by Joan Mellen
Oswald not only was set up as a scapegoat, but there were alternative scapegoats trained should he not fulfill the job, among them Thomas Edward Beckham, whom the CIA protected in Omaha. As for Oswald, not only was he an FBI informant and a CIA employee working for Counter Intelligence, but he was also an operative for United States Customs, a dual role shared by customs officers in Miami.
I met Jim Garrison in New Orleans in May of 1969, where he registered my husband and me as “Mr. and Mrs. Lyndon Baines Johnson.” My husband had sent Garrison a series of articles from an Italian newspaper called Paese Sera, which revealed that Garrison suspect Shaw had been on the board of directors of what had been a CIA front. That Garrison’s arrest of Shaw coincided with the publication of the articles was a coincidence of history.
Jim Garrison arrived, a very tall, heavyset man with a smooth, rosy complexion. You did not look at him—you listened to his deep, sonorous baritone, because he did not stop talking. He spoke not about Clay Shaw’s trial, which had concluded three months earlier with Shaw’s acquittal, but about the assassination. He did not mention that he was running for reelection as district attorney. He did not even suggest that he presently was district attorney. He did not mention his wife or his children. He spoke only of what had befallen President Kennedy.
Dinner was at Moran La Louisiane. Garrison had us seated in the center of the red brocade-walled room, directly under the crystal chandelier. After dinner, he lit a cigar. He was not downcast and you would not know that he had lost anything. The next day he talked of how Earl Cabell, the mayor of Dallas, was the brother of Major General Charles Cabell, who had left the CIA when John Kennedy fired Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs invasion.
In later conversations we discussed his novel manuscript. My husband sold The Star-Spangled Contract for him to McGraw-Hill for a quarter of a million dollars. Jim was broke then, and grateful. Ralph was not a literary agent and didn’t want to take any commission, but Jim insisted. Then he refused to sign the contract unless Ralph agreed to be paid.
I saw Garrison for the last time in the spring of 1989. He mentioned that a film was to be made about his investigation, that his memoir, On the Trail of the Assassins, was a best seller. But all that really mattered were the facts of the assassination. He spoke ill of no one, blamed no one for the harsh turns his life had taken. Instead he wanted to discuss the changing of John F. Kennedy’s Dallas parade route, one more time.
What began as the chronicle of a man I once knew, a sardonic ironist, who would talk for hours about the assassination, became a biography of his investigation. Interviewing over a thousand people, I was able to demonstrate the specifics of how the FBI and CIA, led by National Security Agency, FBI and CIA veteran Walter Sheridan, attempted to destroy Garrison’s effort, not least by bribing his witnesses.
The decades-long campaign to silence Jim Garrison included the participation even of “Deep Throat” himself. Hardly interested in the “truth,” as those who laud him for providing guidance to Bob Woodward suggest, Mark Felt on the matter of the Kennedy assassination is revealed in documents to have been an open enemy of free inquiry, no less than a convicted felon specializing in FBI “black-bag jobs.”
W. Mark Felt was high among those in the government attempting to sabotage Jim Garrison’s investigation. An FBI document of March 2, 1967, the day after Jim Garrison arrested Clay Shaw, has an investigator named H.L. Edwards reporting to Felt on scurrilous rumors that might be enlisted to undermine Garrison and his evidence. Edwards is obviously replying to an assignment from Felt to find a way to stop Garrison. He quotes Frank Manning, chief investigator for Louisiana Attorney General Jack P. F. Gremillion, who calls Garrison a “psychopath” and accuses Garrison of shaking down “hundreds of sex deviates in the New Orleans French Quarter.”
Manning confided to Edwards that “Garrison might himself be a sex deviate, or at least he is a participant in some deviate activities with other homosexuals.” None of this was true. But Edwards’ focus is revealed in his writing for the record that “Garrison has absolutely no basis for his present publicity stunt in claiming that he has reason to believe Oswald acted as a part of a conspiracy in the assassination.” Edwards knew that Felt was interested, not in Garrison’s prosecutorial foibles as a district attorney, but in destroying his credibility, the better to subvert his challenge to the Warren Commission. Edwards recommends to Felt that the New Orleans field office contact Manning directly so that they might dig into cases where, hopefully, they can “discover” that money was paid to Garrison to have cases against these “sex deviates” disappear.
