by Joan Mellen
Yet another witness who died before Jim Garrison could reach him was a former military affairs editor at Life named J. Garrett Underhill, a CIA informant. “A small clique in the CIA” killed President Kennedy, Underhill told his friends. He knew the people involved and they knew what he knew. As he prepared “to blow the whistle on the CIA,” Underhill was found in bed with a bullet wound behind his left ear. The date was May 8, 1964.
Jim Garrison forged ahead. He subpoenaed CIA asset Lawrence J. Laborde, who, piloting his Tejana III, had blown up a ship “running machinery to Cuba.” Even Hemming calls him “plugugly” and “cold-blooded,” a “trained CIA assassin” who had bungled two jobs in Mexico, attempting to murder Mexican politicians under the orders of Win Scott. The CIA granted Laborde “Provisional Covert Security Approval.” Should he leave the country? Laborde asked Lloyd Ray as Jim Garrison closed in on him. The Rock, pulling Laborde’s CIA files, was pleased to note that he had never been paid directly by the Agency. Ray was ordered never to meet with Laborde again.
Jim Garrison was interested in Laborde because he now believed that Laborde had enlisted for the assassination the same assets CIA had utilized for sabotage against Cuba. Based in New Orleans, Laborde was under Garrison’s jurisdiction. Garrison wondered whether he had been involved.
A deadly chess game ensued between Jim Garrison and the CIA. The CIA compiled a Garrison dossier, including a list of its New Orleans assets and employees, conveniently omitting, for one, Carl Trettin, Deputy Chief of the Counter Intelligence Branch of the Cuban Operations Group, who knew Carlos Bringuier. CIA asset Edward Butler’s page is blank, with “RI trace in progress.” David Ferrie’s page reads “no identifiable traces.” Memoranda, labeled “CASE 49364”—"The Garrison Case”—flowed from the Agency. One memorandum was titled: “CIA Involvement with Cubans and Cuban Groups Now or Potentially Involved in The Garrison Investigation.”
The CIA maintained a “target file” of people the agency considered to be hostile. According to Chester Vigurie, who worked as a file clerk for the CIA field office in New Orleans in the late 1960s, and later as a probation officer in Jefferson Parish, “Jim Garrison and everyone connected to his probe of the JFK case were in the CIA’s target file.”
In search of negative information about Jim Garrison, Richard Helms breakfasted with Louisiana congressman F. Edward Hebert, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, who was “friendly and well-disposed toward the Agency.” Garrison in turn subpoenaed Helms, demanding that the CIA produce a photograph of Oswald and a Cuban companion in Mexico City. He worried about how his staff would cope with the smooth Helms. “The guy’s going to come in a thousand dollar suit, and my guys will be awed,” he told Mark Lane.
Garrison needn’t have worried. Lawrence Houston wrote to Judge Bagert on Helms’ behalf: New Orleans had no jurisdiction. Helms would make no personal appearances in New Orleans. Undeterred, Garrison subpoenaed Allen Dulles. The subpoena was returned undelivered, only for Dulles to declare on television that he had no objection to going to New Orleans, only he hadn’t been served with a subpoena.
Garrison also subpoenaed Regis Kennedy and Warren de Brueys, who had already been transferred to Washington, D.C., out of harm’s way. Thwarted by the intelligence agencies, Garrison turned increasingly to the press, accusing “our investigative federal agencies” of being deeply involved in the “concealment of essential information relating to the assassination of President Kennedy.”
He charged that the CIA was paying lawyers representing his suspects, and that made the papers on May 11, 1967: William Martin had told him Stephen B. Lemann, as a special counsel, was handling the CIA’s clandestine New Orleans payroll. Martin’s informant had been Clay Shaw’s friend, David Baldwin. Garrison also charged that “federal agents involved are taking the fifth amendment.” There were so many articles about Garrison that Lloyd Ray, ordered to send five copies of every article to “interested Agency components,” dubbed his office “Ray’s Clip Joint.”
De Brueys was gone, but Regis Kennedy remained in New Orleans. In Washington, Regis Kennedy’s reports were at once sealed. Judge Bagert ruled that the Executive Branch did not enjoy “unlimited authority.” Big Regis must appear before the Orleans Parish grand jury. Ramsey Clark ordered Kennedy to reveal no information acquired in the performance of his official duties. Then, just before Kennedy entered the grand jury room, two of U.S. Attorney Louis Lacour’s assistants, fearing that a blanket invocation of privilege might lead to judicial review, told him he should use “his own judgment” about when to invoke privilege.
