by Mark Lane
Q: Did you see Mr. Hunt actually deliver money to anyone in the motel room which you were present in?
A: Yes.
Q: To whom did you see him deliver the money?
A: He gave an envelope of cash to Frank Fiorini.
Q: Did anyone else enter the room other than you, Mr. Fiorini, Mr. Hunt, and others who may have been there before Mr. Hunt arrived?
A: No.
Q: Where did you see the person you identified as Jack Ruby?
A: After Eduardo left, a fellow came to the door and it was Jack Ruby, about an hour later, forty-five minutes to an hour later.
Q: When you say Eduardo, who are you referring to?
A: E. Howard Hunt.
Q: When did that meeting take place in terms of the hour; was it daytime or nighttime?
A: Early evening.
Q: How soon after that evening meeting took place did you leave Dallas?
A: I left about two hours later; Frank took me to the airport and we went back to Miami.
Q: Now, can you tell us in relationship to the day that President Kennedy was killed, when this meeting took place?
A: The day before.
Q: Is it your testimony that the meeting which you just described with Mr. Hunt making the payment of money to Mr. Sturgis took place on November 21, 1963?
A: Yes.
In the original trial, the defense worked to prove that Hunt had not been in Dallas on November 22. However, Hunt was charged with conspiracy in the assassination. It was not imperative that he be there on the day, just that he have a connection to the crime. Marita Lorenz had just placed him in Dallas on November 21. Hunt had no alibi for that day.
Hunt had not prepared himself for questions about the twenty-first, and freely admitted to me that it was entirely possible that he had not been in his office in Washington, D.C., on November 21, although he was quite certain he was there on the twenty-second.
I asked Marita about Jack Ruby:
Q: Is it your testimony that the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald is, to the best of your ability to identify him, the person who was in the room in the motel in Dallas the night before the president was killed?
A: Yes.
Q: Had you ever seen Jack Ruby before November 21, 1963?
A: No.
During cross-examination, Lorenz was able to clarify some of the details of her testimony. She was asked why she was not questioned by the Warren Commission and responded that the CIA had instructed her not to answer questions that were put to her by the Warren Commission. She did, however, testify in front of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s.
Q: Is it your testimony today, that today’s testimony is consistent with what you said before the House Select Committee?
A: That’s right.
Q: When was the first time you met Howard Hunt?
A: 1960, in Miami, Florida.
Q: How was he identified to you?
A: Introduced. Introduced as Eduardo.
Q: How do you spell that?
A: E-D-U-A-R-D-O, Eduardo, E-D-U-A-R-D-O. He was to finance the operations in Miami.
Q: What language did he speak to you in?
A: English and Spanish.
Q: English and Spanish?
A: Yes.
Q: When is it that you became aware that this person you know as Eduardo was E. Howard Hunt?
A: About the same time. Eduardo was the name we were to refer to him as, when discussing things.
Q: Who did you believe he was working for at that time?
A: CIA.
Q: Why?
A: Because we were all at that time CIA members of Operation 40. We had been given instructions from Eduardo and had certain rights and permissions to do things that the average citizen could not do.
I asked Lorenz to tell me the names of the men with whom she had traveled to Miami. She refused, saying, “They killed Kennedy. I don’t want to be the one to give their names; it’s too dangerous.” I warned her that Hunt’s attorney might ask her about them.
Hunt’s lawyer did. He asked her for the name of the persons in the car with her. She told him of Gerry Patrick Hemming, two brothers named Novo and Pedro Diaz Lanz.
She told me later, “If Hunt and his friends in the CIA wanted that question answered, or were too dumb or too lazy to keep their lawyer from asking it, the responsibility is theirs, not mine.”
Counsel for Hunt asked her about the weapons in the car, and she identified them as handguns and automatics, rifles, “cases of machine guns, rifles, thirty-eights, forty-fives.” When he asked her what happened to the weaponry after the caravan reached Dallas, she told him, “They were in the car and I presume they took them to the motel the next day, the next night. A lot of things they carried in.”
Hunt’s lawyer continued to question her. At one point I had to break in and remind him that she was testifying about classified subjects and could be breaking the law in order to answer his questions.
Lorenz left Dallas on November 21, 1963, because, as she said:
“I knew that this was different from other jobs. This was not just gunrunning. This was big, very big, and I wanted to get out. I told Sturgis I wanted to leave. He said it was a very big operation but that my part was not dangerous. I was to be a decoy. Before he could go further, I said please let me get out. I want to go back to my baby in Miami. Finally he agreed and drove me to the airport.”
She flew to Miami, picked up her child, and then flew to New York so that she could be with her mother in New Jersey.
Counsel for Hunt asked her if she had done anything with her information after she had found out the president had been killed and was in New Jersey.