William C. Sullivan, who would be Felt’s rival in assuming the leadership of the FBI after J. Edgar Hoover’s day was done, only to be shot in an “accident” where, standing on his porch, he was mistaken for a deer(!), read the document addressed to Felt. Then he urged that the FBI “move with prudence.”
Less circumspect voices prevailed and the FBI’s General Investigative Division wrote to Felt recommending that the information in Edwards’ memo be made available to the White House and the attorney general in what was patently a conspiracy to silence Jim Garrison. Four days later, Felt obliged.
If I believed Garrison, who was so persuasive a talker that he won wily reporter Jack Anderson over to his side, it is the overwhelming documentary evidence that has vindicated his effort since the CIA had trained its sights on an independent president. Its involvement in President Kennedy’s assassination has been an open secret for these forty years. The mainstream media have persisted in granting credence to the by now thoroughly discredited Warren Commission Report, a document based on a scant and arbitrary pseudo-investigation, in actuality on no investigation at all.
On the fortieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s death, a Gallup poll recorded that twice as many people believed that the CIA had masterminded the assassination as were persuaded that Lee Harvey Oswald, a man without a motive, had acted alone in the dastardly deed.
Reader, you decide.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
The District Attorney’s Office, Orleans Parish Jim Garrison, District Attorney
Assistants
James Alcock
William Alford
Denis A. Barry
Numa Bertel
Milton E. Brener
Richard Burnes
William Martin
Alvin Oser
Ross Scaccia
Andrew (Moo Moo) Sciambra Ralph Slovenko
John P. Volz
Charles Ward
D’alton Williams
Investigators
Raymond Beck
Steve Bordelon
Raymond Comstock
Pershing Gervais
Louis Ivon
Frank Meloche
Lester Otillio
Staff
Tom Bethell
Sharon Herkes
Joyce Wood
The Garrison Family
Mrs. Jane Garrison Gardiner, mother
Mrs. Leah (Liz) Garrison, first wife
Phyllis Weinert Kritikos, second wife
Children: Jasper, Virginia, Lyon (Snapper), Elizabeth, Eberhard
The Shaw Defense Team
F. Irvin Dymond
Salvatore Panzeca
Edward F. Wegmann
William Wegmann
Louisiana Politicians
Hale Boggs, Representative to Congress
Jack P. F. Gremillion, Attorney General
Aaron Kohn, Metropolitan Crime Commission
Earl Long, Governor
Russell B. Long, Senator
John McKeithen, Governor
Frank Minyard, Coroner of Orleans Parish
Chep Morrison, Mayor
New Orleans Police
Robert Buras
L. J. Delsa
Frank Hayward
Richard Hunter
Norman Knaps
James Kruebbe
Francis Martello
Edward O’Do
nnell
Robert Townsend
Major Presley Trosclair, police intelligence
Louisiana State Police
Colonel Thomas Burbank
Francis Fruge
Captain Ben Morgan
Guy Banister’s Office
Guy Banister, former FBI Special Agent in Charge, ONI, CIA asset, “detective”
Helen Louise Brengel, secretary
William Dalzell, CIA
Vernon Gerdes
Lawrence Guchereau, detective
Jack Martin, CIA
Joe Newbrough, CIA
I. P. Nitschke, former FBI agent
Delphine Roberts, lover and secretary
Banister’s Infiltrators
Tommy Baumler
Allen Campbell
Daniel Campbell
George Higginbotham
The New Orleans Bar
Edward Baldwin
Burton Klein
Stephen B. Lemann Jim McPherson
