FOIA | FBI | Otto Otepka

[Gene Kelly]

I don't think Courtney Evans would be a credible source for an accurate perspective on RFK.  Joan Mellen used him as an example of RFK's prodigious/illegal use of wiretapping (and the allegations that Bobby authorized the wiretaps on MLK).  She also refers to Hebert J. Miller as a "Kennedy acolyte" which seems patently untrue ... Miller was CIA all the way, and feeding Garrison's information to Shaw's lawyers (see the 2013 William Davy article):

By December 24, 1965, Courtney Evans had retired from the Bureau and joined the law firm of a Kennedy acolyte, Herbert J. Miller, Jr. Miller would serve as Walter Sheridan’s lawyer on more than one occasion. It was Herbert J. Miller, Jr. who extracted Walter Sheridan when he was indicted in Orleans Parish by Jim Garrison for petty bribery and intimidation of witnesses.

Walter Sheridan died in 1995. During the period of the ARRB, the National Archives sought to obtain Sheridan’s papers as Kennedy assassination records. The papers had been deposited at the Kennedy Library ... Herbert J. Miller, Jr. then stepped in, seized Sheridan’s records from the Kennedy library, and removed them to the bosom of the Sheridan family, far from the prying eyes of historians. Miller’s taped interview with Jeremy Gunn of the ARRB is a masterpiece of obfuscation. On the subject of his deceased client Sheridan, and his behavior in New Orleans, Miller refused to answer a single question for the historical record.

One day Courtney Evans, at Bureau headquarters, shared with two fellow FBI officers details of the contacts he had with Robert Kennedy. He had furnished written information to Kennedy “and other Justice Department officials” who had served under Kennedy, Evans revealed. The subject of the discussion was the FBI’s use of microphone surveillances. Then something odd occurred. After this meeting, Courtney Evans furnished Robert Kennedy with a letter denying that the two ever had any discussions about wire taps. Evans also lied and denied he had ever provided Bobby with written material about the FBI’s use of microphone wire taps.

Confident that Evans’ lying letter would protect him, defending himself in the press against persistent charges that he had sanctioned wire taps, Robert Kennedy denied he knew anything about the FBI’s use of surveillance microphones. To demonstrate his veracity, Bobby released to the press the fraudulent letter that Evans had obligingly written for him. The letter is dated February 17, 1966. In it, Evans states, falsely, that he “did not discuss the use of microphones by the FBI with Robert Kennedy during his tenure as Attorney General.” Evans also denies he knew of any written material that was sent to Robert Kennedy “at any time” concerning microphone surveillances. 

Gene

[Pamela Brown]

To ask a question backwards, how could it not have been to RFK's advantage to do everything he could to protect the Garrison investigation?