Kennedys and King Test host626

Tag: JIM GARRISON

  • Eugene Dinkin: The Saga of an Unsung Hero

    Eugene Dinkin: The Saga of an Unsung Hero

    Few people risk their job, their reputation and their life for an important mission. But that is what Eugene B. Dinkin did. For that reason, I believe Mr. Dinkin deserves the critical community’s respect and admiration. Maybe more than that. Yet how many people, even in the research community, know who he is? If one turns to a standard reference book on the JFK case, Michael Benson’s Who’s Who in the JFK Assassination, the man merits only three desultory lines that tell us nothing about him. In the first edition of the late Jim Marrs’ Crossfire, which is really a desk compendium on the JFK case, there is no mention of him.

    So who is Eugene B. Dinkin and what exactly did he do involving the assassination of President Kennedy? Dinkin was a young American soldier who was serving in the United States Army in 1963. If he is a hero, and this author thinks he is, why have we not heard about him?

    One reason is this: the Warren Commission hid his name and the information he had gathered in an attempt to warn the President about a plot prior to November 22, 1963. Fifteen years later, he tried to get his information to the House Select Committee on Assassination to help solve the crime, but they also hid this information.

    I first got a hint of Private First Class Dinkin when, in the early Nineties, I saw a file that referenced an Army man who had information about the murder of the President. The file was dated from the Seventies, but it did not include Dinkin’s name. I was left to wonder who the person was and what he knew. Then in the mid-Nineties Congress passed the JFK Records Act, mandating that the CIA, FBI, U. S. Secret Services and other agencies release their holdings on the assassination to the National Archives. That mandate also covered the material that the Warren Commission and the HSCA had collected. (The U.S. Army should also have released their files, but it was learned that they had destroyed their files sometime in the 1970’s, which is an important story for another time.)

    Once bundles of files came to the archives, I went there looking for all that I could find on the twenty-some witnesses who took film or photos in and around Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. (That is a topic for another interesting story.) In the back of my mind, the Army soldier file lurked. So with the kind assistance of the personnel at the Archives, we came up with Dinkin’s name and a trove of documents about his story.

    Regular Army Private First Class Dinkin was serving in Metz, France in the 599th Ordinance Group. He held a secret security clearance for his job in the crypto-section of his unit. Prior to enlisting he had attended the University of Chicago. He and his family had lived in Chicago. His studies at the university included psychology. His duties at Metz would have included deciphering cable traffic from the European Commands, NATO and so forth.

    In September, 1963, Dinkin noticed material in the Army newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and other print publications, that was negative toward the president and his policies and implied that he was a weak president in dealing with the Russians. The examples that he found became more negative, the suggestion being that if he were removed as president it would be a good thing. By mid-October Dinkin had found enough information—some of it subliminal—that he was convinced that a plot was in the works. One driven by some high ranking members of the military, some right-wing economic groups, and with support by some national media outlets.

    He did not tell his superior officers about this information—given that he believed that the military was involved. He did tell quite a few Army friends and some others that I will note shortly. This information probably got back to Army authorities because Dinkin was transferred to the Army Depot in Metz, France, where his duties did not require a secret clearance.

    Dinkin’s studies forced him to conclude that the plot would happen around November 28, 1963, and that the assassination would be blamed on “a Communist or a Negro”. He then sent a registered letter to Attorney General Robert Kennedy. When he got no reply, he decided on other options.

    In late October, 1963, Dinkin gathered up the material that he found that had psychological sets, which Dinkin would be sensitive to because of his college studies. Psychological sets are a batch of information that is used to induce a particular state of mind in an individual being exposed to the sets. The sets can be a series of pictures, events, written statements or combinations of the aforementioned examples that are used by advertisers and others to implant ideas into the mind of the people being exposed to them. In advertising, of course, the goal would be to get you, the target audience, to be interested enough in the product or service that you would buy it.

    In the case of the psychological sets being used against President Kennedy, the goal was to get American citizens to believe that President Kennedy was a weak, Communist-sympathizer, whose murder would not be a bad thing. Additionally, Dinkin concluded that sets were placed in print media to implant into citizens’ consciousness the recognition of Oswald, Ruby and various other assassination artifacts.

    On October 25, 1963, Dinkin left Metz and went to the United States Embassy in Luxembourg, where he tried to see Mr. Cunningham, Chargé d’Affaires at the embassy. He sent word to Mr. Cunningham that he had information concerning a plot to assassinate the president, and at one point he was able to speak to Mr. Cunningham by phone. Mr. Cunningham refused to see him or to review the newspapers and other data that he had collected that would advance his assertions. While he was at the Luxembourg Embassy, Dinkin spoke to an unnamed Marine Corps guard about his research. Not being successful in his attempt to get authorities to pass on his warning, he went back to his unit at the Army Depot.

    After he returned from Luxembourg, his superiors informed him that he was to undergo a psychological evaluation on November 5, 1963. Due to this impending development, Dinkin went absent without official leave from his unit and travelled to Geneva, Switzerland to try to present his information to some higher authority.

    In Switzerland, he went to the newspaper Geneva Diplomat and tried to speak to the editor. Dinkin also tried to talk to a Mr. DeWhirst, a Newsweek reporter, but he would not listen to the information. Dinkin then went to Time-Life publications and was able to speak to the secretary who was located in Zurich.

    On November 6, 1963, Dinkin went to the press room of the United Nations office in Geneva. There he told reporters about the plot. One reporter, Alex des Fontaines, a stringer for Time-Life and Radio Canada, later told authorities that he and a female reporter both recalled Dinkin talking about his assassination information, which prompted Des Fontaines to file the story on November 26, 1963.

    In 1977, when the House Select Committee on Assassinations was re-investigating the murders of President Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Dinkin related some of his ordeal in a letter to Jacqueline Hess, one of the chief investigators for the Committee. He wrote that on November 6, 1963, he had told the Tass News Agency representative about his forecast of the assassination. Dinkin said on November 7th and 8th that he was in Frankfurt and Bonn, Germany and had been a cryptographic operator at the 599th Ordinance Company, Metz, France. He wrote that his secret clearance had been revoked at the time messages were going across teletype lines. He noted to Hess that he had never decoded any illicit cryptographic message that appeared to relate to the JFK assassination. Six months after Dinkin wrote to Hess at the HSCA, he received a form letter, but not from Hess. It was from the HSCA Chief Counsel Robert Blakey.

    An FBI Airtel from the Paris Legation to FBI Director Hoover of February 27, 1964 gives additional information about the FBI’s knowledge of Dinkin’s activities in Geneva in

    early November 1963. The Airtel noted that on November 8, 1963—over two weeks before Kennedy’s assassination—a Bern Airtel contained references to Dinkin’s activities and stated that since his statements and actions apparently received considerable publicity, his case might have already come to the Bureau’s attention. If that had not already occurred, it certainly would now be that the FBI was onto it. From these intelligence documents, and his attempts to meet embassy personnel, we know that a significant number of people, some of them officials of the United States government, either met Dinkin and/or heard Dinkin’s information. They all failed to investigate it thoroughly, report it to the Secret Service, or report it to the White House.

    About a month after the assassination, with the Warren Commission in process, Eugene Dinkin’s mother wrote a letter to the Attorney General’s office. In her December 29, 1963, letter she noted that she was writing on behalf of her son. She stated that, through his semantic studies, her son knew how the assassination was planned. Mrs. Dinkin wondered if the Attorney General could arrange someone to talk with Eugene so that perhaps some important information could come of this. She ended the letter by hoping that the Attorney General would look into this matter. She gave her son’s location as Walter Reed Army Hospital, right there in Washington, D. C.

    Mrs. Dinkin’s letter was answered by Assistant Attorney General Herbert J. Miller Jr. Which was unfortunate, because, as writers like James DiEugenio have shown, Miller was an important part of the cover up. (See The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 35-40) He replied in keeping with that pose.

    In his one paragraph answer, Miller lied to Mrs. Dinkin three times. He said the matter was entirely in the jurisdiction of the Department of the Army. This was not true; the FBI had been given authority on November 29, 1963 by an executive order of the White House to investigate all matters pertaining to the murder of the President. The FBI is the investigative arm of the Justice Department. Miller’s second false statement was that his

    (Miller’s) department had no authority to take action. Obviously wrong, since the Justice Department houses the FBI. His third lie was that the Attorney General had only asked him to acknowledge Mrs. Dinkin’s letter. Early after the assassination, Attorney General Robert Kennedy came to CIA Director John McCone and asked him if the Agency was involved in any way in his brother’s death. From that indication, Robert Kennedy would have been very interested in hearing what PFC Dinkin knew about the murder.

    Agency cables of November 12 and 18 to CIA Director McCone should have made him interested in getting more knowledge about Dinkin or, at the minimum, alerting the Secret Service about Dinkin’s information. Neither Director McCone nor anyone from the CIA passed this knowledge on to the President or the Secret Service in time to foil the plot. The CIA and the FBI had at least 2 weeks, from November 8 to 22, to warn the Secret Service and the President. They did not do so. On November 13, 1963, after he had returned to base in Metz, Dinkin was confined to the “Psych Ward” where, on the evening of November 22nd, he was questioned by a Secret Service agent and asked if the plot was from the left or right. Dinkin said that it was “from the right”.

