Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  When Quigley finally wrote up his encounter with Oswald, he tried to say that he knew nothing about him before he talked to him. But yet, Quigley had looked over Oswald’s Navy file in 1961.56 This jailhouse interview lasted a long time. Estimates range from 90 minutes to three hours. Quigley produced a five page report. But, in keeping with FBI standard practice, the notes were destroyed.57 There would seem to be at least some information that was left out. During the interview process, Oswald turned over some of his literature, and also an FPCC card which was signed by A. J. Hidell.58 This last is significant since the Warren Commission tells us that Oswald mail ordered the rifle that he shot Kennedy with under this name. For now, the reader should note that Oswald allegedly ordered the rifle a few months prior to turning over this membership card. Yet, according to the Commission, knowing that the FBI now had this card, he would use this same rifle in the assassination.

  The reader would think that this incident could not get any odder. Or suspicious. But it does. There was a court hearing on August 12. Bringuier showed up with someone who was not involved in the episode, one Frank Bartes. Even though it was Oswald who was the accosted party, he pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a nominal fine. Even though it was Bringuier who did the accosting, he pleaded innocent and the charges against him were dropped. This sounds as if it was arranged in advance. As we have seen, Bartes was associated with the FBI, and later the CIA. He told the press who had gathered that Oswald was a dangerous man. One month later, when the FBI interviewed him, he said the name Oswald was unknown to him.59

  The next day, Oswald was in the office of the New Orleans States-Item trying to convince city editor David Chandler to give more coverage to the FPCC. Three days after this he reportedly called a New York City radio show asking to be a guest.60 Then, on August 16, he was on the streets again. The unemployed Oswald first went to the unemployment office and hired a couple of young men on the promise he would give them two dollars for fifteen to twenty minutes of work passing out leaflets in front of the International Trade Mart. Why just for fifteen to twenty minutes? Because very soon after, Jesse Core, Clay Shaw’s right-hand man, phoned WDSU-TV about the “event.” And they showed up. (It should be noted here, Shaw was friendly with the owners of this station, Edith and Edgar Stern.) George Higginbotham, who worked for Banister, saw the incident and walked over to Banister’s office to tell him about it. Banister calmly replied, “Cool it. One of them is mine.”61 Although at his trial, Shaw denied he saw Oswald outside leafleting that day, there is a photo of him walking into the building and he is looking at Oswald and Oswald is looking at him.62 What makes this even more interesting is that Core was at the previous Canal Street incident also. He picked up a Corliss Lamont pamphlet from Oswald and recognized the Camp Street address on the inside of the back cover. On August 19, from the Trade Mart, he mailed the pamphlet with a message to the FBI office in New Orleans. The handwritten message said, “Note inside back cover.”63 In other words, Shaw and Core were likely aware of the faux pas by Oswald. Was Oswald made aware of this also? Perhaps. Because a few days later, he was seen inside the Trade Mart.64

  Before leaving these two leafleting incidents, it is worth making one more observation about them. In between the two filmed episodes, Carlos Quiroga—a mutual colleague of both Sergio Arcacha Smith and Bringuier—was sent by the latter to infiltrate Oswald’s FPCC organization. Bringuier said that Quiroga brought with him a couple of sheets Oswald had dropped on Canal Street. But this story is suspicious on two grounds. First, both Bringuier and Quiroga told the Commission it took place after the Trade Mart incident, and second that Quiroga was just returning a few flyers that Oswald had dropped. But these are undermined by a neutral witness, Mrs. Jesse Garner, Oswald’s landlady. She told the Commission that Quiroga was not there to deliver a few flyers. He had a stack of literature about five to six inches high. Second it was not after the Trade Mart episode. It was just after the Canal Street arrest.65 If this information is accurate, then it appears that far from infiltrating Oswald’s nonexistent FPCC—of which he was the only member—they were actually supplying him with the literature for the next leafleting event. What makes this even more likely is the polygraph exam given to Quiroga by Jim Garrison. Quiroga was asked about this specific point: “You have said you tried to infiltrate Oswald’s “organization.” Isn’t it a fact that you knew his Fair Play for Cuba activities were merely a cover?” Quiroga replied in the negative. That response indicated he was lying. So did his negative response to the following question: “Is it not a fact that at that time Oswald was in reality a part of an anti-Castro operation?”66

