On the Trail of the Assassins: One Man's Quest to Solve the Murder of President Kennedy

[Tom Gram]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

That amount of money does not seem to me to make that significant.

Especially in those early days.  I am pretty sure that this is from the Rosemary James expose article.

I thought it was the James article too - I actually wrote that in my original comment but I pulled it up last night and didn’t see it so I wasn’t sure. It might’ve just been a copy with a missing page, or I just missed it. 

I agree it doesn’t seem like a ton of money, but that’s still equivalent to ~$1000 today, so Garrison did use them for something. Supplementing NODA personnel to keep a continuous eye on Ferrie seems to fit given the timing and SRC’s area of expertise, but I don’t think there’s any way to confirm that.

My suspicions about SRC are not tied to their possible role in assisting Garrison, though. I listed most of my top reasons above, mainly related to subverting Garrison’s investigation for Shaw’s attorneys while having plausible connections to the USG, plus the weird ‘coincidence’ from ‘63. 

Another one would be the GB&A CIA security investigation for cover purposes in late 1960 when Banister’s firm was rejected for derogatory information. Oster’s name came up during the investigation, and details were given on SRC’s size, business ops, etc., in the resulting report to the OS. No negative information was developed - then Jim O’Connell of mob/Castro plots fame suddenly provides an unnamed “alternate detective company” for the CIA to use for cover in New Orleans…

It should be noted that CIA denied any relationship with SRC to the HSCA, so this is just another strange coincidence. As far as I know, the name of the “alternate detective company” the CIA was using in New Orleans has never been released. 

I know Jack Martin isn’t exactly captain credible as a sole source, but this is a pretty interesting article he wrote on SRC for the Houstonian in ‘68: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=103865#relPageId=102

He correctly notes that the top guys, including “Clay Shaw’s personal investigator” Charles Carson, whom Martin doesn’t name, all ended up working for the LA state labor rackets commission, plus some other interesting tidbits.