Legacy of Secrecy (53 page)

contact with Oswald was part of a legitimate US intelligence operation,

and they had simply gotten burned by someone who turned out to be

a turncoat. Banister wouldn’t have said that to the three police officers

who were eventually sent to interview him, but would have conveyed

the national-security implications to their superiors and to Banister’s

higher-level government contacts.

For the federal agencies to investigate further would not only harm

ongoing US covert Cuba operations, but also jeopardize each agen-

cy’s extensive participation in the national domestic surveillance net-

work. Later Congressional investigations would find that this network

involved the FBI, CIA, military intelligence, and large police depart-

ments, which routinely tracked hundreds of suspects and thousands of

individuals suspected of communist or leftist ties (along with a small

but increasing number of white supremacists).

David Ferrie returned to New Orleans only after Oswald was dead.

Ferrie and his associates were arrested the next day. Since Ferrie couldn’t

be sure what others might have said in his absence, he stuck to his

improbable cover story about his recent Texas trip and denied knowing

Oswald. However, Ferrie was careful in his interrogation to acknowl-

edge potentially incriminating things others might have heard him say.

For example, Ferrie admitted to the FBI that he had been very critical

of JFK, and had even possibly said, “He ought to be shot.” He also

acknowledged being “critical of any President riding in an open car

[since] anyone could hide in the bushes and shoot a President.” Ferrie

was also able to produce his library card when asked.46

There was no real investigation of Guy Banister. When three police

officers went to his office, their report says that “Mr. Banister stated that

he would not comment about this matter upon” advice of his attorney.47

(The attorney isn’t named, but it was probably Marcello’s attorney, G.

Wray Gill.) The three officers allowed their former boss to get by with

that, especially since Banister’s associate who had made the original

allegation, Jack Martin, was an unstable individual who had started to

back off from his initial claims. Martin probably realized that making

accusations against two men who worked for Marcello wasn’t going to

get him anywhere in New Orleans.

We mentioned earlier that privately, the FBI told an NBC newsman

that the story about Ferrie should not be broadcast, “for the good of the

country.” Publicly, the FBI issued an unusual statement to the press,

which seemed to lay the arrest of Ferrie’s associates solely at the feet of

New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Garrison told a reporter

for the
New Orleans States-Item
that the two young men “were picked

up at the request of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret

Service,” and were being held for them. But the local FBI spokesman told

the newspaper, “The FBI does not ask anyone to hold anyone for the FBI

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unless there is a warrant outstanding. There is no warrant outstanding,

period.”48 The whole incident soon blew over, follow-up stories were

kept out of the media, and Ferrie’s name does not appear in the War-

ren Commission Report. However, Garrison maintained an interest in

the case that would resurface three years later, with Ferrie as his first

target.

Garrison later claimed that he once called Bobby Kennedy, some

months after JFK’s murder. Garrison told author C. David Heymann,

“I told him some of my theories. He listened carefully, then said, ‘Maybe

so, maybe you’re right. But what good will it do to know the truth? Will it

bring back my brother?’ I said, ‘I find it hard to believe that as the top law

man in the country you don’t want to pursue the truth more ardently.’

With this he hung up on me.”49 Bobby and his Mafia prosecutors didn’t

fully trust the District Attorney in Marcello’s territory, and their relation-

ship with Garrison would only get worse in the years to come.

Chapter Nineteen

The aborted investigations of Ferrie and Banister set the tone for how

the FBI and other agencies treated any leads that threatened to tie Carlos

Marcello to JFK’s assassination. The CIA had its own links to Marcello

and his associates to conceal, but Marcello’s soft treatment by the Secret

Service and Federal Bureau of Narcotics might have been influenced by

the FBI’s deferential approach to the mob boss. Marcello’s biographer

John H. Davis wrote that in the wake of JFK’s murder, “no fewer than

twelve persons associated with Carlos Marcello, or with some of his

closest operatives, had been either arrested or questioned in connection

with the assassination.”1 That list included both familiar names (Ruby,

Oswald, Ferrie, Banister) and less-known Marcello lieutenants and fam-

ily members. In the two decades since Davis wrote that passage, the total

has increased as more suspects whom the FBI interviewed have been

linked to Marcello (Martino and Milteer, for example). Yet Marcello him-

self was not questioned at the time, and it would be more than twenty

years until an FBI supervisor secretly targeted the godfather because of

JFK’s assassination.

Marcello was not even interviewed about the two FBI reports detailed

earlier: the one from November 26, about Oswald receiving money at

Marcello’s Town and Country restaurant; and the November 28 report

linking Marcello’s brother to talk of killing JFK.2 While individual FBI

agents and local supervisors might not have been able to fit together the

various leads pointing to Marcello, it’s hard to believe that the obsessive

Hoover didn’t notice the pattern.

Banister and Ferrie apparently covered their contact with Oswald

by using legitimate US intelligence activities, so Hoover could have

rationalized his inaction as protecting national security and the reputa-

tion of FBI veteran Banister, rather than as protecting Carlos Marcello

or JFK’s assassins. Hoover was enough of a Cold Warrior to believe that

Oswald was a real Marxist, and may have viewed Oswald as a US intel-

ligence asset who’d simply gone bad. That rationalization would have

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conveniently allowed Hoover to avoid confronting whatever damag-

ing personal information Marcello had on the FBI director, as detailed

by Anthony Summers in his landmark Hoover exposé,
Official and

Confidential
.

