Legacy of Secrecy (81 page)

His colleague Rolando Masferrer couldn’t help, since he was still in

legal hot water over his failed Haiti invasion. Their mutual partner in

smuggling and the drug trade, Santo Trafficante, would not tolerate del

Valle’s becoming the focus of the same type of publicity now plaguing

del Valle’s old friend David Ferrie. If the Cuban reports are true about

del Valle being involved in JFK’s assassination with Herminio Diaz, then

Trafficante couldn’t let del Valle be found, let alone interviewed.28

Chapter Thirty-two

President Johnson, Richard Helms, and Bobby Kennedy had very differ-

ent reactions to the news coming out of New Orleans about Garrison and

Ferrie. On February 18, the day after the news broke, LBJ called Acting

Attorney General Ramsey Clark to discuss Garrison and the story he’d

heard earlier from Drew Pearson. Clark had talked to one of Hoover’s

top aides about the Garrison story the previous day, but LBJ seemed

much more interested in talking about Drew Pearson’s story from Ed

Morgan, whom LBJ described as “Hoffa’s lawyer.” LBJ said the story

was about “a man brought into the CIA with a number of others and

instructed by the CIA and the Attorney General [Bobby Kennedy] to

assassinate Castro.” The news from New Orleans now made LBJ take

the story more seriously.1

At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the public identification of

Ferrie hit Richard Helms hard. A former executive assistant to the CIA’s

Deputy Director told Anthony Summers “he observed consternation on

the part of then CIA Director Richard Helms and other senior officials

when Ferrie’s name was first publicly linked with the assassination in

1967 . . . and was told ‘Ferrie had been a contract agent to the Agency

in the early sixties and had been involved in some of the Cuban activi-

ties.’”2 In an earlier interview, the former executive assistant allegedly

said, “Helms stated that David Ferrie was a CIA agent and that he was

still an agent at the time of the assassination.”3 Helms no doubt started

taking steps to contain the situation and spin the news coming out of

New Orleans, using the CIA’s extensive media assets as well as his per-

sonal high-level media connections.

Helms’s career was finished if the Garrison investigation, or the media

coverage of it, exposed his unauthorized attempts to eliminate Fidel, or

any ties between CIA operations and JFK’s murder. There were only a

few staff members in the CIA who knew those secrets, and to whom

Helms could turn for help and advice. In late February 1967, Desmond

FitzGerald was still the Deputy Director for Plans, though his health

and energy continued to decline. David Morales was on temporary

assignment in South America, before joining Ted Shackley in Laos. The

increasingly alcoholic William Harvey had recently been recalled from

Rome, due to his erratic behavior, and given a make-work project at

CIA headquarters.4 David Atlee Phillips was good with the press, but

was still the Station Chief in the Dominican Republic. One of the few

CIA insiders Helms could turn to for advice and spin control with the

press and publishers was E. Howard Hunt. Because of Hunt’s activities

such as forming the Cuban Revolutionary Council, whose New Orleans

branch had been involved with Ferrie, Hunt had just as much to lose as

Helms if Garrison’s investigation exposed Agency secrets.

While Bobby Kennedy shared some of Helms’s desire to make sure

the authorized 1963 plots to topple Fidel weren’t exposed, Bobby also

wanted to learn the full story behind his brother’s murder. In late Feb-

ruary and early March 1967, Bobby helped to launch two private inves-

tigations by his close associates, and monitored at least two more. One

investigation covered the assassination in general, while three focused

on Garrison, including one that would help to torpedo Garrison’s inves-

tigation in the eyes of the public.

Ed Guthman, Bobby’s former press aide at the Justice Department,

who had since become a top editor at the
Los Angeles Times
, conducted

one investigation. Guthman told author David Talbot he decided on his

own to cover the Garrison affair, and assigned five reporters to cover

the story. Guthman even traveled to New Orleans himself, but they all

“concluded there was nothing to it.” Guthman says Bobby “wanted to

know what we had found out and I told him . . . my feeling was that it

was possible [there was a conspiracy], but with Garrison, the evidence

wasn’t there.”5

In 1967, former JFK special envoy William Attwood was

editor-in-chief of
Look
magazine,
Life
’s chief rival. According to Talbot,

after a meeting with Garrison in New York, Attwood “intended to throw

the weight of
Look
. . . behind Garrison’s investigation. He strongly

encouraged [Bobby] Kennedy to commit himself to reopening the case.

In response, Bobby told Attwood that he agreed his brother had been

the victim of a conspiracy. ‘But I can’t do anything until we get control

of the White House,’ Kennedy told him.” However, Attwood had a heart

attack soon after talking to Bobby, and Garrison’s investigation had

already fallen into disarray when he returned to
Look
three months later.

It would be five years before Attwood began an investigation that would

finally expose Michel Victor Mertz in the American press, though as a

heroin kingpin, not as part of JFK’s assassination.6

In addition to monitoring Guthman’s and Attwood’s efforts, Bobby

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

launched two investigations of his own, apparently in hopes of using

the information once he became president. Bobby knew that coming

out publicly in favor of a conspiracy prematurely, before clear evidence

to substantiate it, could damage his reputation and possibly give Hoffa

the ammunition he needed to avoid prison. It could also ruin Bobby’s

chances of ever occupying the White House, which he considered cru-

cial for bringing any of JFK’s assassins to justice. That meant that any

investigation Bobby conducted before he was president would have to

be done secretly, in a deniable fashion.

