A Farewell to Justice

by Joan Mellen

  Ten days later, the waiting time required by law, Collins returned and registered to vote. By now, he had joined CORE. When the town of Clinton issued an injunction against demonstrations, arguing that “Communist-front” operators had infiltrated CORE, Collins went to court to have the injunction lifted. Lined up against him were Van Buskirk, Kilbourne, “Billy” Kline, and a lawyer named William E. Woodward.

  It seemed that every week Collins found himself in Judge Rarick’s court. Rarick admits today that the only violence resulting from the CORE voter registration drive came when the rapscallion son of deputy sheriff Hardy Travis threw a brick and broke the window of a black Baptist church. At the time, Rarick more than once jailed CORE leaders, and Collins in particular, for “criminal conspiracy.” Once he ordered a deputy sheriff to force “a Negro wearing a CORE T-shirt” in court to put on a coat.

  Corrie Collins could not be intimidated. A fellow CORE worker later explained that Collins would go down before he would give in “unless the lives of his family were threatened.” His mother had died when he was three years old. This brought him a certain stoicism. The worst had already happened, he says. Now he had nothing to fear. When a CORE worker, arrested for demonstrating, was dragged from jail by a lynch mob, Collins sent a message that the man be brought back to jail. “By the time I get there, he better be back in jail,” Collins said. He was.

  If Collins discovered that a Klan meeting was in the works— the Klan met regularly at a TV repair shop—if he saw the cars lined up outside, he walked in, just to let the Klan members know he knew they were there. The Klan burned crosses in the yards of CORE members like James Bell, who would not testify for Jim Garrison. They stayed away from the Collins house. “They knew better,” Collins says. It was Collins who had nicknamed Manchester “Barney.”

  His enemies were formidable. Collins was fired from his job at the Villa Feliciana Geriatric Hospital because he missed work when he was jailed for participating in the voter education project. The days of work he missed did not equal the leave days he had kept in reserve. Still, he was fired. Protesting before the Louisiana Civil Service Commission, he was reinstated. It was just another day in East Feliciana Parish.

  Two weeks after Collins was standing Collins registered, Oswald had appeared. beside Verla Bell outside Palmer’s office dressed in blue overalls, the signature outfit of the civil rights worker, when the black Cadillac rolled up with four men in it. When, later, Collins said there were three, he was referring to the time after the fourth white man had gotten in line to register to vote. It was between nine and ten in the morning.

  “It may be an FBI car,” Collins said. The driver was a tall man with white hair. A shorter man was sloppy, with bushy eyebrows. One of the men in the back wore white pants, definitely not hospital whites, but casual pants. The white pants recall Vernon Bundy’s testimony that Oswald had been in “white jeans” at the lakefront. The fourth man was the same age as Oswald, Collins says, out speculation that this was not Oswald, but a male nurse in his late forties named Winslow Foster. Foster would not have been registering in East Feliciana Parish, where he did not reside.

  Collins decided the men had been sent to disrupt the registration drive. The two young men got out of the car and joined the line to register. Later in the day, Collins strolled upstairs to the Registrar’s office. In the hallway he observed Lee Harvey Oswald deep in conversation with a man Collins identified easily from his wig, David Ferrie. Nor did Collins have trouble identifying Clay Shaw, who had gotten out of the car and was walking around.

  On his second try, Francis Fruge found Corrie Collins at his home in Baton Rouge.

  “Why me?” Collins said.

  “They told me, anything that happened in Clinton during that time, you would know,” Fruge said.

  Collins examined the photograph of the black Cadillac, but the faces weren’t clear. He easily identified photographs of Shaw, Ferrie and Oswald. When Moo Moo came to interview him, Collins told him how he had seen Ferrie and Oswald upstairs. Sciambra did not write this down, creating yet another potential Russo-memo problem.

  Late in January, Moo Moo returned with Jimmy Alcock. If he wore blue overalls, it had to be a Wednesday or a Thursday, his days off, Corrie Collins said. He had heard Manchester joke that the Federal people looked like they were trading with the enemy, a line Verla Bell also remembered. “Scrubbs” Dunn had been sitting on a bench and had identified Oswald later as getting out of the car.

