John Simkin Posted July 10, 2006 Share Posted July 10, 2006 This passage appears in John H. Davis' The Kennedy Contract: The Mafia Plot to Assassinate the President (1993): In June 1992, I was a guest on a live, syndicated television special produced by George Paige Associates in Los Angeles entitled "The Kennedy Assassinations-Coincidence or Conspiracy?" which was principally concerned with the allegation of Frank Ragano that Hoffa, Trafficante, and Marcello had conspired to assassinate President Kennedy. Other guests on the show were Frank Ragano, Dan Moldea, author of The Hoffa Wars, Philip Melanson, author of books on Lee Harvey Oswald and the Robert Kennedy assassination case, James Spada, author of Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept the Secrets, and Victor Marchetti, author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. When at the end of the two hour show the guests were asked by the host what the ultimate purpose of the Garrison investigation was, the vote was unanimous: to protect Carlos Marcello from being named a suspect in the Kennedy assassination. What do members think of this theory? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
J. Raymond Carroll Posted July 10, 2006 Share Posted July 10, 2006 This passage appears in John H. Davis' The Kennedy Contract: The Mafia Plot to Assassinate the President (1993): Other guests on the show were Frank Ragano, Dan Moldea, author of The Hoffa Wars, Philip Melanson, author of books on Lee Harvey Oswald and the Robert Kennedy assassination case, James Spada, author of Peter Lawford: The Man Who Kept the Secrets, and Victor Marchetti, author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. When at the end of the two hour show the guests were asked by the host what the ultimate purpose of the Garrison investigation was, the vote was unanimous: to protect Carlos Marcello from being named a suspect in the Kennedy assassination.[/color] What do members think of this theory? I am not a Garrison admirer, but it strikes me that, if Garrison wanted to keep attention away from Marcello, the last thing he would have done is draw attention to New Orleans, which had heretofore been largely ignored by Warren Commission critics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dawn Meredith Posted July 10, 2006 Share Posted July 10, 2006 TOTAL BULL****!!!!!! Read Joan Mellen's excellent book A Farewell to Justice, Potomac Books 2005 for an 'case-closed' death blow to those kinds of dis-information, continue-the-cover-up claims. This is from the same dark forces that penetrated and twarted Garrison's investigation and trial. All complex, but laid-out clearly and convincingly and with paragraph by paragraph references to all in Mellen's book. Too complex to really do justice to here in a post. Garrison was on to the right persons. Even with all the infiltrators in his staff, dirty tricks, lies and more done to him he kept on a self-correcting course toward the right persons involved and who was behind them - the CIA [to say it in shorthand] and those the CIA works for and with. Garrison was NOT involved with nor did he protect the Mafia nor any in it. That lie was invented to stop his persuit of the truth...the thing the CIA and those they work for fear the most and constantly invent counters to. I agree. Read also Destiny Betrayed -Jim DiEugenio, and Let Justice Be Done- Bill Davy. (I received an eamil from Owen last nite informing me that Bill Davy has just loined the forum. GREAT!!) Dawn Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Simkin Posted July 10, 2006 Author Share Posted July 10, 2006 John H. Davis, Frank Ragano, Dan Moldea, Philip Melanson, James Spada and Victor Marchetti are clearly wrong in their assessment of Jim Garrison. As J. Raymond Carroll rightly points out: “if Garrison wanted to keep attention away from Marcello, the last thing he would have done is draw attention to New Orleans, which had heretofore been largely ignored by Warren Commission critics”. These writers have got it the wrong way round. The role of people like Richard Billings, Bernardo de Torres, Gerry Hemming, Thomas Bethall, etc. was to direct Garrison away from the CIA towards Marcello and the Mafia. Garrison refused and so every effort was made to discredit him. This included a very successful campaign to persuade the public that Garrison was in the pay of Marcello. Garrison real problem was that he did not realize that after the CIA failure to get him to accept the Marcello story, their next strategy was to direct him towards Clay Shaw. Cleverly, they did use someone with links to the CIA. Garrison took the bait and as a result he was finally discredited by his poor case against him. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Simkin Posted July 11, 2006 Author Share Posted July 11, 2006 Read Mellen's book. I have. I was not impressed. I thought it was ironic that Joan's investigation was infiltrated by Gerry Hemming. Why? To take her to Angelo Murgado. That says it all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Simkin Posted September 30, 2009 Author Share Posted September 30, 2009 There are some good YouTube videos on Jim Garrison. I have linked them to my page on Garrison: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKgarrison.htm I would recommend the following: Jim Garrison Response (in 3 parts) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS0p3tyZUlQ Jim Garrison Story (in 3 parts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7gQ4wy_ShE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Howard Posted October 3, 2009 Share Posted October 3, 2009 (edited) There are some good YouTube videos on Jim Garrison. I have linked them to my page on Garrison:http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKgarrison.htm I would recommend the following: Jim Garrison Response (in 3 parts) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WS0p3tyZUlQ Jim Garrison Story (in 3 parts): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7gQ4wy_ShE I am past the point of engaging in semantics about Jim Garrison. On the other hand, Peter Lemkin hit the nail on the head re the "mob did it," crowd mentioned earlier. The whole idea of my posting on the Forum, has become anachronistic, as apparently if one hasn't a curriculum vitae that includes a major book or article, one is just another idiot with an opinion. Although those sentiments are not mine. I have always maintained a policy of sacrificing my time to transcribe pertinent documents, present leads and the results have been what I would call dismal, which is why I have 2 posts on the Forum in the last thirty day's. Whining is for those who cannot deal with reality, and even though the Forum does not seem to be what it used to be, I will at least contribute "new information." The original depiction of events as described by Jim Garrison continues to be even more valid that ever. Why, or, to be more accurate how can this be "proved?" In a sense one would have to be a historian to explain.... Suffice to say the following.......Oswald's intelligence connections have been proven, his relationship with Bannister is a fact, Bannister was connected to ONI, whether he was a "member" of ONI or not is academic his connections to ONI are proven by virtue of the fact that he knew Guy Johnson. Guy Johnson see cryptonym OCKADIAK, and Jack Martin aka Stuart Suggs are in the same world, the much maligned movie JFK was not inaccurate in depicting Bannister pistol whipping Jack Martin on November 22, 1963. Dean Andrews was involved in a potential arrangement to see that Oswald was provided "legal representation," until that became academic. The name Martin pops up in all sorts of places, there is more to that story that can be fit into a single forum post. The subtitle to the Kennedy Assassination could be said to be "the devils in the details," I would imagine the current insanity regarding our President being depicted as a "Marxist," is not unlike the treatment President Kennedy received in the last days of his administration, the only difference id that instead of Billy James Hargis we have Rush Limbaugh...... It is also interesting that the very first suspect in the Kennedy Assassination was Jack W Martin of Goldonna, Louisana, who may or may not have been connected to the same netherworld of "religious groups and Minuteman types" that are the subject of Peter Levenda's writings. There is also a new name to throw into the mix, someone named William Quitman Wolfson and in a purely speculative mode it would be interesting to speculate if the British born Wolfson Foundation circa 1955 rates as much attention as the other foundations which were of such interest in 1967....... There is a Bob Dylan song entitled "Your Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone." I would find it ironic if I quit posting on the forum, and no one even noticed, which pretty much appears to be what is happening..... Edited October 3, 2009 by Robert Howard Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Terry Mauro Posted October 3, 2009 Share Posted October 3, 2009 (edited) John H. Davis, Frank Ragano, Dan Moldea, Philip Melanson, James Spada and Victor Marchetti are clearly wrong in their assessment of Jim Garrison. As J. Raymond Carroll rightly points out: “if Garrison wanted to keep attention away from Marcello, the last thing he would have done is draw attention to New Orleans, which had heretofore been largely ignored by Warren Commission critics”. These writers have got it the wrong way round. The role of people like Richard Billings, Bernardo de Torres, Gerry Hemming, Thomas Bethall, etc. was to direct Garrison away from the CIA towards Marcello and the Mafia. Garrison refused and so every effort was made to discredit him. This included a very successful campaign to persuade the public that Garrison was in the pay of Marcello. Garrison real problem was that he did not realize that after the CIA failure to get him to accept the Marcello story, their next strategy was to direct him towards Clay Shaw. Cleverly, they did use someone with links to the CIA. Garrison took the bait and as a result he was finally discredited by his poor case against him. Clay Shaw was a director of Permindex. This was the organization headed by British SOE Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. This was also the organization identified by French Intelligence in 1967 as being responsible for the assassination attempts against Charles DeGaulle in the early 1960's. Permindex was also linked to the murder of Italian industrialist Enrico Mattei. Garrison was right on target identifying Clay Shaw as being part of the conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy. The problem with his investigation came with interlopers like Lord Bertrand Russell (who despised President Kennedy) who got inside his investigation, as well as the dirty tricks carried out by former Kennedy Justice Department operative Walter Sheridan. Edited October 3, 2009 by Terry Mauro Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bernice Moore Posted October 3, 2009 Share Posted October 3, 2009 (edited) John H. Davis, Frank Ragano, Dan Moldea, Philip Melanson, James Spada and Victor Marchetti are clearly wrong in their assessment of Jim Garrison. As J. Raymond Carroll rightly points out: “if Garrison wanted to keep attention away from Marcello, the last thing he would have done is draw attention to New Orleans, which had heretofore been largely ignored by Warren Commission critics”. These writers have got it the wrong way round. The role of people like Richard Billings, Bernardo de Torres, Gerry Hemming, Thomas Bethall, etc. was to direct Garrison away from the CIA towards Marcello and the Mafia. Garrison refused and so every effort was made to discredit him. This included a very successful campaign to persuade the public that Garrison was in the pay of Marcello. Garrison real problem was that he did not realize that after the CIA failure to get him to accept the Marcello story, their next strategy was to direct him towards Clay Shaw. Cleverly, they did use someone with links to the CIA. Garrison took the bait and as a result he was finally discredited by his poor case against him. Clay Shaw was a director of Permindex. This was the organization headed by British SOE Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. This was also the organization identified by French Intelligence in 1967 as being responsible for the assassination attempts against Charles DeGaulle in the early 1960's. Permindex was also linked to the murder of Italian industrialist Enrico Mattei. Garrison was right on target identifying Clay Shaw as being part of the conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy. The problem with his investigation came with interlopers like Lord Bertrand Russell (who despised President Kennedy) who got inside his investigation, as well as the dirty tricks carried out by former Kennedy Justice Department operative Walter Sheridan. ROBERT I FOR ONE WOULD CERTAINLY MISS YOUR VALUABLE POSTED INFORMATION...B... NBC The National Broadcasting Company became an active participant in the government's efforts to protect Clay Shaw and to ruin Jim Garrison. Two of NBC's high-level management people, Richard Townley of NBC's affiliate in New Orleans, WDSU, and Walter Sheridan, executive producer, became personally and directly involved in the Shaw trial. They were indicted by a grand jury in New Orleans for bribing witnesses, suppressing evidence and interfering with trial proceedings. NBC top-level management backed Sheridan and Townley. NBC produced a highly biased, provably dishonest program personally attacking Garrison and defending Shaw prior to the trial. Frank McGee, who acted as moderator, later had to publicly apologize for lies told on the program by two "witnesses" whom NBC paid to give statements against Garrison. The FCC ruled that NBC had to give Garrison equal time because the program was not a news program but a vendetta by NBC against Garrison. NBC did give Garrison 30 minutes (compared to their one-hour attack) to respond at a later date. Sheridan was the producer of the one-hour show. With Sheridan and Townley so deeply involved, and with such an extremely strong editorial position favoring the Justice Department, the Warren Commission, and the lone assassin stance, suspicions were raised about NBC's and RCA's independence.[7] At one point in 1967 the president of NBC, according to Walter Sheridan, helped in the bribery efforts by calling Mr. Gherlock, head of Equitable Life Insurance Company's New York office, and asked for assurance that Perry Russo, who worked for Equitable, would cooperate with NBC. NBC is also the owner of several important pieces of photographic evidence. A TV film taken by NBC photographer David Weigman was suppressed by NBC and not made available to researchers. It shows the grassy knoll in the background just a fraction of a minute after the shots. Some of the assassination participants can be seen on the knoll. Fortunately for researchers, NBC sold the Weigman film to the other networks and to the news film agencies before realizing its importance. The author was able to purchase a copy from Hearst Metrotone News. NBC's affiliate, WBAP in Fort Worth, has several important film sequences. James Darnell took several sequences on the grassy knoll and in the parking lot which should contain important evidence. Dan Owens took TV movies in and around the Depository building which should show how the snipers' nest was faked on the sixth floor, and one of the assassins in front of the building. Saturday Evening Post The position of the Saturday Evening Post solidified after the Garrison probe became public. It was based in large part on the reporting of one man, James Phelan. Phelan wrote a blistering article for the Post published on May 6, 1967. He attacked Garrison and Russo, and claimed that Russo's original statement to Assistant D.A. Andrew Sciambra differed from his later testimony. In view of the earlier editorial position of the Post when Lyron Land and his wife questioned the Warren Commission findings, the Phelan article came as somewhat of a surprise. In fact, the Post had taken a strong conspiracy stand when in 1967 it published a long article excerpted from Josiah Thompson's book, Six Seconds in Dallas, and featured it on the magazine's cover. The Garrison investigation, however, turned the Post around. Phelan became directly involved in the case, and in a sense was more of an accessory than Walter Sheridan or Richard Townley. He travelled to Louisiana from Texas, spent many hours with Perry Russo and other witnesses, and generally obfuscated the Shaw trial picture. Phelan joined the efforts to persuade Russo to desert Garrison and to help destroy Garrison and his case. According to a sworn Russo statement, Phelan visited his house four times within a few weeks. Phelan told Russo he was working hand-in-hand with Townley and Sheridan, that they were in constant contact, and that they were going to destroy Garrison and the probe. Phelan warned Russo that he should abandon his position and that Russo would be the only one hurt as a result of the trial. Phelan claimed Garrison would leave Russo alone, standing in the cold. Phelan offered to hire a $200,000-a-year lawyer from New York for Russo if he would cooperate against Garrison. He asked Russo how he would feel about sending an innocent man (Clay Shaw) to the penitentiary. Phelan left New Orleans and Baton Rouge and returned to New York, only to telephone Russo several times and offer to pay Russo's plane fare to New York to meet with him and discuss going over to Clay Shaw's side. Phelan was subpoenaed by Shaw's lawyers during a hearing in 1967 because his article attacked Garrison. Sciambra welcomed the opportunity to cross-examine Phelan on the stand. He described the article as being incomplete, distorted and tantamount to lying. Sciambra said, "I guarantee that he (Phelan) will be exposed for having twisted the facts in order to build up a scoop for himself and the Saturday Evening Post."" Sciambra went on to say that Phelan had neglected the most important fact of all in his article. It was that Phelan had been told by Russo in Baton Rouge that Russo and Sciambra had discussed the plot dialogue (to assassinate JFK) at their initial meeting. and on......... http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp9.html *************** GARRISON: ""Guy Banister -- it's difficult to say much about him, because he always stood in the shadows and pushed someone else to the front. He was a strongly disciplined man, perhaps the outgrowth of his many years as a special agent in charge of the Chicago office of the FBI. But he was a key man in the assassination, and that's clear from the fact that Oswald's "sheep-dipping" -- his being portrayed as a Communist -- was done out of Guy Banister's office. So he was sheep-dipped for months as a Communist by giving literature: "Lee, hand this out today. This is your assignment."" TMWKK pt 4.....B Fletcher Prouty Eulogizes Jim Garrison We all note and mourn the passing of that "Old Law-Man" Jim Garrison of New Orleans. Jim was the only official in this great country of ours w/the courage & fortitude to comply w/the law & the terms of his sworn oath of office to bring charges against the conspirators in the case of the death of our Pres. John F. Kennedy. Law requires that a murder be tried in the state where it occurred, & for that crime there is no statute of limitations. This remains the responsibility of the State of Texas. Jim Garrison did his best when, as District Attorney in New Orleans, he brought charges against the man he had reason to believe was a conspirator in that crime. For this...for doing his duty, Jim was attacked from all sides, from the Fed. Govt, other state govts, the biggest guns of the media, & many members of the press. Jim was doing his duty. They maligned him, castigated him, whipped him. Still he held his head high with determination & pride. I'm proud to say that Jim was my friend. We corresponded after he sent me the manuscript of his great book, "On the Trail of the Assassins" & had great respect for each other's work. He & I worked together with Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar on the development of the script for the movie "JFK." For this, all of us were again attacked by the media and others. Jim and I were born early in the era of "Communism" and we have out-lived the Cold War. We have both lived to see the end of that ideological structure that overshadowed all our lives. Jim hoped his "book will help the younger generation to understand better the political, social, & historical consequences of the assassination & the subsequent cover-up. Today we still live with those consequences...a deceptive secret government, a docile press, a pervasive cynicism and corruption." My friend Jim Garrison fought against great odds to change all that. Those of us who were with him continue that fight. The Garrison battle lives on. Jim would understand us as we say, "To Live in the Hearts We Leave Behind is Not to Die." Fletcher Prouty below small photo on right is andrew sciambra.. Edited October 3, 2009 by Bernice Moore Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Howard Posted October 3, 2009 Share Posted October 3, 2009 John H. Davis, Frank Ragano, Dan Moldea, Philip Melanson, James Spada and Victor Marchetti are clearly wrong in their assessment of Jim Garrison. As J. Raymond Carroll rightly points out: “if Garrison wanted to keep attention away from Marcello, the last thing he would have done is draw attention to New Orleans, which had heretofore been largely ignored by Warren Commission critics”. These writers have got it the wrong way round. The role of people like Richard Billings, Bernardo de Torres, Gerry Hemming, Thomas Bethall, etc. was to direct Garrison away from the CIA towards Marcello and the Mafia. Garrison refused and so every effort was made to discredit him. This included a very successful campaign to persuade the public that Garrison was in the pay of Marcello. Garrison real problem was that he did not realize that after the CIA failure to get him to accept the Marcello story, their next strategy was to direct him towards Clay Shaw. Cleverly, they did use someone with links to the CIA. Garrison took the bait and as a result he was finally discredited by his poor case against him. Clay Shaw was a director of Permindex. This was the organization headed by British SOE Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. This was also the organization identified by French Intelligence in 1967 as being responsible for the assassination attempts against Charles DeGaulle in the early 1960's. Permindex was also linked to the murder of Italian industrialist Enrico Mattei. Garrison was right on target identifying Clay Shaw as being part of the conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy. The problem with his investigation came with interlopers like Lord Bertrand Russell (who despised President Kennedy) who got inside his investigation, as well as the dirty tricks carried out by former Kennedy Justice Department operative Walter Sheridan. ROBERT I FOR ONE WOULD CERTAINLY MISS YOUR VALUABLE POSTED INFORMATION...B... NBC The National Broadcasting Company became an active participant in the government's efforts to protect Clay Shaw and to ruin Jim Garrison. Two of NBC's high-level management people, Richard Townley of NBC's affiliate in New Orleans, WDSU, and Walter Sheridan, executive producer, became personally and directly involved in the Shaw trial. They were indicted by a grand jury in New Orleans for bribing witnesses, suppressing evidence and interfering with trial proceedings. NBC top-level management backed Sheridan and Townley. NBC produced a highly biased, provably dishonest program personally attacking Garrison and defending Shaw prior to the trial. Frank McGee, who acted as moderator, later had to publicly apologize for lies told on the program by two "witnesses" whom NBC paid to give statements against Garrison. The FCC ruled that NBC had to give Garrison equal time because the program was not a news program but a vendetta by NBC against Garrison. NBC did give Garrison 30 minutes (compared to their one-hour attack) to respond at a later date. Sheridan was the producer of the one-hour show. With Sheridan and Townley so deeply involved, and with such an extremely strong editorial position favoring the Justice Department, the Warren Commission, and the lone assassin stance, suspicions were raised about NBC's and RCA's independence.[7] At one point in 1967 the president of NBC, according to Walter Sheridan, helped in the bribery efforts by calling Mr. Gherlock, head of Equitable Life Insurance Company's New York office, and asked for assurance that Perry Russo, who worked for Equitable, would cooperate with NBC. NBC is also the owner of several important pieces of photographic evidence. A TV film taken by NBC photographer David Weigman was suppressed by NBC and not made available to researchers. It shows the grassy knoll in the background just a fraction of a minute after the shots. Some of the assassination participants can be seen on the knoll. Fortunately for researchers, NBC sold the Weigman film to the other networks and to the news film agencies before realizing its importance. The author was able to purchase a copy from Hearst Metrotone News. NBC's affiliate, WBAP in Fort Worth, has several important film sequences. James Darnell took several sequences on the grassy knoll and in the parking lot which should contain important evidence. Dan Owens took TV movies in and around the Depository building which should show how the snipers' nest was faked on the sixth floor, and one of the assassins in front of the building. Saturday Evening Post The position of the Saturday Evening Post solidified after the Garrison probe became public. It was based in large part on the reporting of one man, James Phelan. Phelan wrote a blistering article for the Post published on May 6, 1967. He attacked Garrison and Russo, and claimed that Russo's original statement to Assistant D.A. Andrew Sciambra differed from his later testimony. In view of the earlier editorial position of the Post when Lyron Land and his wife questioned the Warren Commission findings, the Phelan article came as somewhat of a surprise. In fact, the Post had taken a strong conspiracy stand when in 1967 it published a long article excerpted from Josiah Thompson's book, Six Seconds in Dallas, and featured it on the magazine's cover. The Garrison investigation, however, turned the Post around. Phelan became directly involved in the case, and in a sense was more of an accessory than Walter Sheridan or Richard Townley. He travelled to Louisiana from Texas, spent many hours with Perry Russo and other witnesses, and generally obfuscated the Shaw trial picture. Phelan joined the efforts to persuade Russo to desert Garrison and to help destroy Garrison and his case. According to a sworn Russo statement, Phelan visited his house four times within a few weeks. Phelan told Russo he was working hand-in-hand with Townley and Sheridan, that they were in constant contact, and that they were going to destroy Garrison and the probe. Phelan warned Russo that he should abandon his position and that Russo would be the only one hurt as a result of the trial. Phelan claimed Garrison would leave Russo alone, standing in the cold. Phelan offered to hire a $200,000-a-year lawyer from New York for Russo if he would cooperate against Garrison. He asked Russo how he would feel about sending an innocent man (Clay Shaw) to the penitentiary. Phelan left New Orleans and Baton Rouge and returned to New York, only to telephone Russo several times and offer to pay Russo's plane fare to New York to meet with him and discuss going over to Clay Shaw's side. Phelan was subpoenaed by Shaw's lawyers during a hearing in 1967 because his article attacked Garrison. Sciambra welcomed the opportunity to cross-examine Phelan on the stand. He described the article as being incomplete, distorted and tantamount to lying. Sciambra said, "I guarantee that he (Phelan) will be exposed for having twisted the facts in order to build up a scoop for himself and the Saturday Evening Post."" Sciambra went on to say that Phelan had neglected the most important fact of all in his article. It was that Phelan had been told by Russo in Baton Rouge that Russo and Sciambra had discussed the plot dialogue (to assassinate JFK) at their initial meeting. and on......... http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp9.html *************** GARRISON: ""Guy Banister -- it's difficult to say much about him, because he always stood in the shadows and pushed someone else to the front. He was a strongly disciplined man, perhaps the outgrowth of his many years as a special agent in charge of the Chicago office of the FBI. But he was a key man in the assassination, and that's clear from the fact that Oswald's "sheep-dipping" -- his being portrayed as a Communist -- was done out of Guy Banister's office. So he was sheep-dipped for months as a Communist by giving literature: "Lee, hand this out today. This is your assignment."" TMWKK pt 4.....B Fletcher Prouty Eulogizes Jim Garrison We all note and mourn the passing of that "Old Law-Man" Jim Garrison of New Orleans. Jim was the only official in this great country of ours w/the courage & fortitude to comply w/the law & the terms of his sworn oath of office to bring charges against the conspirators in the case of the death of our Pres. John F. Kennedy. Law requires that a murder be tried in the state where it occurred, & for that crime there is no statute of limitations. This remains the responsibility of the State of Texas. Jim Garrison did his best when, as District Attorney in New Orleans, he brought charges against the man he had reason to believe was a conspirator in that crime. For this...for doing his duty, Jim was attacked from all sides, from the Fed. Govt, other state govts, the biggest guns of the media, & many members of the press. Jim was doing his duty. They maligned him, castigated him, whipped him. Still he held his head high with determination & pride. I'm proud to say that Jim was my friend. We corresponded after he sent me the manuscript of his great book, "On the Trail of the Assassins" & had great respect for each other's work. He & I worked together with Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar on the development of the script for the movie "JFK." For this, all of us were again attacked by the media and others. Jim and I were born early in the era of "Communism" and we have out-lived the Cold War. We have both lived to see the end of that ideological structure that overshadowed all our lives. Jim hoped his "book will help the younger generation to understand better the political, social, & historical consequences of the assassination & the subsequent cover-up. Today we still live with those consequences...a deceptive secret government, a docile press, a pervasive cynicism and corruption." My friend Jim Garrison fought against great odds to change all that. Those of us who were with him continue that fight. The Garrison battle lives on. Jim would understand us as we say, "To Live in the Hearts We Leave Behind is Not to Die." Fletcher Prouty below small photo on right is andrew sciambra.. Bernice this is a priceless post you just made, I also agree with the points made by Terry Mauro...... I have been involved in a special project in which I am basically compiling a catalogue of all 1,555 Warren Commission Documents, although the idea may seem laughable, I have learned more over the last couple of months about the assassination, than I did in any comparable time frame. If you go to NARA and look at the various other files of ARRB members, other than Russ Holmes' files, one gets the distinct impression, that possibly a majority of the remaining classified documents deal extensively with two topics Documents pertaining to the Office of Naval Intelligence and Jim Garrison's files. It would be wise to remember that when Connick inherited the office of District Attorney after Jim Garrison later became a judge in Louisiana, there were allegations, some might say irrefutable proof, that Garrison's files became very harmful to the lone assassin nonsense of the 1960's. Joan Mellen argued that one CIA personage, Alfred J. Moran, had his CIA file "sanitized," and not with Lysol, if you know what I mean..... I have had, and still have, major concerns about the "sanctity" read, security of the current repository of JFK Assassination related documents, my concern has validity in light of the fact, that it is a documented fact that the Secret Service was responsible for the destruction of some of its own documents pertaining to the assassination, in direct contravention of the directives outlined in the establishment of the JFK Records Collection Act. I have made the point before that I fear the remaining JFK Classified documents may ultimately share the same fate as the big fish in Hemingway's Old Man & The Sea........ I would love to be wrong but it was not so long ago, that documents pertaining to the death of George Polk suddenly went down a rabbit hole......probably never to be seen again.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bernice Moore Posted October 3, 2009 Share Posted October 3, 2009 (edited) John H. Davis, Frank Ragano, Dan Moldea, Philip Melanson, James Spada and Victor Marchetti are clearly wrong in their assessment of Jim Garrison. As J. Raymond Carroll rightly points out: “if Garrison wanted to keep attention away from Marcello, the last thing he would have done is draw attention to New Orleans, which had heretofore been largely ignored by Warren Commission critics”. These writers have got it the wrong way round. The role of people like Richard Billings, Bernardo de Torres, Gerry Hemming, Thomas Bethall, etc. was to direct Garrison away from the CIA towards Marcello and the Mafia. Garrison refused and so every effort was made to discredit him. This included a very successful campaign to persuade the public that Garrison was in the pay of Marcello. Garrison real problem was that he did not realize that after the CIA failure to get him to accept the Marcello story, their next strategy was to direct him towards Clay Shaw. Cleverly, they did use someone with links to the CIA. Garrison took the bait and as a result he was finally discredited by his poor case against him. Clay Shaw was a director of Permindex. This was the organization headed by British SOE Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. This was also the organization identified by French Intelligence in 1967 as being responsible for the assassination attempts against Charles DeGaulle in the early 1960's. Permindex was also linked to the murder of Italian industrialist Enrico Mattei. Garrison was right on target identifying Clay Shaw as being part of the conspiracy to murder John F. Kennedy. The problem with his investigation came with interlopers like Lord Bertrand Russell (who despised President Kennedy) who got inside his investigation, as well as the dirty tricks carried out by former Kennedy Justice Department operative Walter Sheridan. ROBERT I FOR ONE WOULD CERTAINLY MISS YOUR VALUABLE POSTED INFORMATION...B... NBC The National Broadcasting Company became an active participant in the government's efforts to protect Clay Shaw and to ruin Jim Garrison. Two of NBC's high-level management people, Richard Townley of NBC's affiliate in New Orleans, WDSU, and Walter Sheridan, executive producer, became personally and directly involved in the Shaw trial. They were indicted by a grand jury in New Orleans for bribing witnesses, suppressing evidence and interfering with trial proceedings. NBC top-level management backed Sheridan and Townley. NBC produced a highly biased, provably dishonest program personally attacking Garrison and defending Shaw prior to the trial. Frank McGee, who acted as moderator, later had to publicly apologize for lies told on the program by two "witnesses" whom NBC paid to give statements against Garrison. The FCC ruled that NBC had to give Garrison equal time because the program was not a news program but a vendetta by NBC against Garrison. NBC did give Garrison 30 minutes (compared to their one-hour attack) to respond at a later date. Sheridan was the producer of the one-hour show. With Sheridan and Townley so deeply involved, and with such an extremely strong editorial position favoring the Justice Department, the Warren Commission, and the lone assassin stance, suspicions were raised about NBC's and RCA's independence.[7] At one point in 1967 the president of NBC, according to Walter Sheridan, helped in the bribery efforts by calling Mr. Gherlock, head of Equitable Life Insurance Company's New York office, and asked for assurance that Perry Russo, who worked for Equitable, would cooperate with NBC. NBC is also the owner of several important pieces of photographic evidence. A TV film taken by NBC photographer David Weigman was suppressed by NBC and not made available to researchers. It shows the grassy knoll in the background just a fraction of a minute after the shots. Some of the assassination participants can be seen on the knoll. Fortunately for researchers, NBC sold the Weigman film to the other networks and to the news film agencies before realizing its importance. The author was able to purchase a copy from Hearst Metrotone News. NBC's affiliate, WBAP in Fort Worth, has several important film sequences. James Darnell took several sequences on the grassy knoll and in the parking lot which should contain important evidence. Dan Owens took TV movies in and around the Depository building which should show how the snipers' nest was faked on the sixth floor, and one of the assassins in front of the building. Saturday Evening Post The position of the Saturday Evening Post solidified after the Garrison probe became public. It was based in large part on the reporting of one man, James Phelan. Phelan wrote a blistering article for the Post published on May 6, 1967. He attacked Garrison and Russo, and claimed that Russo's original statement to Assistant D.A. Andrew Sciambra differed from his later testimony. In view of the earlier editorial position of the Post when Lyron Land and his wife questioned the Warren Commission findings, the Phelan article came as somewhat of a surprise. In fact, the Post had taken a strong conspiracy stand when in 1967 it published a long article excerpted from Josiah Thompson's book, Six Seconds in Dallas, and featured it on the magazine's cover. The Garrison investigation, however, turned the Post around. Phelan became directly involved in the case, and in a sense was more of an accessory than Walter Sheridan or Richard Townley. He travelled to Louisiana from Texas, spent many hours with Perry Russo and other witnesses, and generally obfuscated the Shaw trial picture. Phelan joined the efforts to persuade Russo to desert Garrison and to help destroy Garrison and his case. According to a sworn Russo statement, Phelan visited his house four times within a few weeks. Phelan told Russo he was working hand-in-hand with Townley and Sheridan, that they were in constant contact, and that they were going to destroy Garrison and the probe. Phelan warned Russo that he should abandon his position and that Russo would be the only one hurt as a result of the trial. Phelan claimed Garrison would leave Russo alone, standing in the cold. Phelan offered to hire a $200,000-a-year lawyer from New York for Russo if he would cooperate against Garrison. He asked Russo how he would feel about sending an innocent man (Clay Shaw) to the penitentiary. Phelan left New Orleans and Baton Rouge and returned to New York, only to telephone Russo several times and offer to pay Russo's plane fare to New York to meet with him and discuss going over to Clay Shaw's side. Phelan was subpoenaed by Shaw's lawyers during a hearing in 1967 because his article attacked Garrison. Sciambra welcomed the opportunity to cross-examine Phelan on the stand. He described the article as being incomplete, distorted and tantamount to lying. Sciambra said, "I guarantee that he (Phelan) will be exposed for having twisted the facts in order to build up a scoop for himself and the Saturday Evening Post."" Sciambra went on to say that Phelan had neglected the most important fact of all in his article. It was that Phelan had been told by Russo in Baton Rouge that Russo and Sciambra had discussed the plot dialogue (to assassinate JFK) at their initial meeting. and on......... http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp9.html *************** GARRISON: ""Guy Banister -- it's difficult to say much about him, because he always stood in the shadows and pushed someone else to the front. He was a strongly disciplined man, perhaps the outgrowth of his many years as a special agent in charge of the Chicago office of the FBI. But he was a key man in the assassination, and that's clear from the fact that Oswald's "sheep-dipping" -- his being portrayed as a Communist -- was done out of Guy Banister's office. So he was sheep-dipped for months as a Communist by giving literature: "Lee, hand this out today. This is your assignment."" TMWKK pt 4.....B Fletcher Prouty Eulogizes Jim Garrison We all note and mourn the passing of that "Old Law-Man" Jim Garrison of New Orleans. Jim was the only official in this great country of ours w/the courage & fortitude to comply w/the law & the terms of his sworn oath of office to bring charges against the conspirators in the case of the death of our Pres. John F. Kennedy. Law requires that a murder be tried in the state where it occurred, & for that crime there is no statute of limitations. This remains the responsibility of the State of Texas. Jim Garrison did his best when, as District Attorney in New Orleans, he brought charges against the man he had reason to believe was a conspirator in that crime. For this...for doing his duty, Jim was attacked from all sides, from the Fed. Govt, other state govts, the biggest guns of the media, & many members of the press. Jim was doing his duty. They maligned him, castigated him, whipped him. Still he held his head high with determination & pride. I'm proud to say that Jim was my friend. We corresponded after he sent me the manuscript of his great book, "On the Trail of the Assassins" & had great respect for each other's work. He & I worked together with Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar on the development of the script for the movie "JFK." For this, all of us were again attacked by the media and others. Jim and I were born early in the era of "Communism" and we have out-lived the Cold War. We have both lived to see the end of that ideological structure that overshadowed all our lives. Jim hoped his "book will help the younger generation to understand better the political, social, & historical consequences of the assassination & the subsequent cover-up. Today we still live with those consequences...a deceptive secret government, a docile press, a pervasive cynicism and corruption." My friend Jim Garrison fought against great odds to change all that. Those of us who were with him continue that fight. The Garrison battle lives on. Jim would understand us as we say, "To Live in the Hearts We Leave Behind is Not to Die." Fletcher Prouty below small photo on right is andrew sciambra.. Bernice this is a priceless post you just made, I also agree with the points made by Terry Mauro...... I have been involved in a special project in which I am basically compiling a catalogue of all 1,555 Warren Commission Documents, although the idea may seem laughable, I have learned more over the last couple of months about the assassination, than I did in any comparable time frame. If you go to NARA and look at the various other files of ARRB members, other than Russ Holmes' files, one gets the distinct impression, that possibly a majority of the remaining classified documents deal extensively with two topics Documents pertaining to the Office of Naval Intelligence and Jim Garrison's files. It would be wise to remember that when Connick inherited the office of District Attorney after Jim Garrison later became a judge in Louisiana, there were allegations, some might say irrefutable proof, that Garrison's files became very harmful to the lone assassin nonsense of the 1960's. Joan Mellen argued that one CIA personage, Alfred J. Moran, had his CIA file "sanitized," and not with Lysol, if you know what I mean..... I have had, and still have, major concerns about the "sanctity" read, security of the current repository of JFK Assassination related documents, my concern has validity in light of the fact, that it is a documented fact that the Secret Service was responsible for the destruction of some of its own documents pertaining to the assassination, in direct contravention of the directives outlined in the establishment of the JFK Records Collection Act. I have made the point before that I fear the remaining JFK Classified documents may ultimately share the same fate as the big fish in Hemingway's Old Man & The Sea........ I would love to be wrong but it was not so long ago, that documents pertaining to the death of George Polk suddenly went down a rabbit hole......probably never to be seen again.... THANKS ROBERT HOPEFULLY IT SHEDS SOME FURTHER WEE BIT OF LIGHT ON HOW THEY TOGETHER TRIED TO BURY GARRISON..YES THE SS DELIBERATELY DESTROYED SO VERY MUCH OF IT'S FILES..BY THE DRAWERFUL..FWIW SEE BELOW.. BEST B..TAKE CARE AND THANKS FOR THE TIP..RE DOCS..NI INYTERESTING..B..I'LL BE BACK CANNOT FIND THE DOC TO ATTACH.. BAH HUMBUG..I SHALL..""When Mastrovito took charge of the JFK assassination file, it consisted of 5 or 6 file cabinets of L material. After Mastrovito finished “culling” irrelevant material, HA.. the collection was down to one five-drawer file cabinet. Mastrovito guessed that his purging of extraneous material took place around 1970. The Secret Service White House Detail of President John F. Kennedy PHOTOS www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xFALugIcQGs www.youtube.com/ watch?v=xFALugIcQGs HERE'S WHAT JAMRS MASTROVITO HAS TO SAY...11 May 2005 ... My name is James M. (Mike) Mastrovito and I retired in 2004 after a .... Michael Mastrovito of the Secret Service should be interviewed ... www.barnley.blogspot.com -11 May 2005 ... My name is James M. (Mike) Mastrovito and I retired in 2004 after a .... Michael Mastrovito of the Secret Service should be interviewed ... www.barnley.blogspot.com/ - Edited October 3, 2009 by Bernice Moore Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bernice Moore Posted October 4, 2009 Share Posted October 4, 2009 (edited) "...We do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him, there're fingerprints of intelligence." --Republican Senator Richard Schweiker, member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Village Voice, December 15, 1975 below to the left looking at the photo of judge bernard baggart is one of james phelan.. Garrison had been born Earling Caruthers Garrison in Denniston, Iowa on November 20, 1921, but he legally changed his first name to plain "Jim" when he first entered Louisiana politics in the 1950s.....and was 6 feet 6 inches tall...... If you will note the name at the bottom of each photo...these are people, places and information who were in some way connected....to the Garrison Investigation..... Further information in relation to the below photos...... Some of the photos and the information is obtained from "Assassination of America" 2006...by Paris Flammonde as well as from others and other sources......as well as sites//txs Jim Garrison Bio... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Garrison Garrison Link..... http://www.prouty.org/garrison.html Also....Real History Archives ..http://192.220.64.45/collections/assassinations/jfk/garrison.htm ******************************** Garrison : ""Well I went down there to look at it, and I found myself not merely outside of Guy Banister's office, but across the street from Naval Intelligence, across the street from Secret Service, around the corner was the Crescent City Garage, the garage for the intelligence community and then, two doors away, the Reily Coffee Company. I used to be in the FBI. I knew people in Naval Intelligence and they were either across the street, around the corner -- the whole intelligence community was there, and right in the middle of it was Guy Banister having Oswald sheep-dipped as a Communist.... When the President ends up being assassinated and the scapegoat grabbed by the federal government, and killed before anything can be done to help him, turns out to be the man that Guy Banister had been the tutor of all the time, you have to conclude that Guy Banister was a key man in the assassination, and possibly the most important man that we encountered in our whole investigation. But he's been dead so many years it's a little hard to question him."" TMWKK Pt 4.... Clay Lavergne Shaw.. Served as an officer in French Intelligence......"La Servicede Documentation Extrerieure et de Conte Espionage (SDECE)" during WW 11, under aliases Col.Rene' Bertrand, & Col.? Beaumont , connected to Corsican Christian David, professional assassin. N/O businessman, with a long time intelligence association, a director of CIA European front operation "Permindex "and " Centro Mondiale Commerciale"..... After his death it was conceded that he had, indeed worked for the CIA ...Almost al individuals involved in the case who were said to have government ties and were denied as agents by said government, were eventually estabished as having had such allegiance or alliances ....The government of the U.S , nearly without exception lied about such matters... D/A Jim ( not James ) Garrison....dubbed " Big Jim".....and the "Jolly Green Giant".....Three times D/A of New Orleans...elected and re-elected to the judicial bench. The only person ever to persue an investigation into the murder of President John F.Kennedy, Aaron Kohn..N/O businessman and director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission N/O...( Times Picayne Pub.) Once an admirer of Garrison, became a consistant and political opponent of his. "The question of whether Oswald had any relationship with the FBI or the CIA is not frivolous. The agencies, of course, are silent. Although the Warren Commission had full power to conduct its own independent investigation, it permitted the FBI and the CIA to investigate themselves -- and so cast a permanent shadow on the answers." --Walter Cronkite, June 28, 1967 Bernard Barker........ CIA operative..........Although the charter of the CIA forbids the functioning of such within the United States....of course, it does... Edgar Eugene Bradley ( Brading).. Charged with willfully and unlawfully conspiring with others to murder John F Kennedy.... The entire Bradley scenario was false, as one of Garrison's investigators had confused the names of Bradley with that of Eugene Hale Braden, alias James ( Jim) Braden aka James Hale Brading....Who had been arrested in Dealey Plaza immediately following the assassination. ( Mentioned in Garrison's "Trail of the Assassins".....information within James DiEugenio's "Destiny Betrayed"...Lane's "Plausible Denial "... Belin's " Final Disclosure" ....Lifton's "Best Evidence" ....Davy's " Justice Be Done".. Clay Shaw: On aquittal.......Born March 17 /13...Death Aug.15/74 ..and was buried within 24 hours....His name does not appear in the W/C...J.Lee Rankin, it's former chief counsel said "as far as I know we've never heard of this person"..... After the trial, Shaw engaged in many efforts to recoup the depletion of his finances..from his legal fees.....He joined the French Market Corp. created to renovate the French Market in N.Os...he retired in May, 74.....but continued on lecturing on the experiences instigated by the D.A Fate numbered Clay Sahw's remaining days..........at 61 he was discovered at 12.30 AM..on his bed, in pajamas and dressing gown, dead of terminal cancer.. City Police record ( 15410-74) noted.." Dets. John Dillman and Fred Dantagnan , of the Criminal Investigative Division, report that on Fri.Aug.16th they were instructed by the Chief of Detectives Henry M. Morris, to initiate and investigation into the death of Clay Shaw, white male, age 61, formerly residing at 1024 St.Peter St. Major Morris then furnished the Detectives with a certifcate of death signed by Dr.Hugh M.Batson, with the cause of death reflecting Metastatic Lung Malignancy, Brain & Liver....etc " His body was found by sitter Don Doddy ( a friend for twenty years) who also had a personal relationship with the deceased.. who called Shaw's attorney of 25 years, who also had a long personal relationship with the deceased, Edward R. Wegmann who proceeded to make arrangements.....No autopsy, no ceremony, and secretively, he was buried within a day.....His passing was as peculiar as his habits, also his acquaintances, friends, and activities, and as cloudy....An examination of of the 8 page official summary detailed a long deterioration from a terminal illness with all the characteristics of such... Obituary: Fri. Aug.16,1974 Clay Shaw Final Rites To Be Today Clay Shaw, one of the founders of the International Trade Mart and the man acquitted of charges of conspiring to assassinate John F.Kennedy, died Thursday morning. He was 61. Mr.Shaw died at his home at 1024 St.Peter St.shortly after 1 am..He had been ill since early this year, when he suffered a blood clot in the brain, and underwent surgery which left one side paralyzed and Mr.Shaw in failing health.. He was forced to return to Ochsner Foundation Hospital in June. Funeral services will be held at 9.am Friday at the House of Bultman 3338 St. Charles Ave. Internment will be in Mr.Shaw's hometown, Kentwood, La..at 11am Friday. Note :" Solitary bare ritual and consignment to the earth in less than 22 hours after he died. As he was not known to be Jewish, is it difficult to refain from speculating about the haste".P.F. Raymond Cummings: Claimed he had seen a newspaper photo of Ferrie.....following the break of the Garrison case...and recognised him...He had once been a policeman in a town in south Texas....During the period between Jan.11th to March 15, 1963....he had been a part time Taxi driver..in Dallas.. Cummings stated that he took a man from the Dallas bus station to suburban Irving..The passenger he said was Lee Harvey Oswald...He recalled because both were ex-marines and talked about the service..and though Oswald did not have enough money for the fare, took him anyway. A few weeks later he picked up three men on a Dallas street and was told to take them to Jack Ruby's "Carousel" ....he stated these men were...Oswald, Ferrie and an unidentified man.....Upon recognizing Oswald, they chatted more about the marines... Ferrie's unusal appearance caused Cummings to keep glancing at him in the mirror...( He wore a red wig, and false eye brows..he suffered from a disorder called "Alopecia Totalis" which caused a complete loss of hair... After the Garrison investigation was announced he flew into N/Os, and mentioned he had received phone threats on a successive evening, afternoon, and evening warning him....that "you're definitely going to get it ( if you go to New Orleans)"...He expressed that he was not particularly concerned......as they were possible pranks.......But his Lawyer Frank Wright....said he would seek police protection.......for his client....Cummings appeared twice at the DA's office during the day......March 9/67.. In "Plot or Politics?"..by Rosemary James & Jack Wardlaw, the following....."Dallas sources report, however, that Cummings did not work for a cab company at that time.".....Whether he was actually operating as a gypsy ( free lancer) is not known... Note: While Garrison found the police officer's story interesting at the time, he makes no mention of him in his two books...and subsequent allusions to him are almost none existent..eg..DiEugenio, Davy....This was the fate of a number of persons interviewed.... « Reply #2 on: May 26, 2008, 02:28 AM » -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the [Central Intelligence] Agency and its relationship to Oswald.... I do not believe any denial offered by the Agency on any point. The law has long followed the rule that if a person lies to you on one point, you may reject all of his testimony.... We now know that the Agency withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Had the commission known of the plots, it would have followed a different path in its investigation.... We also now know that the Agency set up a process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the Agency. Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of story. I am now in that camp." --Robert Blakey, staff director and chief counsel (1977-79), U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, statement from 2003... Dean Andrews: New Orleans attorney informed the W/C that a man calling himself Clay Bertrand asked for his legal aid for Lee Harvey Oswald...the day of the assassination ( W/C 5 H,CE, 1931..Convicted later of perjury after refusing to re-identify Clay Shaw as Clay Bertrand.. Deputy Sheriff : Eddy Raymond "Buddy" Walthers: Police aid to Sheriff Bill Decker.... Present when an unidentified man recovered a bullet from Dealey Plaza, south side of Elm...near a sewer grate.....He was shot and killed by a felon......James Walter Cherry on Jan.11, 69... Much more further information within "Harvey & Lee"by ..John Armstrong.....Larry Hancock's..."Someone Would Have Talked"...."Rush To Judgement" by Mark Lane and within Jim Garrison's, "On the Trail of the Assassins (1988)" to name a few....also.. See Roger Craig's "When They Kill A President".....for further information..on Walthers.. http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_....craig.bio.html "[Former CIA Director Richard] Helms told reporters during a break that no one would ever know who or what Lee Harvey Oswald ... represented. Asked whether the CIA knew of any ties Oswald had with either the KGB or the CIA, Helms paused and with a laugh said, 'I don't remember.'" --Helms, chatting with the Washington Post's George Lardner and other reporters in 1978, during a recess of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation Eugene C.Davis: After many statements by Attorney Dean Andrews to the question whom was Chay Shaw?, ...such as "You said I identified him, I don't know if I did or not"...In reply to a question at the same interview...."And have you seen Clay Shaw's picture in the news?....Reply .."Since this happened many times"....without hesitation........However.....Less than a minute before, "Man, I wouldn't know Clay Shaw if I fell across him on the street dead."..... Another new and most explosive of Andrews " Revelations"..was the "Real Identity " of Clay Shaw, .... one Eugene C.Davis..owner of "Wanda's Seven Seas Bar"...in the French Quarter of N/Os. Davis exploded...with indignation....going immediately to the D/As office and making a statement.. Marina (Oswald) Porter & husband Kenneth Garrison created quite the stir when on Jan.24th 68..he supoened Mrs. Kenneth Porter, the former Marina Oswald.....She admited she had conferred with lawyers for Clay Shaw, and told them she would testify at his trial..........she did not intend to respond to Garrison's subpoena, she felt she had nothing to add to the Garrison probe.. Her testimony was not immediately released to the public.... "I don't see how any court would say her testimony was not material in this case ".said Asst.D.A James Alcock....she ultimately took that position, that, while convinced that there was a conspiracy to slay the President, her husband had nothing to do with the affair... Thomas Edward Beckham.... A guitar playing self styled psychologist and minister of a minor religious sect whom Garrison suspected of knowing Ferrie..... . GARRISON: ""Guy Banister -- it's difficult to say much about him, because he always stood in the shadows and pushed someone else to the front. He was a strongly disciplined man, perhaps the outgrowth of his many years as a special agent in charge of the Chicago office of the FBI. But he was a key man in the assassination, and that's clear from the fact that Oswald's "sheep-dipping" -- his being portrayed as a Communist -- was done out of Guy Banister's office. So he was sheep-dipped for months as a Communist by giving literature: "Lee, hand this out today. This is your assignment."" TMWKK pt 4..... Guy Banister : "On at least two separate occasions, Banister employees saw Oswald handing out pro-Castro literature and reported it to their boss. In one instance Banister simply laughed, and on the other, he told his secretary Delphine Roberts: 'Don't worry about him.... He's with us. He's associated with the office.' Roberts also said she saw Oswald at 544 Camp Street, and that he filled out one of Banister's 'agent' application forms. She later told author Anthony Summers: 'Oswald came back a number of times. He seemed to be on familiar terms with Banister and with the office.'" --Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy Born in a log cabin in Caldwell Parish, Monroe, Louisiana, March 7, 1901.......His resume states that when he was 28 he appears in New Orleans, as an investigator for the Monroe Louisiana police...Within a fortnight the chief asked him to take a stenography course, upon completion he became the chiefs official secretary with sergeant's pay..6 months later his mentor died, and he "" was assigned duties that made me, actually. Chief of Detectives"..FBI files # 62-103863-13..He impressed someone as on Nov.5/34 he was sworn in as special agent, into the Division of Investigation pf the Dept of Justice....soon to be renamed the FBI...He was a violent man, and one wonders if he would have applied if Congress had not made it possible for the Bureau personal to go armed that year,,, There is information nonsense associated with him, ..that he was alleged to have been in on the slaying of John Dillinger, not true..... In May, 38....he was assigned as an Asst, Agent in Charge in Newark, New Jersey, within three months promoted again to Special Agent in Charge in Butte, Montana ....In 1941 he moved to Oklahoma City, but returned to Butte within three years.... He transferred to Minneapolis in Sept.52...for about 15 months, then was shipped to Chicago on Jan 1.1954...where he finished out his career on December 12, 1954...at one time being Special Agent in Charge.... Note : Garrison believed that Banister had been associated with Naval Intelligence during WW 11......within "On The Trail of the Assassins" Garrison, p.41.....revealed within the retired spy's possession's and found by the state police, given to Lou Ivon of the D.As staff , was the volume "Naval Intelligence" inscribed " For Guy Banister,with warmest regards, Ellis Zacharias. He was the noted intelligence figure, Adm Elis M.Zacharias, author of "Behind Closed Doors : The Secret History of the Cold War"..1950,,whose report is based on documents, interviews with diplomats from both sides of the Iron Curtain, political exiles, atomic scientists, secret police, etc....