Who was Pierre Laffite?

[Ron Bulman]

The December 19, 1969, Time Magazine article "The Gourmet Pirate", about Lafitte's arrest.

 Nation: The Gourmet Pirate - TIME

[Leslie Sharp]

On 1/18/2024 at 9:30 AM, Michael Griffith said:

I just hope that a new book is written about the Lafitte datebook, one that is not laced with egregious tar-brush attacks on conservative political figures and their supporters. 

Any US historian rufusing to acknowledge the trajectory of shared ideologies — from the 1930s America First Committee to the 1960s John Birch Society to the Pat Buchanan revival of America First in the 1990s to the Tea Party at the turn of the century to Trump's MAGA in 2016 . . .  and full circle to the Trump/Miller/Bannon/Stone/Flynn America First movement in play — is intellectually   dishonest imv. 

From Coup in Dallas, based on the private records of Pierre Lafitte: 

. . . Dulles would throw himself into the job, becoming the Commissioner who attended the highest percentage of WC sessions. Dulles began preparation for the establishment slant that he would bring to the Commission quickly. A December 2 phone contact shows Dulles requesting multiple copies of Isaac Don Levine’s The Mind of an Assassin, Levine’s study of the Kremlin-dispatched murderer of Leon Trotsky. Readers will remember from the epilogue of this book, the datebook entry penned by Pierre Lafitte on November 28, 1963:

                                                 “Levine will deal with Marina…”

December 5, 1963 is a date that resonates historically, both on the surface, and in the back-story provided by the datebook of Pierre Lafitte. The first meeting of the Warren Commission was held, on a day in which Dulles spoke with DDP Richard Helms, and Lafitte recorded the essence of a personal conversation with CIA Counterintelligence head James Angleton in a datebook entry: “JA (Close out Lancelot), with a reference to “T” as well. . . .

 

This fellow Levine is in contact with Marina to break the story up in a little more graphic manner and tie it into a Russian business, and it is with the thought and background of a Russian connection, conspiracy concept. —John J. McCloy, Warren Commission Jan 21, 1964 

 

After much deliberation over the significance of Isaac Don Levine having closed out the assassination project manager’s 1963 datebook, Albarelli determined that, logically, Levine would also close out the investigation. Levine’s anti-communist dogma which would permeate his life’s work took shape prior to America’s entry into WWII, and thus serves as the symbolic bookend to the foundational chapters of this book. His writings, and in particular his networking—from the sensational Alger Hiss spy case, to the associations he developed during the reign of Senator Joseph McCarthy, and the services he provided the CIA—gave us a keener grasp of why Levine was selected by Warren Commission members Allen Dulles and John McCloy to influence the propaganda surrounding Lee Oswald as a “Commie Lone Nut.” It is the political history of Levine and that of a young Manhattan attorney named Roy Marcus Cohn—Joe McCarthy’s lead counsel who serves as our foothold on contemporary US politics—that captures the decades-long repercussions of the assassination of President Kennedy and the Coup in Dallas. . . . 

 

So How Does It All Come Together?

Roy Marcus Cohn, identified as one of the most powerful attorneys in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s stable during the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and the ensuing Army-McCarthy hearings—and Robert Morris of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee who would later become a senior executive of the John Birch Society—each epitomized the philosophical argument that the only bulwark against the scourge of the earth, communism, was unregulated capitalism functioning in league with a fully sympathetic and compliant government apparatus, the generally accepted definition of fascism.

In the early 1950s, Cohn had caught the eye of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover who soon recommended the twenty-four-year-old attorney to his personal friend, Joe McCarthy, to fill the role of his chief counsel. For assistant counsel, McCarthy fulfilled another request, that of his good friend Joseph P. Kennedy who was looking for a spot for his young and restless son, Robert F. Kennedy. McCarthy designated RFK as assistant counsel to his committee, working alongside Hoover’s professional protégé, Roy Cohn. . . .

 

note: Roy Cohen's indictment was the purpose of a lunch meeting between AG Robert Kennedy and SDNY DA Morgenthau when Bobby received the call from Cohn's mentor FBI Dir. Hoover  that his brother had been gunned down in broad daylight in Dallas. To suggest the Trump presidency is removed from events in 1963 is either ignorant of history or deliberate obfuscation.