  The driver had on a light hat, Collins said, echoing Henry Earl Palmer and Verla Bell. Years later, he had forgotten the hat, but his testimony remains unimpeached. On January 31, 1968, Corrie Collins signed the back of the photographs of Oswald, Shaw and Ferrie. A measure of how strained Garrison’s office had become is that on the back of the Shaw photograph, someone wrote: “Chg: conspiracy to commit murder of Pres. Johnson.” Corrie Collins would prove to be among Jim Garrison’s staunchest Clinton witnesses.

  Fruge and Dischler persisted until the end of September 1967. Both Bobbie Dedon and her husband, Joe, repeated that they had seen Oswald in Jackson with Gladys Palmer. “Oswald may have been at the Audubon Bar with Gladys,” Joe said. Dischler passed a note to Fruge: “Recorder is on floor.” D. J. (“Cotton”) Blanchard reiterated that he had seen Gladys in Opelousas in a Cadillac, as the tape recorder whirred, undetected. “Too many men,” Emily Bailey, who had worked at the Audubon, said of Gladys. Mrs. Cochran said she saw Gladys getting into the black Cadillac. Dischler and Fruge corroborated that the registration, revealing that the Mercury was owned by Jack Ruby, had been rechecked by Sheriff Archie Doughty and his deputy, Alvin Doucet.

  On October 9th, Anne Dischler wrote the last page in her third notebook. The Winslow Foster lead had gone nowhere. “We don’t want to stop,” Dischler pleaded with Moo Moo. She and Fruge had not yet even interviewed Dr. Frank Silva. Her list included tracking down “old churches,” at Garrison’s suggestion, and talking to Dr. Silva, Gladys Palmer and Cal Kelly again. Did Ned Touchstone have any photographs they needed? she writes. Fruge had his own list of tasks as yet unaccomplished:

  1. Shaw’s credit cards for Aug–Oct. 1963.

  2. Any civil rights organizations in Trade Mart?

  3. Dunn affidavit: is it complete?

  4. Have we spoken to Estes Morgan’s relatives?

  5. Justice dept (FBI) who were around during registration may well have spoken to Oswald.

  6. Should we check with Doris Shaw Yarbough?

  7. Old dark beat up car at Barber Shop (may well be same as one sold by Oswald at Junk Yard).

  8. Have we talked to Morgan’s daughter?

  9. Person Morain [sic] heard of at hospital who said Pres. to be shot was probably the Ruby stripper. . . .

  “Mr. Garrison said stop,” Moo Moo repeated. The state police had now formally removed Fruge from the investigation with the excuse that “we’re short of people.” A state legislator had called for the return of the expenses paid to “a state police detective and a woman state employee who worked together on a mysterious investigation.”

  Working alone, Sciambra was inundated with disinformation. A hospital attendant named Pete Reech identified a photograph of Sergio Arcacha Smith and insisted that Frank Silva had introduced them, although he knew Dr. Silva only as someone to whom he delivered the newspaper. Once, Dr. Silva had invited Reech in for scrambled eggs. Dr. Silva states that he never met Sergio Arcacha Smith. Henry Earl Palmer reported Manchester’s false contention that a boy who fit Oswald’s description had emerged from a CORE meeting, and that Manchester followed him in the direction of Jackson. Corrie Collins is adamant that no such white person at that time attended a CORE meeting.

  Some witnesses retracted their testimony. Cal Kelly denied he was sitting on that bench with Andrew Dunn. Dunn again identified Guy Banister, but now placed Jack Ruby as the driver of the black Cadillac. Later Dunn admitted he changed his testimony because he thought “Dischler and Fruge were FBI agents.” The on
ly new witness was CORE activist William Dunn.

  Still, by June 1968, thirteen East Feliciana Parish witnesses had agreed to testify at the trial of Clay Shaw.

  Jim Garrison would continue to pursue East Feliciana leads even after the Shaw trial. Sciambra found Ed Dwyer, willing to discuss his neighbor Lloyd Cobb’s Marydale Farms. “Clay Shaw visited that farm,” Dwyer said, “for sure.” He believed Shaw supplied funds to the Klan in the area, and that Edward Grady Partin’s man, with the surname Sylvester, might know whom Shaw knew in Clinton and St. Francisville. At the end of April 1969, Moo Moo found Jerry Sylvester, who turned out to be a good friend of John Manchester. Sylvester agreed to help, only two months later to die in a small plane that crashed on take-off.

  In the late 1970s, Garrison turned over to the HSCA some of these leads, including the statement of Corinne Villard. He noted that Patterson, where Villard had seen Oswald and the “foreign lady,” was on the same route David Ferrie had taken on his trip to Houston and Galveston on the weekend of the assassination. The HSCA chose not to follow up.

