination.

He says both agencies failed to

investigate properly Oswald's Cuban connections.

He thinks

the possibility exists in both agencies that senior officials

made conscious decisions to no disclose important information.

Turner discusses at length, in this chaper, the findings of

the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence - the AMLASH

operation of the CIA using Rolando Cubela (allegedly), the

separate Mafia-CIA plots against Castro's life, involving

James P. O'Connel and William K Harvey of the CIA and

Robert A. Maheau, formerly of the FBI.

Turner says Maheau

was the CIA's link to the Mafia through he friendship with

Johnny Roselli. He relates an incident in which Roselli was

offered $150,000 to cover the cost of a Castro assassination

plot.

Such an attempt would have to be cleared with Santos

Trafficante, and Roselli used Sam Giancana to solicit

Trafficante.

Maheau, Roselli, Trafficante and a Cuban exile leader formulated

a plan

to poison Castro, and believed it worked, until the

Bay of Pigs invasion took place and Castro showed no signs

of illness. After one more poisoning attempt, Roselli group

turned to guns as

one more

a means of assassination.

By early 1963,

the CIA had lost interest in sponsoring plots against Castro's

life.

Turner relates that Castro and Kennedy were conducting "behind-

the-scenes negotiations aimed at rapprochement" and that it was

unlikely that Castro would initiate a plot against Kennedy if

such negotiations were going on.

HH 54756 DocId: 32245514 Page 100

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## Page 101

Contract on Kennedy

Page

2

The author goes into a lengthy discussion of the possible

role played by Washington lawyer Edward P. Morgan, whose

clients included Howard Hughes, the Teamsters, Society of

Former Special Agents of the FBI, and several organized

crime figures.

Morgan contacted

Drew Pearson in January

1968 and told him of plots against Castro, stating that

his sources were clients who had taken part in the plots.

He claims Castro learned of the plots and sent an assassination

team to the United States to kill Kennedy:

No particular

reason is to be found for Morgan's withholding of this

information for three years but Turner suggests two possible

reasons: one,that it colncided with the Garrison investigation

and two, it might have been instigated by Johnny Roselli who.

was under threat of deportation.

For some reason or other,

the deportation proceedings stalled.

Turner suggests that the June 24 and August 7, 1976 murders

of Giancana and Roselli respectively may have been committed

to silence them because of what they knew about the Kennedy

assassination.

Columinst Jack Anderson wrote that Roselli

had "hinted" to his associates that he knew who had arranged

for Kennedy's murder.

Turner says it is hard to believe that Castro would use

Cuban Mafia hirlings to "hit"

suggested.

Kennedy, as Roselli had

Turner next discusses the McLaney brothers from New Orleans,

the amount of real estate they had lost in Cuba when Castro

took over, the fact that they had their own air force,

and

had sent the CIA a detailed plan for bombing Havana oil

refineries.

Turner says that at the time the CIA was helping

anti-Castro action groups, the FBI and Customs service were

raiding groups that assumed they had government immunity.

The McLaneys were among this group. Sam Benton, an associate

of the McLaneys, was grabbed by Customs agents.

Undaunted,

Benton and his Cuban exiles set up a training camp north of

Lake Ponchartrain, owned by William McLaney.

The camp was

raided and eleven men detained by the FBI -- including Sam

Benton and four Cubans who had been detained by Customs in

Florida in June. Rich Lauchli, supplier of munitions, was

also detained.

Details of this raid were never given

to the

Warren Commission.

These omissions were important, according to Turner, because

HH 54756 DooId:32245514 Page 101

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## Page 102

Contract on Kennedy - 7

Page 3

Castro assassination plans were still in the works. Turner

then tells of the plot to poison Castro using a pen.

This

was to be carried out through AMLASH, and the

pen was

actually given to him the day Kennedy was shot. The existence

of the AMLASH plot likewise was

withheld from the Warren Com-

mission.

Turner suggests that evidence has surfaced that certain of

Benton's contacts continued to plan Castro's assassination

independent of the CIA.

He discusses certain recent dis-

closures of Edward I. Arthur, a weapons supplier for Commandos

One such account allegedly involves a meeting in September

1963 near Miami Beach, involving Benton, Arthur, and a tough-

1ooking Italian who offered $90,000 for Castro's assassination.

Turner has talked to Arthur about this incident.

Arthur said

the meeting place was the home of Marcos Perez Jimenez.

The manuscript ends in the middle of the discussion of this

incident.

