by Joan Mellen
On WVUE-TV, FBI media asset Sam Depino stated that Clyde Johnson needed psychiatric help.
Even after Gurvich was gone, files continued to disappear from Garrison’s office.
One day Boxley opened a letter from a “Duncan Miller.” “The same oil man who bought the Oswald guns,” Miller wrote, was “the subject of a collusive use of a post-office box in Dallas.” On the very day Oswald received his guns, a Denver oil man and gun collector, John J. King, had been implicated in a fraudulent land scheme for oil leases in Alaska. This same King had sued the government for the release of Oswald’s weapons on behalf of Marina, and lost. John J. King told Penn Jones of The Midlothian Mirror that he wanted to contribute to Jim Garrison’s investigation. Boxley brought him to Tulane and Broad where he sat twirling his Annapolis class ring.
When Jim Garrison attempted to show King assassination photographs and documents, he manifested no interest.
“What would it take to stop you from this thing you’re on?” King said. “Suppose you were offered a federal judgeship? Would you continue to be involved?” When Garrison asked what it would take for him to be appointed to the federal bench, King said, “Stop the investigation.”
“There’s nothing they could offer me,” Garrison said. The “propinquity” of King’s post office box to Oswald’s led Garrison to conclude that King, called “Miller” in On the Trail of the Assassins, was a government plant.
By appealing to the audience, satirist Mort Sahl had goaded Johnny Carson into inviting Jim Garrison to be a guest on “The Tonight Show.” In his relentless campaign to destroy Jim Garrison’s investigation, Bobby Kennedy telephoned Carson and requested that he not put Garrison on, but he was too late. Walter Sheridan and his sidekick, Frank Grimsley, had to fly to Los Angeles to brief Carson.
On the air, Garrison was reasonable and engaging. Carson, however, had metamorphosed from the affable imaginary golfer to a rigid prosecutor as he read from Sheridan-authored index cards. Hadn’t Garrison alternately blamed Cubans, Nazis, oil-rich millionaires and “high officials in the United States government” for the assassination? Carson demanded.
His knowledge had evolved, Garrison explained patiently. “There have been refinements.” He offered a conceit: An elephant has a tail, is gray, but also has four legs. Descriptions would change based on one’s perspective. On his main point, he had never wavered: “We have found that the Central Intelligence Agency, without any question, had individuals who were connected with it involved.” Did Garrison have “absolute facts and proof of that?” Carson sputtered.
“I wouldn’t say so otherwise,” Garrison said.
“It’s not going too well,” Garrison remarked to Carson during one of the breaks. “Would you like me to do a tap dance?” This was not an idle suggestion. Phyllis, his girlfriend, had taught him the soft shoe, which he performed ably with a cane.
“Not on my fucking show you won’t,” Carson said.
When Carson provided a list of Warren Report supporters from Dean Rusk and Robert S. McNamara to J. Edgar Hoover and Robert F. Kennedy, Garrison said, “What difference does it make, Johnny, how many honorable men are involved when the critical evidence is continually being concealed from the American people?”
Garrison challenged NBC to show the Zapruder film. Then concealed from the American public, this 8mm movie reveals how Kennedy’s skull was shattered by a shot from a gunman positioned at the front of the motorcade. Garrison told the audience that the Warren Commission files had been locked away until the year 2039, so that his eight-year-old son Jasper would be seventy years old before he could read “the CIA file on Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Afterward, Garrison and Carson exchanged harsh words, and Carson stalked out. So many people wrote to NBC complaining of Carson’s rudeness to Jim Garrison on the air that the station disseminated a form letter: “I can assure you that Mr. Garrison was not in the least discomfited by Mr. Carson’s questions, and he left the studio in an atmosphere of cordiality.” Garrison’s version was different. “I didn’t like Carson and he didn’t like me so there was virtually no colloquy,” he said. Later Garrison added, “Carson is no Noel Coward as far as conversation is concerned.”
Investigation funds dwindled. In Miami, Garrison met a financier and horse-racing aficionado named Louis Wolfson, whose horse, Affirmed, would win the Triple Crown in 1978. Wolfson shared his interest in the ponies with a local broadcaster named Larry King, to whom Wolfson periodically lent money, none of which was ever repaid. Eventually Wolfson swore out complaints against King. States Attorney Richard Gerstein liked both the ponies and King and refused to accept charges on King’s bad checks or Wolfson’s complaints.
