by Joan Mellen
It was Oswald the infiltrator, playing his hero Herbert Philbrick, leading his own multiple lives. At the East Louisiana State Hospital, he was not the pro-Castroite, but the man described in David Atlee Phillips’ The Amlash Legacy, in which his hero recounts, “I was one of those officers who handled Lee Harvey Oswald. We gave him the mission of killing Fidel Castro in Cuba. ...”
In 1955, having graduated from the University of Havana Medical School, Dr. Francisco Silva Clarens had left Cuba to continue his studies at Tulane University. He has no love for Fidel Castro. He is a man more interested in art, literature and history than in politics, an intellectual, and the psychiatrist who would come to be known as the “father of psychiatry in Baton Rouge.” Jim Garrison would have viewed him, like Alberto Fowler, as a “legitimate Cuban.” Dr. Frank Silva was spiritually light years from his second cousin, Francisco Bartes Clarens, a CIA asset and mercenary who flew murderous missions for the Agency in the Congo. Dr. Silva has met this cousin, Frank Bartes, only once. “I don’t get involved with people for whom I have no respect,” he says. He is certain that Frank Bartes, who appeared on the scene immediately after Oswald’s court appearance over the Canal Street fracas with Carlos Bringuier, has no idea that he is working in Clinton.
Now Dr. Silva concludes that this disrespectful, impolite man ranting about killing Fidel Castro has no idea what he’s talking about. He is a troubled man making a spectacle of himself while applying for a job at a mental hospital.
“I’ve come to get a job at the suggestion of Dr. Malcolm Pierson,” Oswald says. It flashes through Dr. Suva’s mind that they might know each other because both are homosexual. So Pierson has imported one of his New Orleans boyfriends up here, Dr. Silva thinks.
I would never give a job to this person, Dr. Silva decides as he walks off. Armed with the name “Dr. Frank Silva,” Oswald then returned to Henry Earl’s office. Dr. Silva had registered to vote in Clinton in 1962; Henry Earl then permitted Oswald to register.
Assigned by Jim Garrison to help Fruge and Dischler, Moo Moo Sciambra interviewed Dr. Frank Silva. His memo of that meeting claims that Dr. Silva “had never seen or heard of Lee Harvey Oswald.” This is not what Dr. Silva told him, however. Dr. Silva says that Moo Moo had been so vague that he had concluded that all Sciambra had come to discuss was Rose Cheramie’s story.
Dr. Silva had begun to tell Moo Moo about the man at the hospital talking about Cuba. Then, feeling ill, he pleaded he had the flu. He had more to say. Could Sciambra come back at a later time? Moo Moo never returned to interview this witness who had encountered Lee Harvey Oswald, one whose integrity and credibility could never have been challenged.
AN UNSUNG HERO AND THE DO-NOT-FILE FILE
14
By the time I get there, he better be back in jail.
—Corrie Collins
AT THE EAST LOUISIANA STATE Hospital at Jackson, Fruge and Dischler interviewed Merryl Hudson, secretary at the personnel office headed by Guy Broyles. They examined Dr. Pierson’s file. Jack Darsey, the hospital executive assistant, said that Dr. Pierson was “about to crack up, worrying about something.” Pierson himself gave Fruge and Dischler the name of a nurse, Charlie Wilbans, who had talked to Rose Cheramie.
Maxine Kemp, who also worked in personnel, confirmed that Oswald had applied for a job. She would show them the form. Kemp searched all personnel files, “active” and dormant. “It’s missing,” she told Fruge. She, too, remembered the black Cadillac, which had stopped at her father’s Texaco station outside Clinton.
Dischler and Fruge interviewed another employee, Aline Woodside, who also said she had seen Oswald’s application. Receptionist Bobbie Dedon identified Oswald from his photograph. She had seen no likeness of Oswald until Fruge showed her his. Independently, a “former Army intelligence officer” told Ned Touchstone that a man who looked like Oswald and used his name had applied for work at East. He had arrived in a big automobile “believed to belong to a wealthy New Orleans man.”
Sciambra did his own set of interviews. Reeves Morgan confirmed that Aline Woodside had said she saw an application with Oswald’s name on it. Henry Earl Palmer told Moo Moo that there were two white people on the “long line of colored people,” and identified Estes Morgan as the second man. Palmer gave his description of the two white males sitting in front of the black Cadillac as it waited for Oswald. He identified David Ferrie in a photograph from his “heavy eyebrows.” He thought the gray-haired man might have worn a hat. Palmer marked with an “X” the photographs of Ferrie and Shaw as “likely identifications.” There was no doubt in his mind when he saw Oswald’s picture: “That’s him!” he said. Henry Earl had, after all, run into Oswald twice.