A: Talked to the FBI.
Q: You talked to the FBI?
A: Yes.
Q: Voluntarily?
A: They wanted to talk to me anyway about certain things with my child’s father and they picked me up and took me to the office.
Q: What day would that have been?
A: A few days after I arrived, after everyone got over the initial shock.
Q: It would be some time in the month of November of 1963?
A: Yes.
Q: In your discussions with the FBI, they inquired about your activities which related to Dallas and this group of seven people that took the car trip?
A: Well, they discussed my associates down there and my relationship with my daughter’s father, mostly.
Q: Did they know the names of the people you took the car trip with, from Miami to Dallas?
A: Yes.
Q: Did they ask you about each of those people?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you tell them about the guns and money and about Eduardo?
A: Yes.
Q: You told them about Eduardo?
A: Yes.
Q: And the guns?
A: They know about all those associations. They didn’t want to go into it. Those were CIA activities, not FBI.
Marita Lorenz clearly did not want to talk about her associations with the men in Dallas, but Hunt’s lawyer pressed her further.
Q: Did you ever talk with Frank Sturgis about it, since then?
A: We are not on talking terms, Frank and I.
Q: That was not my question. Have you ever talked about it with Frank Sturgis since 1963?
A: Yes.
Q: Did he indicate to you that he was involved in the assassination of the president?
A: Yes.
Counsel finally pressed Lorenz to tell of her last meeting with Sturgis, when he told her:
“We killed the president that day. You could have been a part of it—you know, part of history. You should have stayed. It was safe. Everything was covered in advance. No arrests, no real newspaper investigation. It was all covered, very professional.”
In a closing argument, Hunt’s counsel told the jury members that they should have faith in our nation’s leaders. I suggested that they should have faith in their own ability to e
valuate the evidence. Judge Kehoe instructed the jury about the law and then, since it was late in the day, suggested that they retire to the jury room to go over housekeeping matters, look at the verdict form and take an initial look at the evidence. Soon he excused them for the day and asked them to return the next morning. At 9:30 the next morning, they resumed deliberations. Sixty-five minutes later the clerk announced that there was a verdict. To the question by the judge, “Have you arrived at a verdict in this case?” the jury foreperson responded in the affirmative. The unanimous verdict was read, “We, the jury, find for the defendant, Liberty Lobby and against the plaintiff, E. Howard Hunt.” The jury also awarded costs to the victorious party to be assessed against Hunt. When questioned by the media on the steps of the courthouse, Leslie Armstrong, the foreperson, said that the evidence clearly demonstrated that Hunt and the CIA had assassinated President Kennedy and that the government should act so that those responsible be brought to justice.
Later I was able to locate Hemming in Florida. I had been informed that he had trained guerillas to kill with their bare hands when it seemed necessary for some project that the government found worthy. I also learned that he was a very large man. I checked into a well-known and adequately populated Miami Beach hotel and called him. He said, “I know who you are and what you’ve done. I would like to meet you.” The more eager he seemed, the more my fervor for the assignment faded. I told him where I was staying, and we agreed to meet in one hour in the large and busy lobby. I informed the desk not to give my room number to anyone. A few minutes later there was a knock on my door. It was Hemming. He was approximately six feet eight and weighed about three hundred pounds. He said, “Don’t worry, I’m not armed.” I was less than assured. I asked how he got my room number. He laughed and said, “Piece of cake. You forget where I worked.” We talked for a while, but I was not about to accuse him of murder while in the secluded confines of the room. I suggested a walk about the grounds, which overlooked the beach and ocean. He agreed. There, under a palm tree, alone but not out of sight of witnesses, I recounted for him almost verbatim what Marita had said. He watched me intensely and without changing expression. When I completed my narrative, he said, “And do you have a question?” I hesitated and then asked, “Was her testimony accurate?” He responded, “No. Not entirely. It was not a two-car caravan, there were three cars.” He paused and added, “Otherwise everything she said was true.”
The Real Firing Line: The
Brothers Novo and the
Brothers Buckley
During December 1966, I was invited to appear on William F. Buckley’s Firing Line. I wondered why Buckley, who both ardently supported the Warren Commission Report and had neither read it nor examined the evidence upon which it was allegedly based, wanted to duel with me about a subject for which he was totally unprepared. This was an unprecedented break with the tradition he had established for his long-running program on public television. In advance, he advised me that we were not to talk about the details in the Kennedy assassination, but only broader philosophical questions raised by the appointment by the president of a commission to investigate a murder. Buckley also operated from a position of advantage in that he was the host, the person who proposed the specific questions as well as the general subject matter, and the debater who could respond whenever he wished to, and he often wished to.
