by Joan Mellen
Five days after Hemming’s visit, Lawrence Laborde’s son, Michael, appeared at Tulane and Broad. His goal was to divert Jim Garrison’s attention from his father and to implicate Hemming and Hargraves. Hargraves had called David Ferrie shortly before the assassination, Michael claimed. Then he told the Bureau: “You have to stop Garrison before he harms the country.”
At the end of July another CIA asset, Frank Bartes, that cousin of Dr. Frank Silva, whose name appears in Oswald’s notebook as “Bardes,” arrived with a message from Hemming. He wants to be a friend to this office; he wants “to do whatever he can to help you,” Bartes says.
A decade later, Hemming admitted to HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi that he had lied to Jim Garrison. “I created smoke myself,” he confessed. He had passed on to Garrison useless “smoked” names through “cut-outs.” Garrison’s West Coast volunteers had begun to focus on the specious Hemming names, California-based right-wingers who had nothing to do with the assassination. Garrison perceived, correctly, that Hemming’s “mission was to add to the confusion.”
That CIA contract pilot, Jim Rose, who had flown with David Ferrie, had begun to work for Garrison, even as he continued his missions for the clandestine services. Did he think the Agency was so big it could be out of control? Garrison asked Rose. The first time Rose walked into Tulane and Broad, Ivon frisked him, only to ignore a ballpoint pen.
“It’s napalm,” Rose said. “If I shot you, your face would go up in flames.” Garrison dubbed him “Winston Smith,” then “Winnie the Pooh,” then “Rosalie.” Rose worked on Shaw’s telephone records and found the number of Sergio Arcacha Smith’s lawyer. He identified one more CIA courier, William Cuthbert Brady. He knew Loran Hall and Lawrence Howard personally as “proficient riflemen and top-level guerrilla fighters.”
Rose proposed a Miami-based scheme to Jim Garrison. To locate those Cubans photographed with Oswald outside the International Trade Mart, he would pretend to recruit mercenaries for a CIA project in Biafra. A concealed Garrison investigator would photograph the applicants. Should Rose be exposed, Richard Gerstein would have him arrested and “put on the next flight to New Orleans.”
In this effort, Rose contacted several CIA-linked reporters, among them, Donald Bohning, CIA’s AMCARBON-3. “AM” stood for Cuba; “Carbon” was that CIA cryptonym for its writer assets. Bohning, who became the Latin American editor for Miami Herald, an Al Burt doppelganger, lunched weekly with CIA’s Jake Esterline, one of the reluctant engineers of the Bay of Pigs operation. Bohning had received his Provisional Covert Security Approval as a CIA confidential informant on August 21, 1967, then Covert Security Approval itself on November 14th. On July 31st, the DDP himself approved the use of Bohning in the CIA’s Cuban operations.
Bohning informed Esterline of Rose’s visit on March 28, 1968. A “Winston Smith,” working for Jim Garrison, was looking into the activities of Rolando Masferrer in 1963, before the assassination. Rose was attempting to identify certain Cubans who had appeared in photographs. He was leaving for Biafra to fight as a mercenary next month.
Bohning declined to help Jim Rose. Later he found other journalists of his acquaintance had also been contacted, but with Rose using the name “Carl McNab"[sic]. “I use many different names for different purposes,” Rose explained to Bohning when next they met. “I used to have still a different war name with the Company.” That was “Carl Davis.”
During that sojourn in Miami, while JMWAVE watched his every move, Rose met with Lawrence Howard. He didn’t believe Masferrer was involved in the assassination, Howard said smoothly. “He’s too smart for that.” But others “in the ring around him could well have been.” Masferrer had been sentenced to twenty-four years in prison for the abortive Haitian escapade, but Rose managed to meet with him. He could help Masferrer leave the country, Rose promised. Lawrence Houston watched, concerned that Garrison might indeed locate the “seven” Cubans for whom he was searching among the Masferrer group.