HH 54756

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## Page 103

THE MIAMI INSTANT REPLAY

(No Chapter Number Assigned)

Miami, in the period immediately following the assissination

of President Kennedy, was rife with misinformation concerning

the presence of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Miami area in the

1962-63 period.

Turner discusses some of the

alleged sitings

of Oswald as follows:

An annoymous letter out of Cuba addressed to Oswald,

dated November 10, was signed by Pedro Charles. Predictably,

it was intercepted by the Secret Service.

The letter suggested

that Oswald had been paid by Charles to carry out a shooting

mission.

A letter accusing Oswald of the shooting, and typed

on the same typewriter, was sent to Robert Kennedy, accusing

Pedro Charles of hiring Oswald to do the deed. Both letters

were mailed the day after the assassination.

WAM radio talk show host, Alan Courtney, of Miami,

contacted the FBI four days after the assassination regarding

a claim by John V. Martino, a former Castro prisoner, that

Oswald was in Cuba between

September and October, 1963. He

also claimed Oswald had distributed pro-Castro literature

in Miami, printed by a Miami printer. The DRE was also

spreading similar disinformation.

The Pompano Beach Sun Sentinel published a story on

November 26 that Frank Sturgis said that Oswald had had

telephone conversations with Cuban Intelligence during

November 1962. The article was bylined by James C. Buchanan

and denied by Sturgis.

Author Nathaniel Weyl notified the EBl in March, 1964,

that Oswald had a fight with Jerry Buchanan in Miami early

in 1963 when Buchanan was a member of the International Anti-

Communist Brigade.

All these sightings conflict with known employment records

of Oswald, and Turner suggests that a plausible answer is that

Oswald was being impersonated - one of a series of such

episodes that began with the Bolton Ford incident (discussed

in detail in Chapter 3, Part 6.)

The remainder of this section is given over to a discussion

of the Sylvia Odio incident, in which the author leans heavily

on the testimony of Loren Hall. Turner says the failure of

the Warren Commission to adequately resolve this episode left

a "nagging" mystery open -- "Who, knowing that Oswald was en

route to Mexico City, enacted the tableau at the Odio apartment

HH 54756 DocId:32245514 Page 103

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## Page 104

THE NEW ORLEANS CONNECTION - 17

New Orleans in the 1960's, with its sizeable Cuban colony,

was a receptive arm of the Cuba Project that reached over

from Miami.

In 1960, the Front sent Sergio Arcacha Smith

to New Orleans, where he established an office in the Balter

Building and, according to Turner, received a CIA dole for

his anti-Castro activities.

In addition to CIA money, Smith engaged in several fund-

raising activities and became associated with Ronnie Caire,

a public relations man in the New Orleans area:

Caire

solicited support from such prominent conservatives as Dr.

Alton Oschner of the Oschner Clinic and William Reily, of

the Reily Coffee Company (a one-time employer of Lee Harvey

Oswald) •

The creation of Friends of Democratic Cuba by Arcacha Smith,

with the aid of Guy Banister, Grady C. Durham, and William

Dalzell, was, according to an unnamed "insider", "an under-

cover operation in conjunction with the cia and

involved the shipment and transportation of individuals and

supplies in and out of Cuba."

Turner says that the FDC had

as its liaison with the intelligence community one Guy P.

Johnson, a reserve commander of ONI, Lloyd Ray of the CIA

and Regis Kennedy of the FBI.

According to Turner sources,

Kennedy (Regis) bypassed local FBI authorities and sent

daily reports directly to Assistant to the Director John P.

Mohr in Washington, D. C.

A discussion of the situation in and around New Orleans about

the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion, indicates that the CIA

leased a banana boat, flying the Costa Rican flag, to Nino

Diaz, co-founder of the MRR.

The boat, the Santa

Ana, was

to be used to transport men for a landing planned as a

diversionary measure at the time of the primary invasion.

A training camp north of Lake Pontchartrain was used by Diaz

with Arcacha coordinating their activities.

Drawn to the Cuba Project, inevitably, was former FBI agent

Guy Banister.

His background activities in Anti-Communist

Leagues, the Minutemen in Louisiana (according to Jerry Milton

Brooks) made this a natural movement and his office at 544 Camp

Street became a vortex for all kinds of conspirators.

Turner

says that William Dalzell, --"ex-CIA man who was a mainspring of

the Friends of Democratic Cuba, virtually lived on the second

floor of 544 Camp Street."