  After the Trade Mart incident, Oswald walked over to WDSU and was interviewed briefly by WDSU television and radio. Bringuier then called Bill Stuckey, a reporter who had a weekly radio program at WDSU. This interview was excerpted on his show “Latin Listening Post” on August 17.67 Stuckey then arranged for a debate on August 21, between Oswald and Bringuier on a longer format show called “Conversation Carte Blanche.” Prior to the broadcast, the FBI contacted Stuckey and read him large parts of Oswald’s file, including about his defection. The last participant in the debate, Ed Butler of INCA was tipped off about the defection from his contacts on the House Un-American Activities Committee.68 (Butler, as we have seen, would be the eventual custodian of Banister’s files, and he was the man who put Gordon Novel in contact with Sergio Arcacha Smith and David Phillips about a New Orleans telethon.) When confronted with the damaging information about his defection—in other words that Oswald was not a neutral party, but a closet communist himself—Oswald did his best to parry it. He said that the Russian experience gave him the background to say that the FPCC was not communist controlled. Stuckey and Butler later returned to this aspect and kept Oswald on the defensive about his defection. Stuckey felt that the debate finished the FPCC in New Orleans because it had been linked to a man who had lived in Russia for three years and was a self-admitted Marxist.69

  But Oswald slipped up during the debate, and someone on the Warren Commission noticed it. About two thirds of the way through the audio portion, Stuckey asked Oswald how he supported himself in Russia. After saying he worked while he was there, Oswald says that he was “under the protection of the American government ...” He then caught himself and said he was not under their protection. But in the transcript as produced in the Commission volumes, Oswald does not need to correct himself since someone altered his initial statement to say that he was not under the protection of the American government.70

  This was the last public event Oswald did associated with the FPCC. These episodes are important to the case because of the extraordinary media coverage they captured. It was these films and tapes that were then played on television to incriminate Oswald as a communist in the public eye after the assassination.

  In August, Ruth Paine wrote Marina again. She was hard at work trying to find a hospital for Marina to deliver her pregnancy. She was also arranging to see Marina after visiting her family in Philadelphia.71 In September, Ruth did stop at the Oswalds. On September 23, after packing up their things, she drove Marina to Irving, arriving on the 24. On that same day, the Warren Report tells us that Oswald left for Mexico.72

  Oswald returned to Dallas from Mexico on October 3. About ten days later, he took a boarding room in Oak Cliff. Marina was living at the Paines and gave birth to their second child on October 20. Lee would visit the Paine home to see his wife and children on weekends. The Warren Report states that Ruth Paine heard through a friend that there was a job opening at the Texas School Book Depository.73 Ruth called supervisor Roy Truly at the Depository to arrange a meeting for Oswald. She then told Oswald about this arrangement that day, October 14. Lee interviewed on the 15th, and started work on the 16th. The Report tells us that the Oswalds were elated with his new job. What the Report does not say is that an offer for a better paying job came in before Oswald started work at the Depository.

  When Oswald returned from Mexico h
e visited the Texas Employment Commission.74 In reply to that visit, Robert Adams phoned the Paine residence on October 15 with a better job offer for Oswald than the one he took. Adams said he spoke with someone there about a permanent position as a cargo handler at Trans Texas Airport, a job that paid about 100 dollars more per month than the Depository. Adams said that he was told Oswald was not at home. He left a message that Oswald should call him about the job.75 Adams called again the next morning. This time he was told that Oswald had taken a different job. Adams therefore crossed him off his list.

