Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  The pictures of the outside of Walker’s home, along with the famous backyard photographs—the ones depicting Oswald with a rifle and handgun plus communist literature in his hands—both were found at the Paine home. The official story maintains that both photos were taken with an Imperial Reflex camera. Now, during its two searches, the police confiscated three cameras. These were listed on their November 23 inventory report. One was an American made Stereo Realist. One was a 35 mm Russian camera called a Cuera 2. The third was listed as a small German camera with black case and chain.130 This last was the miniature Minox spy camera which, as we shall see, the FBI desperately wanted to go away. There was an evidentiary problem here in relation to the photos. All three cameras produced pictures equivalent to 35 mm photos. Yet the photos in evidence were developed on 620 roll film.131

  On December 8, two weeks after the Paine household search was concluded, with three cameras already in evidence, Robert Oswald picked up a box of Oswald’s articles at Ruth Paine’s house. Inside this box was the Imperial Reflex camera, which did use 620 roll film.132 When the policemen who searched the house were asked about this camera, four of five said they did not see it during their search. And they did recall going through many boxes.133 Robert kept the camera for over two months. On February 24 he turned it over to the FBI. On February 1, Marina said the Cuera and the Stereo Realist appeared to be Oswald’s two cameras.134 On February 19, Marina now said she could not recognize the Stereo Realist. Then on February 25, when shown the newly retrieved Imperial Reflex, she now said it was Oswald’s.135 In the interval between the February 1 and February 19 FBI interviews, Marina had temporarily lived with Robert Oswald who had the Imperial Reflex at that time.136 On August 12, the Stereo Realist camera was finally given to Ruth Paine, who said it was hers.137 Apparently, she never looked for it in that entire six month time span.

  On December 4, five days after she delivered Oswald’s “Walker Note” in Marina’s book, Ruth Paine was visited by two Secret Service agents. They were returning the “Walker Note” since they thought it was from her. (Recall Marina’s grand jury testimony about the Secret Service suspecting Ruth was associated with the CIA.) Ruth said she had not seen it before.138 But she now used this opportunity to give the agents even more exhibits. As in the Walker instance, these would help the FBI and Warren Commission bolster another dubious part of their case: namely that Oswald had been to Mexico City prior to returning to Dallas in early October. Ruth said the following items were found in her home, more specifically in the chest of drawers used by Marina. One was a “Rules for Betting” card used at a thoroughbred racetrack. A second item was a Spanish-English dictionary with a handwritten notation “watch Jai-lai game.” Yet when checking on this, the Commission learned that proper attire was required at these games, which Oswald did not have. Also in the Spanish-English dictionary were the accompanying flyleaf notations: “Phone embassy,” “Get bus tickets,” “Buy Silver Bracelet,” and “Buy Record.” Ruth also turned over a Merriam-Webster English dictionary and six picture postcards with no writing or stamps, but depicting Mexican tableaux.139 And as noted above, Ruth gave the agents a silver bracelet which had “the name Marina written in a crude fashion on the name plate part of the bracelet.”140 The Commission noted that this last did not really prove anything since it could have been picked up in Dallas at a department store.141 But further as Steve Jones noted in a talk at the COPA Conference in Washington in 1995, when Ruth picked up Marina in September of 1963, she said Lee did not say anything about going to Mexico. Once Oswald was apprehended, he never admitted to being in Mexico.142

  While sequestered at the Inn of the Six Flags in Arlington, Marina was asked about her husband’s activities after she left New Orleans. She first replied that she thought he stayed in New Orleans and looked for work.143 She told the FBI the same thing on November 29. Oswald was going to stay in New Orleans to see if he could find work. If not, he would then return to Dallas. She then said she had no knowledge of any trip to Mexico by Lee in September, and she added that, to her knowledge, Oswald had never been to Mexico.144 When they asked her why she made that last comment, she made a telling reply. She said that she figured they were interested in that topic since it had been on television. As we shall see later, the CIA had released information that said Oswald had been to Mexico City and visited both the Soviet and Cuban consulates there. Marina was repeatedly asked about this topic on six more occasions. But she continued to deny that Oswald had ever said anything about being in Mexico City.

