FTR #1053 Interview #22 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

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.’ . . . .”

This is the twen­ty-sec­ond in 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.

This pro­gram con­tin­ues exam­i­na­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

Even­tu­al­ly, the col­lab­o­ra­tionist main­stream media began an assault on Richard Sprague and the work of the com­mit­tee. The New York Times, The Los Ange­les Times and The Wash­ing­ton Post began the assault, which quick­ly drew blood. . . .

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 333–334.

. . . . The only time he ever had his cre­den­tials ques­tioned was dur­ing the six months he agreed to swerve as coun­sel to the HSCA. And that is sim­ply because he was going to super­vise a real inves­ti­ga­tion of the JFK case. Yet, the same thing hap­pened to him as hap­pened to Jim Gar­ri­son. In fact, like Gar­ri­son, Sprague was also even accused of being in bed with the Mafia. When the first press attacks began. HSCA staffer Chris Shar­rett remem­bers think­ing, ‘It’s Gar­ri­son all over again.’ Or, as Joe Rauh, who knew Sprague from Philadel­phia and had a front row seat to the con­tro­ver­sy in Wash­ing­ton said, ‘You know, I nev­er thought the Kennedy case was a con­spir­a­cy until now. But if they can do that to Dick Sprague, it must have been.’ With Sprague’s res­ig­na­tion, the House Select Com­mit­tee sur­vived. The inter­im Chief Coun­sel was Tanen­baum with Al Lewis, a friend and col­league of Sprague’s as his deputy. . . .

In the inter­im, between Sprague’s res­ig­na­tion and the ascen­sion of G. Robert Blakey to the Chief Coun­sel posi­tion, George DeMohren­schildt died of a shot­gun wound to the head.

DeMohren­schildt: was part of the fam­i­ly that man­aged the Nobel Oil Fields for the Czar; was the cousin of Baron Kon­stan­tin May­dell, in charge of Abwehr oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed States for a time (Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence); was a sus­pect­ed Nazi spy in World War II; was an asso­ciate of George H.W. Bush; was a long­time CIA asset; was a petro­le­um geol­o­gist.

DeMohren­schildt imple­ment­ed the Oswalds’ intro­duc­tion to the White Russ­ian milieu in Dal­las. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance for our pur­pose is the fact that he made con­tact with the cou­ple at the sug­ges­tion of J. Wal­ton Moore, who was the pri­ma­ry CIA offi­cer in the Dal­las area!

The White Rus­sians appeared to be work­ing to sep­a­rate Mari­na and Lee, and were involved in han­dling Mari­na after the assas­si­na­tion.

A long-stand­ing CIA asset, DeMohren­schildt had worked with the agency on numer­ous projects in Yugoslavia, Haiti and else­where. Sus­pect­ed of hav­ing spied on the Aransas Pass Coast Guard Sta­tion (in Texas) for the Third Reich, DeMohren­schildt was the cousin of Baron Kon­tan­tin May­dell, who over­saw Abwehr oper­a­tions in the U.S. for a time. (The Abwehr was Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence.)

As dis­cussed in FTR #712, we high­light­ed DeMohren­schildt’s links to for­mer CIA direc­tor George H.W. Bush, for whom CIA head­quar­ters is named. In that same pro­gram, we cov­ered Bush’s involve­ment  in the JFK assas­si­na­tion. LIke DeMohren­schildt and many of the White Rus­sians who asso­ci­at­ed with the Oswalds in the Dal­las area, Bush had roots in the petro­le­um indus­try.

Note­wor­thy in the con­text of Oswald’s pres­ence in Dal­las, is that this alleged trai­tor was employed by Jag­gars, Chiles and Sto­vall, a firm that did clas­si­fied work for the mil­i­tary, includ­ing projects asso­ci­at­ed with the U‑2 spy plane! That the “trai­tor” Oswald, who offered to dis­close clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about the U‑2 and U.S. avi­a­tion oper­a­tions to the Sovi­ets could be employed by such a firm is unthink­able, IF we are to take the offi­cial ver­sion of Oswald at face val­ue.

Ulti­mate­ly, DeMohren­schildt hand­ed the Oswalds–Lee and Marina–off to the “Quak­er lib­er­als” Michael and Ruth Paine.

DeMohren­schildt’s death was ruled a sui­cide, but the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing his demise are note­wor­thy.

At the time he died, DeMohren­schildt was net­work­ing with a Dutch jour­nal­ist named Willem Olt­mans, who began spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion after DeMohren­schildt’s demise. DeMohren­schildt was also net­work­ing with jour­nal­ist Edward Epstein, who pressed the “Sovi­ets did it” meme for a time and whose behav­ior vis a vis DeMohren­schildt is ques­tion­able.

Pri­or to his death, DeMohren­schildt was under­go­ing psy­chi­atric treat­ment, appar­ent­ly includ­ing elec­tro-shock ther­a­py, from a Dal­las physi­cian named Men­doza. DeMohren­schildt’s wid­ow thinks the treat­ments may have had some­thing to do with her hus­band’s death.

The phys­i­cal evi­dence in con­nec­tion with DeMohren­schildt’s death sug­gests the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­i­ty of foul play.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 337.

. . . . Even though a coro­ner’s inquest ruled his death as self-inflict­ed, there are some seri­ous ques­tions about DeMohren­schildt’s demise. First, accord­ing to the crime scene report and the autop­sy, there was not any exit wound to the rear of the skull. Yet DeMohren­schildt alleged­ly placed a shot­gun in his mouth and pulled the trig­ger. It’s true that shot­gun shells dis­perse more quick­ly than jack­et­ed bul­lets. But his shot was almost with­in con­tact dis­tance. Nei­ther the maid nor the cook heard the shot­gun blast, even though both women were right below the room that DeMohren­schildt was in at the time. The police also had prob­lems explain­ing the blood spat­ter on the wall. When a blood spurt hits a flat sur­face, it cre­ates a dif­fer­ent pat­tern than if it hits a sur­face that is per­pen­dic­u­lar to it. In look­ing at pho­tographs of the spat­ter pat­tern, it appears that the bath­room door was closed at the time the shoot­ing took place, because the blood pat­tern looked con­tin­u­ous. But the police said this was not the case. The bath­room door was open at the time. The tes­ti­fy­ing offi­cer demeaned the jurors for ask­ing this ques­tion and then jumped to a new top­ic. But it would appear that some­one altered the crime scene after­wards. The final odd­i­ty about the scene is the posi­tion of the weapon after death. It fell trig­ger side up, par­al­lel to the chair DeMohren­schildt was in, with the bar­rel rest­ing at his feet and the butt of the rifle away from him and to his left. The police had a prob­lem with this issue and so did the inquest jurors. As author Jer­ry Rose has not­ed, this strange posi­tion­ing of the rifle sug­gests it was “placed” by some­one.

Ms. Tilton was not at home at the time of DeMohren­schildt’s death. But she had left strict instruc­tions for the maid to record her favorite TV pro­grams. The home had an alarm sys­tem which caused a qui­et bell to ring, any­time an out­side door or win­dow was opened. Dur­ing the hear­ing, the tape of the pro­gram was played. When it was the alarm bell went off and then the gun blast was heard. . . .

Sub­se­quent­ly, writer Jer­ry Poli­coff felt that Olt­mans was threat­en­ing him and that the Dutch jour­nal­ist was a male­fac­tor.

An ini­tial can­di­date to replace Richard Sprague was for­mer Supreme Court Jus­tice Arthur Gold­berg, who had been JFK’s Sec­re­tary of Labor.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 339.

. . . . For­mer Jus­tice of the Supreme Court Arthur Gold­berg was one can­di­date who turned down the job. Al Lewis had talked Gold­berg into fill­ing the posi­tion. But Gold­berg had one reser­va­tion. He want­ed to know if the CIA would coop­er­ate with him. Lewis sug­gest­ed call­ing up Stans­field Turn­er, Pres­i­dent Carter’s CIA Direc­tor. So Lewis called him and told him Gold­berg want­ed to talk with him. He put Gold­berg on the line and the can­di­date asked Turn­er if he could guar­an­tee the Agency would coop­er­ate if he became Chief Coun­sel. A long silence ensued. It got so long and so qui­et that Gold­berg turned to Lewis and said, ‘I’m not sure if he’s there any­more.’ Lewis sug­gest­ed that he say some­thing. So Gold­berg asked if he was still on the line and Turn­er said he was.  Gold­berg asked him for an answer to his ques­tion. Turn­er said, ‘I though my silence was my answer.’ . . . .

Even­tu­al­ly, the HSCA set­tled on G. Robert Blakey as Chief Coun­sel and Richard (Dick) Billings as a key aide. Both had been involved with tar­ring Jim Gar­ri­son with the Mafia brush in a 1967 Life Mag­a­zine series.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 276.

. . . . But [David] Chandler’s most seri­ous blast against Gar­ri­son and his inquiry was a two-part arti­cle writ­ten for Life in the fall of 1967. This appeared in the Sep­tem­ber 1 and Sep­tem­ber 8 issues of the mag­a­zine. The pieces mas­quer­ad­ed as an expose of Mafia influ­ence in large cities in Amer­i­ca at the time. But the real tar­get of the piece was not the mob, but Gar­ri­son. The idea was to depict him as a cor­rupt New Orleans DA who had some kind of neb­u­lous ties to the Mafia and Car­los Mar­cel­lo. There were four prin­ci­pal par­tic­i­pants in the pieces: Chan­dler, Sandy Smith, Dick Billings, and Robert Blakey. Smith was the actu­al billed writer. And since Smith was a long-time asset of the FBI, it is very like­ly that the Bureau was the Bureau was the orig­i­nat­ing force behind the mag­a­zine run­ning the piece. . . .

. . . . It was the work of Chan­dler, a friend of both Clay Shaw and Ker­ry Thorn­ley, which was the basis of the com­plete­ly pho­ny con­cept that Gar­ri­son was some­how in bed with the Mafia and his func­tion was to steer atten­tion from their killing of Kennedy. . . .

Blakey:

1.–Effectively eclipsed the New Orleans leads devel­oped by Jim Gar­ri­son.
2.–Bought into the Mag­ic Bul­let The­o­ry.
3.–Eclipsed evi­dence about “Oswald’s” sniper’s nest in the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry.

Most impor­tant­ly, Blakey gave the intel­li­gence ser­vices the right to veto what infor­ma­tion would go into the com­mit­tee’s report.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 350.

” . . . . When Robert Blakey took charge of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions, he agreed to do some­thing that Richard Sprague would not. In return for access to clas­si­fied mate­ri­als, mem­bers and employ­ees f the com­mit­tee signed agree­ments pledg­ing not to dis­close any infor­ma­tion they gar­nered while doing their work. Then, when Blakey, Gary Corn­well, and Dick Billings edit­ed the report and vol­umes, the agen­cies they made agree­ments that [the agen­cies] were allowed to veto what infor­ma­tion was includ­ed in the pub­lished vol­umes. This is the rea­son that the HSCA report on Mex­i­co City–assembled by two law stu­dents of Blakey’s from Cornell–was not part of the pub­lished vol­umes in 1979. For when it came time to vet the report for release, Blakey, Ed Lopez and Dan Hard­way met with the CIA rep­re­sen­ta­tives. The Agency made so many objec­tions, it took four hours to get through the first two para­graphs. The report is over 300 pages long. It was there­fore clas­si­fied until the ARRB was cre­at­ed. And then it had to go through sev­er­al reviews. But even today, an annex to the report, ‘Was Oswald an Agent of the CIA’ has not been released. This long clas­si­fied report con­firms that, as Gar­ri­son wrote in 1968, the Com­mis­sion ver­sion of what hap­pened in Mex­i­co City was delib­er­ate­ly cov­ered in mist. . . .

Near the end of his inves­ti­ga­tion, Blakey was on the receiv­ing end of some ques­tion­able behav­ior from CIA liai­son Reg­is Blahut:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 340.

