FTR #1048 Interview #17 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 sev­en­teenth 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 pro­ceed into New Orleans’ DA Jim Gar­rison’s actu­al tri­al of Clay Shaw.

Before going into the tri­al, per se, we high­light the “turn­ing” of The New Orleans States-Item. This “turn­ing” fea­tures one of the prin­ci­pal infil­tra­tors into Gar­rison’s office, William Gur­vich.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 275.

. . . . From this inter­view [with Tom­my Baum­ler], what appears to have hap­pened is that the CIA sent some­one into New Orleans to impact pub­lic opin­ion about Gar­ri­son. This may have been occa­sioned by a let­ter for­ward­ed to CIA HQ to Lloyd Ray of the local New Orleans office. . . . William Gur­vich, now work­ing with Shaw’s lawyers, vis­it­ed the offices of The New Orleans States-Item. Ross Yock­ey and Hoke May had been seri­ous­ly inves­ti­gat­ing the Shaw case. And they had been doing that in a fair and judi­cious man­ner. They had uncov­ered some inter­est­ing facts about how Gor­don Novel’s lawyers were being paid. After Gurvich’s vis­it, the States-Item pulled Yock­ey and May from the Gar­ri­son beat. When this author inter­viewed Yock­ey in 1995, he said that after this, he was then assigned to cov­er­ing high school foot­ball games. With the States-Item now neu­tral­ized, the cov­er­age in New Orleans now became imbal­anced. . . .

Jim titled the chap­ter ded­i­cat­ed to the tri­al “Anti-Cli­max.” It was indeed an anti-cli­max after Gar­ri­son was sub­ject­ed to the irre­sistible engine of the syn­the­sis of: the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty, their lone-wolf oper­a­tors infil­trat­ing his office, those infil­tra­tors’ net­work­ing with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s media hatch­et men ded­i­cat­ed to smear­ing Gar­ri­son pub­licly, Clay Shaw’s defense team and the Jus­tice Depart­ment.

Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion was sub­ject­ed to an onslaught, includ­ing out­right, state-spon­sored ter­ror direct­ed at wit­ness­es.

A syn­op­tic overview of the wit­ness­es and their sig­nif­i­cance:

1.–Richard Case Nagell–A U.S. intel­li­gence oper­a­tive infil­trat­ed into Sovi­et intel­li­gence, and then assigned by KGB to assas­si­nate Oswald, whom they knew was to be a pat­sy in an assas­si­na­tion plot against JFK for which they would be blamed.
2.–Reverend Clyde Johnson–A right-wing activist who was wit­ness to Clay Shaw and a “Jack Rubion” net­work­ing togeth­er against JFK.
3.–Aloysius Habighorst–A good New Orleans cop who was the book­ing offi­cer for Clay Shaw, when Shaw vol­un­teered that he used the alias “Clay Bertrand.”
4.–Edwin McGehee–One of the wit­ness­es con­nect­ing Clay Shaw to Oswald and David Fer­rie in Clin­ton, Louisiana.
5.–Reeves Morgan–Another of the wit­ness­es con­nect­ing Clay Shaw to Oswald and David Fer­rie in Clin­ton, Louisiana.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 294.

. . . . Before and dur­ing the tri­al, Garrison’s wit­ness­es were being sur­veilled, harassed, and phys­i­cal­ly attacked. For instance, Richard Case Nag­ell had a grenade thrown at him from a speed­ing car in New York. Nag­ell brought the remains of the grenade to Gar­ri­son and told him he did not think it wise for him to tes­ti­fy at Shaw’s tri­al. Even though Gar­ri­son had spir­it­ed Clyde John­son out of town and very few peo­ple knew where he was, the FBI’s total sur­veil­lance even­tu­al­ly paid off. He was bru­tal­ly beat­en on the eve of the tri­al and hos­pi­tal­ized. Aloy­sius Habighorst, the man who booked Shaw and heard him say his alias was Bertrand, was rammed by a truck the day before he tes­ti­fied. After he tes­ti­fied, Edwin McGe­hee found a prowler on his front lawn. he called the mar­shal, and the man was arrest­ed. At the sta­tion, the man asked to make one phone call. The call he made was to the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Mart. After he tes­ti­fied, Reeves Mor­gan had the win­dows shot out of his truck. What makes all this vio­lent intim­i­da­tion more star­tling is what Robert Tanen­baum stat­ed to the author in an inter­view for Probe Mag­a­zine. He said that he had seen a set of doc­u­ments that orig­i­nat­ed in the office of Richard Helms. They revealed that the CIA was mon­i­tor­ing and harass­ing Gar­rison’s wit­ness­es. . . .