    On December 5, 1963, Dinkin was sent to Walter Reed Hospital. There he underwent numerous psychiatric tests. He told the FBI that he was aware that the Army psychiatrist had declared him to be “psychotic” and “paranoiac”. Dinkin was at Walter Reed for 4 months. There he was given extensive therapy, including being asked to record lists of words. Dinkin had been recently discharged from the Army prior to an interview by the FBI on April 1, 1964.

    The FBI interviewed Dinkin in Chicago on April 1, 1964. He told them that he had been discharged from the Army. He then related the details about his pre-knowledge of the assassination. He told the agents that he first became aware of the plot to assassinate President Kennedy in September, 1963. At that point Dinkin felt that he did not have enough facts to support his view, but by October he believed he had enough information to substantiate his theory.

    So, on October 16, 1963, he wrote a letter to Attorney General Robert Kennedy setting forth his information, and signed the letter with his own name. He got a friend to send the registered letter because Eugene thought the letter might be intercepted if he showed his own name and address on the envelope. In the letter he requested that he be interviewed by a representative from the Justice Department. (He got no response, but since we know that Asst. Attorney General Herbert Miller answered Mrs. J. Dinkin’s letter to Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, it is likely that Miller intercepted this letter as well.) Dinkin informed the agents who interviewed him that he had told a number of people about his research. He listed the following individuals as having heard the plot details prior to November 22, 1963: PFC Dennis DeWitt, PFC Larry Pullen, Sergeant Walter Reynolds , a Dr. Afar, an Army psychology teacher at Metz, and R. Thomas, a student attending Friebourg University in Switzerland.

    After Dinkin returned from his leave to Switzerland and Germany on November 8, he was placed in detention until November 13. While there, Dinkin was contacted by a white male who identified himself verbally as a representative of the Defense Department. This individual asked Dinkin for the location of the material that he had compiled as proof of his prediction of the assassination of President Kennedy. He added that he desired to obtain these proofs and furnish Dinkin a receipt for the papers. Eugene told the FBI agents that he instructed the man where the papers were located at the base, at which time the man left. This was prior to the assassination.

    Dinkin stated that upon his release from custody, he discovered that all of his notes were missing. He presumed that the individual mentioned previously had taken them. Dinkin never received a receipt for his papers. Dinkin reasserted to the FBI agents that he believed that there had been a plot perpetrated by a “military group,” and abetted by newspaper personnel working with the group that plotted to assassinate President Kennedy.

    After November 13, 1963, Dinkin was taken to Landstuhl Hospital in Germany for a psychological evaluation, and was subsequently transferred to Walter Reed Naval Hospital, where he remained for four months until he was discharged. At this point in April, 1964, Dinkin had given the FBI agents enough information for them to verify his story. They could have interviewed the individuals with whom Eugene had consulted about his assassination information. Additionally, the FBI could have interviewed the white male from the Defense Department. The FBI could have easily identified him because the CID detention center at Metz would have kept a visitor log and no one would have been able to visit a prisoner without signing in and showing identification.

    So far in my ongoing research, I have found no indication that the FBI did anything that was called for to either corroborate Dinkin’s story or refute it. Hopefully when more materials are released in a few days to the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, we will get a complete picture of the Dinkin saga.

    Dinkin filed a civil suit in New York against the Army and others. Writer Dick Russell references that action in his book as Civil Action No. 75C 1015 U.S. District Court for Eastern District of New York. There is no information in the record of which I am aware that has indicated that Dinkin was contacted by the Warren Commission, despite their having been made aware of him by the FBI. Also, there is no record that the Secret Service or the Justice Department contacted him for detailed interviews, even though these agencies knew of Dinkin while the investigation of the assassination was ongoing.

    As noted above, on February 23, 1977, when the HSCA was reinvestigating the murder of the President, Dinkin wrote a letter to Jacqueline Hess, Deputy Chief Researcher. Dinkin noted to Hess that he felt that the enclosed material, which he called Media Demonstrations, could be used as evidence to discover the source of the crime. He noted that studies in perception, brain research, mass hysteria, and subliminal advertising should be used as a reference framework for understanding the exhibits that he enclosed. Dinkin mentioned that further examples of the demonstrations that he sent could be gotten from a civil action he had filed at the U.S. District Court, Eastern District, Brooklyn, N.Y.

    Dinkin followed up with another letter dated March 10, 1977. In this letter to Jacqueline Hess, he noted some errors in the material sent by Richard Helms, CIA Deputy Director of Plans, to the Warren Commission back in 1964, that related to his activities in Switzerland and Germany during the time he was attempting to warn authorities about the assassination. He again stated to Hess that he believed that the exhibits that he had sent could be pertinent to the HSCA investigation. With the 23 examples that Dinkin enclosed with his February letter, he provided written descriptions for how to interpret the demonstrations.

    Demonstration 2, for instance, is comprised of photos from the October 15, 1963 and October 18, 1963 editions of Stars and Stripes. The headline on the October 15th story is “Prospective Bosses Fire Jack With Enthusiasm”. The photo attached to the story is of Jack Pierce, an unemployed California man who has been fired 73 times. The man in the photo has a vague resemblance to Oswald. President Kennedy was often referred to as Jack, so the headline could be processed to mean getting rid of Jack Kennedy. The California man’s name reinforces this subliminal message: pierce Jack -with a bullet. The October 18th story includes a picture of an Army specialist named Clinton Pierce. This photo of Pierce has a vague resemblance to Oswald. Pierce’s job is operating heavy equipment, and the story is about his toy collecting hobby. The caption under his photo is, “so who needs a Jack?” This again could be taken to mean Jack is unnecessary and can be gotten rid of. The last name of the Army specialist is “Pierce”, again a reference to putting a hole in something.

    The other demonstrations include a number of different types of psychological sets that create a variety of assassination related images in the mind of the reader/viewer. In researching the murder of President Kennedy I have found a number of examples similar to those that Dinkin discovered.

    The July 2, 1963 edition of Look Magazine has a caption in the upper right-hand corner of the cover page that reads, “Why Kennedy’s in Trouble”. The caption is written in red, the color of blood. The main part of the Look cover is of Pope John kneeling in prayer. The caption and the Pope taken together could suggest the Pope praying at a funeral mass. The title of the story inside, “Why there is trouble on the New Frontier”, has the words “New Frontier” also in blood red. The story itself was critical of many of the President’s decisions on a variety of issues. JFK when first elected was likened to a new Adam, but the article focuses on the New Frontier’s lack of success in getting domestic programs passed, which suggests the fall of Adam. The article included phrases like “a dark breeze blowing through the Washington political community,” “the bloodstained frontier,” “woes descended on the head of the President,” and “White House unfurled the white flag,” suggesting the fall of the new Adam.

    I have found additional demonstrations in the February 2, 1963, June 8, 1963, and the November 16, 1963, November 23, 1963 issues of Saturday Evening Post, and the July 5, 1963 issue of Life. I have not located all copies of Hearst publications dated between March, 1963 and November, 1963, so there might be more examples of psychological sets out there that were intended to predispose citizens to accept aspects of the assassination of President Kennedy. Writer Dick Russell included quite a bit of Dinkin’s information in his book The Man Who Knew Too Much. Noel Twyman also covered some of Dinkin’s story in Bloody Treason. Neither of these writers used the psychological set examples that Dinkin sent to the HSCA, probably indicating that they had not seen them.

    Russell obliquely refers to material in publications as part of a cover story that Dinkin came up with to account for where he thought he had learned about the plot. This idea surfaced during the Jim Garrison investigation where, like many leads, Dinkin’s name first appeared. Russell writes that some of the military associates Garrison’s investigators talked to told the DA that while he was hospitalized, Dinkin was made to recite a cover story. This may be because when Garrison dug deeper into Dinkin he discovered that one of his functions as a code breaker was to decipher messages from the French OAS. (Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew too Much, Second Edition, p. 352) Which is interesting, since the OAS despised Kennedy for his alliance with Charles DeGaulle against their efforts to overthrow the French leader, and also Kennedy’s early advocacy for independence for the French colony of Algeria, which they violently resisted. As Henry Hurt later discovered, a member of the OAS (Secret Army Organization) was in Fort Worth the morning of the assassination, and in Dallas that afternoon. He was picked up within 48 hours and expelled back to France. (Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, pp. 414-19)

    This, of course, is only a theory. But it remains such because neither the FBI, nor the Warren Commission, ever investigated the Dinkin case. And there is no evidence that the HSCA, even though they knew he was alive, ever tried to interview him. Even though it was a fact that he predicted Kennedy’s assassination well in advance of his murder. If that was not an important lead, then what was? Such was the quality of the inquiries into the JFK assassination.

    Sources:

     

    1. Warren Commission Document 788
    2. HSCA CIA cable 11/12/63
    3. HSCA CIA cable 11/18/63
    4. CIA Text Document (Russ Holmes File) 11/29/63
    5. FBI File Paris Legation 02/27/64
    6. CIA Text Document (Russ Holmes File) 05/19/64
    7. DOJ Document 12/29/63, HSCA Letter 02/23/77
    8. HSCA Letter 08/10/77

     

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    Read now the follow-up obituary, The Death of Eugene B. Dinkin

  • Bill Davy at the VMI Seminar

    Bill Davy at the VMI Seminar

    Alan Dale:

    I have the honor of being your host, your emcee. I’d like to begin by introducing our first speaker. William Davy is a longtime researcher and writer, a respected contributor to Probe Magazine. He’s been published as an essayist and reviewer. He’s the author of a monograph on Clay Shaw, which he further developed into his illuminating and much admired work, Let Justice Be Done: New Light on the Jim Garrison Investigation. Please welcome Bill Davy.

