Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  The lead attorney for the State was young Jim Alcock. One of Garrison’s few good choices during the trial, Alcock did a decent enough job with the materials available. He knew the nuances of the case, the constitutional issues involved, and his summation, before Garrison’s, was simple, direct, and impassioned.

  Alvin Oser, the assistant DA who handled most of the Dealey Plaza testimony, was just as good as Alcock. With the help of Vincent Salandria, he had mastered the technical aspects of the case: the autopsy report, the ballistics tests, the bullet trajectories, and more. Oser was confident, aggressive, and thoroughly convinced of and schooled in the fallacies of the Report. By the time he delivered his summation, the Warren Report lay in tiny pieces on the courtroom floor.

  After a long jury selection process that entailed more than 1,200 interviews, the trial began on February 6, 1969. Including jury selection, it lasted thirtynine days.33 To say the CIA was ready for the proceeding is an understatement. As soon as the jury was selected, James Angleton began to run background checks on them through Agency computers. This information was then given to the Office of Security.34 Certain of Garrison’s witnesses were also afforded this treatment. For example Dr. John Nichols had been a deft critic of the Warren Commission’s treatment of the ballistics evidence. Garrison had him testify about the dubiousness of the Single Bullet Theory. This was the Warren Commission’s necessary concept that one bullet went through both Kennedy and Governor John Connally, making seven wounds and smashing two bones, yet remained almost unscathed when allegedly found at Parkland Hospital. Nichols was a pathologist from Kansas. After he testified, Angleton sent a request to the FBI for additional information on the doctor.35 The FBI was ready for the requests, since after a series of meetings with Shaw’s lawyers they had agreed to check out State witnesses, or potential witnesses, who would testify for Garrison.36

  The CIA also decided it needed not just wall to wall coverage of the trial, but coverage in real time. Declassified internal memoranda reveal that the Agency subscribed to both local papers for the trial coverage: the States–Item and Times-Picayune. Hunter Leake of the New Orleans office would then forward clippings from the papers to Richard Helms’ assistant at CIA HQ.37 But then a teletype machine was actually moved into the New Orleans office to keep Langley aware of all developments in the trial as they occurred.38 The J ustice Department was also represented at the proceedings. Their official liaison with the court was a young lawyer named Harry Connick. Connick was the man who sat next to witnesses that the government deemed important and official, such as Navy pathologist Pierre Finck and FBI agent Regis Kennedy. He also was with them when there was any pre-trial questioning requested. For instance, when Finck flew into town, he was asked questions by both sides in their offices. Connick was by his side. As we shall see, this was a significant detail that had future large ramifications.

  It is necessary to add one more important aspect to what happened at the trial. Before and during the trial, Garrison’s witnesses were being surveilled, harassed, and physically attacked. For instance, Richard Case Nagell had a grenade thrown at him from a speeding car in New York. Nagell brought the remains of the grenade to Garrison and told him he did not think it wise for him to testify at Shaw’s trial.39 Even though Garrison had spirited Clyde Johnson out of town, and very few people knew where he was, the FBI’s total surveillance evidently paid off. He was brutally beaten on the eve of the trial and hospitalized.40 Aloysius Habighorst, the man who booked Shaw and heard him say his alias was Bertrand, was rammed by a truck the day before he testified. After he testified, Edwin McGehee found a prowler on his front lawn. He called the marshal, and the man was arrested. At the station, the man asked to make one phone call. The call he made was to the International Trade Mart.41 After he testified, Reeves Morgan had the windows shot out of his truck.42 What makes all this violent witness intimidation more startling is what Robert Tanenbaum stated to the author in an interview for Probe Magazine. He said that he had seen a set of documents that originated in the office of Richard Helms. They revealed that the CIA was monitoring and harassing Garrison’s witnesses. As Tanenbaum stated it, he had a negative view of Garrison up until the time he became Deputy Counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Then he read “all this material that had come out of Helms’s office, that in fact what Garrison had said was true. They were harassing his witnesses, they were intimidating his witnesses. The documents exist. Where they are now, God only knows.”43 As alluded to before, this was the escalating stage of CIA interference which could not be recorded by Marchetti. Where the top level of Angleton’s office met CIA Director Richard Helms.

