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Lee Harvey Oswald, Guy Banister and I in New Orleans 1955-1956


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Lee Harvey Oswald, Guy Banister and I in New Orleans 1955-1956



I attended Alcee Fortier High School in New Orleans from September 1954 until June 1956, when I was graduated. In late 1954 Kent and Phoebe Courtney announced that they were holding a public meeting in a pavilion in Audubon Park to enlist citizens who opposed the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy pending before the U.S. Senate. My parents’ residence was only a few blocks from Audubon Park and Tulane University so I decided to attend as our family admired McCarthy’s fighting spirit against communism.



An enthusiastic crowd of about 40 persons attended the Courtneys’ meeting and assignments were handed out. My assignment was to set up a card table in the plaza in front of St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter to collect signatures on petitions that opposed the censure as part of a national petition drive headed by General Bonner Fellers. I had little difficulty in collecting signatures as Catholics regularly attended services at the Cathedral and McCarthy was a prominent Catholic.



A few months later Kent and Phoebe announced they were starting a monthly conservative publication, Free Men Speak, which subsequently became The Independent America. I volunteered to work on the publication after high school. As a result Kent started taking me to meetings, such as Toastmasters International and to a radio station where he had a weekly radio show. Several times during the period of 1955-1956, while still in a high school student, I would accompany Kent to meetings in the office of Guy Banister, a former FBI agent who was a prominent public figure in New Orleans. The topic at these meetings was the extent of organized crime in the city and more particularly the efforts of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans headed by Aaron Kohn to combat it.



So where does Lee Harvey Oswald fit into the picture during this period? Why he was living with his mother in the Vieux Carre section of the French Quarter, less than a 10 minute walk from Banister’s office. Oswald was then about 16 years old.



Eight years later John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Oswald would be branded the alleged assassination, Banister would gain fame as someone who had interacted in a mysterious way with Oswald in New Orleans in the period before the assassination, and I many years later would end up representing Howard Hunt, a self-confessed bench warmer in the assassination who claimed LBJ was at the top of the pyramid conspiracy, and also Billie Sol Estes, LBJ’s bagman who maintained to his death that LBJ killed JFK.



Oswald, Banister and I in 1955-1956 had no inkling what fate had in store for us and for the world.



I departed New Orleans permanently in September 1956 to enroll in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Only after I arrived did I learn that Father Walsh had been one of Senator McCarthy’s closest advisers. So while the Big Easy was no longer a part of my life, the public presence of Senator McCarthy was.



http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2737&context=td



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Courtney



http://www.auduboninstitute.org/visit/audubon-park/favorites/history



V. OSWALD'S EARLY LIFE: NEW ORLEANS AND ORGANIZED CRIME


Contents





  1. During his early childhood and adolescence in New Orleans, Lee Oswald lived with his divorced mother at a number of different locations, usually in small rented houses or apartments in a moderate to-lower-income section of the city. (1) While the record of residences is not complete, one address was 126 Exchange Alley. (2) During her testimony before the Warren Commission, Mrs. Marguerite Oswald indicated that she and her son lived there when Oswald was about to 16 years old, roughly the years 1955-56. (3) They were "living at 126 Exchange Place, which is the Vieux Carre section of the French Quarter of New Orleans." (4) During her testimony, Mrs. Oswald noted that "the papers said we lived over a saloon at that particular address * * * that is just the French part of town. It looks like the devil. Of course I didn't have a fabulous apartment. But very wealthy people and very fine citizens live in that part of town. * * .. (5) While Mrs. Oswald correctly noted that "wealthy" citizens resided in some sections of the French Quarter, Exchange Alley was well known as the location of other elements; it was an area notorious for illicit activities. As the managing director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans, Aaron Kohn recalled, "Exchange Alley, specifically that little block that Oswald lived on, was literally the hub of some of the most notorious underworld joints in the city." (6). He noted further that Exchange Alley was the location of various gambling operations affiliated with the Marcello organization. (7) Noting the openness with which such activities were conducted there, (8) Kohn said, "you couldn't walk down the block without literally being exposed to two or three separate forms of illicit activities and underworld operations." (9)


    http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/jfk9/hscv9b.htm


    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbannister.htm


    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcaddyD.htm










Edited by Douglas Caddy
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Just to clarify: In the 1955-6 period, William Guy Banister (correct spelling) was recently retired from the FBI, had been appointed by the mayor as an official of the New Orleans Police Department. By 1956, as Banister went after corrupt police officers, the mayor was having second thoughts and eventually forced him out in 1957. Banister started his detective agency later, in January 1958.

