PDC-.

r

i I ) January 1968 Seventy-five Cents

" Tho appointed-L Ramsey Clark, who has done his best to torpedo the investigation of the case? Who controls the W CIA ? Who controls the FBI? Who controls the Archives where this evidence is locked up for so long that it is unlikely that there is anybody in this room who will be alive when it is released? This is really your property and the property of the people of this country. Who has the arrogance and the brass to prevent the people from seeing that evidence? Who indeed? "The one man who has profited most from the assassination — your friendly President, Lyndon Johnson!" Jim Garrison The Garrison Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy

IM GARRISON IS AN ANGRY MAN. For him away from a vice ring or as if the six years now he has been the tough, the people of this country. Who has the Mob had attempted to use political clout arrogance and the brass to prevent the J uncompromising district attorney to get him off their backs. Only this people from seeing that evidence? Who of New Orleans, a rackets-buster without time, the file reads "Conspiracy to As- parallel in a political freebooting state. indeed ? sassinate President Kennedy," and it "The one man who has profited most He was elected on a reform platform and isn't Cosa Nostra, but the majestic might meant it. Turning down a Mob proposi- from the assassination—your friendly of the United States government which President, Lyndon Johnson!" tion that would have netted him $3000 a is trying to keep him from his duty. week as his share of slot machine pro- Garrison made it clear that he was not "Who appointed Ramsey Clark, who accusing Johnson of complicity in the ceeds, he proceeded to raid Bourbon has done his best to torpedo the investi- Street clip joints, crack down on prosti- crime, but left no doubt that as far as he gation of the case?" he fumed in a recent was concerned, the burden had shifted tution and eliminate bail bond rackets. speech before a gathering of southern His track record as the proverbial fight- to the government to prove that it was California newscasters. "Who controls not an accessory before or after the fact. ing DA is impressive: his office has never the CIA? Who controls the FBI? Who lost a major case, and no convictions "I assume that the President of the controls the Archives where this evidence United States is not involved," he said. have been toppled on appeal because of is locked up for so long that it is unlikely improper methods. "But wouldn't it be nice to know it?" that there is anybody in this room who The simple probity of Garrison's Garrison is angry right now—as angry will be alive when it is released? This is as if some bribed cops had tried to steer challenge is underscored by the fact that really your property and the property of the government and government-oriented by William W. Turner Photography by Matt Herron forces have concealed and destroyed of a vanishing breed: a Southern popu- knave nor fool. No politician on the evidence, intimidated witnesses and list anchored in very traditional Amer- make would be reckless enough to at- maligned, ridiculed and impeded Garri- ican ideals about justice and truth, who tempt to usurp the findings of the seven son and his investigation. In short, the can neither rationalize nor temporize in distinguished men of the Warren Com- conduct of the government has not been pursuit of them. mission. "It's not a matter of wanting to that of an innocent party, but of one de- By design or ignorance, the mass gain headlines," says Garrison indig- termined to cover its tracks. For the past media —from NBC to Life—have created nantly. "It's a matter of not being able nine months, I have worked closely with an image of Garrison as a ruthless op- to sleep at night. I am in an official the DA and his staff, hoping to con- portunist with vaulting political ambi- position in a city where the greater part tribute to their investigation. In my tion, which naturally leads to the of the planning of the assassination of opinion there is no question that they conclusion that he is trying to parlay President Kennedy took place, and this have uncovered a conspiracy. Nor is the death of a President into a political was missed by the Warren Commission. there any doubt that Jim Garrison is one tour de force. He is, in fact, neither What would these people who have at-

PHOTOGRAPHER'S NOTE: Garrison and I played a game of chess. the center. Then he developed his major pieces carefully and We thought the board looked too staid for pictures with all the painstakingly. At first glance he didn't seem to be making much pieces in starting order, so I led off with my king's pawn and progress nor to be taking full advantage of my obvious weak- then (foolishly) played my king's bishop to bishop four. Garrison nesses, but when he finally launched Iris attack, he was so solidly could have clobbered me, but instead he chose to play the game entrenched there was nothing I could do. In those circumstances much as he has played the investigation. First, he solidly occupied a gentleman would have resigned.

44 RAMPARTS 1 tacked me do if they were here and had Garrison's current battle to get the contribution our country has made to official responsibility? Would they be Justice Department, the FBI and the this world we live in"; yet on occasion able to sleep nights? Would they be able CIA to release evidence about the as- he has implied that Supreme Court de- to say, 'Jack Kennedy is dead and there sassination is not the first time he has cisions are a factor in the rising rate of is nothing I can do about it?' " tangled with anal retentive government violent crime. authorities. After the DA's Bourbon [THE MAKING OF A DA] But since the start of his assassination Street raids, the city's eight criminal probe, his views on many issues have ARRISON'S ATTITUDES were un- judges began blocking his source of changed appreciably. "A year ago I was doubtedly set by his experiences funds for the raids, a fines forfeitures a mild hawk on Vietnam," he relates. G during World War II in Europe pool. Garrison took on the judges in a "But no more. I've discovered the gov- where, while flying a Piper Cub as an running dispute that was the talk of New ernment has told so many lies in this [the artillery spotter during the Allied sweep, Orleans. On one occasion, a luncheon of assassination] case it can't be believed on he came upon Dachau. The residue of the Temple Sinai Brotherhood, he lik- anything." He fears that the U.S. is horror he witnessed there etched itself ened the judges to "the sacred cows of evolving into a "proto-fascist state," so deeply on his conscience that in the India." On another, he accused them of and cites as one indication the subtle foreword to a collection of criminology goldbricking by taking 206 holidays, quashing of dissent by an increasingly essays published in 1966, he deplored "not counting legal holidays like All autocratic central government. The mas- the apathy that permitted Dachau. Since Saints' Day, Long's Birthday and St. sive and still growing power of the CIA man emerged from the mists of time, he Winterbottom's Day." Outraged, the and the defense establishment, he con- wrote, "such reason as he possesses has judges collectively filed criminal defama- tends, is transforming the old America produced the cross, the bowl of hem- tion charges. (Complained one, "People into a Kafkaesque society in which lock, the gallows, the rack, the gibbet, holler 'Moo' at me.") The case escalated power is equated with morality. the guillotine, the sword, the machine to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a Garrison detests being called flam- gun, the electric chair, the hand grenade, landmark decision upheld Garrison's boyant, which is the most common the personnel mine, the flame thrower, right to criticize public officials. adjective applied to him, and in truth he poison gas, the nearly obsolete TNT He exercised that right. When Mayor makes no conscious- effort at ostenta- bomb, the obsolescent atom bomb Victor H. Schiro vacillated on an issue, tion. But he is one of those arresting and the currently popular hydrogen he quipped, "Not since Hamlet tried to figures who automatically dominates any bomb—all made to maim or destroy his decide whether or not to stab the king of gathering, and his bold strokes in battle, fellow man." Garrison, who is fond of Denmark has there been so agonizing a as deliberate as his moves in chess, seem allegorical example, pictured an extra- decision." But if he was an embarrass- to dramatize his formidable personality. terrestrial being happening upon a self- ment to officials, he was a delight to the He also must rank as one of the more in- desolated world and asking, "What hap- voters. In 1965, he was returned to office tellectual big, city DAs. He avidly de- pened to your disinterested millions? by a two to one margin—the first New vours history—it reflects in his metaphor Your uncommitted and uninvolved, your Orleans DA to be reelected in 30 years. —and quotes everything from Graham preoccupied and bored? Where today Greene and Lewis Carroll to Polonius' are their private horizons and their mir- ARRISON'S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY advice to Laertes. But he is not exactly rored worlds of self? Where is their defies definition. He subscribes a square. Once known as a Bourbon splendid indifference now?" G in part to Ayn Rand's indi- Street swinger, he is still familiar in a few With a diploma from Tulane Univer- vidualist dogma, but is too much of a of the livelier French Quarter spots, sity law school, Garrison tried the life of traditional democrat to accept its in- where he can sometimes be found hold- an FBI agent but found the role too evitable elitism. He is friendly with ing forth on the piano and crooning a circumscribed to be stimulating. A stint segregationists and archconservativei, basso profundo rendition of a tune popu- with a firm specializing in corporation but bristles at the mention of the Ku lar half a generation ago. But mostly he law was likewise unrewarding. After Klux Klan. Negro leaders have no sticks to his study at home, and his another tour of duty in the Korean War quarrel with his conduct of office, and striking blonde wife and five kids. —he is presently a Lt. Colonel in the he has appointed Negroes as assistant It may be that in the end, the rank un- Louisiana National Guard—he latched DAs. Several years ago when the police fairness of the current siege on Garrison on as an assistant DA in New Orleans vice squad tried to sweep James Bald- will be its undoing, for the American and began his public career. After two win's Another Country from bookstore sense of fair play is not easily trifled with. unsuccessful tries at elective office, he shelves, he refused to prosecute ("How But do the people really want the truth pulled an upset in the 1961 district at- can you define obscenity?") and de- about the assassination, or is it more torney race. Bucking the Democratic nounced the censorship in stinging comfortable to let sleeping dogs lie? machine and backed only by five young terms, thus incurring the wrath of the Garrison sees this as the pivotal question lawyers known as the "Nothing Group" White Citizens Council. He sees no vir- in the history of the American demo- because of their lack of money and tue in capital punishment, but is some- cratic experiment: "In our incipient prestige, he took to television and came what ambivalent on the libertarian trend superstate it really doesn't matter what on strong. Like Jack Kennedy, he pro- in court decisions. In a law quarterly he happened. Truth is what the government jected a youthful vigor and enthusiasm predicted that increasing emphasis on chooses to tell you. Justice is what it that was missing in the stereotyped poli- "the rights of the defendant against the wants to happen. It is better for you ticians he was opposing. state may come to be seen as the greatest not to know that at midday on Novem-

RAMPARTS 45 ber 22, 1963, there were many men in Garrison was unconvinced by Ferrie's constraint barely sufficient "for a man many places glancing at their watches. account. An all-night dash through the to get off two shots from a bolt-action But if we do not fight for the truth now, worst rainstorm in years to start a mer- rifle, much less three." we may never have another chance." curial junket of over 1000 miles in three The DA's mind reverted to the strange days for recreational purposes was too [THE FBI CLEARS A SUSPECT] trip of pilot David Ferrie, and he began much to swallow. "It was a curious trip to wonder how perceptive the FBI had N THE MORNING AFTER the assassi- to a curious place at a curious time," really been in dismissing the whole thing. nation, as the nation lay stunned the DA recalls. He booked Ferrie as a When he returned to New Orleans, he O by grief, Garrison summoned "fugitive from Texas" and handed him went into virtual seclusion in his study his staff to the office for a "brainstorm- over to the FBI. The G-men questioned at home, lucubrating over the volumes ing session" to explore the possibility him intensively, then released him. of the Warren Report. When he became that Lee Harvey Oswald had accomplices Since the 40-odd pages recording the convinced that Oswald could not have in New Orleans, where the previous sum- FBI interrogation of Ferrie are still acted alone, and that at least a phase of mer he had stumped the streets advocat- classified in the National Archives, one the conspiracy had been centered in New ing Fair Play for Cuba. can only surmise the reasons the Bureau Orleans, he committed his office to a The DA's men put out feelers into the stamped its file on him "closed." full-scale probe. He launched it quietly, city's netherworld, and it was First As- Apparently the FBI did not take the preferring to work more efficiently in sistant DA Frank Klein who registered pilot too seriously. A short Bureau docu- the dark. the first feedback. A slight, furtive, some- ment in the National Archives reveals time private eye named Jack S. Martin Ferrie had admitted being "publicly and HE PROBE REFOCUSED ON Ferrie, confided that a David William Ferrie privately" critical of Kennedy for with- and on December 15 he was had taken off on a sudden trip to Texas holding air cover at the Bay of Pigs, and T brought in for further questioning. the afternoon of the assassination. The had used expressions like "he ought to Asked pertinent details of the whirlwind tipster knew Ferrie well, although there be shot," but agents agreed he did not Texas trip in 1963, he begged lack of was bad blood between them. Both mean the threat literally. memory and referred his questioners to had worked intermittently for the same Most convincing at the time, the fact the FBI. What about the goose hunting? detective firm, W. Guy Banister & that Ferrie did not leave New Orleans "We did in fact get to where the geese Associates, and were affiliated with until hours after the assassination were and there were thousands," he re- the Apostolic Orthodox Old Catholic seemed to rule out his role as a getaway counted. "But you couldn't approach Church, a sect steeped in theological pilot. Moreover, the Stinson monoplane them. They were a wise bunch of birds." anti-communism.An exceptionally skilled he then owned was sitting at Lakefront Pressed for details of what took place at pilot, Ferrie had been dismissed from Airport in unflyable condition. the ice rink, Ferrie became irritated. "Ice Eastern Air Lines in 1962 due to pub- Accepting the FBI's judgment, Garri- skate—what do you think?" he snapped. licity over alleged homosexual activities. son dropped his investigation. "I had It didn't take the DA's men long to According to Martin, Ferrie had com- full confidence in the FBI then," he ex- poke holes in Ferrie's story. Melvin manded a Civil Air Patrol squadron of plains. "There was no reason to try and Coffey, one of his companions on the which Oswald had once been a member. second guess them." 1963 Texas trip, deposed that it was not He had taught Oswald to shoot with a For three years the DA's faith in the a sudden inspiration : telescopic sight, and had become in- Bureau's prowess remained unshaken. Q. The trip was arranged before? volved with his protege in an assassina- Then in November 1966, squeezed into A. Yes. tion plot. Less than two weeks before the a tourist-class seat on an Eastern jet Q. How long before? target date, Ferrie bad made a trip to headed for New York, his interest in the A. A couple of days. Dallas. His assigned role in the assassina- possibility of a conspiracy was rekindled. The probers also determined that no one tion, Martin said, was to fly the escaping Flanking him were Senator Russell B. had taken along any shotguns on the conspirators to Matamoros, Mexico, Long of Louisiana and Joseph Rault Jr, "goose-hunting" trip. near Brownsville, Texas. a New Orleans oilman. The previous In Houston, the ice skating alibi was When Ferrie returned to New Orleans week, Long had remarked in the course similarly discredited. In 1963, the FBI on the Monday following President of a press conference that he doubted the had interviewed Chuck Rolland, proprie- Kennedy's death, he was interrogated by findings of the Warren Commission. It tor of the Winterland Skating Rink. the DA's office. He said his trip had been was at the height of the controversy "FERRIE contacted him by telephone arranged "on the spur of the moment." stirred by publications ripping at the November 22, 1963, and asked for the With two companions, Alvin Beauboeuf Commission's methods and conclusions. skating schedule," a Bureau report, one and Melvin Coffey, he had driven straight Garrison bombarded the senator with of the few unclassified documents on through to Houston Friday night. On questions in the manner, he reminisces, Ferrie, reveals. "Mr. FERRIE stated Saturday afternoon, the three skated at "of a prosecutor cross-examining a wit- that he was coming in from out of town an ice rink; that evening they made the ness." Long maintained that there were and desired to do some skating while in short jog to Galveston and hunted geese grievous flaws and unexplored territory Houston. On November 23, 1963, be- Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon they in the Warren Report. He considered it tween 3:30 and 5:30 PM, Mr. FERRIE headed back to New Orleans, but de- highly implausible that a gunman of Os- and two companions came to the rink toured to Alexandria, Louisiana, to visit wald's "mediocre skill" could have fired and talked to Mr. ROLLAND." The relatives of Beauboeuf. with pinpoint accuracy within a time report continues that Ferrie and Rolland

