False Witness

by Patricia Lambert

  15. Chandler, “The Devil’s D.A.,” p. 32.

  16. Roberts, “The Case of Jim Garrison and Lee Oswald,” p. 33.

  17. James and Wardlaw, Plot or Politics? p. 22; Brener, The Garrison Case, pp. 24, 25, 33.

  18. Dymond et al. Interview.

  19. David Chandler believed Garrison originally was a genuine reformer but that “something happened” during the summer of 1966 which changed him. Chandler insisted that the evidence of Garrison’s organized crime connections, which were spelled out in a series of Life magazine articles published in the fall of 1967, was conclusive (David Chandler, telephone interview with author [hereinafter Chandler Interview], July 15, 1993).

  20. Jack Wardlaw had previously published the first national article on Garrison in the National Observer (James and Wardlaw, Plot or Politics? p. 32).

  21. Brener, The Garrison Case, pp. 2–3.

  CHAPTER THREE

  1. Jack Martin, Mercy Hospital records, December 27, 1956. Martin made the remark during his psychiatric confinement.

  2. Dean Andrews, Clay Shaw trial testimony, Feb. 25, 1969, p. 142.

  3. W. Guy Banister, “Biographical Sketch,” HSCA Vol. 10, pp. 126–127.

  4. This account is based solely on Jack Martin’s version of the event, as recorded in New Orleans Police Department Report No. K-12634-63, dated Nov. 25, 1963.

  5. Sam Newman, Affidavit, Jan. 24, 1967.

  6. W. Hardy Davis, FBI interview, Nov. 27, 1963.

  7. Jerry Phillip Stein, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963; Secret Service Report, December 13, 1963 (describing telephone calls from Stein and Donald Mitchell); Alec Gifford (WDSU), FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963; David Ferrie, FBI interviews, Nov. 25, 1963, and Nov. 27, 1963; Jack S. Martin, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963; and G. Wray Gill, FBI interview, Nov. 27, 1963.

  8. The police, who knew Martin, ignored his call, but television news director Bill Reid sent two representatives to David Ferrie’s apartment. They began making inquiries in the neighborhood after learning from Ferrie’s house guest that Ferrie was gone. Reid also contacted Ferrie’s employer, attorney G. Wray Gill, and informed him about Ferrie’s “possible involvement” with Oswald (Reid, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963; Martin, FBI interview, Nov. 27, 1963; Ferrie, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963; Gill, FBI interview, Nov. 27, 1963).

  9. Jim Garrison and Pershing Gervais had been the object of a lawsuit filed by Martin the previous summer, which Martin later withdrew.

  10. Jack Martin reached Herman Kohlman at home. (Martin insisted that his name be withheld, and Kohlman honored this promise at first, until he was pressed by his superior. Kohlman also was forced to reveal Martin’s identity to the Secret Service.) A meeting was convened at Tulane and Broad to decide what should be done. Garrison wasn’t there but “was kept informed.” According to Kohlman, the local Secret Service didn’t seem concerned about Martin’s “information” until Kohlman called Dallas Homicide Chief Will Fritz. Kohlman later learned that a Dallas FBI police liaison contacted Washington concerning the information. After that, Kohlman said, the local FBI and Secret Service representatives were suddenly interested (Kohlman, telephone conversation with author, July 29, 1996).

  11. New Orleans Secret Service Field Office Report, regarding investigation in New Orleans during period of “Nov. 24–29, 1963,” dated Dec. 13, 1963, pp. 1–3. Herman Kohlman’s telephone call to the Secret Service at 11:10 P.M. on Nov. 24, 1963, is described in this report. While Jack Martin told the FBI he spoke to Kohlman on Saturday, Nov. 23, it is clear from the Secret Service chronology of calls from Kohlman, Jerry Stein and Donald Mitchell, and the FBI interview with Stein, that Martin did not reach Kohlman until Sunday, Nov. 24, 1963, sometime after 10 A.M. (see also CD 87, item 61).

  12. A number of people remembered Ferrie being in court on Nov. 22, 1963, including the presiding judge, Herbert W. Christenberry, FBI agent Regis Kennedy, and attorney G. Wray Gill (Herbert W. Christenberry, Jr., telephone conversation with author, Aug. 16, 1997; HSCA Vol. 10, p. 105). Also, in early 1967 William Gurvich was told by a federal marshal present at the trial that Ferrie was there.

  13. At least a week before, Alvin Beaubouef had suggested going ice skating. He was a near-championship-class roller skater but had never been on ice skates and Ferrie had promised him that, at the conclusion of the trial, they would go ice skating (Ferrie, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963; Beaubouef, interviews by New Orleans D.A.’s office, Dec. 15, 1966, and Dec. 28, 1966; Melvin Coffey, FBI interview, Nov. 29, 1963; Beaubouef, interview with author, Sept. 5, 1993 [hereinafter Beaubouef Interview]).

