The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (50 page)

However, on Friday evening, Ferrie had more to worry about than just Martin’s accusations: David Ferrie’s library card was apparently found on Oswald at the time of his arrest. According to an FBI report, Marcello’s lawyer, G. Wray Gill, “stated that he had gotten word that Lee Oswald, when he was picked up, had been carrying a library card with David Ferrie’s name on it.” On Sunday, November 24, Gill would stop by Ferrie’s residence and leave word that “Ferrie should contact him, Gill, and he would represent him as his attorney. In addition, Gill said that Jack Martin . . . had gone to the police and the FBI and said that Ferrie had stated in his presence that the President should be killed.”

That was on Sunday, but according to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, “Oswald’s former landlady in New Orleans, Mrs. Jesse Garner, told the committee she recalled that Ferrie visited her home on Friday—the night of the assassination—and asked about Oswald’s library card.” In addition, “a neighbor of Oswald’s” in New Orleans also said “that Ferrie had come by her house after the assassination, inquiring if” her husband “had any information regarding
Oswald’s library card.” Within days, the Secret Service would ask Ferrie whether he had ever loaned Oswald his library card. But on Friday, November 22, Ferrie didn’t want the authorities to connect him to Oswald in any way, so he took two young men with him on a sudden trip to Texas.

David Ferrie’s travels and actions on the two-day trip were considered so bizarre and unusual by investigators that it’s possible that his goal was to retrieve his library card. Ferrie needed the card, so that he could produce it if he were ever asked for it by investigators in New Orleans. Shortly before his death, Ferrie told the staff of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that “he had some business for [G. Wray] Gill to take care of” when he suddenly went to Texas.

Ferrie told the FBI that “he had been in New Orleans until at least 9:00 p.m. on November 22, celebrating Marcello’s trial victory at the Royal Orleans” hotel. Ferrie suddenly decided to drive to Houston through a heavy rainstorm, accompanied by two young men. They visited a Houston ice-skating rink, where Ferrie “spent a great deal of time at a pay telephone, making and receiving calls,” according to Anthony Summers. In the early morning hours of November 23, Ferrie checked in to the Alamotel in Houston, which was owned by Carlos Marcello. Congressional investigators confirmed that Ferrie made “a collect call . . . to the Town and Country Motel, Marcello’s New Orleans headquarters.” He also called Marcello attorney G. Wray Gill that weekend. While still registered at the Houston Alamotel, Ferrie drove to Galveston and checked into another motel there. Jack Ruby made several calls to Galveston around the time of Ferrie’s arrival there. Congressional investigators couldn’t understand why hotels in Houston and Galveston both listed Ferrie as staying there during the same twelve-hour period.

One explanation is that someone in Galveston or Houston may have been bringing David Ferrie his library card. For example, there were men in each city who had just come from Dallas, shortly before Ferrie’s arrival. One was an associate of Jack Ruby, and the other was alleged mob associate Eugene Hale Brading, who had been arrested in Dealey Plaza just after JFK’s assassination. I’m not asserting that either of those two men delivered Ferrie’s card but simply explaining how it could have been done.

GUY BANISTER MIGHT have been able to use his law-enforcement or intelligence contacts to get someone on the Dallas Police force to pull the card. Banister could have evoked Ferrie’s work for the CIA and with Varona’s CIA-backed anti-Castro Cuban group, giving rise to the “for the good of the country” excuse offered to Dallas reporters to stop their reporting on Ferrie. Alternately, Marcello’s associates might have been able to use their Dallas Police contacts to get the card. Mobster Joe Civello ran Dallas for Marcello, and Dallas Police Sergeant Patrick Dean boasted to Peter Dale Scott about his “longtime relationship” with Civello. Sergeant Dean was also good friends with Jack Ruby. In fact, according to Scott, “Dean would be in charge of security in the Dallas [Police Department] basement when Oswald was murdered” and later fail “a lie detector test about Ruby’s access to” it. Homicide Captain Will Fritz—in charge of the Oswald investigation—was also “very close friends” with Jack Ruby, according to J. D. Tippit’s attorney.