. . . . Toward the end, when CIA liai­son Reg­is Blahut was caught mis­han­dling Kennedy’s autop­sy pho­tos while they were secured in a safe, the Agency offered Blakey four ways to do an inquiry of what had hap­pened. The main object being to see if Blahut was part of  a larg­er oper­a­tion to under­mine the HSCA. One option was to do the inquiry through the D.C. police, anoth­er was through the FBI, and the third was an inter­nal HSCA inquiry. The last was to have the CIA do it. Even though the Agency offi­cers at this meet­ing strong­ly encour­aged Blakey not to choose them to do the inves­ti­ga­tion, he still did. The report­ing offi­cer, Hav­i­land Smith, made the only con­clu­sion he could from this meet­ing He wrote that his inter­pre­ta­tion of what Blakey want­ed was the Agency ‘to go ahead with the inves­ti­ga­tion of Blahut and that he expects us to come up with a clean bill of health for the CIA.’ Which, of course, they did despite the fact that Blahut flunked three poly­graph tests. When the author talked to HSCA staffer Eddie Lopez about this mat­ter, I told him that in read­ing these mem­o­ran­da, I was struck by  how friend­ly Blakey was with these CIA offi­cers. That is, what a  seem­ing­ly easy rap­port he had with them. I said, ‘You know, Eddie he talks to them . . . “Lopez inter­rupt­ed me in mid-sen­tence and com­plet­ed the thought for me: ‘He talks to them like he’s one of them.’ . . . .”

We note that, dur­ing the ear­ly phase of the HSCA’s inves­ti­ga­tion, George H.W. Bush was in charge of the CIA. George Joan­nides, who man­aged the DRE for CIA, was the Agen­cy’s main liai­son to the HSCA.

FTR #1052 Interview #21 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

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.’ . . . .”

This is the twen­ty-first in 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.

This pro­gram under­takes exam­i­na­tion of the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions.

The HSCA coa­lesced after a show­ing of the Zaprud­er film on tele­vi­sion cued a dra­mat­ic increase in peo­ple who were inter­est­ed in the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Tom Down­ing of Vir­ginia was instru­men­tal in real­iz­ing the project.

Ulti­mate­ly, respect­ed Penn­syl­va­nia pros­e­cu­tor Richard Sprague became the com­mit­tee’s Chief Coun­sel, recruit­ing skilled aides like the late Gae­ton Fonzi and Robert Tanen­baum. Net­work­ing with, among oth­ers, Penn­syl­va­nia Sen­a­tor Richard Schweik­er, Sprague, Tanen­baum, Fonzi et al quick­ly con­clud­ed that the War­ren Com­mis­sion was cov­er­ing up the assas­si­na­tion and high­light­ed the ridicu­lous nature of CE399–the so-called “Mag­ic Bul­let,” which is the evi­den­tiary core of the War­ren Com­mis­sion’s the­sis.

Ini­tial­ly, the HSCA began doing some seri­ous work, inves­ti­gat­ing and ana­lyz­ing the New Orleans con­nec­tions that Gar­ri­son inves­ti­gat­ed. In addi­tion to the Shaw, Ban­is­ter, Fer­rie Oswald rela­tion­ships, the role of David Phillips, aka “Mau­rice Bish­op,” became a sub­stan­tive focal point of their work.

Gae­ton Fonz­i’s work for the com­mit­tee focused on:

1.–CIA offi­cer Bernar­do DeTor­res’ pro­fes­sion­al career, includ­ing his work with Mitchell Wer­bell.
2.–David Phillips/“Maurice Bish­op.”
3.–The Rose Cheramie fore­shad­ow­ing of the assas­si­na­tion.
4.–Sergio Arcacha Smith’s numer­ous links to the assas­si­na­tion, includ­ing his pos­si­ble work run­ning guns with Jack Ruby and CIA con­tract agent Tomas Eli Davis.
5.–Freeport Sul­phur, its net­work­ing with both Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie and its own­er­ship by the East­ern Elite.
6.–The role of Jock Whit­ney in Freeport Sul­phur.
The pub­lish­er of The New York Her­ald Tri­bune, Whit­ney worked late into the evening of 11/22/1963, appar­ent­ly on an edi­to­r­i­al that fea­tured the book The Assas­sins, which claimed that Amer­i­ca’s assas­si­na­tions were the work of “crazed indi­vid­u­als.” The book was lat­er dis­trib­uted to mem­bers of the War­ren Com­mis­sion by none oth­er than Allen Dulles.

The pro­gram goes into the dis­cov­ery made by researcher John Hunt of the han­dling of the Mag­ic Bul­let, CE399.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 345.

. . . . And the proof is that both the War­ren Com­mis­sion and the HSCA  signed onto the ludi­crous Sin­gle Bul­let The­o­ry. A the­o­ry that has been ren­dered even more ris­i­ble today than it was in the six­ties and sev­en­ties. For researcher John Hunt has proven with declas­si­fied doc­u­ments that the so-called Mag­ic Bul­let was at the FBI lab in Wash­ing­ton at 7:30 p.m. on the night of the twen­ty-sec­ond. But how could this be if that bul­let was not turned over by the Secret Ser­vice to FBI agent Elmer Lee Todd until 8:50 p.m.? In oth­er words, lab tech­ni­cian Robert Fra­zier had booked CE399 into his reords one hour and twen­ty min­utes before it was giv­en to him by agent Todd. But fur­ther, Tod­d’s ini­tials were said by the FBI to be on this bul­let he dropped off with Fra­zier that night. Hunt saw the blow up pho­tos of the entire cir­cum­fer­ence of CE 399 at the Nation­al Archives. The FBI lied on this key issue. For Tod­d’s ini­tials are not on the bul­let.

All one needs to know about the effi­ca­cy of the HSCA is that it nev­er took the time to do what John Hunt did. . . .

Even­tu­al­ly, the col­lab­o­ra­tionist main­stream media began an assault on Richard Sprague and the work of the com­mit­tee. The New York Times, The Los Ange­les Times and The Wash­ing­ton Post began the assault, which quick­ly drew blood. . . .

FTR #1051 Interview #20 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the twen­ti­eth in 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.

This pro­gram deals with Oswald in Mex­i­co City, one of the most impor­tant ele­ments in con­struct­ing the cov­er-up of the assas­si­na­tion.

The Mex­i­co City gam­bit entails “Oswald” osten­si­bly trav­el­ing to Mex­i­co City to vis­it the Cuban and Sovi­et embassies, the lat­ter involv­ing “Oswald’s” alleged con­tacts with Valery Kostikov, the KGB’s agent in charge of assas­si­na­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. When reports of this were cir­cu­lat­ed in the Amer­i­can media on the week­end of JFK’s assas­si­na­tion, it appeared to many that the Sovi­et Union and/or Cuba was behind the assas­si­na­tion.

Ulti­mate­ly, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of World War III and a nuclear holo­caust break­ing out as a result of the assas­si­na­tion were used by Lyn­don Baines John­son to engi­neer a cov­er-up.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 359.

. . . . To say this decep­tion about Oswald in Mex­i­co worked well does not begin to do it jus­tice. For at the first meet­ing of the War­ren Com­mis­sion, the for­mer DA of Alame­da Coun­ty Cal­i­for­nia, Earl War­ren, came out meek as a lamb:

1.–He did not want the Com­mis­sion to employ any of their own inves­ti­ga­tors.
2.–He did not want the Com­mis­sion to gath­er evi­dence. Instead he wished for them to rely on reports made by oth­er agen­cies like the FBI and Secret Ser­vice.
3.–He did not want their hear­ings to be pub­lic. He did not want to employ the pow­er of sub­poe­na.
4.–Incredibly, he did not even want to call any wit­ness­es. He want­ed to rely on inter­views done by oth­er agen­cies.
5.–He then made a very curi­ous com­ment, “Meet­ings where wit­ness­es would be brought in would retard rather than help our inves­ti­ga­tion.

In oth­er words, as John­son told [then Sen­a­tor Richard] Rus­sell, they were to rat­i­fy the FBI’s inquiry. There was to be no real inves­ti­ga­tion by any­one. The Mex­i­co City cha­rade, with its threat of atom­ic holo­caust, had secured the cov­er up of Kennedy’s mur­der. . . .

Key ele­ments of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis on this top­ic include:

