Not in Your Lifetime: The Defining Book on the J.F.K. Assassination (56 page)

Note 3
: For treatments of the Garrison investigation, see especially Patricia
Lambert,
False Witness
, Landham, MD: Evans & Co., 2000, James Kirkwood,
American Grotesque
,
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. Also Edward Epstein,
Counterplot
, New York: Viking Press, 1968; Rosemary James and Jack Wardlaw,
Plot or Politics!
,
New Orleans: Pelican, 1967; Paris Flammonde,
The Kennedy Conspiracy: An Uncommissioned Report on the Jim Garrison Investigation
, New York: Meredith, 1969; Joachim Joesten,
The Garrison Enquiry
, London: Peter Dawnay Ltd., 1967 & Jim DeEugenio,
Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case
,
New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1992. See too articles in
Ramparts
, January 1968 by former FBI agent William Turner, and
Playboy
, October 1967 (interview with District Attorney Garrison). Garrison himself wrote two books,
A Heritage of Stone
(New York: Putnam, 1970), and
On The Trail of the Assassins
(New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1988).

275
     Banister’s widow: int. Mary Banister by Andrew Sciambra (New Orleans District Attorney’s Office), April 29 & 30, 1967.

Index cards and files: HSCA X.130–; and Garrison,
Heritage of Stone
,
op. cit.
, p. 98–.

Banister hire young men: HSCA X.127.

Campbell brothers: ints. June 1979.

276
Note 4
: Allen Campbell’s 1969 statements draw on a May 14, 1969, interview by the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office, reported in Garrison,
op. cit.
, pp. 100, 208n59. In his 1979 conversation with the author, Allen Campbell claimed he had not actually been at 544 Camp Street in summer 1963. That time, however, is when his brother Daniel said Allen brought him into the Banister operation. Both brothers indicated they had more information to provide but were nervous about doing so.

Banister angry: HSCA X.128 (Nitschke and Roberts).

Delphine Roberts: ints. 1978, 1993; (background)
New Orleans States-Item
, December 16, 1961, November 3, 1961 & January 18, 1962; and Roberts’s election manifesto, January 27, 1962; HSCA X.128–; HSCA Report, pp. 145, 146n.

279
Note 5
: Along with other criticism of this author’s work, the author Gerald Posner suggested in his 1993 book on the case (
op. cit.
) that
Delphine Roberts had retracted her statements about Oswald, and implied that she had only given an interview to the author for money. Neither assertion is accurate. Roberts gave the author the information reported here spontaneously and without payment. She was subsequently paid a fee for a filmed interview in connection with a film documentary project on which the author was a consultant. It is common practice to pay such fees for television appearances, to compensate interviewees for their time and the resulting exposure, and the company concerned paid in that spirit. For her part, and after the Posner claims, Roberts confirmed in 1993 that she stood by her story as told to the author in 1978.

Delphine Roberts’s daughter: int. 1978.

Ross Banister & Nitschke: HSCA X.128.

Alba: HSCA Report, p. 146.

280
     FBI interview of Banister: HSCA X.126.

CIA and Banister: HSCA X.126.

281
     CRC local representative (Sergio Arcacha Smith): CIA document 1363-501, Security File on Arcacha, dated October 26, 1967; CD 75.683, reports of FBI Agent Wall, November 25, 1963; int. of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Rolfe, New Orleans District Attorney’s office, January 13, 1968; Arcacha’s own curriculum vitae; CD 87; New Orleans Police Arrest Report, August 30, 1961 (item No. H-13903-61); HSCA X.11, 61; report of Secret Service Agents Gerrets, Vial, and Counts, December 3, 1963; HSCA X.61.

Note 6
: On March 9, 1962, 544 Camp Street’s owner, Sam Newman, wrote to the CRC regarding rent arrears. The letter was addressed personally to Antonio de Varona, the CRC leader who reportedly—at the initiative of Santo Trafficante played a part in the CIA-Mafia plots to murder Castro (copy of letter in files of William Scott Malone).

Caire: XXII.828; (& Oswald) XXII.831.

Bartes: HSCA Report, p. 144; & see John Newman,
op. cit
., multiple refs.

282
     Ferrie
background: HSCA IX.103; HSCA X.105; CIA document 1359-503, February 7, 1968; FBI reports from New Orleans, November 26, 1963; CD 75.287–;
New Republic
, “Is Garrison Faking?” by Fred Powledge, June 17, 1967;
Ramparts
, January 1968; Arcacha letter to Eastern Airlines official Captain E. Rickenbacker, July 18, 1961; (bombing) article in
El Tiempo
, New York, March 1967.