The scheme progressed. Masferrer told Rose he had ten aides ready to go to Biafra. Rose proposed an Austin, Texas, mail drop. But he was nervous: It was a violation of federal law to recruit personnel for foreign service. He asked Masferrer to submit photographs of the volunteers. When Masferrer hesitated, the Garrison volunteer who was to take the photographs, Gary Sanders, urged Rose to ask other groups for pilots and troop instructors to give Masferrer some competition.
“My next assignment is to fly arms into a little revolution in Biafra,” Rose lied to his old friend Martin Xavier Casey, a veteran of Masferrer’s aborted Haitian expedition. Casey, too, believed that the “CIA was probably involved” in the assassination. All the while, Rose feared that Masferrer might talk to Lawrence Howard and learn Rose’s real identity.
Interviews with the CIA-sponsored Cubans willing to sign on for Biafra were set up at the Howard Johnson’s in Coral Gables where Rose was registered as “Winston Smith” of Los Angeles. Sanders would take the photographs and ship them to Garrison at a mail drop on Chef Menteur Highway. A “short, skinny guy” named Ralph Schlafter (“Skinny Ralph”) arrived. Skinny Ralph was the #2 man of the tramps arrested at Dealey Plaza, CIA photographer Tom Dunkin told Rose. He was also one of Hemming’s men at No Name Key. Some thought they had spotted him in November 22nd footage.
Rose and Sanders remained in Miami for six days, March 28th to April 2nd, 1968, interviewing Cubans. According to Rose, Masferrer himself identified the Cuban with the scar who had been Ferrie’s and Oswald’s companion as one of his own lieutenants. This heavyset man, with a “bull neck,” was now in New York. Rose was ready to fly to New York in pursuit, but nothing came of it, or of Rose’s escapade involving the imaginary expedition to Biafra.
After Rose left Miami, still in search of the “heavy-set thick-necked Latin with a scar over one eyebrow and pock-marks on his face,” Garrison wrote to Gerstein, requesting any records of the “Masferrer group,” especially of his “lieutenants.” This is “extremely important,” Garrison wrote, requesting that Gerstein “assign this to someone who follows through.”
WITNESSES AND ROUSTABOUTS
16
Apparently I am not very highly regarded by the Mafia if they won’t even pick up my phone bill.
—Jim Garrison
W ITH WALTER SHERIDAN TEMPORARILY at bay, J. Edgar Hoover devised a new scheme to discredit Jim Garrison. His instrument would be a reporter named Sandy Smith, writing for Life magazine. “The Director likes to do things for Sandy,” Richard Billings was told when he heard about Life’s projected series on organized crime. Despite its seeming national scope—the Mafia rampant in America—the raison d’être of the two Life articles, running on September 1 and 8, 1967, was to impute Mafia connections to Jim Garrison.
Garrison readily agreed to an interview with Sandy Smith, who arrived in the company of Billings. Smith bided his time as Garrison outlined the achievements of his office. Then Smith came to the point: “Let’s talk about Marcello for a moment.” Garrison admitted that the Sands had picked up his tab during his March 1967 Las Vegas vacation, while he had paid his personal expenses and phone bill. “If I was a friend of the mob, as you seem to insinuate, and I knew the mob controlled the hotel,” Garrison told Smith, “I would have told them to take the bill and shove it.”
When Billings tossed off the name “Frank Timphony” as one of “the top racketeers down here,” Garrison said he had “never heard of him.” Garrison writes in his unpublished manuscript, Coup d’État: “I shook my head and answered that I had never heard of him. The editor shrugged, as if to say, ‘See what I mean?’ He held out his hands. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘You should have had a dossier on him by now.’”
In the presence of Smith and Billings, Garrison telephoned Pershing. In Life’s description of that call, Pershing Gervais replied that Timphony was “one of the biggest bookies in New Orleans.” Garrison’s version was that Gervais had registered no positive response, no recognition of the name.
The local research for the articles was done by David Chandler, with the assistance of Aaron Kohn. Chandler rushed to inform the FBI of the details of Billings’ and Smith’s interview with Garrison. Despite Chandler’s supposed skills as an investigative reporter, the articles do not mention Felix Bonoura, the “chicken man” of Magnolia Broilers. Yet Bonoura was the crime boss who paid Victor Schiro $10,000 in a “campaign contribution” so that he would appoint Joseph I. Giarrusso as superintendent of police, all Bonoura needed to continue unimpeded. Bonoura and Giarrusso were partners in a security company, as the line between police and organized crime blurred. None of this had any connection to Jim Garrison.