1.–Warren Com­mis­sion coun­sels David Slaw­son and William Cole­man relied on CIA and FBI liai­son for their infor­ma­tion. Specif­i­cal­ly, they relied on coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence chief James Jesus Angle­ton and and his aide Ray Roc­ca for their infor­ma­tion. NB: Mr. Emory erred at one point in this inter­view, iden­ti­fy­ing Richard Helms a head of the CIA, he was Deputy Direc­tor of the Agency at this point in time.
2.–Slawson even con­sid­ered join­ing the CIA at this point. We can but won­der if, in fact, he did just that.
3.–Richard Helms appoint­ed Angle­ton to be the main liai­son for the Agency to the War­ren Com­mis­sion. Recall that Angle­ton and Ray Roc­ca were in charge of the Oswald pre-assas­si­na­tion files.
4.–Angleton and the FBI’s William Sul­li­van coor­di­nat­ed their response con­cern­ing Oswald hav­ing ties to U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies, deny­ing that that was, in fact, the case.
5.–A hand­ful of CIA offi­cers known as the SAS (not to be con­fused with the British com­man­do orga­ni­za­tion with the same ini­tials) devel­oped an inter­est in Oswald weeks before the assas­si­na­tion.
6.–Slawson and Cole­man relied on CIA sta­tion chief Win­ston Scott when in Mex­i­co City.
7.–Sylvia Duran, employed at the Cuban embassy in Mex­i­co City, report­ed the “Lee Har­vey Oswald” with whom she met as ” . . . being short, about five foot, six inch­es, blond and over thir­ty years old. Oswald was five foot, nine inch­es, dark haired, and twen­ty-four years old. . . .” (p. 349.)
8.–Duran not­ed that the pro­ce­dure used by the Oswald impos­tor to obtain a visa was sus­pi­cious: ” . . . . “They [U.S. com­mu­nists, which “Oswald” alleged­ly was] usu­al­ly fol­lowed a pro­ce­dure, arranged for by the Amer­i­can Com­mu­nist Par­ty, which allowed them to obtain a visa in advance through the Cuban Com­mu­nist Par­ty. . . The fact that Oswald did not do this was reveal­ing. It seemed to sug­gest that either Oswald was not a real com­mu­nist, or that peo­ple inside the com­mu­nist cir­cles in Amer­i­ca thought he was an agent provo­ca­teur. They there­fore did not trust him. . . .” (pp. 349–350.)
9.–The phone calls made to Sylvia Duran at the Cuban embassy con­tain sig­nif­i­cant dis­crep­an­cies: ” . . . . Duran stat­ed firm­ly that after the twen­ty-sev­enth, when Oswald had failed to secure his spe­cial visa, he did not call her back. Again, some­one embroi­dered this for the Com­mis­sion. For in the War­ren Report, she is quot­ed as say­ing ” . . . . she does not recall whether or not Oswald lat­er tele­phoned her at the Con­sulate num­ber she gave him.” This was an impor­tant dis­crep­an­cy in tes­ti­mo­ny. Because, as we shall see, there was anoth­er call to the Russ­ian con­sulate on Sat­ur­day the twen­ty-eighth [of Sep­tem­ber, 1963]. The CIA claims this call was by Duran, with Oswald also on the line. But if Duran’s recall is cor­rect, then the CIA evi­dence is spu­ri­ous. . . .” (p. 350.)
10.–When G. Robert Blakey and his asso­ciate Richard Billings assumed con­trol over the HSCA, they made a sig­nif­i­cant con­ces­sion: ” . . . . In return for access to clas­si­fied mate­ri­als, mem­bers and employ­ees f the com­mit­tee signed agree­ments pledg­ing not to dis­close any infor­ma­tion they gar­nered while doing their work. The, when Blakey, Gary Corn­well, and Dick billings edit­ed the report and vol­umes, the agen­cies they made agree­ments that [the agen­cies] were allowed to veto what infor­ma­tion was includ­ed in the pub­lished vol­umes. . ..” (p. 350.)
11.–While “Oswald” was sup­pos­ed­ly in Mex­i­co City, Sylvia Odio was vis­it­ed by three men, one whom was iden­ti­fied as “Leon Oswald,” an ex-Marine, an excel­lent shot, and some­one who felt that JFK should be assas­si­nat­ed for fail­ing to sup­port the Bay of Pigs inva­sion. ” . . . . After read­ing the War­ren Report, [HSCA’s first Chief Coun­sel Richard] Sprague won­dered why the com­mis­sion chose to dis­count the tes­ti­mo­ny of Sil­via Odio. . . . When she first heard of Oswald’s involve­ment with the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, she imme­di­ate­ly recalled the vis­it of the three men. That after­noon she became very fear­ful, so much so that she faint­ed. She then met with her sis­ter, ans and they had both been watch­ing tele­vi­sion with Oswald’s pho­to on the screen, they both real­ized he was the man who thought the Cubans should have killed Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. . . .” (pp. 350–351.)
12.–The Odio inci­dent cre­at­ed prob­lems for the War­ren Com­mi­sion: ” . . . . The third prob­lem, the one that both­ered Sprague, was that the dates of the vis­it clashed with the dates that Oswald was sup­posed to be going to Mex­i­co. . . .” (p. 352.)
13.–To dis­cred­it Sylvia Odio, War­ren Com­mis­sion coun­sel Wes­ley Liebler impugned her sex­u­al mores: ” . . . . Odio described what hap­pened next to Fonzi and the Church Com­mit­tee: ‘Not only that, he invit­ed me to his room upstairs to see some pic­tures. I did go, I went to his room. I want­ed to see how far a gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tor would go and what they were try­ing to do to a wit­ness. . . . He showed me pic­tures, he made advances, yes, but I told him he was crazy.’ Liebler was­n’t through. To show her what kind of oper­a­tion the Com­mis­sion real­ly was, he told her that they had seen her pic­ture and joked about it at the War­ren Com­mis­sion. They said things like what a pret­ty girl you are going to see Jim. . . . For HSCA staff lawyer Bill Triplett told this author that the rea­son that chair­man Earl War­ren did not believe Sylvia Odio is that she was some kind of a ‘loose woman.’ . . .” (pp. 352–353.)
14.–The lin­guis­tic capa­bil­i­ties of the “Oswald” who alleged­ly was con­tact­ing the Cuban and Sovi­et embassies in Mex­i­co City are con­tra­dic­to­ry: ” . . . . it has Oswald speak­ing flu­ent Span­ish, which no one has ever said Oswald did. Fur­ther, the HSCA report says that Oswald spoke poor, bro­ken Russ­ian. Yet both Mari­na Oswald and George DeMohren­schildt said Oswald spoke Russ­ian quite well upon his return to the Unit­ed States. Fur­ther, pro­fes­sion­al trans­la­tor Peter Gre­go­ry thought Oswald was flu­ent enough to give him a let­ter cer­ti­fy­ing Oswald’s abil­i­ty to serve as a trans­la­tor. . . .” (p. 353.)
15.–The “Oswald” pho­tographed in Mex­i­co City was obvi­ous­ly an impos­tor: ” . . . . The CIA had mul­ti­ple still cam­eras set up out­side the Cuban embassy in Mex­i­co City to catch every­one com­ing out of and going inside in order to secure a visa to Cuba. When, at the request of the Com­mis­sion, the FBI asked the CIA for a pho­to of Oswald enter­ing the con­sulate, they got Com­missin Exhib­it 237. This is a pic­ture of a husky six foot­er with a crew-cut. Obvi­ous­ly not Oswald. . . . In Owald’s com­bined five vis­its to the Cuban con­sulate and Sovi­et con­sulate, the bat­tery of CIA cam­eras failed to get even one pic­ture of him enter­ing or leav­ing. In oth­er words, they were zero for ten. And the cam­era right out­side the Cuban con­sulate was pulse acti­vat­ed. . . . ” (pp. 353–354.)
16.–Both David Phillips and his assis­tant Anne Good­pas­ture were involved in mul­ti­ple obfus­ca­tions of the facts: ” . . . . Anne Good­pas­ture was in charge of the ‘dai­ly take’ from both tar­get embassies. That is the pho­tographs tak­en from out­side and the clan­des­tine tape record­ings made from inside the com­pounds. This is impor­tant because she then would have been the first per­son to see a pho­to of Oswald. There­fore, she should have sent for a pho­to of Oswald from Lan­g­ley in a time­ly man­ner while Oswald was still in Mex­i­co City. She did not. . . .” (p. 354.)
17.–Next, we high­light more of Phillip­s’s obstruc­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion: ” . . . . Phillips said that they had no audio tapes because they ‘recy­cled their tapes every sev­en or eight days.’ The tapes were actu­al­ly recy­cled every ten days. But they were held for a longer time if so request­ed. Fur­ther, if any Amer­i­can cit­i­zen spoke bro­ken Russ­ian inside the Sovi­et con­sulate, the tape would be sent to Wash­ing­ton. Because he would be con­sid­ered of pos­si­ble oper­a­tional inter­est to the Sovi­ets. . . . Phillips also told [HSCA coun­sel Robert] Tanen­baum that the rea­son the CIA did not have a pho­to of Oswald was because their cam­era was out that day. This appears to be anoth­er lie. First of all, Oswald went to the Sovi­et con­sulate on two dif­fer­ent days, the twen­ty-sev­enth and twen­ty-eighth. So all three of the cam­eras cov­er­ing the site would have had to have been out on both days. . . .” (p. 354.)
18.–Phillips also dis­sem­bled con­cern­ing a cable sent to CIA head­quar­ters: ” . . . . The sur­veil­lance of the Russ­ian con­sulate revealed that by Octo­ber 1, the CIA knew that “Oswald” was in direct con­tact with those who worked there, such as Valery Kostikov of the KGB. But yet, the cable alert­ing head­quar­ters to this fact did not arrive until a week lat­er, Octo­ber 8, Phillips tried to explain this delay by blam­ing the trans­la­tors. He then said he knew that this was the case since he signed off on the cable. Hard­way and Lopez found out that Phillips did not sign off on the cable, since it did not deal in any way with Cuban mat­ters. But even worse, he could not have signed off on it because he was not in Mex­i­co City at the time. The like­ly rea­son the cable was sent out so late was to keep Oswald’s pro­file low while he was alleged­ly in Mex­i­co City. . . .” (pp. 354–355.)
19.–Oswald’s file at CIA began to be bifur­cat­ed: ” . . . . On or about Sep­tem­ber 23, Angle­ton began to bifur­cate Oswald’s file. the FBI reports on Oswald’s Fair Play for Cuba Com­mit­tee activ­i­ties in New Orleans went into a new oper­a­tional file, sep­a­rate from his 201 file. There­fore, the bizarre things Oswald was doing in New Orleans . . . .were all kept out of his 201 file. So when the late arriv­ing cable final­ly did come into CIA HQ from Mex­i­co City about Oswald in the Sovi­et con­sulate, this was kept sep­a­rate from his New Orleans activ­i­ties. Then two dif­fer­ent cables were sent out on Octo­ber 10. One was sent to the Bureau, the State Depart­ment, and the Navy, describ­ing a man who does­n’t fit Oswald’s descrip­tion: he is thir­ty-five years old, has an ath­let­ic build, and stands six feet tall. This descrip­tion resem­bles the Mys­tery Man pho­to. . . .” (pp. 355–356.)
20.–An alto­geth­er remark­able and reveal­ing aspect of the “Oswald” in Mex­i­co City gam­bit con­cerns the FBI’s “FLASH” notice on Oswald: ” . . . . Oswald was not placed on the FBI’s Secu­ri­ty Index list which was passed on to the Secret Ser­vice in advance of Kennedy’s vis­it to Dal­las. If he had been on that list, the Secret Ser­vice would have made sure he was not on the motor­cade route, since he con­sti­tut­ed a clear risk to Pres­i­dent Kennedy. One rea­son he was not on the list is because the FBI “FLASH” on Oswald, which had been in effect since his defec­tion in 1959 was removed. This warn­ing required any infor­ma­tion or inquiry on the sub­ject to e imme­di­ate­ly for­ward­ed to the Espi­onage Sec­tion of Divi­sion Five, the Domes­tic Intel­li­gence unit. Incred­i­bly, the “FLASH” was can­celed on Octo­ber 9, 1963. In oth­er words, after being attached to Oswald’s file for four years, it was removed just hours after he cable from Mex­i­co City arrived in Wash­ing­ton report­ing Oswald’s vis­it to the Sovi­et com­pound and meet­ing with Kostikov . . . .” (p. 356.)
21.–In light of Valery Kostikov’s iden­ti­ty, the FBI’s behav­ior is more than a lit­tle inter­est­ing: ” . . . . Kostikov’s true iden­ti­ty was revealed. His was the KGB unit respon­si­ble for assas­si­na­tions in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. After being method­i­cal­ly lulled to sleep . . . this infor­ma­tion must have felt like a hard punch to the jaw. Oswald had met with the KGB rep­re­sen­ta­tive for assas­si­na­tion sev­en weeks before Kennedy arrived in Dal­las. Yet, he was allowed to be in the build­ing behind where the Pres­i­den­t’s lim­ou­sine would be dri­ving. And no one in the FBI or Secret Ser­vice did any­thing for near­ly two months. The dia­bol­i­cal trap had been sprung. Hoover had no choice. He went into CYA over­drive. . . .” (p. 357.)
22.–In response to a tele­phoned ques­tion from Lyn­don Baines John­son, Hoover revealed that his agents had heard the tapes of “Oswald” speak­ing and seen the pho­tographs of “Oswald” vis­it­ing the Mex­i­co City diplo­mat­ic posts, but that nei­ther the calls, nor the pic­ture was the real Lee Har­vey Oswald. ” . . . . Hoover replied that this was all very con­fus­ing. He said that they had a tape and a pho­to of a man who was at the Sovi­et con­sulate using Oswald’s name. But, ‘That pic­ture and the tape do not cor­re­spond to this man’s voice, nor to his appear­ance. In oth­er words, it appears that there is a sec­ond per­son who was at the Sovi­et Embassy down there.’ On that same day, Hoover wrote a mem­o­ran­dum in which he said that two FBI agents who had been ques­tion­ing Oswald heard this tape and con­clud­ed that the voice on the tape was not Oswald’s. . . .” (p. 357.)
23.–In order to resolve the con­tra­dic­tions that the FBI had high­light­ed about “Oswald” in Mex­i­co City, the lie was gen­er­at­ed that the tapes had been destroyed before the assas­si­na­tion. Yet, Stan­ley Wat­son demon­strat­ed oth­er­wise: ” . . . . CIA offi­cer and Deputy Sta­tion Chief Stan­ley Wat­son tes­ti­fied to the HSCA that at least one record­ing exist­ed after the assas­si­na­tion. Fur­ther, the man who was first in charge of the CIA’s inquiry for the War­ren Com­mis­sion, John Whit­ten, wrote that while some tapes had been erased, some of ‘the actu­al tapes were also reviewed,’ and that anoth­er copy of the Octo­ber 1 ‘inter­cept on Lee Oswald’ had been ‘dis­cov­ered after the assas­si­na­tion. . . .” (p. 358.)
24.–In 1971, after the death of for­mer Mex­i­co City sta­tion chief Win­ston Scott, his wid­ow was threat­ened with removal of her sur­vivor ben­e­fits if she did not per­mit CIA coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence chief James Angle­ton access to her late hus­band’s safe: ” . . . . April 28, 1971 was the day after Janet Scott buried her hus­band Win­ston Scott. When she heard of Scot­t’s death, Anne Good­pas­ture told James Angle­ton about the con­tents of the for­mer Mex­i­co City sta­tion chief’s safe. On that day, on a mis­sion approved by Richard Helms, James Angle­ton flew to Mex­i­co City. He was in such a hur­ry that he for­got his pass­port. And if the record­ings were of the same false Oswald’s voice on tape, it would endan­ger the cov­er sto­ry about those tapes being destroyed pri­or to the assas­si­na­tion. After enter­ing the house, Angle­ton vague­ly threat­ened Janet’s wid­ow’s ben­e­fits. He then had scot­t’s safe emp­tied. The con­tents were shipped by plane to Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia. The man most respon­si­ble for cre­at­ing first, the Oswald leg­end, then the design of the dooms­day sce­nario to the plot had now dis­posed of a last obstruc­tion to his hand­i­work. . . .” (p. 361.)