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Stephen:

Thanks for the correction as to the spelling of Guy Banister's last name. The Spartacus link included in my essay at its end spells his last name as "bannister", although the article that is pulled up spells as "Banister." I should have caught the discrepancy.

I am going to correct the spelling of his last name in the article although I have no control over now as to how it is spelled in the title.

Doug

Edited by Douglas Caddy
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In my essay I failed to note that in August 1956 Kent Countney asked me to accompany him to the Democratic Convention in Chicago where we with the assistance of a few other persons mounted a publicity effort in behalf of states rights. It received some notice but was generally lost in the jubilation of the convention crowd that nominated Adlai Stevenson for President and Estes Kefauver for Vice President.

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From the posting: “In 1959, a New Orleans man, Richard C. Bell, in conjunction
with a Chicago group, organized a group of students to attend
the 1959 World Youth Conference in Vienna. His plans attracted
opposition from the local American Legion, especially Kent Courtney,
Festus Brown and James Pfister. The Legion organized a Free
Enterprise Seminar "to alert local college students to the dangers
involved in attending the communist-sponsored World Youth Festival
in Vienna." Speakers at the seminar include Guy Banister, Medford
Evans and Douglas Caddy. Bell and his group did make it to Vienna.”

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.assassination.jfk/7fKgzfeYtpI

http://www.jfk-online.com/jpskentchsca.html

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Louisiana the song remains the same

====================================

In 1934, Banister joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He was present at the killing of John Dillinger. Originally based in Indianapolis, he later moved to New York City where he was involved in the investigation of the American Communist Party. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was impressed by Banister's work and, in 1938, he was promoted to run the FBI unit in Butte, Montana. He also served in Oklahoma City, Minneapolis and Chicago. In Chicago, he was the Special Agent in Charge for the FBI.[5] He retired from the FBI in 1954.

Banister moved to Louisiana and, in January 1955, became Assistant Superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department, where he was given the task of investigating organized crime and corruption within the police force. It later emerged that he was also involved in looking at the role that left-wing political activists were playing in the struggle for civil rights in New Orleans.[6] On the campuses of Tulane University and Louisiana State University, he ran a network of informants collecting information on "communist" activities. He submitted reports on his findings to the FBI through contacts.[7]

=====================================================================================

Louisiana Creates Database of Citizens Who Represent “A Risk to the State” Information hub would detect potential future criminals and allow government to “intervene”
==================================
policestate1.jpg

Authorities in Louisiana are compiling a database of information on every citizen in order to identify people who are “a risk to the state,” as well as pinpointing future criminals in an effort to allow the state to “intervene in that person’s life”.

Details of the program were recently divulged by Chris Broadwater, Republican member of the Louisiana House of Representatives from District 86, in the following YouTube video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fFuT1wzHjI4

The Comprehensive Person Profile, developed by software company SAS, uses information from every agency of state government to compile personal data entries on Louisiana residents which are centralized on one database.

Originally set up to combat fraudulent workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance claims, the program was expanded to create a “centralized data warehouse” that allows “every agency within state government” to both submit and access data on every person within the state.

The purposes of the database, in the words of Broadwater, are to “detect fraud” and to identify people who are “a risk to the state down the road based upon the information we know about the individual,” enabling authorities to quickly identify “an individual who is going to be at risk of incarceration down the road,” a process that sounds an awful lot like ‘pre-crime’.

Broadwater remarks that the state having such a treasure trove of information about each individual will allow authorities to “intervene in that person’s life”.

The program is also being introduced under the guise of making the lives of Louisiana residents “better” by way of things like speeding up the process of renewing a drivers license. Broadwater notes that during this process, state workers would be able to access information about the applicant’s children and make recommendations about health insurance.

