Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  Walter said he telephoned the special agent in charge, Harry Maynard, who ordered Walter to call special agents with CIs and PCIs. Walter said he did this, writing the names of five agents contacted on the face of the teletype. By 8 a.m., Maynard had arrived for work and Walter went home.

  Five days later, on November 22, 1963, Walter said, he was in a barber shop when he heard about Kennedy’s assassination. Rushing back to the FBI office, he showed the teletype to various agents and asked, “How could this have happened? We had five days’ notice!” Later that day, Walter said, he typed a copy of the teletype and wrote the five agents’ names on the copy, which he took home.

  Walter said soon after the assassination, Director Hoover ordered all agents in the New Orleans office who had written reports dealing with the case to review those reports. The object was to make sure there was nothing in them that might “embarrass the Bureau.” Originals of the reports were to be destroyed.

  Checking the relevant file later, Walter discovered the teletype was missing. In 1975, Walter told his story and showed his copy of the teletype to senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. Later the House Select Committee on Assassinations looked into the matter. The committee checked with New Orleans agents, supervisor Maynard, and even Walter’s ex-wife, who also worked for the FBI. All claimed to know nothing about a teletype. The committee, declaring that it “declined to believe that that many employees of the FBI would have remained silent for such a long time,” concluded that Walter’s story was “unfounded.”

  Unfounded or not, there were other stories in New Orleans that were even harder to dismiss—take, for example, Adrian Thomas Alba, operator of the Crescent City Garage. The Crescent City Garage was located next door to the William Reily Coffee Company, Oswald’s employer while in New Orleans. Alba, a quiet man who has not sought publicity, was both operator and part owner of the garage. Alba said the garage had a contract to maintain a number of cars for the nearby Secret Service and FBI offices.

  Alba said Oswald made frequent visits to his garage during the summer of 1963 and he got to know the ex-Marine quite well. They talked about firearms and Alba would loan Oswald his gun magazines. He claimed to have helped Oswald fix the sling on his rifle.

  But Alba’s best story concerns a visit in early summer 1963. He said a man he believed to be an “FBI agent visiting New Orleans from Washington” came to his garage and took a green Studebaker from the car pool, after showing his credentials. The next day Alba said he saw the same car parked by Oswald’s workplace about thirty yards away. According to Alba, “Lee Oswald went across the sidewalk. He bent down as if to look in the window and was handed what appeared to be a good-sized white envelope. He turned and bent as if to hold the envelope to his abdomen, and I think he put it under his shirt. Oswald went back into the building and the car drove off.”

  Years later, Alba said he saw the same thing happen the next day, but was farther away and could not see what was passed to Oswald. He said he did not tell the Warren Commission about these incidents because he did not recall them until 1970 when he was reminded of them by a TV commercial depicting a man running to and from a taxi.

  The House Select Committee on Assassinations checked garage records and found that two Studebakers had been signed out during that time in 1963, but by Secret Service agents.

  Alba recalled seeing Oswald after he was fired from the coffee company, allegedly for malingering. Alba said Oswald seemed pleased with the turn of events and said he expected to soon be working at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plant near New Orleans. Alba quoted Oswald as saying, “I have found my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.” Of course, this was not to be. Oswald’s destiny lay in Dallas.

  But oddly enough, five Reily Coffee employees, all of whom were in contact with Oswald, did join the NASA facility shortly after Oswald’s departure. Former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison came across these intriguing employment shifts during his ill-fated JFK assassination probe. Oswald left the coffee company on July 19, 1963, just a few weeks before he began his public show of handing out FPCC material. According to Garrison, Alfred Claude, the man who hired Oswald at Reily, went to work for Chrysler Aerospace Division at NASA’s New Orleans facility. Emmett Barbee, Oswald’s immediate superior at Reily, followed Claude to the NASA center in a few days. And within a few weeks they were joined by John D. Branyon and Dante Marachini, both of whom worked with Oswald. Branyon and Marachini also began aerospace careers at the New Orleans NASA center. Marachini, who had gone to work for Reily the same day as Oswald, also was a friend of CIA-Mafia agent David Ferrie.

