by Gus Russo
“I asked Ramsey Clark to quietly look into the whole thing. Only two weeks later, he reported back that he couldn’t find anything new.” Disgust tinged Johnson’s voice as the conversation came to an end. “I thought I had appointed Tom Clark’s son—I was wrong.”25
Although these initial leads were not successfully followed, Rosselli and Johnson set off a Washington firestorm with their allegations. This was in stark contrast to the reception given the story by Morgan’s choice for a second channel. The New Orleans District Attorney had recently opened an investigation into Kennedy’s death, but before he had even heard Morgan’s story, he had already solved the presidential murder, he thought.
Channel Two: The Jolly Green Giant
“You gag at the smallest gnat in the Warren Report, but here in the Garrison-Shaw thing, you’re swallowing an elephant”
—James Phelan, writer, to Mark Lane, a Garrison “investigator”26
“Well before Garrison’s Kennedy investigation, Justice Department attorneys were all aware that he was a fraud—or slightly nuts.”
—William Hundley, Chief of the Organized Crime Division in RFK’s Justice Department27
Rosselli’s attorney, Ed Morgan, also leaked his client’s Castro allegations to Senator Russell Long of Louisiana. Long most likely passed the story on to “channel two”—Long’s close friend, New Orleans’ District Attorney Jim Garrison.28 The way New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison told the story, his interest in the Kennedy assassination was rekindled after a chance conversation with Long, when the Louisiana Senator remarked, “Those fellows on the Warren Commission were dead wrong. There’s no way that one man could have shot up Jack that way.”29
If Morgan or Long or Rosselli expected Garrison to aggressively pursue Rosselli’s story, however, they couldn’t have been more wrong. Garrison launched a legal inquiry into a Kennedy assassination conspiracy, but, immersing himself in the 26 published volumes that supplemented the Warren Commission report, his conspiracy theory was far different from Rosselli’s.
The six foot, six inch Garrison had a reputation perfectly suited to the colorful city that he served. Although he was elected as a “reform” candidate, that distinction, as observed by writer James Kirkwood, has a (predictably) different definition in “The Big Easy.” According to Kirkwood, “A reform candidate [in Louisiana] is someone on the outside looking at all the graft and trying to get in on the inside—to grab his share.”30
In a city where the prosecutor’s pen was often mightier than the sword, all that was needed to charge someone with a crime was the DA’s signature on a bill of information. By all accounts, Garrison went through a lot of pens. Those unfortunate enough to be brought to trial were usually found not guilty. In Garrison’s zeal to court public opinion, he often neglected one chief legal requirement—evidence.
On one occasion, Garrison charged the city’s eight criminal court judges with racketeering. The charges were, as usual, found to be baseless, and the judges sued the D.A. for libel. Garrison was fined $1,000—the Supreme Court later overturned the judgment, not because Garrison was right, but because it was impossible to prove if his malice was intentional.
Despite his checkered record in court, Garrison was popular with the public, which responded enthusiastically to his adopted persona—that of a lone white knight battling the corrupt government. When Long piqued his interest in the Kennedy assassination, Garrison could only wonder how high his popularity would soar if he could gain a national constituency: If his white knight took on a dragon as huge as the federal government? Many New Orleaneans are convinced that Garrison, all along, had set his sights on national office, and saw this Kennedy investigation as his ticket.
Rosselli’s account of the Kennedy assassination was of little appeal to Garrison. Indeed, by the time he heard Rosselli’s story, Garrison—in his own mind at least—had already cracked the case. Before he heard from Morgan, one month after becoming newly interested in the assassination, Garrison called in an old nemesis—someone who, years earlier, had the nerve to help Guy Banister compile an investigative file on Jim Garrison’s vices. His name was David William Ferrie.