I knew little about Buckley’s background at that time; only that he was an icon of the right and respected as a responsible conservative, even by the liberal news media. I wrote briefly about that appearance in A Citizen’s Dissent, evaluating the program as being relevant and fair. Years later I was able to make a judgment as to why the invitation had been offered to me.
During the Hunt trial, Marita Lorenz testified that two brothers, Guillermo and Ignacio Novo, were involved in the assassination of President Kennedy on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency, a statement later confirmed by Gerry Patrick Hemming, a CIA assassin who had traveled to Dallas with Lorenz, just before the assassination. If the Novo brothers had been arrested in November 1963, a tragedy that took place in the nation’s capital many years later might have been avoided.
On September 18, 1976, Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt were assassinated in Washington, D.C. Letelier had served as foreign minister under Salvador Allende, whose administration was overthrown by the CIA. Ronni Moffitt was a twenty-five-year-old American woman who was involved in efforts to bring about democracy in Chile. They were murdered by Guillermo Novo and Ignacio Novo.
At the time of the murders George H. W. Bush was the director of the CIA and was informed that DINA (Departmento de Intelligencia) and its contract agents were involved in the Letelier/Moffitt murders. DINA operated as agents for General Augusto Pinochet who had seized power in Chile in 1974. Bush became an active participant in an effort to falsify the record and deny that DINA had been involved in the murders. Two intelligence-related journalists, Jeremiah O’Leary, writing for the now defunct Washington Star, and William F. Buckley, formerly with the CIA, led that disinformation campaign. O’Leary wrote, “The right wing Chilean junta had nothing to gain and everything to lose by the assassination of a peaceful and popular socialist leader.” Buckley wrote, “U.S. investigators think it unlikely that Chile would risk an action of this kind with the respect it has won with great difficulty during the past year in many Western countries, which before were hostile to its policies.” Newsweek asserted, “the CIA has concluded that the Chilean secret police was not involved.”
In fact, in spite of the assurances from Buckley, O’Leary and the CIA, all offered within days after the two murders, DINA, likely in cooperation with the CIA, was responsible for the murders. Michael Townley, an American with contacts in the CIA, admitted in a plea bargain that he had been a professional assassin for DINA and that he and others had murdered Letelier and Moffitt. At the trial, Guillermo Novo insisted that Townley “was a contract agent for the CIA” and that “the CIA was also responsible for the murders in the nation’s capital.”
On March 23, 1979, Townley, Guillermo Novo and Ignacio Novo, who had been convicted of the murders, appeared before Judge Barrington Parker for sentence. Judge Parker, before whom I had appeared on numerous occasions, was an impartial, intelligent jurist and as honorable as any judge I have ever met. In imposing sentence Parker said, “In the ten years I have served on this bench, I have never presided over a trial of a murder as monstrous as this.”
Before sentence, Townley had entered into an agreement with the Department of Justice, resulting in his being eligible for parole in two years and entry into the Federal Witness Protection Program. Townley and the United States Attorney’s Office also agreed to omit from the public record any evidence of misconduct by DINA. Judge Parker sarcastically asked the prosecutor if he was “representing the Chilean government.” Covering up for the CIA was the duty expected by the U.S. Attorney’s Office which theoretically represented the United States government including its intelligence operations; however, extending that courtesy to a foreign government that had carried out murders in Washington, D.C., was extraordinary.
It became clear during the trial that the United States Attorney’s Office and the FBI had agreed to prevent the most relevant evidence from reaching the jury and the judge. Nevertheless, some testimony, when examined in the context of indisputable facts, revealed both the nature of the government’s conspiracy to cover up the facts and the importance of the evidence that the government sought to suppress.
For example, FBI Special Agent Larry Wack, after being thoroughly prepared by the United States Attorney, described a meeting he had had with Townley. Wack said that he had met the defendant Townley at the John F. Kennedy Airport and “proceeded under his direction to the International Arrivals building.” The purpose of the testimony was for Townley to retrace the steps he took that led to the conspiracy to murder Orlando Letelier.
Wack continued, “The route we traveled was to the International Arrivals
building, to the second floor to LAN Chile Airlines Office to their first class lounge and, subsequently left the airport.” This colloquy followed:
Q: Who was directing the route that you were taking?
Wack: Mr. Townley was.
Q: After leaving JFK Airport, did you go anyplace else?
Wack: We went to the vicinity of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, New York City.
Q: And would you tell us what happened when you got to the vicinity of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue?
Wack: Mr. Townley led us to the specific building of 500 Fifth Avenue.
Q: And what happened when you got to 500 Fifth Avenue?
Wack: Mr. Townley—we entered the building and we proceeded to determine what office he had visited in the building.
Q: Did there come a time when he pointed out an office that he had visited?
Wack: He did. He pointed out the office of a New York state senator on the forty-first floor of the building.