Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  But that it not the worst about Oswald at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall. This company handled contracts for the U.S. Army Map Service.16 And as author Henry Hurt later discovered, part of the work there appeared to be related to the U-2 flights over Cuba. In fact, Oswald’s first day at work was four days before President Kennedy saw the first U-2 photos of missile silos on the island. According to Oswald’s co-workers, some of them were working at setting type for Cuban place names on maps.17 To point out the absurdity of this scenario is both simple, and by now, needless. Especially considering Oswald’s background with the U-2, particularly the Powers shoot-down. But by avoiding all this, the Warren Report does not have to explain it away. For another thing Oswald did there was to send examples of his photographic work to the American Communist Party newspaper in an attempt to secure work from them.18 It is very hard to believe that the FBI, which had all of these groups infiltrated, did not know about this exchange of letters at the time they were sent. But perhaps no action was taken because, around this time—October of 1962—an inexplicable occurrence took place: The FBI closed its file on Oswald.19 This is at the time the former communist defector was working at a Pentagon map-making company that appears to have been doing overflight maps of the U-2 over Cuba during the Missile Crisis. John Newman speculates that this may have been done because this was when DeMohrenschildt’s relationship with Oswald was heating up. What makes this interesting is that the file will not be re-opened until March of 1963. The ostensible reason given for this by FBI agent James Hosty was that Oswald had just opened a subscription to a communist newspaper. Yet, when the Dallas FBI had previously learned of another similar subscription, it had closed the Oswald file. Newman notes that the reopening of the Oswald file coincides with George DeMohrenschildt leaving the Oswald circle for, first Washington, and then Haiti. This coincides with the report by Teofil Meller, husband of Anna. He told the Dallas Police after the assassination that he had “checked with the FBI and they told him Oswald was all right.”20

  In March of 1963, right before Oswald left Dallas for New Orleans, DeMohrenschildt eventually did get his oil consulting contract with the Haitian government, worth about 300,000 dollars.21 The next month, he left the city, never to see Oswald again. In May, he met with CIA and Army intelligence officers to further his Haitian endeavor.22 The Commission never really expressed any real reservations about DeMohrenschildt, or his association with Oswald. Jim Garrison did. He came to the conclusion Oswald was probably being “babysat” by DeMohrenschildt. That is, Oswald was being protected and kept in place while a mission was being prepared for him. But Garrison felt that this was done by George without any knowledge of what the end game was.23

  In light of what was to happen to Oswald, one of the most important things that DeMohrenschildt did occurred right before he left Texas. Commission lawyer Wesley Liebeler discovered it when he asked Ruth Paine if Marina Oswald had ever mentioned DeMohrenschildt to her. Ruth answered with: “Well, that’s how I met her.”24 That is, he introduced Lee and Marina to Ruth and Michael Paine. As one reads the interactions of this White Russian community with the Oswalds, it is fairly clear that they are trying to separate Lee from Marina. And, in fact, they actually did do that, temporarily.25 But as we shall see later, Ruth Paine actually accomplished this for a longer interval and at a much more crucial time. Once Ruth was introduced to Marina, within two weeks she got in contact with her via a note. Then a week later she visited her in person. About a week after that, Ruth invited the Oswalds to her home for dinner.26 Even though she and her husband were separated, Michael Paine was also on hand for this event. In fact, it was Michael who actually picked up the Oswalds at their home that night. And then something really strange happened. Ruth had known Marina for less than a month. They had seen each other three times. Yet, on April 7, “Ruth wrote a note to Marina (which she claims she never sent) inviting Marina to come live with her.”27 This is surprising not just because of the speed with which it was done, but also because the Paines were Quakers. But here Ruth is essentially trying to split off a wife, who she barely knew, from her husband. Two weeks after that, there was a picnic with the Oswalds. And near the end of April, Marina is staying with Ruth, while Lee is in New Orleans in search of a job and a place to live. After Lee did find an apartment, Ruth drove Marina to New Orleans. She then returned home to Irving, and started a written correspondence with Marina which lasted all summer.