The vio­lent harass­ment of the wit­ness­es may be viewed against the back­drop of Tom Bethell and Sal Panze­ca.

Shaw attor­ney Sal Panze­ca received a list of Gar­ri­son wit­ness­es from Gar­ri­son office infil­tra­tor Tom Bethell.

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

. . . . Tom Bethell had been one of the DA’s key inves­ti­ga­tors and researchers . . . . Since Gar­ri­son had des­ig­nat­ed him as his chief archivist, he had access to and con­trol of both Gar­rison’s files and his most recent wit­ness list. . . . Secret­ly, he met with Sal Panze­ca, one of Shaw’s attor­neys, and gave him a wit­ness list he had pre­pared, with sum­maries of each wit­ness’s expect­ed tes­ti­mo­ny for the pros­e­cu­tion. . . .

Exem­pli­fy­ing the effec­tive neu­tral­iz­ing of wit­ness­es is the drum­beat of dis­cred­i­ta­tion and intim­i­da­tion of Per­ry Rus­so, a wit­ness to Shaw and Fer­rie dis­cussing plans to assas­si­nate JFK. By the time of Clay Shaw’s tri­al, Rus­so relent­ed and assent­ed to the canard that the Shaw/Ferrie assas­si­na­tion plan­ning was just a “bull ses­sion.”

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 #1033 Interview #3 with Jim DiEugenio about “Destiny Betrayed”

The third 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 with dis­cus­sion of Cuba and JFK’s pol­i­cy with regard to Cas­tro.

(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.)

After review­ing dis­cus­sion from FTR #1032, the pro­gram high­lights the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis. The best known of JFK’s actions with regard to Cuba, the “Thir­teen Days” exem­pli­fies how Kennedy stood against the Cold War polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment and what Pres­i­dent Eisen­how­er called “The Mil­i­tary-Indus­tri­al Com­plex,” earn­ing the hatred of key play­ers on the U.S. polit­i­cal stage at the time.

Once it became clear that the Sovi­ets had placed offen­sive inter­me­di­ate range bal­lis­tic mis­siles in Cuba, plans were drawn up for both air strikes to take out the mis­siles and a mil­i­tary inva­sion of Cuba as a whole. Kennedy was exco­ri­at­ed for tak­ing a more thought­ful tack.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 63.

. . . . On Octo­ber 9, Kennedy had a meet­ing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kennedy got into a back and forth with the hawk­ish Air Force Gen­er­al Cur­tis LeMay. . . . LeMay frowned upon the block­ade option. . . . “If we don’t do any­thing in Cuba, then they’re going to push on Berlin and push real hard because they’ve got us on the run.” LeMay, who was nev­er one to mince words, then went even fur­ther. To  show his utter  dis­dain for the block­ade con­cept, the World War II vet­er­an actu­al­ly brought up some­thing rather bizarre. He said, “The block­ade and polit­i­cal action, I see lead­ing into war. . . . This is almost as bad as the appease­ment at Munich.” LeMay was now com­par­ing Kennedy’s pref­er­ence for the block­ade with Neville Cham­ber­lain’s giv­ing away the Sude­ten­land to the Nazis, which encour­aged Hitler to invade Poland. Although not express­ing them­selves in such extreme fig­ures of speech, the rest of the chiefs of staff agreed with LeMay. . . .  

Think­ing that the Sovi­et buildup may have been a gam­bit to oblige the U.S. to for­go sup­port for West Berlin in exchange for with­draw­al of the nuclear forces in Cuba, Kennedy sought oth­er alter­na­tives. (Younger lis­ten­ers should bear in mind that West Berlin was the West­ern-aligned half of Berlin, which was itself locat­ed deep in East Ger­many.)

Ulti­mate­ly, Kennedy and Sovi­et pre­mier Niki­ta Khr­uschev drew down hos­til­i­ties, after Kennedy insti­tut­ed a naval block­ade of Sovi­et mar­itime ship­ments of mil­i­tary materiel to Cuba. Jim presents the alto­geth­er for­mi­da­ble order of bat­tle in Cuba, indi­cat­ing the strong pos­si­bil­i­ty that, had the more aggres­sive U.S. con­tin­gency plans been imple­ment­ed, it would have led to a Third World War and the end of our  civ­i­liza­tion.