ACCORDING TO DALLAS FBI agent James Hosty, after JFK’s murder in Dallas, “the Pentagon ordered us to Defense Condition 3, more commonly known as Def Con 3—the equivalent of loading
and locking your weapon, and then placing your finger on the trigger. The power cells within Washington were in a panic.” Peter Dale Scott points out that Hosty wrote “that at the time of Oswald’s arrest, fully armed warplanes were sent screaming toward Cuba. Just before they entered Cuban airspace, they were hastily called back. With the launching of airplanes, the entire US military went on alert.” Scott notes that “these planes would have been launched from the US Strike Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.” That was the very base that JFK had visited just four days earlier, for a secret session with the Strike Force Commander and other leaders. However, the Def Con 3 alert status soon diminished.
U.S. News & World Report
notes that “the Air Force and the CIA sent a ‘Flash’ worldwide alert for all” US surveillance flights “to return to their bases lest the Soviet Union be provoked.”

On Friday afternoon and evening, national security concerns about JFK’s assassination reverberated throughout the US government, as information, misinformation, and possible disinformation about Oswald started to be uncovered. Scott points out a declassified “cable from US Army Intelligence in Texas, dated November 22, 1963, telling the Strike Command (falsely) that Oswald had defected to Cuba in 1959 and was ‘a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.’” Later, even Hoover would erroneously tell “Bobby Kennedy that Oswald ‘went to Cuba on several occasions, but would not tell us what he went to Cuba for.’” It appeared that someone had fed disinformation about Oswald to the FBI and military intelligence, which served to incriminate him and focus attention on Cuba.

JACK RUBY CONSTANTLY stalked Oswald at the police station, while continuing to try to find a policeman willing to silence
Oswald for him. Ruby’s association with hundreds of policemen made him well suited to the task. Ruby admitted later that he was packing a pistol when he went to police headquarters that night. At 6:00 p.m., Ruby was seen on the third floor of police headquarters by John Rutledge, a reporter for the
Dallas Morning News
. At 7:00 p.m., Ruby spoke to Detective August Eberhardt at Dallas Police headquarters, on the third-floor hallway. Finally, at some time after that and before 8:00 p.m., Ruby tried to open the door to Captain Fritz’s office, where Oswald was being interrogated. However, two officers stopped him and one told him, “You can’t go in there, Jack.” If Ruby had managed to get into Fritz’s office while Oswald was there, it’s likely he would have done what he did finally do on Sunday—shoot Oswald.

Frustrated at his first attempt, Ruby regrouped. He called the home of his friend Gordon McLendon, owner of KLIF radio, who was close to David Atlee Phillips and had a connection to Marcello. Ruby then called a radio DJ, offering to help him set up a telephone interview with District Attorney Henry Wade. Around 9:50 p.m., Ruby even dropped by Temple Searith Israel, where Ruby seemed depressed when he talked with Rabbi Hillel Silverman. Ruby didn’t mention JFK’s assassination.

During Oswald’s interrogation, around 10:30 p.m., one of the officers got a phone call from Ruby, who offered to bring them some sandwiches. The officer declined. By 11:30, Ruby was back at the police station, and a policeman spotted him among the throngs of reporters. Finally, after midnight, Ruby would get a chance to see Oswald—but he would be too far away to have a clear shot. Ruby was packing his pistol, and carrying some sandwiches, when he attended a third-floor briefing at Dallas Police headquarters. There, Chief
Curry and District Attorney Henry Wade announced that Oswald would be shown to newsmen at a press conference in the basement. Ruby attended the chaotic press conference in a basement assembly room, where Oswald was shown to reporters to counter stories that he had been beaten. When Wade said that Oswald belonged to the “Free Cuba Committee” (an anti-Castro group headed by Eladio del Valle, an associate of both Trafficante and Ferrie), Ruby—standing on a table in the back of the room—corrected him, saying that it was really the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee” (a Communist, pro-Castro group).

DURING THE ROWDY press conference, Oswald said in response to a question that he “didn’t shoot anybody, no sir” and correctly stated that he had not been charged with shooting the President. Oswald also asked for someone to “come forward to give me legal assistance,” possibly an appeal to one of his contacts, like Banister or Phillips, to clear him with the authorities. Two lawyers connected to Marcello received calls about representing Oswald, but Oswald never saw a lawyer while he was in custody.

Interestingly, Chief Curry later said that “one would think Oswald had been trained in interrogation techniques and resisting interrogation techniques,” and that Curry believed Oswald could have been some type of agent. Curry’s remark was based on the way Oswald handled himself during the twelve hours of interrogation that weekend, none of which were recorded or stenographically transcribed. Assistant DA Alexander said that he “was amazed that a person so young would have had the self-control he had. It was almost as if he had been rehearsed, or programmed, to meet the situation that he found himself in.” For someone like Oswald, who had withstood
KGB pressure and scrutiny in Russia for years, dealing with the Dallas Police for a couple of days—until someone came forward to help him—would have presented few problems.

