by Jim Marrs
In light of the FBI’s meticulously worded denials that Oswald had ever been paid as an FBI informant, it should be noted that not all informants work for money. It is common practice for the FBI to gain information from people who have something to fear from the bureau, perhaps the possibility of being charged with a past crime or even possible deportation. Oswald’s wife had never become a US citizen and therefore was subject to deportation at the government’s pleasure. She even mentioned this to the Warren Commission, saying, “Sometimes the FBI agents asked me questions which had no bearing or relationship [to the assassination], and if I didn’t want to answer, they told me that if I wanted to live in this country, I would have to help in this matter.”
According to Dallas police captain Will Fritz, Oswald became angry when Agent Hosty confronted him. According to Fritz, Oswald “beat on the desk and went into a kind of tantrum,” telling Hosty, “I know you. You accosted my wife on two occasions.” Asked by Fritz what he meant by “accosted,” Oswald replied, “Well, he threatened her. . . . He practically told her she would have to go back to Russia.” Perhaps Oswald was recruited not with the promise of money, but with the threat of Marina’s deportation.
While this may never be proven, this author learned years ago that the Dallas police received a letter about two weeks before the assassination warning that an attack on Kennedy would take place in their city. It was signed by A. J. Hidell, Oswald’s alias. With nothing else to support this warning, the letter was merely filed away. In the days following that fateful Friday, federal agents combed through the police department—even searching the saddlebags on police motorcycles—and took everything that might deal with the assassination. Needless to say, the Hidell warning letter has never been seen again. Did Oswald try to alert both the FBI and the Dallas police to the coming assassination?
Finally, while it cannot be established with any certainty that Oswald was working for the FBI, it is now known that his killer definitely was. In early 1959, at a time when Jack Ruby may have been involved in smuggling activities with Cubans, he contacted the FBI and said he wanted to provide the bureau with information. Accordingly, agent Charles W. Flynn opened a potential confidential or criminal informant (PCI) file on Ruby.
The relationship between Ruby and the bureau was mentioned in a letter from Hoover to the Warren Commission dated June 9, 1964. However, this information was kept classified until 1975.
In the 1964 letter, Hoover stated that Ruby “furnished no information whatsoever and further contacts with him were discontinued.” This disclaimer is difficult to swallow, since records show that agents met with Ruby on at least eight occasions between April and October 1959.
Since Ruby was an FBI informant, and considering the massive circumstantial evidence now available concerning Oswald’s relationship to the bureau, the possibility of Lee Harvey Oswald’s having worked for the bureau appears to be probable.
And if by the spring of 1963, when Oswald arrived in New Orleans, he was indeed working with the FBI, it could explain his contacts with the characters at 544 Camp Street.
Cuban Grand Central Station
By the summer of 1963 the faded three-story Newman Building at the corner of Camp and Lafayette Streets in New Orleans had become known as the “Cuban Grand Central Station.”
Previously housed here was the CIA-backed Cuban Revolutionary Council, which counted Carlos Bringuier as a member, as well as Sergio Archaca-Smith’s Crusade to Free Cuba, both virulently anti-Castro groups. Also in the same building was the private detective firm of Guy Banister. In the summer of 1963, Banister’s employees included Jack Martin and David Ferrie, Oswald’s former Civil Air Patrol leader, and reportedly Oswald himself.
During the 1940s Banister was the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Chicago, Jack Ruby’s hometown. One of his FBI associates at that time was Robert Maheu, who left the bureau in the 1950s and later became the chief go-between in the CIA-Mafia assassination plots against Castro.
According to Banister’s family, he was also involved with naval intelligence during the war and maintained contacts with that group throughout his life.
Banister left the bureau and came to New Orleans in the 1950s at the request of the mayor to become chief of police. However, in 1957, he was forced to retire after an incident in the Old Absinthe House, where Banister allegedly threatened a waiter with a gun. He then formed Guy Banister Associates, which occupied a ground-floor office in the Newman Building with the address of 531 Lafayette Street, the side entrance to 544 Camp Street. This office was within walking distance of the New Orleans FBI office, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and other government agencies.
A member of the John Birch Society, Banister also was a member of the Minutemen and the Louisiana Committee on Un-American Activities, and was the publisher of a racist publication titled Louisiana Intelligence Digest. Reportedly an alcoholic, Banister was later described as “a tragic case” by a member of the New Orleans Crime Commission.
With the rise of Fidel Castro, Banister threw himself into the anti-Castro Cuban activity in New Orleans. He helped organize such anti-Castro groups as the Cuban Revolutionary Democratic Front and Friends of a Democratic Cuba. According to an April 25, 1967, story in the New Orleans States-Item, Banister even served as a munitions supplier during the planning stages of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. In fact, Banister employees have said that as late as 1963, guns of every type littered Banister’s office.
Banister also ran a network of young informants on the campuses of Tulane and Louisiana State Universities, collecting what he hailed as the largest file of anticommunist intelligence in the South.
