Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case
Page 27
No commentator—except Gervais—pointed out what was really about to happen: Garrison was about to wreck his political image and reputation. In the process, he would lose the two jobs he always wanted: the District Attorney’s office and the Senate.
CHAPTER TEN
Garrison Reopens the Kennedy Case
“The only way you can believe the Warren Report is not to have read it.”
—Jim Garrison, Playboy, October 1967
Jim Garrison, the District Attorney of Orleans Parish, Louisiana, had actually begun investigating the assassination on November 25, 1963, four days before the Warren Commission had been announced. Even then, he was closer to the truth than the Commission. Unfortunately, Garrison did not pursue the matter as he could have.
Shortly after the ex-FBI man and private detective, Guy Banister, had pistol-whipped his employee Jack Martin into a hospital bed, one of Garrison’s Assistant DAs came to him with some provocative information. Martin’s tongue had been loosened by Banister’s beating, and he had told a mutual acquaintance about a strange ice-skating and goose-hunting trip on the day of the assassination by David Ferrie. Ferrie had left New Orleans on the afternoon of the assassination with two young friends named Melvin Coffey and Alvin Beauboeuf. Driving 400 miles all night through a torrential rainstorm he first went to Houston. Ferrie gave more than one story as to why he did this. First, it was to relax.1 The next was that it was to go goose hunting. Except downtown Houston is not a good place to hunt geese, which is maybe why Ferrie did not take any guns.2 The trio arrived at the Alamotel early on November 23. The trio then said they went figure skating at Winterland Skating Rink. Yet Chuck Rolland, the proprietor of Winterland, said Ferrie spent two hours waiting near a pay phone. When it rang, he answered. After he hung up, he left with this two companions.3 The trio then went on to Galveston where they arrived at around 9:00 P.M. at the Driftwood Motel. (A little noted problem is that the check-in/check-out times on the motel records conflict. That is, they appear to be staying at both places at the same time.4) Hurt and resentful, Martin cast the weekend excursion in a particularly dark light. Something about Ferrie being a “getaway pilot” in an elaborate assassination plot.5
Ferrie Lies to the FBI
Garrison had a slight acquaintance with all three characters named. He had known Banister when Banister was a policeman, and they had traded stories about their previous work in the FBI. Through Banister, he knew Martin. He had met Ferrie only once. After his election as District Attorney, the odd-visaged pilot had congratulated him on the street. At this point, Garrison was harboring no suspicions about any of these men. His next encounter with Ferrie, however, would change that attitude quickly.
On the weight of Martin’s accusations and a previous police complaint record, Garrison sent assistants from his office to Ferrie’s apartment. When they arrived, they found two young boys inside, waiting for Ferrie. They said he had left for a trip to Texas on the 22 and had not yet returned.6 This was also Garrison’s first knowledge of Ferrie’s odd living conditions. The apartment had a collection of mice for Ferrie’s cancer research, a batch of Army rifles and other military equipment, and a wall map of Cuba.
When Ferrie returned from Texas, Garrison brought him in for questioning. Ferrie’s answers were a mixture of truth, lies, and subterfuge. He admitted going to Houston on the 22nd. He denied ever knowing or meeting Oswald. When Garrison pressed him on his reasons for driving to Texas through a fierce rainstorm, he gave the ice skating-goose hunting story described earlier (he once changed this to an interest in building a rink himself).7 To Garrison, this was like driving 400 miles for a hamburger. The DA was also suspicious of Ferrie’s nervous and evasive demeanor. On November 25, he decided to arrest Ferrie and turn him over to the FBI for questioning. The FBI disposed of him quickly when they determined his plane could not fly that weekend. Evidently they were not concerned that Ferrie would not need his plane in Houston and had already arranged for another plane to be waiting there.8 Garrison automatically accepted the decision of the FBI, his former employer.
This was a mistake, because Ferrie lied through a large portion of his FBI interview 9 For instance, he said he never owned a telescopic rifle, or even used one, and further he would not know how to use one. This from a man who, as we have seen, worked as a CIA trainer for both Mongoose and the Bay of Pigs. Ferrie further said that he did not know Oswald and that Oswald was not a member of the CAP squadron in New Orleans. What is odd about this is that Ferrie named to the Bureau Jerry Paradis as drill instructor for the CAP. If the FBI had talked to Paradis they would have learned that Ferrie was lying. For, as we have seen, Paradis vividly recalled Oswald and Ferrie in the CAP. And if they had pursued this further, they FBI likely would have found the photo that Ferrie was worried about. The one depicting Oswald with Ferrie at a cookout in the CAP. Further, in that interview, Ferrie discusses both Jack Martin and Guy Banister. He says that Martin had charged calls to Banister’s office. The agents failed to ask how Ferrie could know that unless he knew Banister and had been in his office. From there, the agents could have then discovered that Oswald had the address of Banister’s office on his FPCC pamphlet that summer. Ferrie also said that he knew Sergio Arcacha Smith and his anti-Castro group from their stay in the Balter Building. But he never knew the group or Arcacha Smith from 544 Camp Street. And that he had no association with any anti Castro group since 1961. This from a man who admitted he was part of Mongoose.
