A Farewell to Justice

by Joan Mellen

  Oswald surprised Rodriguez by already knowing that there was a training camp north of Lake Pontchartrain; he wanted to help the Cubans kill Castro, Oswald said.

  “I can infiltrate your organization and find out what you’re doing here any time,” Warren de Brueys had told Bringuier, only for Oswald suddenly to materialize. Meanwhile Bringuier himself was an FBI and CIA informant; de Brueys remembers him as a “source.” While Bringuier called himself the DRE’s public relations officer in New Orleans, his file resided in the DRE files in its military section.

  Bringuier treated Oswald on Canal Street, distributing his leaflets as if he were actually a Marxist. But young leftists in New Orleans saw through Oswald at once. What leftist would ignore all leftwing organizations, from the Southern Conference Education Fund (SCEF) to CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) to the pale Council on Peaceful Alternatives? None in history, young Bob Heller and Tulane student Hugh Murray both thought. Heller’s roommate, Oliver St. Pe, took a look at the Fair Play for Cuba leaflet, considered replying to the post office box of “Hidell,” stamped on it, then changed his mind. It must be a trap, he decided.

  Guy Banister had hired a young man named Daniel Campbell to spy on leftist groups, but he was never asked to consider Oswald, whose leaflet bore the address 544 Camp Street, the side entrance of Banister’s own building. The day before Oswald scuffled with Bringuier, August 8th, the FBI already had in its possession a copy of the pamphlet he distributed that day, “The Crime Against Cuba,” written by Corliss Lamont. The FBI’s regular informants, who had been watching for the establishment of a branch of Fair Play for Cuba, did not report on Oswald’s activity.

  That the CIA itself had infiltrated Fair Play for Cuba is well documented. CIA strategy was for its “appropriate cut-outs” to infiltrate Fair Play, then plant “deceptive information which might embarrass the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in areas where it does have some support abroad.” The FBI was enlisted to help by stealing Fair Play stationery and mailing lists so that it could forge “large quantities of propaganda in the name of the Committee.” As CIA’s Joseph Burkholder Smith admitted, “The Counter Intelligence staff was very interested in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and getting a penetration into it would have been a high priority effort.”

  In charge of all these manipulations was CIA disinformation specialist David Atlee Phillips, George Joannides’ immediate superior. “The DRE. Dave Phillips ran that for us,” CIA operative E. Howard Hunt told the HSCA; this was the same Hunt who, as part of the CIA’s vendetta against the president, had invented State Department cables, forgeries that implicated John F. Kennedy in the November 2nd CIA-sponsored assassination of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. Later, Alpha 66 activist Antonio Veciana said that he had spotted his own handler, “Maurice Bishop,” certainly Phillips, with Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas.

  The Canal Street incident bears the stamp of a chain of command that went from Joannides in Miami to David Phillips and upward to Richard Helms, DDP (Deputy Director, Plans), in charge of the CIA’s clandestine services. According to documents released by the CIA through his attorney Jim Lesar to author Jefferson Morley, Joannides traveled from Miami to New Orleans around April 1st, 1964, prior to Carlos Bringuier’s interview with the Warren Commission. Concluding his tour at the Miami CIA station, JMWAVE, on May 15, Joannides returned to Washington. Five days later, on May 20th, he traveled from CIA headquarters back to New Orleans, purpose unexplained.

  Those who believed that the CIA orchestrated the Canal Street incident range from former DRE leader Isidro Borja, who knew that “the CIA had Oswald under surveillance for a long time,” to CIA assets in New Orleans, such as William Gaudet. “Why would someone come to tell Bringuier that Oswald was in the street handing out pro-Castro leaflets?” Borja speculates. “And who was that person?” Gaudet, editor of Latin American Reports, a CIA proprietary journal funded by Dr. Alton Ochsner, and issuing from Gaudet’s office at the International Trade Mart, also concluded that the incident had been staged: “a sort of PR operation . . . put on, I think, mostly by Junior Butler [head of INCA]. I think Carlos went there on purpose,” Gaudet said.

  Jim Garrison later received an eye-witness account of the brouhaha. A tourist named Matt O. Wilson told him he had seen Bringuier and two colleagues emerge out of nowhere, as if “they must have been standing right there in front of one of the buildings.” Then, suddenly, they grabbed Oswald’s literature, tore it up, and shoved him to the ground. A “funny look” came onto Oswald’s face, a “sneery look,” as if “he didn’t care what happened.” Harry Dean, infiltrating Fair Play on behalf of the CIA in Chicago, told both Jim Garrison and Marguerite Oswald that Oswald was “doing the same job as I was.”