Ricardo Davis told of a discussion

involving the placing of poison in the ventillating system of

Havana Presidential Palace and killing all occupants.

HH 54756 DocId:32245514 Page 104

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## Page 105

The New Orleans Connection

Page 2

Jack S. Martin claims that Banister spent long hours with

Orlando Piedra, chief of Batista's secret police.

that

David

Ferrie was also closely associated with the Banister office

operations

as the Bay of Pigs loomed. Turner says that

Ferrie's roommate (Beauboeuf?) said Ferrie was used in the

undercover operations of the FDC and Ferrie claimed he was

working for the CIA rescuing Cubans out of Castro's prisons

in Cuba.

Another member of this group was Gordon Novel, who ran a

business called Electronics Systems International Corp.,

"which was an elegant way of saying he was in the tapping

and bugging business" according to Turner. According. to

the States-Item, Novel operated the Evergreen Advertising

Agency as a CIA communications front.

Novel, fearful of

being called to testify in Garrison's investigation, vacated

his apartment so hurridly that he left behind a letter to a

"Mx. Weiss" his CIA contact. According to Turner, the letter

indicated Novel was afraid he might have to testify about

lop Secret matters involving actions of persons connected

with the Double-Chek Corporation in Miami in the first

quarter of 1961.

Close to the date of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Novel, Ferrie,

Arcacha and several other Cubans picked up a load of

munitions

from a bunker belonging to the Schlumberger Well Services Co.

What Garrison charged was a burglary, Novel described as a

war materiels pickup made at the direction of his CIA contact.

Jack Martin claims that a few days before the "burglary" he

heard Guy Banister making time and date arrangements for the

pickup with an executive of Schlumberger. Novel said that the

munitions were stored temporarily in his own office, at Ferrie's

residence and Banister's office. Eventually they were moved

to the lower decks of the Santa Ana and a week before the

invasion, she set off from Algiers Naval Base headed for Cuba.

This portion of the manuscript @parently incomplete,

as the

story ends at this juncture.

HN 54756 Do0Id:32245514 Page 105

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## Page 106

THE BOLTON FORD INCIDENT - 3.

Oscar W. Deslatte, assistant manager of the Bolton Ford

Truck Center in New Orleans, informed FBI agents shortly

after the Kennedy assassination, that on January 20, 1961.

an incident occurred which he felt should be reported.

On the January 1961 date, Deslatte said two men who said

they represented the Friends of Democratic Cuba, came to

the truck center saying they were interested in purchasing

ten Econoline vans, and wanted a dealer's cost because the

vans were to be used to fight against Castro. A deal was

arranged with the manager of the center, Fred A. Sewell,

and a bid formed filled

out, and signed "Oswald".

Three

years later when Oswald was identified as the slayer of

President Kennedy, Deslatte recognized him as the man who

had signed the bid form.

The FBI sent two agents to the

truck center and confiscated the bid form which Deslatte

still had on file.

The FBI report of this incident was

never published in the Warren Commission Report.

Jim Garrison, in preparation of his investigation in 1967,

uncovered the

report in the National Archives, and realized

that Oswald was living in Russia at the time the Bolton Ford

incident was to have occurred.

Turner suggests this as another of the imposter

incidents which

surround Oswald.

He also states that on June 3, 1960, J. Edgar

Hoover sent a confidential memo to the State Department raising

the possibility that Oswald's credentials were being used by

someone else -- either in the United States or in Russia.

Warren Commission W. David Slawson said he had no memory of

ever having seen the memo -- Howard P. Willens, a Commission

staff counsel conceded that he had seen it.

Slawson hinted

that a "general CIA effort to take out anything that reflected

on them may have covered this up."

Identified as

' a co-author, is a person named Hinckle. He

talked to a friend of his who had spent "ten years on the CIA

roster"...

This person alleges that the CIA kept the Cubans

on the string for years after the Bay of Pigs and most of them

ended up in narcotics or smuggling.

He also said opium smuggling

was standard operating proc-dure for CIA and Air America "guys"

Also asserts that if any one even remotly connected with the CIA

had any part in the assassination, the CIA would cover it up

as a matter of survival for the CIA because of the public

"can of worms" such knowledge would open up.

It was also this

CIA connected person's opinion that Oswald obviously had an

intelligence background.

HH 54756 Do0Id:32245514 Page 106

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## Page 107

The Bolton Ford Incident

Page 2

Turner suggests that revelation of the Bolton Ford incident

might have unravelled the entire anti-Castro infrastructure

that the CIA had put together and, therefore, supressed.