On the stand, when he invoked privilege, as opposed to a simple denial, it seemed as if the tall, lean, red-haired Kennedy was making admissions. He invoked privilege in reply to whether he knew the connection between Oswald and any Cubans; he did not say that he did not know. He invoked privilege on whether he knew Jack Ruby’s New Orleans contacts. He admitted he knew of federal agents in New Orleans who had known Oswald. He admitted he knew the answer to whether the Justice Department had determined that Shaw and Bertrand were the same man. He invoked privilege on the question of whether the Justice Department had investigated Clay Shaw, and whether there was an FBI file on Shaw.
For his honesty, Kennedy was attacked by Assistant Attorney General Fred Vinson and by Ramsey Clark, while Lacour’s assistants, a veritable Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, denied they had told him to use his own judgment. Watching from Langley, Lawrence Houston decided that CIA people should claim “executive privilege” were they to be subpoenaed. Special Agent in Charge Rightmyer, in Regis Kennedy’s defense, reminded Hoover of how helpful the New Orleans field office had been in providing the CIA with information.
Jack N. Rogers, New Orleans CIA asset and counsel to the Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee, solicited liaisons with anti-Castro guerrillas in the Escambray Mountains. Like Oswald, Rogers worked with Customs, helping to head off the entrance into the United States of Communist propaganda from Cuba. Like Guy Banister, Rogers dispatched spies to watch Cuban students at LSU, then reported to both FBI and CIA. Calling on Jim Garrison at Tulane and Broad, Rogers came away believing that Garrison could prove “a close association between Oswald and Jack Ruby and a conspiracy involving Clay Shaw.”
The war between Garrison and the CIA continued to rage, as Garrison spoke of “two Americas,” one in which the government, serving a “warfare complex,” thought it had the right to lie to the people. On WWL-TV, Garrison called Oswald “an anti-Communist doing work for the CIA,” with the CIA “paying lawyers” to block his investigation. He charged that the CIA had more power than “the Gestapo and NKVD of Russia.” Could the CIA halt his investigation? he was asked.
“It can slow it up,” Garrison granted. The “principal responsible people” were “former employees of the CIA.” He blamed “the Bay of Pigs sector—that’s where the rabid people are.” This was a veiled reference to Phillips. Garrison insisted he might not be a perfect person, “but I don’t happen to be a liar.”
Watching Garrison on ABC-TV’s “Issues and Answers,” CIA asset Eustis Reily told Aaron Kohn that anyone listening to Garrison “would also be convinced he is on solid ground.” Jack Anderson arrived in New Orleans with a “hostile viewpoint” toward Garrison. By the end of a six-hour conversation, Anderson admitted he “began to believe Garrison’s story,” and so reported to Deke. There was “authenticity in Garrison’s claim that Shaw had been approved by the CIA “to engineer a plot that would result in the assassination of Fidel Castro only for the assignment to change,” Anderson said. Furious, Deke wrote a memo calling Anderson a “sitting duck” for Garrison’s “wild accusations.”
It wasn’t a good day for Deke. Only the night before, he had had an unwelcome telephone call from Johnson aide Marvin Watson. President Johnson was persuaded that there had been a conspiracy and “that CIA had something to do with this plot.” Could the FBI give them “any further information?” Deke was livid.
&nbs
p; Jack Anderson also talked to Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary, George Christian, who was “convinced that there must be some truth to Garrison’s allegations.” Another reporter persuaded by Jim Garrison “against my will and my judgment” was Fred Powledge of The New Republic, who put the lie to the Agency’s formula for describing Jim Garrison as “politically ambitious” and longing to be “governor of Louisiana” while his case was “jerry-built” and “flimsy.” To Powledge, Garrison seemed neither crazy nor connected to organized crime.
Back at Langley, The Rock raged. Garrison had outstripped even “the foreign Communist press” in attacking the CIA, “vehemently, viciously, and mendaciously.” In fact, Garrison had taken the very position that had cost John F. Kennedy his life: that the “CIA should be drastically curtailed or destroyed.” Garrison also had concluded that there had been internecine warfare within the CIA itself, which the Inspector General’s report, a document he was never to read, reveals amply.