  Orestes Peña, whose Habana Bar at 117 Decatur Street placed him next door to Bringuier’s store, swore under oath that during Bringuier’s tussle with Oswald, he saw the FBI taking photographs, which meant that they had advance notice of the event. Peña knew as well that Gaudet was a “CIA-FBI agent.” The incident, in its clever use of propaganda, closely resembles Phillips’ masterminding of the overthrow of President Arbenz in Guatemala. In Oswald’s case, the ultimate goal of making public future “assassin” Oswald’s pro-Castro sympathies was to blame Castro for the assassination, precipitating a ground war in Cuba.

  Oswald and Bringuier were both arrested, even as the police officers at the scene had to wonder: Oswald seemed as if he were “being used by these people.” The police report states that Oswald was “very uninformed and knows very little about this organization that he belongs to and its ultimate purpose or goal.” Oswald and Bringuier wound up at the First District police station. Soon Bringuier was seeking legal advice from Kent Courtney, a rightwing professional anti-Communist and segregationist supporter of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Courtney edited a sheet called the Independent American, a publication at which no Marxist would have applied for a job. Yet Oswald did.

  Oswald, the supposed Marxist, was seen that summer in Kent Courtney’s company at political gatherings in Baton Rouge. Courtney introduced Oswald as “Leon,” a man who did construction work for him. “Leon” agreed with Courtney. American foreign policy was “soft on Communism,” he said. On one such trip they were accompanied by two silent Latinos. Marguerite Oswald knew of her son’s association with Kent Courtney because she telephoned him on October 27, 1964, demanding to know if he “had ever had any personal contact with my son, Lee.” Writing to J. Edgar Hoover the next day, Courtney denied ever having known Oswald.

  Bringuier would be so hostile to Jim Garrison’s investigation that he was admonished by DRE leader Juan Manuel Salvat. “The entire matter of the assassination is very serious,” Salvat says he told Bringuier. “You should refrain from making any statements or expressing personal speculations.” Salvat himself had “no quarrel with Jim Garrison or his investigation.”

  Following his arrest, Oswald was questioned by Lieutenant Francis Martello, formerly of New Orleans police intelligence. Just as at the American Embassy in the Soviet Union in 1959, Oswald had handed the senior consular official a handwritten note, requesting that his citizenship be revoked, so now he handed Martello a note on a piece of paper torn from his notebook. Its reverse side included the Moscow telephone numbers of United Press International and the Associated Press.

  Oswald pointed to a number scribbled at the top of the note. “Just call the FBI,” Oswald told Martello. “Tell them you have Lee Oswald in custody. When they arrive, hand them this note.” Oswald added that he wished to be visited by a particular agent: Warren de Brueys.

  In the predawn hours of that Saturday morning a young FBI clerk named William Walter took Martello’s call. There was only one agent present at the field office, John Quigley. With the number Martello relayed in hand, Quigley ordered Walter to search the office indices for records of a “Lee Oswald.” Walter found 105 files, which related to espionage and Cuba, not surprising given Oswald’s Customs affiliation, and 134 (Inf
ormant) files.

  There was also a security file in the locked filing cabinet of SAC Harry Maynor. Two names appeared on the file jacket: “Lee Oswald” and “Warren de Brueys.” Oswald’s file resided with those connected to ongoing surveillance and paid informants, and were locked up “for some security purpose.” Later Walter told Jim Garrison that, during the summer of 1963, the FBI had two distinct sets of files on Oswald and were communicating with him on a regular basis.

  Quigley telephoned Warren de Brueys, whose excuse for not visiting Oswald in jail was that he had to attend a barbecue. Quigley himself was to interview Oswald, an interview lasting more than an hour and a half. Later Quigley said he burned his notes. Martello kept Oswald’s original note, transcribed part of it for the FBI, and kept the original with its fuller detail. This he secreted among his personal possessions for the next thirty years. The original is a hodgepodge of English and Russian, filled with cryptic abbreviations: MAPURIS. HA PUS. None of the numbers correspond exactly to the numbers on files at the New Orleans FBI office.

