Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  Unfortunately, and apparently unawares, Garrison began to play into the media’s hands. When New Orleans became a seething cauldron of publicity and reporters, he evaded reporters by using a back entrance to his office. There he read Ferrie’s comments and an editorial criticizing him for spending the 8,000 dollars and implying he was using it for vacation trips for his staff and to get national publicity. Garrison was offended by these remarks because they were not just unfair, but completely mischaracterized what he was doing and why. So, smarting from the editorial, Garrison began to make statements that were, at best, ill-advised and, at worst, inflammatory:

  My staff and I solved the case weeks ago. I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t have evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt. We know the key individuals, the cities involved and how it was done….

  We are building a case and I might add, it’s a case we will not lose, and anyone who wants to bet against us is invited to. But they will be disappointed.

  There will be arrests, charges will be filed, and on the basis of these charges, convictions will be obtained.

  We solved the assassination…. We’re working out details of evidence which will probably take months. We know that we are going to be able to arrest every person involved—at least every person who is still living.11 (Emphases added.)

  From his own perspective, these quotes were justified. But it was a mistake to issue these sweeping statements. First, his investigation had been exposed before it was finished, as some of the quotes indicate. Therefore, the collecting of evidence was by no means complete. Nor had Ferrie yet been indicted, or even called before a grand jury to testify. And equally, if not most importantly, this would be the first time Garrison had been exposed to consistent worldwide media attention. (The national coverage of his Bourbon Street clean up had been sporadic.) He had no experience in this arena and no advisers to help him. His candor, his way with words, his predilection for hyperbole, which may have worked locally, these all played into the worst aspects of global pack journalism: sensationalism and caricature. He was setting himself up for a fall. A conscious campaign by selected journalists to derail and discredit his case was gearing up.

  As noted previously, Ferrie tried to fight back in the press through people such as Lardner. He also tried to laugh the whole thing off by calling it a “big joke.” But, almost simultaneously, he also went to people in the DA’s office like Lou Ivon. On February 18, Ferrie was interviewed by Andrew Sciambra and Ivon at his home. He was evasive and told them very little.12 But the day after, Ferrie called Ivon at his residence. He was fearful for his life. After notifying Garrison, Ivon checked Ferrie into a hotel room under an assumed name. Ivon recalled to author William Davy that Ferrie appeared quite scared, almost like “a wild man.” Ferrie now admitted he had worked for the CIA and that he knew Oswald. He also admitted to knowing Clay Shaw and that Shaw also worked for the Agency. And he added that Shaw despised President Kennedy.13 But he as yet did not admit to any role in the plot to kill Kennedy. Ivon stayed with Ferrie in his hotel room until the early hours of the next morning. He then went home to sleep. When he returned the next morning, Ferrie was gone. Ivon and others on Garrison’s staff now began to search the Cuban exile community on Decatur Street near the French Quarter where Ferrie often stayed.

  The last person to have seen Ferrie alive was Lardner. He visited him very late on the evening of the twenty-first and stayed into the early hours of the twenty-second. On February 22, 1967, the same day Garrison had decided to call him before the grand jury, David Ferrie was found dead.14

  The contents of Ferrie’s apartment at the time of his death were unusual for a private investigator. They included a blue, 100-pound aerial bomb, a Springfield rifle, a Remington rifle, an altered-stock .22 rifle, 20 shotgun shells, two Army Signal Corps telephones, one bayonet, one flare gun, a radio transmitter unit, a radio receiver unit, 32 rifle cartridges, 22 blanks, several cameras, and three rolls of film15

  His body was found naked on his living room sofa; a sheet was pulled over his head. Two typed suicide notes were found. Neither one of them was signed.16 The table next to his body was strewn with medicine bottles, several of them empty. Coroner Nicholas Chetta had the body moved out quickly, before Garrison and his staff arrived. Garrison took some of the medicine bottles in order to check them out. On February 28, Chetta ruled that Ferrie had died of natural causes, specifically, a berry aneurism or broken blood vessel in the brain.