46 RAMPARTS had a short general conversation, and pegged as a getaway pilot," he remarked when it plunged to earth near Ciudad that Ferrie remarked that "he and his bitterly. Victoria, Mexico, May 23, 1965. 4`' companions would be in and out of the When Garrison delivered his epitaph The other associate was Maurice skating rink during the weekend" (Com- of Ferrie as "one of history's most im- Brooks Gatlin Sr, legal counsel to the mission Documents 301). When Garri- portant individuals," most of the press Anti-Communism League of the Carib- son's men recently talked to Rolland, winked knowingly. The probe was, after bean. Jerry Brooks said he had once been they obtained pertinent facts that the all, a publicity stunt, and the DA had a sort of protege of Gatlin and was in his FBI had either missed or failed to report had his headlines. Now that his prime confidence. Brooks believed Gatlin's in 1963. Rolland was certain that none suspect had conveniently passed away, frequent world travels were as a "trans- of the three men in Ferrie's party had ice he had the perfect excuse to inter his porter" for the CIA. As an example, he skated; Ferrie had spent the entire two probe alongside the deceased pilot. said, Gatlin remarked about 1962, in a hours he was at the rink standing by a But for DA Jim Garrison, it was not self-important manner, that he had pay telephone— and finally received a call. the end but the beginning. $100,000 of CIA money earmarked for a At Houston International Airport, French right-wing clique that was going [544 CAMP STREET, NEW ORLEANS] more information was gleaned. Air serv- to attempt to assassinate General de ice personnel seemed to recall that in HILE THE LEGEND '544 Camp Gaulle; shortly afterward Gatlin flew to 1963 Ferrie had access to an airplane St., NEW ORLEANS, LA.' Paris. The search for Gatlin, however, based in Houston. In this craft, the flight Wwas stamped on some of the was likewise futile: in 1964 he fell or was to Matamoros would take little more literature that Oswald had in his posses- pushed from the sixth floor of the El than an hour. sion at the time of his arrest [for "dis- Panama Hotel in Panama during the Ferrie had patently lied about the pur- turbing the peace"] in New Orleans, early morning, and was killed instantly. pose of the trip. One of the standard extensive investigation was not able But the trip to 531 Lafayette Place was tactics of bank robbers is to escape from to connect Oswald with that address" not entirely fruitless. The address, I dis- the scene of the crime in a "hot car" that (Warren Report, p. 408). So said the covered, was a side entrance to 544 cannot be traced to them, then switch Commission. But Garrison has con- Camp Street. Entering either at the front to a "cold car" of their own to complete nected Oswald with that address. His or the side, one arrives via a walkup the getaway. Garrison considers it pos- investigation shows that Oswald func- staircase at the same second floor space. sible that Ferrie may have been the pilot tioned in a paramilitary right-wing That second floor once housed the Cu- of a second craft in a two-stage escape of milieu of which 54-4 Camp Street was a ban Democratic Revolutionary Front the Dallas assassins to south of the nerve center, and that Oswald's ostenta- and W. Guy Banister & Associates. border, or may have been slated to be a tious "Fair Play for Cuba" advocacy Guy Banister had been in charge of backup pilot in the event contingency was nothing more than a facade. the Chicago FBI office before retiring plans were activated. The dilapidated building at 544 Camp in 1955 and becoming New Orleans Did Ferrie know Oswald? The pilot Street is on the corner of Lafayette Place. deputy superintendent of police for sev- denied it, but the evidence mounts that Shortly after news of Garrison's investi- eral years. He was regarded as one of the he did. For example, there is now in gation broke, I went to 531 Lafayette city's most vocal anti-Castroites, and Garrison's hands information that when Place, an address given me by Minute- published the racist Louisiana Intelli- Oswald was arrested by Dallas police, he men defector Jerry Milton Brooks as the gence Digest, which depicted integration had in his possession a current New Or- office of W. Guy Banister, a former FBI as a communist conspiracy. Evidence of leans library card issued to David Ferrie. official who ran a private detective his relationship with the federal intelli- Reinforcing the validity of this informa- agency. According to Brooks, who had gence apparat has recently surfaced. A tion is a Secret Service report on the been a trusted Minutemen aide, Banister man who knew Banister well has told questioning of Ferrie by that agency was a member of the Minutemen and Garrison that Banister became asso- when he was in federal custody in 1963. head of the Anti-Communism League of ciated with the Office of Naval Intelli- During an otherwise mild interrogation, the Caribbean, assertedly an intermedi- gence through the recommendation of Ferrie was asked, strangely enough, if he ary between the CIA and Caribbean in- Guy Johnson, an ONI reserve officer lent his library card to Oswald. No, he surgency movements. Brooks said he and the first attorney for Clay Shaw replied, producing a card from the New had worked for Banister on "anti- when he was arrested by Garrison. Orleans public library in the name Dr. Communist" research in 1961-1962, and A copyrighted story in the New Or- David Ferrie. That card had expired. had known David Ferrie as a frequent leans States-Item, April 25, 1967, further When he realized he was a suspect in visitor to Banister's office. illuminates the Camp Street scene. The Garrison's current investigation, Ferrie Banister had died of an apparent heart newspaper, which at the time had an seemed to deteriorate. By the time he attack in the summer of 1964. But investigative team working parallel to died on February 22, 1967, he was a Brooks had told me of two associates the Garrison probe, reported that a re- nervous wreck, subsisting on endless whom I hoped to find. One was Hugh F. liable source close to Banister said he cigarettes and cups of coffee and enough Ward, a young investigator for Banister had seen 50 to 100 boxes marked tranquilizers to pacify an army. He had who also belonged to the Minutemen "Schlumberger" in Banister's office- sought out the press only days before his and the Anti-Communism League. Then storeroom early in 1961 before the Bay death, labeling the probe a "fraud" and I learned that Ward, too, was dead. Re- of Pigs. The boxes contained rifle complaining that he was the victim of a portedly taught to fly by David Ferrie, grenades, land mines and unique "little "witch hunt." "I suppose he has me he was at the controls of a Piper Aztec missiles." Banister explained that "the --,1( o y 11- ( 16-4,4- nP " 171 6 W orsL4 e •1 RAMPARTS 47 stuff would just be there overnight .. . a acquired part of his files. When he him, Texas Governor John Connally bunch of fellows connected with the realized he was a prime suspect in Gar- would not sign the papers. Cuban deal asked to leave it there over- rison's probe, Ferrie systematically dis- As for Oswald and 544 Camp Street, night." It was all right, assured Banister, posed of his papers and documents for Garrison declares that "we have several "I have approval from somebody." the years 1962 and 1963. But in photo witnesses who can testify they observed The "somebody," one can surmise copying the bibliography of a cancer Oswald there on a number of occasions." from the Gordon Novel episode which paper he had written (at one time he had One witness is David L. Lewis, another follows, was the CIA. Novel is wanted caged mice in his home on which he in Banister's stable of investigators. In by the DA as a material witness in the experimented with cancer implants), he late 1962, Lewis says, he was drinking 1961 burglary of the Schlumberger Well inadvertently overlapped the bottom coffee in the restaurant next to 544 Camp Co. munitions dump near New Orleans. portion of notes recording the disposi- Street when Cuban exile Carlos Quiroga, Subpoenaed by the grand jury last tions. Included is the notation: "Copies who was close to Arcacha, came in with March, Novel fled to McLean, Virginia, of B's [presumably Banister's] microfilm a young man he introduced as Leon Os- next door to the CIA complex at Lang- files to Atlanta rite-wingers [sic]." wald. A few days later, Lewis saw ley, and took a lie detector test admin- The Banister files were reputed to be Quiroga, Oswald and Ferrie together at istered by a former Army intelligence the largest collection of "anti-com- 544 Camp Street. A few days after that, officer which, he boasted to the press, munist intelligence" in Louisiana, and he barged into Banister's office and in- proved Garrison's probe was a fraud. He part were sold by his widow to the Sov- terrupted a meeting between Banister, then skipped first to Montreal and then ereignty Commission, a sort of state Quiroga, Ferrie and Leon Oswald. It was to Columbus, Ohio, from where Gover- HUAC, where a Garrison investigator not until he was interviewed by Garrison nor James Rhodes, in one of the most was able to examine them. Banister's that Lewis concluded that Leon Oswald absurd stipulations ever attached to a filing system was modeled after the was probably Lee Harvey Oswald. Not- normally routine procedure, refuses to FBI's, and contained files on both friends ing that the "natural deaths of Banister extradite him unless Garrison agrees not and foes. The "10" and "23" classifica- and' Ferrie were strikingly similar," to question him on the assassination. tion dealt with Cuban matters; 23-5, for Lewis has slipped into seclusion. From his Ohio sanctuary the fugitive example, was labeled Cuban Democratic cryptically asserted that the munitions Revolutionary Front and 10-209 simply [CIA: THE COMMON DENOMINATOR] caper was one of "the most patriotic Cuban File. There was a main file, 23-14, N OR ABOUT THE NIGHT Of Sep- burglaries in history." When an enter- labeled Shaw File, but someone had tember 16, 1963, a nondescript prising reporter took him to a marathon completely stripped it before Garrison's O Leon Oswald, the brilliant, er- party, Novel's indiscreet tongue loos- man got there. ratic David Ferrie, and a courtly ened further. According to the States- The Cuban Democratic Revolutionary executive-type man named Clem Ber- Item article, Noitel's oft-repeated ac- Front, which occupied what was grandi- trand discussed a guerrilla ambush of count was that the munitions bunker osely called Suite 6 at 544 Camp Street, President Kennedy in Ferrie's apart- was a CIA staging point for war materiel was the coalition of Cuban exile "lib- ment. There was talk of "triangulation destined for use in the impending Bay of eration" groups operating under CIA of fire ... the availability of exit . .. one Pigs invasion. He is quoted as saying aegis that mounted the Bay of Pigs in- man had to be sacrificed to give the other that on the day the munitions were vasion. Arcacha, the New Orleans dele- one or two gunmen time to escape." Es- picked up, he "was called by his CIA gate of the Miami-based organization, cape out of the country would be by a contact and told to join a group which is a dapper, moustachioed man who had plane flown by Ferrie. This was the nub was ordered to transport munitions from served in Batista's diplomatic corps. of the testimony of Perry Raymond the bunker to New Orleans." The key to There are numerous witnesses who at- Russo at a preliminary hearing for Clay the bunker was provided by his CIA test that he was a confidant of Banister Shaw, accused by Garrison of conspir- contact. Novel reportedly said the others and Ferrie, and that his office was a way acy in the assassination. Russo identified in the CIA group at the bunker were station for the mixed bag of Cuban Leon Oswald as Lee Harvey Oswald, and David Ferrie, Sergio Arcacha Smith— exiles and American adventurers in- Clem Bertrand as Clay Shaw. New Orleans delegate to the Cuban De- volved in the "liberation" movement. What would bring three such widely mocratic Revolutionary Front—and sev- Late in 1962, the Front closed up shop, disparate men together in the first place? eral Cubans. The munitions, according at which time Arcacha became a One possible answer: the CIA. to his account, were dropped in Novel's founder of the Crusade to Free Cuba, On the fringe of downtown New Or- office, Ferrie's home and Banister's a paramilitary group of militant right leans, the building at 544 Camp Street is office-storeroom. wingers. In March 1963, he moved to across the street from the government Ferrie worked on and off for Banister Houston, Texas. Early in his investiga- building which in 1963 housed the local as an investigator, and the mutual affinity tion, Garrison charged Arcacha with CIA headquarters. One block away, at was such that in 1962, when Eastern Air being a party to the munitions burglary 640 Magazine Street, is the William B. Lines was in the process of dismissing with Novel and Ferrie, but by this time Reily Co., a coffee firm where Oswald Ferric for publicity over alleged homo- he was living in Dallas, where he refused was employed that pivotal summer. He sexual acts, Banister appeared at a to talk to the DA's men without Dallas worked from May 10 to July 19, earning Miami hearing and delivered an impas- police and assistant DA Bill Alexander a total of $548.41 (Commission Exhibits sioned plea on his behalf. When Banister present. When Garrison obtained an 1154). Despite this, he did not seem suddenly died, the ex-pilot evidently arrest warrant and sought to extradite hard put to support Marina and their

