by Joan Mellen
Jim Garrison sent John Volz to Dallas in search of the pockmarked Cuban, nicknamed “Bugs Bunny.” Volz came up empty only for Jim Garrison to be incredulous. “You know, you have the imagination of an FBI man!” Garrison said. Before long, Volz was promoted to chief of narcotics. Later, as U. S. Attorney, Volz would prosecute Governor Edwin Edwards and Carlos Marcello. Marcello he convicted, but Edwards eluded him. One day Edwards had turned up alone at Volz’s office without an appointment.
“What would I have to do to make this go away?” Edwards said.
“Nothing,” Volz said. (Edwards’ conviction had to await another day.)
Of all Banister’s associates, people whom he suspected of being acquainted with Lee Harvey Oswald, Garrison wanted to talk to Sergio Arcacha Smith, who had been present at the robbery of the Schlumberger ammunition dump, and was paid by David Ferrie. He concentrated on Arcacha and Shaw, hoping to link them to Oswald and Ferrie. Both Arcacha and Ferrie had worked for U.S. Customs, Garrison knew, even as he did not know Oswald had done so as well. Arcacha had maintained his connections with the CIA, the FBI and Customs, and in fact was well-acquainted with Oswald. He had moved to Dallas where he was warned by both Bringuier and his own assistant, Carlos Quiroga, that Garrison’s men were coming.
Gurvich and Alcock arrived with a warrant for Arcacha’s arrest for participating in the Schlumberger burglary, which had been planned in Orleans Parish. “I had expected them earlier,” Arcacha said, suave as ever. He invoked “Mr. Bobby Kennedy,” whom he had called whenever he needed advice, and who “knew what we were doing all the time.” This, of course, turns out to be true.
Governor Connally invited Arcacha to Austin, embraced him and reassured him that he would not extradite him back to Louisiana. Shortly before his death, Arcacha admitted he had traveled back and forth to New Orleans frequently during the summer of 1963 and was even gleeful that he had evaded Jim Garrison. To the end of his life, Arcacha denied he knew Oswald, which was not true. He had told his public relations man and supporter Ronny Caire that “Oswald was nutty as a fruitcake. He didn’t know which side he was working for.” But higher authority shielded Arcacha to the end, so that Garrison was forced to conclude that his connection to the crime was “remote” and his own efforts “a waste of time.”
Garrison developed a list of “standard questions.” Had a witness seen Oswald either in Banister’s building or in Mancuso’s restaurant? (Allen Campbell reveals that you could enter Mancuso’s from 531 Lafayette without even going into the street.) Had the witness seen Ruby at 531 Lafayette? Did the witness recognize Banister, Arcacha, Ferrie or Bringuier? Had the witness seen Oswald with Banister, Ferrie or Ruby? Garrison wondered whether Banister had the same CIA handler, a man named “Logan Stewart,” as Arcacha did. An informant told him that Banister had joined the New Orleans police as a “single step phase” of “sterilizing” him from his intelligence connections.
No answers were forthcoming from Banister associates such as Joe Newbrough, who claimed he did not know what was stored in the boxes of war materiel at Banister’s office. Newbrough was willing to say that “David Ferrie is capable of almost anything,” and to report that Ferrie had asked him to sign a statement based on a lie, that one of the boys whom Ferrie had been charged with molesting, Eric Crouchet, was “habituating homosexual hangouts.” It was for Regis Kennedy, and not for Jim Garrison or Lou Ivon, that Joe Oster, Big Regis’ informant #1309-C, produced a photograph taken by Newbrough of jeeps and trucks being shipped to Cuba in 1960 from a New Orleans dock.
A Banister client reported that “he had heard Banister remark on several occasions that someone should do away with Kennedy.” I. E. Nitschke, a former FBI agent close to Banister, reported that Banister was bidding on the security contract for NASA’s Michoud’s assembly facility where so many employees of Reily Coffee went to work after the assassination, and where Oswald said he hoped to land a job. Nitschke remembered a “short, stocky” Cuban “with obviously large arms and neck,” whom Banister had confided was “exceptionally adept in guerrilla warfare and guerrilla type tactics.”
Was his name Manuel Gonzalez? Garrison said.
Gonzalez, yes, Nitschke said. He was in fact looking at a photograph of longtime CIA operative David Sanchez Morales. Exasperated, Garrison dubbed the group of Cubans he was seeking “Winkin’, Blinkin’ and “Nod” after the nursery rhyme.