  In February she signed a deal with an entity called Tex-Italia films for the rights to her story. She would go on to make 132,500 dollars from this mysterious company, which never produced a film about her.145 In February, before the Warren Commission, she now reversed her story: Oswald had told her he was going to Mexico.146 And she now backed up what the CIA was saying: Oswald went to Mexico City to get a visa to Cuba. (Marina would eventually go overboard on this point when she said Oswald told her he was going to hijack a plane and make the pilot take him to Cuba.147 ) Again, the Commission now had some corroboration for a trip to Mexico that no one recalled Oswald mentioning, and he himself denied. And it began with Ruth Paine.148

  Let us conclude this section on the Paines with what is perhaps the most ignored piece of key evidence in all of the literature on the JFK assassination. On November 23, 1963 mailman H. W. Reed was at Powell’s Waffle Shop in Irving, Texas, for his morning cup of coffee. He was sitting with two colleagues named C. E. Vaughn and Ray Roddy, and they were talking about the assassination. As Roddy got up to pay the cashier, Reed overheard her say something to him about a package being held for Oswald.149 This turned out to be true. But it is necessary to note that between the day Reed first heard about it versus the day he signed his affidavit constitutes a span of nine days. This may be important, because if one looks at this package today, there is something odd about it. Actually it may be unexplainable. At the bottom of the address, written directly on the parcel, are the words Irving, Texas. Yet, right above this—obliterating the rest of the Irving address—is a mail address sticker. The sticker reads as follows:

  Lee Oswald, 601 West Nassaus St., Dallas, Texas.

  And here begins the mystery. For that particular address does not exist in Dallas. Now, what makes this doubly odd is that it would only appear logical that underneath the sticker with the new address, a legitimate address in Irving does exist. And this could be read if the new address sticker was removed. Therefore, why did the FBI not apply a chemical to peel the adhesive off the back of the sticker, thereby cleanly exposing any address below? There is no evidence this was done, or even contemplated.150 Because it was not done, we do not know when the new address sticker was attached. It could have been attached afterwards in order to blot out the name and address of the person it was mailed to. But because this new sticker with a non-existent address is on the package, it eventually ended up in the “Nixie Section” of the post office— the place where undeliverable mail ends up.

  As noted, it was nine days between when Reed first heard about this package and when he signed a legal affidavit concerning it. Therefore, on the twenty-third, at least four people had already heard about the package. And very likely more, since the cashier at the restaurant knew about it and was spreading the word about it that morning. Yet it was not until another ten days after Reed’s affidavit, on December 12, that the post office turned over the parcel to the FBI. Again, no explanation is given as to why it took three weeks for the Bureau to get custody of the evidence. Especially since many people were talking about it both inside and outside the post office. When the FBI did get hold of the parcel, it was through Post Office Inspector Harry Holmes, who picked it up from the postmaster in Irving. As many authors have noted, Holmes was a prized FBI informant inside the post office who cooperated mightily with the Bureau in more than one way to help make the case against Oswald. Now, according to the FBI, Postmaster Twilley told Holmes the parcel was disco
vered in Irving on December 4.151 In light of the fact that the cashier at Reed’s restaurant had heard about it on November 23, this makes no sense. It boggles the imagination that a parcel with the name of Kennedy’s alleged killer could lay around the post office unnoticed for twelve days. This is at the same time that Oswald’s name was being broadcast on TV and radio throughout each and every day in that two week interval. But the fact that it was not in custody for twenty days, and it was given to Holmes at that time, allows us to question when the sticker was applied.

  In an FBI Airtel of December 13, the Bureau says there is no indication the parcel was ever mailed. This is not really accurate. There is a postmark on the package, in which the date is not quite decipherable. There is no postage visible on the one side of the package we can see in photos. In the airtel, the Bureau says something else which is hard to swallow. It says that Twilley questioned numerous persons at the Irving Post Office and could not find out any information about the parcel. Are we really to believe that no one recalled handling the package? Even after the assassination? Why didn’t the FBI itself do the questioning about this important piece of evidence? Further, Holmes said that when he got the package it had already been partly opened. Could someone really have forgotten partly opening a parcel with Oswald’s name on it? Inside the parcel was found a sheet of brown wrapping paper. Although the FBI called it a bag, it was described as being open at each end. Which would more closely resemble wrapping paper. In the FBI photo exhibits there is no tape measure next to the paper. Further, attorney Carol Hewett, who has actually handled the package, states that it is actually cut off at one end, making it harder to reconstruct how long both the envelope and the paper inside was.152 The Bureau tells us that the wrap is eighteen inches long. It generally recalls the brown paper discovered in the Texas School Book depository that the police accused Oswald of using to form a sack to bring his Mannlicher Carcano rifle to the Depository on November 22, 1963. One last point to make about this parcel. Not any part of it, the parcel itself, the paper inside, nor the corrugation, none of it bore any latent fingerprints.153