48 RAMPARTS child. Nor did he seem particularly con- appearing man who called himself Hugh Corps post facto downgraded his dis- cerned about being fired. The personnel Pharris or Ferris; Norton now states it charge to less than honorable, Oswald manager of the Reily Co. told the Secret was Ferrie. "Here are your samples," indignantly wrote Secretary of the Navy Service that "there would be times when Ferrie remarked, handing Norton a John B. Connally, "I have and allways OsWald would be gone for periods of an phonograph record. "It is in the jacket." [sic] had the full sanction of the U.S. hour or longer and when questioned he "It" was $150,000, which Norton duly Embassy, Moscow USSR and hence the could not furnish a plausible explanation delivered to a Cuban television perform- U.S. government" (Warren Report, p. as to where he had been . .." (CE 1154). er in Havana. Norton asserts he went to 710). When an interviewer on a New Next door is the Crescent City Garage, Freeport, Grand Bahamas, on an Agency Orleans radio station asked him on whose owner, Adrian T. Alba, testified assignment late in 1966, and upon his August 21, 1963, if he had had a govern- that Oswald spent hours on end in his return to Miami his contact instructed ment subsidy during his three years in waiting room buried in gun magazines that "something was happening in New Russia, the normally articulate Oswald (Warren Report, Vol. 10, p. 226). Shortly Orleans, and that I [Norton] should take stammered badly : "Well, as I er, well, I before leaving the coffee firm, Oswald a long, quiet vacation." will answer that question directly then mentioned to Alba that his employment He did, and started to fret about the as you will not rest until you get your application was about to be accepted "people who have died in recent months answer er, I worked in Russia, er, I was "out there where the gold is"—the —like Ferrie." Then he decided to con- er under the protection er, of the er, that NASA Saturn missile plant at Gentilly, tact Garrison. Norton was given a lie is to say I was not under protection of a suburb (Vol. 10, p. 226). detector test, and there were no indica- the American government but I was at On the face of it, the idea that Oswald tions of deception. all times er, considered an American could get a job at a space agency installa- Garrison believes that Oswald was citizen . ." (This is the original version tion requiring security clearance seems schooled in covert operations by the CIA as disseminated by the Associated Press. preposterous. He was a self-avowed while in the Marine Corps at the Atsugi The version released by the Warren Com- Marxist who had tried to renounce his Naval Station in Japan, a U-2 facility mission has been edited to delete the American citizenship in Moscow, mar- (interestingly, two possibly relevant doc- hemming and hawing and the apparent ried the niece of a Soviet KGB colonel, uments, "Oswald's access to information slip of the tohgue, "I openly engaged in "Fair Play For Cuba" was under the pro- about the U-2" [CD 931] and "Repro- tection. . ." [Vol. 21, p. 639].) activity, and attempted to join the Com- duction of CIA official dossier on Os- Possibly the most cogent suggestion of munist Party, U.S.A. But Garrison wald" [CD 692] are still classified in the Oswald's mission in the Soviet Union points out that it is an open secret that National Archives). Curiously, the mis- the CIA uses the NASA facility as a can be found in the testimony of Dennis cast Marine who was constantly in hot H. Ofstein, a fellow-employee at Jag- cover for clandestine operations. And it water had a Crypto clearance on top of a is his contention that Oswald was a gars-Chiles-Stovall Co. in Dallas (this Top Secret clearance, and was given two is the photographic/graphic arts firm "witting" agent of the CIA. electronics courses. "Isn't it odd," prods There is a surfeit of indications of where Oswald worked upon his return Garrison, "that even though he sup- from Russia; it receives many classified Oswald's status. One is the story of posedly defected to the Soviet Union Donald P. Norton, who claims he was government contracts). Ofstein's smat- with Top Secret data on our radar nets, tering of Russian evidently set the usu- impressed into the Agency's service in no action was taken against him when 1957 under threat of exposure as a homo- ally phlegmatic Oswald to talking. "All he came back to the United States?" the time I was in Minsk I never saw a sexual. In September 1962, Norton re- Equally odd is Oswald's acquisition of lated, he was dispatched from Atlanta vapor trail," Ofstein quotes him. "He Russian language ability. Although the also mentioned about the disbursement to Mexico with $50,000 for an anti- Warren Report spread the fiction that he Castro group. He had no Sooner regis- [dispersement?] of military units," Of- was self-taught, and Oswald himself stein continued, "saying they didn't in- tered in the Yamajel Hotel in Monterrey, falsely told a New Orleans acquaintance Mexico, per instructions, than he was termingle their armored divisions and that he had studied Russian at Tulane infantry divisions and various units the contacted by one Harvey Lee, a dead University, the likelihood is that he was ringer for Oswald except that his hair way we do in the United States, and they tutored at the CIA's Atsugi station. would have all of their aircraft in one seemed slightly thicker. In exchange for Marine Corps records reflect that on the money, Lee gave him a briefcase geographical location and their tanks in February 25, 1959, at the conclusion of another geographical location, and their containing documents in manila en- his Atsugi tour of duty, he was given a velciPes. According to plan, Norton de- infantry in another . . ." On one occa- Russian language proficiency test (Fol- sion, Oswald asked Ofstein to enlarge a livered the briefcase to an employee of som Exhibit No. 1, p. 7). A former an American oil firm in Calgary, Alber- photograph taken in Russia which, he Marine comrade, Kerry Thornley, de- explained, represented "some military ta, who repeated the pass phrase, "The posed to Garrison that Oswald con- weather is very warm in Tulsa." headquarters and that the guards sta- versed in Russian with John Rene tioned there were armed with weapons Norton also contends he met David Heindel every morning at muster. Ferrie earlier in his CIA career. In early and ammunition and had orders to shoot Oswald's "defection" to the Soviet any trespassers ..." (Vol. 10, p. 202). Os- 1958, he was tapped for a courier trip to Union also smacks of being CIA-initi- Cuba and told to meet his contact at the wald's inordinate interest in the contrails ated. In retrospect, the clearance of U.S. of high flying aircraft, Soviet military Eastern Air Lines counter at the Atlanta departure and reentry formalities seems airport. The contact was a singular- deployment and a military facility in- unduly expeditious. When the Marine volving an element of risk to photograph

RAMPARTS 49 On the left is the entrance to 544 Camp St. On the right, 531 Lafayette Pl. libraries on Thursday. The possible im- Workers Party (a copy of the famous plication of his visits was not overlooked snapshot of Oswald with a revolver on by the FBI, which confiscated every book his hip, a rifle in one hand and the Party he ever charged out, and never returned organ, the Militant, in the other was them. A piece that may fit into the puzzle mailed to the SWP office in New York is the discovery by Garrison of an adult in April 1963). Garrison believes the borrower's card issued by the New Or- facade was intended to facilitate his leans public library in the name Clem entry into communist countries for spe- Bertrand. The business address shown is cial missions. the International Trade Mart [Shaw's Ferrie's involvement with the CIA former place of employment], and the seems to stem mainly from his anti- home address 3100 Louisiana Avenue Castro paramilitary activity, although Parkway, a wrong number, but conspic- iiMitiMENOMMONIME=0.1 there is a suggestion that he was at one The Belly Bldg. (See map opposite) uously close to that of David Ferrie at time a pilot for the Agency, In the late 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway. There 1940s and early 1950s he flew light hardly seems the natural curiosity of a may be a pattern here, since Oswald sup- planes commercially in the Cleveland, hapless ex-Marine private. posedly carried a card issued to Ferrie Ohio area, and was rated by his col- An intriguing entry in Oswald's ad- when arrested in Dallas. leagues as an outstanding pilot. In the dress book is the word "microdots" Still another hint of Oswald's intelli- middle 1950s there is an untraceable gap appearing on the page on which he has gence status is the inventory of his prop- in his career. Then he turns up as an notated the address and phone number erty seized by Dallas police after the Eastern Air Lines pilot. Although he of Jaggers-Chiles-Stovall (CE 18, p. 45). assassination. Included is such sophisti- supposedly obtained an instrument rat- Microdots are a clandestine means of cated optical equipment as a Sterio ing at the Sunnyside Flying School in communication developed by German Realist camera, a Hanza camera timer, Tampa, Florida, there is no record that intelligence during World War II and filters, a small German camera, a Wol- any such school ever existed. still in general use among espionage lensak 15 power telescope, Micron 6X A clue to Ferrie's activities may lie in agencies. The technique is to photograph binoculars and a variety of film—hardly the loss of hair he suffered. A fellow em- the document to be transmitted and the usual accouterments of a lowly ware- ployee at Eastern recalls that when vastly reduce the negative to a size that houseman (Stovall Exhibits). Ferrie first joined the line he was "hand- will fit inside a period. The microdot Upon his return from Russia, the man some and friendly," but in the end be- can be inserted in an innocuous letter or who subscribed to Pravda in the Marine came "moody and paranoiac—afraid the magazine and mailed, or left in a "dead Corps and lectured his fellow Marines communists were out to get him." The drop"—a prearranged location for the on Marxist dialectics set about insti- personality change coincided with a deposit and pickup of messages. tutionalizing his leftist facade. He wrote gradual loss of hair. First a bald spot Thus it may be significant that Oswald ingratiating letters to the national head- appeared, which Ferrie explained was obtained library cards in Dallas and quarters of the Communist Party, Fair caused by acid dripping from a plane New Orleans, and usually visited the Play for Cuba Committee and Socialist battery. Then the hair began falling out

Photographs by William W. Turner Map by John Williams I 'idLi 1. The old International Trade Mart. During the summer of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald passed out "Fair Play for Cuba" literature at its entrance. Some of the literature was stamped with the address "544 Camp St., New Orleans, La:' 2. The building at 544 Camp Street. In 196163, the building was a beehive of activity by anti•Castro groups, some sponsored by the CIA. A side entrance at 531 Lafayette Place was used by the late Guy Banister, a private detective who employed David Ferris. Garrison has linked Oswald to the building's occupants. 3. The old U.S, Courthouse across from 544 Camp Street. In 1963 the CIA had an office In the Courthouse. 4. The William B. Reily Co. at 640 Magazine Street, a coffee firm where Oswald was em- ployed during the summer of 1963. 5. The Crescent City Garage, next door to the Reily Co. Owner Adrian Alba told the Warren Commission that Oswald frequently visited the garage to read his gun magazines, and once mentioned that he would soon be obtaining a job at the Space Agency facility at Gentilly, a New Orleans suburb. 6. The new International Trade Mart, opened in 1965. Clay Shaw, accused by Garrison as al,n6a5s.sassination conspirator, was executive manager of the Mart until his retirement in in clumps—Ferrie desperately studied right-wing French officers dedicated to the FBI had in fact arrested 11 men, then medicine to try to halt the process— "keeping Algeria French" by force of quietly released them. Among those in until his body was entirely devoid of arms. The composition of the CMC the net was Acelo Pedro Amores, be- hair. One speculation is that he was group with which Shaw was associated lieved to be a former Batista official who moonlighting and suffered a physiolog- is of more than cursory interest, since it slipped out of Cuba in 1960. Also ical reactiop to exposure to the extreme includes a former U.S. intelligence offi- caught was Richard Lauchli Jr, one of altitudes required for clandestine flights. cer, now an executive of the Bank of the founders of the Mintemen. Lauchli, Chinese Nationalist U-2 pilots report- Montreal; the publisher of the neo-Nazi who possessed a federal license to manu- edly have suffered the same hair-loss National-Zeitung of Germany ; Prince facture weapons in his Collinsville, Illi- phenomenon. Guitere de Spadaforo,. an Italian in- nois machine shop, was arrested again One of Ferrie's covert tasks in the New dustrialist related by marriage to Hitler in 1964 when Treasury investigators, Orleans area was to drill small teams in finance minister Hjalmar Schacht; and posing as agents of a South American guerrilla warfare. One of his young the lawyer to the Italian royal family and country, trapped him in a deal to sell a proteges has revealed that he trained secretary of the Italian neo-Fascist huge quantity of illicit automatic arms. some of his Civil Air Patrol cadets and Party. Through his attorney, Shaw has The others arrested were American ad- Cubans and formed them into five-man stated he joined the CMC board of di- venturers and Cuban exiles. small weapons units, this under the rectors in 1958 at the insistence of his Garrison believes that the assassina- auspices of the Marine Corps and State own board of directors of the Interna- tion team at Dealey Plaza included rene- Department. Coupled with this is the tional Trade Mart of New Orleans. gade Minutemen operating without the information from another former pro- knowledge of the group's central head- tege that Ferrie confided "he was work- N AUGUST I, 1963, the front quarters. Free-lance terrorism has ing for the CIA rescuing Cubans out of page of the States-Item carried plagued Minutemen national coordina- Castro prisons," and on one occasion O two news stories which, Garri- tor Robert DePugh since the organiza- was called to Miami so that the CIA son asserts, symbolize the bitter end of tion's inception, and there have been could "test him to see if he was the type the paramilitary right's tolerance of John several abortive assassination schemes of person who told his business to any- F. Kennedy. "A-Treaty Signing Set On hatched by individual cliques. body." In a speech before the Military Monday" was the lead to one story, dis- For example, in 1962, a Dallas ex- Order of World Wars in New Orleans in closing that the test ban treaty was tremist using the pseudonym John Mor- late 1961, Ferrie related that he had about to become reality and that a ris was given money by a Minutemen trained pilots in Guatemala for the Bay NATO-Warsaw bloc nonaggression pact clique at the Liberty Mall in Kansas of Pigs, and professed bitter disappoint- was in the wind. "Ekplosives Cache City to subsidize the sniper slaying of ment that they were not used. Home Lent to Cuban, Says Owner's Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkan- Clay Shaw, an international trade Wife," announced the lead to another sas. The plan called for Morris to escape official with top-level contacts in Latin story, telling of an'FBI raid on a military in a plane flown by a Texas man, but America and Europe, would have been a training site and arms cache on the north DePugh got wind of it and aborted it. natural target for CIA recruitment. side of Lake Pontchartrain. Agents had And a Cuban exile close to Guy Banister Gordon Novel, who was acquainted seized more than a ton of dynamite, 20 has told Garrison that in 1962 Minute- with Shaw, was quoted by the States- 100-pound bomb casings, fuses, napalm ' man Banister seriously discussed "put- Item as venturing that Shaw may have ingredients and other war materiel. ting poison in the air conditioning ducts been asked by the CIA to observe the The whipsaw developments—Kenne- in the Havana Palace and killing all traffic of foreign commerce through New dy's patent determination to effect a occupants." Orleans. More persuasive is Shaw's rapprochement with the communist na- The latest plot to surface was formu- membership on the board of directors of tions on the one hand, his crackdown lated in Dallas in September 1966; its a firm called Centro Mondiale Commer- under the Neutrality Act on anti-Castro target was Stanley Marcus of the Nei- ciale in Rome. According to the news- paramilitary groups on the other—trig- man-Marcus department store, a pro- papers Paese Sera of Rome and Le De- gered a rage against the President that United Nations liberal who somehow voir of Montreal, among others of the would find ventin his assassination. has managed to thrive in rigidly con- foreign press, CMC was an obscure but The true nature of the group raided at servative Dallas. According to an in- well-financed firm that was ousted from Lake Pontchartrain was not evident formant who was present, several Italy by the police because it was sus- from the story. The FBI announced no Minutemen decided to ambush Marcus pected of being a CIA front. It trans- arrests, and the wife of the property outside of Dallas, because "another planted its operation to the more friendly owner, Mrs. William J. McLaney, gave assassination in Dallas would be too climate of Johannesburg, South Africa, out the cover story that the premises had much." Again, there was a leak and the where it still functions. been loaned to a newly-arrived Cuban plan fell through. However, as the The same group that incorporated named Jose Juarez as a favor to friends Warren Report might phrase it, such CMC also set up a firm called Permidex in Cuba. (McLaney had been well- schemes "establish the propensity to Corporation in Switzerland, but that known as a gambler associated with the kill" on the part of the radical right. company was dissolved by the Swiss Tropicana Hotel in Havana before being "Minutemen" has become an almost government when it was proved to be a ousted by Castro in 1960.) generic term for the paramilitary right, conduit for funds destined for the Secret According to information leaked to a far from homogenous movement. Army Organization (OAS), a group of Garrison by another government agency, Some elements are driven primarily by