Nitschke did urge Delphine Roberts to turn everything she had over to the district attorney’s office. Roberts refused. She volunteered only that Banister “belonged to a worldwide intelligence network to receive information from all areas.” Mary Banister concealed that she had sold some of her husband’s files to Kent Courtney.
David Lewis had told Jim Garrison that Carlos Quiroga, Arcadia’s assistant, had introduced him to “Lee Harvey.” Quiroga had driven the Schlumberger arms to Miami in a U-Haul truck. During the summer of 1963, at the suggestion of Bringuier, Quiroga had gone to Oswald’s house, requesting an application form for Fair Play for Cuba. Oswald had told him, Quiroga said, that he was studying Russian at Tulane. When Quiroga heard (but how?) that Oswald was distributing leaflets outside the International Trade Mart, he had telephoned New Orleans police intelligence, then rushed over himself. Quiroga says his plan was to “physically attack” Oswald, but he arrived too late. The incident seems a potential carbon copy of Bringuier’s Canal Street fracas.
Quiroga was to be a most unpromising Garrison witness. He was given to reporting the names of students at “pro-Castro” meetings to Warren de Brueys, his informant file (134) having been opened with de Brueys on November 30, 1966. Ultimately the FBI rejected Quiroga as a permanent informant because of his “apparent detective complex.”
At Tulane and Broad, Quiroga faced tough Frank Klein. On Klein’s desk was a statement from Bringuier to the Secret Service that Quiroga had visited Oswald on several occasions, not just the once to which he admitted.
Ferrie is a “Communist” who has been arrested “for Communist activities,” Quiroga says, obvious disinformation that Klein ignores. “Ferrie is plenty scared,” he adds.
Klein asks Quiroga about Banister’s role in the front. “You mean about the arms?” Quiroga says.
“I didn’t say anything about arms,” Klein says.
“Well, he didn’t have anything to do with arms,” Quiroga says. Then he smiles. Klein thinks: He smiles involuntarily or smirks when he is not telling the truth. Klein asks about training camps, and Quiroga replies with a question: “The one here or the one across the lake?”
Klein concluded “This man knows a lot more than he is telling me.” Garrison scribbled on Klein’s statement: “Quiroga seems impelled to reinforce Oswald’s cover.”
Garrison subpoenaed Quiroga for another round of questions. He had been seen at Mancuso’s and had introduced David Lewis to “Lee Harvey,” Garrison said. It was a point on which Lewis had passed his polygraph, reflecting the same response as he did when asked his own name. Richard Billings read the transcript and also wondered about Quiroga: “He’s evasive about Mancuso cafe.” Asked if he knew a “Clay Bertrand,” Quiroga admitted he had heard the name.
“One of the things we have learned is that Oswald was not a Communist at all. Would it surprise you if I told you that Oswald was anti-Castro?” Garrison said.
“He had to be a Communist,” Quiroga insisted. “He told me he would kill American soldiers if they land in Cuba.” Showing Quiroga a photograph of Oswald with anti-Castro Cubans, Garrison persisted. He would reveal “confidential information” to Quiroga, proof that Oswald’s plan had been to enter Cuba as a Communist, and then, as he had been ordered, to kill Fidel Castro. Branding him a Communist was part of a scenario that would blame Castro for the assassination of President Kennedy.
Quiroga immediately reported to Aaron Kohn, accusing Garrison of being “un-American.” Then he denounced Garrison as being “un-American” to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Even Kohn was astonis
hed. Quiroga then called de Brueys at home, complaining that Jack Martin had threatened to kill him for going to the district attorney’s office.
On April 15th, Quiroga took a polygraph at Tulane and Broad. On whether he had seen Oswald only once, on the day he visited him on Magazine Street, Quiroga failed. On that he was aware that Fair Play for Cuba was a cover, he failed. On whether Arcacha and Banister knew Oswald, the box all but blew up. Had Arcacha visited New Orleans on any occasion in 1963? Quiroga said no, and failed. Even on whether he had seen any of the guns used in the assassination, he failed. And while this was unlikely, suggesting that Quiroga was so nervous as not to be a suitable polygraph subject, Quiroga did pass other questions with no difficulty.
Quiroga testified before the Orleans Parish grand jury, only to be asked to return. He begged the FBI to help him, pleading the Fifth Amendment. His father was in prison in Cuba. He would not testify because he had been threatened with a perjury charge, he said.
