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FTR #1046 Interview #15 with Jim DiEugenio About “Destiny Betrayed”

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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment [6].

CIA’s Expert on the JFK Assas­si­na­tion Ray Roc­ca: ” . . . . Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy. . . .”

House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions Assis­tant Coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer: “. . . . ‘We have rea­son to believe Shaw was heav­i­ly involved in the Anti-Cas­tro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s and [was] pos­si­bly one of the high lev­el plan­ners or ‘cut out’ to the plan­ners of the assas­si­na­tion.’ . . . .”

[7]Intro­duc­tion: This is the fif­teenth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed [8] and Jim’s oth­er books, as well as sup­ple­ment­ing those vol­umes with arti­cles about this coun­try’s polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions at his web­site Kennedys and King [9]Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio [10].)

This inter­view begins with an excerpt from the book that encap­su­lates the syn­the­sis of the intel­li­gence agen­cies, infil­tra­tors into Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion, media hatch­et men des­ig­nat­ed to destroy Gar­rison’s rep­u­ta­tion and Clay Shaw’s defense team.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 228–229. [8]

. . . . About Oswald, [Bernar­do] DeTor­res said he knew he had not killed Kennedy because DeTor­res knew the peo­ple who were actu­al­ly involved–and they were talk­ing about it before it hap­pened.

I have detailed the DeTor­res pen­e­tra­tion at length since it is impor­tant in order to under­stand what real­ly hap­pened to Jim Gar­ri­son. And also to reveal just how much was at stake for sus­pects like Bernar­do DeTor­res and his allies. As [HSCA inves­ti­ga­tor Gae­ton] Fonzi notes in his book, as the author found out from an inter­view, when Vic­tor Mar­che­t­ti was exec­u­tive assis­tant to CIA Direc­tor Richard Helms, Helms would run staff meet­ings about Agency oper­a­tions. Dur­ing these meet­ings, Mar­che­t­ti would take the offi­cial notes. At times, Helms would indi­cate he want­ed cer­tain things not tak­en down. At oth­er times, some­thing would come up, and Helms would cut off any fol­low-up by wav­ing his hand. He then would add that this sub­ject would be pur­sued fur­ther in his office, with Mar­che­t­ti not there to take notes. Mar­che­t­ti said that the Gar­ri­son inquiry and the Shaw tri­al came up more than once. Each time, Helms would ask what they were doing to help the defense. Fonzi lat­er found out that DeTorres’s pen­e­tra­tion was only the incep­tion of the CIA’s effort to tor­pe­do Gar­ri­son. For the HSCA lat­er dis­cov­ered through CIA doc­u­ments that there were nine under­cov­er agents at one time or anoth­er in Garrrison’s office. So, in addi­tion to what Mr. King had warned Gar­ri­son about, that is the neg­a­tiv­i­ty of the media which would now plague him until the end, there was some­thing that King left unsaid. But after he left, assis­tant Andrew Sci­ambra not­ed it to Gar­ri­son. He said, “Well, they offered you the car­rot, and you turned it down. You know what’s com­ing next don’t you?”

What we are about to describe in this chap­ter and the next is some­thing that nei­ther Gar­ri­son nor Sci­ambra could have like­ly imag­ined at the time. But with the aid of exten­sive inter­views, plus declas­si­fied doc­u­ments, for the first time we will now out­line a three stage pro­gram to decon­struct Garrison’s case and to make sure Shaw would be acquit­ted. This first stage began very ear­ly with DeTor­res, a man who–while work­ing with Mitch Werbell–may have been involved with Kennedy’s mur­der. But it will con­tin­ue with cer­tain oth­er “sin­gle­ton” pen­e­tra­tions by peo­ple like William Gur­vich and Gor­don Nov­el. The sec­ond stage of the effort will cen­ter around the wider efforts of for­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency offi­cer Wal­ter Sheri­dan in alliance with the CIA and NBC. That effort was cou­pled with the work of intel­li­gence assets/journalists James Phe­lan and Hugh Aynesworth. When Gar­ri­son would still not give up, a third phase set in with two prongs to it. James Angleton’s office took over in Sep­tem­ber of 1967, and, as we have pre­viewed, Angleton’s endeav­or was then allied to, and expand­ed all the way up to Direc­tor Richard Helms in 1968 and 1969. With oper­a­tions that could even be dis­cussed in pub­lic or for the record. But which, as we shall see, HSCA Deputy Coun­sel Bob Tanen­baum saw cer­tain doc­u­ments about. . . .