He further states that it is indeed possible that Oswald's

identify was

"borrowed" while he lived in Russia.

Even after Oswald's return to the United States, "bogus"

Oswalds kept appearing.

One such time is the alleged

meeting with Sylvia Odio.

In late October 1963, an Oswald

look-alike answered an apartment rental ad in Baton Rouge,

gave the name Oswald, reported that his wife was Russian and

talked about having a gun with a telescopic sight. On

November 9, there is a report from a car salesman that

Oswald was a prospective used car buyer.

The mix-up in

identities at the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City

is still another possible attempt to establish Oswald's

presence. at a certain place and time.

Turner says, in the course of researching his book, "the

authors talked to several paramilitary and Cuban exile

sources in Miami who believe he (the mystery man in the

Mexico City photo) is Johnny Mitchell Devereau, also known

as Johnny Mitchell". Turner places Mitchell and a friend,

Jack Cannon, aka Jack Shea, in Cuba in 1959 as tourist

police, later in Miami and

acquainted with Frank Sturgis.

Turner's sources further maintain that Devereau became a

contract employee of the CIA.

A Case Study in Cover-Up

Subdivision of The Bolton Ford Incident

Discusses the professional way the CIA plugged leaks about

the existence of Brigade 2506 before and after the Bay of

Pigs, convincing newsmen and families of Brigade members that

public knowledge of their activities would endanger their lives.

and threaten national security.

Cites a similar plea for self-

censorship when the Glomar Explorer incident involving Howard

Hughe's undersea mining craft started to leak to the press.

Allegedely, after the Bay of Pigs invastion, an intensive

cover-up was conducted at CIA headquarters and Charles J. V.

Murphy, a good friend of Allen Dulles, wrote in the September

1961 issue of Fortune that the greenhorns in the White House

and vacillating diplomats of State were responsible for the

failure of the invasion.

HH 54756 Do0Id:32245514 Page 107

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## Page 108

The Bolton Ford Incident

Page 3

Turner petitioned the National Security Council for a copy

of a report of a Presidential committee assembled to con-

duct a post-mortem of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

He says

members of this elite committee were Robert Kennedy, General

Maxwell Taylor, Admiral Arleigh Burke and Allen Dulles.

The

report of the committee was discussed in E. Howard Hunt's

book, Give Us This Day, Hunt being involved the the CIA

portion of the report.

The National Security Council cannot

locate a copy of this report.

An upshot of the report was direction from the President that

no operations should cross agency lines, and therefore, the

CIA steped up

the tempo of its activities, working on

smaller scale but with greater frequency.

The Intelligence Ambience

Subdivision of The Bolton Ford Incident

The FBI interviewed, on February 26-28, 1964, defected KGB

official, Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko about

Oswald's stay in the

Soviet Union.

Nosenke said

he had handled the KGB file on

Oswald and that the Russian's considered him a possible

"sleeper" American agent.

They tried to get him out of the

country and vetoed his return when he applied for a visa in

Mexico City. He also described Oswald as a poor shot.

The

CIA was initially suspicious of Nosenko but, as. John McCone

recently explained, are now in the position to believe that

the information was correct.

Turner questions Oswald's discharge from the Marines on a

hardship basis and his immediate departure to the Soviet

Union -- the job he obtained upon his return with a graphics

art company which required security clearances of other

employees and not Oswald - and his very strange friendship

with the George DeMohrenschildts when he and Marina returned

to Dallas.

544 Camp Street, New Orleans

Subdivision of

The Bolton Ford Incident

Based on lengthy interviews of Jerry Milton Brooks, the

author puts forth information about activities centered

around the 544 Camp Street address, most of which is repeated

in other sections of the manuscript. Claims that Brooks

worked briefly for Banister in 1961 compiling intelligence

material and delivering packets to the local FBI office.

Brooks also maintained that the #2 local Minuteman was a

Banister aide, Hugh F. Ward.

Ward died in a plane crash

in Ciudad Victoria on

May 23, 1965.

Brooks discussed another Bannister associate, Maurice B.

Gatlin, SI.

Connects Banister and Gatlin through the Anti-

Communist League of the Carribean -- offshoot of a global body.

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## Page 109

The Bolton Ford Incident •

Page 4

Brooks believed that the frequency of Gatlin's world travel

were in the capacity of a

"transporter" for the CIA, arranging

for movement of people and money.