    Bill Davy:

    Thank you. Thank you, thank you, Lee, and good evening everybody. Just give me a second to get settled here and get my eyes on. Okay. All right.

    The topic of my presentation tonight are the new documents and the Season of Inquiry. By the Season of Inquiry, I’m talking about essentially the 1970s. It really was a season of inquiry. We have Watergate, of course, the Pike Committee, the Rockefeller Commission, the Church Committee, and House Select Committee on Assassinations. It seemed like at the time the politicians in the country in general were more interested in uncovering the political state. Pardon the term. Present company excluded, of course.

    We’re going to go into some of the documentary evidence, but oftentimes when I’ve given talks to, say, a less sophisticated audience, just to start off, I’ve asked the question, “What do you feel is the government’s official position on the JFK assassination?” and people will say something like, “Well, Oswald did it,” or, “That Warren Commission thing.” I say, “No, that’s not the official position at all. The official position of the federal government is that JFK was killed by a conspiracy.”

    It’s right there. That is the copy … Or it’s right here. It’s the final report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. God knows there’s all kinds of problems with the HSCA. You can do a whole symposium on some of the in-fighting and backstabbing and so forth.

    But that aside, they did some good work, and a lot of that good work found its way into the report itself. I just want to take a quick look at some of the findings of the report. I hate talking at people because everybody can read, but a few of these are worth noting.

    First, “The committee believes on the basis of the evidence available to it that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as result of a conspiracy.” Further, “The committee found that, to be precise and loyal to the facts it established, it was compelled to find that President Kennedy was probably killed as a result of a conspiracy.” Compelled to find, pretty strong language, even though they keep slipping the ‘probably’ in there.

    We’re talking about the scientific evidence here. The evidence available to the committee indicated that it was “probable that more than one person was involved in the president’s murder. That fact compels acceptance.” Again, with the compelling. “And it demands a reexamination of all that was thought to be true in the past.”

    Further, they conclude, “Neither Oswald nor Ruby turned out to be loners, as they’d been painted in the 1964 investigation,” and indeed in the media, ongoing as a matter of fact.

    “The committee found that the CIA-Mafia-Cuban plots had all the elements necessary for a successful assassination conspiracy: people, motive, and means; and the evidence indicated that the participants might well have considered using the resources at their disposal to increase their power and alleviate their problems by assassinating the president.”

    Again, talking about the scientific evidence. “Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the president.” They’re talking about the stuck open mic of the motorcycle policeman who essentially recorded the assassination as it happened.

    Further, in talking about the photographic evidence, “A fleshtone comparison performed by analyzing measurements of color values,” and this is on Willis photograph number five. “A fleshtone comparison performed by analyzing measurements of color values on an object located behind the west end of the retaining wall,” this is on the grassy knoll, “confirmed that the image perceived was actually a human being.” They found photographic evidence of a human being behind the retaining wall on the grassy knoll.

    “The panel did perceive ‘a very distinct straight-line feature’ near the region of this person’s hands, but it was unable to deblur the image sufficiently to reach any conclusion as to whether the feature was in fact a weapon,” but they found a person and they found what appeared to be a weapon behind the grassy knoll.

    “During the course of its investigation, the committee developed several areas of credible evidence and testimony indicating a possible association in New Orleans and elsewhere between Lee Harvey Oswald and David W. Ferrie.” I’ll assume most people know who David Ferrie is, so we don’t have to go down that road.

    “The committee found that the Clinton witnesses … ” This may require a little explanation. What they’re talking about here is the town of Clinton, Louisiana, which is just outside of Baton Rouge. It was uncovered during the Garrison Investigation and the subsequent Shaw trial that Lee Harvey Oswald was seen in Clinton, Louisiana at a voter registration incident with not only David Ferrie but Clay Shaw as well.

    “The committee found that the Clinton witnesses … ,” and there was a whole cross-section of people up there testifying to this. “The committee found that the Clinton witnesses were credible and significant. It was the judgment of the committee that they were telling the truth as they knew it.”

    “If the witnesses were not only truthful but accurate as well in their accounts,” they’re talking about the Clinton witnesses, “they established an association of an undetermined nature between Ferrie, Shaw, and Oswald less than three months before the assassination.” “The committee was, therefore, inclined to believe that Oswald was in Clinton, Louisiana in late August, early September ’63 and that he was in the company of David Ferrie, if not Clay Shaw.”

    “The committee also found that there was at least the possibility that Oswald and Guy Banister were acquainted.” Banister, Ferrie, and Shaw were a triumvirate of suspects and intelligence operatives that had come into the orbit of the Garrison investigation. Anybody who’s seen Oliver Stone’s film, JFK, certainly knows who these players are. The committee found that there was at least a possibility that Oswald and Banister were acquainted. We’ll show later that that was more than a possibility.

    “The committee obtained independent evidence that someone might have posed as Oswald in Mexico in late September and early 1963.” This was the imposter down in Mexico City. Dr. Newman will probably be covering some of that later.

    On the Warren Commission, the committee found that it “failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the president”, that it “presented as conclusions in its report in a fashion that was too definitive”. It “overstated the thoroughness of its investigation”, and that “It is a reality to be regretted that the commission failed to live up to its promise.”

    A summary of the House Select Committee’s conclusions. President Kennedy’s assassination was the result of CIA-Mafia-anti-Castro conspiracy. A gunman fired from the grassy knoll. Oswald was associated with Ferrie, Shaw, and Banister. Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City. The Warren Commission was a failure. Does that remind you of anybody? The House Select Committee’s conclusions vindicated Jim Garrison.

    Further vindication of Garrison comes in the form of the Church Committee. This is a rather misleading title document of Oswald in New Orleans. It’s 155 pages and there’s very little in it on Oswald in New Orleans. Again, this comes from the files of the Church Committee. This is the cover sheet: Oswald in New Orleans. One that’s of importance for us here is this interview with Wendell Roach.

    Now Mr. Roach at that time was in charge of the INS in New Orleans. That was the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It’s since become part of DHS, known as ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. But back before 9/11, it was known as INS. Wendell Roache was in charge of the New Orleans office. They interviewed Roach and … According to Roache, the INS’ role was to determine who was an alien and prevent unauthorized border crossings, et cetera. As part of their duties, they had the responsibility of surveilling these various Cuban groups in New Orleans, and there were a ton of them at the time, mainly these anti-Castro groups.

    The INS had them under surveillance. Included in the surveillance was the group of nuts, as he calls them, headed by David Ferrie. Roache knew the details of Ferrie’s dismissal from Eastern Airlines, various sordid details of his private life, et cetera. As part of surveilling these Cuban groups, they picked up surveillance on David Ferrie because he was closely aligned with these anti-Castro groups.

    As they were surveilling Ferrie and the anti-Castro groups, they picked up surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald. As we can see here, Roache revealed that during the course of their surveillance, they picked up Lee Harvey Oswald going into the offices of Ferrie’s group. The offices of Ferrie’s group was at 544 Camp Street, which was Guy Banister’s office. Oswald had used that address and stamped that address on the literature that he was handing out in New Orleans. He was seen going into the offices of Ferrie’s group, Banister’s office, and Oswald was known to be one of the men in the group.

    Here you have an investigative body of the United States government in the person of Wendell Roache admitting that in the course of their surveillance, routine surveillance, they picked up David Ferrie associating with Lee Harvey Oswald, and the two of them going into Guy Banister’s office. Let’s see if we can blow this up a little bit.

    He also said that the anti-Castro Cubans have been trained by a six-foot ex-marine out of Lake Pontchartrain. He could be referring to Gerry Patrick Hemming here. Just throw that out there because he mentions … He goes out of his way mentioning a six-foot ex-marine.

    His take on Garrison was that Garrison had something: I read his reports in the newspaper, and they were correct. He received good intelligence, whether he was using it for politics or not. Roache noted that Garrison was all eyes and ears in the French Quarter.

    Further, he adds a little something extra to the Oswald story. When Oswald was arrested for the street scuffle with Carlos Bringuier in the summer of 1963, he was taken into custody. As the official record shows, the first thing he did he asked for an FBI agent, which was suspicious in and of itself.

    But there was an extra part of this story that hadn’t been revealed, at least I’d never heard of it until I found this document, and that is when they took him into custody, Oswald would only speak in Russian. When the NOPD had him, they assumed he was a Russian. They called INS. Of course, they would have responsibility for foreign aliens and so forth.

    One of Roache’s associates, this guy, David Smith, went to the police station, and he recognized Oswald as being part of the Banister-Ferrie group and said, “Look, this guy’s an American.” Once Oswald had been outed, he stopped with the Russian. It was then at that point he asked to see an FBI agent, but it was not until the INS guy had come in and said, “We recognize him from our surveillance of David Ferrie and Guy Banister.”