FTR #1050 Interview #19 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Guy Ban­is­ter employ­ee Tom­my Baum­ler: ” . . . . what­ev­er hap­pens, the Shaw case will end with­out pun­ish­ment for him [Shaw], because fed­er­al pow­er will see to that.”

This is the nine­teenth 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.

In the con­text of the then CIA direc­tor Richard Helms’ memo that Gar­rison’s should be neu­tral­ized before, dur­ing and after the Clay Shaw tri­al, we high­light the media attacks against Gar­ri­son that con­tin­ued after the tri­al.

The media hit pieces con­tin­ued dur­ing Gar­rison’s attempt at try­ing Clay Shaw for per­jury.  Look mag­a­zine did a hit piece on Gar­ri­son fea­tur­ing many of the “Usu­al Sus­pects,” includ­ing William  Gur­vich, one of the infil­tra­tors into Jim Gar­rison’s inves­tiga­tive tri­al who then col­lab­o­rat­ed with Shaw’s defense team.

Offi­cial­ly the piece was writ­ten by War­ren Rogers, whose insti­tu­tion­al affil­i­a­tions bear relat­ing:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 313.

. . . . Rogers, like Phe­lan and Sandy Smith, was a reli­able asset of the FBI. That is, he could be con­tact­ed to do favors for them when called upon. The pub­lic did not know this until the 1979 posthu­mous pub­li­ca­tion of William Sul­li­van’s book about the FBI called The Bureau. Sul­li­van had beena top ech­e­lon offi­cer in the FBI for many years. In his book there is a chap­ter enti­tled “Flack­ing for the Bureau.” List­ed as one of the reporters who would often write arti­cles with infor­ma­tion fed to them by the FBI was War­ren Rogers. . . .

Hunter Leake–in charge of CIA oper­a­tions in New Orleans–kept the tele­type machine they had installed dur­ing Shaw’s crim­i­nal tri­al  in place until after the pro­posed per­jury tri­al.

An alto­geth­er remark­able change of venue occurred, after Shaw’s lawyers had received copies of Gar­rison’s inves­tiga­tive doc­u­ments for Shaw’s per­jury tri­al! 

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 313.

. . . . After hav­ing been in receipt of Gar­rison’s brief­ing papers for the per­jury tri­al, Shaw’s attor­neys final­ly tried for a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order to stop Gar­rison’s case from pro­ceed­ing. This was ini­tial­ly denied. But then, on Jan­u­ary 18, 1971, the day the state tri­al was to begin, a motion for emer­gency relief was grant­ed. This was unusu­al because the fed­er­al judi­cia­ry does not often inter­vene in state pros­e­cu­tions. But Shaw’s lawyers wrote that Shaw would suf­fer “grave and irrepara­ble injury” as the result of the state per­jury case which had been brought in “bad faith” and “in fur­ther­ance of Gar­rison’s scheme of harass­ment and intim­i­da­tion.” A hear­ing on whether or not to grant the pre­lim­i­nary injunc­tion was set for Jan­u­ary 25, 1971, just one week after the state tri­al was to begin. In oth­er words, Shaw’s lawyers need­ed almost no prepa­ra­tion time for the new venue and the new hear­ing, which they like­ly had been prepar­ing for in advance, since they had an inti­ma­tion that they would be suc­cess­ful in switch­ing the venue.

They were count­ing on Her­bert Chris­ten­ber­ry. Chris­ten­ber­ry was the fed­er­al judge who presided over this hear­ing. To under­stand what hap­pened thee, one must under­stand who Chris­ten­ber­ry was. . . .

In 1935, Louisiana gov­er­nor Huey Long was assas­si­nat­ed, and Her­bert Chris­ten­ber­ry cov­ered for the true con­spir­a­tors, who were a group of oper­a­tors from Stan­dard Oil, who were plot­ting to take over the reigns of the Louisiana state gov­ern­ment.

Chris­ten­ber­ry and his wife Car­o­line were friends and sup­port­ers of Clay Shaw!

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 315–316.

. . . . The oth­er piece of infor­ma­tion that helps elu­ci­date what Chris­ten­ber­ry did was found in the Nation­al Archives as part of Shaw’s per­son­al papers. It is a let­ter from Chris­ten­ber­ry’s  wife Car­o­line to Shaw which was sent a week after his acquit­tal. It begins like this: “Our most sin­cere con­grat­u­la­tions! We shared your anx­i­eties over the past two out­ra­geous years.” The read­er should note the wife’s sen­ti­ments. Te note goes on with: “Should your case have even­tu­al­ly found its way to Fed­er­al Court and been allot­ted to my hus­band you most cer­tain­ly would have had a fair tri­al. He felt we should not risk the pos­si­ble of being con­sid­ered ‘prej­u­diced’ in advance. This is our rea­son for not open­ly express­ing these sen­ti­ments ear­li­er.’ As if Shaw did not have a fair tri­al the first time around? The read­er should note the quotes around the word prej­u­diced. That usage and the sen­tence’s mean­ing clear­ly denotes that Chris­ten­ber­ry was fero­cious­ly biased for Shaw and against Gar­ri­son. But he did not want any­one to know that. . . . the fact that this was sent in 1969 clear­ly influ­enced his lawyers’ strat­e­gy for the per­jury case. . . . .

. . . . The three day hear­ing might have been script­ed by Hugh Aynesworth. . . . For exam­ple, William Gur­vich was allowed to tes­ti­fy as to the fraud­u­lence of Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion. . . . Gar­ri­son, not Shaw, was actu­al­ly placed on the wit­ness stand and asked to explain why he ever called in Shaw for ques­tion­ing in the first place. In oth­er words, at the Weg­manns’ request, Chris­ten­ber­ry was ask­ing the DA to give away his planned upcom­ing case against the defen­dant. . . .

After the fore­gone con­clu­sion of the Shaw per­jury tri­al, the Richard Helms/CIA direc­tive to neu­tral­ize Gar­ri­son after the Clay Shaw tri­al con­tin­ued to be man­i­fest­ed. Gar­ri­son was framed for alleged­ly tak­ing kick­backs from an ille­gal pay­off scheme from orga­nized-crime linked pin­ball machine oper­a­tors. Key points about this gam­bit:

1.–The recruit­ing by the gov­ern­ment of Per­sh­ing Ger­vais to con­coct pho­ny “evi­dence” against Gar­ri­son.
2.–Garrison’s cross-exam­i­na­tion of the pin­ball oper­a­tors and the deter­mi­na­tion that the evi­dence against him was nonex­is­tent. None of the oper­a­tors tes­ti­fied to pay­ing Gar­rri­son and/or his assis­tants any mon­ey or even know­ing him.
3.–Gervais was shipped to Cana­da and giv­en a job at Gen­er­al Motors, as well as an annu­al stipend from the Jus­tice Depart­ment!
4.–The tapes Ger­vais had alleged­ly made of Gar­ri­son while the for­mer was wear­ing a wire were deter­mined to be pho­ny.
5.–The sums Ger­vais claimed to have moved from Gar­ri­son were not even con­sis­tent with­in the var­i­ous accounts that he gave.
6.–Pershing even­tu­al­ly “rolled over” on the gov­ern­ment, admit­ting that he was recruit­ed in a crim­i­nal enter­prise by the gov­ern­ment to frame Gar­ri­son.

Per­haps the most effec­tive, long-last­ing ele­ment in the post-Shaw tri­al destruc­tion of Jim Gar­ri­son was the elec­tion of Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial Har­ry Con­nick to suc­ceed Gar­ri­son as DA.

Key points of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis about Con­nick:

1.–He was seem­ing­ly omnipresent in Clay Shaw’s crim­i­nal tri­al, oper­at­ing to obstruct Gar­ri­son and aid Clay Shaw and the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment for which he  worked.
2.–Station WDSU–very close to Clay Shaw and the vehi­cle for both the Wal­ter Sheri­dan dis­in­for­ma­tion hit piece on Jim Gar­ri­son and the Ed Butler/Carlos Bringuier inter­view of the “Com­mu­nist” Oswald–was active on behalf of Con­nick.
3.–The Gur­vich broth­ers, who infil­trat­ed Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion and net­worked with Clay Shaw’s defense team (with William appear­ing as a wit­ness in the hear­ing on Shaw’s per­jury tri­al), were active on behalf of Har­ry Con­nick.
4.–Clay Shaw him­self, as well as DRE oper­a­tive Car­los Bringuier con­tributed to Con­nick­’s elec­tion cam­paign.
5.–In his sec­ond cam­paign to replace Gar­ri­son, Con­nick was suc­cess­ful.
6.–After becom­ing New Orleans DA, he burned many of Gar­rison’s files.

Even­tu­al­ly, the mon­ey Gar­ri­son sup­pos­ed­ly gar­nered from the pho­ny pin­ball oper­a­tor kick­back scheme led to an IRS charge of income tax eva­sion. Gar­ri­son was acquit­ted.

Clay Shaw filed a nui­sance law­suit against Gar­ri­son for slander/defamation, which was ter­mi­nat­ed by Clay Shaw’s death, despite the Weg­manns’ attempts at per­pet­u­at­ing it even after their client was deceased.

James Phe­lan’s pro­tege James Kirk­wood con­tin­ued the media assault on Gar­ri­son with the pub­li­ca­tion of his book Amer­i­can Grotesque, which mis­rep­re­sent­ed the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion.

FTR #1049 Interview #18 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

Guy Ban­is­ter employ­ee Tom­my Baum­ler: ” . . . . what­ev­er hap­pens, the Shaw case will end with­out pun­ish­ment for him [Shaw], because fed­er­al pow­er will see to that.”

This is the eigh­teenth 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.

This inter­view con­tin­ues with the analy­sis of Clay Shaw’s tri­al.

Exem­pli­fy­ing the pow­er that was mar­shaled on behalf of Clay Shaw was the treat­ment accord­ed FBI agent Reg­is Kennedy.

Not only did the Depart­ment of Jus­tice inter­cede ahead of time to lim­it Kennedy’s tes­ti­mo­ny, but Nixon’s Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Mitchell “severe­ly cur­tailed” his tes­ti­mo­ny “mid-tri­al.”

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 298.