Jan 12, 2024

'This to Him Is the Grand Finale': Donald Trump's 50-Year Mission to Discredit the Justice System

The former president is in unparalleled legal peril, but he has mastered the ability to grind down the legal system to his advantage. It’s already changing our democracy.

(Michael Kruse, Senior staff writer POLITICO)
' . . . Starting in 1973 [only a decade following the assassination of Kennedy], when the federal government sued him and his father for racist rental practices in the apartments they owned, Trump learned from the notorious Roy Cohn, then searched for another Roy Cohn — then finally became his own Roy Cohn. He’s exploited as loopholes the legal system’s bedrock tenets, eyeing its very integrity as simultaneously its intrinsic vulnerability — the near sacrosanct honoring of the rights of the defendant, the deliberation that due process demands, the constant constitutional balancing act that relies on shared good faith as much as fixed, written rules. He has routinely turned what’s obviously peril into what’s effectively fuel, taking long rosters of losses and willing them into something like wins — if not in a court of law, then in that of public opinion. It has worked, and it continues to work. Trump, after all, was at one of his weakest points politically until the first of his four arraignments last spring. Ever since, his legal jeopardy and his political viability have done little but go up, together. Deny, delay and attack, always play the victim, never stop undermining the system: Trump has taken the Cohn playbook to reaches not even Cohn could have foreseen — fusing his legal efforts with his business interests, lawyers as important to him as loan officers, and now he’s done the same with politics. He’s not fighting the system, it seems sometimes, so much as he’s using it. He’s fundraising off of it. He’s consolidating support because of it. . . . '

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/12/donald-trump-indictments-legal-system-00135151?fbclid=IwAR0qKptBOw0-AYWuT-TkmQV_XUmEiKXXjiiSGzVdoJongVTy9G3hy9HqQF8

 

 

Edited January 20 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

The only known photo of Laffite, a mug shot from 1948 (?), in disguise which he was reputedly a master of, or as Hank Albarelli thought, possibly altered?  *

 . . . But one of the most extraordinary associations in the annals of crime is the carefully guarded relationship between the federal government and one of the most amazing underworld figures of the age." — Bob Considine, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, April 24, 1955

[Leslie Sharp]

 

endnote, Coup in Dallas . . . . The one publicly available photo [prior to 1969]  of Pierre Lafitte appeared in a 1955 syndicated newspaper article written by well-known journalist Bob Considine. The Considine article was circulated widely, and its prominence at the time may have exempted it from Helm’s directive. Instead, per the author’s recollection of having seen family photos of Lafitte taken around this time period, the photo appears to have been altered.

[Ron Bulman]

On 1/9/2024 at 11:04 PM, Ron Bulman said:

Talking to his new reporter Ed Reid, of NYC, who knew George White and Pierre, Reid recommended Laffite to entrap Jones.  Laffite later said George and Reid didn't know where he was and Maheu connected them as he was on assignment for Maheu.

So, Pierre knew Maheu and did work for him.  I read something earlier today about Al Ulmer working for the CIA, for/with/at the same time Maheu did.  Interesting.  Pierre would have been working on projects for them at that time.  Thus, he would have known both at the time of the JFKA.  FWIW.

[Leslie Sharp]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

So, Pierre knew Maheu and did work for him.  I read something earlier today about Al Ulmer working for the CIA, for/with/at the same time Maheu did.  Interesting.  Pierre would have been working on projects for them at that time.  Thus, he would have known both at the time of the JFKA.  FWIW.

Ulmer only retired, nominally?, in 1962 or early 1963 to go to work for Niarchos in London.  He was first posted in Athens station, maybe at the end of the war. If I recall correctly, the timing coincided with Joannides' recruitment.  

A "Hughes' is mentioned in Lafitte records from the early 1960s, but Hank was convinced the reference is to Paul Hughes pilot mercenary not Howard.

Of interest — but deep into the weeds — is Maheu's history with FBI Scotty McLeod who ended up as Ike's Ambassador to Ireland, preceding Kennedy's buddy Grant Stockade who was business partners with, among others, George Smathers and Bobby Baker. Writing stream of consciousness, I believe Meltzer (in a business venture with Lafitte) and Yazbek figure in this milieu. 