Palmer was vague only when Moo Moo asked him the name of the doctor with whom Oswald said he was living. He now claimed he urged Oswald either to obtain a letter from someone who had lived in Jackson for six months, or to register in New Orleans. He had told Oswald he did not need to be a registered voter to get a job at the hospital—which was technically true. “That’s the last time I saw Oswald,” Palmer lied to Sciambra. Warren Price and Dr. Silva were too prominent to be drawn into this mess, and Palmer was now circumspect.
According to Henry Earl Palmer, Gloria Wilson, emerging from Cochran’s, had taunted him: “Your civil rights workers are riding better than you now. That boy in line with the niggers got in the black Cadillac and left with it.” Palmer was “sure” that Gloria and her boss Mrs. Cochran had “talked to the people in the car.”
Moo Moo tracked down CORE activist Verla Bell in Indiana. She had seen the black Cadillac, and a man in it with a big straw hat. She saw “Barney” (Manchester) talking to the men in the car, and Palmer talking to Manchester, and a man named Andrew Dunn sitting on a bench in front of Wright’s barbershop. Bell said she could not positively identify the men in the car.
John Manchester was now willing to sign an affidavit that the gray-haired man said he “was from the International Trade Mart.” He had not run a “1028,” but had examined “Clay Shaw’s” driver’s license.
Jim Garrison tried to locate the owner of the black Cadillac. Moo Moo learned that G. Wray Gill made his automobile available to David Ferrie “in the scope of his employment.” Shaw’s friend Jeff Biddison owned a similar automobile, which Shaw borrowed on occasion. Banister’s cohort A. Roswell Thompson also drove a black Cadillac. When John Volz scrutinized Shaw’s appointment books for the summer of 1963, nothing demonstrated that he could not have been in Clinton.
By now, Francis Fruge had a small snapshot of the black Cadillac that had been taken by a local resident. It pictured four figures, their faces indistinct. The “well-dressed” fourth man seen in the Cadillac by Henry Earl remained unidentified. Joseph Cooper, a Baton Rouge police officer working undercover for the FBI infiltrating the Klan, told Moo Moo that Guy Banister had attended events in Baton Rouge at the Jack Tar Capitol House Hotel in the company of local attorney Richard Van Buskirk. One such occasion was a speech given by right-wing General Edwin Walker in 1963, the same General Walker at whom Oswald purportedly took some shots. The other was a 1964 speech by Dr. Carl McIntire, whose assistant Edgar Eugene Bradley would figure in the Garrison case. Cooper said that Van Buskirk, McIntire, General Walker and Guy Banister all knew each other.
Cooper also confirmed that Billy Kemp had indeed been offered $25,000 to fly two passengers to South America on November 22, 1963. Kemp had refused.
Cooper was ready to testify before the Orleans Parish grand jury when he was seriously injured in an automobile accident. While he was in the hospital, members of the Louisiana State Police and representatives from the governor’s office both attempted to take possession of his files, which were in the custody of the Slidell police. Cooper was persuaded that Oswald was a naval intelligence agent. Cooper also told Sciambra that Banister had a file on Lee Harvey Oswald, which of course was true.
The possibility that Banister had been in Clinton led Moo Moo once more to Hen
ry Earl Palmer. It was not Guy Banister in the black Cadillac, Henry Earl insisted. He had run into Banister in 1944 when he was in the Army, stationed in Orlando. He would certainly have recognized Banister, he claimed.
Andrew Dunn, who had been sitting in front of the barbershop, as Verla Bell said, told Fruge and Dischler, and Moo Moo as well, that he had seen four men in the car. It was a Thursday. Dunn, unemployed and the town drunk, had time on his hands. Townspeople told Fruge and Dischler that Dunn’s memory was good despite his affliction. He was not an unstable man.
He saw a tall man with black hair, Dunn said. The driver was tall, well dressed and gray at the temples, with darkish hair. He wore a blue suit. All of the men got out of the car. From photographs, Dunn immediately identified Ferrie, Oswald and Shaw. He could not find a photograph in the group depicting the fourth man. He would know him if he saw him, Dunn insisted. Dunn had also seen Oswald with Estes Morgan. He knew Morgan well and had seen him go upstairs to the registrar’s office, but not anywhere near the car. He was definitely not the fourth man.