. . . . The only wit­ness that Gar­ri­son was able to pro­duce to inquire into the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion of the assas­si­na­tion in New Orleans was FBI agent Reg­is Kennedy. And even then, by pri­or arrange­ment with the Jus­tice Depart­ment, Kennedy would only tes­ti­fy about a cer­tain area of his inquiry, name­ly his inter­view with Dean Andrews and his con­se­quent search for Clay Bertrand. This lim­i­ta­tion hurt the DA since Kennedy was a rel­e­vant wit­ness to oth­er aspects of the case. For instance, along with sev­er­al oth­ers, he had been a mem­ber of the Friends of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cuba group set up by Guy Ban­is­ter and William Dalzell. Fur­ther, there were wit­ness­es who put Kennedy in Banister’s office. There­fore, what Kennedy could have told the court about Ban­is­ter, Fer­rie, their asso­ci­a­tion with the Cubans–especially Ser­gio Art­cacha Smith–and Oswald, was very like­ly con­sid­er­able. But he was not allowed to tes­ti­fy about any of those impor­tant mat­ters. Con­se­quent­ly, when Alcock asked him if he was involved with the inves­ti­ga­tion into Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s death pri­or to his inter­view with Andrews, Kennedy said he was not sure if he could answer that ques­tion. The dis­cus­sion then went inside the judge’s cham­bers. Con­nick then called Wash­ing­ton. After this, the jury was called back inside. Alcock then asked Kennedy if, pri­or to his inter­view with Andrews, had he been engaged in the inquiry into Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion. Kennedy replied in the affir­ma­tive. Alcock then was allowed to ask the fol­low-op ques­tion, which relat­ed to the first: Was Kennedy seek­ing Clay Bertrand in con­nec­tion with his over­all inves­ti­ga­tion into the assas­si­na­tion. Kennedy said that he was.

There was a code to all this that Alcock could not have known about. But it was part of the rea­son that Attor­ney Gen­er­al John Mitchell severe­ly cur­tailed Reg­is Kennedy’s tes­ti­mo­ny in mid-tri­al. . . .

A major ele­ment in the tes­ti­mo­ny dur­ing Clay Shaw’s tri­al was the tes­ti­mo­ny of autop­sy sur­geon Army Lieu­tenant Colonel Pierre Finck. The autop­sy was being con­trolled by one of the high-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cers present at the pro­ce­dure.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 300.

. . . . Finck replied that he was not run­ning the autop­sy, it was Com­man­der James Humes. When Oser asked if Humes was actu­al­ly in charge, Finck made a dis­clo­sure which lit­er­al­ly changed the face of the autop­sy evi­dence for­ev­er. And it should have rocked the news media if [media hatch­et man James] Phe­lan had not been con­trol­ling it. Finck replied that Humes actu­al­ly stopped and asked, “Who is in charge here?” Finck then said he heard an Army Gen­er­al say, “I am.” Finck then added, “You must under­stand that in those cir­cum­stances, there were law enforce­ment offi­cials, mil­i­tary peo­ple with var­i­ous ranks, and you have to coor­di­nate the oper­a­tions accord­ing to direc­tions”. . . .

Then, Jim notes that Alvin Oser had to ask Finck eight times as to why Finck did not dis­sect the track of the neck wound. Finck­’s response–that he was ordered not to do so by one of the high-rank­ing offi­cers present, is proof of a con­spir­a­cy.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 302.

. . . . [Alvin] Oser then moved on to anoth­er key issue that exposed the pathol­o­gists as pawns. A very impor­tant point about the autop­sy is its fail­ure to con­vinc­ing­ly prove direc­tion­al­i­ty. That is, from which direc­tion did the bul­lets enter the body? There have always been seri­ous queries about whether the wound in Kennedy’s throat was an entrance or exit wound. If that wound was one of entrance, then Kennedy was shot at least once from the front. That shot could not have been from Oswald, there­fore the mur­der was a con­spir­a­cy. What makes this pos­si­bil­i­ty very real is that Mal­colm Per­ry said dur­ing a tele­vised press con­fer­ence on Novem­ber 22 that the throat wound was one of entrance. He repeat­ed this three times that day. Since he did the tra­cheoto­my right over that wound, he should cer­tain­ly know. The best way to have proven this point once and for all was to have dis­sect­ed the wound track. Amaz­ing­ly, this was not done. When Oser tried to find out why it was not done, Finck used every eva­sion he could to avoid answer­ing the ques­tion. Going over the tran­script of this exchange is a bit star­tling. The read­er will find that Oser had to pose the ques­tion eight sep­a­rate times. It got so bad that Oser even had to request that the judge direct the wit­ness to answer the ques­tion. Finck final­ly answered with, “As I recall I was told not to, but I don’t remem­ber by whom.” Again, some­one was con­trol­ling the pathol­o­gy team in a way that pre­vent­ed them from doing a full and cor­rect autop­sy. . . . Fur­ther, the fact that the doc­tors were ordered not to track the wound indi­cat­ed the mil­i­tary brass may have been try­ing to cov­er this point up. . . .

One of Gar­rison’s strongest weapons in his coun­ter­at­tack against the forces run­ning inter­fer­ence on behalf of Shaw and oth­ers involved in the assas­si­na­tion was the Zaprud­er film, which clear­ly shows Kennedy’s body being thrown back and to the left, indi­cat­ing a shot from the front.

Media hatch­et man James Phe­lan who, like Wal­ter Sheri­dan and Hugh Aynesworth worked with the intel­li­gence ser­vices, became a defense wit­ness for Clay Shaw and also played what was, in effect, a supervisory/PR role in pre­sid­ing over a con­sor­tium of jour­nal­ists cov­er­ing the Shaw tri­al.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 289–290.

. . . . That jour­nal­is­tic duo, Phe­lan and Ayneswoth, were both on the scene: Phe­lan as a wit­ness for the defense and Aynesworth to help Shaw’s attor­neys. An odd thing about this was that nei­ther man had any osten­si­ble writ­ing assign­ment at the time. But it turned out that Phe­lan had a very spe­cial func­tion for his back­ers. Most reporters in town to cov­er the pro­ceed­ings rent­ed a hotel room, but not Phe­lan. Phe­lan rent­ed a house. Why would he do such a thing if he was not there to write a sto­ry? because his was a much big­ger assign­ment. His job was to put the spin on each day’s tes­ti­mo­ny for the resid­ing press corps, there­by con­trol­ling the entire nation­al media reportage on the Shaw tri­al. How did he do such a thing? He would invite all the reporters over to his rent­ed house at the end of each day. He would then serve them refresh­ments and snacks. He then would spell out the next day’s sto­ry on a chalk­board. This is how some of the most inter­est­ing and impor­tant tes­ti­mo­ny pre­sent­ed dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings got cov­ered up by the media. On the day the Zaprud­er film was shown, Phe­lan had his work cut out for him. For the repeat­ed show­ing of the film was shown, Phe­lan had his work cut out for him. For the repeat­ed show­ing of the film—depicting Kennedy’s body being vio­lent­ly knocked back—really shook up the press. It appeared Gar­ri­son was right, it was a con­spir­a­cy. But when they arrived at Phe­lan’s rent­ed house, the reporter pulled a prover­bial rab­bit out of his hat. He took out his chalk­board, raised up his piece of chalk, and he began to out­line the dynam­ics of the so-called “jet-effect” expla­na­tion for the action of the film. That is, if Oswald was fir­ing from behind Kennedy, why does Kennedy’s body recoil with tremen­dous force to the rear of the car? What Phe­lan and the jet effect prof­fer is that some­how, the spurt­ing of blood and brains served as a jet that drove Kennedy’s head back­ward with over­pow­er­ing force. This is how deter­mined Phe­lan was to keep a lid on what came out of the tri­al. . . .

In our pre­vi­ous pro­gram, we high­light­ed the attempt on book­ing offi­cer Aloy­sius Habighorst’s life on the eve of his tes­ti­mo­ny in the Clay Shaw tri­al. When he tes­ti­fied, Judge Hag­ger­ty refused to allow his tes­ti­mo­ny into evi­dence.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 306–308.

. . . . When Shaw was first arrest­ed in March of 1967, Habighorst had han­dled the book­ing. Before hav­ing him sign the fin­ger­print card, the offi­cer had rou­tine­ly asked if the defen­dant had ever used an alias. Appar­ent­ly unset­tled by his arrest, Shaw had replied “Clay Bertrand.” Habighorst typed this on the card and Shaw signed it. Alcock now want­ed to admit both the card and the officer’s tes­ti­mo­ny as evi­dence into the tri­al. This seemed pow­er­ful, damn­ing evi­dence because it came right out of Shaw’s mouth and hand. . . .The prosecution’s protes­ta­tions fell on deaf ears. Judge Hag­ger­ty would not allow the evi­dence. . . .

Alcock leaped out of his chair. His face red and his voice cracked with emo­tion. “Your Hon­or. Are you rul­ing on the cred­i­bil­i­ty of offi­cer Habighorst?” . . . .

. . . . “The whole world can hear that I do not believe Offi­cer Habighorst. . . . .”

“I demand a mis­tri­al,” Alcock shout­ed. “A judge’s unso­licit­ed com­ment on evi­dence . . . .”

“Denied,” said Hag­ger­ty. . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of Har­ry Con­nick­’s destruc­tion of Gar­rison’s files and of the gov­ern­men­t’s efforts to dis­cred­it Gari­son. This will be tak­en up at greater length in our next pro­gram.

FTR #1043 Interview #12 with Jim DiEugenio About Destiny Betrayed

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.’ . . . .”

This is the twelfth 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.

In this pro­gram, we con­tin­ue with analy­sis of Clay Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tion, begin­ning with review of his work for the Domes­tic Oper­a­tions Divi­sion.

A fas­ci­nat­ing intel­li­gence involve­ment of Shaw’s is his work with Per­min­dex.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 385–386.

. . . . The next step in the CIA lad­der after his high-lev­el over­seas infor­mant ser­vice was his work with the strange com­pa­ny called Per­min­dex. When the announce­ment for Per­min­dex was first made in Switzer­land in late 1956, its prin­ci­pal back­ing was to come from a local banker named Hans Selig­man. But as more inves­ti­ga­tion by the local papers was done, it became clear that the real backer was J. Hen­ry Schroder Cor­po­ra­tion. This infor­ma­tion was quite reveal­ing. Schroder’s had been close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Allen Dulles and the CIA for years. Allen Dulles’s con­nec­tions to the Schroder bank­ing fam­i­ly went back to the thir­ties when his law firm, Sul­li­van and Cromwell, first began rep­re­sent­ing them through him. Lat­er, Dulles was the bank’s Gen­er­al Coun­sel. In fact, when Dulles became CIA direc­tor, Schroder’s was a repos­i­to­ry for a fifty mil­lion dol­lar con­tin­gency fund that Dulles per­son­al­ly con­trolled. Schroder’s was a wel­come con­duit because the bank ben­e­fit­ed from pre­vi­ous CIA over­throws in Guatemala and Iran. Anoth­er rea­son that there began to be a furor over Per­min­dex in Switzer­land was the fact that the bank’s founder, Baron Kurt von Schroder, was asso­ci­at­ed with the Third Reich, specif­i­cal­ly Hein­rich Himm­ler. The project now became stalled in Switzer­land. It now moved to Rome. In a Sep­tem­ber 1069 inter­view Shaw did for Pent­house Mag­a­zine, he told James Phe­lan that he only grew inter­est­ed in the project when it moved to Italy. Which was in Octo­ber 1958. Yet a State Depart­ment cable dat­ed April 9 of that year says that Shaw showed great inter­est in Per­min­dex from the out­set.

One can see why. The board of direc­tors as made up of bankers who had been tied up with fas­cist gov­ern­ments, peo­ple who worked the Jew­ish refugee rack­et dur­ing World War II, a for­mer mem­ber of Mus­solin­i’s cab­i­net, and the son-in-law of Hjal­mar Schacht, the eco­nom­ic wiz­ard behind the Third Reich, who was a friend of Shaw’s. These peo­ple would all appeal to the con­ser­v­a­tive Shaw. There were at least four inter­na­tion­al news­pa­pers that exposed the bizarre activ­i­ties of Per­min­dex when it was in Rome. One prob­lem was the mys­te­ri­ous source of fund­ing: no one knew where it was com­ing from. Anoth­er was that its activ­i­ties report­ed­ly includ­ed assas­si­na­tion attempts on French Pre­mier Charles De Gaulle. Which would make sense since the found­ing mem­ber of Per­min­dex, Fer­enc Nagy, was a close friend of Jacques Soustelle. Soustelle was a leader of the OAS, a group of for­mer French offi­cers who broke with De Gaulle over his Alger­ian pol­i­cy. They lat­er made sev­er­al attempts on De Gaulle’s life, which the CIA was privy to. Again, this mys­te­ri­ous source of fund­ing, plus the rightwing, neo-Fas­cist direc­tors cre­at­ed anoth­er wave of con­tro­ver­sy. One news­pa­per wrote that the orga­ni­za­tion may have been “a crea­ture of the CIA . . . set up as a cove for the trans­fer of CIA . . . funds in Italy for legal polit­i­cal-espi­onage activ­i­ties.” The Schroder con­nec­tion would cer­tain­ly sug­gest that. . . .