("" Ironically in August 1960, the CIA did consider Banister's detective agency as " a source of intelligence"....and as "a cover mechanism" of some kind, presumably due to Banister's FBI background...A background check revealed that Guy Bannister Associates was failing financially and Banister was personally regarded as unstable & unreliable. The Agency lost interest in him, and a search in the CIA records yields no further connection.. Whatever the facts may be, Banister turned up in N.O with possibly the confidentiality of Naval Intelligence, top FBI ranking and connections with the Chicago mob, where no one could work against without getting to know it and it's players....He became Head of Internal Affairs of the Police Dept.by mayor of N.O De Lesseps S.Morrison after being confronted by one scandal after another within the NO PD...in less than 6 months he was in number three position as Dept Superintendent of the force..He was also supported by Aaron Kohn, an ex G-man, who would create the Metropolitan Crime Commission... Banister's recalled his accomplishments, of over a couple of years, him being responsible for the break up of extensive graft...corruption in the force...indictment of many policemen...some convicted within courts....and Grand Jury preparation, submission of malfeasance charges against his benefactors......Mayor Morrison, Superintendent of Police Provosty, A.Dayries, and D.A Leon Dayries Hubert, however were not indicted..While his team fought corruption, he main concern was Communism....and he was ready and able when Morrison appointed him to investigate local leftists..and put him in contact with the rabid racist Senator James Eastland....For some time all when accordingly, by Banister lacked the self control of discipline and often threatened people at random...with his imitation George Patton pistol......and finally he destroyed his law enforcement career..it ended when he was arrested for threatening a bartender , that he would kill him, for not catering to him as he expected. ...He then became a private detective "Guy Banister & Associates "..In an interview a former crew member stated that " Guy participated in every important anti Communist South and Central American revolution which came along acting as key liaison man for the U.S government-sponsored anti-Communist activities in Latin America.."...N.O "States Item" May5/67....."He (Oswald) told me Banister worked for the CIA ....that Banister worked for the CIA is indisputable ," stated Ron Lewis...( Flashback: Lewis, p.67-69 )...It seemed impossible to to isolate and intell agency he did not work for.Alluding to Lee, he said that " although he worked for Banister, he was paid by someone else. I am certain that it was the FBI, and that he was paid two hundred dollars a month.".This of course confirms, similar reports... He became involved with Sergio Arcacha Smith,a major representative of the virulent anti-Castro Cuban Revolution Council, which was made even more convenient by it's office being directly across the hall from the investigator's at 544 Camp... The Garrison investigation revealed countless contacts between Lee Oswald and the anti-Castro underground in New Orleans and Dallas....One connection centered about the elusive careers of Guy Banister and Hugh Ward, who was a N.Os private investigator,who operated a private detective agency in N.Os while L.H.O resided there... Bannister associate whom Garrison claimed was involved with David Ferrie and the anti Castro Cuban exiles, and whose address was used as a mail drop by L.H.O in the summer of 1963...According to Garrison "Guy Banister was one of the most militant right-wing anti-Communists in N.Os. He was a former FBI agent and his headquarters at 544 Camp St. was a clearing house for Cuban exile and para-military right-wing activities .....Banister also published a newsletter fro his clients that included virulent ant-Kennedy polemics ..Norden " Playboy".......A New York "States-Item" May 5/67.reported that "Banister...is believed to have worked in co-operation with a U.S military intelligence office here", "and Garrison's office has developed evidence that it was the office of Naval Intelligence".. ""That would explain why Banister was never questioned, let alone investigated by anyone , FBI,CIA, or the Warren Commission...If one wishes to hide where the bodies are buried, one hardly summons, one of the grave keepers for interrogation."".P.Flammonde... Guy Banister died of a heart attack, coronary thrombosis on June 6, in 1964..Hugh Ward died in an air plane crash he was piloting for a former Mayor of N.Os, Delesseps Morrison it crashed mysteriously in Mexico on May.23 1965..Morrison has previously introduced Clay Shaw to the President in Washington.... There is a huge amount of information available on Banister and all that went down in N.Os and his connections, and if interested in following through some books that are available as well as many more... See " The Fish is Red" Hinkle & Turner, "Deadly Secrets" Hinkle & Turner...... Di Eugenio's "Destiny Betrayed"........ Abive info from..pps....775 to 781 Flammonde's "Assassination of America".. Also see : Banister W Guy http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb01?Na=Banister+Guy Also......********* Guy Banister -- Former FBI Agent and Naval Intelligence Operative. Also a Member of the Minutemen, the John Birch Society, the Louisiana Committee on Un-American Activities, and Publisher of the Racist Louisiana Intelligence Digest. Banister also helped organize various anti-Castro groups in the New Orleans area: Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front; Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean; and Friends of Democratic Cuba. The following text is excerpted from the book, Crossfire by Jim Marrs: On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, two men sat drinking in the Katzenjammer Bar, located in New Orleans next door to 544 Camp Street, where a puzzling parade of anti-Castro Cubans and intelligence agents -- including Lee Harvey Oswald -- were seen the previous summer. (see The Patsy) One of the men was Guy Banister, the former FBI man who was running a private-investigation firm with intelligence connections out of an office at 544 Camp Street. The other man was one of his investigators, Jack Martin. According to a police report prepared that day, the two men returned to Banister's office where an argument erupted. Banister, his irritability inflamed by alcohol, accused Martin of stealing files whereupon Martin reminded Banister that he had not forgotten some of the people he had seen in Banister's office that summer. Banister then beat Martin over the head with a heavy .357 magnum pistol. In the heat of the moment, Martin screamed out: "What are you going to do -- kill me, like you all did Kennedy?" A police ambulance was called and carried the bloodied Martin to Charity Hospital. An angered Martin soon whispered to friends that Banister had often been in the company of a man named David Ferrie, whom Martin claimed drove to Texas the day of Kennedy's assassination to serve as a getaway pilot for the assassins. He hinted at even darker associations. Martin's words soon reached the ears of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, who quickly arrested Ferrie and began an investigation into the JFK assassination that eventually turned into a worldwide cause celebre. Because of the Garrison investigation much new assassination information became known and the assassination was addressed for the first time in a courtroom -- even though the defendant was finally acquitted. Garrison claimed that the entire weight of the federal government was moved to block and ridicule his investigation, and indeed there were many strange aspects to this entire episode, including an attack by some in the national media before Garrison even had a chance to present his case.... After hearing the remarks of Jack Martin, Garrison moved quickly enough.. Over the assassination weekend, New Orleans lawmen vainly sought David Ferrie. On Monday, November 25, Ferrie turned himself in. http://www.geocities.com/garrisoninvestigation/ "The thing I am concerned about, and so is [Deputy Attorney General Nicholas] Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin." --FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, speaking on the telephone to Johnson aide Walter Jenkins two hours after Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby, HSCA Report, vol. III, pp. 471-73. (The Warren Commission -- charged with determining the truth in the JFK assassination -- relied upon Hoover's FBI as its primary investigative arm.)...... Lawrence J.Howard Jr. & Loran Eugene Hall On Sept.25th 1963, a visit was made by three men to the apartment of Silvia Odio a 26 year old , American educated Cuban exile living in Dallas who in 1963, was active in Manolo Ray's JURE ( Junta Revolucionaria ) the most Liberal of the Castro exile groups, she testified to the W/C that they told her they had just come from New Orleans..and were leaving " for a trip "..The delivered to her some intimate information about her Father ,then held by the Castro Government on the Isle of Pines...the information was of such that it could have only come from the "underground" or CIA sources....and they requested her help in anti-Castro activities. Two of the men appeared to be Latins , though one perhaps Mexican , and they called themselves by dramatic "War names" of Leopoldo, and Angelo..the third an American, that was introduced as Leon Oswald..later identified as a former Marine and a crack shot...Leopoldo told Mrs. Odio, that " our idea is to introduce him to the underground in Cuba, because he is great , he is kind of a nut..He has told us we don't have any guts .........Because President Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs , because he was the one that was holding up the freedom of Cuba.That he was the one that was in the way." ."It's so easy to do" he told us afterwards, she said..When Silvia saw LHO on T.V the day of the President's assassination both she and her sister Annie, who had seen the men, and had been present at the meeting.....recognized him as "Leon Oswald ".....and was so traumatized that she collapsed...but after she recovered she did not notify the authorities, not the police, FBI ,or the Secret Service... fearing, that the Cuban exiles would be blamed for the assassination..CE 3147.....A friend who heard of the encounter informed the authorities on Nov.28th 63... When shown photographs by the W/C on July 22, 64.......of Oswald she was asked if she had any doubts.."after looking after the pictures that the man in your apartment was Lee Harvey Oswald ?"......she replied " I have no doubts ".... The problem was that LHO on Sep. 26/63.....could not have been the man.because it was established that between 6.AM & 2.PM on that day, he had crossed the Mexican border on a bus....north to south...... Other contradictions were that it could not have been Oswald, as he did not have a car, could not drive..nor could it have occurred the day before, because he had been in New Orleans, that day.....The only way that he possibly could have was to fly, but upon investigation, it was found that he had not..so if Leon was not LHO, who was he...?? Could there have been an impersonator implicating him in advance of the assassination ?...Garrison thought so....( see Harvey & Lee by John Armstromg )...... The FBI was requested by the W/C to investigate, and attempt to locate and identify the two men, she thought were with Oswald.......and on Sept..16/64, they located Loren Hall, in Johnsondale, Cal..he stated yes he was with Lawrence Howard a Mexican American from East Los Angeles, and one William Seymour from Arizona..and that he Seymour was similar in appearance to Oswald...and that he spoke only a few words of Spanish as Mrs Odio had testified .. The FBI investigation had not been completed at that time, but the report was to the press....and the W/C affirmed LHO was not in the Odio apartment...in Sept.63.. Note: a shadowy figure Loran Hall....( aka Hall, Lorenzo, Pascillio, Lorenzo, "Skip".Physical description at the time, Mexican 6' , 40 to 45 years old, and according to the FBI a "Loud mouth"....Benson, "Who's Who".. ....Former Life reporter Richard Billings revealed in his 5 part examination of the Garrison investigation.in the Chicago Daily News " An FBI report dated Nov. 23/63 .....tells of an informant who advised that in Sept. Loren Hall had redeemed a 30.06 rifle from a pawn shop in Los Angeles...."......What the Bureau concluded is astounding .The report reads " " No further investigation was conducted, as it is obvious that the rifle mentioned above was not used in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy".... Aridly, he appends, "the day after the assassination was a trifle early for the FBI to be making decisions like that"........ The HSCA found Silvia Odio's information believable , that " Mrs. Odio checked out thoroughly ...the evidence is unanimously favourable.....( she) is the most significant witness linking Oswald to the anti-Castro Cubans "...While the Commission evidence was far from conclusive, Jim Garrison believed at that juncture that it was not improbable that William Seymour may have been deliberately impersonating LHO....in order to enmesh him in a pot to assassinate the President..These connections was strongly supported by the countess contacts he uncovered between Oswald and and the anti-Castro factions in New Orleans....and Dallas....one centering on the elusive careers of Guy Banister and Hugh Ward there... On Dec.29/67 Garrison issued a subpoena for each..Howard & Hall... Hall in Kernville and Howard in El Monte both in Cal..and another for the new character Thomas Beckham whom Garrison suspected knew Ferrie...... Howard asserted he was in Los Angeles on Nov.22.63...appearing in the L.A court on Jan 16/68......to a show cause order, and protested that returning to N.O would impose hardships on him.. On Jan,24 in Bakersfield Cal.Superior Court Judge P.R Burton rejected the New Orleans request,,.that Hall be returned to that city to testify.. Howard overcame his reluctance to testify and at the end of Feb....travelled to see Garrison.. Meanwhile Hall , by the same Judge P.R.Borton who had accepted Hall's denial of knowledge of events pertaining to the Garrison probe, followed suit and rejected the D.As request. But then followed the same pattern as his associate Howard, and announced in May 68, that his "memory had been jogged"........ After both men conferred ...with critic Harold Weisberg, both men met with Garrison.for lengthy interviews much of which has never been released...after these interviews Jim Garrison released both men, Hall left the militant plotters unnamed , although he conceded that he had given full details to the N.O district attorney....He conceded that he had been able to identify a half a dozen of the photographs shown him by Garrison as being persons now living in Cal.. However, if neither Hall, Howard nor Seymour ever went to see Mrs. Odio then who did ?, all denied the allegations vehemently of doing so, or with anyone else...........and more to the point, who then was Leon..?. Of more importance was Hall's statements.... "there are absolutely no doubts in my mind but that ( Edgar Eugene Bradley remembered me right from the beginning ......I did not remember him (at first.)......then I recalled having met him ......( at a) house that was noted for their anti Semitic and paramilitary feelings and thinkings:..." "I am positive in my mind from the calls and stuff I have received from him that he has remembered me right from the beginning." In response to :" You are saying that Bradley is a CIA man ?".....Hall replied ." In my mind.".... "The assassination of President Kennedy .........was precipitated by the Fascists and rightist anarchists and the CIA they are one and the same," he asserted.."I firmly believe that the rightist anarchists and the CIA can take over out country right now and it would be a Fascist state except for two things. They would first have to demolish and destroy the conservative movement by the radical right.....They would have to destroy organizations such as the John Birch Society ....(and) the other thing that is in their way is......Jim Garrison"..... Suddenly and unexpectedly, in Sep.1,68.....issue of "The Enquirer" .which though it was not one of the foremost literary papers in the nation, ...was one of the very few that carried full stories on the New Orleans Enquiry..... Hall wrote.." I turned down a $50,000 offer to kill President John F. Kennedy , only five weeks before he was shot dead in Dallas, Texas..".. The militant anti-Castroite said the proposal came as a result of his trying to raise money for arms, ammunition and supplies of his guerrilla raids on Cuba......much of which was supplied by the CIA.radical rightists and ex-military officers.." who had their taste of glory"and they now believed that only the elite can rue the nation".....a familiar theme to Americans.... "I'd heard the killing of Kennedy discussed many times, at meetings held by the paramilitary fanatics,"....recalled Hall...... "They drew up a kill list. Martin Luther King, was on it.King was beginning to get things accomplished for the black people.......Bobby Kennedy was on the kill list. If they hated anyone more than John Kennedy it was Bobby...they figured..he was even more dangerous ( and).......would be even a stronger opposition to their plans for power."...... ...B ************************* How It Began The conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy began in a series of discussions held in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The men in the discussions were extremely angry that Kennedy had stopped plans and preparations for another invasion of Cuba (scheduled for the latter part of 1963.) One of the instigators was David Ferrie, a CIA contract agent who had been training pilots in Guatemala for the invasion. Meetings held in Ferrie's apartment in New Orleans were attended by Clay Shaw, William Seymour and several Cubans. Plans for assassinating President Kennedy developed out of those early meetings. Others whose support was sought by the group included Guy Banister, Major L. M. Bloomfield, Loran Hall, Lawrence Howard, Sergio Arcacha Smith and Carlos Prio Socarras. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp5.html D110. Lawrence Howard, Jr. Documents and Transcript of Interview by Jim Garrison, William Boxley, Louis Ivon, and Steve Burton, Feb. 1968. (from AMKW files) RIF1801007610015. N/A. Sylvia Odio vs. Liebeler & the La Fontaines By Jim DiEugenio http://www.ctka.net/pr996-odio.html Some Books...... DiEugenio,J. Destiny Betrayed. 1992 (346) DiEugenio,J. Pease,L. The Assassinations. 2003 (210) Duffy,J.. Ricci,V. The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. 1992 (337-8) LaFontaine,R.& M. Oswald Talked. 1996 (245) Morrow,R. First Hand Knowledge. 1992 (295) Newman,J. Oswald and the CIA. 1995 (349) Russell,D. The Man Who Knew Too Much. 1992 (331, 480-2) Scott,P.D... The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond. 1976 (103, 115) The Road to Dallas ....David Kaiser B..... Lewallen :James ( Jim ) Ronald He was 38 years old, born in Clevland,Ohio.He worked as a Quality inspector for the Bowing Company...at the Michoud Saturn Rocket plant....He once was the roomate of David Ferrie, in Kenner. His attorney was George Piazza 11.....did concede that like many other people in New Orleans he did know David Ferrie..but did not know why the District Attorney, wanted to question him........When asked if he had been questioned by the W/C , Piazza stated "Not that I know of".... Lewallen was a licensed ( former Air Force Pilot )...had been with Boeing in the Michoud plant since 1964, except being farmed out once to the Mississippi Test Facility in Hancock County..Miss. He reportedly possessed security clearance, his assignment within was said to be checking out ground support equipment for the test firing of the Saturn V booster..... He was rated by a supervisor as having " a relatively good background in aircraft repair"..and regarded as mild mannered..A friend of his told reporters that Lewallen was shocked at being subpoenaed as he felt he had been cooperating behind the scenes for some time. The D.As office had little to say, except that he had declined to take a lie-dtector test.....Though Ferrie had told them, if they wanted to know more about him to ask Jim Lewallen. Snip from "On the Trail of the Assassin's.."......Jim Garrison One other lead about Ferrie yielded some provocative information. Ferrie, once a pilot for Eastern Airlines, had been investigated by a private detective agency. I obtained a copy of its report. The investigators had maintained a stakeout near his residence and found that Ferrie was visited frequently by a man named Dante Marachini. A simple check of the phone book revealed that Dante Marachini resided at 1309 Dauphine Street. This was extremely interesting to me because right next door was the home of Clay Shaw. I wondered who else might be living next door to Shaw. Reaching for the red book (which lists individuals by address) I found that also living at 1309 Dauphine Street was a man named James Lewallen. I recalled from earlier research that James Lewallen had once shared an apartment with David Ferrie in the vicinity of Kenner, a New Orleans suburb. Now I found myself looking at two unfamiliar names, Marachini and Lewallen, both of whom had in the past been associated with Ferrie and both of whom now lived next door to Clay Shaw. That was something to think about. Some time later, I came across the name of Dante Marachini again. I had wanted to talk to individuals at the Reily Coffee Company who had worked with Lee Oswald or at a level immediately above him, so I sent Frank Klein over to the company to get their names and respective positions. He returned rather quickly. "They're all gone," he said. "Anyone who ever had any connection with Lee Oswald left the Reily Company within a few weeks after Oswald did." He laid a sheet of paper in front of me. "Here are the names and the new jobs." http://www.maebrussell.com/Garrison/On%20T...0Assassins.html Paese Sera on CMC/Permindex March 4, 1967 (Front page) Sensational revelations on the mysterious past in Italy of the entrepreneur prosecuted by Garrison in New Orleans CLAY SHAW (ARRESTED FOR THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION) HAS DEVELOPED AN OBSCURE ACTIVIY IN ROME He was a member of the board of directors of the Centro Mondiale Commerciale, an institution, with head office in EUR-Rome, that for four years has undertaken a series of pseudo-commercial initiatives – Among its chief executives were former officers of the American espionage who financed the far right-movements in our country and in Europe. --------- Clay Shaw, the New Orleans businessman that district attorney Garrison has had arrested under the accusation of having participated to a conspiracy to kill president Kennedy, was a member of the board of directors of CMC, Centro Mondiale Commerciale, that from 1961 to 1965 was actively engaged in Rome, in its head office in EUR-Rome, in an obscure pseudo-commercial activity. Among the members of the board and the chief executives of CMC were also ex-major Bloomfield – who, during the war, was an espionage officer in Europe – and Ferenc Nagy, a former Hungarian, escaped to America and president of the mother-house of CMC, Permindex. His name was cited in France as that of the top financier of the neofascist movement of Soustelle and of various other European right-wing extremist organizations. All these connections make very likely the conclusion that CMC (reborn in Rome with the name Italo American Hotel Corporation, more focused on business activities) was a cover institution set up by the CIA, the American espionage agency, in order to be able to transfer in Italy the necessary funds to finance illegal activities of political espionage. The presence of Clay Shaw among its directors rises disquieting questions WAS THE CENTER IN EUR A MEANS FOR THE CIA TO INTRODUCE FINANCINGS IN ITALY? CMC, dissolved after four years of mysterious activities, was reborn in Rome – with a more specific focus on business – and was called Italo American Hotel Corporation – Between one deal and the other (Hotel du Lac, Capocotta, Villa Ada) there is room for more activities – Did Faruk Chourbagi pay 200 millions to CMC right before having been killed? (p. 11) Clay Shaw, the man that district attorney Garrison has had arrested under the accusation of having concocted with David Ferrie, in New Orleans, the assassination of president Kennedy, was actively involved in pseudo-commercial businesses in Europe. And more precisely in Rome, as a member of the Board of Directors of CMC, Centro Mondiale Commerciale, with head office in EUR-Rome. His name appeared in the newspapers for the first time on February 14, 1962, when "Paese Sera" reported on the financial misfortunes of CMC, that is, on the eviction for missed rent payments of the company's head office in EUR, rented for more than 100 million liras a year. Obviously, at that time the name Shaw did not have any particular meaning. His recent mishap and the mysterious role CMC played for years make it possible, now, to establish connections that are at least strange, opening perspectives of investigation that are even clamorous. As you might remember, Centro Mondiale Commerciale, a smoky international commercial organization, the purpose of which was to transform EUR in a permanent exhibition and to foster who-knows-what big trades[sic]. The personnel of the Rome offices and the equipment cost an average of 150 millions a year. The offices had three hundred between intercoms and telephones. In sum, a grandiose set-up, that presupposed conspicuous gross earnings, such to alarm several Italian commercial companies. In the Board of Directors were some prestigious Italian names, such as the member of the Parliament, the Christian Democratic Mario Ceravolo, and the then member of the Parliament, the Social Democratic Corrado Bonfantini. The third Italian was Carlo D'Amelio, lawyer and administrator of the assets of the former Italian royal house, who was nominated president of CMC. The other members of the Board were foreigners: the Swiss minister Ernest Feisat; the Swiss professor Max Hagemann, editor and owner of the paper "National Zeitung"; Hans Seligman Schurch, banker from Basel; Dr. Edgar Salin, professor at the University of Basel, chairman of the Business Department; Clay Shaw, delegated member of the board of International Trade Mart in New Orleans; Ferenc Nagy, former president of the Hungarian council and former leader of the Farmers's Party, residing in the United States on a continued basis and president of PERMINDEX (the mother house of CMC) doctor Enrico Mantello, brother of Giorgio Mantello (alias George Mandel, of Hungarian origins, emigrated to Swizerland, where he conducted intense and unclear financial and speculative activities, especially in the real estate sector.) The last member of the board of CMC was prince Gutierez of Spadafora, from Palermo, great agrarian and industrial manager, related, by way of his sister-in-law, to Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler's "finance wizard." The activity of Permindex (the mother house of CMC) in Switzerland had raised many criticisms. In August 1961, "AZ", a newspaper of Basel, wrote in a reportage dedicated to the directors of he company and to the people that gravitated around it: "In many articles we have righteously talked of the criminal activity of Mr. Nagy and of Mr. Mantello." There is no evidence that the two so contemptuously cited individuals have brought any actions against "AZ" for slander. Mantello's personality has many shadows. It is known that, within CMC he represented himself and other six shareholders, among which – owning half of the shares – was the American former major L. M. Bloomfield, currently a banker in Montreal. During the war Bloomfield was an officer in OSS, the espionage service (later transformed into the CIA.) He was, and still is, an intimate friend of the sole administrator of CMC, Paul Jean de Dongo, born in Budapest. Ferenc Nagy: president of PERMINDEX and member of the board of CMC, the French press indicated him as a munificent sponsor of the neofascist movement of Soustelle and of the extreme right-wing movements in all Europe and also in Italy. Another fact that might help understanding some things on the personalities gravitating around CMC, is the presence in it of a certain H. Simonfay, an Hungarian refugee, director of BO-DA, an agency of provocative information to and from the socialist countries, director in Italy of ACEN (specialized in hostile activities against the socialist countries,) that was entrusted with an important "public relations" task on behalf of the company from which it received a secret funding of half a million liras a month. Apparently, also Giuseppe Zigiotti, president of the fascist Associazione Nazionale Arma Milizia, was connected to CMC. In substance, the activities of CMC seemed mysterious, to say the least, and, among the current rumors – which are supported by the presence in directive positions of man deeply involved with the European extreme right-wing organizations – was the one that indicated in the Centro a creature of the CIA (the American espionage body,) established to cover the transferring of CIA-FBI funds in Italy for illegal political and espionage activities. In this