Jerry Milton Brooks, a former Minuteman who worked for Banister, said he would regularly take Banister’s updated files to the New Orleans FBI office, where they were integrated into the bureau’s files. Brooks also said Maurice B. Gatlin, another Banister employee who regarded the younger Brooks as a protégé, once said, “Stick with me—I’ll give you a license to kill.”
Although Banister’s files were scattered after his sudden death in June 1964—he reportedly died of a heart attack before authorities could question him about his contacts with Oswald and the assassination—some idea of their scope can be found in indexed titles made public by Louisiana lawmen. “Central Intelligence Agency,” “Ammunition and Arms,” “Civil Rights Program of JFK,” and significantly, “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” and “International Trade Mart” are just a few of these titles. Banister’s operation was right in the thick of New Orleans intelligence activities, located near government offices and just around the corner from the Reily Coffee Company, Oswald’s employer and a supporter of anti-Castro Cuban exiles.
Banister’s secretary, Delphine Roberts, recalled Oswald at 544 Camp Street, and said he filled out one of Banister’s “agent” application forms. She later told author Anthony Summers, “Oswald came back a number of times. He seemed to be on familiar terms with Banister and with the office.”
Roberts’s daughter, also Delphine, had a photography studio at 544 Camp Street and she, too, recalled Oswald:
I knew he had his pamphlets and books and everything in a room along from where we were with our photographic equipment. He was quiet and mostly kept to himself, didn’t associate with too many people. He would just tell us “hello” or “good-bye” when we saw him. I never saw him talking to Guy Banister, but I knew he worked in his office. I knew they were associated. I saw some other men who looked like Americans coming and going occasionally from the room Oswald used. . . . I got the impression Oswald was doing something to make people believe he was something he wasn’t. I am sure Guy Banister knew what Oswald was doing.
It appears that by late summer 1963, Oswald was playing a dangerous game—caught up in a mixture of CIA- and FBI-related agents who were in touch with both anti-Castro Cubans and organized-crime figures.
Despite the contacts between Oswald and both current and former FBI agents—plus the evidence of
advance warnings of the assassination to the bureau—the Dallas tragedy still occurred.
While no unquestionable case for FBI involvement in the assassination itself can be made, there is now no doubt that the bureau manipulated the subsequent investigation.
For starters, top FBI officials took total control of all evidence the very day of the assassination and held it, with no chain of evidence, for three full days before the bureau was officially called into the case, as will be discussed later.
About noon on Tuesday, November 26, following several morning conferences with top aides and the district attorney, police chief Jesse Curry announced to reporters that it had been decided to call in the FBI for assistance with the assassination case. The transfer of evidence from city police to federal control was completed four hours later.
So now the FBI was officially on the case and officially in charge of the evidence. But what could have happened during the two days while the evidence was unofficially in their hands? Fabrication, substitution, elimination, alteration—with no effective chain of responsibility, anything could have happened.
Today the FBI has been accused of poor management of evidence at best and downright falsification of evidence at worst. For example, an FBI document released to the public in 1968, File No. DL 89-43, signed by special agent Vincent Drain and dated November 29, 1963, reports that wrapping paper available at the School Book Depository was “found to have the same observable characteristics as the brown paper bag shaped like a gun case which was found near the scene of the shooting on the sixth floor.” This is incriminating evidence against Oswald. However, in 1980 among many FBI documents released by the bureau was another File No. 89-43, signed by Agent Drain and dated November 29, 1963. This one states the wrapping paper from the Depository was “found not to be identical with the paper gun case found at the scene of the shooting.” When asked about this discrepancy, an FBI spokesman simply said the latter document was a phony. This prompted researchers to wonder how many other “phony” documents rested in FBI files.
Such discrepancies should prove to any objective researcher that severe questions remain concerning the validity of the government’s evidence in the assassination.
Under Hoover’s iron control, it would have been easy for ranking bureau officials to do with the evidence whatever they pleased. The fact that federal authorities had all the assassination evidence under covert control for two days could go far in explaining the contradictions and questionable conclusions of the official investigation. Apparently at least one person understood the gravity of this issue, as there was an attempt to obscure it in the Warren Commission materials.
In 1992, the “confidential” deposition of FBI fingerprint expert James C. Cadigan was made public by the National Archives. The deposition was clearly altered with edits in pencil intended to obscure statements regarding the early unofficial handling of the assassination evidence.
While the assassination evidence is often ambiguous and contradictory and will certainly be in controversy for years to come, the handling of the evidence clearly points to manipulation and obstruction at the highest levels of federal authority, providing a clear view of who was responsible for at least the demonstrable cover-up, if not the assassination itself.
In fact, FBI activities after the assassination fall well within the realm of criminal behavior. Consider:
Suppression of evidence: Examples include the loss of Beverly Oliver’s assassination film, which she claimed was taken by an FBI agent; the disappearance of an assassination bullet taken from under the noses of a police guard by an FBI agent; the suppression of testimony, such as Ed Hoffman’s, which failed to support the lone-assassin theory; and the bureau’s failure to follow important leads, even when requested to do so by the Warren Commission.