His involve­ment with Per­min­dex places him in the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate milieu that spawned fas­cism and Nazism. Key obser­va­tions about Per­min­dex and Shaw’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in it:

1.–Shaw was part of the deep polit­i­cal orbit of the Dulles broth­ers and Sul­li­van & Cromwell.
2.–The Per­min­dex oper­a­tional link to the Schroder Bank places it in the same milieu as the Himm­ler Kreis, the indus­tri­al­ists and financiers who financed the work­ings of the SS through an account in the Schroder Bank.
3.–Shaw was a friend of Hjal­mar Horace Gree­ley Schacht, who became the finance min­is­ter of the Third Reich and was very close to the Dulles broth­ers.
4.–Permindex was appar­ent­ly involved with the OAS efforts to assas­si­nate De Gaulle. This places Shaw in a net­work includ­ing: Ban­is­ter inves­ti­ga­tor Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin, who boast­ed of hav­ing trans­ferred mon­ey to the OAS from the CIA; Rene Souetre–an OAS oper­a­tive who was expelled from Dallas/Ft. Worth the day of the assas­si­na­tion of JFK.
5.–As dis­cussed in FTR #‘s 1031 and 1032, JFK was an ear­ly crit­ic of the French pol­i­cy in Alge­ria, crit­i­ciz­ing it on the floor of the Sen­ate in 1957.

The con­clu­sion of the broad­cast focus­es large­ly on the CIA’s intense inter­est in the Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. This inter­est was man­i­fest­ed through an agency con­clave infor­mal­ly named “The Gar­ri­son Group.”

“Des­tiny Betrayed” by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 270.

. . . . Helms want­ed the group to “con­sid­er the pos­si­ble impli­ca­tions for the Agency” of what Gar­ri­son was doing in “New Orleans before, dur­ing, and after the tri­al of Clay Shaw. It is cru­cial to keep in mind the phrase: before, dur­ing, and after. As we will see, the effec­tive admin­is­tra­tor Helms was think­ing not just of some short term fix, but of for­mu­lat­ing a strat­e­gy for the long haul. Accord­ing to the very sketchy memo about this meet­ing, [CIA Gen­er­al Coun­sel Lawrence] Hous­ton dis­cussed his deal­ings with the Jus­tice Depart­ment and the desire of Shaw’s defense to meet with the CIA direct­ly. [Ray] Roc­ca then said some­thing quite omi­nous. He said that he felt “that Gar­ri­son would indeed obtain a con­vic­tion of Shaw for con­spir­ing to assas­si­nate Pres­i­dent Kennedy.” This must have had some impact on the meet­ing. Since every­one must have known that Roc­ca had devel­oped, by bar, the largest data­base on Gar­rison’s inquiry at CIA. . . .

We note that House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions assis­tant coun­sel Jonathan Black­mer wrote the fol­low­ing:

“Des­tiny Betrayed” by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 332.

. . . . “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.” . . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with analy­sis of Clay Shaw’s close rela­tion­ship to the Stern fam­i­ly of WDSU. In addi­tion to car­ry­ing staged inter­views between Oswald and Car­los Bringuier, the broad­cast out­let pil­lo­ried Jim Gar­ri­son and his tri­al of Clay Shaw.

FTR #1042 Interview #11 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

This is the eleventh 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.

In this broad­cast, we explore the asso­ci­a­tion of David Fer­rie and Clay Shaw in the con­text of the plan­ning of assas­si­na­tion plots against JFK, as well as Shaw’s involve­ment with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty.

NB: In our pre­vi­ous inter­view, Mr. Emory mis­tak­en­ly linked “The Bomb” to Clay Shaw and to a plot to assas­si­nate JFK. Shaw was, accord­ing to cred­i­ble tes­ti­mo­ny involved with Fer­rie in anoth­er, prob­a­bly con­nect­ed, asso­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss killing Kennedy.

David Fer­rie had a desk in the  office of C. Wray Gill, a lawyer for Car­los Mar­cel­lo. When anoth­er of Gill’s clients–a woman named Clara Gay–was in the office, she wit­nessed anoth­er Fer­rie assas­si­na­tion schemat­ic on Novem­ber 26, 1963:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 217.

. . . . Clara looked  over at Fer­rie’s desk and she saw what looked like a dia­gram of Dealey Plaza: it was a draw­ing of a car from the per­spec­tive of an angle from above, the car was sur­round­ed by high build­ings, rem­i­nis­cent of Dealey Plaza. After the sec­re­tary threw it out, Clara  retrieved it. She said it should be giv­en to the FBI or Secret Ser­vice. The sec­re­tary took it back and a pulling con­test ensued. The sec­re­tary even­tu­al­ly won, but not before Clara saw the words “Elm Street” on the dia­gram. She lat­er recon­struct­ed this expe­ri­ence for Gar­ri­son. She said she came for­ward because she con­sid­ered her­self a good cit­i­zen, and Fer­rie must  have been  some­thing evil . . . .

After dis­cus­sion of the Fer­rie Dealey Plaza assas­si­na­tion schemat­ic, the dis­cus­sion turns to a con­ver­sa­tion wit­nessed by Per­ry Rus­so, one of Gar­rison’s most impor­tant wit­ness­es.

Key points of infor­ma­tion about what Rus­so wit­nessed:

1.–Present at the meet­ing where the dis­cus­sion took place were: Clay Shaw, David Fer­rie, Lee Har­vey Oswald and sev­er­al Cubans.
2.–Shaw was using one of his most com­mon aliases–“Clay Bertrand.”
3.–Ferrie became increas­ing­ly agi­tat­ed and high­light­ed “tri­an­gu­la­tion of cross­fire” as nec­es­sary to assure a kill shot on Kennedy.
4.–Ferrie and Shaw dis­cussed the neces­si­ty of being some­where else, to give them­selves “cov­er.” This led Rus­so to con­clude that the plans were con­crete not the­o­ret­i­cal.
5.–Ferrie said he would be in Ham­mond, LA., on the cam­pus of South­east­ern Louisiana. He was, in fact, there on the day of the assas­si­na­tion.
6.–Shaw said that he would be on the West Coast. He was, in fact, at the San Fran­cis­co Trade Mart, where he was to give a talk. When news of of the assas­si­na­tion reached Shaw and his host, Shaw seemed remark­ably detached. When asked if he thought the talk should go for­ward in light of the news, Shaw said yes. This struck those around him at that time  as  curi­ous.

The issue of Shaw’s alias­es is an impor­tant one. The day after the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, New Orleans attor­ney Dean Andrews got a call from “Clay Bertrand,” request­ing that he rep­re­sent Lee Har­vey Oswald in Dal­las. Andrews had pre­vi­ous­ly encoun­tered Shaw using the same alias when seek­ing legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for some gay Lati­nos.

Key aspects of Andrews’ con­tact with Shaw/Bertrand:

1.–Andrews feared for his life if this came to light. He claimed to have been told, after call­ing Wash­ing­ton D.C., that he might get a bul­let in the head if he talked.
2.–After Andrews changed his tes­ti­mo­ny, Gar­ri­son charged him with per­jury, even­tu­al­ly gain­ing a con­vic­tion.
3.–Andrews’ state­ments about Shaw/Bertrand were bol­stered by some­one at the VIP lounge at the East­ern Air­lines ter­mi­nal at New Orleans air­port, who knew Shaw to sign in under that alias.
4.–Numerous peo­ple in bars and bistros–particularly in the French Quarter–knew that Shaw used that alias. Because of Gar­rison’s crack­down on orga­nized crime-relat­ed oper­a­tions in New Orleans, his poten­tial infor­mants remained silent.

When being booked, Shaw actu­al­ly stat­ed that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”

Shaw was booked by a New Orleans police offi­cer named Aloy­sius Habighorst–who had an excel­lent record. When being booked, Shaw stat­ed that he used the alias “Clay Shaw.” Before tes­ti­fy­ing at Shaw’s tri­al, Habighorst’s car was rammed by a yel­low truck, and he was injured.

At Shaw’s tri­al, Judge Hag­ger­ty refused to admit Shaw’s admit­ted alias as evi­dence.

The con­clud­ing por­tion of the broad­cast deals with Clay Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions. Key points of infor­ma­tion in that regard:

1.–Shaw’s intel­li­gence con­nec­tions date to World War II, when he worked as a aide-de-camp to Gen­er­al Charles Thrash­er. This placed him in the Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Sec­tion, a branch of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence and one which was involved with recruit­ing some of the Paper­clip per­son­nel to work for the U.S.
2.–After the war, he became involved with Inter­na­tion­al House, a Rock­e­feller-linked oper­a­tion deeply involved with the transna­tion­al cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ty.
3.–His work for the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart fol­lowed log­i­cal­ly on the heels of his work for Inter­na­tion­al House.
4.–Shaw also worked with the  Mis­sis­sip­pi Ship­ping Com­pa­ny, which did a lot of work with the CIA.
5.–His “Y” file indi­cat­ed that Shaw’s work for CIA involved con­fer­ring with the agency before trav­el­ing to Latin Amer­i­ca, not after he returned as was the case for most infor­mants.
6.–At least one of Shaw’s files with the CIA was destroyed.

One of the most impor­tant ele­ments of Shaw’s intel­li­gence career was uncov­ered by researcher Peter Vea, whose dis­clo­sures were sup­ple­ment­ed by some inter­est­ing com­men­tary by Vic­tor Mar­che­t­ti.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 385.

. . . . Peter Vea dis­cov­ered a very impor­tant doc­u­ment while at the Nation­al Archives in 1994. Attached to a list­ing of Shaw’s numer­ous con­tacts with the Domes­tic Con­tact ser­vice, a list­ing was attached which stat­ed that Shaw had a covert secu­ri­ty approval in the Project QKENCHANT. This was in 1967 and the present tense was used, mean­ing that Shaw  was an active covert oper­a­tor for the CIA while Gar­ri­son was inves­ti­gat­ing him. When William Davy took this doc­u­ment to for­mer CIA offi­cer Vic­tor Mar­che­t­ti, an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion ensued. As Mar­che­t­ti looked at the doc­u­ment, he said, “That’s inter­est­ing . . . . He was . . . He was doing some­thing there.” He then said that Shaw would not need a covert secu­ri­ty clear­ance for domes­tic con­tacts ser­vice. He then added, “This was some­thing else. This would imply that he was doing some kind of work for the  Clan­des­tine Ser­vices.” When Davy asked what branch of Clan­des­tine Ser­vices would that be, Mar­che­t­ti replied, “The DOD (Domes­tic Oper­a­tions Divi­sion). It was one of the most secret divi­sions with­in the Clan­des­tine Ser­vices. This was Tracey Bar­nes’s old out­fit. They were get­ting into things . . . Uh . . . exact­ly what, I don’t know. But they were get­ting into some pret­ty risky areas. And this is what E. Howard Hunt was work­ing for at the time.” And in fact, Howard Hunt did have such a covert clear­ance issued to him in 1970 while he was work­ing at the White House. . . .

FTR #1041 Interview #10 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The tenth 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.

In this broad­cast, we delve into oper­a­tional links between U.S. intel­li­gence agent David Ferrie–the first tar­get of Gar­rison’s investigation–and Clay Shaw, who was tried by Gar­ri­son.