As the elder Von Moltke observed: “No bat­tle plan sur­vives con­tact with the ene­my.” Some­thing would not have gone accord­ing to plan in the pro­posed mil­i­tary adven­tures against the Sovi­et pres­ence in Cuba. When that hap­pened, there would have been World War III.

Des­tiny Betrayed by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; Sky­horse pub­lish­ing [SC]; Copy­right 1992, 2012 by Jim DiEu­ge­nio; ISBN 978–1‑62087–056‑3; p. 66.

. . . . The deploy­ment includ­ed 40 land based bal­lis­tic launch­ers, includ­ing 60 mis­siles in five mis­sile reg­i­ments. The medi­um range mis­siles had a range of 1,200 miles, the long-range ones, 2,400 miles. In addi­tion, there were to be 140 air-defense mis­sile launch­ers to pro­tect the sites. Accom­pa­ny­ing then would be a Russ­ian army of 45,000 men with four motor­ized rifle reg­i­ments and over 250 units of armor. There would also be a wing of MIG-21 fight­ers, with 40 nuclear armed IL-28 bombers. Final­ly, there was to be a sub­ma­rine mis­sile base with an ini­tial deploy­ment of eleven sub­marines, sev­en of them capa­ble of launch­ing one mega­ton nuclear war­heads. In addi­tion, there were low-yield tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons for coastal defense in case of an inva­sion. . . . 

Fol­low­ing the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, Kennedy sought to woo Cas­tro away from the Sovi­et Union with a diplo­mat­ic rap­proche­ment between Cuba and the U.S.

Using U.S. diplo­mat William Atwood, French jour­nal­ist Jean Daniel and Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Lisa Howard as inter­me­di­aries, JFK was seek­ing to nor­mal­ize U.S./Cuban rela­tions.

The CIA and its anti-Cas­tro Cuban con­tin­gent learned of the nego­ti­a­tions, and under­took a num­ber of covert oper­a­tions, such as the Pawley/Bayo/Martino raid to break up the nego­ti­a­tions.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

The roles of many of the “Drama­tis Per­son­ae” who fig­ure in Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion into the JFK assas­si­na­tion in anti-Cas­tro Cuban intrigue, includ­ing:

1.–David Fer­rie’s work as a para­mil­i­tary train­er at camps used to train anti-Cas­tro guer­ril­las and as a pilot on var­i­ous “ops” against Cas­tro.
2.–Clay Shaw’s work orga­niz­ing CIA anti-Cas­tro Cuban activ­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the New Orleans area.
3.–Guy Ban­is­ter’s “detec­tive agency,” which served as a front for para­mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against Cas­tro’s Cuba and also as a cov­er for Lee Har­vey Oswald’s role as a faux Cas­tro sup­port­er and Fair Play For Cuba mem­ber.
4.–Bernardo de Tor­res’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Bay of Pigs and sub­se­quent anti-Cas­tro activ­i­ties, as well as his work with silenced weapons devel­op­er Mitchell Wer­Bell and as an infil­tra­tor into Gar­rison’s office.
5.–Eladio Del Valle’s work with David Fer­rie, among oth­ers, and his bru­tal mur­der.
6.-Sergio Arcacha Smith’s role as a key offi­cial of the CIA front orga­ni­za­tion CRC and his links to many oth­er fig­ures in Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion.
7.–CIA offi­cer David Atlee Phillips and his work against Cas­tro, as well as against the U.S. Cas­tro sup­port group Fair Play For Cuba. In a 1988 con­ver­sa­tion with his estranged broth­er short­ly before his death, Phillips admit­ted hav­ing been in Dal­las when Kennedy was killed.
8.–Future Water­gate bur­glar James McCord’s work with Phillips against the FPCC.
9.–Antonio Veciana’s work with Alpha 66, arguably the most mil­i­tant of the anti-Cas­tro exile groups and his mys­te­ri­ous con­trol offi­cer “Mau­rice Bish­op,” who appears to have been David Atlee Phillips.
10.–Future Water­gate Bur­glar E. Howard Hunt’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Allen Dulles and Charles Mur­phy on the anti-Kennedy For­tune Mag­a­zine arti­cle, as well as his work on the Bay of Pigs oper­a­tion.

FTR #971 Nazis in New Orleans

This broad­cast is some­thing of a “pre­quel” to the next two pro­grams, both deal­ing with Char­lottesville.

What the media have termed “Alt-Right” and the author calls “the rad­i­cal right” were present at Char­lottesville and par­tic­i­pants in the assas­si­na­tion of JFK.