framework, it remains to be clarified why Clay Shaw and former major Bloomfield were in the board of directors of CMC. Founded in 1961, CMC was later dissolved and was reborn, with some of the same protagonists (Giorgio Mantello, alias George Mandel in front raw,) as Italo American Hotel Corporation, with head offices in EUR. Mantello's corporation had the appearance of being mainly involved with profitable land and real estate speculations. It sponsored, with Hilton, the construction of the Hotel au Lac, in EUR, which raised harsh criticism and, for a brief period of time, was interrupted and was completed later on. Mantello, with attorney Carlo d'Amelio, is deeply involved in other speculative enterprises, such as the division into lots of Capocotta and the attempted dismemberment of Villa Ada. "Paese Sera" was the first one to report on this, generating wide reactions in the press. As a consequence, the planned transformation of the gigantic park of the heirs of the House of Savoy into a large and luxurious residential and hotel complex, financed by American, Swiss, and German capitals, was postponed to better times. The vicissitudes of CMC, on which the authorities should thoroughly investigate, have been extremely tumultuous. In less than five years of activity, the president or the directors, the more or less fictitious top offices of the company, changed ten times. However, the men behind this cover name are always the same. And to CMC or to its "reincarnation," the Italo American Hotel Corporation, are linked names that have recently come on to the scene of crime news, due to a great number of rumors and reports that, originating from the CMC itself and from men who, in the past, have lead their activities under the cover of the mysterious organization, expand the horizons of the suppositions and suspects in absolutely clamorous directions. One of these rumors pertained Faruk Churbagi, the young Lebanese-Egyptian industrialist killed in Rome in circumstances so obscure that not even the verdict of the courts has been able to clarify them. Within CMC are rumors that, right before being killed, the young man paid 200 million liras as a share in the activities of the Center itself, among which was, and still is, the hotel sector. It is pure coincidence, of course, that there is evidence that the young man' uncle, Munir Mohamed Churbagi, is president of the board of directors of INVESTUR (INVEStimenti Immobiliari e TURismo alberghiero [Real Estate Investments and Hotel Tourism]), with head office in Latina, via Lunga Podere 175; nominal capital: 100 million liras. The company was formed on July 9, 1962, with a paid-up capital of 1 million, increased to 50 millions in September of that same year, and to 100 millions in November. Finally, we must report that an even more groundless rumor indicates, among the people connected (through commercial activities or personal friendships) to the Center, Christa Wanninger, the German woman stabbed to death in front of the apartment of a friend of hers, near via Veneto. Nothing concerning her death could be clarified, except for the fact that she was dead. As you might remember, it was ascertained that Wanninger used to keep company, in Switzerland and elsewhere, with mature German and Swiss industrialists and financiers. It is believed that her murder was caused by the fact that she knew too many secrets of the world of high finance and, maybe, of politics. Certainly a groundless rumor, at least on the surface. But many things that pertain CMC and its activity are not less groundless and, yet, they are concretely true. END / 1967 --------------------------------------- THE ORIGINS OF PERMINDEX After [Clay] Shaw's arrest, Jim Garrison received from Ralph Schoenman, philosopher Bertrand Russell's secretary in London, copies of a series of articles published in an Italian newspaper of the independent left called Paesa Sera. The articles had been assigned six months earlier to expose the CIA's pernicious attempt to influence European electoral politics and to thwart the democratic process in more than one country. They focused on 'Centro Mondiale Commerciale,' the world trade center in Rome, as a CIA front, one modeled, according to a 1958 State Department document, on the original CIA-created International Trade Mart in New Orleans. Paese Sera, of course, did not possess this document. Its evidence came first hand. Contro Mondiale Commerciale was, by the US government's own admission, a CIA front, channeling money not only into legal political parties, but also into right-wing movements. Among them was the virulent paramilitary OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète) in France, which employed terrorism to oppose the independence of Algeria, and was among the 'most notorious fascist organizations in French history.' In New Orleans, Guy Banister and L.P. Davis had been OAS supporters. The most notorious OAS-sponsored effort was the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle in 1962. Banister operative Tommy Baumler remarked that 'those who killed John F. Kennedy were those who wanted to kill de Gaulle.' He was referring to the CIA, Clay Shaw, Banister, and Centro's parent organization, PERMINDEX (Permanent Industrial Exhibition), based in Switzerland. Having been accused of 'shady speculation' by the Swiss, PERMINDEX had created the Centro Mondiale Commerciale in Rome, ostensibly to develop industry and trade in Italy. The Centro, however, was a trade association that rarely if ever organized an exhibit; it facilitated no commercial transactions. CIA had, in fact, founded PERMINDEX to organize its political policymaking. In Italy, this had meant opposition to a coalition of socialists and communists that would have resulted in a majority government. The CIA preferred the Christian Democratic Party and so CIA Counter Intelligence chief James Angleton filtered ten million dollars of CIA money to the Christian Democrats. In Les Echos newspaper, de Gaulle named PERMINDEX as having been involved in the attempt on his life. The French, no less than the Italians, considered PERMINDEX a 'subsidiary of the CIA.' Paese Sera would call PERMINDEX ' a creature of the CIA...set up as a cover for the transfer of CIA funds in Italy for illegal political espionage activities.' In the ranks of PERMINDEX were actual Nazis and neo-Nazis, terrorists and Mafia operatives. Typical was Prince Guterez di Spadafora, a former Mussolini undersecretary, whose son had married the daughter of Hitler's finance minister, Hjalmar Schact, tried for war crimes at Nuremberg. The leadership of PERMINDEX included a long-time asset of CIA Deputy Direct of Plans, Frank Wisner. His name was Ferenc Nagy, and he was the president of PERMINDEX. Nagy had been chairman of the Hungarian's 'People's Party' or 'Independent Party of Small Holders.' Briefly, in 1945, he had been prime minister of Hungary. But it was Nagy's CIA history that catapulted him to the leadership of PERMINDEX. Its general secretary, Bela Kovacs, was also a CIA asset. Kovacs had been arrested by the Soviet security police and charged with spying for 'a Western intelligence service.' Nagy had been on Frank Wisner's list of the individuals with whom his office would 'have dealings in connection with our authorized activities' since September 22, 1948. Wisner then had been Assistant Director of CIA as well as 'Assistant Director for Policy Coordination.' Nagy had been a 'cleared contact of the International Organizations Division of the Agency,' among Wisner's most trusted Eastern European contacts. Nagy's history with the CIA dates from its beginnings and links to PERMINDEX with the Agency's clandestine services. Confirming de Gaulle's thesis that PERMINDEX funded the OAS is that Nagy was a 'munificent contributer' to Jacques Soustelle, former professor at the École pratique des hautes études and former Algerian governor general. Soustelle became an OAS supporters, and his organization, Conseil national de la resistance, was all but identical to OAS. In 1960, Soustelle met in Washington, D.C., with Richard Bissell, then heading the CIA's clandestine services. A year later, Soustelle went into exile to avoid being arrested by de Gaulle's police. Two years after that he would be accused of colluding with OAS in the attempted assassination of de Gaulle. S Soustelle had openly 'advocated over throwing de Gualle,' while condoning OAS violence. In New Orleans, Delphine Roberts identified Nagy from his photograph as someone she had seen at Guy Banister's office. Nagy's partner in the leadership of PERMINDEX was Giorgio Mantello, aka George Mandel, who during World War II had traded in Jewish refugees, profiting handsomely from their misery from his perch at the consulate of El Salvador in Bern. It was Mandel who had been the official founder of PERMINDEX. CIA kept silent, but the State Department learned that, as 'Georges Mandel,' Mantello had been engaged in the 'wartime Jewish refugee racket' until he was expelled from Switzerland. Although Centro Mondiale Commerciale refused to reveal the origins of its vast income, the paper trail leads to a Miami bank, Astalde Vaduz, and to the CIA front 'Double-Chek.' CMC was connected as well to L.M. Bloomfield in Montreal, and to the Seligman banking family in Basel; Seligman banking in turn was allied with Sullivan and Cromwell, the law firm of CIA Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles. 'My parents are very interested in PERMINDEX,' Peter Seligman-Schurch wrote to Clay Shaw. In Switzerland, PERMINDEX soon aroused 'widespread public suspicion.' Nagy and Seligman stonewalled the concerned American consulate in Bern after the Swiss complained they had 'insufficient confidence in the business integrity' of PERMINDEX. In the spring of 1958, Enrico Mantello, the vice president of PERMINDEX and brother of Giorgio, visited New Orleans. Touring the Trade Mart, he invited Clay Shaw to join the board of directors as a means of defusing the criticism of PERMINDEX; its critics by now included the State Department itself. Nagy appeared at the American Embassy in Rome to announce that he intended 'to strengthen US control in PERMINDEX by adding to its Board of Directors a Mr. Shaw, who is in charge of the New Orleans, Louisiana permanent exhibit.' Nagy claimed that Shaw 'had from the outset great interest in the PERMINDEX project,' and Shaw did use the term 'delighted' in his cable of acceptance. He made plans to visit Italy, then canceled. despite Mantello's urgings. When he added his PERMINDEX directorship to ' Who's Who in the South and the Southeast,' the Department of Commerce warned Shaw about 'this shadowy organization.' But, as in all his CIA assignments, grateful for the career CIA made of him, Clay Shaw honored his obligation. Internal evidence that PERMINDEX was a CIA front emerges in the fact that the CIA included PERMINDEX materials in its asset Clay Shaw's files, three years before as well as after the Kennedy assassination. One of these documents, dated March 16, 1967, reveals that at the time of his arrest Clay Shaw was working with Domestic Operations Division of the CIA's clandestine services. This was only a seeming contradiction since the CIA's operational component in New Orleans had resided under the umbrella of the Domestic Contact Division, at least since November 19, 1964, according to a CIA document on 'Garrison and the Kennedy Assassination,' MEMORANDUM No.8. 'Most of us consider the CIA with abhorrence,' Shaw wrote in his Diary for the record, with his customary dark laughter. In 1962, Centro Mondiale Commerciale was expelled from Italy, ostensibly for financial malfeasance, and specious real estate dealings, but actually for subversion and illegal intelligence activity. 'Who was giving money to the CMC and what was it being used for?' Paesa Sera demanded. PERMINDEX relocated to a more compatible political venue, apartheid South Africa. Clay Shaw remained on its board, providing space at the Trade Mart for a permanent PERMINDEX display. The editors of Paese Sera were astonished when their March 1967 publication date for the series on PERMINDEX coincided with the arrest of Clay Shaw. They had been working on the series for months, former editor Giorgio Fanti says. Now they headlined Clay Shaw's involvement in PERMINDEX, with a subhead revealing that he had been arrested by Jim Garrison in New Orleans. Paese Sera noted that Shaw's name had first appeared in connection with the machinations of the organization. He had gone to Rome 'during the time preceding the disbanding of the CMC,' Shaw admitted to a Paesa Sera interviewer. Paesa Sera wondered, too, about Shaw's leaving the United States two days after the assassination, remaining abroad for two years with only intermittent visits to America. Shaw affected his customary disdain. He had agreed to be on the PEMINDEX board, he claimed, because 'a young Italian came to see me in New Orleans and told me about a world trade center that was being planned in Rome.' He also told the Paese Sera interviewer that he 'accepted the position in exchange for two New Orleans-Rome air tickets.' Even his closest friends were appalled. 'There must have been blackmail - they're very famous for that, the CIA,' Patricia Chandler says. Jim Garrison had charged that the CIA had plotted the assassination of John F. Kennedy, for which they were aided and abetted in New Orleans by their operative, Clay Shaw. Thirty-five years later, a series of attacks on Paese Sera began to appear, accompanied by an excoriation of Jim Garrison. Among the publications sanctioning these attacks was the CIA's own web site, 'Studies in Intelligence.' Journalist Max Holland repeated in a series of magazine articles the erroneous thesis that the only reason that Paese Sera believed that the CIA was behind PERMINDEX was that the newspaper was the victim of KGB disinformation. Jim Garrison, therefore, had connected the CIA to the Kennedy assassination and to Shaw only owing to a KGB lie. Rather, Garrison's attribution of the planning of the assassination to the CIA was based on his discovery of the CIA connections of Lee Harvey Oswald, and not those of Clay Shaw, an inconvenient detail Holland omits. The truth is that Garrison had focused on the CIA in December 1966 and January 1967, well before the March publication of the Paese Sera articles. A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case that Should Have Changed History. by Joan Mellen. Pgs. 136-140. http://ce399.typepad.com/weblog/assassinations/index.html FBI..telex..Walter-Garrison..warning assn ON THE TRAIL OF THE ASSASSINS lists several critical evidence issues seemingly obstructed by the Warren Commission and later congressional committees in the House and Senate. While attorney and author Mark Lane was researching his book Citizen's Dissent, he broke a major story involving prior knowledge of the assassination, according to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. "...he [Lane] happened to meet a former FBI employee named William S. Walter. During their conversation Walter mentioned that on Novermber 17, 1963—five days before the assassination—he had been the night clerk on duty at the Bureau's New Orleans office when a warning about a possible presidential assassination attempt came chattering through on the teletype machine. Walter immediately called five agents and considered his work done." According to Garrison, "In 1976, Walter gave a copy of the text of the FBI telex to the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. After the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was passed Lane also obtained a copy of the warning telex and made it available to me. This is what it said: "URGENT: 1:45 AM EST 11-17-63 HLF 1 PAGE TO ALL SACS: FROM: DIRECTOR THREAT TO ASSASSINATE PRESIDENT KENNEDY IN DALLAS TEXAS NOVEMBER 22 DASH TWENTY THREE NINETEEN SIXTY THREE. MISC INFORMATION CONCERNING. INFORMATION HAS BEEN RECEIVED BY THE BUREAUS [sIC] BUREAU HAS DETERMINED THAT A MILITANT REVOLUTIONARY GROUP MAY ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE PRESIDENT KENNEDY ON HIS PROPOSED TRIP TO DALLAS TEXAS NOVEMBER TWENTY TWO DASH TWENTY THREE NINETEEN SIXTY THREE. ALL RECEIVING OFFICES SHOULD IMMEDIATELY CONTACT ALL CIS, PCIS LOGICAL RACE AND HATE GROUP INFORMANTS AND DETERMINE IF ANY BASIS FOR THREAT. BUREAU SHOULD BE KEPT ADVISED OF ALL DEVELOPMENTWS BY TELETYPE. OTHER OFFICES HAVE BEEN ADVISED. END AND ACK PLS." "...when the assassination occurred, he [Walter] was eating lunch but immediately ran back to the New Orleans Bureau office. In the file he found the warning telex along with a duplicate which had soon followed it. At the time he copied the exact phraseology of the telex warning and kept it. Shortly afterwards he checked the file again to see if the warning was still there. It had been removed." "The telex had been most explicit, naming both a place and dates for the attempt to assassinate the President. It was addressed to all special agents in charge, which meant every on the country, including Dallas. And yet the FBI did nothing. There is no record that it notified anyone—not even the Secret Service, which as the President's bodyguard should have been informed immediately....nearly five years had passed since the assassination. But in that time none of the five agents Walter had called that morning of November 17 ever hinted to the American people or to the Warren Commission that the FBI had received a specific warning about the assassination five days before it occurred." http://tomflocco.com/fs/Bush41RevivesLinks.htm Marty Underwood, Democratic National Committee advance man for the Dallas trip, told this correspondent that he was hearing all sorts of assassination rumors just 18 hours prior to the actual shooting. Underwood said that he conveyed this information to JFK, who told him not to worry. Former agent Kinney further stated that there was an assassination threat in Florida on November 18, 1963. Former agent Bouck said that he too was aware of the active pre-Dallas threats. ...V.Palamara.... Larry King Interview With Jim Garrison Aired on Sat.3/14/68, in News Weekend, 6.00-6.30.pm http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=388337 HSCA Report Threats : Secret Service http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...absPageId=69298 B..... "The question is whether Lee Harvey Oswald killed the President alone and unaided; if the evidence doesn't support that conclusion -- and it doesn't -- a thousand (honorable) men sitting shoulder to shoulder along the Potomac won't change the facts.." -- JIM GARRISON; 1988 HSCA Segregated CIA Collection http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;docId=62090 CLAY SHAW'S TRIAL AND THE CIA http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=2 The CIA Thought That Garrison Would Win..... Below is a copy of a CIA Memo... It relates that a Garrison Group had been formed ....See heading.. It appears to be from their first meeting...it is dated Sep.20/67...... It states that a senior aide to Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton... ..... " Rocca felt that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kenedy....".... B...... "The Media, the CIA and the JFK Assassination" In the JFK case, we find many journalists were serving two masters - the press and the FBI or the CIA, depending on which journalist you are talking about. For example: Jack Anderson, famous for his 'breakthrough' investigative journalism, briefed the FBI after talking to Jim Garrison. He told the FBI Garrison had quite a case, and was quite serious in his efforts. [FBI document from 4-4-67, referenced in Unreliable Sources] But what did Anderson tell the American public? That it looked like the president had been killed in what might have been a Communist plot! During the Garrison investigation, worried about public opinion, the CIA sent out this operational memorandum instructing media assets how to respond to critics of the Warren Commission's lone assassin verdict. Instructions include trying to associate critics with Communists, and trying to insinuate that the critics are only in it for money (neither of which has any bearing on reality, if my own experiences are worth anything!) Leading the charge against Jim Garrison, District Attorney for New Orleans in Louisiana, when he attempted to prosecute Clay Shaw along with others on the charge of conspiracy to assassination President Kennedy, was Saturday Evening Post writer James Phel an. Like Priscilla, Phelan proved to be serving two masters. While ostensibly working as a journalist, Phelan was also informing to the FBI on Garrison's case, sending them copies of documents from Garrison's case files. Here are a couple of FBI documents on Jim Phelan: Jim Phelan FBI documents http://192.220.64.45/media/phelan.htm and see..... http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/media.htm#Wh...s%20the%20Truth "The CIA's Interest in Garrison's Case" Once Garrison started looking into the case, people affiliated with the CIA kept popping up over and over. Garrison came to believe the CIA had direct involvement in the assassination. Garrison's interest in the CIA was returned in kind. This file from the Assassination Archives in Washington demonstrates the CIA's keen interest not just in the defendent Clay Shaw, who had covert security clearance to operate with the CIA, but in a man solely called to testify about the impossibility of the "single bullet theory". That Counterintelligence Director for the CIA Jim Angleton would find it necessary not only to spy but to work with Hoover's FBI in an attempt to dig up dirt on this innocent man's background is key to understanding the nature of (and perhaps reason for) the CIA's intense interest in wrecking Garrison's case. Angleton Spying on Garrison's Witness http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collect...fk/garrison.htm "Media Distortions" When JFK was assassinated, Dan Rather was a small town TV newscaster in Texas. It was he who, immediately after viewing the Zapruder film, reported to all America that John Kennedy's head was "rocketed forward" by the head shot. The Zapruder film then vanished into TIME/Life's vaults, never to be publicly seen until the Jim Garrison trial subpoenaed it, and Dan Rather leapt to network status. http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/LIE/lie.html "Mockingbird" ""An example of particularly shabby scholarship and unacceptable behavior is George Lardner Jr's contribution to the Post's campaign against the movie. Lardner wrote three articles, two before the movie was completed, and the third upon its release. In May, six months before the movie came out, Lardner obtained a copy of the first draft of the script and, contrary to accepted standards, revealed in the Post the contents of this copyrighted movie (*68). Also in this article, (*69). Lardner discredits Jim Garrison with hostile statements from a former Garrison associate Pershing Gervais. Lardner does not tell the reader that subsequent to the Clay Shaw trial, in a U.S. Government criminal action brought against Garrison, Government witness Gervais, who helped set up Garrison for prosecution, admitted under oath that in a May 1972 interview with a New Orleans television reporter, he, Gervais, had said that the U.S. Government's case against Garrison was a fraud (*70). The Post's 1973 account of the Garrison acquittal mentions this controversy, but when I recently asked Lardner about this, he was not clear as to whether he remembered it (*71)."" http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...ockingbird.html ""I only wish the press would allow our case to stand or fall on its merits in court. It appears that certain elements of the mass media have an active interest in preventing this case from ever coming to trial at all and find it necessary to employ against me every smear device in the book. ""...Jim Garrison Jim Garrison, whether we agree with all or not, was the only official within the Unites States to ever bring anyone, to trial for being involved in the Assassination of President John F.Kennedy.. The man named Clay Shaw, alias Clay Bertram, upon information found in documents that were later released, was also proven to have been a C.I.A. employee.... Had this information been allowed, as it should have been at the trial....Jim Garrison would have had a conviction, as it was the proof, that connected, Clay Bertram, to the assassination dealings....Clay Shaw was Clay Bertram.... B.. Clay Shaw Trial Transcripts http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents..._garr_trial.htm WWL-TV Reporter Bob Jones and News Director Bill Reed discuss the 1967 trial of Clay Shaw. http://www.wwltv.com/video/50yearsclassic-...tml?nvid=169528 A HERITAGE OF STONE By Jim Garrison A MAN WHO CARES too much for the human race may find himself living in a hostile environment. His humanity may not regarded as dangerous so long as his voice cannot be heard by too many people, but if he is eloquent, or in a position to affect the affairs of the nation, then his humanity will be regarded by some men as a great threat. AFTER THE UNITED STATES ascended to the position of the most powerful military nation in history, in the midst of its accumulation of the most effective death machinery of all time, there occured the accident election of a President who regarded the entire human race with compassion. By the time this happened, the cold war had become our major industry, and the Central Intelligence Agency had become the clandestine arm of our military-industrial complex and, in the process, (it had become) the most effective assassination machine in the world. JOHN KENNEDY'S EFFORTS to obtain a lasting peace represented the threat of civilian control reasserting itself over the military and industrial power structure which had developed during the years of the cold war. Shortly after twelve noon on November 22, 1963, Kennedy's hopes died by assassination. THE COUNTERTHRUST HAD taken less than six seconds. There was no risk the federal government would expose the truth about the President's murder, because agents of the federal government had participated in it. There was no risk of exposure from the national press, because, having been tossed a lone assassin and presented with an acceptable fable, the press would not go farther and try to digest the indigestable, to think the unthinkable and to question Brutus about the removal of Caesar. THE USE OF THE COUP D' ETAT - the murder of a leader by forces within his own government - is as old as the struggle of men for power. From modern intelligence agency techiques, however, there comes a new refinement. Through the employment of cover devices and the controlled disemination of information, the role of the government in assassinations can be effectively concealed. COUP D' ETAT GENERALLY have been accomplished by men powerful enough to be free from any fear of retribution. If they did not possess, at the outset, some manner of achieving control over the machinery of government, they would not have initiated the murder of a national leader. The people afterward may be free to make Caesar a god, as they did in Rome, but they must not be free to disturb the men who killed him. IN THE MEANTIME, the men who sponsored his removal can change the government's policies to suit their desires, leaving the citizens free to mourn and worship their dead leader. NO ONE WANTS TO RECOGNIZE that somewhere along the line America has ceased to be the home of the brave and the land of the free, and that only in after-dinner speeches, it is still the sweet land of liberty. No one wants to recognize that there are assassins at work in the land, systematically eliminating men who speak out for the human race and for the future. No one wants to admit that in America peace is dangerous business. Better to have the assassination accompanied by wafer-thin deceptions, eagerly accepted one after the other, than to have to face the truth. JUSTICE IS NOT SO blind that it pursues the most powerful forces in the country. Nor is the press so committed to truth that it wants the burden of knowledge of what is happening. AMERICA HAS BECOME A nation controlled by men who seeks ever-increasing power. Justice is whatever they want to happen. Truth is whatever they annouce has occured. AS THE PRESIDENT'S limousine turned right from Main Street onto Houston, gunman waited in Dealey Plaza. In other towns and cities men glanced at their watches and waited for the news bulletin. At the corner of Elm the car made a sharp left turn past the Texas School Book Depository. President Kennedy had ten seconds to live. "What kind of peace do we seek.... not a Pax-Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of of the grave, nor the security of the slave. Not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time. Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. Too many of us think that this is impossible, that war is inevitable, than mankind is doomed. That we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view, our problems are man made, therefore they can be solved by man, man's reason and spirit has oftened solved the seemingly unsolvable, and I believe they can do it again." SUDDENLY became mere words. OUR INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT BEGINS and ends with deception. Perceiving this deception is the key to understanding how the assassination of President Kennedy was accomplished. Understanding the motivation for his assassination is the key to understanding what has happened to America. -- JIM GARRISON B.... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edited October 4, 2009 by Bernice Moore Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert Howard Posted October 4, 2009 Share Posted October 4, 2009 "...We do know Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him, there're fingerprints of intelligence." --Republican Senator Richard Schweiker, member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Village Voice, December 15, 1975below to the left looking at the photo of judge bernard baggart is one of james phelan.. Garrison had been born Earling Caruthers Garrison in Denniston, Iowa on November 20, 1921, but he legally changed his first name to plain "Jim" when he first entered Louisiana politics in the 1950s.....and was 6 feet 6 inches tall...... If you will note the name at the bottom of each photo...these are people, places and information who were in some way connected....to the Garrison Investigation..... Further information in relation to the below photos...... Some of the photos and the information is obtained from "Assassination of America" 2006...by Paris Flammonde as well as from others and other sources......as well as sites//txs Jim Garrison Bio... