Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  It was around late March of 1967, when Garrison heard that Gurvich had been talking to Walter Sheridan, that Garrison began to suspect Gurvich was a double agent.41 Prior to this he trusted Gurvich implicitly. They shared an office, to which Gurvich had the keys, and Gurvich even used Garrison’s car. (Gurvich later admitted to actually stealing things off Garrison’s desk and copying them.42) But after Garrison heard what Sheridan was doing to some witnesses, he began to freeze Gurvich out of sensitive areas of the inquiry. Gurvich formally defected in late June of 1967. In fact, he called a press conference on the very day that CBS began to broadcast its four-part defense of the Warren Report. But what is also interesting is that, two weeks before he announced his defection, he had visited with Bobby Kennedy in New York City. Clearly, Sheridan was trying to influence and mold his former boss’s opinion of Garrison.43 While using his own efforts to give some ballast to CBS.

  But Gurvich was not done dispensing his favors yet. Not by a long shot. For when Gurvich left, he took with him a copy of Garrison’s master file. This is something he failed to admit to in public. But in an interview he did with Clay Shaw’s lawyers, Ed Wegmann, and Irvin Dymond, he spoke of it like this: “I have it locked in a vault in a bank and you are welcome to have every bit of it as far as I am concerned.”44 So here you have the spectacle of a former aide decrying the DA’s ethics while failing to admit he is a thief. On top of that, Gurvich asked to appear before the grand jury to testify about Garrison’s unethical practices. In his first appearance, he testified that Garrison had forced certain witnesses into the office to be cross-examined and polygraphed. When asked who they were, he could not name anyone. He said he had to consult his records. Which he did not have with him, even though he had requested to take the stand.45 When he appeared again he still could not name anyone. So he said that Garrison had ordered the arrest and physical beating of Walter Sheridan and Rick Townley. The only problem is neither man was ever arrested or beaten. And Gurvich could not name one police officer, assistant DA, or investigator who heard Garrison say this.46

  Gurvich’s father was a longtime FBI agent. His company, called Private Patrol, signed various contracts with shipping lines departing New Orleans for South America. The kind that Clay Shaw and his mentor Ted Brent monitored for the intelligence community. Gurvich later joined forces with the FBI to investigate CIA pilot Leslie Bradley’s comings and goings at Lakefront Airport, and his possible connection to Shaw and Ferrie. Gurvich then worked directly for Shaw’s lawyers on the eve of his 1969 trial. He was interviewing prospective witnesses with copies of his purloined documents from Garrison’s master file. In fact, Gurvich worked for Shaw’s defense all the way to 1971, when the perjury case against Shaw was thrown out.47 All told, Gurvich worked almost five years on this case. Does anyone believe he did it for nothing?

  In 1996, a resident from New Orleans got in contact with the author through researcher John Newman. He was a former veteran who had been through a bad experience in Vietnam. He was therefore living off his veteran’s benefits. He said that, one summer in the early seventies, he was at a vacation spot on the Mississippi coast. He was at a four star hotel with a girlfriend of his. While relaxing at the pool he started up a conversation with the woman next to him. He discovered that she, like he, was from New Orleans. So he introduced himself by name and told her where he lived in New Orleans. She then did likewise, and said she was staying in a suite with a friend named Lou Gurvich and his family. At that time, that name did not ring a bell with him. As the sun began to die down, she invited him up to their room for a drink. When he got there, Gurvich’s daughter, who had been poolside with them, went into the shower. The woman gave him a drink, and then the daughter emerged from the shower. But when she emerged, she had different color hair. The woman noticed the puzzlement on his face. She leaned over and whispered to him, “He does some work for the CIA. So he has his loved ones take precautions.”48 With that brief aside, a light went on in his head. He now recalled the Gurvich name from the Shaw prosecution.