If anything shows us that the FBI was not interested in finding out who Oswald really was and who actually killed President Kennedy, it is their failure to follow up this interview. For under Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 1001, it is a crime to deceive an FBI agent. If J. Edgar Hoover had really been interested in the Kennedy case, Ferrie would have been indicted for both lying to an agent and obstruction of justice. He was not, because Hoover was not interested.
Garrison Slowly Gets Back In
Most chronologies of the Garrison investigation say that the DA lost interest in the Kennedy case until, on an airplane trip on November 13, 1966 with Senator Russell Long, the conversation turned to the Kennedy assassination. There, Long made some comments that set off Garrison’s curiosity about the case. And, in fact, even Garrison has essentially stated that this is what brought him back into the Kennedy case. Today, there is some contravening evidence that indicates that although this is true as a generality, it does not cover every instance in between. For having surveyed what was left of Garrison’s files, the author noted four to five memoranda that fell in the time frame of 1965–66. When the author called Garrison’s former Chief Investigator Lou Ivon, he said that there had been intermittent instances when Garrison would get interested in a certain aspect of the Kennedy case prior to the Long in-flight conversation.10 As Garrison’s first assistant John Volz related to Joan Mellen, this began with Garrison picking up a copy of the March 1965 issue of Esquire which featured a review of the Warren Report by illustrious critic Dwight MacDonald.11 Comparatively speaking, MacDonald’s critique was a mild one. But it did appear in a high profile national magazine.
Therefore, it seems Garrison never really lost interest in the case after he mistakenly turned Ferrie over to the FBI. He nurtured it along intermittently through 1965 and most of 1966. The plane conversation with Long was the capper which sent him into full investigative mode. He now began reading every book and article he could find on the assassination: Vincent Salandria, Harold Weisberg, Mark Lane, Edward Epstein, et al. He then ordered the Warren Report and its 26 volumes of testimony and exhibits. That was the clincher. Garrison’s reaction was disbelief, or as he termed it, “the end of innocence”: 12
It is impossible for anyone possessed of reasonable objectivity and a fair degree of intelligence to read those twenty-six volumes and not reach the conclusion that the Warren Commission was wrong in every one of its major conclusions concerning the assassination.
The DA decided to reopen his investigation. Oswald h
ad been in New Orleans for over five months before going on to Dallas less than two months before the assassination. Garrison’s initial assumptions about the assassination, about the probity of the Warren Report, the FBI inquiry, about his own brief investigation, all these were now in freefall. Garrison was now about to make a series of discoveries which would undermine the viability of the Warren Report. For as we have seen, there was a multitude of evidence indicating conspiracy in New Orleans. It was time to uncover the mystery of 544 Camp Street.
The Warren Commission had spent very little time on the New Orleans portion of Oswald’s life. Commission lawyer Wesley Liebeler had interviewed some witnesses in Louisiana, and Ferrie’s name had come up, but it had been disposed of quickly. (As mentioned previously, the testimony appears in Volume VIII with interviews of Edward Voebel and Frederick O’Sullivan, who testified they tentatively recognized both Oswald and Ferrie as CAP members.) Liebeler had also interviewed local New Orleans lawyer Dean Andrews, whose testimony, as we have seen, was quite interesting. But whatever the reason, the Report discounted his testimony. This seems unwarranted, if predictable, because Andrew’s original story was buttressed by the testimony of three people: his assistant, Preston Davis; Eva Springer, his secretary to whom he told the story; and his colleague, Monk Zelden, whom he called and asked to help him in the case.13
But besides these and a few other bits and pieces, the only lead the Warren Commission left to Oswald’s trail in New Orleans was an interview with Sam Newman. Newman was the owner of the building at 544 Camp Street, the address stamped on Oswald’s pro-Castro pamphlets. The FBI dropped its investigation of this address when Mr. Newman said he rented no office there to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and did not recognize Oswald’s photo.14 As we have seen in Chapter 6, Newman was not entirely forthright in any of his interviews. So this was another indication of lack of rigor by the FBI.