Very little information about how the state of Louisiana is actually using the program is in the public domain besides what Broadwater reveals in the video above.

Activist outfit The People, LLC is calling on citizens of Louisiana to support Rep. Schroder’s HB 1076 (data privacy) bill, which would go some way to nullifying that information that could be shared with the state database.

Edited by Steven Gaal
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Pat:


At the invitation of a professional video maker I spent yesterday in Austin giving an oral history of my life. I had prepared an extensive outline beforehand and only after the taping was over did I realize I had inadvertently left out some events that I desired to be included. While the taping was done at a TV station, the air conditioning in the small adjacent studio being used for the taping was not working for some reason, so this may have affected my recall ability. The video maker also took still photographs of a number of my documents that he plans to intersperse in the video. After the editing is done over the coming weeks it will be posted YouTube.


Doug


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  • 4 months later...

Lee Harvey Oswald, Guy Banister and I in New Orleans 1955-1956

I attended Alcee Fortier High School in New Orleans from September 1954 until June 1956, when I was graduated. In late 1954 Kent and Phoebe Courtney announced that they were holding a public meeting in a pavilion in Audubon Park to enlist citizens who opposed the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy pending before the U.S. Senate. My parents’ residence was only a few blocks from Audubon Park and Tulane University so I decided to attend as our family admired McCarthy’s fighting spirit against communism.

An enthusiastic crowd of about 40 persons attended the Courtneys’ meeting and assignments were handed out. My assignment was to set up a card table in the plaza in front of St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter to collect signatures on petitions that opposed the censure as part of a national petition drive headed by General Bonner Fellers. I had little difficulty in collecting signatures as Catholics regularly attended services at the Cathedral and McCarthy was a prominent Catholic.

A few months later Kent and Phoebe announced they were starting a monthly conservative publication, Free Men Speak, which subsequently became The Independent America. I volunteered to work on the publication after high school. As a result Kent started taking me to meetings, such as Toastmasters International and to a radio station where he had a weekly radio show. Several times during the period of 1955-1956, while still in a high school student, I would accompany Kent to meetings in the office of Guy Banister, a former FBI agent who was a prominent public figure in New Orleans. The topic at these meetings was the extent of organized crime in the city and more particularly the efforts of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans headed by Aaron Kohn to combat it.

So where does Lee Harvey Oswald fit into the picture during this period? Why he was living with his mother in the Vieux Carre section of the French Quarter, less than a 10 minute walk from Banister’s office. Oswald was then about 16 years old.

Eight years later John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Oswald would be branded the alleged assassination, Banister would gain fame as someone who had interacted in a mysterious way with Oswald in New Orleans in the period before the assassination, and I many years later would end up representing Howard Hunt, a self-confessed bench warmer in the assassination who claimed LBJ was at the top of the pyramid conspiracy, and also Billie Sol Estes, LBJ’s bagman who maintained to his death that LBJ killed JFK.

Oswald, Banister and I in 1955-1956 had no inkling what fate had in store for us and for the world...

Doug, I find your story intriguing. In my research for H.W. Brands on the topic of Ex-General Edwin Walker, I paid special attention to the writings of Kent Courtney and the prominent role that Courtney played in Walker's fledgling political career.

For one thing, both men were early members of the John Birch Society -- a sort of Joe McCarthy society on steroids.

For another thing, few people know this, evidently, but General Walker was booted out of his command in Augsburg Germany, not because of John Birch Society literature, but mainly because he violated the Army's "Hatch Act," by trying to influence the voting practices of subordinates.

Now, in his violation of the Hatch Act, General Walker used the CVI, or Conservative Voting Index. It was a rigged "Index" slanted to favor politicians who (among other things) opposed Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren's Brown Decision. According to the records I have, it was Kent and Phoebe Courtney who designed the CVI, and delivered it to General Walker in early 1960.

So, in a certain sense, it seems to me, Kent and Phoebe Courtney were indirectly responsible for General Walker losing his job.

If so, that would explain why a few months after Walker quit the US Army, Kent and Phoebe Courtney would publish a book entitled, The Case of General Edwin A. Walker, in which they defended Walker against the "Communists" who "fired" him.