Note 7
: For detail on Ferrie, the author has drawn largely on research by Stephen Roy (writing as David Blackburst), who has specialized in studying Ferrie. (e.g. www.jfk-online.com/dbjmaadf.html).

Ferrie letter to Air Force: “Garrison’s Case,”
New York Review of Books
, September 14, 1967.

283
     Ferrie Cuba speech: James/Wardlaw,
op. cit.
, p. 46.

“The President ought”: Secret Service report by agents Wall and Viater, November 27, 1963.

“An electorate”: in notes found in Ferrie’s effects after his death.

Banister “bullet”/“ballot”: anecdote told by Aaron Kohn, Metropolitan New Orleans Crime Commission.

Ferrie demonstration: James/Wardlaw,
op. cit.
, p. 111.

284
     Ferrie and Oswald:(CAP) HSCA IX.103; VIII.14; XXII.826; (Ferrie denied
re
CRC)

HSCA X.132n; (Banister employee on Ferrie and Oswald) HSCA 1X104,
re
Jack Martin.

285
     Paradis: int. 1993.

Note 8
: According to Ferrie researcher Stephen Roy, Oswald joined the CAP’s Moisant squadron, while Paradis was in the Lakefront squadron—which Oswald only visited. (www.jfk-online.com/dbdfcapfile.html)

Old photograph:
Frontline
, “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?” WGBH-TV/PBS Boston, November 1993.

Ferrie’s homosexuality: see Ferrie sources
supra
.

Note 9
: In August 1961, when Ferrie was arrested in connection with an episode involving a runaway boy, Arcacha Smith—the prominent Cuban exile who that year began using an office at 544 Camp Street in New Orleans—intervened on his behalf. (www.jfk-online.com/dbarcback.html)

286
     Oswald
homosexual?: (party) report of November 30, 1963, by Agent Joseph Engelhardt, FBI file No. 89–69;(bars) Edward Epstein,
op. cit.
, p. 620n3, and Gerald Posner,
op. cit.
, p. 21; (Murray) VII.319; (Powers) interview by Robbyn Swan, 1994, and see VIII.269.

Note 10
: Jack Martin, an associate of Ferrie and of Guy Banister, claimed Ferrie once told him about a youth who had witnessed a sex act in which Ferrie had taken part. The youth then joined the Marine Corps and left New Orleans. The FBI dismissed Martin’s various claims as those of a disreputable character with a grudge, but the House Assassinations Committee was less dismissive (HSCA IV.485; HSCA IX.104; HSCA Report, p.142).

A 1967 CIA headquarters message, reported in an Assassinations Committee staff summary, made the following bald assertion: “Lee Harvey Oswald was a homosexual.” A CIA internal critique of the Committee document, however, said this was a distortion. According to the critique, the original document said homosexuality was merely “a possibility” raised by the media covering New Orleans’ D.A. Jim Garrison’s assassination probe. (HSCA Mexico Report, p. 237, and HSCA Box 6, No. 7,
re
Sylvia Durán in CIA release, 1993)

“Recruiting officer”: CE 1454; FBI transcript of Les Crane TV program, New York, August 21, 1964.

Birth certificate: HSCA IX.99–; (Ferrie fakery) refer to HSCA Ferrie analysis,
supra
, and (another example) see John Davis,
Mafia Kingfish
, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989 p. 158–,
re
Ferrie’s role in forgery of a birth certificate for Carlos Marcello; (Martin)www.jfk-online.com/dbjmaadf.html.

