Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  No Subpoenas Honored

  On March 27, 1967, Garrison’s office issued a subpoena for Sandra Moffett, a girl Perry Russo said had gone with him to Ferrie’s gathering on the night of the assassination discussion. The legal papers were signed by Judge Edward Haggerty, who would preside over the Shaw trial. Moffett had married and moved to Nebraska by this time. She said she was willing to testify, to take a polygraph test, or “anything else.”65 She was scheduled to appear in April and she was sent a check for her travel expenses. But two weeks before she was to arrive, Sandra Moffett got a lawyer. The lawyer now announced she was going to fight extradition and wanted to be under the protection of Nebraska courts.66 Further, the county officials would not attempt to enforce the New Orleans order. Which was odd since Nebraska and Louisiana had a full extradition compact at the time. The officials then announced that their search for the now missing witness was being abandoned. Moffett had fled to Iowa, a state with no extradition agreement with Louisiana.67

  After his attempt to question Sergio Arcacha Smith was derailed by Aynesworth and the Dallas Police, Garrison tried to extradite Arcaha Smith back to New Orleans. And, as we have seen, what a witness Arcacha Smith could have been. Here is a man who knew almost each and every important person in New Orleans: Ferrie, Shaw, Banister, Oswald, Carlos Quiroga, Emilio Santana, Ed Butler, and very likely Howard Hunt and David Phillips. A man who was associated with the CIA from the moment he left Castro’s Cuba. A CIA agent who worked on the Bay of Pigs with Ferrie and even had films of the operation. And then, according to Richard Case Nagell, was likely involved in the setting up of Oswald; and through the statements of Rose Cheramie and Mac Manual, knew Kennedy was going to be killed in Dallas just days before the assassination. Here is a suspect who, by necessity, had to lie about almost everything. It would have been interesting to measure his complicity and knowledge by the depth and scope of his lies during questioning. For example Arcacha denied he knew Ferrie at first. He even said he knew no one who hated Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs failure. This was humorously contradicted when his wife told reporters that Ferrie had been at their house the day of the invasion.68 But Arcacha Smith was not going to be subjected to such exposure under oath.

  His attorney, William Colvin, commented, “Garrison is a man who is power mad!…[He] used the law like a damn club.”69 On July 5, 1967 Arcacha Smith was officially released from extradition hearings. The 90 day period for their completion had elapsed. Governor John Connally had refused to sign the transfer documents unless Arcacha Smith was guaranteed immunity from civil and criminal action—which was an untenable assurance for a DA to give in advance of questioning.70

  With the declassified files, we finally get some insight into how the CIA was able to arrange some of these amazing feats of legal non-cooperation. In the summer of 1967, about a month before Sheridan’s special was to appear on NBC, a CIA lawyer named Dennis O’Keefe met with a Judge Sinclair of Fairfax County, Virginia. Sinclair would be involved in the transfer of any subpoena from Garrison to Langley. O’Keefe briefed Sinclair on the Agency’s views of any legal requests from Garrison. Afterward, the lawyer wrote:

  The Judge … promised to cooperate with us in every area whence in judicial and legal ethics would allow such cooperation. He said there would be no unnecessary publicity emanating from his court and stated that he would call Mr. Houston or myself if and when he heard anything relating to the service of Garrison’s subpoena. I gave the Judge Mr. Houston’s and my phone numbers and thanked him for his cooperation in this matter.71

  At around this time, Garrison issued subpoenas for both Richard Helms and any photographs of Oswald in Mexico City that the CIA held. Counsel Lawrence Houston promptly met with Carl Belcher at Justice, and called Louis LaCour the U.S. attorney in New Orleans, and Edward Hebert, the congressional representative from the area. Hebert was very close to the Agency, and in fact had met with Helms in May.72 The meeting with LaCour was to prepare in case Garrison subpoenaed either Lloyd Ray or Hunter Leake from the local CIA office in New Orleans. Therefore, when Garrison’s subpoenas arrived in Virginia, Houston and Belcher conferred and, “It was agreed that the subpoena would be returned as not having been properly served.” In the memo, there were no legal grounds mentioned for returning the subpoena. The CIA did not want it served and Belcher, like Sinclair, complied. Simple as that. Houston then wrote a letter to New Orleans judge Bernard Bagert who had signed the subpoena. He denied there were photos of Oswald in Mexico City. This reply was run by Attorney General Ramsey Clark and White House adviser Harry McPherson. Hebert then called Bagert and the judge agreed to keep the returned, unanswered subpoena under wraps, with little or no publicity accorded. The judge was pleased to be part of such a covert little intelligence operation which made the Agency above the law. For Hebert informed the Agency that the judge had called him back after he got Houston’s letter and “was very pleased with the letter and that he considered this ‘privileged’ information.” How pleased was the judge? Hebert said Bagert “had turned the letter over to the foreman of the Grand Jury”!73 In other words the Agency not only had the thwarting of Garrison’s subpoenas completely covered at both ends, they also had a cooperative judge signing them who was not going to reveal that secret operation to the press.