One of the trusted people Bobby turned to was Frank Mankiewicz,

a journalist and attorney who in 1967 was Bobby’s press aide. Shortly

after the Garrison case became national news, Bobby told Mankiewicz,

“I want you to look into this, read everything you can, so if it gets to a

point where I can do something about this, you can tell me what I need

to know.”7

After reading all the books and articles he could get his hands on, and

meeting with JFK researchers, Mankiewicz came close to uncovering

the truth. He told David Talbot he “came to the conclusion that there

was some sort of conspiracy, probably involving the mob, anti-Castro

Cuban exiles, and maybe rogue CIA agents.” However, when he tried

to tell Bobby, “it was like he just couldn’t focus on it. He’d get this look

of pain, or more like numbness, on his face. It just tore him apart.”

What Mankiewicz probably didn’t realize was that Bobby himself had

come to a similar conclusion within days, even hours, of JFK’s murder.

Bobby withheld crucial information from Mankiewicz about his early

suspicions and how they were linked to the JFK-Almeida coup plan.

Also, as we’ll see shortly, by the time Mankiewicz tried to give Bobby

his conclusion, Bobby had new reasons to fear that too much about JFK’s

murder would come out too soon.8

Soon after Garrison’s claims became public, while Mankiewicz was

just beginning his investigation, another of Bobby’s most trusted and

experienced aides went to New Orleans to dig into the matter. It was

Walter Sheridan, former head of the Get Hoffa Squad that had sent the

Teamster leader to prison. What Sheridan did for Bobby in 1967 wasn’t

new. Sheridan’s widow told David Talbot that her husband had helped

Bobby look into JFK’s murder before, and that they “continued work-

ing on the case even after Bobby left the Justice Department. The two of

them would sometimes go back to the Justice Department to look over

evidence together.” However, Sheridan left the Justice Department in

1965 to work for NBC News as a producer and investigator. His widow

said “the only thing Walter wouldn’t do for NBC was to investigate

the assassination,” because that was something he and Bobby would

only do together. Once the news about Garrison and Ferrie broke, they

finally had the chance. Sheridan could go to New Orleans on behalf of

NBC News, without appearing to work directly for Bobby Kennedy.9

Talbot writes that Sheridan “began feeding [Bobby] information about

[NBC’s] investigation,” one of several developments that would soon

have a huge impact on Garrison’s efforts.10

Perhaps the biggest turning point in Garrison’s investigation came on

February 21, 1967, when David Ferrie was released from protective

custody. Ferrie had been at the Fontainebleau Hotel (where Trafficante

often stayed), while Garrison weighed whether or not to charge him.

Many have speculated about the reason for Ferrie’s release, with some

authors saying it was designed to scare Ferrie and prod him into turn-

ing on other conspirators. Even before the public learned of Garrison’s

investigation, the DA had told staff members that “Ferrie [was] talk-

ing about not having long to live.” Ferrie was quoted as telling one of

Garrison’s investigators, “I’m a dead man,” and his emotional condition

declined rapidly under the stress.11 It’s also possible that Garrison saw

releasing Ferrie from protection as the only way to get him to turn on

Marcello.

Garrison’s detractors point to problems with that scenario, since Ferrie

was not placed under round-the-clock surveillance after his release, as

he reportedly had been earlier. There were also reports that Garrison

no longer saw Ferrie as important, and that his investigation had hit a

dead end.

On the day of Ferrie’s release, the
New York Times
ran an article picked

up by other newspapers, in which Garrison said that because his inves-

tigation had been prematurely publicized, “arrests . . . are [now] most

certainly months away.” A Garrison staff member hinted at one New

Orleans suspect in particular to the
Times
, but wouldn’t name him.

According to the
Times
, “one of the lawyers who served on the staff of

the Warren Commission . . . said that the FBI had accumulated a ‘great

stack’ of data on the alleged New Orleans suspect, and that the infor-

mation indicated that the man had not seen Oswald in the months just

before the assassination and had not been a part of any conspiracy.” The

Times
also noted Garrison’s connection to
Life
magazine, and observed

that CBS News’ Mike Wallace had been talking to Garrison for about

“two weeks” regarding a CBS special on JFK’s assassination. That meant

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LEGACY OF SECRECY

Garrison had been holding discussions with CBS even before his inves-

tigation was made public.12

In some newspapers, the
Times
article was headlined “JFK Death Link

to Anti-Castro Plot Weighed,” since the story told of a theory held by

Garrison: “[that] President Kennedy’s assassination grew out of a plot

by anti-Communist forces to kill Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba. . . . The

conspirators planned to send Lee Harvey Oswald to Cuba to kill Castro,

and later decided to go after President Kennedy.” This theory actually

contained a few kernels of truth. Equally surprising, the Warren Com-

mission staff attorney whom the
Times
consulted indicated that “the

anti-Castro theory [was not] new,” though the Warren Report mentions

no theory describing Oswald as part of a plot to assassinate Castro.

Garrison’s theory, coupled with his focus on David Ferrie and Eladio

del Valle, would have allowed Garrison to make real progress if he had

been willing to investigate their bosses at the time of the assassination,

Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante.

But everything changed on the morning of February 22, 1967, when

David Ferrie’s dead body was found at his home at 11:40 AM. The

unusual circumstances surrounding Ferrie’s death created a new fire-

storm of publicity, which Garrison played to the hilt. Garrison wrote

that near Ferrie’s body were “two typed suicide notes,” and Ferrie’s

“signature on each note was also typed.” One said, “To leave this life is,

for me, a sweet prospect.” The New Orleans coroner first determined

that Ferrie’s death must have occurred the previous evening. However,

he had to change his finding after
Washington Post
reporter George Lard-

ner revealed that he had interviewed Ferrie from midnight to 4:00 AM.

The coroner determined the cause of death to be a brain aneurysm that

caused a fatal cerebral hemorrhage. Essentially, David Ferrie had died