287
     Oswald, Marines, and Socialism: Report, p. 383–; (“baloney”) HSCA IX.107.

288
     Andrews: XI.326–, 331; XXVI.704, 732.

Note 11
: Other
evidence that supposedly linked Oswald to Ferrie—made much of in New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation and failed trial—involved the alleged sighting in Clinton, a small Louisiana town, of Oswald, Ferrie, a man who resembled Banister, and Clay Shaw. Shaw, a prominent New Orleans businessman and a former CIA contact, was to be charged by Garrison with conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. In early September 1963, according to witnesses Garrison produced, these men arrived in Clinton during a voter registration drive that the Congress of Racial Equality—CORE—had organized to get black citizens to vote. The witnesses included the town’s registrar, its marshal, a leading member of CORE, and others—who seemed persuasive. A drive for racial equality appeared to fit Oswald’s political profile, while his supposed companions—Ferrie, Banister, and Shaw—were of the opposite persuasion. The House Assassinations Committee found the sources of the Clinton story “credible and significant,” and the author included the Clinton episode in earlier editions of this book. In 1998, however, the author advised readers of new research—still being prepared—that would likely cast doubt on the entire matter. That research, published in a 2000 book by author Patricia Lambert, effectively demolishes the Clinton story. It is therefore not given space in the text of this edition. The author suggests that interested readers refer to Lambert’s book,
False Witness
(
op. cit.
).
Other sources on Clinton have been (background:
Robert F. Kennedy
by Arthur Schlesinger, p. 303; transcripts of evidence in trial,
State of Louisiana v. Clay Shaw
, 2/6–769; ints. Edwin McGehee (barber), John Manchester (town marshal), William Dunn (CORE worker), Henry Palmer (registrar of voters), Reeves Morgan (state representative), Maxine Kemp (hospital secretary), & former police Intelligence officer Francis Frugé, 1978; HSCA Report, p. 142. See also Gerald Posner,
op. cit.
, Mailer,
Oswald’s Tale
,
op. cit.
, p. 621–,
Probe
(pub. by Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination, ed. by Jim DiEugenio), June and July 1994.

Ferrie and Marcello: (as pilot) HSCA Report, p. 143n; (and Andrews) James/
Wardlaw,
op. cit.
, p. 92; (Andrews and Marcello) testimony released by New Orleans grand jury, April 12, 1967; (Ferrie and Marcello case) CD 75 and HSCA X.105–; int. Joe Newbrough, former Banister investigator, by William Scott Malone, August 16, 1978.

289
     Banister and Marcello: int. Mary Brengel, 1978; HSCA X.127.

290
     Oswald mother/uncle links to organized crime figures: HSCA IX.93–103, 115–.

291
     Clem Sehrt: HSCA IX.100.

Note 12
: Dean Andrews, another New Orleans attorney, who had links to Marcello associate David Ferrie, also said he was asked to represent Oswald after the President’s murder. He named the man who called him by the pseudonym of Clay Bertrand. To reveal the true identity of his caller, he said later, would endanger his life. (XVI.331, 326, 339; (pseudonym) Epstein,
Counterplot
,
op. cit.
, p. 41n; (in fear of life) Weisberg,
Oswald in New Orleans
,
op. cit.
, p. 139.)

Raoul Sere: HSCA IX.103.

Termine: HSCA IX.115.

Murret: See entry for Oswald family’s connections with organized crime figures, above.

292
     Helping Oswald get bail: XXV.117; CD 75.159, FBI report of November 30, 1963;
Clandestine America
, III.2, p. 7, quoting New Orleans Crime Commission Director on Bruneau; CD 6.104; VII.175; (Pecora) HSCA IX.192; HSCA Report, p. 155.

293
     Schweiker: int. 1978.

18. The Cuban Conundrum

295
     American University speech: Public Papers of President Kennedy (1963), p. 45.

296
     “Let us, if we can”: Public Papers of President Kennedy (1963), p. 606.

Alpha 66: Sen. Int. Cttee.,
Performance of Intelligence Agencies
, p. 11–; raids:
Dallas Times-Herald
, March 19, 1963;
ibid
., March 22, 1963; Albert
Newman,
op. cit.
, p. 326;
Dallas Times-Herald
, March 28, 29, 30, 31 & April 1, 1963; JFK statement on raids—
JFK Public Papers
, April 1 & 12, 1963.

“Pinprick” attacks: Sen. Int. Cttee.
Assassination Plots
, pp. 172, 337; Schlesinger,
Robert F. Kennedy
,
op. cit.
, p. 543–.

297
Note 1
: The formal title was Special Group (Augmented), an offshoot of the Special Group of the National Security Council specifically charged with the overthrow of the Castro regime. (“Note on U.S. Covert Action Programs,”
Foreign
Relations of the United States
, 1964–1968, XII, www.fas.org).

Note 2
: The author has drawn here on 1970s interviews of Ayers and on Ayers’ memoir
The War That Never Was
(New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1976). A second book written three decades later, however, and points to sinister figures supposedly involved in the Kennedy assassination. In this author’s view, it has no credibility. It is
The Zenith Secret
:
A CIA Insider Exposes the Secret War Against Cuba and the Plot that Killed the Kennedy Brothers
(New York: Vox Pop, 2007).