by Joan Mellen
Myrtle and Tony LaSavia were both “positive” they had seen Thornley walking past their house at 919 Upperline with Marina on the way to the Winn-Dixie supermarket on Prytania Street. Tony LaSavia was certain: It was not Oswald, but “another man,” accompanying Marina to the market. When he saw Thornley on television, as well as in the newspaper, he immediately recognized him “as being the person who used to walk with Marina to the Winn-Dixie food store.”
Mrs. Doris Dowell, assistant manager of Shilington House where Thornley was the doorman, said Thornley had told her he “met Oswald again in New Orleans at a place in the French Quarter.” And Allen Campbell says now that Oswald and Thornley were in constant contact.
Was it Thornley at the Levee Board ranting about fascism? Garrison wondered. Both were intelligence agents, he believed.
For the HSCA, Thornley concocted yet another affidavit. Clint Bolton, a Vieux Carre Courier columnist, Thornley writes, knew Shaw and Banister; Banister had ordered Bolton to coach him in “rewritting” [sic] his book about Oswald. Bolton had “fed” him the view that Oswald was a Marxist; Bolton had told him Oswald was a government agent who was slated to kill Castro, but “somehow flipped out and killed Kennedy instead.” Thornley had, nonetheless, dedicated his 1965 book Oswald to Clint Bolton.
In New Orleans, Thornley had known only “the second Oswald or Leon Oswald.” Admitting he had discussed his book with Guy Banister, Thornley insisted that meant that the CIA “knew I was writing a book on Lee Oswald.” David Chandler, he added, “knew more about the assassination than he was telling.”
Reading this fifty-page affidavit, Gaeton Fonzi concluded that Thornley was making “a rather strained effort to portray an instability of character,” mimicking his false picture of Oswald and hoping to avoid further scrutiny of his own role. A “confidential” Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department interview with a friend of Thornley’s father on November 26, 1963, reveals that Oswald and Thornley had been corresponding regularly. Kerry, his father Ken had revealed, had “numerous letters from Oswald, some of which are of recent date.”
From the Department of Defense files comes a document placing Thornley as a CIA employee who attended Chemical and Biological Warfare School. Receiving “technical instruction” in Washington, D.C., Thornley moved up from “confidential” to “secret” clearance. His course in “Atomic, Biological and Chemical Warfare” ran from June to August 1960, and had begun at Atsugi, Japan.
On December 29th, Garrison had subpoenaed Loran Hall, Lawrence Howard and Thomas Edward Beckham. Los Angeles Police intelligence forwarded Hall’s files to New Orleans. But Howard was too well protected. They had nothing on Howard, they said. The subpoena to Howard cited him for association with David Ferrie in 1963 in New Orleans. These witnesses were relevant, Garrison told the press, unlike the “preposterous irrelevancies” called by the Warren Commission: “Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rudy Vallee and Xavier Cugat.”
CIA at once announced it had “no connection” with Howard. Hall was a domestic contact, but only in 1959, cross-referenced with Hemming. When a reporter asked Howard whether his training of guerrilla forces “had any connection with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency,” Howard did not bother to deny it. “No comment,” Howard said.
To Art Kevin, Howard denied he had ever met Ferrie, Ruby, Oswald, or Shaw. “He can prove he was working in Los Angeles at the time of the assassination,” Kevin wrote to Garrison, which was not so. For Garrison volunteer Steven Burton, Howard produced falsified “employment records.” When Burton showed him a photograph of Oswald, Howard exclaimed “That’s Leon Oswald!” as if he were confirming that he had visited Sylvia Odio.
Having been relieved by friendly California courts of Garrison’s subpoenas, Howard and Hall went to New Orleans voluntarily, in exchange for immunity. They would talk, not at the grand jury, but in Jim Garrison’s office. Howard demanded that Garrison make his cooperation “public.” Then he began to lie: He insisted he was unable to identify his companion Loran Hall from photographs. He looked at beautiful Sylvia Odio’s picture and said, “I’ve never seen her, but I’d like to.” He gave himself away in referring to Odio as someone Gerry Patrick “had gone out with,” reflecting a story Hemming still spins of a liaison with Odio in Cuba.
“Do you think he could be CIA?” Garrison asked Howard about Hemming. “There’s no question he could have told us a lot more than he did.”