  In light of the above, there can be little doubt that, almost from the beginning, Ruth was intent upon separating the Oswalds. In the summer correspondence, Ruth said that Marina mentioned she may have to go back to Russia. When Ruth heard this, she now, for the second time, invited Marina to move in with her.28 But in July, Marina replied that her relations with Lee had improved and she would not be going back to Russia. That August, Ruth was traveling by car around the country visiting friends and relatives. She got a letter from Marina saying that Lee was now unemployed. Ruth then decided to stop off in New Orleans to visit the Oswalds on her way back home. She stayed with the couple for three days. It was decided that Marina would return home with Ruth so she could deliver her second child at Parkland Hospital. But yet, this was not altogether impromptu. It seemed planned in advance. Because “according to FBI interviews of Ruth’s friends and family, Ruth had told everyone she was going to pick up a Russian woman in New Orleans and bring her home to live with her in Irving.”29 Ruth now achieved what she seemed intent on doing from the start. The Oswalds were finally separated, and they would stay that way until Lee’s murder at the hands of Jack Ruby. What the purpose of this separation was, and why Ruth was so single-minded about it, these have never been explained. But by September 27, Marina was living with Ruth while Oswald was allegedly in Mexico. And, Quaker-like, Michael was committed to giving Marina financial support in order to stay there. When Oswald finally returned to Dallas, he got his new job at the Texas School Book Depository, an act in large part facilitated by Ruth Paine. The fact that the couple was separated, but Ruth had packed her station wagon with their things in New Orleans, meant that many of Oswald’s belongings were now in her garage. Therefore, they were under her control at the time Oswald was apprehended. And Ruth and Michael Paine now became the source for much of the dubious evidence used to build a case against Oswald. At the same time their true backgrounds and characters were being hidden by the Warren Commission. The reader will comprehend why their background was deliberately covered up by the Commission in Chapter 10.

  Last Months

  In late April of 1963, the Oswalds decided to move to New Orleans. Oswald said it was Marina’s idea. The Commission said that the real reason was that Marina wished to get him out of town because he took a shot at General Edwin Walker.30 Yet Oswald was never even questioned about this shooting incident, let alone made a suspect in the case. It was only after Oswald was dead that the FBI said he had taken a shot at Walker.

  When he arrived by bus in New Orleans, Oswald stayed with his Aunt Lillian Murret while looking for a job. He secured a position with William B. Reily Co. on May 10. This was a large coffee company which grinded, canned, bagged, and sold coffee. There are two interesting details the Warren Report leaves out about this company. First, it was located just two blocks from Guy Banister’s office.31 Second, as Jim Garrison notes in his book, only a stranger to the city would not be aware of Reily’s support for anti-communist causes like Arcacha Smith’s Crusade to Free Cuba and Ed Butler’s right-wing, CIA related propaganda shop, INCA.32 The Information Council of the Americas chief sponsor was another New Orleans rightwing patrician, Dr. Alton Ochsner. Through the author’s field investigation in New Orleans, there is no doubt Banister knew Ochsner, and so did Clay Shaw. In fact, there is a photo in the New Orleans Public Library of Shaw with Ochsner.33 Ochsner had a CIA clearance which appears to have originated in 1955.34 The point being that if Banister wanted to salt Oswald away nearby in order to provide him a temporary cover, he could have easily done so by making
perhaps one or two phone calls. What makes this even more probable is a conversation the author had with William B. Reily III in 1994. When contacting the Reily Coffee Company at that time, to inquire about any records left over about Oswald, the author talked to Reily. When asked about Oswald, he said, “What year was that assassination?”