Numer­ous pro­grams and arti­cles on this web­site have dealt with Nazi involve­ment with the assas­si­na­tion of JFK, from para­mil­i­tary Amer­i­can Nazi ele­ments to indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions over­lap­ping the Rein­hard Gehlen spy milieu.

In this pro­gram, we excerpt a recent, mas­sive vol­ume Gen­er­al Walk­er and the Mur­der of Pres­i­dent Kennedy by Jef­frey H. Cau­field M.D. NB: For a sea­soned researcher, this is a use­ful and impor­tant book, how­ev­er it MUST be handicapped–the author is dis­mis­sive of the [by now record­ed fact] that ele­ments of the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty were involved in the killing. Of course, they were.

Notwith­stand­ing that sig­nif­i­cant flaw, the book fea­tures a trea­sure trove of infor­ma­tion about Nazi and fas­cist con­nec­tions to the assas­si­na­tion of JFK. A vet­er­an researcher can–and should–easily take the infor­ma­tion from Cau­field­’s book and col­late it with the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty ele­ments with which the “rad­i­cal right” indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions are affil­i­at­ed.

Although not coter­mi­nous by any means, what Cau­field terms “the rad­i­cal right” and U.S. intel­li­gence are pro­found­ly con­nect­ed.

We sus­pect that over­lap­ping groups com­pris­ing what Cau­field terms “the rad­i­cal right” con­sti­tute an “Amer­i­can Glad­io.”

This hypo­thet­i­cal rela­tion­ship sug­gests the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a domes­tic ver­sion of “Oper­a­tion Stay Behind” and its Ital­ian com­po­nent, “Oper­a­tion Glad­io”. The above were NATO oper­a­tions that uti­lized extreme right and fas­cist ele­ments as poten­tial gueril­la forces to fight against com­mu­nists in the event of either a suc­cess­ful Sovi­et takeover of West­ern Europe (an extreme improb­a­bil­i­ty), or the greater like­li­hood of a pop­u­lar Com­mu­nist takeover of a major West­ern Euro­pean coun­try. In prac­tice, Glad­io result­ed in a pro­gram of ter­ror­ist acts (bomb­ings, kid­nap­pings and assas­si­na­tions) direct­ed against the left. (Many of those acts were actu­al­ly blamed on the left, in order to dis­cred­it it in the eyes of the pub­lic.)

Dis­turbed by the alleged lack of “back­bone” demon­strat­ed by Amer­i­can mil­i­tary per­son­nel dur­ing the Kore­an War, Amer­i­can strate­gic thinkers under­took to indoc­tri­nate the Amer­i­can pub­lic with a prac­ti­cal­ly mil­i­tant, anti-Com­mu­nist per­spec­tive. These lead­ers feared that, in the event of a pro­tract­ed nuclear face-off with the Sovi­ets, lack of Amer­i­can polit­i­cal resolve could result in the Unit­ed States “blink­ing” and back­ing down in such a con­fronta­tion.

In 1958, the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion issued a Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil direc­tive autho­riz­ing the mil­i­tary to engage in a pro­gram of polit­i­cal indoc­tri­na­tion of mil­i­tary per­son­nel and (more impor­tant­ly) the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion as well. The goal of this direc­tive was to alter the polit­i­cal views of the Amer­i­can peo­ple. The con­sti­tu­tion­al impli­ca­tions of this direc­tive could not be exag­ger­at­ed. The bulk of the broad­cast exam­ines evi­dence that sug­gests that, as a result of this NSC direc­tive, the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment began uti­liz­ing far-right and fas­cist groups in order to real­ize the desired ide­o­log­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion. Mr. Emory sug­gests that these net­works may very well have been uti­lized in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions of the 1960s and ear­ly 1970s, as well as domes­tic intel­li­gence oper­a­tions against the civ­il rights and anti-Viet­nam War move­ments.

We begin our analy­sis with New Orleans DA Jim Gar­rison’s 1967 let­ter to Lord Bertrand Rus­sell, in which he not­ed the Nazi asso­ci­a­tions of many of the peo­ple involved with the JFK assas­si­na­tion.

Next, we excerpt text dis­cussing David Fer­rie’s Nazi mus­ings and asso­ci­a­tions.

In future pro­grams, we will take up the issue of what Fort Sill Oper­a­tions Com­mand Offi­cer Glenn Pinch­back referred to as a “Neo-Nazi plot to enslave Amer­i­ca in the name of anti-Com­mu­nism” and “a neo-Nazi plot gar­gan­tu­an in scope.”