It would have been McLeod who was in a position to influence the Irish residence visas being sought by Otto and Ilse.  Stockdale would take up his post in Dublin and even entertain the Skorzenys in Phoenix Park before he was recalled by JFK. He was replaced by another Kennedy funder who was heavily invested in Harco, the Haiti project with Texas Oilman Clint Murchison.  Harco had significant overlap with Smathers' et al ServU Corp.

Aside from Smathers' role in landing Judyth Baker in New Orleans in time to meet LHO, Bobby Baker was running the operation to implicate JFK with East German femme fatale Ella Rometsch. Lafitte details that op. 

Edited January 23 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

11 minutes ago, Leslie Sharp said:

Baker was running the operation to implicate JFK with femme fatale Ella Rometsch. Lafitte details that op. 

I've never read of that, that I remember, is it in ATM or CID?  

Could the Hughes be Allan Hughes, electronics expert involved in the Greenspun story and Cuba on loan to the CIA from ?

[Leslie Sharp]

17 minutes ago, Ron Bulman said:

I've never read of that, that I remember, is it in ATM or CID?  

Could the Hughes be Allan Hughes, electronics expert involved in the Greenspun story and Cuba on loan to the CIA from ?

Indeed, and yes, another "Hughes" — Allan in context of his pharma front —does surface in PL financial records.  

This particular Hughes entry though, in context of the surrounding days, fits with the whole Nicaragua op and history with William Morgan, John Wilson-Hudson, and the Chinese embassy gig guys whose names I forget.

If you mean the Ella op, it fills a chapter in Coup.  I think Scotty McLeod ended up on the cutting room floor; saved for paperback or sequel.

Edited January 23 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

I started this thread in part to get out there so to speak, expose, what I'd read.  Also to gather the different reports and statements in one place for my own better understanding and that of others.  There is yet more on Laffite.

It seems Hank Albarelli discovered Pierre in the papers, documents, letters, notes, and yes diaries/"datebook(s)" of George Hunter White.  I think now safely (?) secured in Northern California.  For further future research.

Through further research he was able to contact Pierre's widow and daughter.  Subsequentially he was made aware of and later allowed to examine the datebook.  Eventually in greater detail. 

[Leslie Sharp]

2 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I started this thread in part to get out there so to speak, expose, what I'd read.  Also to gather the different reports and statements in one place for my own better understanding and that of others.  There is yet more on Laffite.

It seems Hank Albarelli discovered Pierre in the papers, documents, letters, notes, and yes diaries/"datebook(s)" of George Hunter White.  I think now safely (?) secured in Northern California.  For further future research.

Through further research he was able to contact Pierre's widow and daughter.  Subsequentially he was made aware of and later allowed to examine the datebook.  Eventually in greater detail. 

You've provided a tight summary of what was Hank's long road to Lafitte and his subsequent investigation. 

I would add that Pierre was in the wider press as early as 1969 — IN New Orleans no less at the precise time Garrison was pursuing Clay Shaw. It is reasonable to suspect Lafitte was summoned back.

Prior to the Bob Considine article in 1977, Lafitte had made it into a few syndicated columns covering his testimony in trials and his own arrest.  Dorothy Kilgallen mentioned his having won an Upstate NY art award. Serendipitously I came across one article in the Lubbock (Tx)Avalanche - Journal in the early '60s. I've laterally wondered if my parents who followed national news voraciously came across the name Pierre Lafitte.

How did so many JFK researchers miss the coincidence that the popular chef of the Plimsoll Club in the new International Trade Mart who had been summarily remanded into federal custody to return to Boston to face charges had been a long-time friend of journalist James Phelan who loomed large during the Garrison investigation?  Anyone looking into Phelan would walk headlong into his writing collaborations with Lafitte and the sensational series published in True magazine. Phelan had even been in New Orleans in '63, researching a piece on the new DA Garrison; that coincidence alone should have piqued interest since the True series had hit the stands not that long before and Pierre was then living in Gretna hiding in plain sight.

I recently spoke with Joan Mellen who insists that because she and those dedicated to Jim Garrison had never heard of Pierre Lafitte, he was either a fictional character or of little significance (paraphrasing). With respect — and I admire Mellen's body of work — he was neither.
 