  Garrison had his doubts, especially in light of the two typed suicide notes. He had Proloid, one of the drugs found in the apartment, analyzed and discovered that with Ferrie’s hypertension, this drug could cause death by brain aneurism without a trace.17

  There are other mysteries beyond the two suicide notes and the deadly drugs. Washington Post reporter George Lardner, Jr., claims he was with Ferrie until 4:00 A.M., a time the coroner insisted was “absolutely the latest possible time of death.” This means that Ferrie must have died, by whatever means, within minutes of Lardner’s departure.18 It could mean that, if Ferrie was murdered, the killers were waiting for Lardner to leave. And in fact, years later, when coroner Frank Minyard looked at the autopsy pictures of Ferrie, he noted contusions of the inside of the lower lip and gums. The day before he died, Ferrie had purchased 100 thyroid pills. When his body was discovered, they were gone. Minyard theorizes that if Ferrie was murdered, the killers may have mixed the pills into a solution and forced it down his throat with a tube. One of the contusions is on the inside of the lower lip where the tube may have struck during a struggle. With all these suspicious circumstances, why did Chetta rule as he did? In no one’s memory had someone left a suicide note—in this case, what could be considered two of them—and then died of natural causes. But Chetta apparently wanted to play it safe in the face of the tremendous publicity focused on Ferrie’s death.19

  Further, Chetta had first set the time of Ferrie’s death as before 4:00 A.M. But then Lardner came forward and said he had been with the man until about four in the morning. This is when Chetta revised his time of death until 4:00 A.M. as the absolute latest possible time of death. And further, Ferrie’s doctor Martin Palmer told author Joan Mellen he thought the autopsy was “slipshod.” He termed it not a full autopsy but a partial one.20

  Ferrie’s death was a staggering body blow to Garrison’s inquiry. But his death was compounded by the death in that same twenty-four-hour period of Eladio Del Valle. As mentioned, Del Valle was a former congressman in Cuba under Batista. Once Castro took over, Del Valle joined the violent opposition to him. One of the things he did was to hire David Ferrie to run fire bomb missions over Cuba. Since Del Valle had run up a small fortune in smuggling contraband with mobster Santo Trafficante, he could afford to pay Ferrie well, 1,500 dollars per mission.21 According to author Dick Russell, congressman Del Valle eventually became part of Batista’s military intelligence forces in charge of narcotics south of Havana. And this is how he became involved with Trafficante.22

  Bernardo DeTorres: The CIA’s First Infiltrator

  Garrison found out about Del Valle’s murder through a man named Alberto Fowler. Fowler was a Cuban living in New Orleans who was an aide to Garrison’s investigation, about whose loyalty some have suspicions about. But the man who told Fowler about Del Valle’s death was undoubtedly a CIA agent masquerading as a Garrison aide.23 In fact, one can make the case that Bernardo DeTorres was the first infiltrator into Garrison’s assassination probe. And his early penetration dates from at least December of 1966, perhaps even a bit earlier.24 Before Del Valle’s death, DeTorres had told Fowler that Del Valle was willing to help him in his case.25 Which seems odd since no less than Fabian Escalante, head of Castro’s security services, thought Del Valle was a suspect in Kennedy’s murder. The actual death report as it came to Garrison reads as follows: “He was shot in the chest and it appears ‘gangland style’ and his body was left in the vicinity of BERNARDO TORRES’ apartment.”

  At the time Fowler turned
his name over to Garrison as a possible aide in checking out leads in south Florida, DeTorres was working as a private eye in Miami. But this was likely at least a partial front. For as was later discovered, DeTorres began filing reports on Garrison with the Miami CIA station almost immediately.26 This information was discovered through the HSCA, who later got onto the trail of DeTorres independently of Garrison. But they then discovered he was the first CIA agent to infiltrate Garrison’s office. DeTorres was also cozy with Del Valle’s pal Trafficante. Having been a veteran of the Bay of Pigs, DeTorres was associated with the CIA by 1961, and associated even closer in 1962. DeTorres’s work in Florida was an expensive item for Garrison with very little, or nothing, to show for it. Except, perhaps, the dead body of Del Valle.