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Garrison Garrison Link..... http://www.prouty.org/garrison.html Also....Real History Archives ..http://192.220.64.45/collections/assassinations/jfk/garrison.htm ******************************** Garrison : ""Well I went down there to look at it, and I found myself not merely outside of Guy Banister's office, but across the street from Naval Intelligence, across the street from Secret Service, around the corner was the Crescent City Garage, the garage for the intelligence community and then, two doors away, the Reily Coffee Company. I used to be in the FBI. I knew people in Naval Intelligence and they were either across the street, around the corner -- the whole intelligence community was there, and right in the middle of it was Guy Banister having Oswald sheep-dipped as a Communist.... When the President ends up being assassinated and the scapegoat grabbed by the federal government, and killed before anything can be done to help him, turns out to be the man that Guy Banister had been the tutor of all the time, you have to conclude that Guy Banister was a key man in the assassination, and possibly the most important man that we encountered in our whole investigation. But he's been dead so many years it's a little hard to question him."" TMWKK Pt 4.... Clay Lavergne Shaw.. Served as an officer in French Intelligence......"La Servicede Documentation Extrerieure et de Conte Espionage (SDECE)" during WW 11, under aliases Col.Rene' Bertrand, & Col.? Beaumont , connected to Corsican Christian David, professional assassin. N/O businessman, with a long time intelligence association, a director of CIA European front operation "Permindex "and " Centro Mondiale Commerciale"..... After his death it was conceded that he had, indeed worked for the CIA ...Almost al individuals involved in the case who were said to have government ties and were denied as agents by said government, were eventually estabished as having had such allegiance or alliances ....The government of the U.S , nearly without exception lied about such matters... D/A Jim ( not James ) Garrison....dubbed " Big Jim".....and the "Jolly Green Giant".....Three times D/A of New Orleans...elected and re-elected to the judicial bench. The only person ever to persue an investigation into the murder of President John F.Kennedy, Aaron Kohn..N/O businessman and director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission N/O...( Times Picayne Pub.) Once an admirer of Garrison, became a consistant and political opponent of his. "The question of whether Oswald had any relationship with the FBI or the CIA is not frivolous. The agencies, of course, are silent. Although the Warren Commission had full power to conduct its own independent investigation, it permitted the FBI and the CIA to investigate themselves -- and so cast a permanent shadow on the answers." --Walter Cronkite, June 28, 1967 Bernard Barker........ CIA operative..........Although the charter of the CIA forbids the functioning of such within the United States....of course, it does... Edgar Eugene Bradley ( Brading).. Charged with willfully and unlawfully conspiring with others to murder John F Kennedy.... The entire Bradley scenario was false, as one of Garrison's investigators had confused the names of Bradley with that of Eugene Hale Braden, alias James ( Jim) Braden aka James Hale Brading....Who had been arrested in Dealey Plaza immediately following the assassination. ( Mentioned in Garrison's "Trail of the Assassins".....information within James DiEugenio's "Destiny Betrayed"...Lane's "Plausible Denial "... Belin's " Final Disclosure" ....Lifton's "Best Evidence" ....Davy's " Justice Be Done".. Clay Shaw: On aquittal.......Born March 17 /13...Death Aug.15/74 ..and was buried within 24 hours....His name does not appear in the W/C...J.Lee Rankin, it's former chief counsel said "as far as I know we've never heard of this person"..... After the trial, Shaw engaged in many efforts to recoup the depletion of his finances..from his legal fees.....He joined the French Market Corp. created to renovate the French Market in N.Os...he retired in May, 74.....but continued on lecturing on the experiences instigated by the D.A Fate numbered Clay Sahw's remaining days..........at 61 he was discovered at 12.30 AM..on his bed, in pajamas and dressing gown, dead of terminal cancer.. City Police record ( 15410-74) noted.." Dets. John Dillman and Fred Dantagnan , of the Criminal Investigative Division, report that on Fri.Aug.16th they were instructed by the Chief of Detectives Henry M. Morris, to initiate and investigation into the death of Clay Shaw, white male, age 61, formerly residing at 1024 St.Peter St. Major Morris then furnished the Detectives with a certifcate of death signed by Dr.Hugh M.Batson, with the cause of death reflecting Metastatic Lung Malignancy, Brain & Liver....etc " His body was found by sitter Don Doddy ( a friend for twenty years) who also had a personal relationship with the deceased.. who called Shaw's attorney of 25 years, who also had a long personal relationship with the deceased, Edward R. Wegmann who proceeded to make arrangements.....No autopsy, no ceremony, and secretively, he was buried within a day.....His passing was as peculiar as his habits, also his acquaintances, friends, and activities, and as cloudy....An examination of of the 8 page official summary detailed a long deterioration from a terminal illness with all the characteristics of such... Obituary: Fri. Aug.16,1974 Clay Shaw Final Rites To Be Today Clay Shaw, one of the founders of the International Trade Mart and the man acquitted of charges of conspiring to assassinate John F.Kennedy, died Thursday morning. He was 61. Mr.Shaw died at his home at 1024 St.Peter St.shortly after 1 am..He had been ill since early this year, when he suffered a blood clot in the brain, and underwent surgery which left one side paralyzed and Mr.Shaw in failing health.. He was forced to return to Ochsner Foundation Hospital in June. Funeral services will be held at 9.am Friday at the House of Bultman 3338 St. Charles Ave. Internment will be in Mr.Shaw's hometown, Kentwood, La..at 11am Friday. Note :" Solitary bare ritual and consignment to the earth in less than 22 hours after he died. As he was not known to be Jewish, is it difficult to refain from speculating about the haste".P.F. Raymond Cummings: Claimed he had seen a newspaper photo of Ferrie.....following the break of the Garrison case...and recognised him...He had once been a policeman in a town in south Texas....During the period between Jan.11th to March 15, 1963....he had been a part time Taxi driver..in Dallas.. Cummings stated that he took a man from the Dallas bus station to suburban Irving..The passenger he said was Lee Harvey Oswald...He recalled because both were ex-marines and talked about the service..and though Oswald did not have enough money for the fare, took him anyway. A few weeks later he picked up three men on a Dallas street and was told to take them to Jack Ruby's "Carousel" ....he stated these men were...Oswald, Ferrie and an unidentified man.....Upon recognizing Oswald, they chatted more about the marines... Ferrie's unusal appearance caused Cummings to keep glancing at him in the mirror...( He wore a red wig, and false eye brows..he suffered from a disorder called "Alopecia Totalis" which caused a complete loss of hair... After the Garrison investigation was announced he flew into N/Os, and mentioned he had received phone threats on a successive evening, afternoon, and evening warning him....that "you're definitely going to get it ( if you go to New Orleans)"...He expressed that he was not particularly concerned......as they were possible pranks.......But his Lawyer Frank Wright....said he would seek police protection.......for his client....Cummings appeared twice at the DA's office during the day......March 9/67.. In "Plot or Politics?"..by Rosemary James & Jack Wardlaw, the following....."Dallas sources report, however, that Cummings did not work for a cab company at that time.".....Whether he was actually operating as a gypsy ( free lancer) is not known... Note: While Garrison found the police officer's story interesting at the time, he makes no mention of him in his two books...and subsequent allusions to him are almost none existent..eg..DiEugenio, Davy....This was the fate of a number of persons interviewed.... « Reply #2 on: May 26, 2008, 02:28 AM » -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I no longer believe that we were able to conduct an appropriate investigation of the [Central Intelligence] Agency and its relationship to Oswald.... I do not believe any denial offered by the Agency on any point. The law has long followed the rule that if a person lies to you on one point, you may reject all of his testimony.... We now know that the Agency withheld from the Warren Commission the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. Had the commission known of the plots, it would have followed a different path in its investigation.... We also now know that the Agency set up a process that could only have been designed to frustrate the ability of the committee in 1976-79 to obtain any information that might adversely affect the Agency. Many have told me that the culture of the Agency is one of prevarication and dissimulation and that you cannot trust it or its people. Period. End of story. I am now in that camp." --Robert Blakey, staff director and chief counsel (1977-79), U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, statement from 2003... Dean Andrews: New Orleans attorney informed the W/C that a man calling himself Clay Bertrand asked for his legal aid for Lee Harvey Oswald...the day of the assassination ( W/C 5 H,CE, 1931..Convicted later of perjury after refusing to re-identify Clay Shaw as Clay Bertrand.. Deputy Sheriff : Eddy Raymond "Buddy" Walthers: Police aid to Sheriff Bill Decker.... Present when an unidentified man recovered a bullet from Dealey Plaza, south side of Elm...near a sewer grate.....He was shot and killed by a felon......James Walter Cherry on Jan.11, 69... Much more further information within "Harvey & Lee"by ..John Armstrong.....Larry Hancock's..."Someone Would Have Talked"...."Rush To Judgement" by Mark Lane and within Jim Garrison's, "On the Trail of the Assassins (1988)" to name a few....also.. See Roger Craig's "When They Kill A President".....for further information..on Walthers.. http://spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_....craig.bio.html "[Former CIA Director Richard] Helms told reporters during a break that no one would ever know who or what Lee Harvey Oswald ... represented. Asked whether the CIA knew of any ties Oswald had with either the KGB or the CIA, Helms paused and with a laugh said, 'I don't remember.'" --Helms, chatting with the Washington Post's George Lardner and other reporters in 1978, during a recess of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation Eugene C.Davis: After many statements by Attorney Dean Andrews to the question whom was Chay Shaw?, ...such as "You said I identified him, I don't know if I did or not"...In reply to a question at the same interview...."And have you seen Clay Shaw's picture in the news?....Reply .."Since this happened many times"....without hesitation........However.....Less than a minute before, "Man, I wouldn't know Clay Shaw if I fell across him on the street dead."..... Another new and most explosive of Andrews " Revelations"..was the "Real Identity " of Clay Shaw, .... one Eugene C.Davis..owner of "Wanda's Seven Seas Bar"...in the French Quarter of N/Os. Davis exploded...with indignation....going immediately to the D/As office and making a statement.. Marina (Oswald) Porter & husband Kenneth Garrison created quite the stir when on Jan.24th 68..he supoened Mrs. Kenneth Porter, the former Marina Oswald.....She admited she had conferred with lawyers for Clay Shaw, and told them she would testify at his trial..........she did not intend to respond to Garrison's subpoena, she felt she had nothing to add to the Garrison probe.. Her testimony was not immediately released to the public.... "I don't see how any court would say her testimony was not material in this case ".said Asst.D.A James Alcock....she ultimately took that position, that, while convinced that there was a conspiracy to slay the President, her husband had nothing to do with the affair... Thomas Edward Beckham.... A guitar playing self styled psychologist and minister of a minor religious sect whom Garrison suspected of knowing Ferrie..... . GARRISON: ""Guy Banister -- it's difficult to say much about him, because he always stood in the shadows and pushed someone else to the front. He was a strongly disciplined man, perhaps the outgrowth of his many years as a special agent in charge of the Chicago office of the FBI. But he was a key man in the assassination, and that's clear from the fact that Oswald's "sheep-dipping" -- his being portrayed as a Communist -- was done out of Guy Banister's office. So he was sheep-dipped for months as a Communist by giving literature: "Lee, hand this out today. This is your assignment."" TMWKK pt 4..... Guy Banister : "On at least two separate occasions, Banister employees saw Oswald handing out pro-Castro literature and reported it to their boss. In one instance Banister simply laughed, and on the other, he told his secretary Delphine Roberts: 'Don't worry about him.... He's with us. He's associated with the office.' Roberts also said she saw Oswald at 544 Camp Street, and that he filled out one of Banister's 'agent' application forms. She later told author Anthony Summers: 'Oswald came back a number of times. He seemed to be on familiar terms with Banister and with the office.'" --Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy Born in a log cabin in Caldwell Parish, Monroe, Louisiana, March 7, 1901.......His resume states that when he was 28 he appears in New Orleans, as an investigator for the Monroe Louisiana police...Within a fortnight the chief asked him to take a stenography course, upon completion he became the chiefs official secretary with sergeant's pay..6 months later his mentor died, and he "" was assigned duties that made me, actually. Chief of Detectives"..FBI files # 62-103863-13..He impressed someone as on Nov.5/34 he was sworn in as special agent, into the Division of Investigation pf the Dept of Justice....soon to be renamed the FBI...He was a violent man, and one wonders if he would have applied if Congress had not made it possible for the Bureau personal to go armed that year,,, There is information nonsense associated with him, ..that he was alleged to have been in on the slaying of John Dillinger, not true..... In May, 38....he was assigned as an Asst, Agent in Charge in Newark, New Jersey, within three months promoted again to Special Agent in Charge in Butte, Montana ....In 1941 he moved to Oklahoma City, but returned to Butte within three years.... He transferred to Minneapolis in Sept.52...for about 15 months, then was shipped to Chicago on Jan 1.1954...where he finished out his career on December 12, 1954...at one time being Special Agent in Charge.... Note : Garrison believed that Banister had been associated with Naval Intelligence during WW 11......within "On The Trail of the Assassins" Garrison, p.41.....revealed within the retired spy's possession's and found by the state police, given to Lou Ivon of the D.As staff , was the volume "Naval Intelligence" inscribed " For Guy Banister,with warmest regards, Ellis Zacharias. He was the noted intelligence figure, Adm Elis M.Zacharias, author of "Behind Closed Doors : The Secret History of the Cold War"..1950,,whose report is based on documents, interviews with diplomats from both sides of the Iron Curtain, political exiles, atomic scientists, secret police, etc....("" Ironically in August 1960, the CIA did consider Banister's detective agency as " a source of intelligence"....and as "a cover mechanism" of some kind, presumably due to Banister's FBI background...A background check revealed that Guy Bannister Associates was failing financially and Banister was personally regarded as unstable & unreliable. The Agency lost interest in him, and a search in the CIA records yields no further connection.. Whatever the facts may be, Banister turned up in N.O with possibly the confidentiality of Naval Intelligence, top FBI ranking and connections with the Chicago mob, where no one could work against without getting to know it and it's players....He became Head of Internal Affairs of the Police Dept.by mayor of N.O De Lesseps S.Morrison after being confronted by one scandal after another within the NO PD...in less than 6 months he was in number three position as Dept Superintendent of the force..He was also supported by Aaron Kohn, an ex G-man, who would create the Metropolitan Crime Commission... Banister's recalled his accomplishments, of over a couple of years, him being responsible for the break up of extensive graft...corruption in the force...indictment of many policemen...some convicted within courts....and Grand Jury preparation, submission of malfeasance charges against his benefactors......Mayor Morrison, Superintendent of Police Provosty, A.Dayries, and D.A Leon Dayries Hubert, however were not indicted..While his team fought corruption, he main concern was Communism....and he was ready and able when Morrison appointed him to investigate local leftists..and put him in contact with the rabid racist Senator James Eastland....For some time all when accordingly, by Banister lacked the self control of discipline and often threatened people at random...with his imitation George Patton pistol......and finally he destroyed his law enforcement career..it ended when he was arrested for threatening a bartender , that he would kill him, for not catering to him as he expected. ...He then became a private detective "Guy Banister & Associates "..In an interview a former crew member stated that " Guy participated in every important anti Communist South and Central American revolution which came along acting as key liaison man for the U.S government-sponsored anti-Communist activities in Latin America.."...N.O "States Item" May5/67....."He (Oswald) told me Banister worked for the CIA ....that Banister worked for the CIA is indisputable ," stated Ron Lewis...( Flashback: Lewis, p.67-69 )...It seemed impossible to to isolate and intell agency he did not work for.Alluding to Lee, he said that " although he worked for Banister, he was paid by someone else. I am certain that it was the FBI, and that he was paid two hundred dollars a month.".This of course confirms, similar reports... He became involved with Sergio Arcacha Smith,a major representative of the virulent anti-Castro Cuban Revolution Council, which was made even more convenient by it's office being directly across the hall from the investigator's at 544 Camp... The Garrison investigation revealed countless contacts between Lee Oswald and the anti-Castro underground in New Orleans and Dallas....One connection centered about the elusive careers of Guy Banister and Hugh Ward, who was a N.Os private investigator,who operated a private detective agency in N.Os while L.H.O resided there... Bannister associate whom Garrison claimed was involved with David Ferrie and the anti Castro Cuban exiles, and whose address was used as a mail drop by L.H.O in the summer of 1963...According to Garrison "Guy Banister was one of the most militant right-wing anti-Communists in N.Os. He was a former FBI agent and his headquarters at 544 Camp St. was a clearing house for Cuban exile and para-military right-wing activities .....Banister also published a newsletter fro his clients that included virulent ant-Kennedy polemics ..Norden " Playboy".......A New York "States-Item" May 5/67.reported that "Banister...is believed to have worked in co-operation with a U.S military intelligence office here", "and Garrison's office has developed evidence that it was the office of Naval Intelligence".. ""That would explain why Banister was never questioned, let alone investigated by anyone , FBI,CIA, or the Warren Commission...If one wishes to hide where the bodies are buried, one hardly summons, one of the grave keepers for interrogation."".P.Flammonde... Guy Banister died of a heart attack, coronary thrombosis on June 6, in 1964..Hugh Ward died in an air plane crash he was piloting for a former Mayor of N.Os, Delesseps Morrison it crashed mysteriously in Mexico on May.23 1965..Morrison has previously introduced Clay Shaw to the President in Washington.... There is a huge amount of information available on Banister and all that went down in N.Os and his connections, and if interested in following through some books that are available as well as many more... See " The Fish is Red" Hinkle & Turner, "Deadly Secrets" Hinkle & Turner...... Di Eugenio's "Destiny Betrayed"........ Abive info from..pps....775 to 781 Flammonde's "Assassination of America".. Also see : Banister W Guy http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb01?Na=Banister+Guy Also......********* Guy Banister -- Former FBI Agent and Naval Intelligence Operative. Also a Member of the Minutemen, the John Birch Society, the Louisiana Committee on Un-American Activities, and Publisher of the Racist Louisiana Intelligence Digest. Banister also helped organize various anti-Castro groups in the New Orleans area: Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front; Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean; and Friends of Democratic Cuba. The following text is excerpted from the book, Crossfire by Jim Marrs: On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, two men sat drinking in the Katzenjammer Bar, located in New Orleans next door to 544 Camp Street, where a puzzling parade of anti-Castro Cubans and intelligence agents -- including Lee Harvey Oswald -- were seen the previous summer. (see The Patsy) One of the men was Guy Banister, the former FBI man who was running a private-investigation firm with intelligence connections out of an office at 544 Camp Street. The other man was one of his investigators, Jack Martin. According to a police report prepared that day, the two men returned to Banister's office where an argument erupted. Banister, his irritability inflamed by alcohol, accused Martin of stealing files whereupon Martin reminded Banister that he had not forgotten some of the people he had seen in Banister's office that summer. Banister then beat Martin over the head with a heavy .357 magnum pistol. In the heat of the moment, Martin screamed out: "What are you going to do -- kill me, like you all did Kennedy?" A police ambulance was called and carried the bloodied Martin to Charity Hospital. An angered Martin soon whispered to friends that Banister had often been in the company of a man named David Ferrie, whom Martin claimed drove to Texas the day of Kennedy's assassination to serve as a getaway pilot for the assassins. He hinted at even darker associations. Martin's words soon reached the ears of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, who quickly arrested Ferrie and began an investigation into the JFK assassination that eventually turned into a worldwide cause celebre. Because of the Garrison investigation much new assassination information became known and the assassination was addressed for the first time in a courtroom -- even though the defendant was finally acquitted. Garrison claimed that the entire weight of the federal government was moved to block and ridicule his investigation, and indeed there were many strange aspects to this entire episode, including an attack by some in the national media before Garrison even had a chance to present his case.... After hearing the remarks of Jack Martin, Garrison moved quickly enough.. Over the assassination weekend, New Orleans lawmen vainly sought David Ferrie. On Monday, November 25, Ferrie turned himself in. http://www.geocities.com/garrisoninvestigation/ "The thing I am concerned about, and so is [Deputy Attorney General Nicholas] Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin." --FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, speaking on the telephone to Johnson aide Walter Jenkins two hours after Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby, HSCA Report, vol. III, pp. 471-73. (The Warren Commission -- charged with determining the truth in the JFK assassination -- relied upon Hoover's FBI as its primary investigative arm.)...... Lawrence J.Howard Jr. & Loran Eugene Hall On Sept.25th 1963, a visit was made by three men to the apartment of Silvia Odio a 26 year old , American educated Cuban exile living in Dallas who in 1963, was active in Manolo Ray's JURE ( Junta Revolucionaria ) the most Liberal of the Castro exile groups, she testified to the W/C that they told her they had just come from New Orleans..and were leaving " for a trip "..The delivered to her some intimate information about her Father ,then held by the Castro Government on the Isle of Pines...the information was of such that it could have only come from the "underground" or CIA sources....and they requested her help in anti-Castro activities. Two of the men appeared to be Latins , though one perhaps Mexican , and they called themselves by dramatic "War names" of Leopoldo, and Angelo..the third an American, that was introduced as Leon Oswald..later identified as a former Marine and a crack shot...Leopoldo told Mrs. Odio, that " our idea is to introduce him to the underground in Cuba, because he is great , he is kind of a nut..He has told us we don't have any guts .........Because President Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs , because he was the one that was holding up the freedom of Cuba.That he was the one that was in the way." ."It's so easy to do" he told us afterwards, she said..When Silvia saw LHO on T.V the day of the President's assassination both she and her sister Annie, who had seen the men, and had been present at the meeting.....recognized him as "Leon Oswald ".....and was so traumatized that she collapsed...but after she recovered she did not notify the authorities, not the police, FBI ,or the Secret Service... fearing, that the Cuban exiles would be blamed for the assassination..CE 3147.....A friend who heard of the encounter informed the authorities on Nov.28th 63... When shown photographs by the W/C on July 22, 64.......of Oswald she was asked if she had any doubts.."after looking after the pictures that the man in your apartment was Lee Harvey Oswald ?"......she replied " I have no doubts ".... The problem was that LHO on Sep. 26/63.....could not have been the man.because it was established that between 6.AM & 2.PM on that day, he had crossed the Mexican border on a bus....north to south...... Other contradictions were that it could not have been Oswald, as he did not have a car, could not drive..nor could it have occurred the day before, because he had been in New Orleans, that day.....The only way that he possibly could have was to fly, but upon investigation, it was found that he had not..so if Leon was not LHO, who was he...?? Could there have been an impersonator implicating him in advance of the assassination ?...Garrison thought so....( see Harvey & Lee by John Armstromg )...... The FBI was requested by the W/C to investigate, and attempt to locate and identify the two men, she thought were with Oswald.......and on Sept..16/64, they located Loren Hall, in Johnsondale, Cal..he stated yes he was with Lawrence Howard a Mexican American from East Los Angeles, and one William Seymour from Arizona..and that he Seymour was similar in appearance to Oswald...and that he spoke only a few words of Spanish as Mrs Odio had testified .. The FBI investigation had not been completed at that time, but the report was to the press....and the W/C affirmed LHO was not in the Odio apartment...in Sept.63.. Note: a shadowy figure Loran Hall....( aka Hall, Lorenzo, Pascillio, Lorenzo, "Skip".Physical description at the time, Mexican 6' , 40 to 45 years old, and according to the FBI a "Loud mouth"....Benson, "Who's Who".. ....Former Life reporter Richard Billings revealed in his 5 part examination of the Garrison investigation.in the Chicago Daily News " An FBI report dated Nov. 23/63 .....tells of an informant who advised that in Sept. Loren Hall had redeemed a 30.06 rifle from a pawn shop in Los Angeles...."......What the Bureau concluded is astounding .The report reads " " No further investigation was conducted, as it is obvious that the rifle mentioned above was not used in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy".... Aridly, he appends, "the day after the assassination was a trifle early for the FBI to be making decisions like that"........ The HSCA found Silvia Odio's information believable , that " Mrs. Odio checked out thoroughly ...the evidence is unanimously favourable.....( she) is the most significant witness linking Oswald to the anti-Castro Cubans "...While the Commission evidence was far from conclusive, Jim Garrison believed at that juncture that it was not improbable that William Seymour may have been deliberately impersonating LHO....in order to enmesh him in a pot to assassinate the President..These connections was strongly supported by the countess contacts he uncovered between Oswald and and the anti-Castro factions in New Orleans....and Dallas....one centering on the elusive careers of Guy Banister and Hugh Ward there... On Dec.29/67 Garrison issued a subpoena for each..Howard & Hall... Hall in Kernville and Howard in El Monte both in Cal..and another for the new character Thomas Beckham whom Garrison suspected knew Ferrie...... Howard asserted he was in Los Angeles on Nov.22.63...appearing in the L.A court on Jan 16/68......to a show cause order, and protested that returning to N.O would impose hardships on him.. On Jan,24 in Bakersfield Cal.Superior Court Judge P.R Burton rejected the New Orleans request,,.that Hall be returned to that city to testify.. Howard overcame his reluctance to testify and at the end of Feb....travelled to see Garrison.. Meanwhile Hall , by the same Judge P.R.Borton who had accepted Hall's denial of knowledge of events pertaining to the Garrison probe, followed suit and rejected the D.As request. But then followed the same pattern as his associate Howard, and announced in May 68, that his "memory had been jogged"........ After both men conferred ...with critic Harold Weisberg, both men met with Garrison.for lengthy interviews much of which has never been released...after these interviews Jim Garrison released both men, Hall left the militant plotters unnamed , although he conceded that he had given full details to the N.O district attorney....He conceded that he had been able to identify a half a dozen of the photographs shown him by Garrison as being persons now living in Cal.. However, if neither Hall, Howard nor Seymour ever went to see Mrs. Odio then who did ?, all denied the allegations vehemently of doing so, or with anyone else...........and more to the point, who then was Leon..?. Of more importance was Hall's statements.... "there are absolutely no doubts in my mind but that ( Edgar Eugene Bradley remembered me right from the beginning ......I did not remember him (at first.)