Anne Dischler’s notes reflect Dunn’s testimony: “There were four men in the car. There was a tall, well-dressed man driving the car. The other three men in the car were not as tall and not as well dressed. I have identified three pictures of the men in the car. He did not have a picture of the fourth man.” Three men had returned to the car, while the fourth got into the registration line. Dunn’s was the best interview Dischler and Fruge had conducted that July.
Four days later, Dunn confirmed that he was “absolutely sure” there were four people in the car. Moo Moo pulled out his set of photographs and now Dunn found the fourth man. It was Guy Banister. He was driving, Dunn said. Then he examined the photograph of Clay Shaw again and corrected himself. No, it was Shaw who was driving. Banister had been in the backseat. Gloria Wilson also told her best friend Veda Freeman that “four men were in the car.”
After Dunn had identified Banister for Sciambra, Dischler again studied the 3 x 5 photograph of the black Cadillac. It was Ferrie at the wheel, she decided, with Oswald beside him. In back, were Shaw and another older man, more bulky: two middle-aged, gray-haired men were seated side by side in the backseat. Dischler was persuaded that it was Guy Banister. Back in New Orleans, Garrison’s staff blew up the photograph, but the larger it became, the more distorted were the faces.
Fear of talking cut across race and class lines. “We’re working for Mr. Garrison’s office,” Dischler and Fruge would say. “We’re trying to find out what happened to our president.” Few found it in their interest to come forward. Black people had no sympathy for Shaw or Oswald, but they had heard of witnesses dying, and held back. The white people were cautious. Barber Wright would say only, “Possibly I did see the Cadillac.”
Lawyer William (“Billy”) Kline, whose office was right across the street from Palmer’s, told someone he had “talked to men in car.” It took a call from Jack Rogers before he would even meet Fruge and Dischler. “I didn’t see anything,” Kline would say ever after. “Try Richard Van Buskirk.” Van Buskirk was that Clinton town attorney who filed the motions against CORE seeking injunctions to thwart its voter registration drive, and he was close to the Klan. Van Buskirk, friend of General Walker, friend of Guy Banister, was the least likely person in East Feliciana Parish to help Dischler and Fruge. Kline was sending a not-so-veiled message. John Rarick speculates about Kline’s refusal to come forward: “Just don’t want to get involved. Fear of being regarded as controversial.”
By the end of August, the Sovereignty Commission, whose interests in forestalling integration did not mesh with Jim Garrison’s effort to uncover the murderers of John F. Kennedy, told Anne Dischler she was being terminated. The excuse was that her expenses were too high, even as these were paid by the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office. A seasoned politician, Garrison thanked Henry Sibley for “the cooperation of the Sovereignty Commission with regard to our case.” “Do not resign,” Moo Moo told Dischler. “Go back to work on Monday.” Garrison would intervene.
“Are you interested in witnesses who could identify Shaw as a homosexual?” Dischler asked Garrison when they met in New Orleans that August. He was not.
Fruge and Sciambra interviewed the mother of Layton Martens, now incarcerated at East. In September 1963, Marguerite Martens had claimed in a letter to a Father Toups that at their home she had overheard her son Layton, Ferrie, Banister and Shaw talking about killing Kennedy. Her son, she added, was just an innocent bystander. With Guy Banister’s assistance, Martens had her committed to the mental ward at Charity Hospital. Martens told a friend, Beverly Farley, that he had his mother committed because “she complained that the FBI was questioning her.” On November 30, 1966, just as Jim Garrison was beginning his investigation, Ferrie and Martens had her committed in Mandeville. Now she resided at the mental hospital at Jackson.
Marguerite Martens’ psychiatrist was present during her interview with Fruge and Sciambra. “Why didn’t you contact the authorities?” Fruge asked.
“Who’s going to believe a nut?” Mrs. Martens said.