52 RAMPARTS race hatred and anti-Semitism, others by Friends of Democratic Cuba. To help perfervid anti-communism, still others their cause, they wanted to purchase ten by a personal interest in overthrowing trucks at cost. Deslatte filled out a bid Castro and regaining property or sine- form, recording their names as Joseph cures in the Cuban bureaucracy. There Moore and Oswald. The young man call- is considerable cross-pollination, espe- ing himself Oswald said that if the trucks cially in the South. A graphic example were purchased he would be the one to can be found in rural St. Bernard pay for them. This is the gist of an inci- Parish, near New Orleans. A state police dent recorded by the FBI immediately undercover investigator relates that in- after the assassination and dug out of side a farmhouse which serves as a Ku the obscurity of the Archives by Garri- Klux Klan regional headquarters are son researcher Tom Bethell (CD 1542). Nazi emblems and a shrine to Horst Garrison has located the former Bol- Wessel, and in back, behind a copse of ton Ford manager who was present at trees, a rifle range and large cache of the time, Fred A. Sewell. He recalled that guns belonging to Minutemen. the younger "skinny" man gave the full There is intense factionalism inside the name Lee Oswald, and that "Joseph paramilitary right, and in recent years a Moore" actually was a Cuban who gave rondo power struggle for hegemony over the cylinder clock is the first new a Cuban name on the bid form. What is idea in clocks in nineteen years. movement raged between DePugh of the puzzling about the incident is that Lee Minutemen and the late George Lincoln Harvey Oswald was in Minsk, Russia • DIGITAL CLOCKS FIRST APPEARED on the scene nineteen years ago. Rockwell of the American Nazis. In a in 1961, thus raising the question of who They were the first clocks in 650 recent public statement DePugh com- was impersonating him and why. years to improve the medieval concept of hands spinning around mented that "fascism is the number one Any answer must necessarily be con- on dials at different speeds. Quite danger in this country today," and that jecture, but it may be significant to recall an improvement, that! the "fascists" are using anti-communism that Lee Harvey Oswald spent four days • THE NEW rondo CYLINDER CLOCK adds another dimension. Two as a smokescreen to cover their own rush in New Orleans in September 1959 be- airplane tachometer-type dials for power. I had occasion to talk to fore departing on the first leg of his jour- stacked one on the other, imper- ceptibly move past an index, in- DePugh, and suggested to him that the ney to the Soviet Union aboard the SS stantly and unequivocally giving guerrilla team that bushwhacked the Marion Lykes (CE 1963). Garrison has you the exact time "readout." President included Minutemen who had picked up indications that Oswald's de- • A "MEISTERWERK" OF HOROLOGY drifted into the Nazi orbit. "I'm inclined that comes to us from Pforzheim cision to embark via ship from New (Germany) where they have been to agree," he said. Orleans was dictated by intelligence con- making timepieces since the One of the most inexplicable entries in reign of Pippin The Short. The siderations. It is not beyond the realm of works are absolutely noiseless Oswald's address book is "Nat. Sec. possibility that during the four-day and run on 110v housecurrent. Dan Burros, Lincoln Rockwell, Arling- The translucent cylinders are lit period in the city he was inducted into a from within for easy timetelling ton, Virginia" (CE 18, p. 55). Other CIA group, an anti-Castro member of in the wee hours (even from 30'). right-wing figures in the address book For you light sleepers a built in which would later use Oswald's name. switch turns out the light. are Carlos Bringuier of the Cuban Stu- The genesis of the Friends of Demo- • rondo COMES IN THREE FINISHES: dent Directorate in New Orleans and cratic Cuba is not inconsistent with this Natural teakwood (pictured retired General Edwin Walker of Dallas. above), natural pigskin, and theory. One of the incorporators of the black sharkskin with a burnished Bringuier told the Commission that Os- organization was Guy Banister, the chrome ring. 65'2" high, 344" die. wald had approached him and offered to Minutemen/CIA type. Another was • THIS UNIQUE CONVERSATION PIECE train Cuban exiles in Marine tactics, but William Wayne Dalzell who knew Ferrie is available only through us and comes with a year's guarantee on he suspected Oswald was a plant. and Arcacha, and was still another in the parts and workmanship. An anti-Castro adventurer who trained Banister coterie of sleuths. To a States- in the Florida Keys prior to the assassi- Item reporter he admitted he was CIA. nation claims that by November 22, The Friends of Democratic Cuba was 1963, there was not one but several para- founded January 9, 1961, less than two rondo WRITE OR PHONE (415) military teams gunning for Kennedy. weeks before the Bolton Ford incident. 981-5688 Please send me the rondo cylin- They had been in contact, he said, with It was intended as a kind of American der clock in finish checked. "wealthy backers who wanted to see auxiliary to Arcacha's all-Cuban Revo- (Indicate 1st and 2nd choice) Kennedy dead and had been given lutionary Front, and Arcacha was instru- D Teak 0 Pigskin 0 Sharkskin money to do the job." mental in its creation. Government ad- p I enclose $40 ($39 plus $1 for postage & ins.) Calif. res. add 5%. visors to the Friends, says an informant [THE MAKING OF A PATSY] Name ... who was closely involved with the N JANUARY 20, 1961, two MEN group, were a CIA man named Logan Address approached Oscar W. Deslatte, and the FBI's Regis Kennedy, who in- Zip O assistant manager of the Bolton voked executive privilege when ques- RI Ford Truck Center in New Orleans, 584 WashIngton St.. and tioned not long ago by the New Orleans haverhillt San Francisco, 94111 identified themselves as members of the grand jury looking into the assassins-

RAMPARTS 53 tion. The Friends were short-lived, and he said, a man who "could do anything the Front slowly dissolved after the like getting underground in Cuba, like abortive Bay of Pigs invasion. The die- killing Castro" (Vol. 11, pp. 367-389). hard remnants of these moribund groups Just before the Warren Report went to formed the Free Cuba movement. press, the FBI located three men possibly The Secret Service stumbled upon the identical with Mrs. Odio's provocative Free Cuba group in its hectic post-as- visitors. Some three weeks after the visit, sassination inquiries at 544 Camp Street, Loren Eugene Hall and William Sey- but apparently the T-men were com- mour had been arrested by the Dallas pletely sold on Oswald's left-wing orien- police on a technical narcotics charge. tation and never thought to connect him Significantly, their arrest record bore the with a right-wing outfit. Learning that notation: "Active in the anti-Castro "Cuban revolutionaries" had occupied movement . Committee to Free Cuba." space at that address, Secret Service men G-men traced them and a companion, talked to a Cuban exile accountant who Lawrence Howard Jr, to the west coast. said that "those Cubans were members Hall admitted to the FBI that he, of organizations known as 'Crusade to Howard and Seymour bad been to see Free Cuba Committee' and 'Cuban Rev- Mrs. Odio, whose apartment he correctly olutionary " Arcacha, the ac- located on Magellan Circle, "to ask her countant related, was authorized to sign assistance in the movement," presum- checks on both accounts (CE 3119). ably the Free Cuba movement. But He said that Arcacha continued with the Howard, although conceding he was Free Cuba group even after he had been with Hall in Dallas in late September, ousted from the CRC (CE 1414). There flatly denied being at Mrs. Odio's. Sey- is no record that the Secret Service mour alibied that he was working in questioned Arcacha about Oswald. Miami Beach at the time; the FBI veri- It was a grievous omission, for it is fied that pay records of a Miami Beach now manifest that Oswald was inti- firm showed him at work from Septem- mately involved with the Free Cuba ber 5 through October 10. group. One indication is implicit in the In a second session with the FBI, Hall testimony of Mrs. Sylvia Odio, an recanted his admission and claimed he aristocratic Cuban refugee. When Lee had been mistaken, a turnabout that did IMPULSE • BOX 466 Harvey Oswald's picture was flashed on not seem to be viewed too skeptically by TIBURON • CALIF. 94920 television after the assassination, she the G-men. The Bureau closed its inquiry fainted, She explained to the Warren by observing that Seymour bore a strik- Commission that in late September 1963, ing resernblence to Oswald, a meaning- three men appeared unannounced at her less footnote considering that the pay Dallas apartment seeking assistance for records had been accepted as prima facie the anti-Castro movement. The spokes- evidence that he was in Miami Beach man gave a "war name" that sounded at the relevant time. like Leopoldo; a second man was intro- With Seymour "out of the way," the duced as something like Angelo. The Warren Commission had only to dispose third man was introduced as Leon Os- of the possibility that it was Oswald at wald, and Mrs. Odio was certain he was Mrs. Odio's. It did so by declaring it the accused assassin. improbable that Oswald could have Unsure of the trio's true allegiance, traveled to Dallas in the limited time be- Mrs. Odio was noncommittal. They left, tween his departure from New Orleans after commenting that they had just ar- and his crossing of the Mexican border. rived from New Orleans and were leav- But the Commission reckoned from sur- ing shortly "on a trip." The next face transportation timetables, and there morning Leopoldo telephoned Mrs. is a suggestion be flew at least part of the Odin with a new sales pitch. "Leon" was way. Mrs. Horace Twiford of Houston an ex-Marine, he said. "He told us we stated that in late September, when Os- don't have any guts, you Cubans, be- wald telephoned her husband, be com- cause President Kennedy should have mented that he "had only a few hours" ALICE'S RESTAURANT been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs before "flying to Mexico" (CE 2335). Arlo Guthrie R/ RS 6267 . It is easy to do. He has told us." The post-assassination search at the When his listener became upset at talk of Irving premises of Ruth and Michael killing Kennedy, Leopoldo remarked Paine, with whom Marina had been that it would be just as easy to kill the staying, yielded another tie to the Free Cuban Premier. Leon was an expert shot, Cuba movement. Among Oswald's be-

54 RAMPARTS longings in the garage was a barrel that been to this house before" (Decker Ex- had, said Deputy Buddy Walthers, "a hibit No. 5323). lot of these little leaflets in it, 'Freedom Why Oswald's anti-Castro comrades for Cuba' " (Vol. 7, p. 548). And at his decided to make him the patsy is open to building celebrated press conference the night of conjecture. Perhaps he balked at going world the assassination, DA Henry Wade let through with the assassination. Perhaps peace it slip that "Oswald is a member of the they did not trust him and suspected he Free Cuba Committee." He was im- was an infiltrator. The most likely ex- — a pamphlet discussing: mediately "corrected" by Jack Ruby planation is a pragmatic one: they who had mingled with the press: "No, needed a patsy and he was the ideal can- • the limitations of socialism, liberalism, he is a member of the Fair Play for Cuba didate. To make the assassination look pacifism • a definition of loyalty to Committee." like the work of an avowed Marxist and the race, the world, and the future • Deputy Walthers added a final link. In the force called the "United Nations" Castro sympathizer would have been a • implications of the U.S. attack on a "Supplementary Investigative Report" propaganda tour de force. "Even so," Vietnam • technoshock and techno- dated November 23,1963, he stated that offers Garrison, "I think the big money lag • what is to be done... he had advised Dallas Secret Service backers of the plot were a little disap- Chief Forrest Sorrels that "for the past pointed. Oswald was supposed to be by Charles Hook. foremost young spokesman few months at a house at 3128 Haden- killed trying to escape, and if those Cu- for the new internationalism, and previously notional chairmon of the Student Peace Union. dale some Cubans had been having ban and Soviet visas he applied for but meetings on the week ends and were didn't get could have been found on his P.O. Box 639 possably [sic] connected with the 'Free- body, public opinion against Russia and N.Y. 10009 dom For Cuba Party' of which Oswald Cuba would have been incited to a was a member." Three days later, when dangerous pitch." the Secret Service had evinced no inter- In the weeks preceding the assassina- est, he wrote a wistful addendum: "I tion, there are a number of instances of learned today that sometime between an Oswald double in Dallas who prob- Free with each order of "Building World seven days before the President was shot ably was instrumental in "setting him Peace,"o short Swil tion satire entitled and the day after he was shot these Cu- "Prospectus of the War Corporation" up." Gunsmith Dial D. Ryder told the –presents perhaps the only rational bans moved from this house. My in- Commission that in early November, argument for war in general-and the formant stated that subject Oswald had someone giving the name Oswald war on Vietnam in particular.