    When the Church Committee investigators finally tracked down Roache and they finally got a hold of him, this is what he said: “I’ve been waiting 12 years for you guys. I’ve been waiting for 12 years to talk someone about this.” No one ever bothered to run him down, talk to him. Maybe he didn’t volunteer the information either, but it’s rather shameful that the FBI and the Warren Commission, who were assigned to investigate the New Orleans angle, didn’t even come across this, and this is a representative of the federal government.

    As they were interviewing him over the phone, the Church Committee investigator was letting him go on and Roache began talking about Oswald. He said, “I saw him around frequently. I recall that he had an office in … ” As you can see, the interviewer cut him off. I was thinking to myself, “What are you doing?” Oswald was just obviously getting ready to say … I’m sorry. Roache was getting ready to say that they had seen Oswald had an office in Guy Banister’s building. It was obviously where he was going with that, but the investigator cut him off.

    Unfortunately that is about it in the files for Roache. I could not find any more follow up from the Church Committee. There was no transition of this evidence over to the House Select Committee. It’s just a shameful lack of follow up on this committees and that we’ve got a body of the federal government, the INS, who had seen Oswald in the company of David Ferrie and Guy Banister. Again, vindicating what Jim Garrison had been saying all along.

    Now what I want to do here is shift gears a little bit in that I’ll talk about … Again, this is out of the files of the Church Committee, because I think that’s been an unmined area for a lot of the researchers.

    This is the testimony of Scott Breckenridge. Scott Breckenridge was a counsel for the CIA. He had written the inspector general’s report on the CIA assassination plots. It was written by Breckenridge and Greer and signed off by the IG Ehrman .

    It came out of a Drew Pearson column that had appeared in The Post at the time. It was in response to a newspaper column by Drew Pearson, which had talked about Castro plots and how they may have backfired on the president, and Bobby Kennedy may be haunted by this. At any rate, the IG began their investigation of the assassination plot against Castro. This is some of what they came up with in the testimony of Breckenridge.

    First of all, he states that the only person to have seen that report was Richard Helms. It was written for Helms. Ehrman was the inspector general who signed off on it and Greer was the other author of it. Helms returned the report to the inspector general.

    What actually happened was they had one original and one copy. Helms ordered the copy destroyed and the one original got put in Helm’s safe at CIA headquarters. It left one copy of the IG report. For obvious reasons, Helms did not want that getting out.

    First of all, Helms didn’t like the report. One of the IG’s conclusions was that they concluded that the elimination of a dominant figure in government will not necessarily cause the downfall of the government. In other words, they’re saying assassination will not necessarily cause the downfall of a government. Helms didn’t like that. He liked assassinations. He thought it could lead to the downfall of a government.

    Further on, they’re talking about Phase I and Phase II plots against Castro. Phase I were the CIA-Mafia plots pre-JFK and ended under Eisenhower. Phase II were also CIA-Mafia plots. They began around November ’61, some time between November ’61 and April ’62. This is the William Harvey ZR/RIFLE-type plots.

    Some of the earlier plots to assassinate Castro were concurrent with the Bay of Pigs invasion. In other words, at the Bay of Pigs operation, a major component of that was the assassination of Castro. This information was never shared with the president, as it goes on here. Was that ever authorized by the White House, the president, and the Department of Defense? Answer: We have no record for it. Castro assassination plots, with the Bay of Pigs: not authorized. This goes on. This speaks, again, about the Bay of Pigs and the assassination plots.

    Breckenridge says, “I don’t think we ever found a clear record of the original authorization.” Senator Baker then asks, “Is it fair to say that Phase I of this operation included a plan for assassination of the leader of a foreign state without any authority from any agency or branch of government outside of the CIA?” Answer: “It is fair to say that our records did not disclose such authority.”

    On the question of presidential authority for these plots, as I note in my marginalia here, the answer is unequivocal. There was none. The president did not authorize any of this activity, and this is coming right from the CIA’s own inspector general report. That’s why this is key, I believe.

    Further, they’re talking about Sheffield Edwards. This is the briefing of Phase II by Helms and Sheffield Edwards to Robert Kennedy. They told him at the time that phase I was obviously pre-JFK and had stopped and that phase II, they did not notify him about, even though it was an ongoing operation. They told him that there were no current assassination plots.

    Then they’re asking who within the CIA approved the making of these false statements to Attorney General Kennedy, making of the false statements to RFK? Sheffield Edwards and Helms knew and approved making false statements to RFK. This would indicate that Colonel Edwards knew and that Mr. Helms knew, and knew that they were making false statements to RFK when they told him that phase I had been switched off and there was no phase II going on. Let’s see who we have here.

    This is CIA Director McCone. He had not been advised of any of the CIA assassination plots. In other words, they were worried that he would have stopped the assassination plots had he known, McCone. .. .so they didn’t tell him. It was just the director of the CIA. Helms and Sheffield Edwards and Harvey withheld all this information from the CIA director.

    Outside of phase I and phase II, there were other Castro assassination plots. As you can see, Breckenridge says yes in response to that. There was one plot about blowing up an electric plant in Havana while trying to get into position to assassinate Castro. That was an adjunct to these Phase I and Phase II plots, a sort of off the books, off the shelf kind of thing.

    There was another CIA plot where there was an assassin who tried three times and didn’t get into Cuba. After the Bay of Pigs occurred, he went on to some other activity. That was all that Breckenridge had, but there were other CIA plots to kill Castro prior to the Bay of Pigs with this one assassin trying three times.

    Again, they’re talking about other plots here, dropping in Cuban rifles with silencers to be used to kill Castro, correct. Also talking about the syringe with poison. This was actually a poison pen that was given to a CIA assassin. He was told that he had the approval, the tacit approval, of RFK to proceed with the assassination of Castro. That was Desmond Fitzgerald who was telling this to AMLASH, Rolando Cubela, code name AMLASH.

    Here they’re talking about other miscellaneous schemes prior to August 1960. It was when Kennedy wasn’t even in office yet. Again, Castro assassination plots ongoing prior to JFK even taking office.

    “We find no evidence of any of these schemesap proved at any level higher than division, if that.” Breckenridge: “That is correct.” There was no approvals as we see. There was no approval by the executive for any of these operations.

    This was something I didn’t know about. “Our record is not too conclusive, but when Mr. Colby,” they’re talking about William Colby taking over as CIA director in August of ’63, “instructed that if it had not already been terminated, it should be terminated.” They’re talking about the ZR/RIFLE assassination plots within the CIA.

    Apparently, as late as 1973, this was still an ongoing operation. It was still on the books. They didn’t know if it had been switched off or not. We’ll touch a little bit more on ZR/RIFLE in just a second.

    One thing I want to mention here, this gets brought up a lot in the context of Garrison and Garrison being mobbed up under the thumb of various mafiosos. They like to cite thi:s that the CIA knew about Garrison talking with Johnny Roselli in Las Vegas, and it was disturbing to them.

    First of all, Garrison was investigating the assassination of the president. He should be talking to Johnny Roselli. Certainly, the House Select Committee wanted to talk to him, and they did. After that, his remains ended up in an oil barrel floating outside of Miami. At any rate, what they were disturbed about was not that Garrison was mobbed up, they were concerned that Roselli was probably spilling the beans on the Castro plots to Garrison.

    It says here, they’re quoting from another CIA document, “Unhappily, it now appears that Garrison may also know this.” They’re talking about the Castro plots. Garrison may also know it because Roselli was spilling the beans to him. That’s what they were worried about, not that he was mobbed up, which he was not. That’s what they were disturbed about.

    They’re talking about Desmond Fitzgerald and the AMLASH plot and the poison pen that was given to AMLASH, and told that he had the assurances of Robert Kennedy, this was approved by RFK. F.A.O. Schwarz Jr., who was a counsel, asks, “There was no approval sought from Robert Kennedy?” Breckenridge: “That is correct.” They didn’t even ask for approval from RFK. They just went ahead and did it.

    This goes on to mention that there was a contingency fund of about $100,000 that could be used for these type of operations, off the book-type operations, unvouchered funds that could be used for assassination plots, foreign or domestic, and no one would be the wiser.

    This is actually one of the pages from the IG report itself. In the report, they ask, “Can the CIA state or imply that it was merely an instrument of policy?” CIA: “Not in this case. While it was true that phase II was carried out in an atmosphere of intense Kennedy pressure, such is not true of the earlier phase. Phase I was initiated in ’60 under the Eisenhower administration.” Again, phase II was never revealed to RFK or JFK. That’s just the second page of that. I just want to move on quickly.

    I mentioned the ZR/RIFLE program. That was the assassination program run by William Harvey. This is a document from the CIA. In 1976, probably as the HSCA was ramping up, they did a review of the ZR/RIFLE file. In so doing, they found these various ZR/RIFLE files, and note the early date pre-JFK. There’s a ZR/RIFLE administrative financial folder dated October 13th, 1960, and they’re talking about using one of their assets QJ/WIN back in 1959. As you can see, the ZR/RIFLE program predates JFK by quite a significant period. That’s just a continuation of that.

    Hale Boggs was a member of the Warren Commission. He was a congressman from New Orleans. A lot of people like to cite him as one of the Warren Commissioners who didn’t believe the conclusions, didn’t believe the magic bullet theory.

