Guy Banister and the CIA

[James DiEugenio]

IIRC, I think Larry Hancock had that document.

Gerry, I cannot answer that question.  Jim just said that this presence was continuous.  He did not question it.

As per Tom and Joe, I agree with that analysis.  The Church Committee was running too far afield in the JFK case. Especially with Oswald.

[Larry Hancock]

I had and wrote about a document which recorded an urgent request to review and approve Bannister's office as a cover in 1960.....my discussion was that it was most likely related to Phillips and his propaganda tasks with the Cuba Project.  My best recollection is you would find that document reference and the discussion in SWHT 2010....I'm not sure that I had a document stating that the request had actually been approved...but there were other sources that related meetings about a propaganda film project and referred to Phillips in New Orleans at that time.

 

[Tom Gram]

38 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

I had and wrote about a document which recorded an urgent request to review and approve Bannister's office as a cover in 1960.....my discussion was that it was most likely related to Phillips and his propaganda tasks with the Cuba Project.  My best recollection is you would find that document reference and the discussion in SWHT 2010....I'm not sure that I had a document stating that the request had actually been approved...but there were other sources that related meetings about a propaganda film project and referred to Phillips in New Orleans at that time.

 

I’m reading SWHT so I’ll check the footnotes later. We do have the August 1960 request for approval, the 9/13/60 investigative report, and the 9/21/60 (might be wrong on that date) memo stating that the request to use GB&A as a cover mechanism was denied and that OS officer Jim O’Connell furnished an “alternate private detective company”, (which I strongly suspect was SRC) - but as far as I can tell we have nothing from November 1960 showing that Banister himself was approved for use as a contact source, even though we supposedly have Banister’s OS files and the CIA itself said that a review of those files in ‘67 reflected that approval. 

We have DCD review and approval documents for other sources, and there should be at least a contemporaneous memo stating that Banister was approved for contact, and that’s assuming the 9/13/60 investigative report on GB&A was repurposed as the review documents, otherwise there should be a full background check sheet like William Martin’s:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=55559#relPageId=3

[James DiEugenio]

The November 1960 approval must have been for Operation Zapata.

[Bob Ness]

On 8/25/2022 at 6:26 AM, Douglas Caddy said:

 

I am today requesting Gerry Down to post verbatim in this topic the private message that I sent him about this matter.

Thanks Doug.

[Tom Gram]

3 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

The November 1960 approval must have been for Operation Zapata.

I agree, but the official CIA line is that Banister had zero relationship with the agency - and the Nov ‘60 files appear to be legitimately missing. Also, it looks like the agency had a hard time keeping their story straight.

For example, during the Garrison investigation, the Chief of the New Orleans DCD (Hunter Leake?) claimed that Banister approached CIA and offered his services, and that was why GB&A was considered as a cover mechanism. The actual files are crystal clear that Banister’s organization was targeted and investigated covertly as part of some shady larger program, that proceeded by adopting an “alternate detective agency” for cover in New Orleans. 

In the same memo, the DCD Chief stated that Banister’s file reflected that he was contacted only once on 11/10/60, when the Chief himself met with him: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=16080#relPageId=26&search=Banister_and services

Note there is no mention of any sort of security approval, and again, Banister’s files do not reflect any CIA contact with Banister ever, including November 1960.

I will look for the documents in the NARA database later today, but they should be in the Banister OS files on MFF, which reflect zero withheld in full pages, so I doubt there’s anything different available at NARA that isn’t already online. 

[Gerry Down]

On 8/25/2022 at 2:23 PM, Douglas Caddy said:

I am today requesting Gerry Down to post verbatim in this topic the private message that I sent him about this matter.

Just see now that a few posts back someone wanted to see a PM Douglas sent me to see if there was anything in that that might help further our understanding of Guy Banister. To add to the completeness of this thread, here's that message:

 

[Bob Ness]

15 hours ago, Gerry Down said:

Just see now that a few posts back someone wanted to see a PM Douglas sent me to see if there was anything in that that might help further our understanding of Guy Banister. To add to the completeness of this thread, here's that message:

 

Thanks Doug and Gerry!

[Matt Allison]

Don't know if this what people were referring to, but I remember reading about Phillips and Banister's 1960 connection in Bill Davy's "Let Justice Be Done" book.

[Tom Gram]

This is the Church Committee testimony of Warren DeBrueys. DeBruyes testified on 1/8/76, which was well after Pena and the INS people (that we know of) - and Senator Schweiker grills him pretty good on Banister:

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1421#relPageId=89

Schweiker: All right. To your knowledge, was Banister doing any CIA work? You said he was doing Cuban work. Might he have been doing CIA work?

DeBrueys: Well, it seems to me he got involved with Cubans in one way or another. I'm not so sure what it was at this time, and certainly he was the kind of individual who would have been interested in States Rights. Maybe he had something to do with the State Sovereignty Committee. It seems to me that he had a job with the Louisiana State Sovereignty Committee, being the type that would be States Rights and anti-Communism would, say, find an affinity with anti-Castro groups, anti-Castro groups and anti-Communism.