  The FBI would forever deny that they had received a telephone call from Reeves Morgan, informing them that Oswald had been in Clinton and Jackson. On January 22, 1968, Moo Moo wrote to Elmer B. Litchfield, the FBI’s resident agent in charge at Baton Rouge. He had learned that Mr. Reeves Morgan “called your office to inform you of Oswald’s presence in the area,” Sciambra wrote. He would like to meet with Litchfield. Given official FBI policy, Litchfield couldn’t have met with Sciambra even if he wanted to.

  Alerted, J. Edgar Hoover sent a message to all Louisiana agents: they were not to acknowledge Sciambra’s letter “because we are not becoming involved in any way in Garrison’s investigation.” Division 5’s William Branigan ordered that agent Joseph Sylvester have Sciambra’s letter hand-delivered to the U.S. attorney, who had to be alerted in the event that Litchfield was subpoenaed. Litchfield composed a formal denial that the FBI in Baton Rouge had received Morgan’s call and sent it to Robert E. Rightmyer, the SAC in New Orleans. He “did not receive any telephone calls from Mr. Reeves Morgan, or from anyone else that Oswald was there,” Litchfield wrote. Two of his underlings, Earl R. Petersen and Michael Baron, wrote identical denials.

  Hoover now ordered Ramsey Clark to state that a review of his files “fails to reveal any contact with Mr. Reeves Morgan in connection with the assassination investigation.” Hoover added, malignantly, that Morgan’s name did appear in his files; Morgan had fired a Negro trucker “because the Negro had participated in voter registration activities.”

  Moo Moo and Jimmy Alcock drove up to the Baton Rouge FBI office and asked to speak to Litchfield. They were told he was not available, and, no, they could not wait. Litchfield at once informed Rightmyer, who reassured Hoover that no “effort would be made to contact Sciambra and Alcock.” Litchfield comments today, “Everything went through the Seat of Government.”

  On February 1, 1968, a nervous William Branigan again telephoned Joseph Sylvester at the New Orleans field office. Should Litchfield be contacted at home or away from the office by Alcock or Sciambra, he should be “brief,” offer “no comment,” and declare that “any information he might have acquired as a Special Agent of the FBI cannot be divulged.” Assistant U.S. Attorney Gene S. Palmisano on February 14th wrote Sciambra that Reeves Morgan’s only contact with the FBI was “on a totally unrelated matter,” while “the FBI has no record of any such contact by Mr. Morgan.” The term “no record” calls to mind the FBI’s “do-not-file file.”

  Five days later, Moo Moo wrote to Hoover: “Our office has information indicating that Lee Harvey Oswald was in the Jackson and Clinton, Louisiana area some time in the late summer of 1963. Would you please send any information you have relative to Oswald’s presence in the area at that time?” He hoped to force Hoover into an outright lie. “If you have no information relative to Oswald’s presence . . . we would also appreciate a reply from you, indicating this.” Hoover replied—with silence. Sciambra then repeated the request to Palmisano. He may not have been clear. “Irrespective of Mr. Reeves’ telephone contact with the Bureau’s Baton Rouge office,” he asks, did the FBI have any information?

  On April 18th, Branigan again telephoned Rightmyer, requesting that the New Orleans field office review its files to see if they had any information about Oswald “being in the Jackson-Clinton area during the summer or ‘late’ fall of 1963.” It was so urgent that Rightmyer was to reply the same day. Rightmyer dutifully reported that the review “failed to uncover any information that Oswald was in the Jackson and Clinton areas.” Now Hoover told the U.S. attorney’s office that they should “refer Mr. Sciambra to the material published by the Warren Commission in its Report and the twenty-six volumes of testimony and exhibits.” This Hoover memo was distributed to all assistant U.S. attorneys, to Division 5, and to Hoover’s own special team, starting with Clyde Tolson and Deke.

  Research has revealed that the FBI, from Hoover on down, was lying. The Bureau was fully aware of Oswald’s presence in Clinton and at the East Louisiana State Hospital at Jackson. On November 26th or 27th—the witness, Merryl Hudson, is not certain which— the Tuesday or Wednesday after the assassination, an FBI agent appeared at East. He headed for the office of the personnel director, Guy Broyles. Had Oswald appeared at the hospital? he asked disingenuously, producing a small, glossy 3 x 5 photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald.