In March 1968, Jim Garrison appeared on Larry King’s Miami television program where he blamed a “reactionary clique” at the CIA for the assassination. The network vice-president at once reported to Richard Helms that Garrison had attacked “the integrity of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Gerstein suggested to Larry King that he enlist Wolfson to make a contribution to Jim Garrison’s investigation. At the top floor of the Miami Beach Doral Hotel, Garrison met with Wolfson, King, Gerstein and Wolfson’s right-hand man, Arvin Rothschild. He talked. Wolfson grew dejected as he heard Garrison blame the CIA for the assassination.
“I hope you fall flat on your face,” Wolfson told Garrison. Wolfson hoped that Garrison was wrong, that an agency of the government had not murdered the president; but he believed as well that the American people had the right to know the truth.
When Wolfson asked how much was needed to complete his investigation, Garrison said $25,000. This sum Wolfson at once pledged, in $5,000 installments, to be conveyed by Gerstein. Wolfson decided to send Garrison the money through an intermediary because of his troubles over a Nixon-concocted securities violation. He did not want at that moment publicly to expose his support for Jim Garrison.
He was going to New Orleans, Larry King piped up. He would be happy to deliver the money.
Larry King never delivered any money to Tulane and Broad. Challenged, he insisted he had given all the money to Gerstein. When the second installment was sent to King, he claimed he gave Gerstein that money, too. Soon Wolfson discovered that Garrison had received only a portion of his contribution. Before it was over, King and Gerstein had stolen about half of the money.
Wolfson swore out a complaint against Larry King. “Larry King was the lowest person I’ve ever run into,” Wolfson says. This time King was arrested, charged with grand larceny and booked on December 17, 1971. Gerstein recused himself. The special prosecutor would be Alfonso Sepe, who had already investigated an assassination incident at the “Parrott Jungle,” where a Cuban spoke of his sharp-shooter friend “Lee,” who could speak Russian. Sepe, who himself would later serve jail time, ruled that King should go free since the statute of limitations had run out.
Later Gerstein claimed that the missing money had been residing all along in his office safe. He had been so “forgetful” that he had never gotten around to giving Garrison the money. At a press conference Gerstein made a show of producing notes he had made of the original serial numbers on the Wolfson money. Then he opened the safe and declared that the money inside bore the same serial numbers.
Martin F. Dardis, Gerstein’s own chief investigator, who himself had arrested King twice, once for bad checks, laughed. Dardis noticed that the bills Gerstein was holding up were printed after the incident occurred and could not possibly have been Wolfson’s money earmarked for Jim Garrison. Having Larry King deliver money to Garrison, Dardis says, was like “having the fox guard the hen house.” No money had been put in any safe. Wolfson never spoke to Gerstein again; King never apologized to Wolfson.
Gerstein now had to be certain that Garrison would not reveal the truth to ace Miami Herald reporter James Savage. When Savage called Tulane and Broad, Garrison, ever loyal, telephoned Gerstein. Talk only to Gene Miller, Gerstein said, referring to a friendlier reporter.
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nbsp; When Miller called, Garrison lied to protect Gerstein. He had “accidentally misled Wolfson in February 1970 by failing to report that Gerstein had been trying to give him $5,000 he was holding,” Garrison said. It was an “oversight,” due to his own “absentmindedness.” He had promised to go to Miami, and then never went. Gerstein had even called and said, “I have another $5,000,” only for Garrison to be hospitalized with a slipped disk. Garrison’s creative chronology reveals how conscientiously he sought to protect Gerstein: he was at Hotel Dieu Hospital in December 1969; Wolfson dispensed the money in 1968.
In his memoir, Larry King by Larry King, King refers to the incident, claiming the amount of money he stole was $5,000, which in fact was not the actual amount, but the figure decided on by the court for prosecution purposes. “Garrison was something of an eccentric who would disappear for weeks at a time and not let anyone know where he was, so Dick hung on to the money,” King writes.
Indifferent to money, Garrison never noticed that only $9,500 of Wolfson’s $25,000 ever reached him.
“There’s been a delay in sending the rest of the money,” Garrison was told one day in 1970 when the jig was up for Gerstein and King.
“What money?” Jim Garrison said.