This was where the Commission ended its inquiry into Oswald’s stay in New Orleans. It is where Garrison began.
544 Camp Street and the FPCC Agent Provocateur
Because the Oswald pamphlet with the address 544 Camp street is in the Commission volumes, Garrison decided to go down and inspect the building. Garrison realized that its other address was 531 Lafayette and recalled that Guy Banister’s office had been there. This, of course, led Garrison to solving the Camp Street mystery and to establishing Oswald’s association with Ferrie and Banister. Unfortunately—and this is what makes Garrison’s failure to follow up his 1963 inquiry so crushing—Banister and his associate Hugh Ward had both died in 1964. Nevertheless, Garrison managed to get the title cards to Banister’s files and uncovered his façade as a private detective. One of the files was entitled “Shaw,” but its papers had disappeared within days after Banister’s death.15
In reading the Commission volumes, Garrison became convinced that Oswald had been receiving intelligence training in the Marines. And that his learning of Russian was preparation for being part of a false defector program. Now he began to understand that after he was brought back to America, his next assignment was to act as Banister’s agent provocateur in New Orleans against the pro-Castro FPCC. What Garrison could not know at that time— unless he knew what happened to Otto Otekpka—is that the false defector program was likely being run by James Angleton. And what he could not have known under any circumstances is that both the CIA and FBI were running counter intelligence programs against the FPCC and that David Phillips and Jim McCord were supervising that particular Agency effort.16
To certify Oswald as an agent provocateur for Banister, Garrison went back to his 1963 lead about David Ferrie, namely Jack Martin, who had worked for Banister. Martin had originally called Herm Kohlman, an assistant DA. Garrison now had Kohlman get in touch with Martin. Martin had contacted not just Garrison but the FBI back in 1963. He told the Bureau that Ferrie had known Oswald in the CAP, for he had seen a photo of the two together, and Ferrie may have hypnotized Oswald into shooting Kennedy.17 So now, three years later, Garrison sat across a table in his office from Martin. After describing the November 22, 1963, physical assault on him by Banister, Martin now told Garrison about all the Cubans in Banister’s office, along with David Ferrie, who he said practically lived there and how Banister didn’t really do any detective work. If anything came in, he did it. Martin added, as several people knew, that Oswald was also there. Sometimes he would be meeting with Banister, and at times he would be talking to Ferried18 But this is as far as Martin would go at this early stage. It was through his assistant Frank Klein that Garrison discovered that Banister’s office was serving as a clearinghouse for anti-Castro Cubans involved in Mongoose. Klein discovered newspaper stories about the FBI crackdown ordered by Kennedy against anti-Castro training camps in 1963. Particularly the raid on the McLaney cottage, near Lacombe as outlined in Chapter 6.19 When Garrison called Martin back in to show him that he now understood what the Banister office was about, Martin added a personage: Ferrie had introduced him to Oswald in Banister’s office. With Ferrie at the time was Sergio Arcacha Smith, the local Cuban leader of Howard Hunt’s group, the CRC. Further, agreeing with Delphine Roberts, Martin said that Oswald had an office in the building. And that James Arthus, the custodian the Commission had partly relied on to keep Oswald out of 544 Camp Street, had taken Oswald’s paraphernalia after the assassination.20
The FBI and Shaw/Bertrand
Another important early witness for Garrison was Dean Andrews. The gravity of the plot was made clear to Garrison in his meeting with his old law school chum. Garrison was intensely curious about who Clay Bertrand really was. From 1963, when Andrews had first told the FBI of his phone call from Bertrand to defend Oswald, the lawyer had been backpedaling from his original story. Andrews almost begged not to be interviewed anymore. Andrews implied that he backpedaled because the FBI wanted him to change his story. He even denied knowing what Bertrand looked like, though he had seen him twice.21 To Garrison, this meant that Andrews’s original corroborated testimony was true. But due to his reception by the Commission, he had decided to tap dance away from it. For although Andrews’s testimony lasts for 14 pages in the volumes, the actual Warren Report deals with him in one paragraph.22 And in that one paragraph the name of Clay Bertrand is not mentioned; in fact, it is not in the entire Warren Report. And clearly, whoever wrote this part of the report was out to discredit Andrews. The anonymous author says that the witness was 1.) unable to locate records of Oswald’s visits, 2.) investigation could not locate the man who called Andrews to go to Dallas to defend Oswald, and 3.) Andrews was under heavy sedation at the time of the call.