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RAMPARTS 55 brought in t rifle to have a telescopic going to have to go back to Russia to Why frustrate yourself any longer? sight mounted; he produced a repair tag buy a car" (Report, p. 320). Why let a few high officials have all the fun? in that name as confirmation (Report, Given a lie detector test by the FBI, Now you too can play CREDIBILITY CAP, p. 315). Garland G. Slack and other the slashing and hilarious new game Bogard's responses were those "normally for all patriotic Americans target shooters patronizing the Sports expected of a person telling the truth." Drome Rifle Range reported that a man Nevertheless, the Warren Commission resembling Oswald had practiced there dismissed the incident by noting that as late as November; the man made him- Oswald supposedly could not operate an self obvious, at one time incurring automobile and that on November 9 he Slack's displeasure by firing on his tar- allegedly spent the day drafting a get (Report, pp. 318-319). lengthy letter to the Soviet Embassy. It An incident at Downtown Lincoln- evidently never considered the possibility Mercury is highly revealing. Immedi- someone might be impersonating Os- ately after the assassination, salesman wald. But Bogard will never identify the Albert Guy Bogard reported to the FBI impersonator. He stuck to his story in that a man giving the name Lee Oswald, news interviews, and subsequently was who closely resembled the accused as- beaten to within an inch of his life by an Play sassin, came into the showroom on No- unknown assailant and arrested by the vember 9. Remarking that in several Dallas police on seemingly trumped-up weeks he would have the money to make bad check charges. He retreated to his the purchase, he test-drove an expensive native Louisiana, where on St. Valen- CREDIBILITY model on the Stemmons Freeway at 60 tine's Day 1966, he was found dead of to 70 miles an hour. Both Bogard and exhaust fumes in his automobile. another salesman, Oren Brown, wrote The main ingredients of the patsy G A P down the name Oswald so that they theory are wrapped up in a story that has would remember him if he called back. gradually filtered out of Leavenworth many Americans suspect that a few im- A third salesman, Eugene M. Wilson, Penitentiary. The story is that of inmate portant officials in Washington have recalled that when the man purporting Richard Case Nagell, and paradoxically, been having a grand old time tossing out fibs on every conceivable topic. If you're one to be Oswald was told he would need a the most cogent confirmation for it is the of these Americans, here at last is your credit rating, he snapped, "Maybe I'm manner in which he wound up sentenced chance to join in the fun . to ten years in federal custody. This fast-moving game, invented by two angry professors, permits you to uncover an Nagell was a highly decorated infantry entertaining variety of bureaucratic untruths captain in the Korean War who, he and win your way to the Truth Vault. PROTEST claims, subsequently became a CIA What's in the box? Two sets of cards — a Citizens' playing deck and an Administration BUTTONS! agent. It is a matter of record that in pack of Iles, 4 liberty-bell counters, 90 truth 1957 he was seriously injured in a plane trophies, dice, rules and a colorful game board richly sprinkled with amusing in- NAPALM MAKES MILLIONAIRES • crash in Cambodia, which tends to sup- scrIptions. CAUTION: MILITARY SERVICE MAY port his contention, since Cambodia was Pleasantly competitive? Yes! Strategy? Of BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH • not exactly a tourist playground. On course. Adult? Very! — yet simple enough for "WHAT ME WORRY?" (photo LBJ grinning) a I3-year old to enjoy as well. Two, three • SAVE LIVES NOT FACE • "BAD September 20, 1963, Nagell walked into or four can play individually or as teams. ENOUGH?" (photo Reagan smiling) • a bank in El Paso, Texas, fired a gun into Anyone can come from behind to win with COME BACK TRUMAN, ALL IS FOR- the ceiling, and then sat outside waiting dramatic suddenness. Game time; 30 to 90 GIVEN • MY GOD IS ALIVE, SORRY minutes. ABOUT YOURS • IS THERE INTELLI- to be arrested. He says he staged the Price. $5.95 Unconditionally guaranteed. GENT LIFE ON EARTH? • Peace symbol affair because he wanted to be in custody Smile end chuckle over the game for a week. • peace dove" or wreath* Then, if you can bear to pert with it, return as an alibi when the assassination took It and we'll send back all your money, SNOOPY SNIFFS AEROPLANE GLUE • place. It was a desperate measure, he ad- FLOWER POWER' • END POVERTY, mits. But he had sent a registered letter GIVE ME $10 • WE LOVE YOU, CHARLIE BROWN • KEEP AMERICA GREEN, to J. Edgar Hoover warning him of the AMHERST GAME COMPANY Box 5, South Pleasant Street PLANT GRASS* • EVEN I LIKE SEX • A impending assassination, which he says Amherst, Mass. 01002 PILL IN TIME SAVES NINE • LOVE' • was then scheduled for the latter part of Gentlemen: I enclose $5.95 plus 55f I'M NO. 3, I DON'T TRY AT ALL • POT` for packaging and shipping. Send im- • CLEAN AIR SMELLS FUNNY • BAN September (probably the 26th in Wash- mediately my CREDIBILITY GAP game. THE BRA • CHASTITY IS ITS OWN If I so desire, I'll send it back at the ington, D.C.), and the letter had gone and of a week and receive prompt re- PUNISHMENT • LSD: FLY UNITED• • fund In furl_ ZAPI YOU'RE STERILE' unanswered. • Buttoo There is an incredibly brief FBI inter- Name has groovy artwork. view report stating, in part, that on De- Address Largest selection in U.S., OVER 500 TITLES @ 25¢ cember 19, 1963, Nagell advised, "For City each, 5/$1, 200/$25. FREE LIST! State Zip the record he would like to say that his POSTERS tool Rock groups, film stars, association with OSWALD (meaning 0 GIFT IDEA: Enclose $16.95 and well psychedelic, etc. Stamp brings list. send three copies of Credibility Gap - LEE HARVEY OSWALD) was purely all shipping costs paid by us. You save ARIES $2.55. Same refund guarantee. social and that he had met him in Mexico Box 666R Antos, California 95003 R1 City and in Texas" (CD 197). Another

56 RAMPARTS report states that when the prisoner was foreign countries under the authorization being led from court on January 24, of the Defense Intelligence Agency. He LOVE 1964, he "made wild accusations to news- states that the files of the FBI and the SYMBOLS paper reporters, accusing the FBI of not CIA contain information that Oswald International symbols of love and attempting to prevent the assassination was using the aliases Albert Hidel and peace, handsomely cast and nuns from imported leather thong of President Kennedy . . ." (CD 404). Aleksei Hidel. He charges that the FBI That the charges may not be so wild is illegally seized from him evidence crucial indicated by the fact that the government to his defense, such as notebooks con- ARABIAN LOVE BELLS (#18-1.21 Encircled threw the book at Nagell, a first offender taining the names of certain CIA em- In delicately hand- carved flowers.— $1.50 who says he expected to be charged only ployees, photographs, two Mexican with discharging a firearm on govern- tourist cards (one in the name Joseph LB•1 ment-protected property. Since his sen- Kramer, the other in the name Albert tencing, he has been shuttled between Hidel), and receipts for registered mail, Leavenworth and the federal medical including the one for the letter sent center (a euphemism for mental institu- Hoover warning of the assassination. tion) at Springfield, Missouri. While the When Nagel] complains he has been government has suggested in court that bronze "salted away" because of what he PEACE SYMBOL LITTLE his airplane crash mentally affected (OPE-4)—Inter- FLOWERS knows, he just. might be making the un- natonally ANKH (OA-3)- ritn-5) Nagell, the fact remains that he was recognized Oriental charm of Brill eatly derstatement of the year. symbol Of happiness. Under. enameled on after brotherhood ground symbol of delicate, gold- given intelligence training the crash. and love.$2.50 secret meaning.$1.50 filled cheln.$2.50 What Nagell alleges is damning not only [THE ELIMINATION OF A PATSY] to the FBI, but to the CIA. In brief, DIDN'T KILL ANYBODY . . . I'm juSt 111.11MMMIS•11111101111111111111111011111111111111111• he says that the motive for the assassina- a patsy," Oswald shouted to news- BUSIES HEART SHOP 10512 1st Ave„ Inglewood, Calif. 99303 tion was Kennedy's move in the direction men while in police custody. A I am 13,1C101111E T for #PE•4__#.4.3___OLB-1_AL8-2___tr FL-5_ _ of a rapprochement with Castro, which marked patsy, contends Garrison—one Add 25c for postage and handling. was a rank betrayal in the eyes of who was not supposed to have lived long NAMF anti-Castro elements. As he puts it, an ADDRESS enough to utter his cry of innocence. But CITY STATE 71P anti-Castro group in New Orleans and something had misfired, and Oswald fell Mexico City, code name Bravo Club, not into the hands of his would-be exe- decided to give Kennedy a "Christmas cutioners, but into the comparative present" to be delivered September 26, a safety of the Dallas jail. The denouement date that was postponed. A party was presented a crisis that the conspirators required. Two members of Bravo Club could solve only by pressing police buff NUDE approached Oswald while he was work- Jack Ruby into service. PSYCHOTHERAPY ing at the Reily coffee firm in New Or- Although the Warren Commission leans in the summer of 1963, and ap- concluded that Oswald ducked into his pealed to his ego in setting him up as the Oak Cliff rooming house to pick up the patsy. When the "delivery" site was .38 revolver, later confiscated from him shifted to Dallas, Bravo Club enlisted in the Texas Theater, it did not explain the aid of a Dallas "subsidiary," Delta why, if he had gone to work at the School Club. Book Depository that morning intend- Meanwhile the CIA got wind of the ing to kill the President and escape, plans and sent several agents into the he did not take the revolver with him. field to ascertain whether they were "for That he made a beeline to his rooming real." Nagell says he was one of the house for the sole purpose of getting the agents dispatched. Within a short time, revolver speaks of a man who desper- he claims, he was pulled in. It had been ately wanted to protect himself from verified that the plans were authentic, treacherous comrades rather than from Now available! A personal de- that "gusanos [anti-Castroites] were the police. Notwithstanding the mild re- tailed account of the first ex- making the watch tick," and that the sistance he put up in his refuge in the perimental NUDE PSYCHO- sum of the plot was right-wing in nature. Texas Theater, Oswald's demeanor in THERAPY marathon, written by Nagell says that he was instructed to custody gave every indication that he a participant, reveals the hap- "arrow" the patsy, that is kill him, after penings at a scientifically con- would resolve the great riddle—given ducted weekend session involv- the assassination. At this point, he con- the time. ing 3 nudists and 17 non- tends, he got cold feet and bailed out. "I Oswald does not appear to be the only nudists. Only $1. would rather be arrested than commit double-cross victim of that bloody after- murder and treason," he declared in a noon : the evidence is persuasive that self-prepared petition for habeas corpus. ,- ELYSIUM Institute someone other than the accused assassin 4 In the petition, Nagell asserts that he 5436 FERNW0011 AVENUE DEPT.EAM8 1 killed Officer J. D. Tippit, a friend of LOS ARGUES, CAL 90027 used the pseudonyms Robert Nolan and Jack Ruby, whose patrol area included Joseph Kramer in the U.S. and three the Harlandale Street section headquar-

58 RAMPARTS ters of the Free Cuba group. The Com- lively match the bullets in the dead offi- Car 95 ordered, "Send me another squad mission's star witness in fingering Oswald cer's body with Oswald's revolver, they over here to Tenth and Crawford to was Mrs. Helen Markham, a billing that did determine that three bullets were of check out this church basement." precipitated strong dissent among some one manufacture, the fourth of another, At this point Car 223 burst in excited- staff members, notably Wesley Liebeler while the four recovered shell casings ly, "He's in the library on Jefferson east who called her testimony "contradictory" were evenly divided between the two 500 block . . . I'm going around back, and "worthless" (Inquest, p. 109). Al- manufacturers. The Commission wrig- get somebody around the front, get them though ballistics tests could not posi- gled out of this dilemma by wildly here fast." The dispatcher complied, and speculating that five shots were fired, one Car 19 soon affirmed, "We're all at the completely missing (Report, p. 172). library." There was no suspect at the -+- Moreover, the police radio logs de- library, but the Abundant Life Temple scribe a killer other than Oswald. Ser- gii aV 1.41" had been spared a shakedown. ,FoTT6444-7- geant Gerald Hill alerted all cars that The grave problem, of course, was sir 4. IVO*, "Shells at the scene indicate the suspect II if %USW 11.11 how to eliminate Oswald, who knew too nr. 11Mip fat//p is armed with an automatic .38 rather much. This was where Jack Ruby came than a pistol" (presumably, Hill noted in. Although the Warren Commission the distinctive marks made by the ejector In the Winter Issue pictured Ruby as a blustery night club of an automatic). In the same vein, operator with a soft spot in his heart for from Latin America Patrolman H. L. Summers announced, dogs and dames, who killed Oswald on Marxism-Leninism vs. Castroism "He's apparently armed with a .32 dark an impulse of one-man justice, the real finish automatic pistol...." First flashes Ruby was no buffoon. The fiction that from the USSR had the killer with "black wavy hair" Underground Bolshevik Call he executed Oswald out of compassion and a "white shirt," certainly not a de- for the Kennedy family was conjured up from Indonesia scription of Oswald that day (Sawyer by his first attorney, the late Tom How- Communist Party Self-Criticism Exhibit No. A, pp. 396-397). And the ard. "Joe, you should know this," Ruby from Vietnam best placed eyewitness, Domingo Bena- scribbled to a succeeding attorney, Joe vides, described a killer quite different U.S. Defeat Inevitable Tonahill. "Tom Howard told me to say from Oswald : "I remember the back of that I shot Oswald so that Caroline and WORLD REVOLUTION Dept. NYR his head seemed like his hairline sort of P.O. Box 208, Church Street Station Mrs. Kennedy wouldn't have to come New York, N.Y. 10008 went square instead of tapered off—it to Dallas to testify. OK?" Please enter.. ,subscription(s) for 1 year to kind of went down and squared off and In a memorandum dealing with his World Revolution at $2.00 each, made his head look flat in back." Name background, Ruby specialists on the Garrison posits that the real killer hid Commission compiled a list of persons Address in a cavernous building at the corner of seemingly "the most promising sources City State Zip.• Tenth and Crawford which in 1963 was of contact between Ruby and politically known as the Abundant Life Temple. In motivated groups interested in securing PROGRESSIVE an aerial view of the area, the Commis- the assassination of President Kennedy" LABOR sion traced the killer's escape path from (CE 2980). Included were Ruby's sister, PL the scene near Tenth and Patton to Jef- Eva Grant, and a brother, Earl, of People's War is Inevitable ferson Boulevard one block south, Detroit, who sent "a telegram of undis- MuchoDebrisfrom Regis Debray thence to the Texaco service station one closed nature to Havana, Cuba, April 1, Analysis of Key U.S. Strikes block west at Jefferson and Crawford. A 1962" and made "calls to Welsh [sic] Notes from the Detroit Rebellion "white jacket" was found at the rear of Candy Company" in Belmont, Massa- PL, national organ of the Progressive the station, which the Commission said chusetts, then owned by Birch Society Labor Party, offers Marxist-Leninist an- was Oswald's. Consequently, it had the founder Robert Welch. Also listed by the alysis from the factories, campuses, killer reverse his path so as to bring him Commission was Thomas Hill, an "offi- from rebelling ghettos and the impov- back onto Jefferson and proceeding in a cial of the John Birch Society" in Bel- erished farms. Future issues include: westerly direction toward the theater NYC Welfare—the Caseworkers' Re- mont whose name was in Jack Ruby's port, Appalachia from the Inside, Wil- (CE 1968). notebook, and Lamar Hunt, the son of liam Styron vs. Nat Turner and more. Rejecting this arbitrary reconstruction, H. L. Hunt, who subsequently denied =NMI Garrison points out that the killer could knowing Ruby. PROGRESSIVE LABOR Dept.NYR G.P.O. Box 808, Brooklyn N.Y. 11201 have proceeded straight ahead from the Ruby was an admirer of General Ed- I am interested In receiving .. copies of rear of the Texaco station, across an win A. Walker. He told former Okla- PL at 50¢: alley and into the rear door of the Abun- homa City police detective Cliff Rob- sub(s) to PL at $2,50 yearly dant Life Temple. This view is corrob- ...PLP East newspaper Challenge at S2 yrly erts, who had been hired by Walker to PLP West newspaper Spark at S2 yearly orated by police radio logs. Shortly after investigate the potshot taken at Walker 1:40 p.m., Sergeant Hill came on the air: Name in April 1963, that Walker was "100 per "A witness reports that he last was seen Address cent right" about Castro's Cuba and it in the Abundant Life Temple about the Ci ty State Zip... should be "blown out of the ocean."' 400 block. We are fixing to go in and William McEwan Duff, who served as shake it down." On an alternate channel, the retired general's "Batman" from