In that book, they also called on America to elect General Walker for US President.

Nor was that the end of it. At some point they renamed their newspaper from Free Men Speak to the Independent American, and that paper would feature as many as three stories each issue on Ex-General Walker. They praised his patriotism, his greatness, and called on him to lead a Third Party to victory in the White House.

Of course, Walker had no political experience, yet, but he soon would seek some as Governor of Texas. And if he had won that post, he would have run for US President in the 1964 Elections -- that was evidently the plan.

Kent and Phoebe Courtney were solid backers of Edwin Walker from the start. When most people gave up on Walker, the Courtneys stood by him.

I find it fascinating, Doug, that you knew Kent Courtney personally. In my humble opinion, his relationship with Guy Banister and with Edwin Walker (and with Billy James Hargis, evidently) makes him very suspicious in the plot to murder JFK. He knew so many of the principals (according to my theory) and he was clearly on their side.

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

<edit typos>

Edited by Paul Trejo
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Lee Harvey Oswald, Guy Banister and I in New Orleans 1955-1956

I attended Alcee Fortier High School in New Orleans from September 1954 until June 1956, when I was graduated. In late 1954 Kent and Phoebe Courtney announced that they were holding a public meeting in a pavilion in Audubon Park to enlist citizens who opposed the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy pending before the U.S. Senate. My parents’ residence was only a few blocks from Audubon Park and Tulane University so I decided to attend as our family admired McCarthy’s fighting spirit against communism.

An enthusiastic crowd of about 40 persons attended the Courtneys’ meeting and assignments were handed out. My assignment was to set up a card table in the plaza in front of St. Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter to collect signatures on petitions that opposed the censure as part of a national petition drive headed by General Bonner Fellers. I had little difficulty in collecting signatures as Catholics regularly attended services at the Cathedral and McCarthy was a prominent Catholic.

A few months later Kent and Phoebe announced they were starting a monthly conservative publication, Free Men Speak, which subsequently became The Independent America. I volunteered to work on the publication after high school. As a result Kent started taking me to meetings, such as Toastmasters International and to a radio station where he had a weekly radio show. Several times during the period of 1955-1956, while still in a high school student, I would accompany Kent to meetings in the office of Guy Banister, a former FBI agent who was a prominent public figure in New Orleans. The topic at these meetings was the extent of organized crime in the city and more particularly the efforts of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans headed by Aaron Kohn to combat it.

So where does Lee Harvey Oswald fit into the picture during this period? Why he was living with his mother in the Vieux Carre section of the French Quarter, less than a 10 minute walk from Banister’s office. Oswald was then about 16 years old.

Eight years later John Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Oswald would be branded the alleged assassination, Banister would gain fame as someone who had interacted in a mysterious way with Oswald in New Orleans in the period before the assassination, and I many years later would end up representing Howard Hunt, a self-confessed bench warmer in the assassination who claimed LBJ was at the top of the pyramid conspiracy, and also Billie Sol Estes, LBJ’s bagman who maintained to his death that LBJ killed JFK.

Oswald, Banister and I in 1955-1956 had no inkling what fate had in store for us and for the world.

I departed New Orleans permanently in September 1956 to enroll in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Only after I arrived did I learn that Father Walsh had been one of Senator McCarthy’s closest advisers. So while the Big Easy was no longer a part of my life, the public presence of Senator McCarthy was.