A steady steam of people bent on sidetracking Garrison’s investigation beat an unholy path to Tulane and Broad. An intellectual, more interested in ideas than practicalities, Garrison was a gullible man. “I regret to say, I trust everyone and am easily fooled,” he would acknowledge. That soldier of fortune who had scorned John F. Kennedy’s offer that he take over the CIA’s Radio Swan, arrived unannounced on July 7, 1967. Gerald Patrick Hemming wore green camouflage fatigues and jungle boots with treads, as if he had just interrupted guerrilla maneuvers.
From serving as a CIA courier, like Beckham, like Donald P. Norton, Hemming in Cuba had participated in those assassination squads of Batista functionaries. CIA media asset William Stuckey had written in the New Orleans States-Item that Hemming could handle “two heavy machine guns from the hip at the same time.” The CIA liked that Hemming “appears to be little influenced by deep beliefs in democratic principles.”
On orders from Robert Kennedy to pursue the untimely death of Fidel Castro exclusive of the efforts of the CIA’s clandestine services, General Edward Lansdale had solicited the help of Gerald Patrick Hemming. Lansdale had requested of the CIA its Hemming file, only to be told CIA had “a dosier [sic] about an inch thick.” CIA had offered its sanction: “As far as they are concerned he is OK,” a Colonel Patchell writes Lansdale in a handwritten memo. “They consider him helpful to their cause.” Hemming believed that it was “one or more of Bobby’s boys gone bad” who had killed his brother, as Bobby shared operatives with CIA executioner William Harvey, tool of the DDP, Richard Helms. If Jim Garrison was perplexed by Bobby’s efforts to “torpedo” his investigation, Hemming understood them well.
Hemming had heard Garrison had been looking at “his men.” “We’re going to be indicted by Jim Garrison for the JFK thing,” Hemming told his cohort, Roy Hargraves. Hargraves would later admit he was in Dallas on November 22nd, armed with fake Secret Service credentials. His later FBI COINTELPRO service would include the planting of bombs against the Black Panthers. Lawrence Howard, “fat Larry,” another Hemming No Name Key associate, had also been in Dallas on that day. Hemming had good reason to fear that Garrison might consider as suspects the men training with him for sabotage against Cuba. An anonymous letter mailed from Miami stated that the “person that shot at President Kennedy was Hector Aguero (Indio Mikoyan), who was prepared in Miami by two Americans to kill Fidel Castro, those Americans are named Chery and Davis.”
Examining that note, William Martin had told Garrison that “Chery” was the way a Latin-American would pronounce “Jerry". “Davis” must be the Howard Davis who flew with Hemming over Covington in search of training camp sites. El Indio (“Mikoyan”) would be exposed by Gaeton Fonzi as David Sanchez Morales, a CIA officer involved in the overthrow of President Arbenz in Guatemala.
“Investigate in Miami,” the writer advises Garrison.
On June 28th, one Wiley Yates had written to Garrison suggesting that Loran Hall, another Hemming cohort, should be a suspect. Yates’ source was a Dallas businessman named Wally Welch, who had been together with Hemming and Hall in Cuba. Concluding that Hemming had been involved in “assassination training,” Garrison had been showing witnesses those photographs of Hall, Howard and William Seymour, whom he had nicknamed “Winkin’, Blinkin’ and Nod.”
Accompanying Hemming now was Roy Hargraves. Hemming made him wait downstairs. The CIA, aware of the presence of Hemming at Tulane and Broad, watched.
He was writing an article for Life magazine, Hemming told Garrison. (Richard Billings smiles and denies that this was so.) “You’re heading back to No Name Key and you’re leading back to me,” Hemming said. “Either I’m stupid or someone is trying to frame my ass, and you’re taking the bait.” Hemming’s alibi is that he was in Miami on November 22nd, at the office of the Miami News. There, he ran into CIA media asset Hal Hendrix, who was about to write a story linking him to Oswald until Angleton’s people stopped him, Hemming claims.
Hemming fears that he is being recorded. He fears that his foreknowledge of the Kennedy assassination is tantamount to treason. He worries that Garrison’s attention will cause him to lose a possible appointment to the CIA’s Agency for International Development (AID) in Vietnam. His strategy, like Boxley’s, is to divert Garrison’s attention away from the CIA.
“There were numerous teams of adventurers with paramilitary inclinations trying to get Kennedy,” Hemming says. There were two hundred conspiracies. “Maybe Oswald got there ahead of them.” He is gifted at double-talk, as he extrapolates about teams blackmailing their sponsors, pretending to have killed Kennedy and demanding money for their silence. Then the sponsors hired the Mafia to silence them. Later Hemming will claim that Guy Banister was one of these sponsors, offering Hemming a suitcase full of cash to shoot Kennedy. Howard K. Davis, present on that occasion, suggests that Hemming could not have resisted telling him about such an offer had it been made.