Howard kept a straight face. Asked if any of the Cubans “have any connection with the Central Intelligence Agency,” Howard evaded the question. Garrison knew that when in October 1963 Oswald was registered at the Dallas YMCA, Howard was there too. Now Howard insisted someone else had signed his name to the register.
Then Howard began to insert false names into the discussion: Nico Crespi (“he’s a Cuban”); Clint Wheat, an ex-Klan member who held meetings at his house where they discussed the assassination, and who disappeared after Garrison attempted to have him subpoenaed; William Gale. Howard opened his address book and gave Garrison the useless number of Colonel William Gale. When Garrison mentioned Thomas Edward Beckham, the man who had delivered maps and diagrams to Howard in Dallas the week of the assassination, Howard remained calm.
“I’ve heard the name Tom Beckham,” Howard said coolly. “I know you subpoenaed him.”
“That’s the only way you know him?” Garrison said.
“Yeah,” Howard said. He added that Hemming “could have been” CIA because “he had the connections,” as he revealed his knowledge that Gerald Patrick Hemming had two uncles, Robert and Art Simpson, who had been shipbuilding partners with John McCone during World War II and who stayed close to the intelligence community so that as a young man, Hemming claims, he was introduced to Frank Wisner and James Angleton.
Howard revealed one startling truth. Jerry Cohen of the Los Angeles Times and Lawrence Schiller had promised him representation from Clay Shaw’s lawyer. He didn’t have to talk to Garrison at all. Disarmed, Garrison told Howard, “It’s perfectly obvious that you’re completely honest.” In a press release of February 28th, Garrison called Howard “extremely cooperative,” his appearance “very helpful.”
Off balance, he was exonerating a man involved in the implementation of the murder of the president. Lawrence Howard “was not personally connected in any way with the assassination of President Kennedy,” Garrison said. Lou Ivon thought otherwise: Howard should have been followed up more thoroughly, Ivon says. A year before the Shaw trial, Garrison’s staff was exhausted, and Howard slipped through their fingers.
Cohen and Schiller also attempted to prevent Loran Hall from going to New Orleans. Garrison would hold him in “contempt of court” and put him in jail for five years, Schiller told Hall. Billings’ Life colleague Mike Acoca also worked on Loran Hall. Garrison is out to hang you, Acoca told Hall.
To Harold Weisberg, echoing Hemming, Hall insisted that Jim Garrison “will never solve the thing . . . somebody a lot higher than you or I masterminded the whole thing . . . there is people up in Washington, DC.” Approximately two weeks after the assassination, Harry Dean of the Chicago Fair Play for Cuba Committee met with an FBI agent named Rapp, of the Pomona, California, office, who told him not to talk to anyone else. Dean told Rapp that he had heard Loran Hall state that a Communist would be framed for the murder of President Kennedy.
Hall’s interviews were laced with disinformation. He had a “source” who saw Clay Shaw enter the home of Edgar Eugene Bradley, he said. Schiller and Cohen both believed Bradley was involved, Hall said.
Hall knew that Hemming was telling people that he was in Dallas on November 22nd, armed with Hemming’s Johnson .06 rifle, complete with telescopic sight. Garrison was told by an informant named Jack Huston that Hall knew Oswald in Dallas. He knew from Wiley Yates that Hall had spent time in New Orleans.
The meeting between Hall and Oswald is confirmed in an Army Intelligence, 11th MI Group (III), document authored by Charles N. Phillips, an
d dated June 19, 1970. The “source” mentioned is Roy Hargraves, who reveals that both Lawrence Howard and Loran Hall met with Lee Harvey Oswald in Texas in October while en route to Florida before the assassination. It states that both Howard and Hall were connected with the CIA. This document also has Hemming explaining to Hargraves that “the assassination was a Central Intelligence Agency plot to do away with Kennedy.” Hall and Howard, both CIA-sponsored, were involved, according to this Army intelligence document. Hargraves reveals that he confronted Lawrence Howard with the question of his involvement, only for Howard to have “clammed up” and become very nervous.
Hall’s intelligence connections were manifold: arrested in Dallas that October for having dexadrine in his glove compartment, a parade of agents—CIA, FBI, military intelligence—visited him in jail. Later he would call himself a “jackal for the CIA.” Just before he boarded the plane for New Orleans, Hall contacted first the FBI and then the CIA to ask if they had any objections to his going. Was there anything they wanted him to tell Jim Garrison?