In August, Fruge and Dischler continued to uncover evidence linking Gladys Palmer to Ruby and Oswald. Alba Claudine Ross, a telephone operator at East and “close to Gladys” until Gladys seduced Alba’s husband, Troy, might be a witness. Gladys had stayed at one point with Hilda Perpera, Ross said. Dischler confirmed not only that Gladys had returned from Texas in that steel blue Mercury, but that she had been in the company of a “blondish” man with blue eyes and fair skin, five foot eight or nine inches tall, a man who fit the description of the person at the Holiday Inn lounge who had signed his bar bill “Hidell.” In helping the decoy become “Oswald,” it appeared that Gladys herself, three months in advance, had foreknowledge of the assassination.
Gladys was known to have borrowed an old model Ford and driven to Jackson. If Lea McGehee did see Oswald emerge from old car near the Washateria, a car with a woman in it, that woman could well have been Gladys. McGehee remains certain Oswald departed in a black Cadillac. Both Fruge and Dischler saw Gladys as a key witness.
On August 22nd, Fruge and Sciambra found Gladys at her home on Evangeline Street. She had already been interviewed by Jack Rogers and Ned Touchstone, she said testily. She did not know anything “that would lend any assistance.” She had never seen or heard of Lee Harvey Oswald “in her life” before the assassination. She had never heard of Jack Ruby until he shot Oswald. She had never been in Dallas. As for that new light blue Mercury, she bought it herself and it was registered in her own name. It had since been repossessed. She could identify no photographs. Estes Morgan did look familiar, she said as she ushered Sciambra and Fruge out the door.
Yet witnesses continued to contradict Gladys Palmer. Cal Kelly’s daughter, Elizabeth Kelly Graham, told Sciambra she heard Oswald had been at the hospital seeking employment—in the company of Gladys Palmer. She had talked to people who had seen Oswald and Gladys together, although she was not ready to provide their names. Neither Graham nor Gladys Palmer was subpoenaed to appear before the Orleans Parish grand jury.
So far, Jim Garrison had only white witnesses to testify to the presence of Oswald, Ferrie and Shaw in Clinton, and he didn’t even have all that many of those. Jack Rogers’ investigator, Ronald Johnston, saw Shaw and Oswald together at the Clinton courthouse “looking for something”—information Rogers did not share with Jim Garrison.
Moo Moo Sciambra presided over a town meeting at Mount Hope Missionary Baptist Church on State Road 10. He showed slides to an audience of about sixty black people and four or five whites. Images of Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald flashed on a screen.
“Does anybody recognize any of these pictures?” Moo Moo said. Silence rang out. The meeting produced “no positive result,” Dischler wrote in her notebook. Sciambra told Jim Garrison that “we must win their confidence more in order for them to talk freely . . . they seem to be very suspicious of white people.”
T
he audience was in fact filled with people who could identify those slides. One woman recognized Ferrie at once. “It looked like he had on a false face,” she said later. “False eyelashes, reddish looking, like it was plastered on.” Experience cautioned silence. “We don’t know where our enemy is,” she said. A friend echoed her: “It’s too dangerous to fool with.” Community leader Charlotte Greenup also would not testify. “If you don’t have to die, you don’t want to die,” Greenup said.
On September 12th, Dischler and Fruge produced their final witness, Henry Burnell Clark, a twenty-nine-year-old clerk at the Stewart & Carroll General Merchandise Store. Shortly before noon, Clark said, he saw approaching him “a tall man in a dark business suit, who was wearing a shirt and tie.” He entered a black automobile, backed the car onto Main Street, and drove past the bank. Clark signed the photograph identifying Clay Shaw. “He reminded me of a movie actor I remembered seeing on the screen, and because he was unusually tall, standing well over six feet,” Clark said.
“Jeff Chandler?” Garrison wrote onto Clark’s statement. The other man had “unusual” hair, “bushy” hair. He had walked up to the pay telephone. Clark also identified the photograph of David Ferrie. The notary who signed Clark’s statement, and witnessed Clark’s signature on the Ferrie and Shaw photographs, was— William F. Kline Jr.
“One who might help you is Corrie Collins of Baton Rouge,” a CORE member named Christine Wright told Fruge and Dischler. “Corrie C. Collins—female. May be in E. Baton Rouge Ph [Parish],” Dischler wrote.
Tall and broad-faced, with quiet courage, Corrie Collins, a man, was the East Feliciana chairman of CORE. At eighteen, he had been drafted into the Army; at twenty-one, a Vietnam veteran, he had attempted to register in Clinton. Henry Earl Palmer failed Collins because he answered all six questions correctly. To pass, you needed only four right answers. “You didn’t follow instructions!” Palmer said nastily.