  After opening presentations by Garrison and chief defense attorney Dymond, the prosecution led off with what many observers considered their best witnesses: the people from Clinton who had seen Ferrie, Oswald, and Shaw together in the late summer of 1963. Reeves Morgan, Edward Lee McGehee, John Manchester, Henry Palmer, Corrie Collins, and William Dunn made strong, simple witnesses. The prosecution bolstered their testimony with Bobbie Dedon and Maxine Kemp, two women from Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson, the place where Shaw and Ferrie wanted Oswald to get a job. They testified that Oswald had indeed visited them to inquire about a position and had filled out an application, which had since been discarded.

  Next on the stand for the State was Vernon Bundy, who linked Shaw to Oswald. Dymond warmed to the attack on this relatively easy target. Bundy was black, was a drug user, and had a police record, so Dymond scored some points here. But Bundy had a surprise in store for the crusty courtroom veteran. He asked the judge to have the defendant go to the back of the room while Bundy himself sat in an aisle seat. Judge Haggerty agreed, and Vernon Bundy now began his demonstration. He asked Shaw to walk toward him. As Shaw did so, Bundy stared at his feet. When he got close, he stopped, and after a pause, Bundy asked him to repeat the exercise. After the second time, Bundy returned to the witness stand and revealed how he knew he had seen Clay Shaw: “I watched his foot, the way it twisted that day. This is one way I identified this man the next time I saw him.”44 In fact, when John Volz interviewed Bundy, Volz took him to his office window, since he knew Shaw was coming into the court building that day. Bundy looked at him and told Volz that was him, he recognized the limp.45 Shaw, in fact, did walk with a slight twist. He explained later how an old war injury to his back had caused this hitch in his gait. The irony was that this witness, whose status the defense had tried to belittle, had noticed something telling that no one else had.

  The prosecution had quickly reached its zenith. The next witness for the State was a New Yorker named Charles Spiesel.46 The DA had not uncovered Spiesel. He had called Garrison’s office to enter the case.47 Alcock went to New York to interview him and, according to the prosecutor, he seemed alright to him at the time.48 Apparently what neither Alcock nor Garrison knew was that Spiesel’s father was an FBI agent and was fully aware of what he was going to testify to on the stand.49 The small, wiry New York accountant had been in Louisiana, he related, to visit his daughter who attended LSU, when he met Ferrie at a bar.50 The two then went to visit Clay Shaw at a building in the approximate area where Shaw’s home was located. They began drinking, and, testified Spiesel, Ferrie brought up the subject of a possible Kennedy assassination. Spiesel was surprised at this turn in the conversation but he chalked it up to the liquor. Spiesel recalled some talk about a high-powered rifle and a telescopic sight. Shaw had added that Ferrie would have to fly the assassins away after the crime.51 He closed his direct testimony saying that he never saw Shaw again, though he did run into Ferrie a few times. Ferrie had suggested, he claimed, that Shaw could help set him up in business in New Orleans. Spiesel allegedly called Shaw’s office on a few occasions, but those calls were never returned.52

  Dymond now took over, asking the witness if he had tried to sell his story to the media. At first Spiesel resisted, but when Dymond challenged him, he admitted he had discussed the matter with CBS. When
the attorney asked how much he was looking for, he replied, “I told him a couple of thousand.”53 Dymond then asked where Spiesel had stayed in New Orleans during the summer of 1963. He said it had been at a hotel and then two apartments. When asked to name the hotel and the location of the two apartments, Spiesel could not recall.54

  Now Dymond closed in for the kill. He asked Spiesel if he had noticed anything unusual about David Ferrie. “No,” replied the witness. This was amazing because everyone knew what a startling appearance Ferrie had possessed. Spiesel added that he was “fairly well-groomed,” and the only unusual thing about his appearance was his rather thin eyebrows.55 This about a hairless man who glued on a wig and pasted mohair above his eyes.