  To compound these oddities, Garrison found that two of Ferrie’s friends also went to work for the NASA center about this same time. James Lewallen, a friend of Ferrie’s who lived in the same apartment house as Marachini, went to work for Boeing, located in the NASA complex. Melvin Coffee, who had accompanied Ferrie on his strange Texas odyssey the night of the assassination, was hired by NASA at Cape Kennedy in Florida.

  Was all this coincidence or was there some connecting link between these occurrences? Garrison claimed these men were lured into government-connected jobs so as to make them unavailable during the subsequent assassination investigation. And in fact, none of these men were called to testify before the Warren Commission. Garrison wrote in A Heritage of Stone, “The fact that these transfers were being made not in direct support of the assassination, but looking far beyond that, in order to complicate further investigations which might afterward occur, serves to give some idea of the scope and professional nature of the entire operation.”

  Other Dallas FBI agents swore under oath that Oswald was never an FBI informant. However, the truthfulness of their statements has come under severe question in light of the saga of Dallas FBI agent James P. Hosty Jr., who was assigned to check on Oswald prior to the assassination. Although Hosty claims to never have met Oswald in person, his name, address, telephone number, and car license number appeared in Oswald’s personal notebook—a fact omitted from a December 23, 1963, FBI report to the Warren Commission.

  In testimony to the Commission, Director Hoover explained that the omission was due to the fact that the report was not originally intended for the Commission. He said that the information on Hosty in Oswald’s notebook was presented to the Commission in a February 11, 1964, report. Of course, by that time, the Commission was already very much aware of the connection between Hosty and Oswald.

  Hoover also explained that it was not unusual for agents to leave their name, address, and telephone number for persons they were attempting to contact. He said Oswald’s wife, Marina, probably jotted down Hosty’s license number for her husband. Hosty, however, claimed he had parked his car some distance from the house where Marina was staying to avoid drawing attention to his visit.

  On January 22, 1964, Texas attorney general Waggoner Carr called Warren Commission general counsel J. Lee Rankin to report that he had information that Oswald had been recruited as an informant for the FBI in September 1962. He further stated that Oswald was being paid $200 a month and assigned Informant Number S-179 or S-172. Carr cited Dallas County district attorney Henry Wade, a former FBI man, as the source of this information. The number designation was not in accordance with normal FBI informant identification but because of the uncertainty of the numbers, it obviously was mistranslated during communication to Wade and the letter “S” was used to signify “security” matters, which would have fitted with Oswald’s background.

  This led to the question of Oswald’s cashing money orders and checks. One such incident involved Western Union Telegraph Company night manager C. A. Hamblen, who just a few days after the assassination got into a brief conversation with Bob Fenley, a reporter for the Dallas Times Herald. Hamblin told Fenley he recalled Oswald, or a man who looked just like him, causing trouble in the Western Union office while trying to cash money orders in small amounts and once sending a telegram to the secretary of the Nav
y. Hamblen said he was certain it was Oswald who on more than once occasion was disagreeable to the office girls to the point that Hamblen himself would serve him. Fenley had the newspaper’s police reporter, George Carter, talk to Hamblen to verify his account. Carter did and then wrote a story for the paper that subsequently brought the matter to the attention of the Warren Commission. Federal authorities ordered Western Union officials to search for records confirming the transactions but none were found. By the time the Commission questioned Hamblen, July 23, 1964, he had become less certain of the disagreeable man’s identity. The Warren Commission reported that Hamblen’s superiors at Western Union had concluded the whole thing was a figment of Hamblen’s imagination. They added, “And the commission accepts this assessment.”