Lou Merhige
Donald V. Organ
Louis P. Trent
Sam (Monk) Zelden
Suspects
Thomas Edward Beckham, Banister courier and country singer Edgar Eugene Bradley, assistant to the Reverend Carl McIntire, falsely charged
David Ferrie, police informant, ex-Eastern Airlines pilot, CIA contract pilot
Loran Hall, CIA mercenary
Lawrence Howard, CIA mercenary
Clay Shaw, managing director, International Trade Mart
Kerry Thornley, Oswald Marine Corps cohort and author of a book about Oswald
Friends of David Ferrie
Alvin Beaubouef, traveled to Houston and Galveston with Ferrie the weekend of the assassination; Ferrie’s heir
Bob Boylston, Civil Air Patrol
Morris Brownlee, named Ferrie his “godfather” during his conversion to Catholicism
Melvin Coffey, traveled to Houston and Galveston with Ferrie and Beaubouef
G. Wray Gill, Ferrie’s attorney
Jimmy Johnson, Ferrie acolyte and informant for Jim Garrison
James Lewallen
Layton Martens, indicted by Jim Garrison for perjury
Benton Wilson
John Wilson
Friends of Clay Shaw
Patricia Chandler, wife of David Chandler
Jack Sawyer, news director, WVUE-TV
Donald G. Schueler, professor
Jefferson Sulzer, professor
Nina Sulzer
The International Trade Mart
David G. Baldwin, public relations
Theodore Brent, first managing director
Lloyd J. Cobb, founder in 1946 and president from 1962 and during the Shaw trial
Jesse Core, public relations
J. B. Dauenhauer, Shaw assistant
Witnesses
Dean Andrews, attorney telephoned by “Clay Bertrand”
Dago Garner, Dallas roustabout
The Reverend Clyde Johnson
Jack Martin, once and present CIA operative
Julia Ann Mercer, saw Ruby at Dealey Plaza on the morning of November 22
Richard Case Nagell, CIA operative; warned FBI of the November Dallas conspiracy involving Oswald and two right-wing Cubans
Donold P. Norton, CIA courier
The FBI
John Edgar Hoover, Director
Cartha DeLoach (“Deke”), third in command at headquarters after Hoover and Clyde Tolson
Regis Kennedy, Special Agent, New Orleans field office
Warren de Brueys, Special Agent, New Orleans field office
William Walter, clerk, New Orleans field office
Elmer Litchfield, Baton Rouge resident agent
Department of Justice
Ramsey Clark, Acting Attorney General
Herbert J. Miller Jr., Department of Justice attorney and CIA liaison
Fred Vinson, Assistant Attorney General
Walter P. Yeagley, Assistant Attorney General, Internal Security Division
The CIA
James Angleton, Chief of Counter Intelligence
Major General Charles Cabell, Dulles’ assistant, forced to resign when Dulles was fired
Allen Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence, fired by John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco
Desmond Fitzgerald, JMWAVE
Richard Helms, DDP (Deputy Director, Plans), chief of clandestine services on November 22, 1963
Lawrence Houston, Chief Counsel
Hunter Leake, second in command, New Orleans
John McCone, Director of Central Intelligence on November 22, 1963
David Atlee Phillips, Chief of Western Hemisphere, COG (Cuban Operations Group), Chief of Cuban Operations at the Mexico City Station in 1963; at his retirement in 1975, he was Chief of Latin American and Caribbean Operations
Lloyd N. Ray, chief, New Orleans field office
Raymond Rocca, nicknamed “The Rock” by James Angleton; head of Counter Intelligence’s research and analysis division (R&A).