When he first started his investigation, Garrison seized on the government’s clear lack of interest in the offices at 544 Camp Street. Was it true, he wondered, that the Feds were protecting Oswald’s co-conspirators? On December 15, 1966, Ferrie, who years earlier had worked out of the Camp Street address with Bobby Kennedy’s friend Sergio Arcacha, appeared under subpoena in Garrison’s office. Ferrie repeated what he had told Garrison immediately after the assassination in 1963—he had no idea what Garrison was talking about. Garrison was unimpressed that Jack Martin had long ago recanted his assertions that Ferrie knew Oswald. Ferrie, much like the “corrupt government,” was a straw target. And, as an odd-looking man of dubious sexuality, Ferrie was no match for Garrison.31 At least that’s what Garrison hoped.
David Ferrie may be the only “assassin” in history to report directly to the FBI. The day after Garrison had a subpoena served on him, Ferrie went to the local FBI office and advised them of his scheduled appearance before the District Attorney.32 As Attorney General Ramsey Clark informed President Johnson, “Ferrie wanted to know what the Bureau could do to help him with this nut [Garrison].”33 Ferrie’s New Orleanean friends agree that he was looking for protection from a D.A. known for destroying innocent people.
On February 22, 1967, just two months after his appearance in Garrison’s office, David Ferrie died of a burst brain aneurysm. Because two notes of farewell were left behind—both seemingly forecasting his death—some suspected suicide. Garrison, of course, suspected murder. In fact, if Ferrie had been murdered, the murderer was Garrison himself—because he had turned up the pressure on him.
“Dave had been sick for a long time,” remembers Layton Martens. “He had such high blood pressure. I remember him having spontaneous nose-bleeds all the time. His pressure was over 200. With the Garrison thing, his health deteriorated rapidly. He wrote those notes because he knew he was dying. Besides, Dave wasn’t a coward. He’d fight rather than kill himself.”34
After Ferrie’s autopsy, Dr. Nick Chetta’s phone rang off the hook for several days. Chetta was the coroner who had autopsied David Ferrie, and the press queried him extensively for details. One call, however, stood out.
Teenager Nicky Chetta, Jr. answered the phone for what seemed like the thousandth time. The voice on the other end intoned, “Hello, this is Robert Kennedy. May I speak with Dr. Chetta?”
“Yeah, and I’m the Lone Ranger,” came young Chetta’s sarcastic reply before slamming down the phone.
A minute later, the phone rang again. “This is Robert Kennedy, and I insist on speaking with Dr. Chetta.” At this point, Nicky’s father entered the room, noticed his son’s look of exasperation, and asked what was wrong.
“There’s this guy on the phone who’s claiming to be Bobby Kennedy.” The elder Chetta took the phone from his son, and conversed with the caller in hushed tones for several minutes. After hanging up, the coroner informed his son that the caller was indeed Bobby Kennedy. He had wanted to know the details of Dave Ferrie’s death.35 On March 3, 1967 Drew Pearson finally published his story (including Rosselli’s leak and Garrison’s investigation) under Jack Anderson’s by-line. The article practically jumped off the page:
President Johnson is sitting on a political H-bomb—an unconfirmed report that Robert Kennedy may have approved an assassination plot which backfired against his late brother. Top officials, queried by this column, agreed that a plot to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro was “considered at the highest levels of the Central Intelligence Agency. . . One version claims that underworld figures were recruited to carry out the plot. . . One source insists that Bobby, eager to avenge the Bay of Pigs fiasco, played a key role in the planning. . .
Some sources consider Robert Kennedy’s behavior after the assassination to be significant. He seemed to be tormented, they say,
by more than the natural grief over the murder of his brother. . . For weeks after the tragedy, this column was told, Bobby was morose and refused to see people. Could he have been plagued by the terrible thought that he had helped put into motion forces that indirectly may have brought about his brother’s martyrdom? Some insiders think so.
This report may have started New Orleans’ flamboyant District Attorney on his investigation of the Kennedy assassination, but insiders believe he is on the wrong trails.