  It is important to make a legal distinction here. Once a witness is served with a subpoena, he is legally obligated to appear in court. If he does not, he is in defiance of the subpoena. He then can be charged with contempt of court. This can lead to a jail term. With the CIA, Justice Department, and White House doing what they did—that is, interfering with the process ex parte— they saved the receiving parties the embarrassment of having to explain the judicial doctrine they were following by not complying with a legal subpoena.

  This same interference was clearly at work when Garrison tried to subpoena both Commission counsel Wesley Liebeler and Warren Commissioner Allen Dulles. Liebeler complained that he had personal business to attend to at the time which conflicted with his New Orleans court date. Therefore, a district court judge then blocked a request to have Liebeler appear.74 When Dulles was subpoenaed, the U.S. attorney David G. Bress refused to assist in the procedure. He wrote back to the DA that he did not care to assist him in this matter. He then returned both the documents and the check for Dulles’s traveling expenses.75 To say the least, these two men would have been very interesting witnesses to demonstrate how the Warren Commission actually worked. Or, more properly, didn’t work. But it is clear that from the White House, to the halls of Langley, to Ramsey Clark at Justice, Washington was going to protect itself from being exposed in the court room. And they were going to get the issuing and returning judges to go along with it.

  Cornering the Media

  As mentioned above, when Irvin Dymond and Ed Wegmann met with Nathaniel Kossack, they pointed out to him that, even after the airing of Sheridan’s special, Garrison’s approval ratings within the state were still extremely high. What they were trying to suggest was that a jury of average people could still be swayed just by the DA’s reputation and stature within the community. Something seems to have been done about this later in a clandestine manner.

  In the spring of 1968, Harold Weisberg interviewed Tommy Baumler. Baumler had formerly worked for Guy Banister as part of his corps of student infiltrators in the New Orleans area.76 Because of that experience, Baumler knew a lot about Banister’s operation. For instance, that Banister’s files were coded, and that Banister had blackmail material on the subjects he kept files on.77 He also knew the intelligence network in New Orleans was constructed through Banister, Clay Shaw, and Guy Johnson; how close Shaw and Banister were; and that “Oswald worked for Banister.”78 In Weisberg’s interview with Tommy, he would occasionally ask to go off the record by telling him to turn the tape recorder off. Clearly, there were things going on in New Orleans that Baumler considered too hot to be attributed to him.

  At this time, April of 1968, Weisberg considered Baumler
to be an “unabashed fascist.” He explained this further by saying that Baumler was “aware of the meaning of his beliefs and considers what he describes as his beliefs as proper.” He then explained to Weisberg the following, “that whatever happens, the Shaw case will end without punishment for him because federal power will see to that.”79 He further said that this would also happen to anyone else charged by Garrison. Baumler then started to describe “the activities of a man he said had to be CIA and engaged in what he wanted me to understand was a major propaganda campaign, designed to influence public opinion here, including that of jurors and about you personally.” (Note, Weisberg’s memo of this interview is being forwarded to Garrison, which is who “you” refers to.) Baumler went on to describe this man as outwardly “nondescript.” But his knowledge of the case was “tremendous,” and his attitude was “very antagonistic.” Weisberg went on to note that Baumler said that about this man, “if the CIA could put 500 men like him working throughout the country, it would kill the probe. He is, according to Tommy, “fabulous.”80