It was May 6, 1968, by the time Hall reached Tulane and Broad. “You can make a great contribution to this country if you so choose,” Garrison had pleaded. But Hall only repeated the scenario of his fellow Cuba infiltrator Hemming that there had been many plots to kill John F. Kennedy. He had been part of a conspiracy of Mafia demons (Giancana, Rosselli and Trafficante) to kill Castro, but not of “the conspiracy.” There was no “one person” assigned to kill President Kennedy, Hall said. Then he regurgitated the Hemming litany of names: Clint Wheat and Colonel Gale; the National States Rights Party and Nico Crespi; Dr. Drennan. He threw in the name of Dr. Crocket, whom Hemming insisted was holding his Johnson .06, only for Crocket to deny it.
Hall claimed he had never spent time in New Orleans.
Did Hall know Thomas Edward Beckham?
“No, I seen pictures of Beckham,” Hall said. Yes, he could identify Garrison’s thick-necked Cuban: it was “José Duarte, who, in fact, was a long-time and current asset of JMWAVE.” Two months later Hall would send a photograph of “Duarte” to Lou Ivon, with greetings for “the big man.”
As he had for Howard, Jim Garrison issued a public statement exonerating Hall. Then Steve Bordelon took Hall for a drink at the Habana Bar.
“Welcome back, Lorenzo!” the bartender said, calling Hall by his real name, which was Lorenzo Pascillio. Loran Hall was, of course, no stranger to the Crescent City.
A month later Manolo Aguilar, a Naval Intelligence operative, with cover as head of the FRAC (Frente Revolucionaria Anti-Communista), told the Miami police, but not Jim Garrison, that Lawrence Howard had “said that the FBI was giving him a very bad time because of his part in the assassination.” Hall had told the FBI that “Howard has been involved.” Hemming himself had informed on Howard, Hall and Seymour to the CIA.
Hall was to tell the HSCA that a woman named Mrs. Mildred Hyatt could provide an alibi for him for November 22nd, but Hyatt did not back him up. He had never heard the name Oswald before the assassination, Hall claimed, although Nico Crespi was with Oswald in Dallas in May, June or July. Both Hall and Howard denied they had been in New Orleans, except, Hall said, once in January 1963 to “gas up.” Lawyer William Triplett concluded that Hall seemed to have been “not only rehearsed but almost programmed.”
“I was not a CIA agent . . . a card-bearing certified CIA agent,” Howard told the HSCA. “Perhaps indirectly I was working for them.” Howard was not questioned about the package delivered by Thomas Edward Beckham, although the HSCA staff knew about it. Nor did Blakey’s lawyers question Howard about his having been identified at Marydale Farms in East Feliciana Parish during the summer of 1963. That he was a very dangerous man Howard himself confirmed to Louisiana investigator L. J. Delsa. “If the president would call me and ask me to go over to Cuba and kill Castro,” Howard told L. J., “I promise I would get to the tip of Florida and if I had to swim, I promise you he would be dead.”
A few days before the assassination, still in Los Angeles, Hall had made an admission to a private detective named Leroy Payne. Payne worked for Richard Hathcock, to whom Hall had pawned and redeemed the Johnson rifle. I have no time to talk, Hall said. I’m taking a plane to Dallas.
“You better have a good alibi for November 22nd,” Payne, who had told the FBI about the Johnson rifle, remarked to Hall some time later. Hall professed not to be worried. He had fifty witnesses who could testify that he was in the lobby of a Dallas hotel at the time the president was shot, Hall declared. None of those witnesses were to check out. Shortly after the assassination, Hall, who had been chronically unemployed, and had been begging for “quarters and canned goods,” suddenly opened a tavern and motel in Kern County, California.
Forever after, Lawrence Howard would insist he was not in Dallas on November 22nd, but in California. It was not so. Shortly before the assassination, Howard did return to Los Angeles, bitter that Fidel Castro remained alive. To a friend named Richard Magison, he hinted that “they were going to do something so monumental, bad, heinous, terrible, shocking, important, that the United States would definitely invade Cuba.”
“Was the CIA involved?” Magison said.
In reply, Howard removed a piece of paper with a name and a telephone number from his billfold: “E. Howard Hunt.”