J. Edgar Hoover’s lax treatment of white supremacist Joseph Milteer

after JFK’s assassination has perplexed historians and researchers for

years. Georgia FBI agent Don Adams, who investigated Milteer in the

days before JFK’s assassination and interviewed him afterward, was

not told about the Miami Police’s tapes of Milteer’s threats against

JFK, or the Tampa attempt to assassinate JFK. New information about

links between Milteer and Marcello’s associates might help to explain

Hoover’s easy handling of the white supremacist. Not until 2006 did

Louisiana historian Dr. Michael Kurtz disclose information from three

New Orleans witnesses, including the former New Orleans police super-

intendent, that tied Milteer to Guy Banister and another associate of

Marcello.3

If FBI agents like Don Adams had been fully informed and allowed to

pursue leads to their logical conclusion, the JFK plot might have unrav-

eled, at least to the level of Milteer and Banister and Ferrie, which would

have led to Marcello. However, Hoover clearly wanted to avoid investi-

gating FBI veteran Banister and his associates, so any national-security

concerns gave him the perfect excuse to avoid doing so.

The most logical course of action for the FBI after JFK’s murder would

have been to use phone taps or surveillance against Milteer, to learn more

about his activities and associates. That would have also given the FBI

more insight into the white supremacist movement, which the FBI had

slowly started to target at Bobby Kennedy’s urging. Possibly because

Milteer’s associates included Banister, that wasn’t done. Instead, FBI

officials sent Agent Adams to interview Milteer on November 27, 1963.

Naturally, the report says Milteer “emphatically denies ever making

threats to assassinate President Kennedy or participating in any such

assassination. He stated he has never heard anyone make such threats.”

High FBI officials knew Milteer was lying to Agent Adams, and they had

the Miami police tapes to prove it—yet Milteer was not arrested, and

the active investigation of him was apparently dropped.4

Hoover would have known that sending an FBI agent to interview

Milteer about his JFK comments would tip off Milteer that one of his

associates was an informant. Perhaps that was the point, so Hoover

wouldn’t have to worry that Milteer might say something about Banister

to Miami police informant William Somersett that could embarrass the

FBI. In fact, after Milteer was interviewed, he called Somersett. A wor-

ried and frantic Somersett then called his contact in the Miami Police

Department, Detective Everett Kay, saying, “These people [the FBI] are

going to get me killed by such actions.”5

Ultimately, Hoover’s handling of Milteer would result in another

tragedy, in 1968, when Milteer would be a driving force in the assas-

sination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

The FBI was far from the only agency with investigative shortcomings

in the wake of JFK’s murder, but it’s interesting how many of the prob-

lems various agencies experienced involved Carlos Marcello’s associ-

ates. After Michel Victor Mertz was deported from Dallas, he or his

partners might have been behind a little-known incident that further

diverted energy and resources away from the JFK investigation at a

crucial time.

On Monday, November 25, leaders from around the world descended

on Washington for JFK’s elaborate state funeral. They included the

French president, General Charles de Gaulle, target of more than a dozen

assassination attempts in the previous four years, including the 1962

attempt linked to Jean Souetre and a 1961 attempt stopped by Michel

Victor Mertz. According to John McCone, the CIA received “a high-

priority report that there would be an attempt on General DeGaulle’s

life” during JFK’s funeral. McCone told historian William Manchester

that the “[ominous] reports came out of New York.”6 Former CIA agent

Tom Tripodi says the reports involved four assassins “en route from

Montreal.”7 The assassins were supposedly linked to the dissident group

that included Jean Souetre, and were angry over de Gaulle’s granting

independence to Algeria.

It’s not hard to imagine the reactions of Hoover and the FBI when they

learned of the threat, since they had thought they had lost Souetre’s trail

in Texas shortly before JFK’s murder (the FBI still didn’t realize it was

actually Mertz using Souetre’s identity). Richard Helms might have had

similar worries, due to Souetre’s contact with the CIA several months

earlier and his own memo about the matter. Also, Helms knew that

prior to McCone’s taking office, some US CIA officials had actually met

with and supported Souetre’s superiors in their attempt to overthrow

de Gaulle.8

US officials, worried about yet another head of state being assassi-

nated, would have turned to French Intelligence for assistance. French

Intelligence had a trusted undercover operative with a proven track

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record of saving de Gaulle’s life, an operative who spoke perfect,

unaccented English and frequently traveled to America, where he main-

tained a residence in New York City: Michel Victor Mertz.

Agent Tripodi was never able to discover the source of the reports

about assassins from Montreal. That city was a major base for Mertz,

and the threat may have simply been a ruse by Mertz or his associates to

divert investigative resources, or a chance for Mertz to appear to help US

authorities. Jean Souetre confirmed to our French associate, journalist

Stephane Risset, that there was no real attempt against de Gaulle by his

group at that particular time, and that he was never in America during

the 1960s.9

Carlos Marcello and his heroin associate Mertz stayed one step ahead of

the law for years, by making careful plans and then ruthlessly executing

them—but unforeseen problems did arise. Their roles in JFK’s murder,

and their heroin network, came very close to being exposed on the day of

JFK’s funeral, only twenty-four hours after Ruby murdered Oswald.

One of the lowliest members of their heroin network, Rose Cheramie,

was well enough to talk to Detective Francis Fruge by Monday, Novem-

ber 25. While hospitalized at East Louisiana State Hospital, Cheramie

had told Dr. Bowers—prior to JFK’s death—that JFK would be killed.

Dr. Bowers repeated Cheramie’s remarks to Dr. Weiss, who was told by