The murder of John F. Kennedy, Jim Garrison believed, was ratified by the entire Agency “as an Agency policy” because “the Agency did not want it known that Agency elements were involved.” Fully aware of the forces in the media unleashed to discredit him, Garrison commented that “he who controls the past controls the future.”
"WHITE PAPER”
12
They didn’t want to just discredit Jim Garrison. They wanted him destroyed.
—William Alford
ENLISTED IN THE FRONT LINE of the media attack to discredit Jim Garrison and ruin his case was Justice Department lawyer Walter Sheridan. In 1963 it was Sheridan who had determined, at Bobby Kennedy’s request, that the Mafia had not planned his brother’s assassination. Whether he had been sent directly to New Orleans by Bobby, or on Bobby’s behalf by Herbert J. Miller Jr., who had been rushed to Dallas to forestall any investigation of the assassination by the state of Texas, Sheridan appeared in New Orleans virtually as soon as Garrison considered the CIA a suspect and began to examine the involvement of anti-Castro Cubans. By February 20th, Sheridan had enlisted that young entrepreneur and FBI informant Gordon Novel to penetrate Garrison’s office. On February 26th, four days before Clay Shaw’s arrest, Sheridan knocked on his door at 1313 Dauphine Street.
Sheridan’s background included service to vast areas of the intelligence community: to the FBI; to the CIA, which had cleared him as an investigator in 1955 and 1956; and to the National Security Agency, which granted him “security approval for liaison.”
At the Justice Department, Sheridan had made himself indispensable to Bobby Kennedy in his relentless pursuit of Teamster president Jimmy Hoffa. With the help of a vicious Louisiana criminal named Edward Grady Partin, and using blackmail, threats of violence and wiretapping, Sheridan had succeeded in engineering Hoffa’s conviction. Like Sheridan, Partin also reported directly to Herbert J. Miller Jr. For a time, future Garrison lawyer Lou Merhige had represented Partin. When they severed their relationship, Partin owed Merhige ten thousand dollars. “You won’t sue me and I won’t have you killed,” Partin said. When Hoffa was finally behind bars, Bobby Kennedy rewarded Partin with his heart’s desire: a “Lotus Ford” racing car.
Sheridan next demanded that Ramsey Clark ensure that Clark’s father, Justice Tom Clark, not vote to reverse the Hoffa conviction. Despite Earl Warren’s dissent, the Supreme Court complied.
Put in contact with the Shaw defense team by Walter Sheridan, Miller went on to serve as the liaison between Shaw’s lawyers and Richard Lansdale, a lawyer in Lawrence Houston’s office. On a regular basis, Edward Wegmann sent his briefs to Miller, who then forwarded them to the CIA. Houston had been ordered to cooperate with the Shaw defense by Richard Helms. Throughout the Garrison investigation, the CIA’s highest legal officer, Houston, worked to help Shaw evade justice. The sanitizing of Alfred Moran’s file had been but one example.
By the time he was assigned to the Garrison investigation, Sheridan, according to author Jim Hougan, “disposed over the personnel and currency of whole units of the Central Intelligence Agency.” Simultaneously, he worked for Bobby Kennedy as his personal intelligence agency, head of his wiretapping unit. Sheridan was a short, stocky man with a beaky nose and slitlike eyes. “His almost angelic appearance hides a core of toughness,” wrote Bobby Kennedy, ever given to hero-worship of brutal men.
Sheridan now began a four-year effort to discredit Jim Garrison and, enlisting his Internal Revenue capabilities, to try to put him in jail. Not the first federal agent to pose as a journalist, he traveled to New Orleans ostensibly as a producer of NBC documentaries, a cover he had established in Detroit. In Newsweek, Hugh Aynesworth called Sheridan a “reporter” or “journalist” four times in a one-page article. Sheridan was nothing of the sort.
Jim Garrison was astonished by Sheridan’s single-minded effort to destroy his investigation, given that it so obviously emanated from Bobby Kennedy. Bobby’s opposition perplexed him. “If my brother were killed,” Garrison said quietly, “I would be interested in getting the individuals involved, no matter who they were.” Unaware that Bobby had reasons to behave otherwise, Garrison told Joe Wershba on the CBS program, “Mike Wallace at Large,” “I cannot go into his mind.”