  It is interesting to note Cuban intelligence chief Fabian Escalante’s suspicions about Del Valle’s role in Kennedy’s murder. Especially in regard to the fact that certain members of the HSCA—Al Gonzalez, Gaeton Fonzi, and Edwin Lopez—all ended up believing that DeTorres was involved in Kennedy’s assassination. By 1963, DeTorres was a full fledged CIA officer who was cross posted at times into military intelligence. In fact, Gerry Hemmings met Bernardo in just such an office in 1963.27 Bernardo also became the Latin American representative for Military Armament Corporation, a firm run by Mitch Wer-bell. In the summary of his HSCA interview, Bernardo admitted to being both a visitor at Werbell’s house and being enlisted by the Secret Service to guard Kennedy on his visit to Miami in November of 1963. The HSCA later wrote that “DeTorres has pictures of Dealey Plaza in a safe deposit box. These pictures were taken during the assassination of JFK. Life offered DeTorres twenty or thirty thousand dollars but he refused.”28

  How did the HSCA get a lead on DeTorres, thus throwing backward light on how worried the Agency was about Garrison at a very early date? It began with Fonzi talking to Cuban exile Rolando Otero. Otero had heard that there were five Miami men who were involved with the assassination. One of them was DeTorres, who was allegedly in Dealey Plaza posing as a photographer. Further, Otero said that DeTorres was actually in contact with Oswald prior to the assassination.29 (This could have been at the Alpha 66 safe house at Harlendale referenced in Chapter 9 to the Buddy Walthers’s report.) When Fonzi tried to find the source for Otero’s information, this led him to an associate of Paul Bethel. Bethel was a longtime conservative operative for the United States Information Agency in Cuba, and was a friend of Phillips. After Castro came to power, Bethel became associated with the Cuban exiles in Miami. Like Howard Hunt, he was a friend of William F. Buckley; and also like Hunt, he wrote for Buckley’s National Review. In 1969 Bethel wrote a book called The Losers. In it he wrote that, after the Missile Crisis, “There is no doubt that President Kennedy and his brother … consciously set about the business of stopping all efforts to unhorse Fidel Castro—from outside exile attacks, and from Cuba’s internal resistance movement.”30 These were the kinds of circles that DeTorres and his cohorts were fellow travelers in. When Fonzi talked to Otero’s source, the DeTorres/Bethel colleague, the man was in jail for driving with a fraudulent driver’s license.31 Fonzi found out that he began his career as a likely plant on the liberal democratic side during President Johnson’s invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. When he defected to the American side in that conflict, he made a beeline to none other than DeTorres’s business cohort, the CIA weapons expert, Mitch Werbell. From here he quickly became a witness for conservative Kennedy nemesis Senator Thomas Dodd on the subject of Cuban exportation of subversion in the Caribbean. From there, he was sitting in on National Security Council meetings. This is how connected DeTorres, Werbell and Bethel were. Afterwards, he went to work for Werbell.

  When Fonzi talked to him, Otero’s contact revealed that DeTorres was working for Werbell in 1963. He then added that both Werbell and DeTorres were involved in planned assassinations of political targets. About Oswald, DeTorres had said he knew he had not killed Kennedy because DeTorres knew the people who were actually involved—and they were talking about it before it happened.32