  How does this all relate to Ruth Paine? On November 20, a package was sent from the Irving Post Office to Lee Oswald at 2515 W. Fifth Street, Irving, Texas. This is the address of Ruth and Michael Paine. It was not delivered at that time since there was postage due on it. On November 23, the Dallas Police searched Ruth’s house for a second time and found the postage due notice with instructions to pick up and sign for the parcel.154 A deputy was dispatched to the Irving post office. According to Officer Gus Rose’s HSCA deposition, the deputy was told the parcel had been picked up.155 As we have seen from the H. W. Reed affidavit, this was false. And it began the cover up about this potentially crucial piece of evidence. In February of 1964, in an interview with postal inspector Roy Armstrong, Ruth Paine tried to imply that this notice was for magazines. Which it was not.156

  On November 26, something startling happened. On the Property Clerk’s Invoice for the search of Ruth Paine’s home on the twenty-third, the following item appears, “Postal Form, label bearing name George A. Bouhe, 4740 Homer St., Dallas, Tex., Postal Form bearing name Lee Oswald dated 11/20/63.” This perhaps means that the form for Oswald was then attached to one for Bouhe. But what on earth would a postage due form for Bouhe be doing at Ruth Paine’s? And who would attach it to the form due for Oswald’s mystery package? And why? Bouhe is the man who’s name surfaced in Marina Oswald’s testimony to Garrison’s grand jury in an odd way. Marina mentioned him as one of her English tutors in Dallas. Garrison asked if she knew that Bouhe lived a door down from Jack Ruby; that they knew each other, and shared a common swimming pool. Marina said she did know that. Because right after the assassination, Bouhe came to visit her. He told her that it was all just a coincidence that he happened to live next door to her husband’s killer.157 Bouhe was the “organization man” who kept the files for the White Russian community.

  It is important to recall that the first attempt to mail the parcel was on Wednesday the twentieth. It failed for postage due. But Oswald was at the Paine home on Thursday, the twenty-first, the night before the assassination. If the mailing had been successful, Oswald likely would have opened the package and then handled the paper. He probably would have discarded it. If he had, one of two things would likely have followed: 1.) The police would have found the discarded wrapping paper, or 2.) Ruth Paine would have found it. Either way, the police now would have fresh fingerprints on wrapping paper resembling the sack allegedly used by Oswald to carry a rifle into the Texas School Book Depository. This is crucial because the official story states that Oswald stored the Mannlicher-Carcano murder rifle in the Paine garage. To have Oswald’s prints, and only his prints, on a sheet of discarded wrapping paper would have been strong evidence that the alleged assassin had wrapped the murder weapon the night before.

  The incredible thing about the above case against the Paines is this: this does not even come close to exhausting it. For example, to mention just two further instances, one could detail their role in attempting to make Oswald’s Minox camera disappear—a project in which they cooperated again with the FBI—and in which, for all intents and purposes, they appear to be working as accessories after the fact in order to conceal who Oswald actually was.158 One could discuss the truly bewildering markings on Ruth’s pocket calendar—and her even more bewildering explanation for them—concerning when Oswald allegedly ordered the rifle in evidence.159 One could mention more startling statements. Ruth’s excuse for latching onto Marina Oswald was that she wanted to attain more fluency in the Russian language. Yet she had studied Russian since 1957, there were many Russian speakers in the White Russian community she frequented, and third, she had a Russian tutor in Dallas named Dorothy Gravitis, who had been born in the Soviet province of Latvia.160 Finally, Ruth Paine taught Russian at St. Mark’s School for Boys!161 So why on earth would she need Marina to teach her Russian?