    Well, the FBI released these documents. In 1967, Boggs asked for a meeting with Deke DeLoach, who was J. Edgar Hoover’s right hand, if you will. He met with the Boggs in Boggs’ office. Boggs stated Garrison was making New Orleans and Louisiana the laughing stock of the world. He, Boggs, next praised the FBI and indicated that he had always been completely satisfied regarding the FBI’s thoroughness. He said that he wouldn’t be certain that Garrison had nothing which might bring disgrace upon him, Boggs, and his home state, et cetera.

    Here Boggs has reread much of the Warren Commission report just to make absolutely certain there were no loopholes. He stated he had found none. Boggs was no advocate of the Warren Commission and he was certainly no advocate of Garrison as he was informing on him to the FBI.

    Further discreditation of Garrison in the critical community came in a 1967-1968 broadcast by CBS. It was hosted by Dan Rather, Walter Cronkite, and their Dallas CBS reporter, Eddie Barker. It turns out that Eddie Barker was an FBI informant. “On this date, Eddie Barker, special agent in charge of contact, and news director of KBLD Radio and TV Dallas, advised me confidentially that CBS was planning a five-hour documentary. He stated the primary purpose of this was to take the books which are critical of the Warren report, particularly Rush to Judgment, and tear them apart.”

    He indicated in this document that he was not going to be critical of the FBI and, in fact, would support the Warren Report. He requested that this information be kept confidential and that he would give more details at a later date. Very accommodating of CBS.

    Finally, I’ll just conclude here something that’s not out of the files, but was actually in Vanity Fair magazine a few years ago. Yeah, 2009 actually. In it, they’re talking about William Manchester who wrote the book The Death of a President. Earl Warren went to Manchester and gave him the first draft of the commission’s report, of the Warren Report, and said, “Here. We’d like you to read it and approve its findings on behalf of the Kennedys.” Now is that any way to run an investigation? You’re having the Warren Report, the report with your name on it, vetted by the family of the murdered president? That’s a disgrace, frankly.

    This I apologize for the illegibility of, but this was an article from a magazine called Marin Life in 1977. It was written by a reporter named Richard Raznikov. Jim DiEugenio, who’ll be on later, can vouch, as I can, that if Raznikov dug this up, it’s as good as gold.

    What he revealed … It’s a little hard to read; it’s a little hard to read here … Earl Warren had attended a judicial conference in the State of Florida. At that conference, he confided to Raznikov’s source, who was a federal judge and a friend of Warren’s, that he, Warren, was ashamed of himself and of what the Commission had done and that the whole thing had been a whitewash, and he had been coerced into it by President Lyndon Johnson, which we knew.

    Again, this is from an unnamed source, but I have every confidence in this report of Richard Raznikov. If he’s got a source that said it, you can be pretty damn sure that he said it. You even have Earl Warren, the man whose name is on the cover of the Warren report, revealing that the whole thing was a cover up, a whitewash, and that he was actually ashamed.

    I was reading the inscription on the way in today out there, and it says, “Your services as informed citizens will be necessary to the peace and prosperity of the world.” That really touched me, and I hope that my little presentation tonight has helped you be a more informed citizenry. Thank you for your time. Thank you.

    This transcript has been edited for grammar and flow.

  • Joan Mellen, Jim Garrison: His Life and Times, The Early Years

    This book is clearly the direct offspring of Joan Mellen’s heavily edited 2005 volume on Jim Garrison’s JFK investigation, A Farewell to Justice. I reviewed that book after it came out. One of the several criticisms I made of it was that although it had previously been heralded as a full biography, it was nothing of the sort. Mellen heard that complaint. And from the many pages cut out of that book, she culled this one. The complete title is Jim Garrison – His Life and Times, The Early Years. In other words, this covers the DA’s life prior to his delving into the John Kennedy assassination. From that complete title, I wonder if we can expect a follow-up volume, sub-titled “The Later Years”. Which naturally would trace his life from after Judge Christenberry stopped Garrison’s perjury prosecution of Clay Shaw, until the end of Garrison’s life.

    The book is valuable if only because there is no other biography of Garrison available. But actually I think it is a better book than A Farewell to Justice. At least I enjoyed it more. One reason being that the story line is simpler. Therefore Mellen does not have to juggle different time frames, locales and characters seemingly simultaneously. Which she did a poor job of in the previous attempt. Also, since it does not deal with the JFK case, Robert Kennedy is nearly absent. So thankfully we don’t have to put up with her uncontrollable anti-RFK venom. Finally, since it does not deal directly with the JFK case, we are spared all those dubious Cubans like Angelo Murgado who Mellen finds so fetching.

    But there are faults left over from that seriously disappointing book. Mellen still throws a lot of sexcapades at the reader. Some of them she actually repeats from the first book. (Although this time around we are gladly spared a description of the shape of Garrison’s penis.) And at times, although not as often as in the first book, there are interesting and relevant bits of information that go undocumented. And finally, although the book is working in a much simpler genre than the in depth investigation of a complex crime, Mellen never reaches any kind of dramatic or poetic resonance in the text. In other words, although the prose doesn’t get in the way like the first time around, the quality of it is – too be charitable – workmanlike. Because of the simpler task, it should have been better than that.

    The book contains a rather interesting introduction. After her first Garrison book, Mellen met a man named Don Deneselya. Deneselya had worked as a translator for the CIA in 1962. Contrary to what the CIA has maintained, Deneselya told Mellen that Oswald had been debriefed by the CIA on his return from Russia. It was by a man named Andy Anderson. The CIA was very interested in the Minsk radio plant where Oswald worked during his residence there. Deneselya reported to Robert Crowley, a close friend and colleague of James Angleton. Crowley handled the Robert Webster defection and Anderson, according to Deneselya, also reported to Crowley. According to this source, Oswald was part of the false defector program and was therefore working for the CIA’s Counter-Intelligence unit. (pgs. xi, xii) Deneselya maintains he actually saw the Anderson report on Oswald. Yet Oswald was not actually named in that report. But the context and description, which Deneselya was familiar with, made it clear it was he.

    Deneselya talked to both Richard Schweiker and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in the late seventies. (p. xiii) In his HSCA report, he describes his job in detail. It was maintaining files on all technical and scientific industries in Russia, which is why he was interested in the Minsk plant. Oswald gave the CIA a detailed briefing about the Minsk plant. Deneselya appeared on the infamous 1993 PBS Frontline special on Oswald. But his voice was drowned out by that of Richard Helms. The former CIA Director denied the Agency ever debriefed Oswald. What the show’s reporters – Gus Russo and Scott Malone – did not tell the public is that former intelligence analyst John Newman was on the set the day Helms issued his denial. When the camera was turned off, Newman leaned over to Helms and said, “Mr. Director, what would be so bad about the CIA interviewing Oswald on his return from Russia? I mean isn’t that what they were supposed to do? Doesn’t it therefore look bad if you say you didn’t?” Helms thought it over a bit. He then told the cameraman to start rolling again. This time he would say that the Agency did debrief Oswald. Of course, the program director did not take him up on that offer. Because PBS was in the tank for the Agency on that one.

    I

    One of the things the book does is to show just how wildly hatchet wielding Pat Lambert’s biographical sketch of Garrison’s childhood was. In her god-awful book False Witness, Lambert spent page after page going after Garrison’s father. Earling had an alcohol problem and a criminal record. The latter which Lambert noted in long and wearisome detail. It was a clear attempt at guilt by bloodline. What Mellen states though counters all of that. Jane, Garrison’s mother, left Earling when young Jim Garrison was barely six years old. (p. 5) After that, Garrison never saw Earling again. He did look him up many years after his death. And the son broke down when he noted that the authorities had written on a legal document that his father had “no family”. (p. 225) So Lambert’s cheap smears are just that.

    Jane Garrison moved the family from Iowa to New Orleans. While there, young Garrison attended Alcee Fortier High School, class of 1939. He did not play sports but he did participate on the debate team. And he found there his first romantic interest, a girl named Peggy Baker. He would often go to her house after school and stay there until he had to go home. The Bakers became a sort of surrogate family for Garrison. (p. 12)

    As a senior in high school, Garrison joined the National Guard. (p. 13) He then entered Tulane. But with war clouds on the horizon, he dropped out after his freshman year to join the service. It was a European artillery unit in the army. It was here that Garrison had the misfortune to meet Pershing Gervais. (pgs. 15-17) Mellen clearly implies that Gervais – a man of bawdy humor and street smarts – filled a father vacuum for the young Garrison. And Garrison was so charmed by Gervais, that they stayed friends and colleagues for almost 30 years. Even though Gervais was a terrible influence on the future DA. Although Mellen does not come out and say it, this unwise relationship clearly shows an early character flaw in Garrison which the DA never corrected: a blind trust in people he considered friends who really weren’t his friends. This trait would be magnified many degrees during his JFK investigation and would be fully taken advantage of by the likes of Bill Boxley, Bernard Fensterwald, and Herve Lamarr. (The last was the French intelligence operative who introduced Garrison to that clever diversionary product entitled Farewell America.)

    While in the service, Garrison flew very low altitude surveillance planes nicknamed “grasshoppers”. These were meant to spot artillery targets. They were very dangerous to fly and had high fatality rates. (p. 17) Toward the end of the war, Garrison was in one of the first details to liberate the German concentration camp at Dachau.