......then I recalled having met him ......( at a) house that was noted for their anti Semitic and paramilitary feelings and thinkings:..." "I am positive in my mind from the calls and stuff I have received from him that he has remembered me right from the beginning." In response to :" You are saying that Bradley is a CIA man ?".....Hall replied ." In my mind.".... "The assassination of President Kennedy .........was precipitated by the Fascists and rightist anarchists and the CIA they are one and the same," he asserted.."I firmly believe that the rightist anarchists and the CIA can take over out country right now and it would be a Fascist state except for two things. They would first have to demolish and destroy the conservative movement by the radical right.....They would have to destroy organizations such as the John Birch Society ....(and) the other thing that is in their way is......Jim Garrison"..... Suddenly and unexpectedly, in Sep.1,68.....issue of "The Enquirer" .which though it was not one of the foremost literary papers in the nation, ...was one of the very few that carried full stories on the New Orleans Enquiry..... Hall wrote.." I turned down a $50,000 offer to kill President John F. Kennedy , only five weeks before he was shot dead in Dallas, Texas..".. The militant anti-Castroite said the proposal came as a result of his trying to raise money for arms, ammunition and supplies of his guerrilla raids on Cuba......much of which was supplied by the CIA.radical rightists and ex-military officers.." who had their taste of glory"and they now believed that only the elite can rue the nation".....a familiar theme to Americans.... "I'd heard the killing of Kennedy discussed many times, at meetings held by the paramilitary fanatics,"....recalled Hall...... "They drew up a kill list. Martin Luther King, was on it.King was beginning to get things accomplished for the black people.......Bobby Kennedy was on the kill list. If they hated anyone more than John Kennedy it was Bobby...they figured..he was even more dangerous ( and).......would be even a stronger opposition to their plans for power."...... ...B ************************* How It Began The conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy began in a series of discussions held in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The men in the discussions were extremely angry that Kennedy had stopped plans and preparations for another invasion of Cuba (scheduled for the latter part of 1963.) One of the instigators was David Ferrie, a CIA contract agent who had been training pilots in Guatemala for the invasion. Meetings held in Ferrie's apartment in New Orleans were attended by Clay Shaw, William Seymour and several Cubans. Plans for assassinating President Kennedy developed out of those early meetings. Others whose support was sought by the group included Guy Banister, Major L. M. Bloomfield, Loran Hall, Lawrence Howard, Sergio Arcacha Smith and Carlos Prio Socarras. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp5.html D110. Lawrence Howard, Jr. Documents and Transcript of Interview by Jim Garrison, William Boxley, Louis Ivon, and Steve Burton, Feb. 1968. (from AMKW files) RIF1801007610015. N/A. Sylvia Odio vs. Liebeler & the La Fontaines By Jim DiEugenio http://www.ctka.net/pr996-odio.html Some Books...... DiEugenio,J. Destiny Betrayed. 1992 (346) DiEugenio,J. Pease,L. The Assassinations. 2003 (210) Duffy,J.. Ricci,V. The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. 1992 (337-8) LaFontaine,R.& M. Oswald Talked. 1996 (245) Morrow,R. First Hand Knowledge. 1992 (295) Newman,J. Oswald and the CIA. 1995 (349) Russell,D. The Man Who Knew Too Much. 1992 (331, 480-2) Scott,P.D... The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond. 1976 (103, 115) The Road to Dallas ....David Kaiser B..... Lewallen :James ( Jim ) Ronald He was 38 years old, born in Clevland,Ohio.He worked as a Quality inspector for the Bowing Company...at the Michoud Saturn Rocket plant....He once was the roomate of David Ferrie, in Kenner. His attorney was George Piazza 11.....did concede that like many other people in New Orleans he did know David Ferrie..but did not know why the District Attorney, wanted to question him........When asked if he had been questioned by the W/C , Piazza stated "Not that I know of".... Lewallen was a licensed ( former Air Force Pilot )...had been with Boeing in the Michoud plant since 1964, except being farmed out once to the Mississippi Test Facility in Hancock County..Miss. He reportedly possessed security clearance, his assignment within was said to be checking out ground support equipment for the test firing of the Saturn V booster..... He was rated by a supervisor as having " a relatively good background in aircraft repair"..and regarded as mild mannered..A friend of his told reporters that Lewallen was shocked at being subpoenaed as he felt he had been cooperating behind the scenes for some time. The D.As office had little to say, except that he had declined to take a lie-dtector test.....Though Ferrie had told them, if they wanted to know more about him to ask Jim Lewallen. Snip from "On the Trail of the Assassin's.."......Jim Garrison One other lead about Ferrie yielded some provocative information. Ferrie, once a pilot for Eastern Airlines, had been investigated by a private detective agency. I obtained a copy of its report. The investigators had maintained a stakeout near his residence and found that Ferrie was visited frequently by a man named Dante Marachini. A simple check of the phone book revealed that Dante Marachini resided at 1309 Dauphine Street. This was extremely interesting to me because right next door was the home of Clay Shaw. I wondered who else might be living next door to Shaw. Reaching for the red book (which lists individuals by address) I found that also living at 1309 Dauphine Street was a man named James Lewallen. I recalled from earlier research that James Lewallen had once shared an apartment with David Ferrie in the vicinity of Kenner, a New Orleans suburb. Now I found myself looking at two unfamiliar names, Marachini and Lewallen, both of whom had in the past been associated with Ferrie and both of whom now lived next door to Clay Shaw. That was something to think about. Some time later, I came across the name of Dante Marachini again. I had wanted to talk to individuals at the Reily Coffee Company who had worked with Lee Oswald or at a level immediately above him, so I sent Frank Klein over to the company to get their names and respective positions. He returned rather quickly. "They're all gone," he said. "Anyone who ever had any connection with Lee Oswald left the Reily Company within a few weeks after Oswald did." He laid a sheet of paper in front of me. "Here are the names and the new jobs." http://www.maebrussell.com/Garrison/On%20T...0Assassins.html Paese Sera on CMC/Permindex March 4, 1967 (Front page) Sensational revelations on the mysterious past in Italy of the entrepreneur prosecuted by Garrison in New Orleans CLAY SHAW (ARRESTED FOR THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION) HAS DEVELOPED AN OBSCURE ACTIVIY IN ROME He was a member of the board of directors of the Centro Mondiale Commerciale, an institution, with head office in EUR-Rome, that for four years has undertaken a series of pseudo-commercial initiatives – Among its chief executives were former officers of the American espionage who financed the far right-movements in our country and in Europe. --------- Clay Shaw, the New Orleans businessman that district attorney Garrison has had arrested under the accusation of having participated to a conspiracy to kill president Kennedy, was a member of the board of directors of CMC, Centro Mondiale Commerciale, that from 1961 to 1965 was actively engaged in Rome, in its head office in EUR-Rome, in an obscure pseudo-commercial activity. Among the members of the board and the chief executives of CMC were also ex-major Bloomfield – who, during the war, was an espionage officer in Europe – and Ferenc Nagy, a former Hungarian, escaped to America and president of the mother-house of CMC, Permindex. His name was cited in France as that of the top financier of the neofascist movement of Soustelle and of various other European right-wing extremist organizations. All these connections make very likely the conclusion that CMC (reborn in Rome with the name Italo American Hotel Corporation, more focused on business activities) was a cover institution set up by the CIA, the American espionage agency, in order to be able to transfer in Italy the necessary funds to finance illegal activities of political espionage. The presence of Clay Shaw among its directors rises disquieting questions WAS THE CENTER IN EUR A MEANS FOR THE CIA TO INTRODUCE FINANCINGS IN ITALY? CMC, dissolved after four years of mysterious activities, was reborn in Rome – with a more specific focus on business – and was called Italo American Hotel Corporation – Between one deal and the other (Hotel du Lac, Capocotta, Villa Ada) there is room for more activities – Did Faruk Chourbagi pay 200 millions to CMC right before having been killed? (p. 11) Clay Shaw, the man that district attorney Garrison has had arrested under the accusation of having concocted with David Ferrie, in New Orleans, the assassination of president Kennedy, was actively involved in pseudo-commercial businesses in Europe. And more precisely in Rome, as a member of the Board of Directors of CMC, Centro Mondiale Commerciale, with head office in EUR-Rome. His name appeared in the newspapers for the first time on February 14, 1962, when "Paese Sera" reported on the financial misfortunes of CMC, that is, on the eviction for missed rent payments of the company's head office in EUR, rented for more than 100 million liras a year. Obviously, at that time the name Shaw did not have any particular meaning. His recent mishap and the mysterious role CMC played for years make it possible, now, to establish connections that are at least strange, opening perspectives of investigation that are even clamorous. As you might remember, Centro Mondiale Commerciale, a smoky international commercial organization, the purpose of which was to transform EUR in a permanent exhibition and to foster who-knows-what big trades[sic]. The personnel of the Rome offices and the equipment cost an average of 150 millions a year. The offices had three hundred between intercoms and telephones. In sum, a grandiose set-up, that presupposed conspicuous gross earnings, such to alarm several Italian commercial companies. In the Board of Directors were some prestigious Italian names, such as the member of the Parliament, the Christian Democratic Mario Ceravolo, and the then member of the Parliament, the Social Democratic Corrado Bonfantini. The third Italian was Carlo D'Amelio, lawyer and administrator of the assets of the former Italian royal house, who was nominated president of CMC. The other members of the Board were foreigners: the Swiss minister Ernest Feisat; the Swiss professor Max Hagemann, editor and owner of the paper "National Zeitung"; Hans Seligman Schurch, banker from Basel; Dr. Edgar Salin, professor at the University of Basel, chairman of the Business Department; Clay Shaw, delegated member of the board of International Trade Mart in New Orleans; Ferenc Nagy, former president of the Hungarian council and former leader of the Farmers's Party, residing in the United States on a continued basis and president of PERMINDEX (the mother house of CMC) doctor Enrico Mantello, brother of Giorgio Mantello (alias George Mandel, of Hungarian origins, emigrated to Swizerland, where he conducted intense and unclear financial and speculative activities, especially in the real estate sector.) The last member of the board of CMC was prince Gutierez of Spadafora, from Palermo, great agrarian and industrial manager, related, by way of his sister-in-law, to Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler's "finance wizard." The activity of Permindex (the mother house of CMC) in Switzerland had raised many criticisms. In August 1961, "AZ", a newspaper of Basel, wrote in a reportage dedicated to the directors of he company and to the people that gravitated around it: "In many articles we have righteously talked of the criminal activity of Mr. Nagy and of Mr. Mantello." There is no evidence that the two so contemptuously cited individuals have brought any actions against "AZ" for slander. Mantello's personality has many shadows. It is known that, within CMC he represented himself and other six shareholders, among which – owning half of the shares – was the American former major L. M. Bloomfield, currently a banker in Montreal. During the war Bloomfield was an officer in OSS, the espionage service (later transformed into the CIA.) He was, and still is, an intimate friend of the sole administrator of CMC, Paul Jean de Dongo, born in Budapest. Ferenc Nagy: president of PERMINDEX and member of the board of CMC, the French press indicated him as a munificent sponsor of the neofascist movement of Soustelle and of the extreme right-wing movements in all Europe and also in Italy. Another fact that might help understanding some things on the personalities gravitating around CMC, is the presence in it of a certain H. Simonfay, an Hungarian refugee, director of BO-DA, an agency of provocative information to and from the socialist countries, director in Italy of ACEN (specialized in hostile activities against the socialist countries,) that was entrusted with an important "public relations" task on behalf of the company from which it received a secret funding of half a million liras a month. Apparently, also Giuseppe Zigiotti, president of the fascist Associazione Nazionale Arma Milizia, was connected to CMC. In substance, the activities of CMC seemed mysterious, to say the least, and, among the current rumors – which are supported by the presence in directive positions of man deeply involved with the European extreme right-wing organizations – was the one that indicated in the Centro a creature of the CIA (the American espionage body,) established to cover the transferring of CIA-FBI funds in Italy for illegal political and espionage activities. In this framework, it remains to be clarified why Clay Shaw and former major Bloomfield were in the board of directors of CMC. Founded in 1961, CMC was later dissolved and was reborn, with some of the same protagonists (Giorgio Mantello, alias George Mandel in front raw,) as Italo American Hotel Corporation, with head offices in EUR. Mantello's corporation had the appearance of being mainly involved with profitable land and real estate speculations. It sponsored, with Hilton, the construction of the Hotel au Lac, in EUR, which raised harsh criticism and, for a brief period of time, was interrupted and was completed later on. Mantello, with attorney Carlo d'Amelio, is deeply involved in other speculative enterprises, such as the division into lots of Capocotta and the attempted dismemberment of Villa Ada. "Paese Sera" was the first one to report on this, generating wide reactions in the press. As a consequence, the planned transformation of the gigantic park of the heirs of the House of Savoy into a large and luxurious residential and hotel complex, financed by American, Swiss, and German capitals, was postponed to better times. The vicissitudes of CMC, on which the authorities should thoroughly investigate, have been extremely tumultuous. In less than five years of activity, the president or the directors, the more or less fictitious top offices of the company, changed ten times. However, the men behind this cover name are always the same. And to CMC or to its "reincarnation," the Italo American Hotel Corporation, are linked names that have recently come on to the scene of crime news, due to a great number of rumors and reports that, originating from the CMC itself and from men who, in the past, have lead their activities under the cover of the mysterious organization, expand the horizons of the suppositions and suspects in absolutely clamorous directions. One of these rumors pertained Faruk Churbagi, the young Lebanese-Egyptian industrialist killed in Rome in circumstances so obscure that not even the verdict of the courts has been able to clarify them. Within CMC are rumors that, right before being killed, the young man paid 200 million liras as a share in the activities of the Center itself, among which was, and still is, the hotel sector. It is pure coincidence, of course, that there is evidence that the young man' uncle, Munir Mohamed Churbagi, is president of the board of directors of INVESTUR (INVEStimenti Immobiliari e TURismo alberghiero [Real Estate Investments and Hotel Tourism]), with head office in Latina, via Lunga Podere 175; nominal capital: 100 million liras. The company was formed on July 9, 1962, with a paid-up capital of 1 million, increased to 50 millions in September of that same year, and to 100 millions in November. Finally, we must report that an even more groundless rumor indicates, among the people connected (through commercial activities or personal friendships) to the Center, Christa Wanninger, the German woman stabbed to death in front of the apartment of a friend of hers, near via Veneto. Nothing concerning her death could be clarified, except for the fact that she was dead. As you might remember, it was ascertained that Wanninger used to keep company, in Switzerland and elsewhere, with mature German and Swiss industrialists and financiers. It is believed that her murder was caused by the fact that she knew too many secrets of the world of high finance and, maybe, of politics. Certainly a groundless rumor, at least on the surface. But many things that pertain CMC and its activity are not less groundless and, yet, they are concretely true. END / 1967 --------------------------------------- THE ORIGINS OF PERMINDEX After [Clay] Shaw's arrest, Jim Garrison received from Ralph Schoenman, philosopher Bertrand Russell's secretary in London, copies of a series of articles published in an Italian newspaper of the independent left called Paesa Sera. The articles had been assigned six months earlier to expose the CIA's pernicious attempt to influence European electoral politics and to thwart the democratic process in more than one country. They focused on 'Centro Mondiale Commerciale,' the world trade center in Rome, as a CIA front, one modeled, according to a 1958 State Department document, on the original CIA-created International Trade Mart in New Orleans. Paese Sera, of course, did not possess this document. Its evidence came first hand. Contro Mondiale Commerciale was, by the US government's own admission, a CIA front, channeling money not only into legal political parties, but also into right-wing movements. Among them was the virulent paramilitary OAS (Organisation Armée Secrète) in France, which employed terrorism to oppose the independence of Algeria, and was among the 'most notorious fascist organizations in French history.' In New Orleans, Guy Banister and L.P. Davis had been OAS supporters. The most notorious OAS-sponsored effort was the attempted assassination of Charles de Gaulle in 1962. Banister operative Tommy Baumler remarked that 'those who killed John F. Kennedy were those who wanted to kill de Gaulle.' He was referring to the CIA, Clay Shaw, Banister, and Centro's parent organization, PERMINDEX (Permanent Industrial Exhibition), based in Switzerland. Having been accused of 'shady speculation' by the Swiss, PERMINDEX had created the Centro Mondiale Commerciale in Rome, ostensibly to develop industry and trade in Italy. The Centro, however, was a trade association that rarely if ever organized an exhibit; it facilitated no commercial transactions. CIA had, in fact, founded PERMINDEX to organize its political policymaking. In Italy, this had meant opposition to a coalition of socialists and communists that would have resulted in a majority government. The CIA preferred the Christian Democratic Party and so CIA Counter Intelligence chief James Angleton filtered ten million dollars of CIA money to the Christian Democrats. In Les Echos newspaper, de Gaulle named PERMINDEX as having been involved in the attempt on his life. The French, no less than the Italians, considered PERMINDEX a 'subsidiary of the CIA.' Paese Sera would call PERMINDEX ' a creature of the CIA...set up as a cover for the transfer of CIA funds in Italy for illegal political espionage activities.' In the ranks of PERMINDEX were actual Nazis and neo-Nazis, terrorists and Mafia operatives. Typical was Prince Guterez di Spadafora, a former Mussolini undersecretary, whose son had married the daughter of Hitler's finance minister, Hjalmar Schact, tried for war crimes at Nuremberg. The leadership of PERMINDEX included a long-time asset of CIA Deputy Direct of Plans, Frank Wisner. His name was Ferenc Nagy, and he was the president of PERMINDEX. Nagy had been chairman of the Hungarian's 'People's Party' or 'Independent Party of Small Holders.' Briefly, in 1945, he had been prime minister of Hungary. But it was Nagy's CIA history that catapulted him to the leadership of PERMINDEX. Its general secretary, Bela Kovacs, was also a CIA asset. Kovacs had been arrested by the Soviet security police and charged with spying for 'a Western intelligence service.' Nagy had been on Frank Wisner's list of the individuals with whom his office would 'have dealings in connection with our authorized activities' since September 22, 1948. Wisner then had been Assistant Director of CIA as well as 'Assistant Director for Policy Coordination.' Nagy had been a 'cleared contact of the International Organizations Division of the Agency,' among Wisner's most trusted Eastern European contacts. Nagy's history with the CIA dates from its beginnings and links to PERMINDEX with the Agency's clandestine services. Confirming de Gaulle's thesis that PERMINDEX funded the OAS is that Nagy was a 'munificent contributer' to Jacques Soustelle, former professor at the École pratique des hautes études and former Algerian governor general. Soustelle became an OAS supporters, and his organization, Conseil national de la resistance, was all but identical to OAS. In 1960, Soustelle met in Washington, D.C., with Richard Bissell, then heading the CIA's clandestine services. A year later, Soustelle went into exile to avoid being arrested by de Gaulle's police. Two years after that he would be accused of colluding with OAS in the attempted assassination of de Gaulle. S Soustelle had openly 'advocated over throwing de Gualle,' while condoning OAS violence. In New Orleans, Delphine Roberts identified Nagy from his photograph as someone she had seen at Guy Banister's office. Nagy's partner in the leadership of PERMINDEX was Giorgio Mantello, aka George Mandel, who during World War II had traded in Jewish refugees, profiting handsomely from their misery from his perch at the consulate of El Salvador in Bern. It was Mandel who had been the official founder of PERMINDEX. CIA kept silent, but the State Department learned that, as 'Georges Mandel,' Mantello had been engaged in the 'wartime Jewish refugee racket' until he was expelled from Switzerland. Although Centro Mondiale Commerciale refused to reveal the origins of its vast income, the paper trail leads to a Miami bank, Astalde Vaduz, and to the CIA front 'Double-Chek.' CMC was connected as well to L.M. Bloomfield in Montreal, and to the Seligman banking family in Basel; Seligman banking in turn was allied with Sullivan and Cromwell, the law firm of CIA Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles. 'My parents are very interested in PERMINDEX,' Peter Seligman-Schurch wrote to Clay Shaw. In Switzerland, PERMINDEX soon aroused 'widespread public suspicion.' Nagy and Seligman stonewalled the concerned American consulate in Bern after the Swiss complained they had 'insufficient confidence in the business integrity' of PERMINDEX. In the spring of 1958, Enrico Mantello, the vice president of PERMINDEX and brother of Giorgio, visited New Orleans. Touring the Trade Mart, he invited Clay Shaw to join the board of directors as a means of defusing the criticism of PERMINDEX; its critics by now included the State Department itself. Nagy appeared at the American Embassy in Rome to announce that he intended 'to strengthen US control in PERMINDEX by adding to its Board of Directors a Mr. Shaw, who is in charge of the New Orleans, Louisiana permanent exhibit.' Nagy claimed that Shaw 'had from the outset great interest in the PERMINDEX project,' and Shaw did use the term 'delighted' in his cable of acceptance. He made plans to visit Italy, then canceled. despite Mantello's urgings. When he added his PERMINDEX directorship to ' Who's Who in the South and the Southeast,' the Department of Commerce warned Shaw about 'this shadowy organization.' But, as in all his CIA assignments, grateful for the career CIA made of him, Clay Shaw honored his obligation. Internal evidence that PERMINDEX was a CIA front emerges in the fact that the CIA included PERMINDEX materials in its asset Clay Shaw's files, three years before as well as after the Kennedy assassination. One of these documents, dated March 16, 1967, reveals that at the time of his arrest Clay Shaw was working with Domestic Operations Division of the CIA's clandestine services. This was only a seeming contradiction since the CIA's operational component in New Orleans had resided under the umbrella of the Domestic Contact Division, at least since November 19, 1964, according to a CIA document on 'Garrison and the Kennedy Assassination,' MEMORANDUM No.8. 'Most of us consider the CIA with abhorrence,' Shaw wrote in his Diary for the record, with his customary dark laughter. In 1962, Centro Mondiale Commerciale was expelled from Italy, ostensibly for financial malfeasance, and specious real estate dealings, but actually for subversion and illegal intelligence activity. 'Who was giving money to the CMC and what was it being used for?' Paesa Sera demanded. PERMINDEX relocated to a more compatible political venue, apartheid South Africa. Clay Shaw remained on its board, providing space at the Trade Mart for a permanent PERMINDEX display. The editors of Paese Sera were astonished when their March 1967 publication date for the series on PERMINDEX coincided with the arrest of Clay Shaw. They had been working on the series for months, former editor Giorgio Fanti says. Now they headlined Clay Shaw's involvement in PERMINDEX, with a subhead revealing that he had been arrested by Jim Garrison in New Orleans. Paese Sera noted that Shaw's name had first appeared in connection with the machinations of the organization. He had gone to Rome 'during the time preceding the disbanding of the CMC,' Shaw admitted to a Paesa Sera interviewer. Paesa Sera wondered, too, about Shaw's leaving the United States two days after the assassination, remaining abroad for two years with only intermittent visits to America. Shaw affected his customary disdain. He had agreed to be on the PEMINDEX board, he claimed, because 'a young Italian came to see me in New Orleans and told me about a world trade center that was being planned in Rome.' He also told the Paese Sera interviewer that he 'accepted the position in exchange for two New Orleans-Rome air tickets.' Even his closest friends were appalled. 