Kennedy and Johnson: At War
Robert Kennedy reacted to the Anderson article swiftly. The next day, March 4, 1967, he had his secretary, Angela Novello, call Hoover for the express purpose of retrieving the May 7, 1962 memo—originally generated as a cover—that conveyed the clear impression that Bobby had been against the Castro plots.36 Simultaneously, Kennedy contacted Richard Helms, now Director of the CIA, and had Helms retrieve his copy of the memo. Helms later lunched with Kennedy, at which time they discussed the memo.37 With the death of David Ferrie, Robert Kennedy had no way of knowing if Garrison would follow up on the Rosselli tease. However, after the recent blowup with Johnson, Kennedy feared the President would find a way to leverage the issue, thus putting the kibosh not only to “the Kennedy myth” but to the slain president’s “heir apparent.”
And Johnson was indeed salivating. He was keeping track of the developments in Garrison’s investigation through his aide Jack Valenti, whose cousin Judson James was married to a New Orleans reporter covering the story, Rosemary James.38 Texas Governor John Connally also had sources in Garrison’s office, and likewise kept LBJ informed.
On March 17, 1967, unhappy with Ramsey Clark’s report, Johnson had his assistant, Marvin Watson, contact the FBI, instructing the Bureau to follow up on Rosselli’s scenario. Five days later, Johnson met with CIA Director Richard Helms and asked Helms to look into assassination allegations involving Castro.39 The next day, Helms instructed the CIA’s Inspector General to submit to him a report on the CIA’s assassination plots. (The subsequent revelations of this report would become the starting point for the Church Committee inquiries of 1975.)
Helms, however, had already conferred with his former boss in the Cuba Project—RFK. Two months later, when Helms read Johnson several portions of the Inspector General’s report, some plotting was admitted to, but there was no mention of any Kennedy approval of the plots. All indications are that Johnson never saw the full report. CIA historian Thomas Powers described what happened next:
After his meeting with Johnson, Helms held on to the Inspector General’s Report for a couple of weeks, then returned it to Jack Earman [the CIA Inspector General] with a written order. Earman was to keep the draft, but that was all he was to keep. The IG’s working papers were to be destroyed. Every scrap. Every transcript of an interview, every memo, every note made by the investigators. The draft which Helms had read went into a safe, his briefing notes neatly attached to the front, and it stayed there until William Colby [his CIA successor] learned of its existence in 1973.40
Convinced that the paper trail was in order, Bobby next made inroads into the New Orleans investigation to determine just what Garrison had. With the power of the Justice Department no longer at his disposal, Kennedy now relied upon trusted friends to (as the British might say) “suss out” Jim Garrison. But first Bobby had to attend to family matters.
Incident at Arlington
Although the official re-interment would not begin until the following day, a work crew was already making ready to excavate the old grave. The date was March 14, 1967, and the body of John Kennedy was to be moved to a new site. Permanent landscaping had been completed, including new stonework quarried on Cape Cod in the early 19th century, and a tasteful plaque in the walk declaring the dates of JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY (1917-1963). The U.S. Army Band would arrive for the solemn ceremonies early the next morning, then members of the Kennedy family and President Johnson.
Forty-four months earlier, on November 24th, 1963, President Kennedy’s lot in the Arlington National Cemetery had been set aside “in perpetuity”— reserved forever in the honor of his memory, as Cemetery officials would inform visitors. He was buried in Lot 45, Section 30 on the afternoon of the following day, November 25th, when the “eternal flame” was lit. Work on a permanent site 20 feet away began soon thereafter, and would be completed four months after the re-interment—in July 1967.
Now it was time to re-bury the 35th President in that new site, together with the bodies of his two infant children. But, as if the absence of mystery could not be tolerated in any aspect of the Kennedy family history, something puzzling occurred.41
Before the workmen started their excavation, they were startled to witness what had all the appearances of a paramilitary operation. Some 300 military personnel arrived and closed Arlington National Cemetery to the public, clearing it of all unauthorized persons. An Army road-block shut down Arlington Memorial Bridge. The Military District of Washington established a command post at the guard house near the grave sites. A 50-man reserve troop stood by for summoning on short notice. Meantime, troops ringed the area, which was screened by canvas and open to only “key personnel” with “a specific job.”