    In 1945, Jane Garrison married a man named Lyon Gardiner. (Garrison named his lawyer son, nicknamed Snapper, after his stepfather.) In 1946, the future DA entered Tulane Law School. (p. 21) Coincidentally, one of his teachers was Leon Hubert, who would later serve on the Warren Commission. In law school, Garrison began to show symptoms of his military service. He would suffer from dysentery and serious back problems for the rest of his life. (p. 25) While in law school, Garrison’s first love Peggy Baker got married. Although invited, Garrison did not attend the ceremony. But he did attend the funeral services of both of Peggy’s parents.

    Garrison graduated from law school in 1949. He later decided to get a Master’s of Civil Laws, which he did. In 1950, he tried his hand at writing short stories. (One of these was ironically called, “The Assassin”.) He then joined a big name law firm called Deutsch, Kerrigan and Stiles. But being part of a firm bored him. So he decided to join the FBI in the Pacific Northwest. Namely Seattle. But when the Korean War broke out, Garrison reenlisted in the service. But the memories of the dangerous grasshopper flights haunted him and flooded his consciousness. On his first day at Fort Sill, he reported to sick call. He was placed “on quarters” for two weeks and dismissed in October of 1951 due to battle fatigue. (pgs. 35-36)

    Returning to New Orleans, Garrison now broke into politics. Eberhard Deutsch (who Garrison named his last son after) introduced him to the Mayor of New Orleans, a man named DeLesseps “Chep” Morrison. Impressed by young Garrison, Morrison appointed him to the Public Safety Commission to govern over Traffic Court. (p. 41) The young lawyer did a bang up job. Unlike his predecessors, he took refusals to appear in court seriously. So he jacked up the fines for doing so and he pursued those who did not pay. He even got a bill passed to suspend the licenses of habitual offenders. As a result, in just one year, revenue from traffic fines nearly doubled. (ibid) And in his first run in with local judges, he assailed Judge Sperling for being too soft on failures to appear. Garrison was so successful that a new separate traffic court now opened with its own judge. (p. 44) Garrison turned down the judgeship. He told Morrison he would rather be appointed as an assistant on the District Attorney’s staff. Which he was. And he confided to a friend at the time that his ambition was one day to be the DA of New Orleans. (ibid)

    II

    In the discussion of Garrison’s years as an assistant DA – 1955 to early 1958 – the book disposes of another piece of disinformation. Namely, that Garrison never tried any cases in that position. I should add here, this was a canard that was deliberately made up after 1967 to smear the DA. The overall idea was to have compromised “journalists” like James Phelan, Hugh Aynesworth, and Edward Epstein – among others – do a hatchet job on Garrison’s inquiry. And the media barrage would spill over into character assassination against the DA. One way this was done was to paint Garrison as a wildly irresponsible public servant who was abusing his office. To do this, the purveyors had to insinuate that even as an assistant DA Garrison was not trusted by his superiors to handle a case in court. I should add, Clay Shaw’s lawyers were still bandying about this goofy deception – in 1994! I know this for a fact since Irvin Dymond, Shaw’s lead attorney, tried to dump it on me and Bill Davy in his office at that late date.

    The book proves this was nothing but part of the brutal propaganda campaign to caricature Garrison. In that effort, history was rewritten, the record was falsified. And the lawyers in New Orleans, like Dymond, must have known this. Because the truth is that Garrison handled many cases as an assistant. And of a wide variety: burglary, lottery operations, prostitution, homicide and fraud. (pgs. 44-45) And since another lawyer Dymond was allied closely with at the time of the Shaw trial – Milton Brener – actually worked with Garrison in the DA’s office at the time, it strains credulity to say that Dymond was unaware of this. This is now exposed as another deliberate lie by Shaw’s defenders.

    Mellen also describes just how bad the New Orleans Police Department was in the fifties. The force was being paid off in a protection scheme regularly every Friday. Gervais, who worked on the force at the time, actually stole the envelope twice. (p. 47) He was actually suspended for this “offense” for sixty days. He eventually resigned his position and became a bar owner. As we shall see, the people providing the funds were the owners and operators of the B girl clip joints that Garrison was going to bust up in the next decade. As the book notes, this would hurt his JFK investigation in two ways. First, because he had deprived them of a source of ill-gotten gain, the police would generally not support him. Which is one reason why Garrison went elsewhere for field investigators. Second, many of those people who lost money due to his vice campaign were not eager to help Garrison identify Clay Bertrand as Clay Shaw. Even though they knew they were one and the same.

    Mellen also sketches in the background of Aaron Kohn. Kohn was forced to leave the FBI when the Bureau raided a bordello he was frequenting at the time. (p. 49) He then moved to Chicago where he became chief investigator for the city’s anti-crime committee. He was thrown out of Chicago when accusations of his bribing of police officers arose. (ibid) Kohn now made New Orleans his last stop. To gain favor with Mayor Morrison he lied about his record in the FBI. He said he was an assistant to J. Edgar Hoover and had helped organize the Bureau’s National Academy. Hoover called thee claims “poppycock” when he heard of them. Kohn actually worked in the fingerprint department. (p. 49) But to garner more media attention Kohn lied further and said he did important work on both the Ma Barker and John Dillinger cases. (ibid) In reality, he made an error on the latter case and was reprimanded for it.

    But no one called him on his exaggerated, phony history and so he built the Metropolitan Crime Commission into his own little local FBI. He recruited a network of informants, which included Gervais. (p. 50) Mayor Morrison backed Kohn for one reason: self-preservation. New Orleans was so plagued by police corruption, prostitution and bribery, that the state government had threatened to come in and clean up the town. Kohn was Morrison’s fig leaf. (p. 48) But Kohn was a cheap grandstander even way back then. For example, when he could not get the grand jury to indict someone, he – with a straight face – accused a juror of frequenting a bordello. I turned out he was painting the place. Kohn was sent to jail for contempt for ten days because of this. (p. 52)

    One of the people new on the scene who also worked with Kohn briefly was none other than Guy Banister. Banister was also in touch with the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (p. 51). This was a rightwing Senate version of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Bitter JFK enemy Thomas Dodd would eventually helm the SISS. And it would use New Orleans intelligence asset Ed Butler to testify about Lee Oswald in the wake of the JFK murder. As Ed Haslam reveals in his book on Mary Sherman, Butler ended up with many of Guy Banister’s storied files. So this rightwing, New Orleans intelligence network – which would eventually employ Oswald – was being built and manned almost a decade earlier.

    After three years in the office, Garrison had made first assistant by 1958. Around this time, he also unsuccessfully ran for the office of City Assessor. (p. 59) Also at this time, Garrison did something chivalrous that would foreshadow the risk he took on the JFK case. Garrison had made first assistant under DA Malcolm O’Hara. When O’Hara ran for reelection in 1958 and won, there were charges of voter fraud. As first assistant, Garrison supervised the investigation of the charges for the grand jury. He promised to leave “no stone unturned”. (p. 61) Incredibly, he kept his promise. Why is it incredible? Because it cost him his job. His inquiry caused the election to be overturned and Richard Dowling was declared the new winner. In these days of Katherine Harris, this kind of heroism seems almost nostalgic.

    Since he forced himself out of the DA’s office, Garrison now went into private practice. He specialized in personal injury, and he did many cases for free. Even though he was not close to being well off. (p. 65) In 1960, Garrison lost another race. This time for a judgeship. After this, he eventually migrated into the City Attorney’s office. (p. 69)

    From his vantage point in the City Attorney’s office, Garrison had a close view of Dowling’s operation. He didn’t like it. Dowling sold off cases. In fact, David Ferrie bought one for five hundred bucks. (p. 71) Garrison and two friends decided to run for DA to clean up the office. Whoever lost pledged to support the winner in the run off. (p. 73) In a televised debate in January of 1962, Garrison did well and won the endorsement of the New Orleans Times Picayune. (p. 76) Garrison lost the primary to Dowling by a mere two thousand votes. And this positioned him very well for the run off. His old pal Gervais helped him out. He furnished letters showing that Dowling had been accepting contributions from strip club owners as part of a shakedown racket. (p. 81) In March, Garrison defeated Dowling by 7,000 votes. He had fulfilled his ambition of a decade earlier. He was now the DA of New Orleans.

    III

    Once in office, Garrison lived up to his word and began making reforms. He allowed no police beatings of African-Americans. Refusing to enter into an alliance with the Bishop, he prosecuted priests for soliciting sex and child abuse. He vigorously pursued illegal lottery operations. (p. 98) He brought the first female into the office, a woman named Louise Korns. And he went after Dowling for selling off cases. (p. 100)

    But Garrison also made mistakes. After hiring Lou Ivon and Roy Comstock as investigators, he then hired Gervais as an investigator. He also tried to have friendly relations with the grandstanding Aaron Kohn. (p. 99)

    Although a biography of Garrison until 1967, the book reveals some interesting information about the Kennedy case. Eugene Davis, a denizen of the Quarter and known as a homosexual pimp, referred more than one person to Dean Andrews for legal services. Andrews once said that Oswald’s buddies hung out at the Gaslight Lounge. Another source, Hardy Davis, stated that Oswald hung out with a homosexual clique. (pgs. 107-108) This is all perfectly consistent with Dean Andrews’ original story of Bertrand/Shaw sending Oswald to see Andrews with the “gay Mexicanos”. (There is even a hint in Andrews’ Warren Commission testimony that Bertrand/Shaw accompanied Oswald on a visit to his office. WC Vol. 11, p. 334) Another interesting aspect revealed here is that Burton Klein was a former law partner of Dymond. (p. 99) Since, as Richard Helms has stated and Bill Davy has proven, Dymond and Shaw’s lawyers were getting help form the CIA, this explains how Klein came to represent people like Gordon Novel and Sergio Arcacha Smith. Although, as shown above, Dymond would never admit that fact.