'There must have been blackmail - they're very famous for that, the CIA,' Patricia Chandler says. Jim Garrison had charged that the CIA had plotted the assassination of John F. Kennedy, for which they were aided and abetted in New Orleans by their operative, Clay Shaw. Thirty-five years later, a series of attacks on Paese Sera began to appear, accompanied by an excoriation of Jim Garrison. Among the publications sanctioning these attacks was the CIA's own web site, 'Studies in Intelligence.' Journalist Max Holland repeated in a series of magazine articles the erroneous thesis that the only reason that Paese Sera believed that the CIA was behind PERMINDEX was that the newspaper was the victim of KGB disinformation. Jim Garrison, therefore, had connected the CIA to the Kennedy assassination and to Shaw only owing to a KGB lie. Rather, Garrison's attribution of the planning of the assassination to the CIA was based on his discovery of the CIA connections of Lee Harvey Oswald, and not those of Clay Shaw, an inconvenient detail Holland omits. The truth is that Garrison had focused on the CIA in December 1966 and January 1967, well before the March publication of the Paese Sera articles. A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case that Should Have Changed History. by Joan Mellen. Pgs. 136-140. http://ce399.typepad.com/weblog/assassinations/index.html FBI..telex..Walter-Garrison..warning assn ON THE TRAIL OF THE ASSASSINS lists several critical evidence issues seemingly obstructed by the Warren Commission and later congressional committees in the House and Senate. While attorney and author Mark Lane was researching his book Citizen's Dissent, he broke a major story involving prior knowledge of the assassination, according to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. "...he [Lane] happened to meet a former FBI employee named William S. Walter. During their conversation Walter mentioned that on Novermber 17, 1963—five days before the assassination—he had been the night clerk on duty at the Bureau's New Orleans office when a warning about a possible presidential assassination attempt came chattering through on the teletype machine. Walter immediately called five agents and considered his work done." According to Garrison, "In 1976, Walter gave a copy of the text of the FBI telex to the Senate Intelligence Committee chaired by Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. After the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was passed Lane also obtained a copy of the warning telex and made it available to me. This is what it said: "URGENT: 1:45 AM EST 11-17-63 HLF 1 PAGE TO ALL SACS: FROM: DIRECTOR THREAT TO ASSASSINATE PRESIDENT KENNEDY IN DALLAS TEXAS NOVEMBER 22 DASH TWENTY THREE NINETEEN SIXTY THREE. MISC INFORMATION CONCERNING. INFORMATION HAS BEEN RECEIVED BY THE BUREAUS [sIC] BUREAU HAS DETERMINED THAT A MILITANT REVOLUTIONARY GROUP MAY ATTEMPT TO ASSASSINATE PRESIDENT KENNEDY ON HIS PROPOSED TRIP TO DALLAS TEXAS NOVEMBER TWENTY TWO DASH TWENTY THREE NINETEEN SIXTY THREE. ALL RECEIVING OFFICES SHOULD IMMEDIATELY CONTACT ALL CIS, PCIS LOGICAL RACE AND HATE GROUP INFORMANTS AND DETERMINE IF ANY BASIS FOR THREAT. BUREAU SHOULD BE KEPT ADVISED OF ALL DEVELOPMENTWS BY TELETYPE. OTHER OFFICES HAVE BEEN ADVISED. END AND ACK PLS." "...when the assassination occurred, he [Walter] was eating lunch but immediately ran back to the New Orleans Bureau office. In the file he found the warning telex along with a duplicate which had soon followed it. At the time he copied the exact phraseology of the telex warning and kept it. Shortly afterwards he checked the file again to see if the warning was still there. It had been removed." "The telex had been most explicit, naming both a place and dates for the attempt to assassinate the President. It was addressed to all special agents in charge, which meant every on the country, including Dallas. And yet the FBI did nothing. There is no record that it notified anyone—not even the Secret Service, which as the President's bodyguard should have been informed immediately....nearly five years had passed since the assassination. But in that time none of the five agents Walter had called that morning of November 17 ever hinted to the American people or to the Warren Commission that the FBI had received a specific warning about the assassination five days before it occurred." http://tomflocco.com/fs/Bush41RevivesLinks.htm Marty Underwood, Democratic National Committee advance man for the Dallas trip, told this correspondent that he was hearing all sorts of assassination rumors just 18 hours prior to the actual shooting. Underwood said that he conveyed this information to JFK, who told him not to worry. Former agent Kinney further stated that there was an assassination threat in Florida on November 18, 1963. Former agent Bouck said that he too was aware of the active pre-Dallas threats. ...V.Palamara.... Larry King Interview With Jim Garrison Aired on Sat.3/14/68, in News Weekend, 6.00-6.30.pm http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...bsPageId=388337 HSCA Report Threats : Secret Service http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...absPageId=69298 B..... "The question is whether Lee Harvey Oswald killed the President alone and unaided; if the evidence doesn't support that conclusion -- and it doesn't -- a thousand (honorable) men sitting shoulder to shoulder along the Potomac won't change the facts.." -- JIM GARRISON; 1988 HSCA Segregated CIA Collection http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;docId=62090 CLAY SHAW'S TRIAL AND THE CIA http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/...amp;relPageId=2 The CIA Thought That Garrison Would Win..... Below is a copy of a CIA Memo... It relates that a Garrison Group had been formed ....See heading.. It appears to be from their first meeting...it is dated Sep.20/67...... It states that a senior aide to Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton... ..... " Rocca felt that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kenedy....".... B...... "The Media, the CIA and the JFK Assassination" In the JFK case, we find many journalists were serving two masters - the press and the FBI or the CIA, depending on which journalist you are talking about. For example: Jack Anderson, famous for his 'breakthrough' investigative journalism, briefed the FBI after talking to Jim Garrison. He told the FBI Garrison had quite a case, and was quite serious in his efforts. [FBI document from 4-4-67, referenced in Unreliable Sources] But what did Anderson tell the American public? That it looked like the president had been killed in what might have been a Communist plot! During the Garrison investigation, worried about public opinion, the CIA sent out this operational memorandum instructing media assets how to respond to critics of the Warren Commission's lone assassin verdict. Instructions include trying to associate critics with Communists, and trying to insinuate that the critics are only in it for money (neither of which has any bearing on reality, if my own experiences are worth anything!) Leading the charge against Jim Garrison, District Attorney for New Orleans in Louisiana, when he attempted to prosecute Clay Shaw along with others on the charge of conspiracy to assassination President Kennedy, was Saturday Evening Post writer James Phel an. Like Priscilla, Phelan proved to be serving two masters. While ostensibly working as a journalist, Phelan was also informing to the FBI on Garrison's case, sending them copies of documents from Garrison's case files. Here are a couple of FBI documents on Jim Phelan: Jim Phelan FBI documents http://192.220.64.45/media/phelan.htm and see..... http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/media.htm#Wh...s%20the%20Truth "The CIA's Interest in Garrison's Case" Once Garrison started looking into the case, people affiliated with the CIA kept popping up over and over. Garrison came to believe the CIA had direct involvement in the assassination. Garrison's interest in the CIA was returned in kind. This file from the Assassination Archives in Washington demonstrates the CIA's keen interest not just in the defendent Clay Shaw, who had covert security clearance to operate with the CIA, but in a man solely called to testify about the impossibility of the "single bullet theory". That Counterintelligence Director for the CIA Jim Angleton would find it necessary not only to spy but to work with Hoover's FBI in an attempt to dig up dirt on this innocent man's background is key to understanding the nature of (and perhaps reason for) the CIA's intense interest in wrecking Garrison's case. Angleton Spying on Garrison's Witness http://www.realhistoryarchives.com/collect...fk/garrison.htm "Media Distortions" When JFK was assassinated, Dan Rather was a small town TV newscaster in Texas. It was he who, immediately after viewing the Zapruder film, reported to all America that John Kennedy's head was "rocketed forward" by the head shot. The Zapruder film then vanished into TIME/Life's vaults, never to be publicly seen until the Jim Garrison trial subpoenaed it, and Dan Rather leapt to network status. http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/LIE/lie.html "Mockingbird" ""An example of particularly shabby scholarship and unacceptable behavior is George Lardner Jr's contribution to the Post's campaign against the movie. Lardner wrote three articles, two before the movie was completed, and the third upon its release. In May, six months before the movie came out, Lardner obtained a copy of the first draft of the script and, contrary to accepted standards, revealed in the Post the contents of this copyrighted movie (*68). Also in this article, (*69). Lardner discredits Jim Garrison with hostile statements from a former Garrison associate Pershing Gervais. Lardner does not tell the reader that subsequent to the Clay Shaw trial, in a U.S. Government criminal action brought against Garrison, Government witness Gervais, who helped set up Garrison for prosecution, admitted under oath that in a May 1972 interview with a New Orleans television reporter, he, Gervais, had said that the U.S. Government's case against Garrison was a fraud (*70). The Post's 1973 account of the Garrison acquittal mentions this controversy, but when I recently asked Lardner about this, he was not clear as to whether he remembered it (*71)."" http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/P...ockingbird.html ""I only wish the press would allow our case to stand or fall on its merits in court. It appears that certain elements of the mass media have an active interest in preventing this case from ever coming to trial at all and find it necessary to employ against me every smear device in the book. ""...Jim Garrison Jim Garrison, whether we agree with all or not, was the only official within the Unites States to ever bring anyone, to trial for being involved in the Assassination of President John F.Kennedy.. The man named Clay Shaw, alias Clay Bertram, upon information found in documents that were later released, was also proven to have been a C.I.A. employee.... Had this information been allowed, as it should have been at the trial....Jim Garrison would have had a conviction, as it was the proof, that connected, Clay Bertram, to the assassination dealings....Clay Shaw was Clay Bertram.... B.. Clay Shaw Trial Transcripts http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/contents..._garr_trial.htm WWL-TV Reporter Bob Jones and News Director Bill Reed discuss the 1967 trial of Clay Shaw. http://www.wwltv.com/video/50yearsclassic-...tml?nvid=169528 A HERITAGE OF STONE By Jim Garrison A MAN WHO CARES too much for the human race may find himself living in a hostile environment. His humanity may not regarded as dangerous so long as his voice cannot be heard by too many people, but if he is eloquent, or in a position to affect the affairs of the nation, then his humanity will be regarded by some men as a great threat. AFTER THE UNITED STATES ascended to the position of the most powerful military nation in history, in the midst of its accumulation of the most effective death machinery of all time, there occured the accident election of a President who regarded the entire human race with compassion. By the time this happened, the cold war had become our major industry, and the Central Intelligence Agency had become the clandestine arm of our military-industrial complex and, in the process, (it had become) the most effective assassination machine in the world. JOHN KENNEDY'S EFFORTS to obtain a lasting peace represented the threat of civilian control reasserting itself over the military and industrial power structure which had developed during the years of the cold war. Shortly after twelve noon on November 22, 1963, Kennedy's hopes died by assassination. THE COUNTERTHRUST HAD taken less than six seconds. There was no risk the federal government would expose the truth about the President's murder, because agents of the federal government had participated in it. There was no risk of exposure from the national press, because, having been tossed a lone assassin and presented with an acceptable fable, the press would not go farther and try to digest the indigestable, to think the unthinkable and to question Brutus about the removal of Caesar. THE USE OF THE COUP D' ETAT - the murder of a leader by forces within his own government - is as old as the struggle of men for power. From modern intelligence agency techiques, however, there comes a new refinement. Through the employment of cover devices and the controlled disemination of information, the role of the government in assassinations can be effectively concealed. COUP D' ETAT GENERALLY have been accomplished by men powerful enough to be free from any fear of retribution. If they did not possess, at the outset, some manner of achieving control over the machinery of government, they would not have initiated the murder of a national leader. The people afterward may be free to make Caesar a god, as they did in Rome, but they must not be free to disturb the men who killed him. IN THE MEANTIME, the men who sponsored his removal can change the government's policies to suit their desires, leaving the citizens free to mourn and worship their dead leader. NO ONE WANTS TO RECOGNIZE that somewhere along the line America has ceased to be the home of the brave and the land of the free, and that only in after-dinner speeches, it is still the sweet land of liberty. No one wants to recognize that there are assassins at work in the land, systematically eliminating men who speak out for the human race and for the future. No one wants to admit that in America peace is dangerous business. Better to have the assassination accompanied by wafer-thin deceptions, eagerly accepted one after the other, than to have to face the truth. JUSTICE IS NOT SO blind that it pursues the most powerful forces in the country. Nor is the press so committed to truth that it wants the burden of knowledge of what is happening. AMERICA HAS BECOME A nation controlled by men who seeks ever-increasing power. Justice is whatever they want to happen. Truth is whatever they annouce has occured. AS THE PRESIDENT'S limousine turned right from Main Street onto Houston, gunman waited in Dealey Plaza. In other towns and cities men glanced at their watches and waited for the news bulletin. At the corner of Elm the car made a sharp left turn past the Texas School Book Depository. President Kennedy had ten seconds to live. "What kind of peace do we seek.... not a Pax-Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of of the grave, nor the security of the slave. Not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time, but peace in all time. Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. Too many of us think that this is impossible, that war is inevitable, than mankind is doomed. That we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view, our problems are man made, therefore they can be solved by man, man's reason and spirit has oftened solved the seemingly unsolvable, and I believe they can do it again." SUDDENLY became mere words. OUR INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT BEGINS and ends with deception. Perceiving this deception is the key to understanding how the assassination of President Kennedy was accomplished. Understanding the motivation for his assassination is the key to understanding what has happened to America. -- JIM GARRISON B.... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bernice, incredibly helpful, I have a few items that I will add to the mix here, but will need a little time, your effort is very appreciated...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peter McGuire Posted December 13, 2009 Share Posted December 13, 2009 (edited) I am not a Garrison admirer, but it strikes me that, if Garrison wanted to keep attention away from Marcello, the last thing he would have done is draw attention to New Orleans, which had heretofore been largely ignored by Warren Commission critics. Garrison was no doubt a hard man to like, even by those who believed in what he was doing. That does not matter. The man was on the right track early on. Sabotaging the Garrison Enquiry 'Even at this later hour (1968) Lyndon B. Johnson could effectively wash his hand of the Kennedy murder. All he would have to do is to let the new enquiry into the assassintation that has been launched by Jim Garrison of New Orleans , take its normal course. Would it not the duty of the President of the United States to assist investigating the assassination of the murder of a President of the United States?" Joachim Joestin Garrison was an official in a Parish of the United States. I do not accept any nonsense that discredits this man which was obviously done because he was on the trail of the assassins. Garrison was an American hero, who "caught" the murderers of an American President and then was persecuted for it. Edited December 13, 2009 by Peter McGuire Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bernice Moore Posted December 13, 2009 Share Posted December 13, 2009 (edited) I am not a Garrison admirer, but it strikes me that, if Garrison wanted to keep attention away from Marcello, the last thing he would have done is draw attention to New Orleans, which had heretofore been largely ignored by Warren Commission critics. Garrison was no doubt a hard man to like, even by those who believed in what he was doing. That does not matter. The man was on the right track early on. Sabotaging the Garrison Enquiry 'Even at this later hour (1968) Lyndon B. Johnson could effectively wash his hand of the Kennedy murder. All he would have to do is to let the new enquiry into the assassintation that has been launched by Jim Garrison of New Orleans , take its normal course. Would it not the duty of the President of the United States to assist investigating the assassination of the murder of a President of the United States?" Joachim Joestin Garrison was an official in a Parish of the United States. I do not accept any nonsense that discredits this man which was obviously done because he was on the trail of the assassins. Garrison was an American hero, who "caught" the murderers of an American President and then was persecuted for it. Peter you may be interested in this..it was from a post some years ago on the web..sorry there was no author at the end so i cannot GIVE a name any credit..but to whomever sometime in the past a thank you..now testimonies documents etc are available on the web re the mary ferrell site and others but back some years ago that was not how it was...i found this one night while digging through old web sites, as far as i can recall that is where i have found with a crawler some interesting information..over time...this below was about and DR.PIERRE FINK'S TESTIMONY IN THE SHAW TRIAL AS QUESTIONED BY DA ALVIN OSER ..FOR YOUR INTEREST...I THINK WITH ALL THE INFORMATION BECOMING AVAILABLE FROM DOUG HORNES BOOKS AND DISCUSSIONS WITHIN THREADS IT MAY BE OF INTEREST..to you and .TO HAVE IT'S INFORMATION AVAILABLE ..showing some of the the incredible deception that had taken place and was still ongoing.....TAKE CARE B.. ''One of the many lacunae in the literature on the Garrison case is the transcript of the Shaw trial. It is not available to the public. At the trial, both sides demanded overnight typed transcripts to use on cross-examination. Regular court staff could not comply, so a private stenography firm ~ Dietrich and Pickett ~ was engaged. Writers like John Davis in Mafia Kingfish list the transcript at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. When I called there in January of 1992, I was told it was not there. They had only the preliminary hearing and the trial testimony of Perry Russo. The tran- script, some of which remains in the form of unreadable stenotype notes, remains the property of Helen Dietrich, and she informed me that the only copies she had provided were to the HSCA and to Oliver Stone, the latter for use in his film. In my view, the transcript should be published, and perhaps it soon will. But until then, writers and researchers are left with two alternatives. One can journey to New Orleans and read the daily transcripts in the States-Item and the Times-Picayune, which are not always verbatim. Or one can rely on the summaries presented in books. Until 1988 and the publication of On the Trail of the Assassins, both responsible writers like Henry Hurt and irresponsible ones like Robert Sam Anson had to rely on two volumes: Milton Brener's The Garrison Case (1969) and James Kirkwood's American Grotesque (1970). Brener was a New Orleans attorney who defended both Layton Martens ~ a friend of David Ferrie's whose phone number was found in Clay Shaw's address book ~ and Walter Sheridan. Brener is not above attacking Garrison personally, once referring to him as a "witch hunter" (p. 267). But Kirkwood's book is by far the lengthiest treatment of the Shaw trial that I know of. Unfortunately, it can be read only with great caution. The author begins his work by comparing Garrison to a Klansman (p. 7). A few pages later the preliminary hearing is likened to the Spanish Inquisition (p. 13). Sure enough, towards the end, Garrison's assistant DAs are equated to guards at the Nazi death camps (p. 595). Kirkwood's animus toward Garrison is matched only by his sympathy for Shaw. In the last 616 of the book's 657 pages, the accused is never called Shaw or Mr. Shaw; only "Clay" or "Clay Shaw." This bias seriously colors the depiction of the trial. In a rather voluminous book that centers on a court proceeding that took 39 days, the reader would never know that the following witnesses appeared: Wilma Bond, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Willis, Billy Joe Martin, Carolyn Walther, James Simmons, Mr. and Mrs. William Newman, and Mary Moorman. In a book that supposedly centers on the possibility of a New Orleans-related conspiracy, one searches in vain for the name of Gordon Novel. The list could go on, but perhaps Kirkwood's greatest slighting is to Assistant DA Alvin Oser. With help from Vincent Salandria, Oser conducted the Dealey Plaza portion of the trial. Kirkwood refuses to concede that the prosecution shredded the Warren Report, something the jury agreed had been done. He writes about Oser in otiose, condescending, disparaging terms. He even derides his voice. But Kirkwood fails to note that, in his cross-examination of Dr. Pierre Finck, Oser was making history. This was the first and only time one of the three Bethesda autopsy doctors was exposed to informed, aggressive, relentless questioning. In my view, it is a milestone in the depiction of the autopsy as not only hapless but sinister. This theme has been furthered in the work of Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone (High Treason) and David Lifton (Best Evidence), so much so that, today, the autopsy evidence is one of the most questionable aspects of the official story. In the following excerpts, I have chosen those that show who really controlled the autopsy and those that reveal some of the dubious practices employed. It should also be noted that Oser concentrated on the shifting location of the head wound, which, to Dr. Finck's dismay, Ramsey Clark's panel had raised four inches, and on the location of the back wound, which, Oser felt, made for a rather dubious trajectory in exiting through the throat. The transcript appears as typed, with misspellings of names intact. Berkley should be Burkley, Kinney should be Kenney. My thanks and appreciation to Helen Dietrich, with whose kind permission this material is reprinted. (The ex- cerpts are from pp. 46-49, 51-52, 54-57, 92-95, 98-118, 138-141, and 152-159 of the first day, February 24, 1969; and pp. 2-8, and 30-32 of the second day, February 25, 1969.) BY MR. OSER: Q When did you all contact the doctors at Parkland Hospital? THE WITNESS: Dr. Pierre Finck, A Are you asking me if I contacted a Dr. Parker? Q No, I asked you when did you all contact the doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas. A Oh, I did not contact them, Dr. Humes did. Q And did Dr. Humes relate to you what he learned from these doctors at Parkland? A Definitely. Q Do you know when Dr. Humes contacted these doctors at Parkland? A As far as I know, Dr. Humes called them the morning following the autopsy, as far as I know, Dr. Humes called Dallas on Saturday morning, on the 23rd of November, 1963. Q Doctor, can you tell me why the delay in contacting the doctors that worked on President Kennedy in Dallas until the next morning after the body was already removed from the autopsy table? A I can't explain that. I know that Dr. Humes told me he called them. I cannot give an approximate time. I can give you the reason why he called. As I have stated before, having a wound of entry in the back of the neck, having seen no exit in the front of the neck, nothing from the radiologist who looked at the whole body X-ray films, I have requested as there was no whole bullet remaining in the cadaver of the President, that was a very strong reason for inquiring if there were not another wound in the approximate direction corresponding to that wound of entry in the back of the neck, because in the wound of the head with entry in the back of the head and exit on the right side of the head, I never had any doubt, any question that it was a through-and-through wound of the head with disinte- gration of the bullet. The difficulty was to have found an entry in the back of the neck and not to have seen an exit corresponding to that entry. Q This puzzled you at this time, is that right, Doctor? A Sorry, I don't understand you. Q This puzzled you at the time, the wound in the back and you couldn't find an exit wound? You were wondering about where this bullet was or where the path was going, were you not? A Yes. Q Well, at that particular time, Doctor, why didn't you call the doctors at Parkland or attempt to ascertain what the doctors at Parkland may have done or may have seen while the President's body was still exposed to view on the autopsy table? A I will remind you that I was not in charge of this autopsy, that I was called~ Q You were a co-author of the report though, weren't you, Doctor? A Wait. I was called as a consultant to look at these wounds; that doesn't mean I am running the show. Q Was Dr. Humes running the show? A Well, I heard Dr. Humes stating that ~ he said, "Who is in charge here?" and I heard an Army General, I don't remember his name, stating, "I am." You must understand that in those circumstances, there were law enforcement officials, military people with various ranks, and you have to co-ordinate the operation according to directions. Q But you were one of the three qualified pathologists standing at that autopsy table, were you not, Doctor? A Yes, I was. Q Was this Army General a qualified pathologist? A No. Q Was he a doctor? A No, not to my knowledge. Q Can you give me his name, Colonel? A No, I can't. I don't remember. * * * Q How many other military personnel were present at the autopsy in the autopsy room? A That autopsy room was quite crowded. It is a small autopsy room, and when you are called in circumstances like that to look at the wound of the President of the United States who is dead, you don't look around too much to ask people for their names and take notes on who they are and how many there are. I did not do so. The room was crowded with military and civilian personnel and federal agents, Secret Service agents, FBI agents, for part of the autopsy, but I cannot give you a precise breakdown as regards the attendance of the people in that autopsy room at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Q Colonel, did you feel that you had to take orders from this Army General that was there directing the autopsy? A No, because there were others, there were Admirals. Q There were Admirals? A Oh, yes, there were Admirals, and when you are a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army you just follow orders, and at the end of the autopsy we were specifically told ~ as I recall it, it was by Admiral Kenney, the Surgeon General of the Navy ~ this is subject to verification ~ we were specifically told not to discuss the case. Q You were told not to discuss the case? A ~ to discuss the case without coordination with the Attorney General. * * * Q Doctor, can you tell me how many photographs were taken of the President's body? A Some of the photographs were taken in my presence in the autopsy room. I can't give you the exact number, but this information is available. Q To who, Doctor? A To you. Q It is? A It is a public document. Q Go ahead. How many? A I can't give you an exact number of photographs taken or X-rays of the body of the President. Q Doctor, prior to your writing your report on the autopsy, did you have an occasion to view these photographs of the President that were taken? A Yes, I did. Q Doctor, I direct your attention to a report allegedly signed by you on 26 January, 1967. MR. DYMOND: What part are you talking about? (Conference between Counsel.) BY MR. OSER: Q (Exhibiting document to witness) Doctor, I direct your attention to a report, which I mark for identification "S-67," and I ask you to take a look at this document. Would you take a look at this particular one that I have marked Doctor, and let me know whether it is the same as the one you have before you. A (Comparing documents) It is. Q Your answer is that it is, Doctor? A Yes. Q And it contains your signature? Am I correct, sir? A Yes. (Whereupon, the document referred to by Counsel was duly marked for identifi- cation as "Exhibit D-67.") BY MR. OSER: Q Doctor, I direct your attention to the first page, the bottom of the last line of the fifth paragraph, which states, "Dr. Finck first saw the photographs on January 20, 1967," and I ask you if you would explain your answer to me, sir, just made, that you saw the photographs prior to writing your autopsy report in 1963. A I did not say that I had seen the photographs before writing the autopsy report of 1963. MR. OSER: May I have my original question read back to the Doctor, please, and his answer. (Whereupon, the aforegoing passage was read back by the Reporter as follows: "Q Doctor, prior to your writing your report on the autopsy, did you have an occasion to view these photographs of the President that were taken? "A Yes, I did.") THE WITNESS: No, I did not, I did not see those photographs before signing my autopsy report. I may have answered "I didn't" and it was transcribed as "I did." BY MR. OSER: Q Doctor, did you hear what the stenographer just read you back? That is my question that I propounded to you. Now the question is: Did you see the photo- graphs of President Kennedy before signing your autopsy report. A That is correct. Q That is correct? A I was there when the photographs were taken, but I did not see the photographs of the wounds before I signed the autopsy report. I did not see those photographs in 1963. Q So what you said before, that you did see the photographs, that was wrong? Is that correct? A I never said that. It was misunderstood. I said "I did not" or "I didn't." I am very firm on this point that I did not see~ Q Is it, doctor that fact that I showed you the report~ THE COURT: I think you have covered the matter now. * * * Q Can you tell me how the final draft of the autopsy report which you signed along with Commander Humes and Commander Boswell came about? How was that put together? A We signed that autopsy report, as I remember, on Sunday the 24th of November, 1963, in the office of Admiral Galloway, who was one of the Admirals in charge of the Navy hospital. I had reviewed with Dr. Humes his draft of the autopsy report prior to that time, and, as I recall, the three of us, that is Humes, Boswell and myself, were present at that time in the office of Admiral Galloway on that Sunday, to the best of my recollection. Q Doctor, I show you from Volume 17, Page 30 through Page 47, and ask you if you would view the contents of those pages. A Yes, sir. This is Volume 17 of the hearings before the President's Commission on the assassination of President Kennedy. I don't recall seeing Pages 30 through 44. What Dr. Humes and I did, we were discussing the wording of the final autopsy report based on a report he had prepared through the night, I should say through Saturday, in the course of Saturday, the 23rd of November, and he worked on this, and he read over to me what he had prepared. Is Page 45 included in your question? Q Yes, sir, 45 through 47. A On Page 45 I recognize the drawing which I see now in the room, and which is labeled in this volume Commission Exhibit 397. I don't recall the timing of seeing this. I have seen this at some time. I don't recall exactly when. Q The exhibit you are talking about right now, Doctor, Exhibit 397, is this the same exhibit you are talking about reproduced here in State 68, as best you can recall, Doctor? A As best as I can tell, Page 45 of this volume is a reproduction of the exhibit shown in the courtroom as 68, except that at the bottom it doesn't say "Commis- sion Exhibition 397." I remember that these drawings had been made, and you realize now I am referring to Page 45. Q Which is the same thing as Exhibit 68, is that right? A Yes, sir, it is. You will realize the drawings are made ahead of time on work sheets to be used at the time of the autopsy, and that wounds are added to these schematic representations of the front