  But also consider this: There were a number of Reily’s employeess who left after Oswald’s departure for a peculiar destination. Oswald’s superiors, Alfred Claude and Emmett Barbee, both left in July to work for NASA in eastern New Orleans. Two of Oswald’s co-workers, John Branyon and Dante Marachini, were also later hired by NASA. Oswald himself told Alba he expected to be picked up by NASA.35 Garrison suspected that they were moved out so as not to talk about Oswald’s offbeat work habits. If this is so then it would suggest that, like Ochsner, Reily’s company had intelligence connections. This was certified by a declassified document confirming that the company was of interest to CIA dating back from 1949. Further, it appears to have been assigned a contact number.36

  After Oswald secured an apartment on Magazine Street, Ruth Paine drove Marina to New Orleans. Ruth stayed for three days, returning to Irving on May 14. In mid-July, Oswald was terminated from Reily for spending too much time at Adrian Alba’s Crescent City Garage reading gun magazines.37 On one occasion, Alba claimed to have seen an FBI agent handing a white envelope to Oswald while he was standing in front of Reily’s.38 As we have seen, Orestes Pena, proprietor of the Habana Bar, has testified to seeing Oswald there speaking to FBI agent Warren DeBrueys. As we shall see later, there is even more evidence Oswald was a likely FBI informant.

  When Oswald moved to New Orleans, the FBI claims to have lost track of him until late June.39 This is not credible. For Oswald was now writing the Fair Play for Cuba Committee—using his real name—an organization that was being infiltrated and surveilled by American intelligence agents. But in the initial stages of his local New Orleans program, Oswald used the alias Alek Hidell on his post office box and certain pieces of literature. FBI agent James Hosty wrote a May 28 report to his superior Gordon Shanklin saying that he learned Oswald had left Dallas in mid-May. He said that he then inquired at the post office and learned that Oswald had left no forwarding address. This is false, and Hosty likely knew it was so. Oswald had sent in such a card from New Orleans. That card is stamped May 14 per its arrival.40 How could Hosty not have known this? His initial discovery of Oswald’s absence was on May 15. Further, the FBI or the Warren Commission altered and switched Oswald’s flyers in the Commission exhibits to eliminate knowledge that the FBI had to have known where Oswald was living in New Orleans before they said they did.41 John Newman constructed a chart which graphs seven different instances in which—during this so-called “blind period”—the FBI should have known, not only where Oswald was, but about his dealings with the FPCC.42

  A possible reason for this after the fact obtuseness is that Oswald was, in all likelihood, acting as part of the CIA’s anti-FPCC program. Warren DeBrueys told the author that whenever the FBI was cognizant of such an Agency program, they were told to steer clear of it.43 The fact that such a program was being run is one of the most important discoveries of the ARRB. Since it now helps to place Oswald’s activities in their larger and more proper context. But perhaps even more compelling is who was running this program: David Phillips and James McCord.44 That this key piece of information was kept classified for decades is one of the true abuses of the classification process, which relies so much on the excuse of “national security.”

  For this belated discovery also helps explain why the CIA ordered 45 copies of the first printing of Corliss Lamont’s pamphlet “The Crime Against Cuba” in June of 1961. This is the year their counter intelligence program against the FPCC began.45 This first edition sold out fast. In 1963, when Oswald was handing out the pamphlet, it was at least in its fifth printing. Yet Oswald was handing out the first edition in 1963. He could not have ordered it himself since he was in Russia at that time.46 It is very possible that either Banister requested these from CIA, or someone like Phillips gave them to either Oswald or Banister as a part of the program he was running with McCord. But it should be noted that another reason the FBI was cognizant of this Phillips/McCord project is they were running their own discreditation operations against the FPCC. These were supervised by Cartha DeLoach.47