  14. Chuck Rolland, FBI interview, Nov. 28, 1963 (Ferrie’s call to the skating rink); Ferrie, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963; Beaubouef Interview.

  15. Ferrie, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963; Gill, FBI interview, Nov. 27, 1963.

  16. Brener, The Garrison Case, p. 51; Ferrie, interview by New Orleans D.A.’s Office, Feb. 18, 1967.

  17. Alvin Beaubouef, telephone conversation with author, July 9, 1998; Fenner Sedgebeer report (signed by Raymond Comstock) to Joseph I. Giarrusso, Superintendent of Police, Nov. 25, 1963, describing arrest of Beaubouef, Martens and Ferrie. The police also recovered from Ferrie’s apartment “a page from a yellow pad” said to detail Ferrie’s flying Carlos Marcello from Guatemala (where he had been unceremoniously deported by the U.S. government) “back into the United States.” This was turned over to the FBI (Comstock, telephone interview with author, March 27, 1996).

  18. New Orleans Secret Service Field Office Report, regarding investigation in New Orleans during period of “Nov. 24–29, 1963,” dated Dec. 13, 1963, p. 4; Fenner Sedgebeer report, p. 2. Herman Kohlman would later tell FBI Agent Regis Kennedy that “an unknown police officer,” reportedly in the Civil Air Patrol with Oswald, had said “that Ferrie knew Oswald” and “because Ferrie must have known Oswald and because it appeared [Ferrie] had lied when he denied knowing Oswald, Ferrie was arrested.” But when the “unknown police officer,” Vice Squad detective Frederick O’Sullivan, was interviewed that same day by the FBI, he said he thought Oswald had attended CAP meetings during the same time-frame that Ferrie was Squadron Commander but “could not say for certain that Oswald ever met Ferrie” (Fred O’Sullivan, FBI interviews, Nov. 25, 1963, and Nov. 26, 1963).

  19. Ferrie, FBI interviews, Nov. 25, 1963, and Nov. 27, 1963; Ferrie, Secret Service interview, Nov. 25, 1963, described in Secret Service Report dated Dec. 13, 1963. Ferrie said that “to the best of his knowledge Oswald was never a member of the CAP Squadron in New Orleans during the period he was with that group.” Shown some photographs of Oswald, Ferrie stated “that the profile view . . . has a very vague familiarity to him but the full face and full length photographs of Oswald are not familiar to him.” When he was arrested, David Ferrie’s New Orleans Public Library card # M.L. 89437 was among his personal items placed in the police department property room. It was returned to him when he was released and he showed it to the FBI agents who interviewed him on Nov. 27, 1963.

  20. The manager of Winterland Skating Rink, Chuck Rolland, said that he and Ferrie “had a short general conversation” but denied that they discussed “the cost of equipping or operating an ice skating rink” (Rolland, FBI interview, Nov. 28, 1963). But Melvin Coffey told the FBI that Ferrie did talk to the “owner” of the rink about the cost of “installation and operation” (Coffey, FBI interview, Nov. 29, 1963).

  21. Jack Martin also outlined his version of how it all came about, how he had seen rifles in David Ferrie’s home; had heard on television that Oswald was in the CAP; and knew that Ferrie had been in the CAP too. Martin, the agents wrote, “after turning all these thoughts over in his mind” telephoned the D.A.’s office “and told his story as though it was based on facts rather than on his imagination” (Martin, Secret Service Interview, Nov. 29, 1963).

  22. Jack Martin claimed that his speculation about David Ferrie began that Saturday evening when he saw the television program that revealed Oswald had been in the CAP with Ferri
e. But Martin saw that broadcast after he and Hardy Davis had already engaged in their initial conjecture about Ferrie. After Davis went home, Martin telephoned “and told him that he heard a television program which had tied Ferrie in as Civil Air Patrol instructor with Lee Harvey Oswald” (Hardy Davis, FBI interview, Nov. 27, 1963; Martin, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963).

  23. Gill and Ferrie, himself, both ventured explanations for Martin’s actions, but neither of them had any way of knowing about the beating. Gill said “that Ferrie and Martin were once close friends, until they got involved in an ‘ecclesiastical’ deal.” When Martin did not get a job he wanted with “the Holy Apostolic Catholic Church of North America,” he blamed Ferrie and had “slandered” him “at every opportunity” (Gill, FBI interview, Nov. 27, 1963). Ferrie said that in June of 1963, at Gill’s direction, he had “put Martin out” of Gill’s office in an “undiplomatic” manner, and since then Martin had “bedeviled” him “in every manner possible” (Ferrie, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963).