RAMPARTS 59

late 1962 to early 1963, advised the Secret Service that Ruby, who was ad- dressed only as "Jack," visited Walker "on the basis of about once a month, each time in the company of two uniden- tified white males" (CE 2389). A cross-section of Ruby's acquaint- ances can be found in the list of 66 per- sons he favored with permanent passes to the Carousel Club. There is of course Peoples World Parliament a passel of local businessmen. But there Switzerland, August, 1968 is also W. F. (Bill) Alexander, the hard- For information and stamps, send $1.00 to bitten Dallas assistant DA, and three W. C. C., 8800 W. 14 Ave., Denver Colo., USA men pegged by a Garrison investigator as Dallas Minutemen. Since no facet of the investigation seems complete without a strange coincidence, it can be noted MILLION DOLLARS that when Carousel Club passholder Sue Wanted to Speed Success of the World Constitutional Blake vacated her apartment, 10746D Convention and Peoples World Parliament in 1968 Lake Gardens, the next occupant was Sergio Arcacha Smith, formerly of 544 The date and place for the first working sessions are fixed for August 27 to September 10, 1968, at Interlaken, Switzerland. Delegates are already pledged Camp Street, New Orleans. to attend from 40 countries. Others are invited. Nciw we need enough money to Also on the pass list is H. H. (Andy) develop this plan for all that it is worth as a course of action by which people Anderson, at the time manager of the can take the offensive to declare and enforce peace. Adolphus Hotel. Last May, Garrison You have witnessed the futility of trying to stop war by protest alone. Here is the sought to explain the legal materiality of opportunity to join in creating the institutions which are required to end war by Clay Shaw's notebook in terms of an uniting the people of Earth under a world government designed to serve the welfare of all. entry, "Lee Odom, PO Box 19106, Dallas, Tex." He pointed out that it cor- With $1,000,000 or fractions thereof we will: responded to "PO 19106" in Oswald's * Carry on a world-wide publicity campaign in the magazines and papers of address book, and theorized that it many countries. might be a coded version of Ruby's * Organize local groups and national branches to help elect delegates, build unlisted telephone number. Within a support, and follow through. few days a Lee Odom came forth in * Send envoys to all continents to obtain action by people, and support of Dallas to explain away the coincidence. friendly governments and parliaments. In 1966, he was in New Orleans "trying * Help pay the expenses of delegates from poorer countries. to promote a bull fight" and asked the manager of the Roosevelt Hotel who * Pay the costs of continuing after the first two weeks at Interlaken for a smaller group commissioned to complete drafting the World Constitution might put him in contact with the right and a World Magna Charta. people. "He suggested Mr. Shaw," said * Prepare a world economic development organization for the benefit of the Odom, "so I called him—or the manager countries which join the World Federation. called him .. . He came over to the hotel * Publish a monthly periodical (Across Frontiers) to report the action and and we talked." The manager of the discuss in depth all issues connected with a Peoples World Parliament and Roosevelt was Anderson, who had drafting a World Constitution. moved from Dallas. In subsequent HUMANITY: ARCHITECT OR VICTIM OF HISTORY? versions of the story, including the one told to a national audience on CBS tele- I am interested in backing the plan for a World Constitutional Conven- vision, Odom left Anderson completely tion and Peoples World Parliament. Please send full information. out of it and maintained he and Shaw Fnclosed is $$$ right now! ($6 subscribes to ACROSS had introduced themselves at a bar. FRONTIERS, plus 5 sheets of stamps in color.) Ruby's affinity for Cuba is well-docu- am interested in becoming a delegate. Send details. mented. The Warren Report advises that in January 1959, just after Castro took Name power, "Ruby made preliminary inqui- Address ries, as a middleman, concerning the possible sale to Cuba of some surplus City State Zip jeeps located in Shreveport, La., and Return to: World Committee for a World Constitutional Convention asked about the possible release of pris- 8800 West 14th Ave., Denver, Colo. 80215 Phone (303) 233-3548 L oners from a Cuban prison" (p. 369). P.S.—We invite applications for additional staff and volunteer help. Ruby bad telephoned a Houston man named Robert Ray McKeown, known

60 RAMPARTS throughout Texas as a friend of Castro, declares (p. 370). "Both Ruby and offering a total of $15,000 to use his McWillie state the trip was purely so- influence to obtain the release of three cial." Ruby gulled the Commission with NeeitaiPaedafteW Americans held in Havana. The money, a story that he stuck close to the hotel, Thoughts that Enslave Minds Ruby told McKeown, would come from got bored stiff, and left within a week. Tortured souls. Human beings a Las Vegas, Nevada source (CE 1689). whose self-confidence and peace of But Thayer Waldo, an old Latin hand mind have been torn to shreds by McKeown heard nothing more about with sources inside Cuba, reports that invisible darts — the evil thoughts of others. Can envy, hate and jealousy the prisoner deal, which may be ex- Ruby boasted to at least two Americans be projected through space from the plained by the news report on January 6, mind of another? Do poisoned that he was "in with both sides" while thoughts, like mysterious rays, reach 1961, that three Americans had made sitting in Castro's domain. Among the through the ethereal realms to claim innocent victims? All of us. from their way out of jail and back to the Cuban exiles he claimed to be close to day to day and hour to hour, in United States. But a few weeks after the every walk of life, in every circum- was Rolando Masferrer, a former Ba- stance, are possible victims of men- telephone call, Ruby contacted Mc- tista official who had headed 'The tal poisoning, unless we understand its nature, and can quickly recognize Keown in person, this time offering him Tigers," a dreaded private army during its infectious inoculation. $25,000 for a letter of introduction to the dictator's regime. This FREE Book Castro. According to McKeown, Ruby One of the many Dallas police officers Do you know the strangest of all laws in man's body? Man's life, "had an option on a great number of who frequented the Carousel Club has happiness. health, and enjoyment of jeeps which were in Shreveport, Louisi- the things of life depend on his un- told Garrison that in mid-1962 Ruby derstanding of the working of the ana, and he desired to sell them to left on a two-week trip, saying he was human mind. Let the Rosicrucians explain how you may acquire an Castro at a very profitable figure." going to New Orleans and then to Cuba age-old method for mind develop- McKeown agreed to arrange the intro- ment and the proper use of your "to pick up an act for the club." When latent inner powers. If sincere, duction, but once again Ruby failed to he returned he was uncharacteristically write for the free book. follow through. The reason may have tight-lipped about his trip—and without Address: Scribe X.B.W. been that Maurice Brooks Gatlin of the an act. Whether Ruby circumvented the 74 ROSICRUCIANS fAMORC) New Orleans-based Anti-Communism travel ban and got to Cuba is a moot San Jose, California 96114 League of the Caribbean scotched the question. However, there remains Earl Include Your Zip Code deal. Minutemen defector Jerry Brooks Ruby's unexplained telegram to Havana discloses that the minute Gatlin found f t( , on April 1, 1962. And word that circu- 4 out that Ruby proposed to sell Castro lated through Cuban emigre circles in L.4 100 jeeps, he warned the venturesome 1963 had Ruby visiting Havana via IN night club owner to call it off. Gatlin may have detected signs that the new Cuban Premier was about to surface as a communist. The 'Dear President Johnson' Campaign The Warren Report observes that dur- ing the period of the jeep negotiations, gambler Russell D. Matthews, described as a "passing acquaintance" of Ruby's, returned to Dallas from Havana, then several months later went back to the Cuban capital for a year. It also makes the correlation that Matthews' ex-wife in Shreveport received a lengthy tele- phone call from Ruby's Carousel Club on October 3, 1963. But with a denial from Matthews that he knew anything about the "jeep deal," and an inability COPYRIGHT 1467 on the part of Mrs. Matthews to re- LORIN GILLETTE member the long distance call, the Com- PROTEST in time of moral crisis is the responsibility of every mission ran out of curiosity. Matthews American. Join us in a peaceful and effective protest. is no lightweight: in the heyday of the Our SAN FRANCISCO FENCE poster normally retails by mail for $2.50. For Dallas rackets a couple of decades ago this campaign, we have reduced the price to $1.25. We will send a copy of he ran with a crowd whose luminary was this poster to the White House in your name. Join us in our "DEAR Benny (Cowboy) Binion, who moved to PRESIDENT JOHNSON" campaign, Flowers are prettier than corpses. Las Vegas and founded the Horseshoe I have enclosed $2.50 for a SAN FRANCISCO ' I have enclosed $1.25 for a SAN FRANCISCO Club. FENCE POSTER to be sent to my home. FENCE poster to be sent to the White House. The account given by Ruby of his trip NAMF NAME ADDRESS to Cuba in September 1959 also strains ADDRESS CITY, STATE & ZIP credulity. "Ruby traveled to Havana as CITY, STATE & ZIP guest of a close friend and known gam- Send check or money order to: LORIN GILLETTE DISTRIBUTOR, P.O. Box 15125, San Francisco 94115. bler, Lewis J. McWillie," the Report No cash please.

RAMPARTS 61 band, who had ties to organized crime, they detected a flicker of recognition on POSTERS attended a meeting in Dallas in 1962, in Oswald's part just before Ruby shot him. 114 which plans were discussed to smuggle We have already examined the report of guns into Cuba and refugees out. The attorney Carroll Jarnagin [RAMPARTS, key planners were Ruby, an Army "light November 1966] — who claims that he colonel," and a heavy-set "Cuban or eavesdropped on a Ruby-Oswald conver- Mexican," and she gathered that Ruby sation in the Carousel Club the night of was the "bag man" who handled the October 4, 1963, in which the desire of funds. She said the guns were to be pro- organized crime to do away with Gov- sr-111:KA ' cured through a Mexican contact (Vol. ernor Connally was discussed — and the 14, p. 330ff). Garrison has additional statement of Wilbryn "Bob" Litchfield evidence of gun-running by Ruby which that he sat next to Oswald in the Carou- cannot be divulged at this time. sel Club office in early November while