The detailed paperwork for these maneuvers was reminiscent of a minor military operation—which, in fact, it was. A handwritten note from the Army’s General Counsel to a Deputy Secretary of the General Staff noted that Secretary of Defense McNamara wanted an “hour by hour detailed schedule” of what was to take place in the Cemetery. It also included an order that the crane, trucks, and other equipment of the firm responsible for the work bear no identifying markings. And memorandum after memorandum repeated the order that “all public will be clear of the cemetery prior to re-interment.”
The March afternoon had been cool. By 6 p.m., it was growing dark. Ten minutes later, the mystery deepened: cemetery workers were startled to see two members of the official party arrive. Why now? Surely these movers and shakers, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, hadn’t come merely to check on the preparations for the following day?42
Minutes after the powerful Senator and Secretary reached the site, the puzzled work crew was directed to break ground. A tractor and crane moved into position inside the canvas, where the tractor driver switched to his backhoe levers. Actually, the crew consisted of only two men—the tractor driver and a skillful crane operator. The commander of the 1st Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division, who was in charge of the operation, was much impressed by the skill of the workmen, who “seemed like artists with their equipment.” With a single swoop, the backhoe operator scraped to within an inch of the vault, without touching it. Soon, the crane operator lifted it up “as if it were a precious cargo,” and transferred it from the old grave site to the new.43
Senator Robert Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara watched the funeral ballet in silence. At 7 p.m., Senator Edward Kennedy arrived, accompanied by Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston and a priest named McGuire—both of whom were scheduled to bless the graves of the President and his two children the following day.
Considering that future researchers would note the disappearance of President Kennedy’s preserved brain from the National Archives, the proceedings possibly take on an added significance. Recall that virtually all the evidence points to Bobby’s control over this material, in spite of conspiracy theorists’ claims. With Bobby in control of the material, and the brain still inventoried in 1965, the re-interment became the prime opportunity for a simultaneous re-burial of JFK’s brain. Interestingly, in several newly-surfaced photos of the late-night operation, a small box appears by the Kennedy graveside, at the feet of Cardinal Cushing (see photo spread).
Just before the first shovel of earth was thrown on the vault in its new setting, Bobby Kennedy took a Kennedy half-dollar from his pocket, used it to scrape some earth from the concrete vault, and tossed the coin into the new grave. At 8:45 p.m., the mourners departed the property.
But by 11 p.m., they returned—this time, RFK was accompanied by his wife, his brother Ted, Warren Billings, and Jacqueline Kennedy. They remained at the site until just before midnight. They would return in the morning for the actual re-interment proceedings.
Bobby and Garrison
After the re-interment, Robert Kennedy continued to monitor and react to the potentially troublesome Garrison “probe.” As Bobby well knew, it could turn up connections between Oswald and Cuba. And it was just two short conceptual steps from Cuba to the Cuba Project, and from the Cuba Project to him. In fact, Garrison would eventually try to implicate Bobby, but on the wrong counts, and with little success.
“When the Garrison investigation started, Bobby asked me if he had anything,” recalls RFK press secretary Frank Mankiewicz. “I said I didn’t know. He asked me to learn everything I could about it. He said to me, ‘I may need it in the future.’ I read everything there was. A photo expert came to my home with huge blow-ups of the grassy knoll.”44
Robert Kennedy also solicited the advice of his former right-hand man at the Justice Department, Walter Sheridan. Sheridan had worked at the National Security Agency (NSA), the super-secret agency in charge of electronic surveillance. He had played a key role in Kennedy’s prolonged crusade against Jimmy Hoffa. He was now an investigator for NBC News, though some said he never severed his professional ties to Robert Kennedy. In 1961, three other veterans of RFK’s “Get Hoffa” squad formed an investigative agency known as the “Five Eyes,” taken from the five “I’s” of its acronym—International Investigators Incorporated, of Indianapolis, Indiana. According to rumor, the Five Eyes spied privately for the Kennedy family over many years.