    One of the highlights of the book is the detailed description of Garrison’s relentless campaign to clean up Bourbon Street. Garrison was determined to stop the practices in the bars of suckering a tourist – spelled prospective “John” – into buying an expensive bottle of booze with the promise of sex to come. This racket was profitable since the split was 2/3 for the house and 1/3 for the “B” girl. Further, when drinking by the glass, the girls’ drinks were always diluted. In fact, at times, when the John was drunk enough, the girl’s drink was replaced with water. (p. 112) And make no mistake, the girls were told to lead the poor dunce on by telling him that she would meet him afterwards. Which they did not. (p. 113) Up until Garrison, the whole racket was condoned by the police. But beyond that, some corrupt cops took a split of the action. (p. 114)

    In May of 1962, Garrison began his clean-up campaign. He said that he was going to end the racket at all costs. He did not trust the cops so he hired his own undercover agents like Joe Oster. Once the undercover agent busted someone, Garrison took the case to civil court where he could get harsher penalties. At the campaign’s pinnacle, Garrison shuttered nine clubs in two days. Seven clubs were shut down permanently. (p. 116) Garrison garnered a large amount of publicity at this time both locally and nationally. So much so that the mayor and city council had to endorse what he was doing. Even though the merchant class in the French Quarter was being killed by Garrison’s merciless campaign.

    As noted above, this crusade had two future negative effects on Garrison’s Kennedy inquiry. The weird stories, circa 1968, about Garrison being gay and a cross-dresser originated over the resentment about the punitive damages Garrison had inflicted on the Quarter. (p. 117) And secondly, witnesses who knew Shaw was Bertrand would not come forward out of spite for what the DA had done. Professional web propagandist John McAdams likes to note an early report by Lou Ivon to Garrison saying that he had developed no leads yet as to who Clay Bertrand really was. Any idiot – except McAdams – can read Garrison’s book and note that Ivon realized that having Garrison personally in on the search would back bar owners off from helping them identify Bertrand. (On the Trail of the Assassins, p. 84) But once Ivon convinced Garrison he was a detriment, they did get an ID of Bertrand as Shaw. (ibid p. 85) In fact, as Bill Davy notes in his wonderful book on Garrison, even the FBI knew that Bertrand was Shaw’s alias. (Let Justice Be Done, p. 76) And when the HSCA re-investigated New Orleans, Detective L. J. Delsa discovered that Shaw’s use of that alias was common knowledge. (Ibid, p. 293) What Garrison obviously underplayed in his book was that it was his early vice campaign that caused the reluctance of many to come forward with what was well known. And in fact, Mellen talked to two witnesses – Rickey Planche and Barbara Bennett – who were explicit on this point. Namely that they knew Shaw was Bertrand and they would not tell Garrison because of the economic damage he inflicted on the French Quarter. (p. 117)

    IV

    As the reader can see, Garrison was not just waiting for the compromised police to bring cases to him. If he did that, the vice campaign in the Quarter would have never happened. He was actually doing his own investigations, creating his own cases. He did this out of a fines and fees fund attained by the courts. When Garrison took office, the total amount entailed was about a thousand dollars. In just a few months, Garrison’s aggressive prosecutions had increased it to $40, 000. Some of the other things Garrison used the money for were to improve the equipment the local coroner had and to buy cars for his investigative staff. He also did things like refloor the waiting room of the DA’s office to replace the drab trappings Dowling had maintained. The local Criminal Court judges had to sign off on the expenditures.

    Here developed a multi-faceted problem. Most of the judges favored having the police do investigations. (p. 125) Also, many were taken aback by Garrison’s new and bold approach. (ibid) Third, Garrison was not sensitive to the switch. Therefore many of his requests were very sketchy in nature, not fully informing the judges of what he was up to. (p. 127) Fourth, some people on the staff – like Gervais – did not keep vouchers or records of payments to informers. And this created an accounting problem. So in 1962, the judges decided to retaliate. First, they froze the fund, and second they dismissed a case against three Bourbon Street clubs. (p. 128)

    Garrison chose not to negotiate. He decided to engage the judges in open warfare. In October Garrison began a barrage against the Court. First he attacked them for taking too many days off. This allowed his docket to back up. He accused one judge, Bernard Cocke of taking Fridays off – which he did. (ibid) He then took out a personal loan to continue his clean up of the French Quarter.

    A peace conference was arranged. It failed. (p. 129) Garrison now escalated the rhetoric by wondering out loud if there was any connection between the bar owners and the judges. There was. Two of Garrison’s assistants had drinks with one of the judges, Judge Haggerty. (This is the justice who would preside over the trial of Clay Shaw.) Haggerty introduced the pair to Francis Giordano. Giordano, a Carlos Marcello associate, complained to them that when Dowling confiscated illegal gaming machines, he then returned them. But Garrison didn’t, why not? (ibid)

    On November 8th, the court charged Garrison with criminal defamation. They also changed the rules governing the investigative fund. Whereas before only one judge could sign off, now it took five of eight signatures to secure a withdrawal. They asked Garrison to apologize and withdraw his charge of criminal influence. (p. 130) Garrison refused. The case went to trial. Garrison’s lawyer asked for a jury trial. The judge refused. The fix was in. After the case was argued, Judge Ponder asked Garrison again to recant the racketeering charge. Garrison, who saw the case as strictly one of free speech, would not. Garrison lost the case. He said he would appeal. And now the case attracted national publicity. Almost all of it favorable. But Garrison lost again in the state appeals court. (p. 137) In April of 1964, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The month before the court had decided the New York Times v. Sullivan case in favor of free speech. This greatly aided Garrison. The court, in an opinion written by Justice Brennan, sided with Garrison’s right to criticize public officials openly. Garrison always cherished this decision. And he spoke about it at more than one public event.

    But Haggerty never forgot either. When Garrison’s case against Shaw came up on the docket, he maneuvered to have it assigned to his court. (p. 143)

    After this victory, Garrison battled with the police and their reluctance to fully aid his campaign. In a brief respite, the DA and the police jointly agreed to raid two clubs operated by Carlos Marcello and his brother. The one Garrison raided was actually across the county line in Jefferson Parish. (p. 151) He did this to goad the Jefferson DA into action. He even attacked the state Attorney General for being lax on the county. William Davy buried this myth about Garrison avoiding Marcello in his vice crusade. But here it gets even more dirt thrown on it.

    In 1964, Garrison backed a dark horse for governor of the state. A man named John McKeithen. There were nine candidates running that year. McKeithen was considered in the bottom half of the field. Garrison took out a full-page ad in the Times-Picayune backing McKeithen. To everyone’s shock, except Garrison’s, McKeithen won. (p. 155) Garrison now had an ally in the state house. Everyone knew that now, if Garrison wanted to be Lt. Governor or Attorney General, the office was his. He never asked. According to a 1995 interview I did with assistant Bill Alford, he actually turned down the Lt. Governor offer when it came. At the time, he was too busy investigating the Kennedy case. So much for the idea that Garrison was using his JFK inquiry to promote his career.

    By 1964, Garrison had racked up a pretty impressive record. In addition to the French Quarter campaign and his victory over the judges, he had managed to make every assistant a full time position, no moonlighting in private practice. Courts were now open every Friday. There was stricter foreclosure on bail bonds. He requested more money for the Legal Aid Bureau. Any time an assistant or investigator was contacted by an attorney other than the lawyer of record, Garrison had to be contacted. (p. 158)

    His reforms produced results. In Dowling’s final year in office, he had tried 70 cases and lost 42. In about eighteen months, Garrison had tried 101 cases and won 86. (p. 159) A remarkable turnaround in such a short time.

    V

    We now come to the James Dombrowski case. Dombrowski ended up being a pawn on a large chessboard with which the dying remnants of southern racism tried to effect one last power play as they saw the end nearing. The idea was to smear integrationists as Communists in order to delay and hamstring their efforts. Jack Rogers and James Pfister of the Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee (LUAC), along with Senator James Eastland and also J. Edgar Hoover, backed this strategy.

    Dombrowski was not a communist, but a communist sympathizer. And he did back the effort to integrate the south. But since he was not an actual Communist, the technique of tying him into the International Communist Conspiracy emanating from Moscow was not going to work . So the LUAC worked to get a state law passed entitled the “Subversive Activities and Communist Control Law”. ( p. 162) And it was under this pretense that the state police arrested Dombrowski, along with his colleagues Ben Smith and Bruce Walzer.