One of the oper­a­tions in which Fer­rie and Shaw par­tic­i­pat­ed was an effort to bol­ster Freeport Sul­phur.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; pp. 208–209.

. . . . In Chap­ter 1, the author intro­duced Freeport Sul­phur and its sub­sidiaries Moa Bay Min­ing and Nicaro Nick­el. These com­pa­nies all had large invest­ments in Cuba pri­or to Castro’s rev­o­lu­tion. And this end­ed up being one of the ways that Gar­ri­son con­nect­ed Clay Shaw and David Fer­rie. This came about for two rea­sons. First, with Cas­tro tak­ing over their oper­a­tions in Cuba, Freeport was attempt­ing to inves­ti­gate bring­ing in nick­el ore from Cuba, through Cana­da, which still had trade rela­tions with Cuba. The ore would then be refined in Louisiana, either at a plant already in New Orleans or at anoth­er plant in Braith­waite. Shaw, an impres­sario of inter­na­tion­al trade, was on this explorato­ry team for Freeport. And he and two oth­er men had been flown to Cana­da by Fer­rie as part of this effort. More evi­dence of this con­nec­tion through Freeport was found dur­ing their inves­ti­ga­tion of Guy Ban­is­ter. Ban­is­ter appar­ent­ly knew about anoth­er flight tak­en by Shaw with an offi­cial of Freeport, like­ly Charles Wight, to Cuba. Again the pilot was David Fer­rie. Anoth­er rea­son this Freeport con­nec­tion was impor­tant to Gar­ri­son is that he found a wit­ness named James Plaine in Hous­ton who said that Mr. Wight of Freeport Sul­phur had con­tact­ed him in regards to an assas­si­na­tion plot against Cas­tro. Con­sid­er­ing the amount of mon­ey Freeport was about to lose in Cuba, plus the num­ber of East­ern Estab­lish­ment lumi­nar­ies asso­ci­at­ed with the company–such as Jock Whit­ney, Jean Mauze and God­frey Rockefeller–it is not sur­pris­ing that such a thing was con­tem­plat­ed with­in their ranks. . . .

One of the most impor­tant, com­pelling links between Fer­rie and Shaw was their appear­ance with Lee Har­vey Oswald in Clin­ton, Louisiana. Key points of infor­ma­tion about this event:

1.–The three men–Ferrie, Shaw and Oswald–were in Clin­ton to reg­is­ter Oswald to vote.
2.–In the event, their arrival placed them in the mid­dle of a large vot­er-reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve for local African-Amer­i­cans, part of the civ­il rights move­ment of the ear­ly ’60’s.
3.–The three men were very con­spic­u­ous at this event, not only because of their race, but because the large, black Cadil­lac dri­ven by Shaw attract­ed con­sid­er­able atten­tion.
4.–Many of those in atten­dance at the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion dri­ve, as well as the local sher­iff, iden­ti­fied the three men.
5.–Ferrie, in par­tic­u­lar, man­i­fest­ed a strik­ing appear­ance. He was afflict­ed with an ail­ment that caused all of the hair on his body that to fall out. To cov­er up his afflic­tion, Fer­rie wore a gar­ish red wig and match­ing, pen­ciled-on eye­brows.
6.–Oswald was appar­ent­ly at the vot­er reg­is­tra­tion event to reg­is­ter to vote in that area, in order to gain employ­ment at the near­by East Louisiana State Hos­pi­tal, an insti­tu­tion with strong links to Tulane Med­ical Cen­ter and Alton Ochsner, as well as to the MK Ultra exper­i­ments going on at that time.
7.–Two peo­ple Oswald appar­ent­ly cit­ed as ref­er­ences were Mal­colm Pier­son and Frank Sil­va. Not only did both men work at the hos­pi­tal, but they both had inter­est­ing CV’s.

Of the back grounds of Pier­son and Sil­va, Jim writes:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 93.

. . . . The obvi­ous ques­tion then becomes: How did Oswald know the names of these men? Or if he did not, how did Shaw or Fer­rie know them? One pos­si­bil­i­ty is this: Accord­ing to Cuban intel­li­gence, Sil­va was active in the anti-Cas­tro cause in the New Orleans area. Sil­va was Cuban-born and from an upper-class fam­i­ly. He was actu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Tulane Med­ical Cen­ter at the time. Tulane was locat­ed in New Orleans. Dr. Alton Ochsner, who was on the board of, and Chief of Surgery at, Tulane Med­ical School, was a friend of both Shaw and Ban­is­ter. In fact, at the New Orleans Pub­lic Library, there is a pho­to of Shaw sit­ting at a small table with Ochsner.

Anoth­er way that Oswald could have known these names was through a mutu­al acquain­tance of Shaw and Fer­rie, Ser­gio Arcacha Smith. Both Cuban intel­li­gence and Garrison’s inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered that there was a con­nec­tion between the two Cuban refugees. Dr. Robert Heath, Chair­man of Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical School’s Depart­ment of Neu­rol­o­gy and Psy­chi­a­try, became infa­mous for using LSD and elec­trode implan­ta­tion in his research. Many of the peo­ple he worked on came from East Louisiana State Hos­pi­tal, where an entire ward was ded­i­cat­ed to his work. East doc­tor Alfred But­ter­worth (whom this author inter­viewed short­ly before his death) told the author that he had seen both Ochsner and Sil­va while he was there. But­ter­worth also revealed that Tulane Uni­ver­si­ty had a spe­cial psy­chi­atric unit at the hos­pi­tal, where they secret­ly admin­is­tered LSD. This is impor­tant back­ground to the fol­low­ing infor­ma­tion. Dur­ing his inquiry, Jim Gar­ri­son came across a wit­ness who had attend­ed a gath­er­ing at Dr. Heath’s home. Thee, the fol­low­ing event occurred: Dr. Sil­va intro­duced the man to the for­mer local rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Howard Hunt’s CRC, Ser­gio Arcacha Smith. Pier­son was a for­mer nar­cotics offend­er, who, accord­ing to HSCA sub­poe­naed records, list­ed Sil­va as a ref­er­ence in his job appli­ca­tion. It is hard to believe that, left to his own devices, Oswald would have known that either of these men worked at the hos­pi­tal. If either of these more log­i­cal options is accu­rate, it gives the inci­dent even more scope and depth. . . .

The pro­gram con­cludes with dis­cus­sion of what a Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tor called “The Bomb”–an appar­ent plan, with detailed schemat­ics, to assas­si­nate JFK. NB: Mr. Emory mis­tak­en­ly links Clay Shaw to “The Bomb.” Shaw was, accord­ing to cred­i­ble tes­ti­mo­ny involved with Fer­rie in anoth­er, prob­a­bly con­nect­ed, asso­ci­a­tion to dis­cuss killing Kennedy.

“The Bomb” will be ana­lyzed at the begin­ning of our next inter­view.

FTR #1040 Interview #9 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The ninth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing.

In this inter­view, we pro­ceed into the sub­stance of New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Gar­rison’s inquiry began imme­di­ate­ly after the assas­si­na­tion when for­mer Guy Ban­is­ter inves­ti­ga­tor Jack Mar­tin gave infor­ma­tion to him about one of his cronies in the “detec­tive agency.”

David Fer­rie was a vet­er­an intel­li­gence offi­cer with a long CV. Fer­rie’s intel­li­gence resume and behav­ior with regard the JFK assas­si­na­tion includes:

1.–His work with a Civ­il Air Patrol unit that includ­ed Lee Har­vey Oswald, as well as Bar­ry Seal, anoth­er future CIA oper­a­tive who became a major play­er in the Iran-Con­tra drug traf­fic.
2.–Ferrie’s CAP unit’s pro­found rela­tion­ship with the mil­i­tary, per­mit­ting his unit to oper­ate at Keesler Air Force Base in Mis­sis­sip­pi and to fly on mil­i­tary air­craft. This indi­cates strong grav­i­tas on Fer­rie’s part with­in the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.
3.–His strange trip to Texas on the day of the assas­si­na­tion, dri­ving all night through a heavy rain­storm to–take your pick–go ice skat­ing and/or go goose hunt­ing. The man­ag­er of the skat­ing rink stat­ed that Fer­rie did not go ice skat­ing but stayed by a pay phone all of the time he spent there. His com­pan­ions stat­ed that they did not bring guns on the trip. Fer­rie spent his time in Galve­ston (a Texas port city) in a hotel over­look­ing the sea.
4.–Ferrie mar­ket­ing his unten­able ice skating/goose hunt­ing sto­ry to the FBI–an act of per­jury on his part.
5.–Ferrie also stat­ed that he did­n’t know how to fire a rifle, a claim fun­da­men­tal­ly at odds with Fer­rie’s work as a para­mil­i­tary com­man­do train­er at the CIA camps at LaCombe, Louisiana.
6.–Immediately after the assas­si­na­tion, Fer­rie fran­ti­cal­ly sought to recov­er any pho­tographs of him with Lee Har­vey Oswald in his CAP unit.
7.–Immediately after the assas­si­na­tion, Fer­rie wor­ried that his library card might be in Oswald’s pos­ses­sion. Oswald knew about “microdots,” a tech­nique devel­oped by Ger­man intel­li­gence in World War II per­mit­ting the reduc­tion of an intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ca­tion to micro­scop­ic size, thus enabling its inser­tion into a peri­od or com­ma in a sen­tence. Some researchers have opined that the library card may have involved some use of microdot tech­nol­o­gy in the Ferrie/Oswald intel­li­gence rela­tion­ship.
8.–Ferrie, Oswald and Guy Ban­is­ter were all deeply involved with the CIA’s anti-Cas­tro Cuban effort in New Orleans. Ban­is­ter’s office was a front for many of the weapons used by Fer­rie and com­pa­ny at the LaCombe camp and oth­er facil­i­ties. As dis­cussed pre­vi­ous­ly, Oswald’s one man Fair Play For Cuba Com­mit­tee (New Orleans chap­ter) was housed in the same New­man build­ing that housed Ban­is­ter’s oper­a­tion.
9.–Ferrie had oper­a­tional con­nec­tions with both Ela­dio Del Valle and Ser­gio Arcacha Smith, two of the CIA’s pri­ma­ry anti-Cas­tro Cuban oper­a­tives.
10.–Against the back­ground of JFK’s Cuban pol­i­cy, includ­ing JFK’s actions vis a vis the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, his impend­ing diplo­mat­ic rap­proche­ment with Cas­tro and the Jus­tice Depart­men­t’s clos­ing down of the LaCombe camp and oth­ers like it, Fer­rie began mak­ing increas­ing­ly vio­lent state­ments about JFK.
11.–Ferrie began open­ly talk­ing about killing Kennedy. His vio­lent anti-JFK state­ments were one of the rea­sons he was dis­missed from East­ern Air­lines, for whom he worked as a pilot.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 116.

. . . . As Mon­goose began to dwin­dle down, Fer­rie, and oth­ers, now grew even more resent­ful of Kennedy. For the first time, Fer­rie men­tioned to a young pro­tege a design to do away with JFK. But he nev­er includ­ed him­self in the plans. He talked about it in the sec­ond or third per­son. Some­times, he went fur­ther and said that Kennedy “ought to be shot.” This was also echoed by Guy Ban­is­ter who had been a CIA con­duit of funds for the train­ing camps. In 1963, Ban­is­ter bit­ter­ly com­plained to a col­league that “some­one should do away with Kennedy.” Ban­is­ter’s fas­cist ide­ol­o­gy was con­ducive  to such things. . . .

After Gar­ri­son indict­ed him, Fer­rie began pub­licly attack­ing Gar­rison’s cred­i­bil­i­ty, ridi­cul­ing any notion of his own guilt in the assas­si­na­tion. In pri­vate, Fer­rie began express­ing fear for his life. As it devel­oped, Fer­rie’s fears were well found­ed. His naked corpse was found in his apart­ment, alleged­ly felled by a berry aneurism at the base of his brain. A sheet was pulled up over his face, and there were two typed sui­cide notes, with his name typed, not signed.