All Garrison knew for sure was that, although he admired “Jack” Kennedy, and openly said so, inexplicably, Bobby was attempting to “torpedo” his case. That Bobby “never really wanted any investigation” had long been clear to his staff. Whether it was Herbert J. Miller Jr. personally who sent Sheridan to New Orleans, as Edwin Guthman says, or Bobby directly, or the two in tandem, certainly Bobby allowed Walter Sheridan to tell people that it was Bobby himself who dispatched him to New Orleans.
Claiming to be investigating not Garrison, but the Kennedy assassination, Sheridan met Garrison, courtesy of Dick Billings. When Sheridan mentioned he had been with the Office of Naval Intelligence, Garrison raised an eyebrow. Later he would liken Sheridan’s arrival to “artillery” being moved into the area. ONI liaison Guy Johnson was well aware of Sheridan’s assignment: Sheridan “was clearly sent here by the Kennedys to spike Garrison.” He had gone to “bury” Garrison, Sheridan told Herbert J. Miller Jr. at one point, suggesting that it was, indeed, Bobby Kennedy who had sent him. Immediately Sheridan began reporting to Miller, and through Miller to the CIA on everything he learned about Garrison. Miller then turned the information over to Richard H. Lansdale for Lawrence Houston.
Sheridan would have preferred to report directly to the CIA on “Garrison’s schemes and instructions.” Miller tried to obtain that privilege for him, pleading his case before the Agency. Sheridan is “completely trustworthy and will live up to whatever arrangements are made,” Miller said. Sheridan would accept “any terms we propose,” he told Lansdale.
The CIA, obviously uncomfortable with a representative of Bobby Kennedy, preferred to keep Sheridan at one remove and deal with the intermediary, Miller. Miller would protect Sheridan and his nefarious role in the Garrison investigation from later government inquiries into the 1990s. Not only did Miller refuse to reply to the ARRB’s questions about Sheridan and the Garrison investigation, but he went on to facilitate the removal of Sheridan’s papers from the Kennedy Library when the government petitioned that they be moved to the National Archives and be made available to scholars, so obviously were they assassination records, and thus by law the property of the U.S. government. Sheridan’s papers were consigned to the oblivion of his family—with Miller representing the Sheridan family interests.
Shortly after Sheridan’s arrival in New Orleans, the CIA had Emilio Santana’s police file. At Counter Intelligence, Raymond Rocca, “The Rock,” decreed that Sheridan not be authorized to use Santana on his projected NBC “White Paper” because then the CIA’s “relationship with Santana will come out.” Clearly the NBC “White Paper” on Jim Garrison was controlled by the CIA.
Sheridan sent his deputy, Frank Grimsley, to the New Orleans Athletic Club to dig up dirt on Jim Garrison.
&
nbsp; To assist him in the destruction of Garrison, Sheridan hired Richard Townley of the New Orleans NBC affiliate, WDSU, that longtime CIA media asset. “I can make a lot of statements he can’t,” Townley admitted, referring to Sheridan. When Townley arrived armed at the home of Ferrie’s godson, Morris Brownlee, Brownlee, who had been wired by Jim Garrison, looked at him askance. “A squad of federal marshals” will protect you if you agree to talk to NBC, Townley promised.
Townley remarked to the FBI that his instructions from Sheridan regarding Garrison were to “shoot him down.” Gene S. Palmisano, an assistant United States attorney, rushed to the FBI with news it already had: Sheridan’s “White Paper” “would destroy the credibility of Garrison’s investigation.” Loose-tongued Townley told Aaron Kohn that the “White Paper” was being coordinated with “a reporter named Ainsworth [sic] of Newsweek.”
Kohn soon joined the team, providing Sheridan with a list of “sixteen offenses” committed by Jim Garrison, dating back to the Marc Antony grand jury’s refusal to indict Chep Morrison and Provost Dayries, which had not been Jim Garrison’s decision. Included was Garrison’s “admiration for Huey Long!” Sheridan urged Kohn to go before the NBC cameras and state that Garrison’s Las Vegas expenses, including his $5,000 line of credit, had been picked up by Carlos Marcello. “No such credit had been established for Carlos Marcello,” Kohn had to tell Sheridan. Kohn did supply Sheridan with Garrison’s medical records from his military file. Then he told Sheridan to locate Pershing Gervais.