  Dymond then asked Spiesel if he had ever been hypnotized, and Spiesel replied many, many times.56 When asked by whom, he said it was the New York City Police who had tortured him while he was under hypnosis and made him give up his accounting work.57 Dymond pursued this, asking if he had had trouble with a communist conspiracy, “people following you and tapping your phones?”58 Spiesel tried to dodge this, and Dymond then asked if he had fingerprinted his daughter in New York before she left for LSU. Spiesel said he had. Did he also fingerprint her when she returned. Again, the answer was yes. When Dymond asked why he did this, Spiesel replied that he had been hypnotized so often he wanted to be sure it was her when she returned.59 At this point, Garrison later recalled, “I was swept by a feeling of nausea.”60

  How did Dymond know precisely how to detonate the witness? The defense team’s story about Spiesel was that a friend of Sal Panzeca’s named Bill Storm informed him about the witness during cross examination. With the files adduced by the Review Board, this does not ring true today. For instance, there are newspaper clippings about Spiesel in the defense team’s files. Aynesworth was asking questions about him ten days before he took the stand. And at that time he noted that the defense had already tried to call him.61 Two days before he testified, the defense team’s prime investigatory service, Wackenhut, had tracked down his daughter and her husband. Finally, in the Wegmann files turned over to the ARRB, there is a combined confidential report and a legal attachment, of which only a cover sheet remains. This report was assembled by a different detective agency. Either this file is missing or it was stripped before it was turned over to the Review Board.62 With this new evidence, a question now appears as to how and when the defense really discovered Spiesel’s questionable background.

  The reason that Spiesel was so devastating was that his testimony directly struck the chords that Sheridan, Phelan, and Aynesworth had been harping upon. Namely that Garrison would use hypnotized, unstable witnesses to convict an innocent man. For this purpose, Spiesel was nearly perfect. And as he left the stand, so went Garrison’s case against Shaw. After the trial, Ed Wegmann wrote, “Had we been unsuccessful in our efforts to secure information with regard to Charles I. Spiesel … the results could well have been a verdict of guilty.”63

  Perry Russo, a crucial witness, was next. And as Matt Herron later noted, his testimony, because of the two year battering he had taken, now seemed diluted.64 During his two-and-a-half days on the stand, he admitted that the fateful discussion he overheard may have been just that, just talk, not an actual plan to commit a crime. Russo also said that no one except Ferrie ever told him they had decided to kill the President, and Ferrie told him this in private.65

  Dymond tried to get Russo to say that he was not sure that the “Bertrand” at the meeting was actually Shaw. Earlier, journalist James Phelan had also tried this on Russo, implying he had actually seen Banister instead of Shaw. But Russo was ready this time. He denied it categorically, “No, that is absolutely false….I am absolutely sure the defendant is the man who was there.”66 After two days of grilling, Russo got strained and edgy. His cross-examination ended in a shouting match between the witness, Dymond, Alcock, and the judge. Dymond closed his cross-examination by implying that Russo was mentally ill.67

  Since the defense had impugned Russo’s mental state, Alcock made a motion to read to the jury the testimony of Dr. Nicholas Chetta at the preliminary hearing. (Dr. Chetta had died in the interval.) The real reason for bringing in the testimony was to bolster Russo’s credibility by showing there was no hanky-panky during the administering of the Sodium Pentothal. Alcock knew that Phelan would later be put on the stand by the defense to tell his story about Russo. Because of Dymond’s references to Russo’s mental state, Judge Haggerty allowed the reading of Dr. Chetta’s testimony.68 When Alcock tried to have Dr. Fatter, who had conducted the hypnosis, accepted as a witness, Dymond objected on the ground that most of what he had to say was hearsay; Judge Haggerty agreed. Alcock argued, with some logic, that this was inconsistent with the ruling on Dr. Chetta’s testimony.69

  After Russo, the most important witnesses relating to Clay Shaw were Richard Jackson and James Hardiman.70 These two postal employees testified that for a time in 1966, Clay Shaw had redirected his mail to 1414 Chartres Street, home of a friend named Jeff Biddison. There was confusion over just when this had begun, but it ended on September 21 of that year. Jackson had handled the change of address card, whereas Hardiman actually delivered the mail to the house. He said that a few pieces of mail were in fact addressed to a Clem Bertrand at the Chartres house. When Alcock asked if any of the letters were given back because they were wrongly addressed, the letter carrier replied, “No, I don’t recall getting any back.”71 This restored some of the lost credibility to Garrison’s case, particularly as it related to the alias.