RICHARD D. MAHONEY wrote that “[s]ubsequent to the Kennedy assassination, Ruby, a man described by Rosselli himself as ‘one of our boys,’ stalked, murdered, and thereby silenced Oswald. This act shines out like a neon sign through the fog of controversy surrounding the President’s death.” Ruby continued trying to fulfill his obligation to Carlos Marcello throughout the weekend. After the press conference, Ruby went to the radio station, and left around 2:00 a.m., to meet a Dallas Police officer and his girlfriend, a dancer for Ruby, at Simpson’s Garage. There are numerous discrepancies about the duration of the meeting and the participants, but the police officer said the meeting with Ruby lasted two to three hours. Some researchers have speculated that Ruby was trying to either persuade the officer to shoot Oswald, or to help Ruby find an officer who would.

THE TWO SHOOTERS supplied by Carlos Marcello returned to Joe Campisi’s restaurant shortly after the shooting, where they remained until he helped them leave Dallas. Likewise, Michel Victor Mertz was also still in Dallas at this time. However, those three—and likely Bernard Barker—were probably not the only men in Dallas who had been working in Dealey Plaza for Marcello and Trafficante. Just as they’d carefully planned JFK’s murder so it could take place in any of three cities, they probably had additional personnel assisting with JFK’s murder in Dallas.

Johnny Rosselli’s biographers confirm that “the FBI surveillance of Rosselli loses his trail on the West Coast between November 19 and
November 27.” They added that “Jimmy Starr, the Hollywood gossip columnist and a friend of Rosselli’s,” told them, “What I heard about the Kennedy assassination was that Johnny was the guy who got the team together to do the hit.”

There is an unconfirmed report of Rosselli being in Tampa on November 20, before flying to New Orleans the next day. Made years before the Tampa attempt became known to historians, that report comes from a pilot named W. Robert Plumlee, described by Congressional investigators as “an associate of John Martino.” Plumlee told former FBI agent William Turner that Rosselli stayed in Tampa the night of November 20, before being flown in a private plane to New Orleans on November 21. He says the group then traveled to Houston, before going on to Dallas on the morning of November 22. Plumlee says the flight was authorized by “military intelligence” with “the CIA” in a supporting role, and it was apparently related to the CIA–Mafia plots to kill Castro.

Although Plumlee did talk to government investigators in the mid-1970s, some have criticized his credibility. However, three additional mob associates independently placed Johnny Rosselli in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Most of the accounts also include Chicago hit man Charles Nicoletti, whom the Associated Press said had joined the CIA–Mafia plots in the fall of 1963. Unfortunately, none of the accounts meet my usual standards for reliability and independent corroboration, so I consider those accounts only suggestive. It is worth noting that no solid alibi for either Rosselli or Nicoletti has emerged for November 22, despite the fact that these allegations have been public for many years.

Cuban officials have claimed that Trafficante bodyguard and henchman Herminio Diaz was in Dallas on November 22 and took
part in JFK’s murder. Diaz had recently become a CIA asset and as noted in
Chapter Seventeen
, would be linked to a CIA–Mafia plot to kill Fidel just over two weeks after JFK’s murder. Diaz had a dark complexion, which could explain some of the witness statements from Dealey Plaza. Again, there is no independent corroboration or evidence for Diaz’s involvement in JFK’s murder, aside from the statement of a captured Cuban exile named Tony Cuesta. The Cuban exile also named Eladio del Valle—a drug trafficking associate of Trafficante and Roland Masferrer—as being part of the JFK plot. As noted earlier, in 1967 del Valle would be brutally murdered the same night that David Ferrie died.
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As for Lee Oswald as a possible shooter, any scenario for Oswald shooting the president simply doesn’t make sense, either as a “lone nut” or as part of a conspiracy. Recall that the secret Naval Intelligence operation concluded that “Oswald was not the shooter [and was] incapable of masterminding the assassination or of doing the actual shooting.” If Oswald had truly been a Communist, doing it for some ideological reason, he avoided claiming credit or making his ideological points when he had the chance at his Friday-night press conference. If Oswald hoped to get away, killing Kennedy and then trying to escape by bus and cab—to get to a rooming house where he had no car or driver’s license—also makes no sense. Oswald would have known that once he left work, he would quickly be fingered for the crime, and he had no way to get out of Dallas without taking public transportation.