  Jim Garrison perused Francis Martello’s testimony before the Warren Commission, and, without knowing anything of his conversation with Oswald, shook his head. “Martello is a man of no mentality at all,” he said impatiently. Martello had concocted a story of how the note had suddenly appeared with Oswald’s passport photograph. He had concealed how Oswald had handed him the note and told him to call the FBI.

  Martello lied, too, when he testified that he had turned the original of this note over to the Secret Service. He told neither the Warren Commission nor the Secret Service about how Oswald had ordered him to call the FBI. Nor then did Garrison know that Francis Martello had long been Guy Banister’s police department contact. Martello was among those who used the transposition “Harvey Lee Oswald.” So Martello joined U.S. Army Intelligence, the 112th Intelligence Group, and two Office of Naval Intelligence teletypes of November 27, 1963. By August 9th, Martello possessed more information about Lee Harvey Oswald than he would ever admit. Two others to use that same transposition were Clay Shaw and a CIA courier named Donald P. Norton, who was to be interviewed by Jim Garrison.

  When years later the HSCA requested Francis Martello’s file from the FBI, the Bureau sent instead the file of a “Frank Martello” from California. The error was never corrected.

  Leaving John Volz, David Ferrie rushed over to Carlos Bringuier’s store. Where is Sergio Arcacha Smith? he demanded, revealing that he knew of Arcacha’s connections—to Oswald, to Bobby Kennedy, and to the agency he hoped would protect him. Jim Garrison is trying to frame me, Ferrie said.

  “This is a free country,” Bringuier told Ferrie, whose sexual preferences were not to his liking. “Nobody can be framed without evidence.” That afternoon, Ferrie called Lou Ivon. The next day, he sought the protection of the FBI. He began to carry a loaded rifle in his 1954 Chevrolet.

  Jim Garrison now requested the FBI’s 1963 reports on David Ferrie. The Bureau refused, continuing to conceal information from him, including details of Ruby’s FBI file; the New York field office had reported a “mention or overhear” of Ruby on August 6, 1962, suggesting that Jack Ruby was of interest and concern to the Bureau more than a year before the assassination. Garrison was to receive none of these records.

  The FBI instead installed a wiretap in Garrison’s office through T. Chandler Josey, a Garrison acquaintance. The local police ceased to cooperate with his investigation. The FBI and CIA’s media assets agreed to help discredit the “allegations of various authors” who either denied that Oswald was the lone assassin or that Ruby and Oswald were connected and knew each other. Hugh Aynesworth of the Dallas Morning News requested only that the Bureau not disclose his identity “outside the Bureau.”

  When eager volunteers turned up at Tulane and Broad, trusting Jim Garrison did no background checks. An Englishman with “bright blue eyes” named Tom Bethell gained favor because he had graduated from Oxford University. “The real Oxford?” Jim Garrison asked, impressed. Bethell claimed to have arrived in New Orleans in 1966, although during the summer of 1963 he had befriended the roommate of Oswald’s Marine Corps antagonist Kerry Thornley, and had been seen in Thornley’s dubious company.

  William Gurvich, a local detective specializing in security for government-subsidized shipping in the Port of New Orleans, turned up. His father, Samuel C. “Gurevich,” had been an FBI agent whom Hoover had denounced as “an unscrupulous rascal,” having “violated all manner of Bureau rules and regulations.” Dean Andrews, whose sympathies were not with Jim Garrison, had to remark that in New Orleans the “Gurvich family are known as characterassassins and black-mailers—ask any lawyer.”

  Impressed that Gurvich was willing to work as a “dollar a year investigator,” that Gurvich could come up at a moment’s notice with a bunch of Dallas phone numbers, and that he brought as a gift a color television set for the office, Garrison took him on. “Like a Greek bearing gifts,” Garrison would say later. He permitted Gurvich to use his private office. When Gurvich requested the office master file, so he could go through the files at night to be up on the case, Garrison agreed.

  “I don’t trust Gurvich,” Lou Ivon said, refusing to give Gurvich the files. “You can’t distrust everybody,” Garrison said. Ivon gave Gurvich only the least-sensitive material. Garrison also ignored other warnings. Former Banister partner Joe Oster said, “You’re making a big mistake in having Bill Gurvich around here. I think he’s a plant.” Soon letters from potential witnesses addressed to Jim Garrison were finding their way into the files of the New Orleans FBI field office.