  Less easy to dismiss were others’ statements reporting that Oswald had attempted to cash checks or money orders. Leonard E. Hutchinson, proprietor of Hutch’s Market in Irving, Texas, recalled that shortly before the assassination a man who looked like Oswald would stop in to purchase milk and cinnamon rolls. One time this man was accompanied by an elderly woman and a younger woman who spoke a foreign language. On another occasion the Oswald character left without a word when Hutchinson refused to cash a two-party check for $189, as a matter of store policy, which limited check cashing to less than $25. Since Oswald was usually at the Irving home of Ruth Paine only on weekends and in “the absence of any other sign that Oswald ever possessed a personal check for $189,” the Commission decided he had never had such a check.

  Anyone who has worked for the government knows that officials are very diligent about withdrawing taxes. It is interesting to note that if Oswald was being paid $200 a month as an FBI informant, his take-home pay would have been about $189.

  The specter of Oswald as an FBI informant prompted a special executive session of the Warren Commission the same day as Carr’s call. The minutes of that meeting were classified “top secret” until March 1975. At this meeting Commissioners were tense. What could they do with this report that Oswald, already designated as JFK’s assassin, was working for the FBI?

  Commission general counsel J. Lee Rankin said, “When the Chief Justice and I were just briefly reflecting on [the Oswald–FBI informant rumor], we said if that was true and it ever came out, could be established, then you would have people think that there was a conspiracy to accomplish this assassination that nothing the Commission did or anybody could dissipate.”

  Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana mused, “Its implications are . . . are fantastic.”

  Referring to the fact that the Commission had no independent investigators and was forced to rely on the FBI for its information, Rankin complained, “[The FBI] would like us to fold up and quit. . . . They found the man. There is nothing more to do. The Commission supports their conclusions, and we can go on home and that is the end of it.”

  Boggs remarked, “I don’t even like to see this being taken down.” Former CIA director and Commission member Allen Dulles agreed: “Yes, I think this record ought to be destroyed. Do you think we need a record of this?”

  On January 27, the commissioners met again to consider this information. It is obvious from the transcripts that they feared approaching Hoover with the matter. Turning to former CIA director Dulles, Boggs asked how the FBI could disprove that Oswald was an informant. Dulles replied, “That is a hard thing to disprove, you know. . . . I never knew how to disprove it. . . . The record may not be on paper. But on paper you would have hieroglyphics that only two people know what they meant, and nobody outside of the agency would know; and you could say this meant the agent and somebody else could say it meant another agent.”

  “The man who recruited [the agent] would know, wouldn’t he?” asked Boggs. “Yes, but he wouldn’t tell,” replied Dulles. “Wouldn’t tell under oath?” asked an incredulous Earl Warren, chief justice of the US Supreme Court and chair of the Commission. Dulles replied, “I wouldn’t think he would tell under oath, no. . . . He ought not tell it under oath. . . . What I was getting at, I think, under any circumstances. I think Mr. Hoover would say certainly he didn’t have anything to do with this fellow.”

  Exasperated, Boggs exclaimed, “What you do is . . . make our problem utterly impossible because you say this rumor can’t be dissipated under any circumstances.”

  During this same meeting Rankin revealed that he had received the same Oswald-informant information from yet another source—the Secret Service. He said the Secret Service named a Dallas deputy sheriff, Allan Sweatt, as its source.

  It was here that the commissioners decided to just drop the entire matter. The FBI was informing them that Oswald was never an informant, and they could never prove or disprove it.

  Furthermore, although it would be several weeks before the Commission began hearing witnesses and taking testimony, it now appears the verdict already was in. In the same Commission minutes, Georgia senator Richard Russell commented, “They [the FBI] have tried the case and reached a verdict on every aspect.”

  If Oswald was working for the FBI, it could explain many things. It could explain his mysterious movements and associations in New Orleans, where he tried to join both pro- and anti-Castro groups. It could explain why he asked for Agent Quigley after his arrest. It could explain his light sentence after being found guilty of disturbing the peace. It could explain the remarks—later denied—by Agent Hosty in Dallas that the FBI knew about Oswald. It also could explain why the FBI did not pass along its security file on Oswald to the Dallas police and it could explain why Dallas FBI chief Shanklin demanded that Hosty be allowed to question Oswald while in police custody.