  From this interview, what appears to have happened is that the CIA sent someone into New Orleans to impact public opinion about Garrison. This may have been occasioned by a letter forwarded to CIA HQ by Lloyd Ray of the local New Orleans office. In this letter, a lawyer friend in New Orleans named Charles Dunbar had written that, “From original skepticism, many people around town are beginning to think Jim might have something, in any event, I don’t believe the CIA can play ostrich much longer.”81 This forwarded note seems to have marked a milestone in the Agency’s reaction to Garrison. Prior to this, the CIA was being essentially passive. They were recording much material and monitoring events. Whenever they were asked for information or their attitude, as in the Sheridan case, they cooperated. But after this note was forwarded, John Greaney, Lawrence Houston’s assistant, visited in New Orleans with Lloyd Ray to discuss the Garrison inquiry. Ray’s memo on this meeting was still largely redacted, even at the time the ARRB was at work. But then something quite interesting happened. William Gurvich, now working with Shaw’s lawyers, visited the offices of the New Orleans States-Item. Ross Yockey and Hoke May had been seriously investigating the Shaw case. And they had been doing that in a fair and judicious manner. They had uncovered some interesting facts about how Gordon Novel’s lawyers were being paid. After Gurvich’s visit, the States-Item pulled Yockey and May from the Garrison beat.82 When this author interviewed Yockey in 1995, he said that after this, he was then assigned to covering high school football games.

  With the States-Item now neutralized, the coverage in New Orleans now became imbalanced. Because the other major local reporters on the story were Rosemary James, David Chandler, and Dave Snyder. For instance, in the fall of 1968, Snyder told a potential witness for Garrison, “We want to talk to you because the States-Item was going to prove Garrison had no case and was on a witch hunt.”83 David Chandler would merit an entire chapter of his own. Briefly, Chandler had been a good friend of Jim Garrison prior to the DA’s opening of his investigation of the Kennedy case. And his coverage of him as District Attorney had been balanced, that is, never getting wildly favorable, or extremely negative.

  But something happened to Chandler after Garrison started investigating the JFK case. He had been one of the contacts for the team researching the JFK case for Life. Once this team got in contact with Garrison, Chandler immediately began to accent the role of Carlos Marcello in any kind of Kennedy assassination plot. Even though, at this point, late in 1966, there was very little, if any, evidence for which to make that case. So therefore Chandler began to just drop Marcello’s name into the investigation, once insinuating that Marcello had bribed someone in Garrison’s office. Then in an interview with Garrison assistant Charles Ward, the reporter admitted he had nothing to base this upon.84 Chandler, most likely at Dean Andrews’s request, then began to state as fact broadly exaggerated and incomplete information he had from Garrison about the DA’s investigation of the Clay Bertrand figure.85 In a conversation with Tom Bethell of Garrison’s staff, he once said that he would like to see Garrison behind bars.86

  But Chandler’s most serious blast against Garrison and his inquiry was a two part article written for Life in the fall of 1967. This appeared in the September 1 and 8 issues of the magazine. The pieces masqueraded as an expose of Mafia influence in large cities in America at the time. But the real target of the piece was not the mob, but Garrison. The idea was to depict him as a corrupt New Orleans DA who had some kind of nebulous ties to the Mafia and Carlos Marcello. There were four principal participants in the pieces: Chandler, Sandy Smith, Dick Billings, and Robert Blakey.87 Smith was the actual billed writer. And since Smith was a long-time asset of the FBI, it is very likely that the Bureau was the originating force behind the magazine running the piece. The idea was that since Garrison had a hotel room paid for on a visit to Las Vegas, and he had a credit line there, he was somehow in the pocket of the Mafia. When Billings visited him about the article, Garrision explained the free room as a loss leader for the hotel—that is, by letting famous people stay there, they hoped to gain business and notoriety. Which is a common practice in the resort city. Further, the hotel did not pay for his phone bill or valet fee. Therefore, how could the Mafia have been behind such a thing?88 When Billings then asked Garrison about a local bookkeeper in town, Garrison said he did not recall the name. Billings jumped on him for this lack of knowledge.89 In the reissue of his Mafia did it book, called Fatal Hour, Billings wrote that the name he gave Garrision at this time was Marcello’s. This is proven false by Garrison’s contemporaneous notes of this discussion. The name is revealed there as someone called Frank Timphony.90 But this is how badly Life wanted to smear Garrison.