  24. Edward Stewart Suggs, FBI information sheet, June 21, 1968; FBI Memorandum, “Jack S. Martin also known as Edward Stewart Suggs,” dated March 22, 1967, forwarded to the White House on March 24, 1967; “Informative Note,” dated March 10, 1967, attached to FBI Airtel dated March 8, 1967, from SAC New Orleans to the Director; Jack Martin, Mercy Hospital records, dated Dec. 23, 1956, to Jan. 28, 1957. “[Jack Martin] had a way of breathing up stories and being very positive about things,” Pershing Gervais said. “He would concoct things about someone and then he would talk to that someone” and construct a story “that would kind of jibe.” Martin was “pretty good at that.” When asked about Martin’s reliability, Gervais laughed. “He couldn’t be reliable if he intended to be” (Gervais, telephone conversation with author, Sept. 3, 1993).

  25. Ferrie, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963.

  26. Prentiles M. Davis, interview by New Orleans D.A.’s office, March 9, 1967; Memorandum by Louis Ivon re information from Joe Oster on March 6, 1967; R. M. Davis, FBI interview, Dec. 5, 1963. Dean Andrews referred to Davis in his Warren Commission testimony as “Preston M. Davis”; “R. M. Davis,” the name in his FBI report, is used in this book.

  27. Andrews, Clay Shaw trial testimony, p. 132.

  28. Ibid., p. 131.

  29. WC Vol. VII, p. 329; WC Vol. III, pp. 85–86. On Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963, Oswald asked the president of the Dallas Bar Association, H. Louis Nichols, for help engaging Abt on his behalf; that same day Oswald made the same request of Ruth Paine.

  30. Dr. J. B. Andrews, FBI interview, Dec. 5, 1963. The doctor said that Dean Andrews was under heavy sedation the first four days, i.e., Nov. 20 to Nov. 24, 1963.

  31. The dialogue was reconstructed from Eva Springer’s FBI interview of Dec. 5, 1963. Dean Andrews would later remember receiving the Bertrand telephone call between 6:00 and 9:00 P.M. that Saturday. But Eva Springer said Andrews’s call to her about representing Oswald occurred “shortly after four” in the afternoon, and she tied her recollection to her marketing, which she had just completed. (Andrews also had no recollection of his investigator’s visit to the hospital that same day.) Since Eva Springer’s recollection, which places the Bertrand call prior to four o’clock, is more reliable, the reconstruction in this chapter is based on it. Since the call from Eugene Davis to Andrews occurred after R. M. Davis departed (at 3:30 P.M.) and before Andrews phoned his secretary (at 4:00 P.M.), the call could only have occurred between 3:30 and 4:00 P.M. (R. M. Davis, FBI interview, Dec. 5, 1963; Andrews, FBI interview, Dec. 5, 1963.)

  32. Dean Andrews later told the FBI that the “first independent recollection” he had of his stay in the hospital was the evening of Saturday, Nov. 23, 1963, watching a television program about Oswald’s life in New Orleans (Andrews, FBI interview, Dec. 5, 1963, p. 2).

  33. Andrews, Clay Shaw trial testimony, p. 132.

  34. The dialogue was reconstructed from Sam “Monk” Zelden’s FBI interview of Nov. 25, 1963, and the following: Andrews, FBI interview, Dec. 3, 1963; WC Vol. XI, p. 337. Sometime that day, R. M. Davis again stopped by to see Andrews and during that visit Andrews told Davis about the call from “Clay Bertrand” (R. M. Davis, FBI interview, Dec. 5, 1963).

  35. In 1969 Milton Brener, who knew and interviewed Dean Andrews, was the first to go on record suggesting that Andrews’s Oswald-was-my-client story was bogus. “Circumstances strongly suggest that Andrews may never really have laid eyes on Oswald,” Brener wrote (Brener, The Garrison Case, p. 58).

  36. Secret Service Report, regarding interview with Andrews, Dec. 6, 1963; Andrews, Clay Shaw trial testimony. Andrews told Warren Commission attorney Wesley Liebeler that Oswald had wanted to institute citizenship proceedings for his wife (WC Vol. XI, p. 327), which is contrary to what we know was going on in the Oswald marriage. Even today, Marina Oswald Porter is not an American citizen. Moreover, if Oswald had had a relationship with Andrews, Oswald most likely would have contacted him on Aug. 9, 1963, when he was involved in a street scuffle in New Orleans (while handing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets) and arrested; to his dismay, Oswald was forced to spend the night in jail.