  He showed this photograph to Broyles and to his secretary, Hudson. Had they ever seen this man?

  “He is supposed to have turned in an application,” the agent said. Hudson at once denied seeing Oswald or the application, but Maxine Kemp has “some thoughts” about Oswald’s missing application: “I believe the personnel officer, Guy Broyles, had his secretary take it out of there.”

  Forty years later, just as Merryl Hudson reveals that the FBI knew perfectly well about Oswald’s visit to East Feliciana Parish and the hospital, so Elmer Litchfield admits that the FBI knew that Oswald had been in Clinton and Jackson that summer of 1963. Litchfield remembers driving with a fellow agent by the Clinton courthouse shortly after the assassination.

  “That must be where that guy thought he saw Oswald,” his subordinate remarked to Litchfield.

  Evidence reveals, too, that the FBI followed the “Oswald” of the Lafayette Holiday Inn fracas. Right after the assassination, the resident FBI agent out of Lafayette had gone to the Holiday Inn lounge and seized as “evidence” both Oswald’s knife and that bar slip signed “Hidell.” Lou Ivon says that too few resources and too little time made it impossible for the Garrison office to follow up properly on the Holiday Inn incident.

  (Research reveals as well that the FBI also destroyed other Kennedy assassination records. During the 1970s House Select Committee investigation, Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey requested of the Bureau that his personal notes made from “certain FBI files” be retained at FBI headquarters yet not be considered “agency records” and so subject to Freedom of Information Act requests from historians. Rather, they were to be “congressional documents,” safeguarded by the FBI, which would exercise no control over them. That prerogative would remain with Blakey himself.

  The FBI counsel would have granted this request, but the assistant director of the Records Management Division, showing scant respect for Blakey, overrode his decision. “Not necessary to correspond with Blakey,” he wrote onto the recommendation. “Notes were taken from informant files and will be destroyed after HSCA completes inv.” (Emphasis added.)

  When leaks brought the Clinton evidence their way, the Shaw defense team borrowed from tactics honed by Walter Sheridan. Believing it would be easy to intimidate the “country folk,” they dispatched Hugh Aynsworth and James Phelan up to Clinton either to bribe or to frighten the Clinton and Jackson witnesses from testifying that they had seen Shaw and Oswald together. Many of the people were already terrified.

  Aynesworth chose to focus on John Manchester because he was the most potentially
damaging witness. Manchester was a law enforcement officer, and it was to him that the driver of that black Cadillac had shown a driver’s license in the name of “Clay Shaw.” It was to Manchester that the driver had admitted that he worked for the International Trade Mart. Aynesworth produced a copy of Manchester’s statement stolen from the locked filing cabinet in Lou Ivon’s office.

  “You could have a job as a CIA handler in Mexico for $38,000 dollars a year,” Aynesworth said. All Manchester had to do was leave the state of Louisiana and not return to testify at the trial of Clay Shaw.

  It turned out that Manchester was not “Barney” after all. Manchester was livid.

  “I advise you to leave the area,” Manchester told Aynesworth. “Otherwise, I’ll cut you a new asshole!”

  When Manchester reported the incident to Jim Garrison, Aynesworth denied that it had happened. Manchester submitted to both a polygraph and an interview under sodium pentothal. He had been telling the truth. Garrison then subpoenaed Aynesworth before the Orleans Parish grand jury. “It has been determined that the CIA is his true employer,” Garrison concluded about Aynesworth. The charge reads: “Hugh Aynesworth tried in February of 1968 to bribe a Louisiana police officer, Clinton City Marshal John Manchester, to keep Mr. Manchester from testifying about the covert activities of Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and Clay Shaw at a civil rights function there in 1963.” Even when he was offered immunity, Aynesworth would not appear to answer the charges.

  In March 1968, Clay Shaw decided to commission a book about the case, to be written from his point of view. It would attack Jim Garrison as a homophobe and assert that he was being victimized because he was homosexual. Shaw called a friend named Stuart Timmons, who declined. He called his friend James Leo Herlihy, author of Midnight Cowboy, who also turned him down. But Herlihy recommended James Kirkwood, later to coauthor A Chorus Line. Kirkwood would pretend to be “objective.” Kirkwood’s editor at Simon & Schuster, Richard Kluger, says he would never have signed up American Grotesque had he known of Kirkwood’s special relationship with Clay Shaw.