“We only charge people with perjury when they lie under oath,” Jim Garrison said. He referred Quiroga to that pro-Castro Oswald pamphlet with “544 Camp Street” stamped on it. Quiroga remained silent.
By the third week of February 1967, Jim Garrison was convinced: David Ferrie was the “transportation manager” of the assassination, in charge of shepherding people in and out of Dallas. He was also an Oswald babysitter. But Garrison wanted more evidence. Believing Ferrie was close to confessing, Lou Ivon disagreed. Ivon urged that they take Ferrie into custody immediately.
New evidence against Ferrie did continue to arrive. At White Rock Airport in Dallas, a mechanic named Fred Lenz identified Ferrie as having been there in “October or November of 1963,” piloting a plane in and out of Dallas. Ferrie had worn a “checkered, brown and light gray or white sport jacket,” similar to a coat Ferrie was wearing in the photograph William Gurvich now showed Lenz. Lenz remembered being shown “Feme’s credentials.” The owner of Ted Hill Aviation corroborated Lenz’s identification. A student pilot also identified Ferrie from photographs.
David Ferrie was indeed “plenty scared.” In panic, he telephoned Pershing. “I’ve got some interesting ideas,” Dave said. “There may have been a second assassin.” Would Pershing please arrange an interview with Jim Garrison? “Playing for results,” as always, Gervais called not Jim Garrison, but Regis Kennedy. Now Ferrie hired an attorney, one of his flying students, Gerald Aurillo, who had once been a Garrison assistant.
After hiring Max Gonzales undercover to tell Ferrie he wanted to buy a plane, Garrison drew into his investigation that young blond Ferrie friend, Jimmy Johnson, who would report on some of the contents of “the Bomb.” Unlike the majority of the Ferrie boys, he was married. A parole violator on a weapons charge, Johnson helped Garrison, he said later, “to keep myself out of trouble.” Lou Ivon named him “Undercover Agent #1.” A measure of Ivon’s professionalism is that for nearly forty years neither Alvin Beaubouef nor Morris Brownlee knew that Jimmy Johnson was working for Jim Garrison.
On January 18, 1967, Johnson reported that he retrieved for Ferrie an 8 x 10 envelope under the seat of a white Chevrolet with no license plates. “I’m going to buy a new car, because I’ve just got hold of some cash,” Ferrie told him. Police investigator Lynn Loisel learned that Ferrie now had between thirty-five and forty-five thousand dollars and was planning to buy a DC-3 airplane to run guns to Cuba. Ferrie’s only visible means of support was from teaching students to fly, although his license was no longer valid. One night he delivered a truckload of hand grenades to a friend’s house for safe keeping.
Ferrie wrote obscene letters. One, beginning, “Dear Bastard,” described a sex movie: “some dude fucking this broad . . . he got his nuts jerking under her knee, she blew him, he fucked her in the ass twice, and in the pussy twice . . . I could have raped an exhaust pipe they made me so hot.” He asked Johnson to line up women to pose while they were having intercourse with Johnson for fifteen dollars an hour. They would split the profits. He asked Johnson to burglarize a man’s house because he knew the man always kept a thousand dollars in cash at home.
One night a patrolling police car light hit Ferrie’s porch. “The police suspect me,” Dave said. Yet he laughed at Jim Garrison. “They won’t be able to get anything on me. I’m so much smarter than those people.” Later Johnson remembered they discussed the assassination maybe “a hundred times.” Ferrie obviously knew a lot about Oswald. Johnson concluded that Ferrie had been involved in a plot to assassinate President Kennedy with Cubans at Houston, Texas, and that Ferrie was to have flown the airplane helping the assassin get away. That Ferrie knew Oswald there was no question.
Despite his bravado, Ferrie began to deteriorate. He rarely bathed. The rifle in his car was now always loaded. He talked of killing himself. He telephoned the Reverend Raymond Broshears and said he feared that he was going to be killed. Depressed, he confided to Jimmy Johnson that Garrison had picked up his friend Mike (Crouchet), and had questioned him about Ferrie.
Ferrie quarreled with Jimmy Johnson, but Ivon told Johnson to patch it up. “That’s no problem,” Johnson said, “David Ferrie is in love with me.” Evenings, Ferrie reclined on the couch, talking on the telephone. Between eleven thirty and midnight, he removed his false eyebrows, put down two pillows and a blanket and went to sleep on the floor.