On the day of the assassination, Magison drove to the Air Fan Manufacturing Company where Howard worked, anxious to discuss the president’s death with Howard and his friend, “Tex,” whose real name was William Seymour. He had not seen Howard for several days, his boss said, nor did he know where Howard was. Howard was to lie both to Jim Garrison, insisting “work was disrupted” on that day in Los Angeles, and to the HSCA, whom he also told he was “working, I was right on the job. I was right on the job.” Magison remembered something else. Howard had just bought a light blue or green Nash Rambler, even as Garrison witness Edward Girnus was to mention a light-colored station wagon parked “on the railroad track to the rear of the School Book Depository near Dealey Plaza.”
In 1968, when newspapers reported that Garrison had subpoenaed Lawrence Howard, Magison drove over to his house. The burly Howard faced him from behind the barrel of a gun. He was “heavily armed and fearful for his life,” Magison was to remember. Magison made a hasty departure.
Harry Dean, that CIA Fair Play for Cuba infiltrator, also knew that Howard was in Dallas on November 22, 1963. “I think Howard took a shot [at Kennedy],” Dean said, and “he was in Dallas and all those other crumbs . . . I don’t believe Oswald did.”
Perry Russo had told New Orleans CIA asset, lawyer Jack Rogers, that Lawrence Howard was a personal friend of David Ferrie, and he had met Howard with Ferrie. Both Howard and Seymour, Russo believed, were “at the scene of the assassination in Dallas,” where Howard met both Ruby and Oswald.
Clay Shaw’s lawyer, Edward Wegmann, was also persuaded that “Lawrence Howard was in association with David Ferrie in New Orleans in 1963,” and had appeared at Beckham’s Mission. In Dallas, Wegmann had learned, Howard “was in contact with Jack Ruby” and was also “in association with Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas.”
After the assassination, Thomas Edward Beckham had taken to the road. Penniless, terrified, but always a survivor, with an infinite capacity to reinvent himself, he lived on the streets, moving from town to town. As “Mark Evans,” he sang on weekends at clubs. Small and agile, game for anything, at “All American Shows,” a carnival out of Florida, which toured the biggest state fairs in the country, he rode a stripped-down motor bike inside a drum with centrifugal force holding him up. Running was better than thinking what might happen to you.
Fred Lee Crisman seemed able always to find him. Together with Bob Lavender (until a counterfeiting scheme alienated the two), Fred promoted Tommy’s singing career. In Olympia, Washington, a fake license on Crisman’s office wall read: “Crisman and Beckham Psychological Services.” Nobody came. Later Crisman signed the name over to Beckham: “International Assoc
iation of Pastoral Psychologists.”
“Use that as back-up,” Crisman said. Among the businesses incorporated by Fred and Tommy in Olympia were: marketing of a tear gas pistol; a school to train police officers; and the “Northwest Relief Society,” which existed solely to solicit funds, like the New Orleans Mission on North Rampart. By 1968 Crisman would be investigated for narcotics activity in connection with a group called “Servants of Awareness.”
Sometimes Tommy drives Fred out to an Army base in Tacoma, where he is known. At Boeing aircraft, where Crisman had been employed, Fred takes him into the top security area. There is also church activity, like the World Wide Church, run out of Springfield, Missouri, by a CIA asset named Herman Keck.
Keck called himself a “bishop” in the Anglican church and said he was part of an international clergymen’s association. He was a master engraver, and he delivered documents to the CIA through Crisman. He traveled far and wide on a diplomatic passport. “I’m the paper man for the Company,” Keck told Beckham. And Crisman confirmed it. “Look kid,” Keck said. “If they need KGB identification, I’ll provide it.” Later, Keck would be one of those to set up a safe house for Tommy and to advise him to stay away from Jim Garrison. “They’ll just write him up as another nut,” Keck said of Garrison. He called Tommy “cowboy” and said he had been “lucky” to get through it safely. By “it” he meant the assassination.
It is now, finally, that Beckham draws his conclusion.
“Fred, I know you’re a government agent,” Tommy says one day.
“Yeah,” Fred says, and Tommy realizes, as Jim Garrison had, that “the CIA can do a lot under cover of religion.”
Tommy practices medicine without a license. He poses as a police officer. He gets into trouble over a bad check and languishes in jail until Fred arrives, handcuffs Tommy and then explains to the police, “I’m an FBI man.” They walk out.
To get away from Fred, Tommy ships out with the Merchant Marine.