  Allen Dulles Recruits Gordon Novel

  Gordon Novel was originally from the New Orleans area. As a teenager he was associated with a rightwing group called the Storm Troopers.49 Because of this association, Gordon had some early problems with the law, when the group tried to derail a locomotive and blow up a theater. This is where Novel got his early skills not just in mixing explosives but in propelling them. After graduating from East Jefferson High in 1957, Gordon then briefly attended LSU. While there, he formally asked the administration to begin integrating the university. He dropped out of college in 1958 and resumed his high school relationship with Rancier Ehlinger. They got involved in a car theft ring specializing in swiping Corvettes. Ed Butler was Ehlinger’s cousin. Therefore, Novel first met Butler at this time. Butler was then an advertising executive just getting into CIA related propaganda work. By 1959, Novel had encountered David Ferrie, Clay Shaw and Dean Andrews. The latter two he met through a business concession he wanted to open at the Trade Mart.

  It is his friendly CIA relations with assets like Shaw, Ferrie, and Butler, which first brought him into preparations for the Bay of Pigs.50 We have already seen how Novel was involved with the transfer of munitions from the Schlumberger bunker at Houma, and in preliminary talks for a city wide telethon involving Sergio Arcacha Smith and a CIA officer who has all the appearances of being David Phillips. But Novel then became owner of two private businesses: a speedway in Hammond (about forty-five miles north of New Orleans), and a bar off the French Quarter called the Jamaican Village. The speedway was at least partly used as a CIA cover in preparation for the Bay of Pigs. For on the speedway lot was a storage bunker for even more weapons for the Bay of Pigs. These particular munitions were to be used for the New Orleans based diversionary landing by Nino Diaz which never came to fruition.51 But another one of his Bay of Pigs duties utilized his electronics skills. Novel operated a CIA front called the Evergreen Advertising Agency. This was used for embedding cryptographic messages to alert agents in the field about the invasion date. Novel claimed to have spent over 72,000 dollars of the CIA’s money to buy ad time to convey these secret messages.52

  Since Novel was an experienced Agency operative, and since he had excellent electronics skills, he became a good target for Allen Dulles to hire to infiltrate Garrison’s office. Since, due to those skills, he could wire the office for surveillance as part of a counterintelligence program. Counterintelligence techniques were something Dulles was all too familiar with from his decades-long espionage career. The two met sometime in late 1966.53 Since Novel was from New Orleans and knew about Garrison’s good reputation as a DA, he was reluctant to perform the assignment. Predictably, Dulles had a lot of money with him, so Novel took him up on the offer. Novel found a good way to snuggle up to Garrison. It was through, Willard Robertson, one of the organizers of a group of wealthy city residents called Truth and Consequences. This was a private group that decided to back Garrison because Rosemary James’s story had made the DA’s use of his fines and fees fund so controversial on the Kennedy case. (The group was rather short-lived, and Garrison ended up spending a lot of his own money financing the inquiry.)

  Robertson, a wealthy car dealer in New Orleans, was also a personal friend of Garrison. Novel was introduced to the DA by Robertson as a skilled investigator with razor sharp electronics skills—which was accurate. But Garrison did not hire him until February of 1967.54 So now, in addition to DeTorres and Gurvich, Allen Dulles had his own personal agent on Garrison’s staff. And in fact, once on Garrison’s staff, Novel promptly went to work secretly wiring Garrison’s office for sound.55 As Lisa Pease notes in her fine three part series based on Novel’s deposition in his lawsuit against Garrison, Novel admitted that he and Dulles used to talk a lot about Garrison’s case.56 And Novel’s communications were not just limited to Dulles. He also wrote letters to Richard Helms about Garrison.57 What makes this so fascinating is that all three of these infiltration
s began almost six months before Garrison even accused the CIA of being part of the assassination plot against Kennedy!

  But Novel was also quite friendly with the FBI. In fact, when he returned from his first long discussion with Garrison, Novel described the front of his home looking like an armada of FBI agents had descended upon it: “They were across the street in the doorway. They were across the street in the alley, there was two or three of them dressed up as bums.”58 Gordon described the agents as “hungry wolves” who nevertheless addressed him politely with: “What has the Giant [Garrison] got on his mind tonight?” They asked if he could get close to the DA, and if he could would he help them? And Gordon agreed to cooperate with them.