A further discussion is given of the presence of Colonel

Orlando Piedra in the Banister innercircle and Turner

suggests that it was Piedra who was the New Orleans chief

of Operation 40, the all-Cuban supersecret CIA unit.. After

the Bay of Pigs, Operation 40 regouped and continued until

1972.

It participated in the hunt for Che Guevara in Bolivia

in 1967 and Eugenio Martinez was on its payroll when arrested

for the Watergate breakin.

The late Juaquin Sanjenis was

chief of Operation 40

and Felix. Gutierrez was second in

command.

Next portion of the manuscript deals with a lengthy discussion

of David Ferrie and his activities in and around the Miami/

New Orleans area in the early 1960's.

Discusses his par-

ticipation in the "crusade against Castro".

According to

exile journalist Diego Gonzales Tendedera, Ferrie worked

with Eladio Cerefino del Valle to carry out aerial missions.

Gonzales said Del Valle told him that Ferrie was given

$1,000 to $1,500 per flight into Cuba, depending on whether

they would just drop bombs or would land to pick up refugees.

Jack Carter,

an aviator for MIRR under CIA jurisdiction, says

he knew Ferrie in 1963 having met him in the ready room

restricted to CIA-approved flight personnel at an old military

airfield near Tampa.

Carter was interviewed in May 1975.

Turner claims the Secret Service never entertained the notion

that Oswald might have been aligned with anti-Castroites.

Latter part of this chapter deals with Thomas E. Beckham and

the connection he allegedly had activities in the New Orleans

area in the early 1960's,

vestigation..

as uncovered by the Garrison in-

The connection of Beckham and Fred Lee Crisman is

discussed, but the author draws no conclusions.

Turner feels that the significance of the Bolton Ford incident

imply that, if elements of the anti-Castro movement were

impersonating Oswald, it is conceivable that they set him up

as a dupe in the Kennedy assassination.

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## Page 110

NORMAN ROTHMAN SECTION

Since the early 1950's, Norman Rothman has been connected with

the underworld, as a nightclub manager in Miami Beach and later

in Havana, Cuba under the ownership of the Mannarino brothers.

Turner, in this portion of his manuscript, links Rothman with

a $13,500,000 burglery of the Brockville Trust and Savings

Company in Ontario, Canada in May 1958.

Rothman's implication in the robbery allegedly came about through

his gun-running activities.

There was a prime marked to contra-

band weapons in Cuba -- in preparation for Castro's 26th of July

movement.

"Kelly" Mannarino was apparently intrigued by the

profits that could be realized in gunrunning, and law enforcement

officials believe that a shortage of initial

cash to get this

smuggling operation going was the reason for the Brockville

robbery. Turner said the bulk of the Brockville 100, as well as

a large portion of money stolen from La Societe National De

Fiducie in Montreal in January 1958, was funneled "into the hands

of Pepe Cotroni".

The Mannarinos became part of the mechanism

needed to fence the bonds (which were part of the stolen items).

Mannarino used Rothman to convert the bonds into cash.

Rothman

relied upon a William W. Rabin in Chicago to open a numbered

Swiss bank account and

try to get a loan to buy a small bank

which could then be used to launder the remainder of the loot.

Before Rabin could get this transaction finalized, Mannarino

robbed a national guard armory in Canton, Ohio and planned

to fly the burglarized

weapons to Cuba. The Boarder Patrol

stopped the plane in which the guns were being carried and

arrested the Pilot, Norman Rothman, Joe Merola and

three other

rackets runners.

They were convicted of conspiring to fly stolen

government firearms to Cuba.

In the meantime, Swiss officials became suspicious of Rabin's

financial dealings and notified the United States State Department.

Rabin was located by the FBI in the Biltmore Terrace hotel in Miami

Beach -- which was managed by Norman Rothman. The hotel, Turner

claims, had been purchased in 1959 by Rothman and Alberto Arduro,

serving as front men for Batista and the top floor of the hotel

was to be used by Batista in the event that he would be able to

gain entrance into the United States.

Continued investigation by the FBI into the Brockville robbery

brought the March

2, 1959 indictment of Edward J. Browder, Jr.

who was charged with possession, concealment and attempt to sell

come of the Canadian bonds.

Rothman was one of Browders confederates

during the period of time.

Turner says that a Caribbean cargo pilot, Blaney Mack Johnson,

told the FBI shortly after Oswald was murdered, that Jack Ruby

was "active in arranging illegal flights of weapons from Mimai to

the Castro organization

in Cuba" and was "part owner of two planes

used for these purposes."