“Just to have this queer pilot isn’t enough,” Hemming says, as if the dead David Ferrie and not Clay Shaw was now Garrison’s chief suspect. “You need to begin all over again.” Hemming floats a laundry list of suspects: Dennis Harber; a Minuteman from California named “Colonel Gale”; a Jim Keith; an Edward Claude, a former intelligence officer for the Dade County sheriff; G. Clinton Wheat, an ex-Klansman; oil man H. L. Hunt.
He is willing to give up Loran Hall, who, Hemming confides, was in Dallas and could “very well have assassinated the president.” Hall was fooling around with Communists, Hemming suggests, an unlikely scenario that Garrison saw through at once. Hall had gotten Sylvia Odio’s name from a Ford motor salesman named Nico Crespi. Howard and Seymour, however, Hemming claims, had nothing to do with the assassination. Hemming does not tell Garrison, as he later will tell others, that it was “his people” who were with Oswald when he visited Sylvia Odio and who were “working Oswald on the assassination of Castro operation.”
“I don’t know who you work for,” Lou Ivon tells Hemming. Ivon is not easy to fool, the reason why of all the people Hemming meets this day, it is Ivon he respects. “There were more snitches in there than cops,” Hemming would remember.
“If you knew to a T, it wouldn’t do any good,” Hemming tells Garrison harshly. “You can’t cause me any trouble.” Only when Garrison appears not to know the name “Angleton” does Hemming breathe a secret sigh of relief. He offers to “join forces” with Garrison, and asks to read Garrison’s files, so that for a month Hemming believes he is actually working for Jim Garrison. He telephones Tom Bethell that he has been unable to find “Nico Crespi,” and is irritated that Garrison has not sent him the twenty-six Warren Commission volumes. His phone bill is high, Hemming complains, attempting to pull a Bernardo de Torres. No one at Tulane and
Broad falls for it.
Upon departing from New Orleans, Hemming telephoned Angleton’s office. “Do you think Garrison has heard of U.S. Customs?” Angleton asked, well knowing the role of Customs in Oswald’s activities. “Would he go after them?” Hemming says that Garrison had not placed Customs in the case. Yet, Hemming knew, “that’s where all the family jewels were.” Other information Hemming withheld from Jim Garrison was how Angleton, hating Kennedy, termed him a “KGB mole running the country,” and how Allen Dulles, no longer DCI, had ordered the FBI to have Hall recant on the Sylvia Odio story, and say he was not, after all, at Sylvia Odio’s.
Hemming knew that Bernardo de Torres was working for the CIA during the Garrison investigation. He knew that not only Clay Shaw, but also Oswald had “Q” clearance from the CIA. He calls Lawrence Howard “one of the best shots in the world,” and places him at Dealey Plaza as a shooter. At times he lies, as when he told a Garrison volunteer that he knew Thomas Edward Beckham, who was “five foot eleven inches tall,” off by four inches. He lies convincingly, with so much passion, that it seems inconceivable that he doesn’t believe what he is saying. Digression is his tactic, doubt a stranger.
“There is reason to believe he is still working for the CIA,” Garrison remarked when Hemming was gone. He drew this conclusion without knowing that only four months earlier, Hemming had turned up at CIA officer Justin P. Gleichauf’s house to report on Rolando Masferrer’s projected Haitian invasion. CIA concluded that Hemming was targeting his own assets. Hemming “was an informer for the CIA,” while claiming to be with Naval Intelligence. When Hemming had applied for regular employment with the Agency in January 1962, he had been turned down, even as Lawrence Houston pondered more than forty reports to his CIA handler filed by Hemming in the fall of 1960 upon his return from Cuba.
Hemming did not get the job with AID. His visit to Jim Garrison’s office led to CIA’s checking again on Hemming and his Interpen (Intercontinental Penetration Forces), Hemming’s group of soldiers of fortune training at No Name Key in Florida for sabotage against Cuba. CIA was troubled that Hemming’s visit might lead Garrison to focus on Robert K. Brown and on the JMWAVE station’s activities. The Agency had to admit to the FBI that Hemming was a source. Soon the ONI was inquiring of Hoover what information he had on Hemming. Then the Defense Investigative Program Office asked Naval Intelligence for its Hemming files.