Jack Rogers, attorney, Louisiana Agency asset, and Chief Counsel for the Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee
Walter Sheridan, Department of Justice attorney and intelligence operative sent to New Orleans as an NBC producer to destroy Jim Garrison’s case
Clinton Witnesses
Verla Bell, CORE activist
Corrie Collins, Chairman, East Feliciana CORE
Anne Dischler and Francis Fruge, investigators for Jim Garrison William Dunn, CORE activist
Merryl Hudson, secretary, personnel office, East Louisiana State Hospital at Jackson
Maxine Kemp, staff, East Louisiana State Hospital
Edwin Lea McGehee, barber, Jackson, Louisiana
Reeves Morgan, State Representative, East Feliciana Parish
John Manchester, Town Marshal
Henry Earl Palmer, Registrar of Voters, East Feliciana Parish
John R. Rarick, District Court judge during the summer of 1963 and former congressman
Dr. Frank Silva, medical director, East Louisiana State Hospital during the summer of 1963
Cubans
Frank Bartes, CIA asset, second cousin of Dr. Frank Silva, and contract pilot
Carlos Bringuier, arrested with Lee Harvey Oswald on Canal Street
Eladio del Valle, David Ferrie’s CIA handler in Florida
Bernardo de Torres, CIA and FBI asset and plant in Garrison investigation
Alberto Fowler, veteran of Bay of Pigs and Garrison investigator
Orestes Peña, operator of the Habana Bar and FBI informant
Carlos Quiroga, assistant to Sergio Arcacha Smith
Sergio Arcacha Smith, New Orleans Cuban Revolutionary Council
Juan Valdes, close associate of Lee Harvey Oswald, International Trade Mart employee, suspect in Mary Sherman murder
Soldiers of Fortune
Howard Kenneth Davis
Loran Hall
Gerald Patrick Hemming
Lawrence Howard
E. Carl McNabb (“Jim Rose”): CIA contract pilot and Garrison investigator
FBI Informants on the Garrison Case
Hugh Aynesworth, Newsweek, formerly with the Dallas Morning News
Sam Depino, New Orleans television
Gordon Novel
Joe Oster, former partner of Guy Banister and founder of Southern Research
Orestes Peña, proprietor of Habana bar
James Phelan, Saturday Evening Post
Arnesto Rodriguez, language school, and Oswald contact
Lawrence Schiller, author
The Fourth Estate
Hugh Aynesworth, Dallas Morning News and Newsweek
Richard N. Billings, Life magazine editor
Donald Dean Bohning, CIA asset as AMCARBON-3, Miami Herald
David Chandler, Life magazine stringer
Jack Dempsey, States-Item, broke the Garrison case
Sam Depino, FBI informant, New Orleans, Channel 12
R
osemary James, States-Item
Iris Kelso, States-Item
James Phelan, Saturday Evening Post writer and FBI/CIA asset
David Snyder, States-Item
William Stuckey, CIA asset writing for States-Item
Richard Townley, WDSU, assistant to Walter Sheridan
AN ARTICLE IN
ESQUIRE MAGAZINE
1
I guess part of me still thought I was living in the country I was born in.
—Jim Garrison
IN MARCH OF 1965, with Governor John McKeithen barred by law from succeeding himself, Orleans Parish district attorney Jim Garrison decided to run for governor of Louisiana. On a rainy morning, he flew to Shreveport with his favorite assistant John Volz, two very tall, black-haired, handsome, politically ambitious men. While Garrison addressed a convention of dentists, Volz was to distribute a press release to the local radio stations. Ever late, Garrison rushed to board the return flight, his raincoat flapping over his arm, a copy of Esquire magazine in his hand.
“Read this!” Garrison told Volz, pointing to an article by Dwight Macdonald, reviewing the Report of the President’s Commission Investigating the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. The Warren Report, Macdonald wrote, was a work of fantasy and literary imagination, an American “anti-Iliad”; it bore no resemblance to a murder investigation. Perceiving that the Warren Commission’s task was one of “exorcism,” not a search for truth, Macdonald wondered how FBI and CIA involvement in the assassination, which seemed obvious to any disinterested observer, came in “motivewise.” “Officials of a feather stick together,” Macdonald concluded, regretting that neither Sherlock Holmes nor Earl Stanley Gardner had been on the scene. On the orders of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and President Lyndon Johnson, a Justice Department lawyer close to the CIA, Herbert J. Miller Jr., had rushed to Texas to forbid the Dallas police from doing any investigating on its own.