  It was the work of Chandler, a friend of both Clay Shaw and Kerry Thornley, which was the basis of the completely phony concept that Garrison was somehow in bed with the Mafia and his function was to steer attention from their killing of Kennedy. This ploy was not just damaging to Garrison, but it did much to confuse the true circumstances of the Kennedy assassination.91 When Chandler was called before the grand jury to repeat the facts he used for the article, Garrison found that he had escaped his clutches by being hired as a state investigator by Governor McKeithen. Garrison must now have realized the meaning of the term hardball politics. McKeithen is the man who owed Garrison his office. The governor now sorrowfully explained to the DA that he couldn’t support him anymore. He did what he did with Chandler because the editors at Life had threatened to do to him what they had just done to Garrison unless he went along with the scheme. Garrison told the governor, you know, we used to call Huey Long the Kingfish, we should call you the crawfish.92

  Irvin Dymond Meets Lloyd Ray

  As noted, in the summer of 1967, Shaw’s defense team made all kinds of overtures, including trips to Washington, to enlist the aid of the federal government to help their client. As Tommy Baumler noted to Weisberg, this apparently happened in 1968. But there is an event that preceded the Baumler disclosure which may mark the moment in time that the Agency crossed over from lending aid and advice through fronts like Sheridan and Miller, to actually getting directly involved. This appears to have happened the same month that the Garrison Group met, September of 1967. At this point, Dymond’s request for information was sent to CIA HQ in Langley. On September 26, in a cable marked “restricted handling” and “SECRET,” this clandestine channel to Shaw’s lawyers appears to be approved by Langley, Virginia. Upon this approval, the New Orleans station wired back, “I do not believe our contact with Dymond could possibly be twisted into a story of CIA association.”93 It is important to note that the request for approval came before the first meeting of the Garrison Group, but the actual approval came afterwards. There seems to be a connection between the two. Because in all the cable traffic prior to this, the disapproval of any meeting or direct contact was for the reason that if it was discovered, Garrison could use it to his advantage. (In August, Rocca
requested that the local station be checked for implanted surveillance devices by the DA.) One has to suspect that it was Rocca’s warning about Garrison being able to convict Shaw that somehow caused the reversal in policy. Once the commitment was made, it was really made. For a cable went out on January 8, 1968 which reads in part: “[Garrison] case is of interest to several Agency components covering aspects which relate to Agency…office heavily committed to this endeavor.”94 Another memo that was also partly declassified says, “This is an ongoing review. Recipients will receive updatings as the New Orleans cases develop. [Censored] is requested to carry out tasks stipulated in para. 5, 6 and 7. The New Orleans offices…will be tasked by separate memoradum per para. 8” (Italics added). This clearly suggests that there were task forces at work in the city to thwart the DA. Very likely the man Baumler was talking about was part of it. Another likelihood is that Gurvich’s mission to remove Yockey and May from the States-Item Garrison beat was a CIA ordered task. We will now describe what appears to be another.

  We have already described the instance of the receptionist at the VIP Lounge for Eastern Air Lines telling Garrison that Shaw was there one day in December of 1966 and signed the register as Clay Bertrand. In addition to the identification, the handwriting clearly resembled Shaw’s. There was a battle royal over the handwriting sample at the trial between two famous document examiners, Elizabeth McCarthy of Boston and the FBI’s Charles Appel.

  But something came up related to this incident way before the trial. And the local CIA office got involved in it. On November 15, 1967, Ray sent a memo to Langley. In it he told HQ that his colleague Hunter Leake had attended a party the night before at a friend’s house. The friend, Alfred Moran, told him that Garrison’s office knew of several individuals who were at the VIP Lounge when Shaw was there. The next sentence reads as follows: “Mr. Moran recalled the occasion and positively identified to the Assistant DA the presence of Clay Shaw at that time.”95 The next day, the CIA put Ray and Leake on the tail of Moran. It is important to note that Moran had been used as a contact by both the New Orleans and Miami offices. CIA HQ did extensive background checks on Moran. They then contemplated having Leake meet with him to get more on his story. This was then put off since Moran was ill. So another track was tried. The Agency decided that “it makes no sense for Clay Shaw to use the name Clem (sic) Bertrand at such a meeting,” then there must have been two different people. Yet, no one in the city could turn up anyone else who used the name. Even though Shaw’s lawyers placed an ad in the States-Item asking who signed the register as Clay Bertrand.96 Houston told Leake that he should “casually” inquire of Moran along the line that he had suggested: That Shaw had no reason to sign the register as Bertrand and they were two different people. In other words, talk the man out of his story by employing false information. This ploy worked with the pliable Moran. In two weeks Moran admitted to everything he had said to Leake at the party with one exception: He had not seen Shaw at the VIP lounge on that occasion.97 In other words, with some direction from the Agency, and implementation from Leake and Ray, the witness had reversed himself.