In FTR #188, we detailed the “Hate Bus,” a gam­bit by Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty leader George Lin­coln Rock­well to protest the Free­dom Rid­ers and the Civ­il Rights move­ment. It bears some struc­tur­al sim­i­lar­i­ty to the Char­lottesville inci­dent, with fas­cists stag­ing a counter-event to a pro­gres­sive demon­stra­tion, in this case the “free­dom rid­ers” bus rid­den by white col­lege stu­dents and black civ­il rights activists in sup­port of inte­gra­tion and vot­ing rights in the South.

Note that appar­ent Oswald asso­ciate Ray Lea­hart was the best man at the wed­ding of David Duke, a major par­tic­i­pant in the Char­lottesville event.

High­light­ing aspects of the career of “Hate Bus” par­tic­i­pant Ray Lea­hart, a New Orleans ANP [Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty] mem­ber, we note that:

1.-Leahart was alleged to have been an asso­ciate of Lee Har­vey Oswald. ” . . . . On Decem­ber 16, 1963, after the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion, the New Orleans FBI inves­ti­gat­ed a tip that Lee Har­vey Oswald had been seen with Ray Lea­hart dur­ing the pre­vi­ous sum­mer. Lea­hart was a New Orleans Nazi whom [Guy] Ban­is­ter had bailed out of jail in the Hate Bus inci­dent. . . .”
2.-The FBI had no doc­u­ments on Lea­hart, rais­ing the ques­tion of what hap­pened to a doc­u­ment about Lea­hart’s arrest in the “Hate Bus” inci­dent. (For more about the Hate Bus, see FTR #188.) Author Cau­field spec­u­lates that Oswald han­dler Guy Ban­is­ter’s close rela­tion­ship with FBI SAC Reg­is Kennedy may have had some­thing to do with the dis­ap­pear­ance of Lea­hart’s arrest record. ” . . . . No FBI doc­u­ments, oth­er than the New Orleans police mug shots from the Hate Bus arrest, were in the FBI record, which rais­es the ques­tion of what hap­pened to FBI ref­er­ence 841767D (Lea­hart’s arrest record in the Hate Bus inci­dent) and why it did not accom­pa­ny the alle­ga­tion and sub­stan­tial like­li­hood of an Oswald-Lea­hart asso­ci­a­tion when sent to the War­ren Com­mis­sion. Ban­is­ter’s close friend­ship with New Orleans FBI SAC Reg­is Kennedy may have had some­thing to do with the crit­i­cal omis­sion. . . .”
3.-Leahart was close to Dal­las, Texas, ANP mem­bers, includ­ing Robert Sur­rey, who print­ed a noto­ri­ous poster of JFK: ” . . . . . . . The Dal­las FBI office was aware of cor­re­spon­dence link­ing Lea­hart to ANP [Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty] activ­i­ties in Texas. One Dal­las ANP mem­ber, Robert Sur­rey, was a close asso­ciate of Gen­er­al [Edwin] Walk­er. Sur­rey’s wife Mary was Walk­er’s per­son­al sec­re­tary. Wealthy oil­men report­ed­ly fund­ed Sur­rey’s Nazi out­fit. Sur­rey print­ed the infa­mous ‘Want­ed for Trea­son’ poster which had cir­cu­lat­ed in Dal­las before the asso­ci­a­tion. The poster pic­tured mug-shot-styled pho­tos of Pres­i­dent Kennedy and accused him of trea­son. Sur­rey and Walk­er were War­ren Com­mis­sion wit­ness­es, and, of course, Walk­er was close to both Guy Ban­is­ter and Kent Court­ney. . . .”
4.-Leahart was an asso­ciate of David Duke, and was best man at Duke’s wed­ding. ” . . . . On Sep­tem­ber 9, 1972, Lea­hart became the best man at Duke’s wed­ding. . . .”

The pro­gram then reviews Daniel Bur­ros, one of the Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty mem­bers whose con­tact infor­ma­tion was in Lee Har­vey Oswald’s address book.

Bur­ros viewed with favor vet­er­an Nazi Edward Hunter, a Guy Ban­is­ter’s asso­ciate, who had been a mem­ber of the pre-war Nazi Fifth Col­umn in the U.S.

Bur­ros alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide at the home of Penn­syl­va­nia Klan leader Roy Frankhouser, who–as seen in AFA #13–had oper­a­tional links with ele­ments of U.S. intel­li­gence, CIA in par­tic­u­lar.