Destruction of evidence: Examples include the destruction of an Oswald note by FBI Agent Hosty; the destruction of a license-plate number on a photograph of General Edwin Walker’s home found intact among Oswald’s possessions; and the immediate cleaning of the presidential limousine, which effectively destroyed vital ballistic evidence.
Intimidation of witnesses: Examples include Richard Carr, who saw two men run from the Texas School Book Depository but later was told by FBI agents, “If you didn’t see Lee Harvey Oswald in the School Book Depository with a rifle, you didn’t witness it”; Ed Hoffman, who was told by a bureau agent, “You’d better keep quiet; you could get killed”; and Jean Hill, who said she was hounded by bureau agents until she stopped giving media interviews.
In any normal criminal case, such behavior would constitute a jailable offense, but this was not an ordinary case, and the culprits were not ordinary citizens but FBI agents. If a local police agency proves to be corrupt, the FBI can be brought in to investigate. But in the case of the bureau, who investigates the investigators?
Since there can be no question that in 1963 the FBI was personified by J. Edgar Hoover, the questions of means, motive, and opportunity must fall on his shoulders. Did Hoover have the means of committing the assassination? Surrounded by countless informers, agents, and former employees—many of whom were in contact with Lee Harvey Oswald—Hoover’s means were limitless.
Hoover’s motives are obvious. First, his hatred of the Kennedys was notorious, and second, he was afraid that upon reelection John Kennedy would not allow him to continue as FBI director. This fear was well founded. Rumors in Washington were plentiful that Hoover would be forced to retire as FBI director after Kennedy’s reelection in 1964.
William Hundley, former head of the Justice Department’s organized-crime section, is quoted in The Director as saying that what finally destroyed the fragile relationship between Hoover and attorney general Robert Kennedy was “that Bobby mentioned to too many people who complained to him about Hoover that, ‘Look, just wait,’ and we all got the message that they were going to retire him after Jack got re-elected and Hoover hit seventy. And it got back to him.”
Presidential aide David Powers stated he believes that the question of Hoover’s retirement was the subject of one of the very few private meetings between Kennedy and the bureau chief: “[Hoover] had a long lunch with the President and Bobby [on October 31, 1963] and, as you know, three weeks later we went to Dallas.”
But did Hoover have the opportunity? Hoover built his immense power base by currying favor with men more powerful than himself. It is extremely unlikely that Hoover, a consummate bureaucrat, would have assumed the responsibility for initiating the assassination.
It is, however, certainly plausible that Hoover—after having discovered the assassination plot through his network of agents and informers—caused it to happen simply by not preventing it. Of course this is tantamount to criminal complicity and would have required substantial manipulation of testimony and evidence to prevent discovery of the bureau’s role.
Hoover would have needed help. And help he had, in the form of the new president, his former neighbor and dinner friend Lyndon B. Johnson—another man about to lose his job thanks to the Kennedys.
But what about protection of the president? Could his official protection be circumvented? Could a plot to assassinate a US president succeed without in some way neutralizing or involving the Secret Service?
The Secret Service
On the day of his inauguration, Thomas Jefferson walked from the Washington boardinghouse where he was staying to the Capitol without benefit of any protection.
It was symptomatic of the young Republic that presidents had not yet acquired the mantle of royalty and thus did not require protection. This naïveté began to change after an assassination attempt on president Andrew Jackson on January 10, 1835. In August 1842, a drunken painter threw some rocks at President John Tyler, who was walking on the White House grounds. Congress soon passed an act creating an auxiliary watch of the Washington Metropolitan Police for the protection of public and private property consisting of a captain and fifteen men. Although the act was aimed primarily
at protecting property—particularly the White House—it was the crude beginning of presidential protection.
Even after Abraham Lincoln was fatally shot by actor John Wilkes Booth in Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, there was no clamor to create official protection for the president. Americans thought his death was just an accident of the war.
The Secret Service, which was organized as a division of the Treasury Department the year Lincoln was killed, originally was meant only to pursue counterfeiters. It was not until after the assassination of president James A. Garfield in 1881 that a serious attempt was made to protect presidents. While the number of White House policemen grew to twenty-seven after mail threats increased against president Grover Cleveland, it was not until 1894 that Secret Service agents were informally assigned to the president.
Throughout the Spanish-American War, a small detail of Secret Service men were stationed at the White House. However, Secret Service protection of president William McKinley did not prevent his assassination on September 6, 1901. McKinley was attending a public reception at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, when self-professed anarchist Leon F. Czolgosz fired two bullets into him despite the proximity of four Buffalo detectives, four soldiers, and three Secret Service agents. McKinley died eight days later and Czolgosz was executed.
The McKinley assassination finally provoked a response from Congress, which in 1902 ordered the Secret Service to assume full-time protection of the president. Two agents were permanently assigned to the White House. By World War II, the White House detail of the Secret Service had grown to thirty-seven men.