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## Page 111

Norman Rothman Section

Page 2

Additional information in the FBI report from Johnson, reveals

that Browder and Ruby were engaged in arms smuggling and that

he had met Ruby at one time.

Ruby, according to Johnson,

subsequently bought shares in a gambling house in Havana

principally owned by Carlos Prio. In a discussion of Ruby's

past, Turner suggests that the gunrunning allegations are

in character.

McWillie for eight days in Havana. According to newsman Thayer

Waldo, Ruby at this time boasted to two American tourists that

he was

"in with both sides".

In the meantime, Norman Rothman was engaged in what he believed

would be an economic war on Castro -- having the destruction of

the Cuban sugar crop as his goal. About this time, Rothman became

involved in legal difficulties stemming from his involvement in

the Brockville bank job. Several people were arrested in various

parts of the world for transporting stolen bonds which were part

of the loot.

Eddie Browder was sent to prison for his involvement.

Rothman, however, was acquitted. A later arrest in New York

City connected with stolen bonds sent Rothman to the Atlanta

Federal Penitentiary.

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## Page 112

One of History's Most Important Individuals

Page 2

Turner somewhat defends Perry's Russo's story about the Ferrie/

Oswald/Bertrand connection because he says it was on the basis

of this testimony that a panel of judges bound Clay. Shaw over

for trial. Another Garrison witness, David Lewis, reported

seeing Ferrie and Oswald together, and Turner suggests that this

lends authenticity to the accounts of both individuals.

The

author then discusses additional stories which place Ferrie and

Oswald together.

In the latter part of the chapter, Turner relates that the

story of Richard Giesbrecht, given to the FBI on February 13, 1964,

indicates that Ferrie and several other men were discussing the

assassination and involving themselves in it.

As Turner points

out, there is no mention in the Warren Report of such an incident

having been reported...

Part of the conversation whichGiesbrecht

overheard involved a man names "Isaacs" as having become involved

with Oswald. Garrison investigators apparently tried to check out

the identify of this person.

Turner concludes that Garrison's description of the importance

of Ferrie did accurately describe the last four years of his life.

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## Page 113

"ONE OF HISTORY'S MOST IMPORTANT INDIVIDUALS"

Using a quotation of Jim Garrison regarding David Ferrie, the

author sets out in one of his more lengthy chapters to give the

reader a rather complete picture of the associations and

intrigues which made up the life of David Ferrie in his latter

fifteen years.

Turner describes Ferrie as a doer - a brilliant and talented

man, more successful than not. A glimps into his

early life

reveals that he began to study for the priesthood when he was

twenty years of age, but left after two years when he reportedly

suffered a mental breakdown.

When accused by Jim Garrison of complicity in the assassination,

many reporters

believed Ferrie's complaint that he was an innocent

victim of Garrison's "witch hunt"

Turner suggests that this

ability to solicit sympathy was a Ferrie trademark.

Turner discusses

Ferrie's association with the Civil Air Patrol,

his

attempt to become

commissioned in the U.S. Air Force in early

1950's, association with the Apostolic Orthodox Old Catholic Church,

his employment as a pilot for Eastern Air Lines, and theorizes

about his loss of hair -- speculating that it may have been due

to prolonged exposure to extreme altitudes such as achieved by

the U-2.

This is pure speculation.

Turner discusses the story given to Jim Garrison in 1967 by

Donald P. Norton who claimed to have been in the employ of the cIA.

Norton says his assignment was to "ferret out homosexuals among

the officers and men in the Third Army area."

One of his

assiqn-

ments brought him into contact with David Ferrie.

He claimed to

have been in contact with Ferrie in connection with the delivery

of money to a Cuban television star. Turner says it is difficult

to assess the veracity of Norton's story.

Ferrie's involvement in paramilitary activities on Lake Ponchartrain

is based upon a deposition of John Irion -- but the circumstances

under which the deposition was given is not discussed.

It can.

easily be assumed it was given to Turner in connection with the

Garrison investigation.

The remainder of the chapter further discusses Ferrie's broad

scope of interests

, his work in connection with the Carlos Marcello

deportation trial in New Orleans in November 1963, his possible

suicide notes, and the story of Perry Russo which places Ferrie,

Oswald and Clay Bertrand together plotting the Kennedy assassination.

Turner states that Ferrie deposited over $7,000 in his bank account

early in November 1963.

HN 54756 DooId:32245514 Page 113

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