  When Ruth Paine was asked about this phone call from Adams, she first said she did not recall it, but she eventually did. Yet she said she heard of it through Lee Oswald. Oswald informed her that he had high hopes for it but it had “fallen through.”76 This does not coincide with what Adams stated. He tried to notify Oswald twice, since the job was still available. The job offer from Adams paid about 30 percent more than what Oswald earned at the Depository. Therefore if Oswald had known about it, why would he not have taken it? Especially since Marina testified that Lee was not satisfied with the Depository job. He was searching through the newspapers for something better.77 Needless to say, if whoever had talked to Adams had told Oswald about the offer, he very likely would not have been on the motorcade route a month later.

  In November of 1963, two events occurred before Oswald died that confirm his status as an intelligence agent and his journey to Russia as part of a false defector program. Otto Otepka is a man whose name does not appear in the index to the Warren Report, which is another of its grievous shortcomings. In light of what we are about to learn, Otepka should have had his own chapter. Otepka worked in the State Department as a security analyst in the Intelligence and Research Bureau.78 In late 1960 he sent a memo to Dick Bissell at CIA for information on a number of American defectors to the Soviet Union. Bissell turned this request over to James Angleton’s Counter Intelligence staff, but not to the Soviet Russia Division, which had jurisdiction over defectors. Further, as John Newman notes, many of Oswald’s documents from this period bear the label CI/OPS which means Counter Intelligence Operations. This would suggest that Angleton had an interest in the defector program.79 The eighth name on Otepka’s list was that of Lee Harvey Oswald. Although Hugh Cummings actually sent the memo, Otepka originated the request. He sent it because neither the CIA nor military intelligence would inform him which defectors were genuine and which were double agents. When the CIA assigned the job to a researcher, they told her to work on some of the names, but not on others. One of the “others” was Oswald. When the CIA sent back its reply in late November, Oswald’s name was marked SECRET.80 It is very interesting that it is after this request from State that Oswald is finally given a 201 file. Thirteen months after his defection. One has to wonder: if Otepka had never made this request, would CI/SIG ever have opened a 201 file on Oswald? Or would his papers have remained in their private domain?

  This request marked another milestone at the other end. Otepka, who had been an award winning employee, now saw his career slide downhill. And then both his career and his life become a Kafkaesque nightmare. He was first taken off of sensitive cases. Stories began to appear in the press that his job could be eliminated. He was asked to take another position in State but he declined.81 He was then called before a Senate Committee to explain his methods for issuing security clearances. This happened four times in less than three years. He still would not resign or suspend his defector investigation. Spies, phone taps, and listening devices were then planted in his office.82 His office started to be searched after hours and his trash was scoured for any of his notes. Even his house was being surveilled. Otepka could not understand what was happening to him. He could only conclude that the sensitive study of American defectors hidden in his safe was behind it all. That safe was later drilled into after he was thrown out of his original office and reassigned. Whoever drilled it then used a tiny mirror to determine the combination. The safecracker then removed its contents.83 On November 5, 1963 Otepka was formally removed from his job at State. Later on, author Jim Hougan asked him if he had been able to figure out if Oswald was a real or false defector. Otepka replied, “We had not made up our minds when my safe was drilled and we were thrown out of the office.” Just two and a half weeks after his forcible departure from State, Oswald, the man he had studied for months on end, was accused of killing President Kennedy. In nearly nine hundred pages of text, the Commission could not find room to tell this important and riveting story. A story that directly impacts on who Oswald really was.

  The call Oswald made the night before he died probably demonstrates why Otepka had to be stopped. On Saturday night, November 23, Oswald tried to make a call to North Carolina. Two phone operators manned the Dallas jail switchboard. Whenever Oswald attempted to make a call, the operators were tipped off in advance. Then two plainclothesmen came into the switchboard office. In an adjacent room, the two men would monitor the call.84 When Oswald came on the line, he gave one of the operators a number to dial. The operator wrote it down and passed it on. After it was passed onto the two men, the operator then told Oswald the number was unresponsive, even though there was no real attempt to dial out. The operator then hung up on Oswald and threw the number into the trash. Curious, the other operator later picked up the note paper out of the trash.85 It contained the numbers of two men, both named John Hurt. When the HSCA investigated the affair they found out that Oswald was trying to call a man named John Hurt who lived in Raleigh.86 John Hurt turned out to be a former military counterintelligence officer. When researcher Grover Proctor called him, he denied calling the jail or knowing who Oswald was prior to the assassination.