DeBrueys never answered the question. I also found a few undated CIA records on Banister that are not online, including a few that were released after the ARRB, so that could be where the 1960 security approval is discussed. If anyone has or has seen any of these records let me know:

104-10109-10306 Banister, Guy

104-10109-10360 Enclosure 3 on Guy Banister

104-10170-10419  Guy Banister Associates, Inc. 

104-10115-10393  Banister, Guy

104-10195-10301  Memo: Guy Banister

104-10195-10365  Guy Banister

104-10109-10368  Guy Banister Associates, Inc. 

 

Edited September 1, 2022 by Tom Gram

[James DiEugenio]

No he did not.

Warren was a slippery guy who I think had a lot to hide.  He was an all out idolator of Hoover.

[Gerry Down]

On 8/14/2022 at 2:48 PM, Larry Hancock said:

By statute the CIA is allowed to collect information on foreigners inside the United States who may be acting against CIA personnel or activities,  if that means observing them meeting with or in contact with US citizens that would simply be part of the collections - after all foreigners engaged in real spying would most likely be in contact with Americans or somehow penetrating US companies, agencies, etc.  Of course it is also expected that once a real spy or agent would be identified CIA would bring the FBI into the picture and potentially hand it off to them, we do have examples of that ala "Tumbleweed".

The best way to really dig into what is and is not allowed this is to read the National Security Acts of 1947 and that of 1948 on the CIA itself and then read the Title 50 code on clandestine operations.  I deal with that at in some detail in Shadow Warfare.

 

Take a situation where Oswald was operating as a CIA agent in a fake defection to  Russia.

When Lee came back, he brought a foreign citizen Marina with him. Marina could potentially have been trying to recruit Lee to be a KGB agent. Would such a situation make it legal for the CIA to spy on Lee and Marina inside the U.S., Marina being a foreigner?

I'm guessing it would not. The CIA would have to inform the FBI of their suspicions of Marina. These were suspicions the FBI already had because they put her on the SOBIR program. As a result, i'm assuming there would have been no way for the CIA to legally spy on Lee and Marina when they returned to the U.S. even if Lee had been a CIA agent working as a fake defector in Russia. 

[Larry Hancock]

Legally and operationally the CIA would turn over any actual, known Russian agents they identified overseas to the FBI to handle if they moved into the US - you can check that out by looking at the Tumbleweed saga.  Its also one reason there was a connection between the FBI and CIA counter intelligence (FBI files list Angleton as a "source"). 

And certainly the FBI was investigating Marina as a possible agent or Russian asset (per Hosty and related files).  However CIA Domestic Operations also had a brief and the right to collect information on US citizens identified as being in contact with suspected foreign agents (or sources or assets) while overseas. 

All of which is why we see the FBI directly investigating both Marina and Lee on their return to Dallas and also why we see CIA Domestic Agent Moore involved in collecting information on the couple within the Russian community in Fort Worth/Dallas.

Per FBI memos the reason Lee and Marina did not get even more attention is that other FBI sources in the area reported that they were having no contact at all with known Communists or Communist sympathizers - only the conservative, anti-Communist social network.

 

[Joe Bauer]

4 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

All of which is why we see the FBI directly investigating both Marina and Lee on their return to Dallas and also why we see CIA Domestic Agent Moore involved in collecting information on the couple within the Russian community in Fort Worth/Dallas.

And Moore has George DeMohrenchildts befriending Lee to know more?

 

[Gerry Down]

21 minutes ago, Larry Hancock said:

Legally and operationally the CIA would turn over any actual, known Russian agents they identified overseas to the FBI to handle if they moved into the US - you can check that out by looking at the Tumbleweed saga.  Its also one reason there was a connection between the FBI and CIA counter intelligence (FBI files list Angleton as a "source"). 

And certainly the FBI was investigating Marina as a possible agent or Russian asset (per Hosty and related files).  However CIA Domestic Operations also had a brief and the right to collect information on US citizens identified as being in contact with suspected foreign agents (or sources or assets) while overseas. 

All of which is why we see the FBI directly investigating both Marina and Lee on their return to Dallas and also why we see CIA Domestic Agent Moore involved in collecting information on the couple within the Russian community in Fort Worth/Dallas.

Per FBI memos the reason Lee and Marina did not get even more attention is that other FBI sources in the area reported that they were having no contact at all with known Communists or Communist sympathizers - only the conservative, anti-Communist social network.

 

Are you saying that if Moore was getting say Ruth Paine and George de Mohrenschildt to spy on Oswald and Marina, the CIA were within their right to do that? Or should they have left this solely up to the FBI?

I don't understand why both the FBI and CIA would be doing the same job at the same time - spying on Oswald and his wife.