Edited January 29 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

"In all actuality, (George Hunter) White had known Laffite since at least 1948, after the narcotics agent had traveled to Marseilles from Istanbul to meet with American vice consul Bill Camp about the burgeoning number of heroin processing laboratories sprouting up in the port city. Also attending the meeting with Camp was French Narcotics Squad Inspector Edmund Bailleu . . . "They took him to . . . a small cafe . . . where the three men met with confidential informer Laffite to discuss the Surete's  efforts to apprehend Dominique Albertini, an underling to Corsican drug kin-pin Paul Mondolini. 

White and Laffite hit it off in grand style, spending hours together, drinking and discussing Laffite's strong interest in returning to New York City to open a restaurant there."  Pg. 419, ATM.

[Ron Bulman]

I find it very interesting CIA Technical Services Director, head of MKULTRA Sidney Gottlieb and Pierre Laffite were both in the Congo immediately before the assassination of Lumumba, the latter possibly until it (?).  It seems likely pursuing such from different tact's.

Gottlieb's trip and lead up to it is detailed in Stephen Kinzer's Poisoner In Chief, pgs. 175-180.  To summarize.  On August 18, 1960, Dulles visited Eisenhower, who said Lumumba should be eliminated.  Gottlieb decided on botulinum (e.g. botulism, from improperly canned food).  He developed a concentrated version that would kill in a few hours, along with a delivery system (a very fine needle, gloves, mask).  He then personally delivered it to the CIA station chief in the Congo.  And instructed him on the use of it, so the chief could instruct an agent who reputedly had contact with Lumumba could be taught to.  This effort failed.  There is much more detail to this in the book, which is documented.

From A Terrible Mistake by Hank Albarelli, pgs. 430-432.  "Said James Phelan of Laffite, he used dozens of different names - and occupations . . .  Years later he sent me a birthday card from the Belgium Congo - where he was engaged in God knows what. . . .  Phelan's Belgian Congo line was a crafty citation.  What the investigative reporter did not mention was that Laffite was in the Congo at the very same time the CIA had slated Patrice Lumumba for assassination, a fact that surely di not escape Phelan's notice.  Was Laffite the never-identified CIA assassin WI?ROUGE?  It appears that he could have been, or at the very least, that he was quite close to QJ/WIN and QJ/Rouge.  . . .  When James Phelan revealed that Laffite had spent time in the Belgian Congo nobody seemed to notice that it had been at the same time that Patrice Lumumba was killed."

A 1957 song about the Congo, by a man I've met.

 

[Leslie Sharp]

17 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

I find it very interesting CIA Technical Services Director, head of MKULTRA Sidney Gottlieb and Pierre Laffite were both in the Congo immediately before the assassination of Lumumba, the latter possibly until it (?).  It seems likely pursuing such from different tact's.

Gottlieb's trip and lead up to it is detailed in Stephen Kinzer's Poisoner In Chief, pgs. 175-180.  To summarize.  On August 18, 1960, Dulles visited Eisenhower, who said Lumumba should be eliminated.  Gottlieb decided on botulinum (e.g. botulism, from improperly canned food).  He developed a concentrated version that would kill in a few hours, along with a delivery system (a very fine needle, gloves, mask).  He then personally delivered it to the CIA station chief in the Congo.  And instructed him on the use of it, so the chief could instruct an agent who reputedly had contact with Lumumba could be taught to.  This effort failed.  There is much more detail to this in the book, which is documented.

From A Terrible Mistake by Hank Albarelli, pgs. 430-432.  "Said James Phelan of Laffite, he used dozens of different names - and occupations . . .  Years later he sent me a birthday card from the Belgium Congo - where he was engaged in God knows what. . . .  Phelan's Belgian Congo line was a crafty citation.  What the investigative reporter did not mention was that Laffite was in the Congo at the very same time the CIA had slated Patrice Lumumba for assassination, a fact that surely di not escape Phelan's notice.  Was Laffite the never-identified CIA assassin WI?ROUGE?  It appears that he could have been, or at the very least, that he was quite close to QJ/WIN and QJ/Rouge.  . . .  When James Phelan revealed that Laffite had spent time in the Belgian Congo nobody seemed to notice that it had been at the same time that Patrice Lumumba was killed."

A 1957 song about the Congo, by a man I've met.