  Jim Garrison enjoyed the company of intelligent people, and welcomed Life magazine editor Richard N. Billings. Billings flew to New Orleans in December of 1966, suspecting that Garrison was “onto something.” A tall, angular man in his late thirties, Billings was smart and worldly, and, like Garrison, no stranger to irony. When Garrison compared lawyer G. Wray Gill’s incarceration at Angola for murdering a girlfriend to Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, Billings knew what he was talking about.

  From behind his desk, Garrison flipped a photograph to Billings. Billings saw: “a guy in a wig.”

  “He may not be the assassin, but he’ll do,” Garrison said, with a straight face. Ferrie was “a helluva pilot, also a hypnotist, a defrocked priest, and a fag,” Garrison pointed out, and Billings felt as if he were entering a strange land. Garrison later wrote to Billings: “If he [Ferrie] turns out to be our man, you must agree there has never been a more interesting suspect.” Yet acknowledging the possibility of “coincidence,” he was not ready to move against Ferrie. Soon they were exchanging information, as Billings learned of a CAP cadet who revealed that “Ferrie had flown Oswald to Cuba in 1959 in a Stinson.”

  Garrison also revealed that he had extracted from Gill his office phone bills for the telephone David Ferrie had used in 1962 and 1963. There were long distance calls to Houston, Dallas, and Irving, Texas. The bill for November 1963 was missing.

  As he searched for telephone matches between Oswald, Ruby and Ferrie, Garrison was attracted to a call on September 24, 1963, the day before Oswald departed from New Orleans. Ferrie had called an apartment house called “Delaware Towers” in Chicago where a close cohort of Jack Ruby’s named Lawrence V. Meyers met his mistress Jean Aase (West). Was it this call that resulted in Meyers and Aase meeting with Ruby in Dallas at the Cabana Motel on November 21, 1963? Was Meyers Jack Ruby’s handler? On November 23rd, Ruby had telephoned Meyers three times, once at Galveston, where Ferrie had gone to “ice-skate” and “hunt geese.” Meanwhile in Houston on November 23rd, Ferrie converged with Jack Ruby’s friend Breck Wall. Ruby phoned Wall just before midnight that same evening. Why did Breck Wall, an entertainer, rush to Galveston when Kennedy was shot?

  Garrison now had David Ferrie under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba leaflets were “probably a cover,” he suspected, correctly. But was there any significance in Oswald consorti
ng with so many homosexuals, not the least of whom was Ferrie? Garrison did not yet know of even stronger homosexual connections of Lee Harvey Oswald. As Garrison had begun to investigate, Tulane psychiatrist Harold Lief was treating a homosexual patient.

  He had seen Lee Harvey Oswald at one of the parties of Clay Shaw, his patient told Lief. After the assassination, he had recognized him at once on television. “Oswald was there!” he said, as he described Clay Shaw’s house in minute detail, including the wooden beams upstairs in the master bedroom, to which pulleys had been attached. Lief knew he was telling the truth because at one point Lief himself had rented Clay Shaw’s house.

  “You should come forward and tell Jim Garrison what you know,” Lief said. “Oh, no, oh God, no!” the man cried. His parents thought his problem was depression and knew nothing of his sexual orientation. “Oswald was there,” he repeated.

  Garrison constructed a “biography” of Lee Harvey Oswald, terming Oswald “a rebel looking for a cause.” The Cubans crossing his path were “self-designated revolutionaries from the lunatic fringe of the Cuba movement.” He learned that at the age of fifteen, Oswald had tried to join the New Orleans Astronomy Club, although he had no particular interest in astronomy.

  Oswald had wanted “to play the infiltrator” out of a “distorted need to belong to something,” William Wulf, the president of the Astronomy Club, told Garrison. That the FBI was well aware of Oswald’s entire history in New Orleans is reflected in yet another fact: on Sunday morning November 24th, only minutes after Jack Ruby shot Oswald, the Bureau was on the telephone to William Wulf.

  Oswald’s penchant for “infiltrating” was based on his admiration for FBI spy Herbert Philbrick, hero of “I Led Three Lives,” who had infiltrated the Communist Party. Philbrick had lived on Magazine Street in Cambridge as Oswald took up residence on New Orleans’ Magazine Street. Oswald’s teenaged letters to socialist organizations, his assignment of infiltrating the Soviet Union as a false defector and his approach to the DRE—each had been a moment toward his fulfilling a lifelong dream, one based on a real-life, anti-Communist model.