  Another instance, when Oswald requested Ruth to contact an attorney for him, she said she was stunned and appalled because he thought he was innocent and could ask anything of her.162 Or Michael Paine’s reversal of his Commission testimony about seeing Oswald at the police station the night of the assassination and his now revised statement about “he was proud of what he’d done. He felt that he’d be recognized now as somebody who did something.”163 Or Michael Paine’s inexplicable mentioning to the Houston Post on November 23 that Oswald may have been involved in the Walker shooting.164 What is stunning about the literature on the Kennedy case, nearly half a century of it, over one thousand books and innumerable articles, is that until the work of Hewett, Jones, and LaMonica appeared in the nineties, no writer had ever done a sustained inquiry into the Paines, their relationship with DeMohrenschildt, and their ties to the White Russian community in Dallas. Jim Garrison tried to explore it, but too much evidence was being concealed in 1967. As the reader can see, there is a veritable cornucopia of associations, statements, and circumstances that arouse suspicion about the couple. As we shall see, both the HSCA and the ARRB ignored them also. In light of the above, they are truly a charmed couple. Until now. Suffice it to say, if there is ever a reopening of the JFK case, the Paines should be on the short list to be sworn before a grand jury.

  Shaw, Ferrie, and Banister: Friends and Partners

  In Chapter 1 the author introduced Freeport Sulphur and its subsidiaries Moa Bay Mining and Nicaro Nickel. These companies all had large investments in Cuba prior to Castro’s revolution. And this ended up being one of the ways that Garrison connected Clay Shaw with David Ferrie. This came about for two reasons. First, with Castro taking over their operations in Cuba, Freeport was attempting to investigate bringing in nickel ore from Cuba through Canada, which still had trade relations with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at another plant in Braithwaite. Shaw, an impresario of international trade, was on this exploratory team for Freeport. And he and
two other men had been flown to Canada by Ferrie as part of this effort.165 More evidence of this connection through Freeport was found during their investigation of Guy Banister. Banister apparently knew about another flight taken by Shaw with an official of Freeport, likely Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Ferrie.166 Another reason this Freeport connection was important to Garrison is that he found a witness named James Plaine in Houston who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sulphur had contacted him in regards to an assassination plot against Castro.167 Considering the amount of money Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the number of Eastern Establishment luminaries associated with the company—such as Jock Whitney, Jean Mauze, and Godfrey Rockefeller—it is not surprising that such a thing was contemplated within their ranks.168

  The above is just one instance of Shaw being associated with Ferrie, a fact Shaw denied at his trial. As Jim Garrison revealed in his book, On the Trail of the Assassins, he had statements from a number of witnesses who had seen the two together. And this is besides the witnesses in Clinton and Jackson. These witnesses included Jules Kimble who took a plane trip with the two men; David Logan who, after being introduced to Shaw by Ferrie, had a homosexual tryst with Shaw; Nicholas and Mathilda Tadin, who saw Ferrie with Shaw at the New Orleans Airport where Ferrie was giving their son flying lessons; and Raymond Broshears who had a drink with Shaw and Ferrie, and later joined them for dinner.169

  Today, there can be no doubt about this point. And the indications are that Shaw’s lawyers knew he was committing perjury when he denied this. For in the files secured by the Assassination Records Review Board there are now contributions by Shaw’s own defense team. This collection by attorneys Bill and Ed Wegmann includes a report by Wackenhut—a detective agency the Wegmanns hired—of an interview of a secretary who worked for attorney G. Wray Gill. Gill had employed David Ferrie as an investigator on some of his cases, including his work for Carlos Marcello. The secretary, named Sandra Anderson, told the detectives that she had seen a photograph depicting Shaw with Ferrie.170 (The reader should note, along with the photo taken in Clinton, this makes two pictures of the pair.) In March of 1967, J. Edgar Hoover had similar information that contradicted Shaw’s denials. Aura Lee was a former secretary to Shaw at the International Trade Mart. She was now employed by the Heart Fund at Ochsner Clinic. After watching a press conference by Shaw at which he denied knowing Ferrie, she stated to Dr. Charles Moore, among others, that she had seen Ferrie enter Clay Shaw’s office at the Trade Mart several times. It happened so often that she thought Ferrie had privileged entry into his office.171 Also, in one of Harold Weisberg’s unpublished manuscripts called Mailer’s Tale, Weisberg wrote that he knew about Shaw’s sado-masochistic sexual activities through his brother-in-law, Jack Kety. Because Kety had Ferrie as a patient.172