  But it did not take long for Novel to blow his cover. He began to meet with NBC producer Walter Sheridan. He met Sheridan through an old lawyer acquaintance who represented him in his dealings with Clay Shaw, Dean Andrews.59 Sheridan actually met Novel in Andrews’s office. One of the first questions Sheridan asked him was, “Tell me everything you know about Garrison. I’ve got to know.” He also asked the Bay of Pigs accessory about various Cubans he knew.60 At this point, although Novel stayed in touch with Dulles and Helms, he now also began to do paid work against Garrison for Sheridan and NBC. For instance Sheridan wanted to know where Sergio Arcacha Smith was; and he also requested that Novel photograph some of the exhibits Garrison held as evidence. Which Novel did with a Minox camera. As Novel admitted in his deposition, he gave Sheridan some of his surveillance tapes of Garrison’s office.61 The problem was that—New Orleans being the smallest big city in America—wind of Gordon’s meetings with Sheridan got back to Garrison. And once the DA realized what Sheridan was up to, which did not take long, he immediately got suspicious of his newly hired “security expert.”

  As he should have. On March 7, 1967, Novel called up a policeman he knew, a Sergeant John Buccola.62 He asked him if he had been assigned to Garrison’s Kennedy probe yet. Buccola said he had not. Gordon said he would be soon. And when he was, he should call him. In the interim, Buccola found out that Novel was paying the police for information about Garrison’s probe. Two days later, as Novel predicted, Buccola and his partner Thomas Casso were transferred to Garrison’s office. Buccola called Novel and met him at the Jamaican Village. He asked him how he knew he would be transferred. Novel said he had connections everywhere. (Which he did.) He now began to ask Buccola questions about Garrison’s probe, and he requested certain mug shots of Ferrie’s friends from police files. He even made a telling remark to them about the case: “When Garrison opened up his case to you, weren’t you amazed to hear about the Second Oswald?” He then made an even bolder comment. He asked about a student friend of Ferrie’s ducking back to college “when Ferrie was killed.” Buccola wrote to Garrison’s Chief Investigator Lou Ivon that Novel did not say “when Ferrie died.” He specifically used the work “killed.” Novel added that he knew all the principals involved in Garrison’s case and the exact location of Clay Shaw. This last seemed aimed at Buccola. Because the first assignment Ivon gave him was to find Shaw. Which he and his partner Casso had spent twelve days working on—without success. And vice-versa, Shaw knew Novel’s phone number also, even when he was in Reno, Nevada. A number almost no one else had.63

  After a couple of weeks of this kind of behavior, on March 16, 1967, Novel was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury. He appeared with, not one, but two attorneys: Steve Plotkin and Eddie Sapir.64 It was a week after this appearance, on March 23, that Novel sold his interest in the Jamaican Village. He then skipped town. Plotkin said his client was visiting Washington. He added that Novel would return in due course. He then said, “His absence from the state is not to avoid the subpoena, or not to cooperate with the district attorney’s office, but for personal reasons.”65 This was a lie. Novel would not return to New Orleans until years later. And his intent was not just to avoid cooperating with Garrison. Now that he was out of his legal clutches, he was going to smear him in newspapers across the country, but especially by telephone and telegram to papers and magazines inside the Crescent City. How? Because now, Dulles and the Agency would begin to connect the fugitive from New Orleans with over a dozen CIA friendly journalists who—in a blatant attempt to destroy Garrison’s reputation— would proceed to write up the most outrageous stories imaginable about the DA.66 For instance that Garrison had advanced a “bizarre plan” to Novel, which entailed shooting Ferrie with a tranquilizing dart, kidnapping him, and applying as much sodium pentothal as needed to get him to confess.67 Later on he called Garrison “power-mad…. His mad ambitions have run away with him.”68

  To lend an air of credence to these wild charges, Walter Sheridan had arranged for Novel to take a polygraph test in McLean, Virginia. Novel then stated that he passed the test. This self-serving proclamation was also trumpeted in the media.69 For example, Novel said that when he was asked by the polygrapher if Garrison’s inquiry was a fraud, he answered “yes.” And the machine revealed he was being truthful. What the media did not investigate is the man Sheridan had hired for the Novel polygraph. Lloyd Furr was a partner of Leonard Harrelson. Harrelson was later investigated and prosecuted for fraud in polygraphing a certain number of police officers in St. Louis. Neither Furr nor Harrelson was a member of the Academy for Scientific Investigation, a professional board group that critiqued polygraph technicians and pushed for higher standards in the field. In fact, this group specifically criticized the work of Harrelson in a previous case where he was also employed by Sheridan. They said he deliberately lied about a certain polygraph result.70 After this dubious examination, Novel flew to Columbus, Ohio where he was safe housed. Governor James Rhodes did not sign the extradition papers from Garrison to allow him to be sent back to Louisiana. We will pick up this important strand in the next chapter.