22"x28" $2.00 The allegations of narcotics trafficking both were waiting to see Ruby [RAm- IMPULSE • BOX 466 and gun-running should be put in some PARTS, June 1967]. TIBURON • CALIF. 94920 perspective. In 1962, Cuba and Red In addition, there is the cogent state- China reportedly bad entered into a ment of Harvey L. Wade, a Chattanooga barter agreement in which Cuban sugar building inspector who dropped into the Mexico City that year (e.g. CE 3055). would be exchanged for narcotics, but Carousel Club the night of November If Ruby did go to Cuba in 1962, it may the narcotics were a white elephant until 10, 1963. Wade said that a club photog- have been on narcotics business. As long sold for U.S. dollars. This is where buck- rapher snapped a shot of a customer and ago as 1956, a woman named Eileen hungry organized crime elements came in the background were three men sitting Curry told the FBI that her paramour, in, and just possibly Jack Ruby. In this at the bar. Ruby strode over to the James Breen, had become cozy with context his claim that he was playing photographer and "yelled that the Ruby and had "accompanied RUBY to both sides of the street may not have photographs did not turn out." One of an unnamed location, where he had been been sheer braggadocio. In the strange the men in the background was identified shown moving pictures of various bor- accommodations of international in- by Wade as Oswald. He described the der guards, both Mexican and Amer- trigue, Ruby may well have been smug- others as a young man of "very fair pale ican." Curry said that Breen "was gling narcotics into the United States complexion," and an older, stocky Latin enthused over what he considered an and guns into the hands of Cuban in- man who had "numerous bumps on his extremely efficient operation in connec- surgents. face and was believed to have a one-inch tion with narcotics traffic." Curry went It is fair to say that not much in the scar in the eyebrow of his left eye" (CE to the FBI after Breen failed to return way of Caribbean intrigue went on in 2370). The two match the descriptions from a trip to Mexico, and repeated her those days without the CIA, or at least of prime suspects in Garrison's investi- story in 1963 after the assassination CIA operatives, having a finger in it. gation, the latter of the bull-necked (CE 1761,1762). Thus the allegations of Gary Underhill, Cuban who tagged around after Oswald Texas editor Penn Jones Jr has delved a weapons expert and sometime CIA in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. into a story consistent with Eileen Cur- "unperson," may be quite plausible Further indication of a Ruby-Oswald ry's. On November 20, 1963, a woman [RAMPARTS, June 1967]. Immediately link appears in the statement of the Rev. named Rose Chermi was thrown from a after the assassination, a distraught Un- Clyde Johnson which was filed by Garri- moving automobile near Eunice, Louisi- derhill told friends that a semi-auton- son in answer to a Clay Shaw defense ana. Hospitalized with injuries and nar- omous CIA clique which had been profit- motion. Rev. Johnson, a candidate for cotics symptoms, she said she was a eering in narcotics and gun-running was governor of Louisiana in 1962, who Ruby employee traveling to Florida with implicated in the assassination. Several ranted against Kennedy in his campaign, two men to pick up a load of narcotics months later, Underhill was found dead said that he twice attended meetings that for Ruby. She told the attending physi- of a bullet wound in the head; although fall at which Oswald, Ruby, Shaw and cian that Kennedy and other officials police decided it was self-inflicted, the an unknown Cuban were present. The were going to be killed on their impend- circumstances indicated otherwise. When first was in the Roosevelt Hotel in New ing visit to Dallas. Shown a news story an old friend wrote to Underhill's widow Orleans, the second on September 29 in after the assassination in which Ruby asking about his demise, the reply came the Capitol House Hotel in Baton denied knowing Oswald, Miss Chermi from an official of a now defunct Wash- Rouge. He recalled that Oswald was in- chortled, "They were bed mates." When ington firm, Falcon Aeronautics, Inc., troduced as Leon, Ruby as Jack, and his probe got underway, Garrison at- which smacks of having been an ad hoc Shaw as Alton Bernard. On the latter tempted to locate her but was too late. CIA front. The official dismissed Under- occasion, he said, Shaw passed manila On September 4, 1965, she was killed by hill's allegations with the comment that envelopes to Oswald and Ruby which a hit-and-run driver while walking along they were "similar to those flights of his purportedly contained money. a highway near Big Sandy, Texas. imagination which he had during the last While such eyewitness accounts must It is also possible that Ruby's alleged year or so of his life." be weighed with the credibility of the 1962 trip to Cuba concerned gun- The question remains whether or not witness in mind, there is documentary running. Nancy Perrin Rich told the newsmen in the police basement had evidence of a Ruby-Oswald link as well. Commission that she and her late bus- flights of imagination when they thought Oswald's address book contains the en-

62 RAMPARTS try "Midland 2550"; Ruby's has the twice in the last pages of Oswald's book, entry ''Newton 2550." While their sig- what he actually was. Andrew Arm- which leads to another correlation. The strong, a Carousel employee, told the nificance is unknown—Garrison specu- number is listed to Kenneth Cody, a lates they may be communications sig- Commission that his boss was crying on Continental Trailways bus driver on the the afternoon of the 22nd. In the early nals of some sort—the odds against the Shreveport run and an uncle of Dallas same four-digit numbers preceded by morning hours of Saturday, Ruby police officer Joe Cody. A homicide rousted a club flunkey, Larry Craford, the names of Texas cities being in two bureau detective, Cody was the partner unrelated persons' address books by who watched while his boss took a of Detective James R. Leavelle, one of Polaroid picture of a Birch Society "Im- sheer happenstance are astronomical. It the pair of officers escorting Oswald was, in fact, just this kind of mathemat- peach Earl Warren" billboard. That through the police basement when he afternoon, Ruby displayed the picture ical improbability that was instrumental was shot by Ruby. in the recent convictions of a mugging in Sol's Turf Club, his favorite haunt, In an FBI interview, Joseph Cody with suitable expressions of indignation. team in Los Angeles County. acknowledged having known Ruby And there are other "coincidences" as He went to the post office with com- "12 or 13 years." He met Ruby at one of panions, peered at the box receiving re- well. In his address book, Oswald twice his clubs during the Korean War, when jotted down the number of a Ft. Worth sponses to the black-bordered "Wanted Cody was "assigned in the Counter In- for Treason" ad in Friday's Dallas television station, PE 8-1951; in June telligence Corps" and stationed for a 1963, Ruby twice called that number Morning News, and uttered words of time in Dallas. Cody related that he en- outrage. (CE 1322, p. 517). On September 24, joyed ice skating at Fair Park, as did 1963, David Ferrie's telephone was Ruby's survival as a "little big Ruby, and "there had been at least a shot" in Aryan Dallas depended upon charged with a call to Chicago number half dozen times in the last two or three WH 44970; on November 20, 1963, this his obsequiousness to powerful masters. years that RUBY had arrived at Fair Some of those whose boots he licked number was called from Kansas City by Park while he, CODY, had been skat- Lawrence Meyers, a Chicago business- were Nazis, and subliminally he became ing " (CE 1736). one of them. As Garrison put it, "The man and close friend of Ruby's. Meyers Garrison contends that Ruby's stagey arrived in Dallas from Kansas City that connecting link at every level of opera- behavior between the assassination and tion, from the oil-rich sponsors of the same night, and was in touch with Ruby his slaying of Oswald was a way of dis- through the traumatic post-assassination assassination down to the Dallas police associating himself from the plot by department, down through Jack Ruby hours (Vol. 25, p. 335). "reversing the magnetic field"—drawing The Dallas number FR 5-5591 appears and including anti-Castro adventurers, attention to himself as the opposite of at the operating level were Minutemen, re2,-;,7--e^r.:2,771-7-177,7"

foe-violently bright tii-lie—reproditeedin col" These giant (26 x 44) posters are silk-screened--with-flue-res,ger ors. There, is no wa that we can print this ., ad in colors thqt-- st s scillating fr WHYTE STUDIOS Dept. A 291 Delaware Avenue Buffalo, New York 14202 $2.98 each, any two — $5.00 Those with superhuman will-power might find it possible tb lOok directly at these posters for POT more than 5 seconds. However, we will not be (rd, bl, gr) _ LOVE (pk, bl, yel ) held responsible for detached retinae. POT (gr, lay, gld) — LOVE (or, gr, bl) SEX (gld, rd) _ MAFIA DEALERS, REPS. INQUIRIES WELCOMED. (pk, yel, blk ) SEX (gr, cher) - MAFIA (or, lay, blk) evening he returned from Mexico, Os- 1963." The Dallas version was predi- wald checked into the YMCA on North cated upon two alibi incidents furnished Just Published Ervay and remained two days. The same by Ruby, plus the inconclusive state- two days the room next to him was oc- ment of Andrew Armstrong that "he did cupied by a Cuban-appearing young not know of Ruby having made any long How 88,648 man who registered as R. Narvaez. On trips away from Dallas recently" (CE the night of October 17, Loren Hall and 2399). Heavy Smokers Lawrence Howard Jr arrived at the Garrison points out that there was a YMCA; they checked out on October 4-1/2 hour gap in accounting for Ruby's Stopped 22. The arrival of Hall possibly dovetails presence in Dallas that day, giving him with the story of a new witness located adequate time to fly back and forth that by Garrison. The witness stated that in afternoon to "case" the Presidential Smoking 1963, Hall was short of funds and peti- motorcade in Houston. Complementing tioned him for assistance in the anti- this is the report of a Mexico City at- Castro movement. He declined, but lent torney that Ruby's sister, Eva Grant, NEW YORK—The Anti-Tobacco Hall $50, holding a .30 caliber rifle as was in San Antonio that same morning Center of America has just pub- watching the motorcade there [RAM- lished a booklet which explains how collateral. About a month before the 88,648 heavy smokers (of whom assassination, the witness says, Hall re- PARTS, November 1966]. Arturo Alocer many are physicians) have stopped deemed the weapon, commenting that Ruiz, his wife and her woman friend smoking without straining their will he was going to Dallas to meet with a were in San Antonio on vacation. They power. This booklet is available free wealthy oilman—the same oilman who, noticed an obese woman rooted to a spot of charge to smokers. All you need Garrison knows, posted bail for Hall near the Gunter Hotel—she was there at to do, to obtain it, is to send your and William Seymour when they were least two hours—waiting for the Presi- name and address to The Anti- arrested in Dallas in mid-October (in dent's entourage to pass on its way to the Tobacco Center of America, Dept. September 1966, the FBI stripped Dallas airport and the short hop to Houston. A-41-R, 366 Fifth Avenue, New police files of all pertinent material con- After Ruby shot Oswald and Eva's York 1, New York. This offer is open cerning the arrests). As will be recalled, picture was shown on television, the while the supply of these booklets Alocer party immediately recognized her lasts. the record shows that the FBI did not locate and interview Hall, Howard and as the obese woman they had seen in San Seymour until just before the Warren Antonio. Although the FBI sloughed off Report went to press. But what makes the report, Garrison considers it reliable. Nazi oriented. It- was essentially a Nazi these belated interviews seem dissem- Shortly before and after the assassina- operation." bling is that the new witness swears that tion, Ruby was placed by witnesses in Ruby's letters, smuggled out of jail by he was questioned by the FBI about Hall the Dallas Morning News building, a trusty, reveal that towards the end, he and the .30 caliber rifle on the day after which commands a view of Dealey realized what his masters really were the assassination. Plaza. Around I :00 p.m. he was spotted [RAMPARTS, February 1967]. The letters, Coupled with this development is the at Parkland Hospital by housewife sold by the reputable New York docu- statement of Joseph Roland Hummel, Wilma Tice and newsman Seth Kantor ment auctioneer Charles Hamilton, por- who resided at the YMCA that October. (in one of its more disingenuous mo- tray a man acutely aware of his Jewish- Hummel has told Garrison that he had ments, the Commission claimed that ness who realizes with anguish that he been casually acquainted with Oswald in Mrs. Tice was mistaken and that Kantor, has served not ultraconservatives but New Orleans, and saw him again at the who knew Ruby well, had seen him Nazis. "They are going to come out with Dallas YMCA in late October. On two somewhere other than Parkland—even a story that it was the Minutemen who occasions he saw Oswald with a "skinny, though Kantor graphically described killed the Jews," he wrote, "don't you thin-haired" young Anglo, on one oc- being collared by the night club owner believe it, they are using that to cover up casion on the sun roof of the YMCA at the bottom of a hospital staircase). for the Nazis. . . . Oh the way I fucked with Jack Ruby. Was it Ruby who planted the so-called up this world who would ever dream What was Ruby's role before he was magic bullet on a stretcher outside the that the motherfucker was a Nazi and pressed into service to do away with trauma room? Since no one saw him do found me the perfect setup for a frame. Oswald? A Houston Secret Service re- it, we can only speculate. But as we have . . I was used to silence Oswald. I port prepared within days of Ruby's seen, Ruby's actions were hardly irra- walked into a trap the moment I walked shooting of Oswald synopsizes: "Nu- tional, and it was that bullet which down that ramp Sunday morning." merous witnesses identify Jack Leon forged the final link for the Commission Rubenstein, alias Jack Ruby, as being between Oswald and the assassination. [RECONSTRUCTING THE CRIME] in Houston, Texas on November 21, for (It did not seem to bother the Commis- N OCTOBER 1963, a number of key several hours, one block from the Presi- sion that the bullet was in near-pristine figures in Garrison's probe con- dent's entrance route and from the Rice condition, looking more like it had been / verged upon Dallas. The Free Cuba Hotel where [the President] stayed." The fired into a stuffing box than through the group was installed in the house on Har- Houston report was countermanded by sinew, muscle and bone of Kennedy and landale, which is in south Oak Cliff past a Dallas SS report that flatly declared : Connally [CE 399].) Ruby's apartment. On October 3, the "Ruby was in Dallas on November 21, For a bachelor of casual habits, Sun-