  It also might explain a well-documented instance of the FBI destroying evidence after the assassination. In August 1975, the Dallas Times Herald reported it had recently learned that two weeks before the JFK assassination, Oswald had delivered a note to the Dallas FBI office and that the note had been destroyed after the assassination. This story prompted an investigation by the Justice Department and eventually became the center of hearings before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

  It is now certain that two to three weeks prior to the assassination, Oswald came to the Dallas FBI office and asked a receptionist to see Agent Hosty. When told Hosty was not in, Oswald left a note. The receptionist, Nancy Fenner, noted that Oswald asked for “S.A. [Special Agent] Hosty . . . [in] exactly those words.” It’s surprising that Oswald would be so familiar with bureau jargon. Years later Fenner recalled the note as some type of warning, something like, “Let this be a warning. I will blow up the FBI and the Dallas Police Department if you don’t stop bothering my wife—Lee Harvey Oswald.”

  Hosty, who said he was told not to mention the note at the time of the assassination, said the note was not violent in tone and that it said something more like, “If you have anything you want to learn about me, come talk to me directly. If you don’t cease bothering my wife, I will take appropriate action and report this to the proper authorities.”

  Hosty also said the note was folded and expressed doubts that Fenner had read it properly.

  He said that within hours after the assassination, he was called into the office of the special agent in charge, J. Gordon Shanklin. Hosty said Shanklin was visibly “agitated and upset” and wanted to know about the Oswald note. After Oswald had been killed, Shanklin again called in Hosty. Hosty said Shanklin produced the Oswald note from his desk drawer and said, “Oswald’s dead now. There can be no trial. Here, get rid of this.” As Hosty tore up the note, Shanklin cried, “No! Get it out of here. I don’t even want it in this office. Get rid of it!” Hosty said he took the pieces of the note to a nearby restroom and “flushed it down the drain.”

  Another Dallas agent, Kenneth Howe, also testified he showed Shanklin the Oswald note the weekend of the assassination. Existence of the note also was talked about among some members of the Dallas Police Department. Ruth Paine even mentioned in her testimony to the Warren Commission in 1964 that Oswal
d had dropped off a note to the FBI. She told the Commission, “[Oswald] told me he had stopped at the downtown office of the FBI and tried to see the agents and left a note.”

  The House Select Committee on Assassinations said the incident concerning the note was a “serious impeachment of Shanklin’s and Hosty’s credibility,” and that with the note’s destruction, “it was not possible to establish with confidence what its contents were.”

  To the House committee Shanklin denied any knowledge of the Oswald note. But assistant FBI director William Sullivan said Shanklin had discussed an “internal problem” concerning a message from Oswald with him and that the presence of the note was common knowledge at FBI headquarters, thus adding the crime of perjury to destruction of evidence.

  Why did the bureau acknowledge the existence of the note only after media reports in 1975? It seems unbelievable that the FBI would knowingly destroy evidence, especially if it would have proven Oswald prone to violence. Some researchers say a more plausible explanation is that Oswald, as an FBI informant, tried to warn the bureau about the coming assassination. This could explain the receptionist’s insistence that the note contained threatening words. It also could explain why the FBI was so concerned and fearful of the note that it was ordered destroyed. Such a warning would corroborate Judyth Vary Baker’s claim that Oswald tried to stop the assassination.

  Incidentally, Hosty was one of seventeen FBI agents reprimanded for the way they handled the assassination case. He was suspended for thirty days without pay and transferred to Kansas City. However, after the Oswald-note matter was investigated by the House Select Committee on Assassinations and despite the contradictions between Hosty’s testimony and that of his superior, Shanklin, Hosty was given more than $1,000 in repayment for the Hoover-imposed suspension. “Rather than come out and admit [that I was wronged in 1963] . . . [the FBI] just gave me my money back,” commented Hosty.