Con­tin­u­ing and over­lap­ping analy­sis from the last pro­gram, we return to the sub­ject of vet­er­an intel­li­gence oper­a­tive Gor­don Nov­el, whom we have spo­ken of in past inter­views. In FTR #1044 [11], we syn­op­sized Nov­el­’s activ­i­ties as a spook and as an infil­tra­tor into Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion: “One of the most impor­tant infil­tra­tors was Gor­don Nov­el, a vet­er­an CIA offi­cer, bril­liant elec­tron­ics expert and oper­a­tional asso­ciate of many of the peo­ple involved in Gar­rison’s probe. Nov­el had been involved with the Bay of Pigs and an arms bur­glary at a Schlum­berg­er facil­i­ty, some of the loot from which was stored at a rac­ing busi­ness owned in part by Nov­el. Oper­at­ing at the direc­tion of Allen Dulles, he infil­trat­ed Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion and bugged his office for the Agency. He also net­worked with the FBI to mon­i­tor Gar­rison’s probe. Nov­el also used his posi­tion inside Gar­rison’s probe to smear Gar­ri­son in pub­lic state­ments to the media. Nov­el was able to draw on large finan­cial reserves, the source of which is–technically speaking–opaque. At one point, he had five attor­neys work­ing on his behalf. That, in and of itself, would have required more mon­ey than Nov­el appeared to have at his dis­pos­al. Most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Nov­el worked in tan­dem with Wal­ter Sheri­dan, a vet­er­an intel­li­gence oper­a­tive who pro­duced an alto­geth­er “spe­cial” for NBC about the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. . . .”

In this pro­gram, we not­ed Nov­el­’s work with the FBI, as well as CIA. Not­ing a bunch of appar­ent “hang­ers-on” around his res­i­dence, Nov­el real­ized that they were FBI. They were inter­est­ed in hav­ing him mon­i­tor Gar­ri­son for the bureau, which he did. Jim notes that the Wack­en­hut Cor­po­ra­tion (for­mer­ly South­ern Research) was also mon­i­tor­ing Gar­rison’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions. It was an out­growth of the FBI.

Sup­ple­ment­ing analy­sis of CIA Gar­ri­son infil­tra­tor William Mar­tin (also high­light­ed in FTR #1044 [11]), we set forth Mar­t­in’s work for Guy Ban­is­ter.

An impor­tant part of the dis­cus­sion fea­tures expand­ed analy­sis of both Hugh Aynesworth and James Phe­lan, both of whom were promi­nent media hatch­et men who helped defame Gar­ri­son.  (They, too, were high­light­ed in FTR #1044 [11].)

Key points of dis­cus­sion about Aynesworth.

  1. Pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, Aynesworth had net­worked with J. Wal­ton Moore, in charge of CIA oper­a­tions in Dal­las, Texas. Aynesworth was apply­ing for mem­ber­ship in the assas­si­na­tion.
  2. He was involved with attempt­ed sale of Oswald’s “diary.”
  3. Was net­worked with Mari­na Oswald, help­ing to dis­sem­i­nate the offi­cial lie about the assas­si­na­tion, and con­coct­ing a pre­pos­ter­ous sto­ry about Mari­na say­ing Oswald had planned to kill Nixon.
  4. Worked with peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with CIA’s anti-Cas­tro Cuban milieu in con­junc­tion with Life Mag­a­zine’s “re-inves­ti­ga­tion” of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Hen­ry Luce’s Life and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions had a his­to­ry of work­ing with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.
  5. Dis­sem­i­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion about Garrison/JFK for Newsweek.
  6. He informed for both the FBI and Lyn­don John­son about Gar­rison’s inquest.
  7. Dis­sem­i­nat­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion about David Fer­rie’s asso­ciate Alvin Beauboeuf. This dis­in­for­ma­tion ran par­al­lel to Wal­ter Sheri­dan’s dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts in this regard.
  8. Was instru­men­tal in frus­trat­ing Gar­rison’s attempts at inter­view­ing CIA Cuban oper­a­tive Ser­gio Arcacha Smith.
  9. Aynesworth net­worked with Clay Shaw’s defense team.

Key points of dis­cus­sion about Phe­lan include:

  1. Review of his hit piece on Gar­ri­son pub­lished by The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.
  2. His net­work­ing with intel­li­gence agen­cies in con­junc­tion with his jour­nal­is­tic activ­i­ties.
  3. His pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tion with Robert Loomis, who had a long career pub­lish­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion books cov­er­ing-up this coun­try’s major assas­si­na­tions. (Ger­ald Pos­ner’s noto­ri­ous Case Closed is a promi­nent exam­ple.
  4. Phe­lan also net­worked with Clay Shaw’s defense team, help­ing to intro­duce into the tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny the pre­pos­ter­ous “jet effect” syn­drome with regard to the head shot that sealed Kennedy’s fate. This pre­pos­ter­ous con­coc­tion main­tains that the vio­lent toss­ing of JFK’s body to the back and to the left by the fatal head shot was because the shot (sup­pos­ed­ly from behind) cre­at­ed a tun­nel in JFK’s head which, when it chan­neled the blood and flesh torn from Kennedy by the bul­let, cre­at­ed a “jet” that pro­pelled Kennedy back­ward.

The pro­gram con­cludes with a par­tial read­ing of a 2016 Huff­in­g­ton Post sto­ry [12] based, in part on Phe­lan’s disin­gen­u­ous report­ing on the JFK assas­si­na­tion. One of the fea­tures of the arti­cle is that it casu­al­ly dis­miss­es Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion as base­less, and sug­gests that Gar­ri­son felt the homo­sex­u­al Shaw was involved with the assas­si­na­tion as part of a “homo­sex­u­al thrill killing.”