  37. The companions who supposedly accompanied Oswald to Dean Andrews’s office are entirely inconsistent with what we know about Oswald’s life and his lifestyle. While in Russia Oswald was more social, but in this country he was a loner. No one else has described him going about with any sort of crowd, much less a group of overtly homosexual men. Not one scrap of paper, nor any credible testimony was ever produced to support this tale. Andrews probably peopled his Oswald fantasy with gay men because that was the clientele Andrews was accustomed to representing. Like any good storyteller, Andrews stayed with what he knew.

  38. Dean Andrews’s uncontrollable loquaciousness was part of his defense at his later perjury trial. If Lee Harvey Oswald, this infamous man-of-the-hour, whose life story was being trumpeted on television, had actually been in Andrews’s office the previous summer, Andrews would have talked about it that weekend to everyone who entered his hospital room—the doctors, the nurses, the person who emptied his trash. Lee Harvey Oswald: I know that cat! But he didn’t even tell his investigator, his secretary, or Monk Zelden. When he called Eva Springer on Saturday he didn’t say, You won’t believe this: Lee Harvey Oswald consulted me last summer; the accused presidential assassin sat in my office, not once, but several times telling me his problems! He said not one word about it. When his investigator visited earlier that same day, they discussed Andrews’s political campaign. On Sunday when he called Monk Zelden, Andrews was still mute about it. The next day Andrews again failed to inform his investigator. The story first surfaced on Monday, Nov. 25, 1963, when Andrews called the FBI and the Secret Service, twenty-four hours after Oswald was shot and killed. (In 1967, in an apparent effort to help Andrews in his difficulties with Garrison, investigator Davis would make statements to the D.A.’s office that conflicted with his earlier FBI interviews and with statements made by Andrews himself to the Warren Commission regarding Davis’s knowledge about the alleged Oswald visits. See Prentiles M. Davis, Jr., interview by New Orleans D.A.’s office, March 9, 1967.)

  39. Andrews, FBI interview, Nov. 25, 1963; Secret Service Report, regarding interview with Andrews, Dec. 5, 1963.

  40. Andrews, FBI interview, Dec. 3, 1963. Investigator Davis told the FBI that “he has no doubt that Andrews is now convinced that the call he received at the hospital was a dream” (R. M. Davis, FBI interview, Dec. 5, 1963).

  41. WC Vol. XI, pp. 326, 338.

  42. Ibid., pp. 334, 337. Dean Andrews told Wesley Liebeler that Bertrand was “about five feet eight inches” tall, “sandy hair, blue eyes, ruddy complexion”; on Dec. 3, 1963, in his statement to the FBI, Bertrand had been six feet one inch to six feet two inches tall, with “brown hair”; and on Nov. 25, 1963, in Andrews’s earliest description to the FBI, Bertrand had been “youthful,” twenty-two to twenty-three years old, five feet seven inches tall, with blonde crew-cut hair.

  43.
WC Vol. XI, p. 334.

  44. The claim by some that Dean Andrews told Mark Lane about “Bertrand” is not supported by the record. According to Lane, in March 1966 Andrews refused to be interviewed on the subject because he had been threatened (New Orleans Times-Picayune, March 29, 1967).

  45. Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office: 1964), p. 325. The paragraph, most of which was devoted to the alleged consultations with Oswald, pointed out that “Andrews was able to locate no records of any of Oswald’s alleged visits, and investigation has failed to locate the person who supposedly called Andrews on Nov. 23, at a time when Andrews was under heavy sedation.” The name “Clay Bertrand” was not mentioned.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1. James Kirkwood, American Grotesque: An Account of the Clay Shaw-Jim Garrison Affair in the City of New Orleans (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), p. 527.

  2. Brener, The Garrison Case, p. 61. Brener gives the date of the first dinner as Oct. 27, 1966. In a damage suit Andrews filed against Garrison on April 18, 1967, Andrews specified the date as Oct. 29, 1966 (New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 19, 1967; Dean Andrews, NBC Interview, Metropolitan Crime Commission transcript [hereinafter Andrews NBC interview], undated).

  3. Andrews NBC interview; Edward Jay Epstein, Counterplot (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1969), p. 93.

  4. An article in New Orleans magazine claimed the Long–Garrison conversation occurred in Nov. 1966 (“The Garrison Investigation: How and why it began,” April 1967). But the earliest recorded reference to the conversation is Sen. Long’s statement that it occurred “last Oct. [1966]” (New Orleans Times-Picayune, Feb., 22, 1967). This supports Andrews’s claim that his first dinner with Garrison was in October.