  As stated earlier, there were four stages enacted in the overall plan to subvert Garrison. What has been just described here is the first one, consisting of singleton type penetration operations by DeTorres, Gurvich, and Novel. It is important to note a certain crossover from phase one singleton operations to what can be called phase two: the Walter Sheridan assault. For William Gurvich was sent by Sheridan to visit with Bobby Kennedy. Clearly this was an attempt by Sheridan to prejudice Kennedy against Garrison.71 Novel fleeing to Columbus, Ohio, and beginning an incessant media smear crusade against the DA is also important in the overall picture. Because as Paris Flammonde noted in his book The Kennedy Conspiracy, there was a long and intense media campaign that culminated in the last week of June with Walter Sheridan’s Monday night program entitled “The JFK Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison.” What Novel’s proclamations did was to begin this national propaganda barrage which would provide cover for certain governors not to honor extradition requests and for certain judges to decline to serve subpoenas.

  Once Ferrie and Del Valle were dead, it became much more difficult for Garrison to proceed. The lawyers on his staff knew that. Garrison held a meeting to see what his employees wanted to do at this point. Assistant DA Charles Ward recommended he stop the inquiry. Garrison disagreed. After the meeting, Jim Alcock and John Volz, two of his best trial specialists, went into his office. They explained how difficult it would now be with his best witness gone. Volz pointed out how short they were of help and he also recommended halting the inquiry. Garrison would have none of it, although he did say that anyone who wanted off the Kennedy inquiry could leave.72

  Garrison now decided to proceed against a second suspect he was building a case against. The man who he knew was Clay Bertrand. On March 1, 1967, at 5:30 P.M., Garrison issued an arrest warrant for Clay Shaw and a search warrant for his home in the French Quarter. When Garrison’s investigators came back from Shaw’s house, they had with them some strange artifacts: two large hooks that had been screwed to the ceiling of Shaw’s bedroom, five whips, several lengths of chain, a black hood, a webbed hat, and a cape. Shaw passed this off as Mardi Gras attire.73

  Expl
anations aside, it was clear that the fifty-four-year-old bachelor was into the nether regions of sadomasochist activity. In fact, Shaw’s position as director of the International Trade Mart had caused him to come under the all-seeing eyes of J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had in his Bureau files a report by an informant who stated that his homosexual relations with Shaw included sadism and masochism.74 It all explained Shaw’s use of Andrews to defend the “gay Mexicanos.” It also may have accounted for his use of an alias. Shaw’s homosexuality may also have provided a bond between the cool, wealthy, well-mannered Shaw and the excitable, rootless, eccentric Ferrie, a bond beyond their politics, and (as later revealed) their Agency ties.

  The search of Shaw’s home turned up another interesting tidbit. In his address book, there appeared the following entry:

  Lee Odom, P. O. Box 19106, Dallas, Tex.

  Garrison was aware that this same post office box number also appeared in Lee Oswald’s address book.75 Shaw’s lawyers later produced a man named Lee Odom who said he was from Dallas. The box number, he said, was that of a company he once worked for, and that he had tried to contact Shaw about “promoting a bullfight” in New Orleans. To Garrison, this was all reminiscent of Ferrie’s story about setting off for Texas to ice skate and hunt geese in a lightning storm.

  But there was another entry in Shaw’s book that was just as interesting. Although the entire book listed addresses and phone numbers, on one otherwise blank page were scrawled the two abbreviations “Oct.” and “Nov.” and next to these, the word “Dallas.”76

  On March 14, 1967, Garrison initiated a preliminary hearing against Shaw. This is a process usually requested by the defense, because it requires the DA to present a prima facie case to a judge or panel of judges. Prosecutors do not normally request it because, at such a hearing, the defense can cross-examine witnesses, which they cannot do in a grand jury proceeding.