Frankhouser also infil­trat­ed the Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty, an orga­ni­za­tion so infil­trat­ed by spooks and fas­cists that it was lit­tle more than a right-wing front orga­ni­za­tion. (The SWP was the ide­o­log­i­cal petri dish in which Lyn­dn LaRouche and Bernie Sanders were cul­tured.)

Note that Frankhouser was appar­ent­ly in pos­ses­sion of cor­re­spon­dence from Michael and Ruth Paine, two “lib­er­al” babysit­ters of Lee Har­vey Oswald and his wife. Both Michael and Ruth Paine had strong links to the nation­al secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment.

Flesh­ing out the con­ti­nu­ity between the Nazi Fifth Col­umn of the pre-World War II peri­od and what author Cau­field termed the “rad­i­cal right” and by con­tem­po­rary observers as “the alt-right,” we excerpt John Roy Carl­son’s Under Cov­er. Note that Edward Hunter was an asso­ciate of Guy Ban­is­ter’s. (Ban­is­ter was one of Oswald’s appar­ent intel­li­gence han­dlers.)

Ger­hard Frey was the edi­tor of the Deutsche Nation­al Zeitung und Sol­dat­en Zeitung, which had vet­er­ans of the SS and Goebbels’ pro­pa­gan­da bureau on its edi­to­r­i­al staff. The pub­li­ca­tion received finan­cial sup­port from the CIA.

A financier of con­tem­po­rary Russ­ian fas­cist Vladimir Zhi­ronovsky, Frey was asso­ci­at­ed with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations.

Formed by Adolf Hitler in 1943, that orga­ni­za­tion is a con­sor­tium of East­ern Euro­pean Third Reich sub­sidiaries such as the Ukrain­ian OUN/B, the Roman­ian Iron Guard, the Bul­gar­i­an Nation­al Front, the Hun­gar­i­an Arrow Cross, the Croa­t­ian Ustachi, the Slo­va­kian Hlin­ka Par­ty and oth­ers. The uni­fy­ing ele­ment in these fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions was the SS. The ABN became a key ele­ment of the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion and the GOP.

Both Frey and Gen­er­al Charles Willough­by were asso­ci­at­ed with the ABN.

Gen­er­al Charles Willough­by was also tight with the ABN, and its founder Jaroslav Stet­zko, the head of Ukraine’s Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment. (The spelling of Stet­zko’s name varies with the translit­er­a­tion from the Cyril­lic alpha­bet.) In numer­ous pro­grams, we have dis­cussed Stet­zko, his wartime geno­ci­dal oper­a­tions, his and the ABN’s links to the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the GOP, the CIA and the Under­ground Reich.

An ele­ment of con­ti­nu­ity between the wartime regime of Jaroslav Stet­zko and the present OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine is Roman Svarych.

Roman Svarych was Stezko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary in the ear­ly 1980’s. He became Ukraine’s min­is­ter of jus­tice (the equiv­a­lent of Attor­ney Gen­er­al) under Yuschenko, and held the same post under both Tim­o­shenko gov­ern­ments. Svarych then became an advis­er to Ukraine’s pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko and is the chief spokesman for the Azov Bat­tal­ion. (We high­light Stetzko/Stetsko in numer­ous programs–use the search func­tion with the alter­nate spellings to flesh out your under­stand­ing.)

Nazis in New Orleans (#3)

In FTR #188, we dis­cussed the “Hate Bus,” put togeth­er by Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty chief George Lin­coln Rock­well to protest the Free­dom Rid­ers and the Civ­il Rights move­ment of the 1960’s. New Orleans Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty mem­ber Ray Lea­hart was arrest­ed in the Hate Bus inci­dent. Lea­hart was report­ed­ly seen with Lee Har­vey Oswald–neither the FBI nor the War­ren Com­mis­sion accessed Lea­hart’s arrest record in the inci­dent. This may have been due to the fact that New Orleans Spe­cial Agent in Charge Reg­is Kennedy was very close to Oswald han­dler Guy Ban­nis­ter. Lea­hart was also close to Dal­las Amer­i­can Nazi Par­ty mem­ber Robert Sur­rey (Edwin Walk­er’s per­son­al sec­re­tary), who print­ed up the infa­mous “Want­ed for Trea­son” poster of JFK. Lea­hart was also best man at David Duke’s 1972 wed­ding. All of the con­tents of this web­site as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 37+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of video­taped lec­tures are avail­able on a 32GB flash dri­ve. Dave offers his pro­grams and arti­cles for free–your sup­port is very much appre­ci­at­ed.