  But here’s the problem. Chief Counsel of the HSCA Robert Blakey later confirmed that the call was outgoing.87 So Hurt’s reply to Proctor was a cleverly worded non-denial: it was Oswald trying to call Hurt. Blakey added to the gravitas of the matter by saying, “It was an outgoing call, and therefore I consider it very troublesome material. The direction in which it went is deeply disturbing.” But why would Oswald call Raleigh, North Carolina? Perhaps because the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) operated a base nearby at the coastal town of Nag’s Head. Since Oswald received his language training in the Marines, he would have been under ONI’s authority at the time he defected. And according to former CIA officer Victor Marchetti, the Nag’s Head base operated a training program for false defectors to be sent to the Soviet Union: “It was for young men who were made to appear disenchanted, poor, American youths who had become turned off and wanted to see what communism was all about.”88 The intent was to have the false defector be recruited by the KGB. Then you would have a double agent in place for whom to funnel disinformation through and receive information from. One could easily conclude that, in Oswald’s time of crisis, he was trying to contact his handlers through a former, distant cut-out. He was the spy caught out in the cold: What did they want him to do? One could also conclude, as Marchetti does, that it was this attempted call that guaranteed his execution.

  In the period of 1961–63, as we have seen, Howard Hunt was first working with Allen Dulles. He helped Dulles answer queries from the Taylor Commission about the Bay of Pigs. He then helped Dulles and Charles Murphy write their attack article shifting the blame for the Bay of Pigs from the Agency to President Kennedy. After this, Hunt did extensive work on the former Director’s 1963 book called The Craft of Intelligence.89

  But after this, Hunt appears to have been working for Tracy Barnes. Author William Davy went to see former CIA officer Victor Marchetti about a declassified document showing that Clay Shaw had a covert security clearance. He showed it to him and Marchetti commented with the information that it appeared that Shaw was actually working in some kind of domestic clandestine service.90 This was called the Domestic Operations Division and it was being run by Barnes. As Marchetti said, Hunt was likely there also and they were getting into some very bizarre things. In reading his reply, it's clear
that Marchetti did not want to be specific about what Barnes and Hunt were doing.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jim Garrison in 1966

  “I was perfectly aware that I might have signed my political death warrant the moment I launched this case.”

  —Jim Garrison, Playboy, October 1967

  One of the many criticisms brought against Jim Garrison when his inquiry into President Kennedy’s death was made public was this: He was doing it to advance his political career.1 In fact, one newspaper even wrote that Garrison hoped to become Vice-President because of the fame to be garnered from his inquiry.2 This is one of the worst things one can say about a District Attorney. Since it implies that he is willing to indict and prosecute someone only to advance his political ambition. This was only the beginning of a two year war of character assassination that would turn Garrison into a caricature and Clay Shaw into a martyr. As we will later see, in reality, it was this campaign of calumny that was politically motivated. And it was performed by some journalists of rather questionable ethics. The truth is actually the opposite. In pursuing his Kennedy investigation, Garrison threw away a political career of great promise. And along with it, the two offices he most aspired to: District Attorney and the U.S. Senate. This part of the story was not told to the public. We should relate it here.

  Garrison’s family hailed from Iowa. His father had an alcohol problem, which resulted in a criminal record. Therefore Jane, Garrison’s mother, divorced him when young Garrison was barely six years old.3 After this divorce, Garrison never saw his father again. Not knowing he was dead, Garrison did try and find him many years later. He broke down when he saw the authorities had written on a legal document that the man had “no family.”4