64 RAMPARTS day morning, November 24, was possibly the most synchronized in Ruby's life. At 11:17 a.m. by automatic time stamp, he wired $25 to Mrs. Bruce Ray Carlin, stage name Little Lynn, one of his performers ■ who lived in Ft. Worth (surely a pretext: *`11 71 It the night before, Little Lynn and her hus- 711 band had made a special trip to the Carousel—Ruby lent him $5—and Ruby IIELP THESE Yotio' was carrying several thousand dollars in cash). Then he strode from the Western Union office across the street from the PEOPLE MAKE police department to the Main Street entrance of the police basement. How he MOVIES. NOT 'ROME, slipped through the guard is open to question, but his timing was exquisite. An open letter from Otto Preminger Listening to the sound tracks of video- Dear Ramparts Reader: tapes made in the basement about the time the elevator carrying Oswald ar- Several months ago, I was shown a film titled, "You Dig It," made in rived at basement level, one hears the New York—under the Mobilization for Youth program—by a group of hollow-sounding "honk" of a car horn young men and women from poor Negro and Puerto Rican homes. It was an outstanding effort, in my opinion. (only police vehicles were in the base- ment), then a pause of some four sec- "You Dig It" was made without professional guidance. The script was onds, then another "honk" closely fol- written by a 16-year old; directed and filmed by two 20-year olds; with a lowed by the crack of Ruby's pistol. cast composed of 50 youngsters between 15 and 20 with no previous film- Were the "honks" signaling to Ruby the making experience. progress of his victim so he could sud- I was so excited about "You Dig It" that I met with the young film denly push through the press ranks? In makers. Outwardly, they looked just like any other group of similar age one of his letters smuggled from jail and background. But inwardly they glowed. These young people—who were Ruby wrote, "If you hear a lot of horn- born to failure and had only hopelessness ahead of them—suddenly and dramatically achieved success. Not money, not fame—not yet. But blowing, it will be seeing for me, they will want themselves and their films on TV and at Lincoln Center ... hearing their my blood!" work praised by seasoned professionals , winning a first prize (the Plaque ASED ON THE FRESH evidence in of the Lion of St. Marc) at the 1967 Venice Documentary Film Festival ... Garrison's possession, we can has given them pride, purpose—and almost fulfillment of their dream. B now partially reconstruct the op- But—and there is always a but—the Mobilization for Youth program can- eration and getaway on November 22. not provide any more money. The group has appealed to various founda- As previously reported [RAMPARTS, tions, but their decisions often take so long that these June 1967], the DA contends that the teen-agers may be in wheelchairs before the red tape is cut and the money comes in. assassination bore the classic earmarks Knowing that Ramparts readers share many of my views and concerns, of a guerrilla ambush in which the Presi- I ask you to join me in supporting this talented group. They need a total of dent was caught in converging fire. The $80,000 to continue their work for another year, which includes produc- fatal bead shot, he says, was fired from tion of a feature film and two half-hour shorts. the Grassy Knoll area, a quartering angle Please take a moment now to fill out the coupon below, then mail it with from the front. The operation was co- your check today. Whatever you can afford to give will be deeply appre- ordinated by radio. ciated. Your contribution is tax-deductible, of course. To recapitulate, railroader S. M. Hol- land, standing on the Triple Underpass, Sincerely insists to this day that "there definitely was a shot fired from behind that fence [on the Knoll]." The late Lee Bowers, tto Preminger who was in the railroad tower directly north of the Knoll, testified that three Cultural Arts Dept., Mobilization for Youth. 214 E. Second St., N.Y., N.Y. 10009 cars, one radio-equipped, prowled the Here is my contribution of $ to enable the young men and women parking lot between his tower and the who made "You Dig It" to continue their movie work for another year. Knoll shortly before the shooting; he said they definitely were not law enforce- NAMF ment vehicles. Bowers stated he saw two ADDRESS men behind the picket fence on the Knoll CITY just before the shots were fired, one STATE 7IP "middle-aged" and "heavy-set," the Please make checks payable to: Cultural Arts Department, Mobilization for Youth. Contributions are tax-deductible. other "about midtwenties in either a R

RAMPARTS 65 plaid shirt or plaid coat or jacket." Al- Marvin C. Robinson, who told the FBI brought up an unidentified man named though the men were partly obscured by he was driving past the Depository some- Isaacs; they found it odd that "Isaacs" foliage when the shots rang out, Bowers time between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. when would become mixed up with a "psycho" said that in their vicinity there was "a light-colored Nash station wagon like Oswald. In their conversation, a "some unusual occurrence—a flash of suddenly appeared before him. He man referred to as Hoffman or Hock- light or smoke or something . . ." (Vol. stated this vehicle stopped and a white man was to "relieve" Isaacs and destroy 6, pp. 228ff). Postal employee J. C. male came down the grass-covered in- his 1958 model automobile. "We have Price, who had a bird's-eye view of the cline between the building and the street more money at our disposal now than scene, picked up from there: "I saw one and entered the station wagon after at any other time," the older man re- man run towards the passenger cars on which it drove away in the direction of ported. He disclosed that the group of the railroad siding after the volley of the Oak Cliff section . . ." (Dallas FBI which both men apparently were a part shots [the parking lot is bisected by a report 89-43). would hold a meeting in a Kansas City railroad spur]. This man had a white Robinson paid no attention to the hotel in March with reservations made dress shirt, no tie and khaki-colored man, but Craig said it was Oswald. The in the name of a textile concern. At this trousers. His hair appeared to be long Commission rejected his identification point the pair noticed Giesbrecht, who and dark and from his agility in running "because of the overwhelming evidence started to a phone to notify police. A could be 25 years of age. He had some- that Oswald was far away from the build- third man materialized and blocked his thing in his hand. I couldn't be sure but ing at that time." Once again, the Com- way. The trio quickly disappeared. it may have been a head piece" (CE mission ignored the possible manifesta- The FBI checked on the incident—but 2003, p. 222). tion of an Oswald double, this time one the results of this investigation are also A new witness of Garrison's (he is who may have been one of the assassins, "classified." However, a classified docu- afraid to have his name made public), shooting from the Depository Building. ment captioned "Harold Isaacs" does who had the same vantage point as Recently Craig went to New Orleans to exist. A Garrison investigator has lo- Price, states that after the shots were confer with Garrison. Among other cated a Harold Isaacs in Texas, and fired, two men dashed from behind the things, he told the DA that he had not Isaacs acknowledges that he owned a Knoll fence and headed behind the De- said that a Negro was driving the Ram- 1958 Ford which was "crushed in a pository Building, where they were bler, but a "dark, swarthy man, possibly wrecking yard." It is also noteworthy joined by a third man. Two of them got a Cuban." On his return to Dallas, Craig that Kansas City is the headquarters of in a Rambler station wagon and drove noticed that he was being shadowed. As the national Minutemen organization. north, away from the scene. The third, he came out of a restaurant after lunch, Recently witness Giesbrecht was shown a "heavyset, dark-complexioned" man, a bullet whizzed by his head. an assortment of photographs. "That's proceeded back toward Dealey Plaza A possible getaway plane was spotted the man with the bushy eyebrows," he and disappeared. It is quite possibly this at Red Bird Airport some few miles explained, picking out a mug shot of third man whom James R. Worrell de- south of Oak Cliff at about 1:00 p.m. David Ferrie. scribed to the Commission. When the Two women have reported that they saw shooting started, said Worrell, he sought a twin-engine plane, engines idling, sit- [THE POWER PLAY] cover across Houston Street from the ting well away from the paved access HE CLOSER GARRISON comes to fit- rear of the Depository Building. "I was strips and runway, and close to the high- ting together all the pieces of the there approximately three minutes be- way from Dallas via Oak Cliff. Coupled T assassination mosaic, the more fore I saw this man come out the back with this information is the assertion of desperate the attempt to squelch him be- door ... the way he was running, I would a Garrison informant that a Minuteman comes. Long ago the "national security" say he was in his late twenties or middle in Arizona boasted to him that one of curtain was dropped on over 200 docu- —I mean early thirties . . . his coat was the Cubans on the assassination team ments in the National Archives that open and kind of flapping back in the was flown to Arizona and hid out in his range from "Allegation Oswald in Mon- breeze." Worrell asserted the man ran home before slipping across the border treal, summer 1963," to a teaser like "re alongside the building back toward the into Mexico. Charles Small, aka Smolikoff (Mexican Dealey Plaza area (Vol. 2, pp. 190-201). There is a sequel to this flurry of move- trip)." Many of these documents now Although his questioning by the Com- ment; it took place in the restaurant of appear relevant to his investigation, but mission was less than exhaustive, there the Winnipeg, Canada airport February despite the fact that he is a duly consti- will be no more interviews: Worrell died 13, 1964. Richard Giesbrecht, a business- tuted law enforcement officer, he cannot in a traffic accident on November 9, 1966. man whom Garrison's staff has inter- gain access to them. About 15 minutes after the assassina- viewed, was waiting for a luncheon And how do items turn up missing tion, Deputy Sheriff Roger D. Craig partner and overheard a conversation from a citadel of security like the Na- testified he "observed an individual run at an adjacent table between a man of tional Archives? Twenty-six items con- down the grass area from the direction about fifty who wore a hearing aid and nected with the assassination are so of the Texas School Book Depository. spoke with a Southern accent and a listed, including "Jack Ruby's notebook He heard this individual whistle and a younger man with "bushy hair and maintained by Larry Craford [his Carou- white Rambler station wagon, driven by bushy pronounced eyebrows." Both ex- sel Club flunky who scurried out of a Negro male, pulled over to the curb pressed concern over how much Lee Os- Dallas the afternoon of the assassina- and said individual got in . . ." (CE wald had told his wife about the assassi- tion]." Moreover, Garrison observes 1967). The incident is corroborated by nation plot. In their conversation, they that there was "an incredible incidence

66 RAMPARTS of spontaneous combustion" in Wash- verification named his Agency contacts yin Beauboeuf, Ferrie's companion on ington the day after the assassination and the box number at the Lafayette the Texas trip the afternoon of the as- when autopsy notes went up in flames Street station they assigned him. He sassination, that two DA investigators and a secret CIA report on Oswald's averred he had recontacted the CIA after tried to bribe him. What Aynesworth activities prior to the assassination was Walter Sheridan had counseled him to didn't report was that the tape recording singed beyond recognition in a Thermo- say nothing to the DA and go to Canada. of the conversation made by Beauboeurs fax machine. Sheridan, the ex-Bobby Kennedy ram- attorney had been carefully edited to Coupled with the secrecy has been an rod in the Justice Department's "get delete the investigator's emphatic warn- aggressive drive to intimidate and dis- Hoffa" crusade, is now with NBC News ings to Beauboeuf that they sought only credit witnesses. Abraham Bolden, the and has been instrumental in that tele- the truth, and that they would subject first Negro Secret Service agent, accused vision network's extraordinary effort to him to lie detector testing to verify as far his brother agents of carousing into the abort the assassination investigation. as possible that he was telling the truth. wee hours of November 22, and stated Sheridan was so overzealous that he was The tandem attack on Garrison, with that while in custody Oswald blurted out, subsequently indicted by a grand jury for much of the press copy sounding like it "Ruby hired me" ; Bolden was subse- public bribery in attempting to induce had been ghost written by Richard Helms, quently charged by his superiors with witnesses to make statements against seems to be the preliminary to legal bribery and convicted, and he protests Garrison. However, the network does moves aimed at removing the DA from to no avail that the charges against him not consider this newsworthy. office or even jailing him. were a frame-up. A Dealey Plaza eye- NBC's special on the Garrison case The behavior of U.S. Attorney Gen- witness who in 1963 told the FBI that broadcast last June exemplifies their ef- eral Ramsey Clark has been most sug- two men ran from behind the Grassy fort. One of the stars of the program was gestive that such a play is in the works. Knoll fence was brusquely warned, "If Dean Andrews Jr, who has since been On March 2, 1967, the day after Clay you didn't see Oswald shoot from that convicted of perjury by a New Orleans Shaw was arrested, the attorney gen- sixth floor window, you'd better keep jury in connection with his testimony eral announced that Shaw had been your damn mouth shut." A New Orleans about the Clay Bertrand phase of the investigated by the FBI in 1963 and man with pertinent information about investigation, Andrews lent an ethereal "cleared" of any complicity in the as- a local Minuteman was admonished by quality to Garrison's probe by saying sassination. Three months later, after the FBI not to tell the DA anything be- that he invented the name Manuel the world had been noisily advised that cause "District Attorney Garrison was Garcia Gonzales and watched the DA's the prestigious FBI had found Shaw in- trying to overturn the findings of the men frantically Iook for him as a suspect. nocent, Clark sheepishly admitted there Warren Report." There is a Manuel Garcia Gonzales. I had been no investigation at all. The The affair of Jules Rocco Kimble il- have seen the nasty Llama pistol con- retraction hardly caused a ripple in the lustrates how governmental pressure has fiscated from him by New Orleans police press. Then on October 14, UPI quoted induced potential witnesses to slip from in September 1966, shortly before Gar- Clark as telling an audience of law stu- Garrison's grasp. A self-avowed member rison became interested in him, and the dents at the University of Virginia that of the Ku Klux Klan who got in trouble immigration file documenting his ad- Garrison "took a perfectly fine man, over bombings in Baton Rouge, Kimble mission to the United States. Another Clay Shaw, and ruined him just for per- approached the DA's men in the appar- canard fabricated by NBC was the as- sonal aggrandizement," and that the ent hope of gaining mitigation. He said sertion that the network had located the Department would prosecute the DA. that on the day after David Ferrie died, real Clay Bertrand, and that he was not Clark promptly issued a denial, and a he drove a top KKK official, Jack Helm, Clay Shaw. The man's name had been Department spokesman lamely explained to Ferrie's apartment. Helm came out turned over to the Justice Department, that the boss had "discussed this matter with a satchel crammed with papers, the narrator said. The man• turned out hypothetically in response to a question." which he placed in a bank safe deposit to be bar owner Eugene Davis, who But the most reasonable interpretation box. Kimble also divulged that in 1962, loudly protested that he had never used is that Clark let slip precisely what was he had flown to Montreal with Ferrie the name—and indeed, he did not fit the on his mind. The notion is reinforced by on what was purported to be Minutemen description—of "Clay Bertrand." the affidavit of Gordon Novel's former business. He promised the DA's inves- Another medium that has been par- wife, Marlene Mancuso, who told Gar- tigators that he would garner further in- ticularly shrill in its anti-Garrison in- rison that Richard Townley of NBC's formation and report back. vective is Newsweek, which at times New Orleans affiliate tried to get her to He didn't come through. Shortly after- seems to parrot the administration line testify against the investigation. "He ward, he phoned his wife from Atlanta, as faithfully as Izvestia hawks the Krem- said they were not merely going to dis- saying he had met a CIA contact. lin's. The magazine's "expert" on the credit the probe," she swore. "He said "They'll never get me back to New Or- case is Hugh Aynesworth, who at the Garrison would get a jail sentence." leans," he vowed. A few days after that, time of the assassination was an ace re- When news of the assassination probe he called from Montreal. For reasons porter for the Dallas Morning News, first broke, Garrison declaimed in a unknown, Kimble backtracked to Tam- which saw fit to print the black-bordered burst of rhetoric, "Let justice be done pa, Florida, where he was arrested by "Wanted for Treason John F. Ken- though the heavens fall!" The heavens local police. Interviewed by Garrison's nedy" ad on November 22nd. In his are still there, but Washington has come men, he said that he had once worked Garrison put-down (May 15, 1967), crashing down upon him. special assignments for the CIA, and in Aynesworth reported the charges of Al-

68 RAMPARTS