  I have detailed the DeTorres penetration at length since it is important in order to understand what really happened to Jim Garrison. And also to reveal just how much was at stake for suspects like Bernardo DeTorres and his allies. As Fonzi notes in his book, and as the author found out from an interview, when Victor Marchetti was executive assistant to CIA Director Richard Helms, Helms would run staff meetings about Agency operations. During these meetings, Marchetti would take the official notes. At times, Helms would indicate he wanted certain things not taken down. At other times, something would come up, and Helms would cut off any follow-up by waving his hand. He then would add that this subject would be pursued further in his office, or in the proper deputy’s office, with Marchetti not there to take notes. Marchetti said that the Garrison inquiry and the Shaw trial came up more than once. Each time, Helms would ask what they were doing to help the defense.33 Fonzi later found out that DeTorres’s penetration was only the inception of the CIA’s effort to torpedo Garrison. For the HSCA later discovered through CIA documents that there were nine undercover agents at one time or another in Garrison’s office.34 So, in addition to what Mr. King had warned Garrison about, that is the negativity of the media which would now plague him until the end, there was something that King left unsaid. But after he left, assistant Andrew Sciambra noted it to Garrison. He said, “Well, they offered you the carrot, and you turned it down. You know what’s coming next don’t you?”35

  What we are about to describe in this chapter and the next is something that neither Garrison nor Sciambra could have likely imagined at the time. But with the aid of extensive interviews, plus declassified documents, for the first time we will now outline a three stage program to destruct Garrison’s case and to make sure Shaw would be acquitted. This first stage began very early with DeTorres, a man who—while working with Mitch Werbell—may have been involved with Kennedy’s murder. But it will continue with certain other “singleton” penetrations by people like William Gurvich and Gordon Novel. The second stage of the effort will center around the wider efforts of former National Security Agency officer Walter Sheridan in alliance with the CIA and NBC. That effort was coupled with the work of intelligence assets/journalists James Phelan and Hugh Aynseworth. When Garrison would still not give up, a third phase set in with two prongs to it. James Angleton’s office took over in September of 1967, and, as we have previewed, Angleton’s endeavor was then allied to and expanded all the way up to Director Richard Helms in 1968 and 1969. With operations that could not even be discussed in public or for the record. But which, as we shall see, HSCA Deputy Counsel Bob Tanenbaum saw certain documents about.

  The Gurviches: P. I. Services for Free

  After DeTorres, the next dubious aide who came into Garrison’s office offering his investigative skills was William Gurvich. Gurvich and his brother Louis ran a private investigation service in New Orleans. It was one of the larger and more sophisticated offices in the city.36 The Gurviches offered their clients services like witness location, photographic analysis, electronic surveillance and, significant to this instance, undercover infiltration. As Garrison told Playboy in his October 1967 interview, Bill Gurvich knocked on his door around Christmas of 1966 offering to work for the DA on his Kennedy probe for free. He also offered the services of his brother Louis, plus a local polygraph analyst Roy Jacob. Since Garrison was short-handed, and the probe was widening, he took up professional sleuth Gurvich on his offer without asking any questions.

  From around December of 1966 to March of 1967, Garrison gave Gurvich some sensitive assignments which he performed adequately. But in March of 1967, when Shaw was arrested, a reporter asked him how long the inquiry would last. Gurvich replied, “Maybe thirty years.”37 When Gurvich was locating Eladio Del Valle in Florida, he worked with DeTorres. When Perry Russo went to see Gurvich’s handpicked polygraph technician, Jacob tried to intimidate him before he took the test. Jacob later
told Garrison’s office that Russo was a “psychotic.” In a key interview with Cuban exile Ricardo Davis, Gurvich’s tape recorder just happened to malfunction. When Harold Weisberg reinterviewed Davis—who placed Shaw with militant Cuban exiles—Davis told Harold that there some interesting things he told Gurvich that were left out of the investigator’s summary.38 Like, for example, that the FBI had interviewed him the day after the assassination and showed him a picture of Shaw. As Weisberg noted, no such FBI interview was ever sent to the Warren Commission.39 But yet, people like Bill Turner, even at this point, still believed in the Gurviches. For a positive Ramparts article about Garrison, Turner often quoted the brothers as believing in Garrison’s case and frowning on what the FBI had done in New Orleans. Turner even quoted Louis Gurvich when he compared the Kennedy murder with the celebrated Dreyfus case in France.40