There are a num­ber of con­sid­er­a­tions in con­nec­tion with Fer­rie’s death:

1.–If his death was nat­ur­al, why were there two typed sui­cide notes?
2.–If it was sui­cide, how did he die?
3.–There were marks in Fer­rie’s mouth, clear­ly revealed in autop­sy pho­tos. Might they have indi­cat­ed that drugs been forced down his throat? Fer­rie had been tak­ing pro­loid, which might well have pro­duced the lethal reac­tion Fer­rie expe­ri­enced in the event of an over­dose. He had ordered thy­roid pills, which were gone when his body was dis­cov­ered.
4.–Journalist George Lard­ner had inter­viewed Fer­rie, and claims he was with Fer­rie until 4am, the last pos­si­ble time that Fer­rie’s death could have occurred. If Lard­ner was right, the killers must have entered with­in min­utes of his depar­ture.
5.–Decades lat­er, Lard­ner, work­ing for the CIA-linked Wash­ing­ton Post, went to Dal­las to shad­ow Oliv­er Stone’s film­ing of “JFK,” based on Gar­rison’s book On the Trail of the Assas­sins. Lard­ner then wrote a hit piece on Stone’s film before it was released.

The con­tents of Fer­rie’s apart­ment were unusu­al. Recall that he had stat­ed that he did­n’t know how to fire a rifle.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 225.

. . . . The con­tents of Fer­rie’s apart­ment at the time of his death were unusu­al for a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor. They includ­ed a blue, 100-pound aer­i­al bomb, a Spring­field pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor. They includ­ed a blue, 100-pound aer­i­al bomb, a Spring­field rifle, a Rem­ing­ton rifle, an altered-stock, .22 rifle, 20 shot­gun shells, two Army Sig­nal Corps tele­phones, one bay­o­net, one flare gun, a radio trans­mit­ter unit, a radio receiv­er unit, 32 rifle car­tridges, 22 blanks, sev­er­al cam­eras, and three rolls of film. . . . 

Short­ly after Fer­rie’s death, his close asso­ciate Ela­dio Del Valle was found mur­dered, near the apart­ment of Bernar­do De Tor­res, Bay of Pigs vet­er­an and U.S. intel­li­gence vet­er­an. Del Valle had been tor­tured, shot through the heart and his head had been split open with a machete.

FTR #1038 Interview #8 with Jim DiEugenio About “Destiny Betrayed”

The eighth of a planned long series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio about his tri­umphal analy­sis of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s hero­ic inves­ti­ga­tion of the killing, this pro­gram con­tin­ues analy­sis of the devel­op­ment of the leg­end (intel­li­gence cov­er) of Lee Har­vey Oswald.

(Lis­ten­ers can order Des­tiny Betrayed 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. Jim is also a reg­u­lar guest and expert com­men­ta­tor on Black Op Radio.)

The dis­cus­sion begins with review of the deep state intel­li­gence con­nec­tions of Ruth and Michael Paine, who took over the han­dling of the Oswalds from George De Mohren­schildt:

1. Michael Paine was a Cabot and drew from trust funds bequeathed by both the Cabot and Forbes fam­i­lies, both mem­bers of the “Boston Brah­mins.” His moth­er was Ruth Forbes Young.
2. Michael’s cousin Thomas Cabot was a direc­tor Unit­ed Fruit.
3. Thomas’s broth­er John was–like Thomas–a State Depart­ment vet­er­an, who was exchang­ing infor­ma­tion with Guy Ban­is­ter employ­ee Mau­rice Brooks Gatlin about the impend­ing CIA over­throw of Guatemalan pres­i­dent Jacobo Arbenz, who was pur­su­ing poli­cies detri­men­tal to Unit­ed Fruit’s feu­dal monop­oly in that unfor­tu­nate nation.
4. Dur­ing the ear­ly six­ties, Thomas was pres­i­dent of the Gibral­tar Steamship Com­pa­ny, a Hon­duran-based front that owned no ships but oper­at­ed Radio Swan, a CIA radio sta­tion used in the Bay of Pigs, among oth­er oper­a­tions.
5. Before relo­cat­ing to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, Michael Paine had worked for the Franklin Insti­tute, a CIA con­duit.
6. Michael Paine also was appar­ent­ly pos­ing as a left­ist to infil­trate and cat­a­log, Cas­tro sym­pa­thiz­ers, not unlike the work Guy Ban­is­ter was doing in New Orleans in con­junc­tion with, among oth­ers, Lee Har­vey Oswald.
7. His step father was Arthur Young, mar­ried to Ruth Forbes Young. Arthur Young was a devo­tee of “The Nine” and became a major fig­ure at Bell Heli­copter. Arthur got Michael a job at Bell.
8. Ruth Forbes Young was best friend with Mary Ban­croft, Allen Dulles’s sub­or­di­nate and long-time mis­tress while he worked for OSS, Amer­i­ca’s World War II intel­li­gence ser­vice.
9. Ruth Paine’s father was William Avery Hyde, an insur­ance exec­u­tive who had worked for the OSS in World War II and lat­er went to work for the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment, a fre­quent CIA cov­er.
10. Ruth’s father, like George De Mohren­schildt, worked for the Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tive Alliance.
11. In the sum­mer of 1963, Ruth trav­eled cross-coun­try and vis­it­ed her sis­ter Sylvia Hyde Hoke, who was a CIA psy­chol­o­gist.
12. Sylvi­a’s hus­band John Hoke also worked for the Agency for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment.
13. In the 1980s, Ruth Paine was appar­ent­ly infil­trat­ing and cat­a­loging anti-“Contra” activists with regard to the attempts at over­throw­ing the San­din­ista forces in Nicaragua.
The Paines–Ruth in particular–played a deci­sive role in the shap­ing of the cir­cum­stances lead­ing to Lee being framed for the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Among the oper­a­tions per­formed by the Paines:

1. Ruth sep­a­rat­ed Lee and Mari­na, bring­ing a preg­nant Mari­na back to Dal­las while Lee was in New Orleans and then facil­i­tat­ing Lee’s stay at a room­ing house after he returned to Dal­las.
2. Ruth got Lee his job at the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry, despite the fact that Lee had actu­al­ly received a bet­ter job offer. It was Lee’s employ­ment at the TBSD that was the foun­da­tion for fram­ing him for the assas­si­na­tion.
3. Ruth may well have been the per­son who got the phone call com­mu­ni­cat­ing the bet­ter-pay­ing job offer to Lee. It does not appear that she told Lee about the offer.

The dis­in­for­ma­tion used to frame Oswald for the assas­si­na­tion stemmed in con­sid­er­able mea­sure from what we might call “Ruth Paine’s garage sale.”

Many of Oswald’s effects were stored in Ruth Paine’s garage after his return to Dal­las from New Orleans. Ruth Paine’s garage even­tu­al­ly yield­ed:

1. The ludi­crous pic­ture of “Oswald” pos­ing with two Com­mu­nist mag­a­zines and the weapons he sup­pos­ed­ly used to kill JFK and Dal­las Police offi­cer J.D. Tip­pitt. The shad­ows under “Oswald’s” chin and behind his body go in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, indi­cat­ing that Oswald’s head had been super­im­posed on the body posed for the pic­ture. In addi­tion, “Oswald’s” body tilts in a ludi­crous fash­ion. (See the pho­to at right.) This pho­to did much to con­vince a naive pub­lic that Oswald had been the assas­sin.
2. The cam­eras found in Ruth Paine’s garage were not con­sis­tent with the film used to take the “Lean­ing Tow­er of Oswald” pho­to­graph.
3. Ruth Paine’s garage sale yield­ed the “evi­dence” that Oswald–who sup­pos­ed­ly killed a lib­er­al President–had also tried to kill the right-wing Gen­er­al Walk­er. This includ­ed an appar­ent­ly forged note incrim­i­nat­ing Oswald, which had nei­ther Lee’s nor Mari­na’s fin­ger­prints on it.. This was spun in such a way as to neuter any notion that Oswald was a polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed killer. In this pro­gram, Jim reca­pit­u­lates some of the facts that negate the hypoth­e­sis that Oswald fired at Walk­er, includ­ing eye­wit­ness accounts of two men fir­ing and dri­ving away (Oswald did­n’t dri­ve), the fact that the marks­man­ship required to hit a seat­ed Walk­er would have been far less dif­fi­cult than the match­less fir­ing skill required to have done what Oswald had alleged­ly done in Dal­las and dis­crep­an­cies in the bal­lis­tics and muni­tion evi­dence in the Walk­er shoot­ing.
4. A sil­ver bracelet sup­pos­ed­ly pur­chased by Oswald in Mex­i­co City which pro­vides sup­port­ing “phys­i­cal evi­dence” of Oswald’s alleged pres­ence in the impor­tant Mex­i­co City vis­it.
5. There was a pack­age found in Ruth Paine’s garage, addressed to Oswald and from George Bouhe, one of the White Rus­sians involved with the han­dling of the Oswalds in the Dal­las area. There was an address stick­er past­ed on the pack­age, and yet the FBI made no effort to deter­mine the address under the stick­er. Why? Fur­ther­more, the pack­age con­tained wrap­ping paper con­sis­tent with the paper the War­ren Com­mis­sion said Oswald used to bring the Mannlicher/Carchano into the Texas School Book Depos­i­to­ry. Had Oswald opened the pic­ture and han­dled the paper, he would have left fin­ger­prints which would have cor­rob­o­rat­ed the offi­cial cov­er-up.
6. In the con­text of the pre­vi­ous item, it is note­wor­thy that George Bouhe lived next door to, and shared a swim­ming pool with, Jack Ruby!
Next, the pro­gram piv­ots to New Orleans DA Jim Gar­ri­son and his inves­ti­ga­tion of the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

One of the calum­nies used to dis­cred­it Gar­ri­son is the alle­ga­tion that he engaged in his inves­ti­ga­tion of David Fer­rie, Clay Shaw et al in order to fur­ther his career–that he was ambi­tious. And yet, as Jim notes, Gar­ri­son TURNED DOWN oppor­tu­ni­ties to become Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor (of Louisiana), Attor­ney Gen­er­al, a Sen­a­tor and also to acquire lucra­tive bank­ing inter­ests. All of those goals were for­sak­en so that Gar­ri­son could pur­sue his inves­tiga­tive career, includ­ing and espe­cial­ly the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Anoth­er lie that has been used to dis­cred­it Gar­ri­son is the alle­ga­tion that he high­light­ed the CIA’s role in the JFK assas­si­na­tion in order to eclipse the Mafi­a’s role in it and, in so doing, pro­tect what are said to be his Mob asso­ciates.
Des­tiny Betrayed destroys that alle­ga­tion as well, chron­i­cling the fact that Gar­ri­son vig­or­ous­ly pros­e­cut­ed orga­nized crime fig­ures in New Orleans and was known to have fac­tored Mob par­tic­i­pa­tion in the JFK assas­si­na­tion in his inves­ti­ga­tion.
Mr. Emory read into the record a pas­sage which not only refutes the Mafia smear­ing of Jim Gar­ri­son, but pro­vides an inter­est­ing peek into the account of the tri­al to come. After not­ing rack­e­teer influ­ence on judges who had obstruct­ed Jim Gar­rison’s activ­i­ties, Jim writes:

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 171.

. . . . The insin­u­a­tion about rack­e­teer influ­ences had some under­pin­ning. Two of Gar­rison’s assis­tants had drinks with one of the judges, Judge Hag­ger­ty, who would pre­side over the Clay Shaw tri­al. Hag­ger­ty intro­duced them to Fran­cis Gior­dano. Gior­dano was a Car­los Mar­cel­lo asso­ciate. He com­plained to them that when Dowl­ing took away their ille­gal gam­ing machines, he returned them. Gar­ri­son did not. “How Come,” Gior­dano asked? . . . .