 

On May 9, Lafitte notes, Souetre and David[s] in April here, and then asks, Shaw where? Later, on September 17, Lafitte asks, Willoughby – Shaw?

Investigative journalist James Phelan's friendship with Pierre was under discussion today while reviewing an index of files of the office of District Attorney James Garrison. (see relevant entries below)

What strikes me as more than curious, according to this Phelan was in and out of New Orleans as early as May 1967; his friend Lafitte had returned to New Orleans to open the Plimsoll Club in the new ITM building by mid-late autumn of '67.  If Phelan was working on Garrison's case, is it reasonable to assume he was aware that his friend Pierre, a.k.a. Jean Martin was back in town? 

A related question that plagued us: how could Jim Garrison have avoided meeting sous chef Jean Martin [Pierre Lafitte] in the early 1960s? In 1963, Garrison was the subject of Phelan's coverage of the feisty new DA who planned to clean up the seedier side of the French Quarter.  Is it reasonable Phelan didn't catch up with Pierre, his friend and writing partner since the Greenspun / Las Vegas caper while working on that story or that Garrison would have been intrigued by Phelan's inside scoop on that sting and want to meet "Louis Tabet"?

Fast forward to 1967, in spite of the controversy over the [alleged] Phelan-Lafitte break-in of Garrison's office — a claim that is still vigorously challenged by at least one Phelan family member — it is reasonable to ask whether Lafitte was brought back to New Orleans in concert with the launch of Garrison's investigation to serve some purpose other than his culinary skills.   Is it possible Garrison and those with more discretionary income during their intense investigation even dined at the newly opened Plimsoll?

The coincidence of Pierre's arrival back in New Orleans as the Shaw case took shape bookends with the coincidence he was spirited out of town by Federal authorities at the end of 1969 only to disappear into the ethers; the timing is more than curious to many of us familiar with Lafitte's role in the assassination. 

 

INDEX OF FILES ‑‑ OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY, NEW ORLEANS

FILE DRAWER 11

3.

__ 5/25/67 Phelan.

Contents

Contains envelopes ‑ bulky materials, primarily tape recordings

5/28/67 4th interview between Perry Russo and James Phelan

James Phelan and Mark Lane

Contents:

1. l tape marked "Phelan Original"

2. Transcript of 4th interview between Russo and Phelan 6 pages. Reviewed ‑ General Conversation

Tape in box ‑ "4th interview between Perry and Phelan"

2nd interview between P. Russo and J.

 

2.

 

5/24/67

Tape in box ‑ "2nd interview between

Perry and Phelan"

Transcript Russo expressing concern about job at Equitable; doesn't want to hurt anybody. Phelan recommending Russo retain a lawyer.

1st interview between Perry Russon and

James Phelan

Tape and transcript (approximately 30

pages)

Transcript re: Shaw, Moffett, Ferrie

5/27/67 3rd interview between Perry Russo

and

James Phelan

Tape and transcript

Transcript ‑ 7 pages, RE: parafin test, Warren report, misc.

Tape ‑"Nothing of importance" noted on box containing tape

Perry Russo and Washington Post #5

(Person conducting interview not identified)

Tape and transcript 11 pages , RE: Ferrie &associates; Shaw

Edited February 3 by Leslie Sharp

[Ron Bulman]

I'd read about Laffite, Phelan and ? burglarizing Garrison's office for files in the Clay Shaw/Bertrand trial.  But I'd never thought about Garrison possibly dining on Pierre's tasty delights at Shaw's New Orleans Trade Mart's Plimsol Club.  Complimented on by Ladybird Johnson.

New Orleans brought this song to mind, though I've never been there.

 https://youtu.be/agmXzGnR3LA  

[Ron Bulman]

On 2/2/2024 at 11:51 PM, Leslie Sharp said:

In 1963, Garrison was the subject of Phelan's coverage of the feisty new DA who planned to clean up the seedier side of the French Quarter.  Is it reasonable Phelan didn't catch up with Pierre, his friend and writing partner since the Greenspun / Las Vegas caper while working on that story or that Garrison would have been intrigued by Phelan's inside scoop on that sting and want to meet "Louis Tabet"?

I think it is interesting in 1963 Phelan wrote a favorable article on Garrison's cleaning up the seamier side of the French Quarter then coming back during the Shaw trial to pillory him.