Now Ferrie began to telephone Lou Ivon. His persistent themes were that he feared for his life and that he was sick and would die soon anyway.
“What’s happening with the Cubans?” Ferrie asked in one of these calls.
“Dave, the best thing is for you to come talk to us,” Ivon said. Ferrie refused. Yet, Jim Garrison concluded later, “in his need to talk to Ivon, he was showing signs of conscience.”
Judge Thomas Brahney tipped off reporter Jack Dempsey. “Gervais and all those big investigators have been going to Dallas and Miami,” he said. “What do you think they’re going there for?” On another day, Brahney told Dempsey that Jimmy Alcock, the assistant assigned to his section, had been replaced. “I hear Alcock has been going to Dallas,” he said. Dempsey had City Hall reporter Dave Snyder examine the air ticket vouchers put through the accounting office from the district attorney’s office fines and fees account: There were twelve trips to Miami alone. Dempsey soon noticed two names on the grand jury agenda: Joseph Newbrough and David William Ferrie.
That Jim Garrison was investigating the Kennedy assassination was by now an open secret in New Orleans. Reporter Sam Depino was babbling, as was Pershing, as was Carlos Bringuier. On February 17th, the States-Item broke the story: “DA Here Launches Full JFK Death ‘Plot’ Probe.” David Ferrie, not mentioned by name, was described as a man who had been arrested in New Orleans and booked as a fugitive from Texas, November 26, 1963. It could be no one else.
Ferrie showed the article to Allen Campbell, his hangar neighbor at the airport.
“I’m a dead man!” Ferrie said.
Ferrie was particularly agitated by a quotation attributed to Jim Garrison, saying “none of the people mentioned in the press so far are very important in the investigation.” That was “a big joke.” If he wasn’t important, why was the DA harassing him? He reached Pershing. “Get your licks in first,” Pershing advised, and so Ferrie called the FBI and reporter Snyder and gave him an interview.
Discovering that a law enforcement officer, the first, was investigating the murder of President Kennedy, the world press converged on New Orleans. Arrests are certainly “months away,” Jim Garrison told them in an attempt to deflect attention from his real plan, which was soon to arrest David Ferrie. “Jim Garrison has some information the Warren Commission didn’t have,” Senator Russell Long announced, making public his support of Jim Garrison. Garrison had requested that Long not “tell the FBI what he was doing and I didn’t.”
WDSU was the New Orleans NBC affiliate owned by Edgar and Edith Stern that had helped the CIA establish Oswald’s cover as a Marxist in that August 1963 radio debate. They
at once opposed Jim Garrison’s investigation. He should turn his information over to the federal authorities, WDSU insisted. Garrison replied in a press release. These authorities, he said, have “been able to develop very little after three long years.” As for who had jurisdiction, he pointed out, murdering the president was not a federal crime on November 22, 1963: “The Federal Government has about as much jurisdiction over a murder in New Orleans as the S.P.C.A. [Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals].”
It was now that Jim Lewallen told Ferrie’s friends to stay away from Ferrie’s apartment. “Dave is hot, very hot,” Lewallen told the Wilson brothers. “A lot of shit is coming down, so just stay away.” Soon Lewallen would reveal that Ferrie had for a time lived at one of Clay Shaw’s French Quarter properties.
On Saturday, February 18th, the day after the story that Jim Garrison was investigating the Kennedy assassination broke, Ivon and Sciambra drove over to 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway where Ferrie rented an apartment from Eddie Sapir and his father. Their purpose was to gauge Ferrie’s reaction to the news. “I’m glad you finally decided to come and talk with me,” Ferrie said. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with Garrison or Ivon for days.”
He is sick, Ferrie says, and has been unable to keep anything in his stomach. In the living room, Ferrie lies down on the sofa. As a result of rumors of my arrest, I’ve been asked to leave the airport, he says, not mentioning that he was banished because he had no license to give flying lessons.
“Garrison is using Miguel Torres to frame me,” Ferrie complains. He curses Jack Martin, who “started all this.” He wants to speak to Garrison to see if he is serious. He brings up the trip to Houston and Galveston the weekend of the assassination. “It was the worst trip of my life,” Ferrie says, leaving it at that.
“Who do you think killed the president?” Sciambra says. Ferrie launches into a lecture on ballistic trajectories, and even produces some sketches of the assassination scene, leftovers from that package Tommy Beckham delivered to Lawrence Howard on instructions from Ferrie and G. Wray Gill, vestiges of “the Bomb.”