and back of a human body. I know this was involved in the discussions, in the testimony, but I can't give you any timing. As I recall, Dr. Boswell did those and discussed them but I can't recall exactly when I saw them. Q In other words, when an autopsy descriptive list or sheet is used at an autopsy, it is either used at the time of an autopsy or shortly thereafter as a work sheet somewhere in the autopsy room, is that right, Doctor? A If State 68 is an autopsy work sheet ~ well, when it was done by Dr. Boswell I don't know. Q In referring to State Exhibit 69 and 70, Doctor, these two exhibits were not done then until sometime in March of 1964, is that correct, Doctor? A I wouldn't know the exact date. The first time as I recall that I saw these exhibits was in March 1964, to the best of my recollection. Q But you do know, Doctor, you can testify that the photographs and X-rays were not available, to the best of your knowledge, to the illustrator of these exhibits as they were not available to you in March, 1964? A To the best of my knowledge the X-rays and photographs were not available to the illustrator. I know for sure that they were not available to me, the X-rays and the photographs. * * * Q When was the first time you saw the Zapruder film, Doctor? A As I recall, it was in March 1964, when I returned from Panama and was told I had to testify before the Warren Commission. Q So at the time you signed and co-authored the autopsy report, which has been marked as S-71 for identification, you had not, as of that time, seen the Zapruder film, is that correct? A I had not. Q Doctor, are you familiar in this particular report, S-71, which you co-authored with Commanders Humes and Boswell, with all the evidence upon which the report was based? A Please repeat your question. Q Are you familiar with all of the evidence upon which this report was based? A In the general sense, yes. Q Doctor, I call your attention to Page 2, under the heading of "Clinical Sum- mary," and ask you to tell me the basis for your statement as part of your clinical summary that three shots were heard. A Where do you see that, that three shots were heard? Q The first sentence in the second paragraph of Page 2, the first four words. A This is the information we had by the time we signed that autopsy report. Q The information from whom, Doctor? A There were a lot of people who were asked, I wouldn't know their names. I couldn't list all the people by name. Q Who told you that three shots were heard? Who told you that? A As I recall, Admiral Galloway heard from somebody who was present at the scene that three shots had been heard, but I cannot give the details of this. Q I ask you, did you have an occasion to interview any of the witnesses that were present in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, you yourself, before you wrote this? A During the autopsy of President Kennedy there were Secret Service Agent Kellerman in that autopsy room. I asked him his name. Admiral Berkley, the personal physician of President Kennedy was present, and there was a third person whose name I don't recall who said to Admiral Galloway, who was there during the autopsy, that three shots had been fired. At the time we wrote this we had this information obtained from people who had been at the scene to the best of my recollection. Q Did you have any information available, Doctor, from people at the scene who heard four shots? A From the assassination on I heard conflicting reports regarding the number of shots. Q I am talking about at the time you all prepared and signed this report, Doctor, before you affixed your signature to this, did you talk to anyone or have any reports available from people who heard four shots at Dealey Plaza on November 22? A I don't remember any. Q Did you have any statements or reports available to you from people who heard two shots in Dealey Plaza on November 22 at the time you made this report? A At the time I made the report I don't recall having a report of two shots. Q Going further, Doctor, in your autopsy report, it states, "Governor Connally was seriously wounded by this same gunfire." From where did you receive this information? A I knew it at the time of the autopsy because of the news media who reported the President had been shot and the Governor of Texas had been wounded, as I recall. Q What did you mean, that Governor Connally was seriously wounded by the same gunfire? What did you mean when you said the same gunfire? A This is the information we had at the time of the autopsy ~ correction, at the time we signed the autopsy report, and because the information in the autopsy report may be obtained after the autopsy, and again I can't pinpoint the source of that information. Q Doctor, I now show you State Exhibit 64, and ask you if you recognize what is depicted in this particular photograph, as being similar to something you have seen before during the investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy? A This black-and-white reproduction is similar to a bullet that, as best I can remember, I saw for the first time in March 1964. Q Doctor, speaking of your statement in the autopsy report that Governor Con- nally was seriously wounded by the same gunfire, is it not a fact that when testifying before the Warren Commission you stated that in your opinion it was impossible for Commission Exhibit 399 to do the same damage to President Kennedy as was done to Governor Connally because there were too many fragments in Governor Connally's wrist? Did you not so testify, sir? MR. DYMOND: I object to that question. Nobody has stated the same damage was done to Governor Connally as was done to President Kennedy, and that is what this question asks. THE COURT: I think the question was put to the Doctor, did he not make a prior contradictory statement, which is legitimate cross-examination. Let the question be read back. (Whereupon, the pending question was read back by the Reporter.) THE COURT: I am permitting the question. I overrule your objection. BY MR. OSER: Q Will you answer yes or no, Doctor, then you can explain. A This is a difficult question to answer because there were two bullets striking President Kennedy. I have examined the wounds of President Kennedy and I would say that the bullet seen here is an entire bullet. Q Is what? A Is an entire bullet. By an entire bullet, I mean a bullet that did not disintegrate into many fragments. Q Let me ask you about that in this way~ THE COURT: Let him finish his answer. MR. OSER: I thought he had finished. THE COURT: Had you finished your answer? THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. BY MR. OSER: Q Colonel, let me ask you this way: Speaking of State Exhibit 64, the bullet, I ask you whether or not you testified in front of the Warren Commission that that particular bullet could not have done the damage to Governor Connally as there were too many bullet fragments in Governor Connally's wrist. Did you or did you not answer that in front of the Warren Commission in answer to a question by Mr. Specter? It appears on Page 382 of your testimony of the Warren Report about the middle of the page. A It reads as follows: "Could that bullet possibly have gone through President Kennedy in 388," Mr. Specter's question. "Through President Kennedy's head~" what is 388? MR. WILLIAM WEGMANN: The one on the right. A (Continuing) "and remain intact in the way you see it now?" "Definitely not." "And could it have been the bullet which inflicted the wound on Governor Connally's right wrist?" "No, for the reason there are too many fragments described in that wrist." MR. OSER: Thank you, Doctor, that is the point I am talking about. BY MR. OSER: Q Now, referring back to that same paragraph in the clinical summary, in the next sentence you said, "According to newspaper reports (Washington Post November 23, 1963) Bob Jackson, a Dallas 'Times Herald' photographer, said he looked around as he heard the shots and saw a rifle barrel disappearing into a window on an upper floor of the nearby Texas School Book Depository Building." Can you tell me who called that particular newspaper article to your attention? A Are you referring to Page 979 of the Hearing? Q No, sir, I am back on your original autopsy report, Page 2. A I have it. Q The sentence right after you said that Governor Connally was wounded by the same gunfire. A What was that sentence? Q Right after "gunfire." A "Governor Connally was seriously wounded by the same gunfire." This is part of the autopsy report I signed. Q Can you tell me who called that particular newspaper article to your attention, and why? A As I recall, it was Dr. Humes who mentioned this article to me. Q Colonel, do you customarily take notice of newspaper articles in an autopsy report? A At times it is done. Q Therefore, Doctor, am I correct in stating that particular autopsy report signed by you was based partially on hearsay evidence, is that correct? By that I mean evidence received by someone other than you having actual personal knowledge of the thing? A Having not been at the scene I had to get information from somebody else. Q Did you have occasion to read a newspaper article of November 22 or 23, which reported there were four to six shots fired and they came from the grassy knoll, being stated by Miss Jean Hill? Did you read that before you made your report? A I don't recall reading that before I made the report. I may have been aware at that time of conflicting reports as regards the number and the difference in the direction of the shots, but I cannot pinpoint the time. Q Since you are referring to the Washington Post~ A Would you repeat that? THE COURT: Mr. Oser, speak into the microphone, it may help a little bit. BY MR. OSER: Q Since you are dealing with the Washington Post article of November 23, 1963, in your autopsy report, I wondered if you had an occasion to either read the article or have it brought to your attention, that one Charles Brehm, one of the spectators close to the Presidential limousine, saw material which appeared to be a sizable portion of President Kennedy's skull~ MR. DYMOND: Objection, that is not in evidence. THE COURT: This is not a prior contradictory statement, Mr. Oser, is it? MR. OSER: I am asking if he took this into account when he~ THE COURT: Where are you reading from? MR. OSER: An article taken out of the Washington Post on the same day as the article by Bob Jackson. MR. DYMOND: Your Honor, that has no place in this trial at all. THE COURT: Mr. Oser, I think you are enlarging the scope of the prior contradictory statement unless you can allege it was made in the report. MR. OSER: I am trying to ascertain what hearsay they used to arrive at in their report. MR. DYMOND: If you permit that you will have to permit Counsel to go through every conflicting report that was reported by every alleged eyewitness to the assassination and ask this witness whether they were taken into account. It certainly has no place in this trial and is completely irrelevant to the issues and irrelevant to the credibility and qualifications of the Doctor and irrelevant to the material on which he is testifying. THE COURT: I believe that the witness did state a few moments ago that he was not there personally and they did have to accept what Mr. Oser termed as hearsay. I believe the question being put by the District Attorney is to find out what other hearsay evidence they received. MR. OSER: That's right. THE COURT: Can't you ask a specific question instead of reading the article? MR. DYMOND: The thrust of my objection is that we have nothing before The Court to show this was even a bit of hearsay without even asking the Doctor whether he heard it. This is something that is purely out of the files of the District Attorney. MR. OSER: Your Honor, the State is attempting to ascertain from the Colonel whether or not he based his conclusions or his autopsy report on any type of hearsay other than that type of hearsay that backed up what the Warren Commission wanted it to be, or the Federal Government. Strike Warren Commission and make it Federal Government. MR. DYMOND: Your Honor, what I'm trying to impress on The Court is you have nothing before you to even show there is hearsay evidence to the effect of this statement that has been made by the District Attorney. That is completely outside the scope of the evidence in this case. We don't know any such contention was ever made by anybody. THE COURT: If the witness signed part of a three-man report and you referred to the report without using exact words, I would permit it, which you did previously. I think a general question can be asked, did they interview any other person, without saying what those persons said. BY MR. OSER: Q Colonel, besides what you referred to in paragraph 2 of the report, were you furnished with any other alleged statements by any of the witnesses in Dealey Plaza, namely the witnesses to the assassination of President Kennedy on Novem- ber 22? MR. DYMOND: Is this question restricted to before he signed the autopsy report? MR. OSER: I am asking about at the time he signed the report. THE COURT: It is restricted to that period. BY MR. OSER: Q Were you furnished statements by anyone else? A We based the statement on the people who had been at the scene. THE COURT: Let me interrupt you a second. You say "we," I presume you mean you and the other two doctors? THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. THE COURT: Mr. Oser's question is, did you and the other two persons personally interview these people or get it from another source? THE WITNESS: I personally talked to Secret Service Agent Kellerman. I personally talked to Admiral Berkley, the personal physician to President Kennedy. I personally talked to Admiral Galloway, who was referred to a third witness present at the scene. There may have been others leading us to the statement that to the best of our knowledge at that time there were three shots fired. BY MR. OSER: Q Doctor, speaking of the wound to the throat area of the President as you described it, after this bullet passed through the President's throat in the manner in which you described it, would the President have been able to talk? A I don't know. Q Do you have an opinion? A There are many factors influencing the ability to talk or not to talk after a shot. Q Did you have an occasion to dissect the track of that particular bullet in the victim as it lay on the autopsy table? A I did not dissect the track in the neck. Q Why? A This leads us into the disclosure of medical records. MR. OSER: Your Honor, I would like an answer from the Colonel and I would ask The Court so to direct. THE COURT: That is correct, you should answer, Doctor. THE WITNESS: We didn't remove the organs of the neck. BY MR. OSER: Q Why not, doctor? A For the reason that we were told to examine the head wounds and that the~ Q Are you saying someone told you not to dissect the track? THE COURT: Let him finish his answer. THE WITNESS: I was told that the family wanted an examination of the head, as I recall, the head and chest, but the prosecutors in this autopsy didn't remove the organs of the neck, to my recollection. BY MR. OSER; Q You have said they did not. I want to know why didn't you as an autopsy pathologist attempt to ascertain the track through the body which you had on the autopsy table in trying to ascertain the cause or causes of death? Why? A I had the cause of death. Q Why did you not trace the track of the wound? A As I recall I didn't remove these organs from the neck. Q I didn't hear you. A I examined the wounds but I didn't remove the organs of the neck. Q You said you didn't do this; I am asking you why didn't [you] do this as a pathologist? A From what I recall I looked at the trachea, there was a tracheotomy wound the best I can remember, but I didn't dissect or remove these organs. MR. OSER: Your Honor, I would ask Your Honor to direct the witness to answer my question. BY MR. OSER: Q I will ask you the question one more time: Why did you not dissect the track of the bullet wound that you have described today and you saw at the time of the autopsy at the time you examined the body? Why? I ask you to answer that question. A As I recall I was told not to but I don't remember by whom. Q You were told not to but you don't remember by whom? A Right. Q Could it have been one of the Admirals or one of the Generals in the room? A I don't recall. Q Do you have any particular reason why you cannot recall at this time? A Because we were told to examine the head and the chest cavity, and that doesn't include the removal of the organs of the neck. Q You are one of the three autopsy specialists and pathologists at the time, and you saw what you described as an entrance wound in the neck area of the President of the United States who had just been assassinated, and you were only interested in the other wound but not interested in the track through his neck, is that what you are telling me? A I was interested in the track and I had observed the conditions of bruising between the point of entry in the back of the neck and the point of exit at the front of the neck, which is entirely compatible with the bullet path. Q But you were told not to go into the area of the neck, is that your testimony? A From what I recall, yes, but I don't remember by whom. * * * Q In referring once again, Colonel to S-67 for identification, the five-page report signed by you in January 1967, can you tell me why this report was prepared? A Please repeat your question. Q Can you tell me why this report was prepared, the one you signed in January 1967. A The purpose of this, as I recall, was to correlate our autopsy report of November 1963, and the X-rays and photographs of the wounds, because we has seen the X-rays at the time of the autopsy but we hadn't seen the photographs in November 1963 or in March 1964, so in 1967 we were asked to look at those X-rays and photographs. Q By whom were you asked to do this? THE COURT: Are you waiting for an answer? MR. OSER: Yes. THE COURT: I thought you were referring to your notes, Doctor. MR. OSER: I asked the witness~ THE COURT: I heard your question. I was just wanting to know if you were waiting for an answer. THE WITNESS: I think I went first to the ~ I saw these photographs and X-rays to the best of my recollection at the archives of the United States in January 1967, the photographs, for the first time. THE COURT: He didn't ask you that question. He wanted to know who asked you to do this. Was that your question? MR. OSER: Yes, sir. THE WITNESS: As I recall it was Mr. Eardley. There are many names involved in this. I think it was Mr. Eardley at the Department of Justice and I had the authority to go there from the military. BY MR. OSER: Q Can you tell me whether or not you were asked to do this summary in January 1967 in regard to a panel review that was going to be done by Mr. William H. Carns, Russell S. Fisher, Mr. Russell H. Morgan and Mr. Alan R. Moritz. A In January 1967 when I signed S-67, to the best of my recollection, I was not aware of this panel review which took place in 1968, if you are referring to an independent panel review. Q I am. A It was composed of W. H. Carns, Russell H. [sic] Fisher, Russell H. Morgan and Alan R. Moritz. Q That is correct, Colonel. A I don't remember knowing in 1967 that these four names were reviewing the evidence to the best of my recollection. Q Are you familiar with their work? A I have read this. I was made aware of this panel review, I had received this panel review in February 1969. Q Colonel, can you give me the measurements of the wound in the area of the front of the President's neck that I am pointing to here on State Exhibit 69? A As I recall, it was given by the Dallas surgeons as approximately five millime- ters in diameter. Q Can you convert approximately five millimeters in diameter to a part of an inch for me, please? A Approximately three sixteenths of one inch corresponds to five millimeters. Q Referring, Colonel, to your Summary Report, State-67 for purposes of identi- fication, which you signed on 26 January, 1967, can you tell me why you did not list the size of the wound that you say is the exit wound in the throat of the President? A Because I did not, I did not see that wound in the front. I did not, I don't know why it is not there. Q You say you did not see it? A I did not see the wound of exit in the skin. I saw a hole of exit in the shirt of the President. Q But in speaking of the throat area, or skin area of the President, relative to his throat you said it was approximately five millimeters and you later said that Commander Humes received this information from Dallas. A The wound that was in the front of the neck I obtained that information from Dr. Humes. Q Therefore would you say, Colonel, that the wound in the back of the neck as you describe it is larger than the wound in the throat area? MR. DYMOND: We object to this. First of all, the Doctor testified that these are approximate measurements on wounds in the skin. Secondly, the doctor testified that he never saw the front bullet wound and consequently an answer on that would have to be based on measurements made by someone else, told to someone else, and then included in the report. MR. OSER: All the results, if The Court please, from two autopsy reports signed by this witness stating that ~ I believe he said everything in here is true and correct when I asked him, then I asked him if he wished to change anything in here at the beginning of his testimony and he said no. I'm trying to ascertain what he told Defense Counsel on direct examination, he stated this was an exit wound and I am trying to find out whether the hole in the back is larger than the front and whether or not it is compatible with a wound from this type of bullet. MR. DYMOND: If The Court please, the Doctor testified what he based his conclusions on and further testified that he never did see the front wound in the neck and conse- quently the question is impossible of answer. THE COURT: He has testified he is familiar with the information received from Dr. Humes from the surgeons in Dallas, Texas and he knows it was in the report and that the information was communicated to him and he was aware of it. I understand that Mr. Oser's question is whether the entrance wound from the rear was larger than the exit wound, which was the information given by the surgeon in Dallas, Texas. MR. DYMOND: Your Honor has consistently ruled throughout the trial that a witness cannot relate what someone else related to him. THE COURT: Ordinarily I agree but it was advised to him and he was made cognizant of it when he signed the original report, when he signed the report he either knew that as a fact which was received it from Commander Humes who received it from Dallas. I will permit the question. You are asking Dr. Finck if from the information he had whether or not the measurements of the alleged entrance wound as you wish to call it, alleged, is not larger than the information received from Dallas of the entrance wound in the front. I will permit you to ask it. MR. DYMOND: To which Counsel respectfully objects and reserves a Bill of Exception on the grounds this is hearsay evidence making the entire line of questioning, particu- larly this question, the answer to the question, the objection and ruling of the Court and the entire record parts of the bill. MR. OSER: Could I have the witness answer my question. Will you answer the question. THE WITNESS: Please repeat the question. THE REPORTER: Question: "Therefore, would you say, Colonel, that the wound in the back of the neck as you described it is larger than the wound in the throat area?" MR. DYMOND: Your Honor, that is not the question you stated you were ruling on. You said you were ruling on the question whether it was larger than the information indicated. MR. OSER: I will ask that question. THE WITNESS: Whether or not it was larger? BY MR. OSER: Q Than the information you received from the doctors in Dallas. MR. DYMOND: Object now on the ground that he didn't receive the information from the Doctor. THE COURT: I just ruled that he signed his name to the report and under that exception I will permit the question. Do you understand the question? MR. OSER: Let me ask you again, Doctor~ THE COURT: No, because then I will have to be ruling on different things if you change the question each time. MR. OSER: Then I'll ask that the Court Reporter read the question I asked. THE REPORTER: Question: "Therefore, would you say, Colonel, that the wound in the back of the neck as you described it is larger than the wound in the throat area" ~ then he added the second part of the question, Your Honor, which says, "than the infor- mation you received from the doctors in Dallas?" THE WITNESS: I don't know 'cause I measured the wound of entry whereas I had no way of measuring the wound of exit and the wound could have been slightly smaller, the same size, or slightly larger because all I have is somebody saying it was approximately 5 millimeters in diameter. * * * Q Colonel, I direct your attention to Page 4 of your autopsy report of November 1963, and to the fourth paragraph which states, "The complexity of these frac- tures and the fragments thus produced tax satisfactory verbal description and are better appreciated in photographs and roentgenograms which are prepared." Now, Colonel, can you tell me and tell the Court how you refer in your autopsy report that the fractures and the fragments are better appreciated in the photographs when you did not see the photographs until January 1967? MR. DYMOND: We object to this unless Counsel says better than what. This report indicates a photograph would show them better than they could be described in words. THE COURT: You are coming to the aid of a witness unsolicited. MR. DYMOND: You cannot compare something to nothing, Your Honor. THE COURT: Do you understand the question? THE WITNESS: Yes. When there are so many fractures in so many directions producing so many lines and fragments in the bone, a photograph will be more accurate than descrip- tions. The photographs were taken but turned over undeveloped to the Secret Service at the time we performed the autopsy, and the photographs were taken, we did not know when these photographs would be processed, this was beyond our control because they had been turned over, exposed, taken in our presence, but the Secret Service took charge of them. BY MR. OSER: Q And you didn't see the photographs until January of 1967. Is that correct, Colonel? A That is correct. Q Also in your autopsy report on the same page, Page 4, I direct your attention to the last paragraph, the last paragraph under "2," where you said in your report, "The second wound presumably of entry," and now you state in Court that you are positive it was of entry. A As I recall, it was Admiral Galloway who told us to put that word "presumably." Q Admiral Galloway? A Yes. Q Told you to put that word "presumably"? A Yes, but this does not change my opinion that this is a wound of entry. Q Is Admiral Galloway a Pathologist, to your knowledge? A Admiral Galloway had some training in Pathology. He was the Commanding Officer of the Naval Hospital, as I recall, and at that time, in my mind, this was a wound of entry, it just was suggested to add "presumably" this was. Q Did he suggest you add anything else to your report, Colonel? A Not that I recall. Q Can you give me the name of the General that you said told Dr. Humes not to talk about the autopsy report? A This was not a General, it was an Admiral. Q All right, excuse me, the Admiral, can you give me the name of the Admiral? A Who stated that we were not to discuss the autopsy findings? Q Yes. A This was in the autopsy room on the 22nd and 23rd of November, 1963. Q What was his name? A Well, there were several people in charge, there were several Admirals, and, as I recall, the Adjutant General of the Navy. Q Do you have a name, Colonel? A It was Admiral Kinney, K-i-n-n-e-y, as I recall. Q Now, can you give me the name then of the General that was in charge of the autopsy, as you testified about? A Well, there was no General in charge of the autopsy. There were several people, as I have stated before. I heard Dr. Humes state who was in charge here, and he stated that the General answered "I am," it may have been pertaining to operations other than the autopsy, it does not mean the Army General was in charge of the autopsy, but when Dr. Humes asked who was in charge here, it may have been who was in charge of the operations, but not of the autopsy, and by "operations," I mean the over-all supervision. Q Which includes your report. Does it not? A Sir? Q Which includes your report. Does it not? A No. Q It does not? A I would not say so, because the report I signed was signed by two other pathologists and at no time did this Army General say that he would have anything to do with signing this autopsy report. Q Can you give me the Army General's name? A I don't remember it. Q How did you know he was an Army General? A Because Dr. Humes said so. Q Was he in uniform? A I don't remember. Q Were any of the Admirals or Generals or any of the Military in uniform in that autopsy room? A Yes. Q Were there any other Generals in uniform? A I remember a Brigadier General of the Air Force, but I don't remember his name. Q Were there any Admirals in uniform in the autopsy room? A From what I remember, Admiral Galloway was in uniform, Admiral Kinney was in uniform, I don' t remember whether or not Admiral Berkley, the President's physician, was in uniform. * * * Q Do you know whether or not all of the X-ray films came out or not, to your knowledge? A To my knowledge, they came out all right. Q Now, if, Colonel, you viewed the X-ray film of the head or had been viewed by a radiologist, can you tell me why there was no mention in your report of a three-quarter by one-half inch rectangular shaped object in the President's brain? A No. Q Can you tell me why there is nothing in your report making mention of metallic substances in the track? A Before you go to that second question, if I may say something, in that panel review of 1968 there was a rectangular structure and they say it is not identifiable to this panel. Q If it was there, Colonel, in the X-rays, would you say it was there in the brain at the time of the autopsy? MR. DYMOND: What page are you referring to, Doctor, what page are you referring to? MR. OSER: The panel of 1968, the pages are not numbered. THE WITNESS: That is "S-72." MR. OSER: Page 8, Mr. Dymond. THE WITNESS: "There can be seen a gray-brown rectangular structure measuring approximately 13 by 20 millimeters, its identity cannot be established by the panel." I don't know what this refers to. BY MR. OSER: Q Did you see such at the time of your autopsy, did you see such a substance in the brain of the President? A I don't remember. Edited December 13, 2009 by Bernice Moore Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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