    As the book notes, the law was not evenly applied. If it was, then Lee Oswald could have been arrested under the same act. But the point was that Oswald did not play up integration as a cause. And the whole idea was to paint the civil rights movement with a red brush. Now state Attorney General Jack Gremillion knew that Garrison, a staunch first amendment backer, would not want to be part of any such effort. This is why the state police executed the raids, and why Garrison’s office was not alerted to them in advance. (p. 165) In fact, speaking of the arrests, Garrison went on the radio and said, “There is always a danger, particularly in fighting communism, that we may end up imitating communism.” (ibid)

    The LUAC delivered the evidence secured from the raid to Sen. Eastland of Mississippi. Even though Dombrowski’s civil rights organization was located in New Orleans. Garrison’s office did as little as possible to help as the case went through the both state and federal court. For instance, Garrison said that the actual warrants were made out improperly. (p. 166) But clearly, Gremillion wanted Garrison’s office to take over the prosecution since Dombrowski’s organization was located in New Orleans. But the charges were ridiculous. One was participation in the management of a subversive organization. Yet Dombrowski’s organization was not on the USA’s list of Communist front groups. Which of course, cancelled the second charge. Which was being a member of a Communist front organization. The third was operating within state lines for five days without registering with the Department of Public Safety. (p. 164) It was all a sham. The law was clearly unconstitutional. Local Criminal Courts Judge Bernard Cocke ordered all three men released on grounds of insufficient evidence. Afterwards, Garrison made clear he had gone through with the formality of a hearing only because there was no evidence to present. And he also added, he was very concerned about the arrests of the individuals, believing the LUAC was out of line. (p. 165) He later added, even if Dombrowski was a Communist, he could not be part of a conspiracy since he was the only one in the city. (ibid)

    As the case made its way upward on appeal, Garrison followed the same strategy: to evade, circumvent, and contribute as little to the prosecution as he could. For instance, he demanded that Eastland, in Mississippi, deliver all the documents seized from the Dombrowski office. Which he knew Eastland would not do. But eventually, in January of 1964, Garrison’s office had the three men indicted. The men did not hold it against Garrison, understanding it was all the Attorney General’s show. But the judge ruled the warrants were illegal and therefore the evidence seized was inadmissible. (p. 167) The case proceeded to the US Supreme Court with Garrison as the defendant. His office wrote an apologetic brief showing how the case was not handled through their office, but putting up a fig leaf defense of state’s rights. The Supreme Court ruled against the DA and used his own previous case against the local judges as a precedent. The lawyer for Dombrowski was Milton Brener, obviously no fan of Garrison. But even he admitted that Garrison’s office participated by rote, doing the “absolute minimum.” (p. 169) Jerry Shinley is a rather responsible critic of Garrison, as opposed to the virulent chemical imbalance inherent in say Patricia Lambert or the John McAdams appendage Dave Reitzes. (An interent troll who Rex Bradford actually links to.) Shinley uses this case to criticize Garrison. To me it’s a judgment call, and a relative one at that. If Garrison had not participated, Gremillion would have probably stepped in. And things would have been worse. So Garrison did what he could to lose a case he wanted no part of.

    Relieved of a case he wanted no part of, Garrison now went after the legal establishment over the sale of paroles in Louisiana. Garrison had found an informant named John Scardino who told him about how two of his criminal friends had purchased paroles for $3,500. Garrison demanded an open hearing on the issue. The state Parole Board went to court to stop the hearing. They failed. But they then tried to ban the press. (p. 171) Once the hearing was on, Garrison’s first question to a Parole Board member was “When did you start taking bribes?” Scardino testified and Scardino’s friend who purchased a parole answered a few questions before pleading the Fifth Amendment. (p. 172) The local press praised the DA. Thirteen lawyers resigned the Criminal Courts Bar Association upon hearing Garrison’s evidence. One prominent lawyer said that Garrison was now in a position to begin an exceptionally promising career. (p. 173)

    Which he threw away once he entered the Kennedy case.

    VI

    As I wrote previously, William Davy essentially pulverized the phony accusations that Garrison was somehow tied in with the Mafia and was covering for Marcello in his pursuit of the CIA. Mellen reveals something here that is quite relevant to that ersatz charge. If this were to have any truth to it, then Garrison must have been interested in being paid off for creating a phony sideshow. But Mellen presents something that completely vitiates this entire pretense. After McKeithen was inaugurated, he was eager to show his thanks for what Garrison had done for him. So he offered Garrison a state bank charter. Which, of course, would have made Garrison a very rich man. Garrison turned it down! McKeithen couldn’t believe it. (p. 173) But after he recovered, the governor awarded it to one of his other backers. Who promptly turned around and sold it for $750, 000. The equivalent of 2-3 million today. The governor then offered him a position as legal representative of a Savings and Loan. A desk job that would have made him a lot of money. Garrison turned that down also. McKeithen then offered him state business as part of a large law firm that would later make him managing partner when he retired. He turned that down also.

    In light of all this, how could Garrison even think of taking illegal bribes from the Mafia, when he would not take much larger amounts legally, and in the open? With the obvious answer to that question, writers like John Davis have never looked more stupid. Or dishonest.

    In 1965, Garrison was at the height of his power and popularity in New Orleans and in Louisiana. He issued a Report to the People. One of the achievements of his office that year was that it prosecuted 22 jury trials on capital offenses without one acquittal. Both Kohn and the Times-Picayune praised his work in that report. (p. 195) He actually thought of running for mayor. And in fact, with huge irony, the wealthy Stern family offered to back him. These were the owners of station WDSU who would later do all they could to save Clay Shaw.

    Garrison did not run for mayor but for DA again. Although Garrison made even more reforms to the office, he still employed Gervais. But Gervais’ reputation had become so bad that he had to resign before election day. Which he did, or Garrison may have lost. (p. 205) After this victory, Garrison revealed that his ambition was to eventually be a senator. (pgs 211-212) This, of course, was derailed by the Kennedy investigation.

    At the beginning of his second term, Garrison was still blazing trails for a New Orleans DA. He started to prosecute the state legislature for bribery. (Actually this started right before his re-election.) He favored strong gun control laws, which put him up against the powerful National Rifle Association in their bastion of the south. He also wanted to cap usury rates at 16% for finance companies. (pg. 215)

    The book makes a potent character point about Garrison at this time, which is right before he is to embark on his quest for President Kennedy’s true killers. Although Garrison was a reform DA, and relatively bold and honest for New Orleans, he was actually a moderate overall. For instance, he was anti-ACLU. He once said that it had “drifted so far to the left that it is now almost out of sight.” (p. 217) And he also favored the Cold War. In a speech he said that the US had to act against Communist aggression in places like Korea and Vietnam. (p. 208) This is an issue I discussed with Lyon Garrison, who is also an attorney, at one time. After studying Garrison’s career I had come to the conclusion that in 1966 he was actually a moderate. It was the Kennedy case that radicalized him forever. Lyon agreed with me.

    The book ends with the famous Linda Brigette case. Brigette, a local stripper, had been arrested for obscenity. This was a charge that, since Garrison was so much a believer in the First Amendment, he was hesitant to prosecute. So he requested a pardon for her 230 day sentence. Governor McKeithen granted it. Kohn used this case to go to war with Garrison. (p. 227) And this was the beginning of the false accusation of Garrison being in cahoots with Marcello. If you can believe it, it started over Brigette. The great Archives researcher Peter Vea once sent me his work on this case. In checking the timing – the case extended into late 1966 – Peter had come to the conclusion that Kohn’s nutty brouhaha over a stripper was really motivated by his knowledge that Garrison had secretly reopened the Kennedy case. And knowing what the FBI knew about Oswald, he was protecting his old employer. Mellen partly confirms this by revealing that Kohn had found out about Garrison’s inquiry through journalist David Chandler. Chandler was a friend of Garrison’s who turned on him at the request of his part time employer Life Magazine. In fact, Kohn had issued a report on Oswald through the MCC within a week of the assassination. It presaged the Warren Commission in its conviction of Oswald. When an HSCA investigator asked him where he got all the information and the photos of Oswald, Kohn replied that he had his avenues. He was clearly suggesting the Bureau. (p. 234)

    Right around this time period, when Garrison was launching his investigation of the JFK case, he crossed paths with the dismissed Gervais. Gervais had heard that Garrison was interviewing Jack Martin about David Ferrie. He warned his old Army buddy that this one would not be worth it. (p. 236) He told Garrison he was signing onto a suicide mission in which he would be telling the whole world the federal government was lying. Gervais was not one to sign up for, as he termed it, “kamikaze missions”. As he said, “I have acquired this habit of breathing.” But Garrison, who had gone after the Criminal Courts judges, the Parole Board, and the state legislature, was not about to back down. As he told Dutch television during his investigation, “Nothing else matters.” And in fact, in giving up the Lt. Governorship, and his dream of running for the Senate, it didn’t. And it stayed that way until his death.

    With all the reservations I made at the beginning, this book brings you closer to the real Jim Garrison. Not the deliberately and grossly distorted caricature that the MSM made him out to be. The real Jim Garrison was nothing like that. It was all a cruel campaign over the politically charged Kennedy case. Which Garrison was willing to risk losing his promising future for. And he did.

    It’s hard not to like a guy like that.

    Read James DiEugenio’s review of Joan Mellen’s 2005 book of Jim Garrison’s JFK investigation, A Farewell to Justice.

  • The Testimony of Marina Oswald Before the Orleans Parish Grand Jury

    From the March-April 2000 issue (Vol. 7 No. 3) of Probe

     

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