http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2737&context=td

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_Courtney

http://www.auduboninstitute.org/visit/audubon-park/favorites/history

V. OSWALD'S EARLY LIFE: NEW ORLEANS AND ORGANIZED CRIME

Contents

  1. During his early childhood and adolescence in New Orleans, Lee Oswald lived with his divorced mother at a number of different locations, usually in small rented houses or apartments in a moderate to-lower-income section of the city. (1) While the record of residences is not complete, one address was 126 Exchange Alley. (2) During her testimony before the Warren Commission, Mrs. Marguerite Oswald indicated that she and her son lived there when Oswald was about to 16 years old, roughly the years 1955-56. (3) They were "living at 126 Exchange Place, which is the Vieux Carre section of the French Quarter of New Orleans." (4) During her testimony, Mrs. Oswald noted that "the papers said we lived over a saloon at that particular address * * * that is just the French part of town. It looks like the devil. Of course I didn't have a fabulous apartment. But very wealthy people and very fine citizens live in that part of town. * * .. (5) While Mrs. Oswald correctly noted that "wealthy" citizens resided in some sections of the French Quarter, Exchange Alley was well known as the location of other elements; it was an area notorious for illicit activities. As the managing director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission of New Orleans, Aaron Kohn recalled, "Exchange Alley, specifically that little block that Oswald lived on, was literally the hub of some of the most notorious underworld joints in the city." (6). He noted further that Exchange Alley was the location of various gambling operations affiliated with the Marcello organization. (7) Noting the openness with which such activities were conducted there, (8) Kohn said, "you couldn't walk down the block without literally being exposed to two or three separate forms of illicit activities and underworld operations." (9)

    http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/jfk9/hscv9b.htm

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKbannister.htm

    http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcaddyD.htm

Here's a photo taken in April of 1964 showing 124-126 Exchange Alley in New Orleans. Note the bar on the right. Marguerite and Lee lived above this bar in 1955-1956. It was called the Vieux Carre Saloon. Some scenes from Elvis Presley's 1958 film "King Creole" were shot there. The owner of the toy store, R.H. Rohmer, told the Warren Commission he didn't remember Marguerite or Lee.

http://www.hnoc.org/vcs/property_info.php?lot=11193

I033n2428.jpg

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/jfkinfo/jfk9/hscv9b.htm#res

--Tommy :sun

Edited by Thomas Graves
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Doug, did you also work on the Courtney's newspaper, Independent American? Did you follow their strong support for Edwin Walker as a political candidate in 1962?

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

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Kent and Phoebe Courtney published the Free Men Speak newspaper starting around 1954 and then they changed the name to the Independent American. I worked on Free Men Speak after high school each day. I may have worked on The Independent American, which succeeded the first paper, but do not remember.

I left New Orleans in 1956 to attend the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. I was graduated in 1960. In 1962 I was working in the NYC of Governor Nelson Rockefeller in the daytime and going to New York University Law School at night.

So I had nothing to do with Edwin Walker's political activity at any time.

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Kent and Phoebe Courtney published the Free Men Speak newspaper starting around 1954 and then they changed the name to the Independent American. I worked on Free Men Speak after high school each day. I may have worked on The Independent American, which succeeded the first paper, but do not remember.

I left New Orleans in 1956 to attend the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. I was graduated in 1960. In 1962 I was working in the NYC of Governor Nelson Rockefeller in the daytime and going to New York University Law School at night.

So I had nothing to do with Edwin Walker's political activity at any time.

Interesting, Doug. During the years that you volunteered to work for Kent and Phoebe Courtney, to what degree were you aware of their position on the Brown Decision passed by Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren?

Did you (i.e. your family) also take the position that Earl Warren should be impeached because of the Brown Decision?

I presume you were old enough to take a political position regarding Civil Rights marches during that era, and regarding Dr. Martin Luther King, whom J. Edgar Hoover regarded as one of the most dangerous men in America at the time.

We know Kent Courtney's opinion about MLK. Had you formed an opinion of your own in those early days?

Best regards,

--Paul Trejo

Edited by Paul Trejo
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Yes, I was pretty conservative in those high school days. I favored the impeachment of Earl Warren and favored getting out of the United Nations. I had no opinion on MLK or the Supreme Court's Brown decision.

I later came to believe Earl Warren was a good chief justice with the exception of his falling for LBJ's tearful plea that he head up the Commission to investigate JFK's assassination

The value of higher education is that it broadens one's perspectives. By my senior year at Georgetown, which was 1959-60, I was still conservative but willing and eager to hear all sides to a public issue. The last time I voted for a Republican for President was in 1984 for Reagan and I regret now that I did that.

As David Stockman has pointed out, Reagan started the U.S. on its casino economy path in which the expenditures of the federal government are manipulated so that the elite is favored at the expense of the average working man.

Kent and Phoebe Courtney divorced later after I had moved from New Orleans. I think Kent's activity in the Citizens Councils was too much for Phoebe.

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