Again, this shows just how thoroughly preoccupied the Commission was in scapegoating Oswald. For Andrews had told Commission attorney Wesley Liebeler that his office was rifled shortly after he was released from the hospital and interviewed by the FBI after the assassination.23 As per Andrews being under sedation at the time of the call, this is false. The FBI discovered that Andrews did receive sedation on that day, November 23. But it was at 8:00 P.M. in the evening. The call from Bertrand came in four hours earlier.24 As per the FBI investigation not being able to locate Bertrand, as we shall see, that is because the Bureau never really wanted to.
Garrison invited Andrews to lunch early in 1967 and asked him Clay Bertrand’s true identity.25 When Andrews would not respond truthfully—he insisted he did not know what the mysterious Bertrand looked like—the conversation turned dramatic. Garrison grabbed Andrews’s arm and warned him that he would take him before the grand jury and, if he dodged the question on the stand, he would go to jail for perjury. Andrews’s response was equally intense. He told the DA that if he revealed the identity of Clay Bertrand, “It’s goodbye Dean Andrews … I mean like a bullet in my head.” Although Andrews was clearly upset, Garrison was adamant. He would still call him to testify. Andrews expressed this same fear for his life to Mark Lane, before Garrison interviewed him, and to Anthony Summers after Garrison interviewed him.26
In the early part of 1967, Garrison got his lead on the Rose Cheramie affair. A man named A. H. Magruder had spent the Christmas holidays of 1963–64 on a hunting trip with Dr. Victor J. Weiss. At that time Weiss was the Clinical Director of East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson, Louisiana. The two were sitting at Magruder’s home near St. Francisville when Weiss started to talk about Cheramie and her connection to the Kennedy case. Weiss told Magruder that he had treated Rose when she came to Jackson. She had told him she worked as a dope runner for Jack Ruby. She also said she had worked in a Ruby nightclub. She had been making a dope run for Ruby from Florida to Dallas. She did not want to do it but she had a young child who was being held. She told Weiss about being abandoned by her male cohorts, which is how she ended up at Jackson. She told the doctor that the president and other Texas officials were going to be killed on Kennedy’s upcoming visit to Dallas. Weiss told Magruder that, like Fruge, he did not pay very much attention to these meanderings by the patient. But after Kennedy was killed, he went back to her. She now said, after Ruby had shot Oswald, that Oswald knew Ruby since she had seen them together at Ruby’s club.27
Once Garrison got this explosive lead, he tracked it down. He discovered who Fruge was, and had him transferred from the State Police to his staff. The first thing he wanted Fruge to do was to find Cheramie. Fruge went to Jackson, found some records, and located her sister in Houston. The sister told her she was now dead. She had been killed in 1965 while on a small highway between Tyler and Dayward, Texas.28 Garrison wanted to exhume the body but the local authorities would not let him. Garrison now instructed Fruge to find the saloon that Rose had stopped at before she was abandoned. This place was called the Silver Slipper and the bar manager was a man named Mac Manual. After visiting with him once, Fruge came back with some photos that Garrison had given him. Manuel identified the two men with Rose as Sergio Arcacha Smith and Emilio Santana.29 In other words, the Cheramie lead went back to denizens related to 544 Camp Street. According to an interview the author did with Lou Ivon, in 1967, Santana disappeared into the Miami Cuban underworld.30 Arcacha Smith reportedly moved out of New Orleans to Texas in late 1962. First he went to Houston and then to Dallas. But he visited New Orleans often to stay in touch with his former friends. Garrison tried to question Arcacha Smith in Dallas. He sent Jim Alcock and William Gurvich to do the questioning. But, as we will see, the Cuban exile leader said he would only talk to them if Dallas policemen were present. Garrison rejected that condition.31 Arcacha Smith’s lawyer said he might agree to be questioned as long as he did not have to go to New Orleans. On April 1, Garrison telegraphed an arrest warrant to Dallas for Arcacha Smith’s role in the Schlumberger bunker raid in Houma. He was arrested and then released on a 1,500 dollar bond. Garrison then sent extradition papers to Texas, which Governor John Connally refused to sign. Because Connally did not sign them within 90 days, Arcacha Smith was released from the bond. Thus, one of the most suspicious characters in the entire case was allowed to escape serious questioning. And, as we shall momentarily see, the dark clouds around Arcacha Smith extend even further and deeper.