  The only witness that Garrison was able to produce to inquire into the official investigation of the assassination in New Orleans was FBI agent Regis Kennedy. And even then, by prior arrangement with the Justice Department, Kennedy would only testify about a certain area of his inquiry, namely his interview with Dean Andrews and his consequent search for Clay Bertrand. This limitation hurt the DA since Kennedy was a relevant witness to other aspects of the case. For instance, along with several others, he had been a member of the Friends of Democratic Cuba group set up by Guy Banister and William Dalzell. Further, there were witnesses who put Kennedy in Banister’s office.72 Therefore, what Kennedy could have told the court about Banister, Ferrie, their association with the Cubans—especially Sergio Arcacha Smith—and Oswald, was very likely considerable. But he was not allowed to testify about any of those important matters. Consequently, when Alcock asked him if he was involved with the investigation into President Kennedy’s death prior to his interview with Andrews, Kennedy said he was not sure if he could answer that question. He then conferred with Connick, who was a near constant presence in the courtroom. After doing that, Kennedy refused to answer. Then, with the jury escorted outside, a long discussion took place about whether or not Kennedy could answer the question. The discussion then went inside the judge’s chambers. Connick then called Washington. After this, the jury was called back inside. Alcock then asked Kennedy if prior to his interview with Andrews, had he been engaged in the inquiry into President Kennedy’s assassination. Kennedy replied in the affirmative. Alcock then was allowed to ask the follow up question, which related to the first: Was Kennedy seeking Clay Bertrand in connection with his overall investigation into the assassination. Kennedy said that he was.73

  There was a coda to all this that Alcock could not have known about. But it was part of the reason that Attorney General John Mitchell severely curtailed Regis Kennedy’s testimony in mid-trial. After Garrison’s probe had been exposed in public, the FBI began to do a survey as to what their postassassination investigation had revealed. William Branigan was the counterintelligence chief in charge of the FBI’s Oswald investigation. In the Bureau’s 1967 review, he stated that all the information Regis Kennedy uncovered had been forwarded to the Warren Commission. But some of it had been sealed at the request of certain Commission members and McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy’s national security adviser. (Bundy was a friend of Allen Dulles.) Parts of the report had been seale
d because it pertained to “information showing certain people were homosexuals” and this was deemed as not important to the investigation.74 Since the term “homosexuals” is in the plural, this almost has to be Shaw and Ferrie. Therefore it confirms what Ramsey Clark said about Shaw being part of the FBI’s investigation back in 1963. It would also seem to affirm the Justice Department report in the New York Times stating that they were convinced that Shaw and Clay Bertrand were the same man.75

  Alvin Oser then presented the prosecution’s all-out attack on the Warren Report. It featured a scale model of Dealey Plaza, the Zapruder film shown at various speeds, photos and visual models, and compelling witnesses the Commission ignored. Well prepared by Salandria, Oser was particularly adept at demolishing the testimony of “experts” like Robert Frazier on ballistics and Dr. Finck on the autopsy. Oser got Frazier to admit that the tests conducted by the FBI did not replicate the conditions at Dealey Plaza. They were staged to produce a desired result, and even then, none of the marksmen could duplicate Oswald’s alleged feat.76

  Pierre Finck “Louses Everything Up”

  Edward Wegmann first phoned Dr. Pierre Finck and requested that he testify at the Shaw trial on February 16.77 This was likely in response to the effectiveness of the Alvin Oser/Vincent Salandria Dealey Plaza presentation of the trial. The conjunction of the Zapruder film with witnesses like James Simmons, who said he heard shots from the grassy knoll area and then saw smoke rising from there, was compelling.78 Oser then called Dr. John Nichols, a pathologist, to offer commentary on the Zapruder film. Oser asked him to make a conclusion as to the source of the fatal shot to Kennedy’s skull. Nichols replied, “Having viewed the Zapruder film, the individual 35 mm frames and the particular exhibits here, I would say that this is compatible with a gunshot having been delivered from the front.”79 Wegmann was going to bring in Finck to certify that all this testimony did not matter. Because the medical evidence convicted Oswald, and only Oswald. So after Finck got Wegmann’s call, he phoned the Justice Department and met with Deputy Assistant Attorney General Carl Eardley. He then went to his office and reviewed numerous documents about the autopsy.80 After organizing his trip, Eardley called Finck and told him he had a check and a D.C. court order for him to appear at the Shaw trial. Finck then flew down to New Orleans and met with Shaw’s lawyers. Connick also called him at his hotel to offer him his help.81