  Hosty said that the FBI did not discover Oswald’s address in New Orleans until the end of June. And this was not confirmed until August 5. By odd coincidence, that is the same day that Oswald now began to appear in public as an agent of the FPCC. Prior to this, he had been corresponding with the New York City FPCC office, opening a post office box, securing applications, printing up his own literature at Banister’s, picking up special flyers at Jones Printing Company, dropping off flyers at places like the Tulane campus to root out leftist sympathizers, etc. The one exception to this was a very low profile picketing incident on June 16. But August 5 is when he began his public exhibition of street theater. Or as Newman writes, “the FBI’s alleged blind period covers—to the day—the precise period of Oswald’s undercover activity in New Orleans.” On August 5, Oswald had visited Carlos Bringuier’s clothing store. He offered to do something he had experience in: to train members of his Cuban exile group, the Cuban Student Directorate, or DRE. In other words he appeared as if he was anti-Castro. On August 9, Bringuier and two cohorts angrily confronted Oswald while he was acting pro-Castro. This is when he was passing out his Fair Play for Cuba literature on Canal Street. This created a minor fracas. And arrests were made for disturbing the peace. The arresting officer, Lieutenant Frances Martello described it as saying that Oswald “seemed to have set them up, so to speak, to create an incident, but when the incident occurred he seemed absolutely peaceful and gentle.”48 The idea that this incident was “set up” is fortified by the fact that Oswald described the incident to the national office of the FPCC on August 4, five days before it happened. In this letter he described being attacked by Cuban exiles in the street and then being approached by the police. He then added, “The incident robbed me of what support I had, leaving me alone.”49 Further evidence it was stage managed is that when he was booked, Oswald turned over the out of print Corliss Lamont pamphlet from 1961.50 In other words, the evidence more than suggests that Oswald was acting out a scene he had written five days in advance, with props furnished to him by either Banister or Phillips.

  After Oswald was arrested, something else not noted by the Commission happened. And although Martello told a different story about it to the Warren Commission, to researcher Larry Howard he said that Oswald handed a piece of note paper over to him. On one side were the Moscow numbers of the press agencies UPI and AP. Oswald pointed to a number on the other side and said, “Just call the FBI.” He added that he wanted to be interviewed by DeBrueys.51 When the call came into the FBI office, DeBrueys was not there. So James Quigley decided to go to the jail and interview Oswald. Before he did, he had a young employee check the file indices on Oswald. William Walter did find an informant file on Oswald with DeBrueys’ name on it. Walter later said that there was also a locked security file on Oswald with DeBrueys’s name on that also.52 This is further evidence that Oswald was known to the FBI during Hosty’s blackout period. In fact, Oswald’s landlady in New Orleans said that FBI agent Milton Kaack talked to her about Oswald three weeks after he arrived in New Orleans. When Anthony Summers called Kaack about this, the FBI agent cried, “No, no. I’m not talking. You won’t get anything out of me.”53 And finally, after being transferred to Kansas City after the assassination, Hosty later told Church Committee witness Carver Gayton that Oswald indeed was an informant.54

  And, in fact, if Oswald was actually a communist, why would he have his jailer call the FBI after his arrest? This is not something a genuine communist does. It is something that either an informant or infiltrator does. And this type of weird behavior typifies what Oswald did with the FPCC in New Orleans. Many decade
s ago, researcher Ray Marcus was a member of the communist party. In a 1998 interview, he told the author that they never did the things Oswald did in New Orleans. When they leafleted, it was always at night, leaving the papers in the doorway or the foyer of homes or apartments. This way the reader would not be seen looking at the literature. He could do it privately without any peer pressure being applied. This insight would apply even more strongly to a southern city like New Orleans. In fact, during the FBI investigation of the Kennedy murder, they learned of a source representing John Stanford, a secretary for the Texas Communist Party, who had told Senator Ralph Yarborough that he had solid information that Oswald was really a CIA agent.55 In other words, not only did Oswald associate with right wingers and CIA types like Ferrie, Banister, and Clay Shaw; not only is it impossible to find any communists or communist cells Oswald associated with or frequented; but the communists around him thought he was an intelligence operative.