Carlos Marcello funded political adversaries, as would later become common practice with American corporations. When John R. Rarick ran against John McKeithen in 1968, a Marcello emissary met with Rarick’s campaign manager, $100,000 in hand. “Big John’s already got his,” Marcello’s man said. Rarick turned him down. None of this had anything to do with Jim Garrison, either.
Chandler wrote only that Garrison was “very friendly” with Sammy Marcello and Joseph Marcello, and that Garrison’s Las Vegas expenses were paid for by a Mario Marino, once a Marcello floor boss at the Flamingo Club. The $5,000 credit that was extended to Jim Garrison was investigated by James Phelan, who had to tell Chandler, as he had informed Walter Sheridan, that “no such credit had been established for Carlos Marcello.” Billings admits there was never any proof Garrison either used the credit or came away with any of the $5,000.
Garrison was “friendly with some Marcello henchmen,” the September 8 Life article says vaguely. There were “frequent meetings” with Marcello, although Life does not even claim Garrison was present at any of them. Timphony is said to have done business in New Orleans in a betting establishment. That was all they needed “for me to become Life’s version of ‘The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo,’” Garrison said later.
Sandy Smith had described telephone calls from Carlos Marcello to McKeithen aide Aubrey Young, who had indeed worked as a bartender at a Marcello-owned establishment. Suspicious of how Smith could have obtained those records, Billings requested that he reveal his source. Smith refused. Billings then dialed FBI headquarters in Washington and asked to speak to Sandy Smith.
“He’s not in today,” the woman said. Like Sheridan, masquerading as a journalist, Smith was a full-fledged employee of the FBI whose assignment was to discredit Jim Garrison by charging him with mob complicity. Smith was particularly close to Deke, who called Smith “a good friend of the Chicago office.”
WDSU television reported that “an associate of Cosa Nostra kingpin Carlos Marcello signed the tab for Jim Garrison,” something the Life articles never dared claim. Jim Garrison attempted to defend himself: “I’ve never used a dollar of gambling credit anywhere in the world in my life because I don’t gamble,” he said, offering to resign.
McKeithen was asked why he thought Life had focused its stories on Louisiana. “I still think it has something to do with Sheridan being indicted down here,” he said. Bob Hamm, on KATC-TV in Lafayette, quoting an FBI report titled “Garrison and the Mafia,” stated that Garrison had placed organized crime along with anti-Castroites as participating in the assassination. Hamm referred to “FNU (first name unknown) Santanna [sic]” as having been in Dealey Plaza.
At a meeting with Life editors in New York, McKeithen blinked and admitted there was evidence of organized crime in Louisiana. When he appointed Chandler to be a “Special Investigator,” Garrison was furious. “He’s got a wonderful face,” he said of McKeithen. “He’s got the face of a wagon train leader traversing the continent, but when he got back to New Orleans, this BLOB stepped off the plane.” Garrison demanded that Chandler present what evidence he had before a grand jury.
Chandler, like Sheridan, evaded the grand jury by seeking relief in the federal courts. He told the LSU student newspaper that Garrison was “helping the Mafia,” and alluded to bribery, so that even Tom Bethell had to demur: “No one said anything about bribery, only gambling.” Chandler then threatened McKeithen that unless he stopped supporting Garrison, they would do to him what they had done to Garrison. “I can’t support you openly now,” McKeithen told Garrison.
“We had Huey Long and we called him ‘the Kingfish.’ We’re going to call you ‘the Crawfish,’” Garrison replied. Garrison was so angry that when McKeithen came to testify before the Orleans Parish grand jury, Garrison let him wait for an hour in the hall. “Aren’t you going to ask him to come inside?” Sharon Herkes asked.
“Let him sit out there like everyone else,” Garrison said.
Pershing testified before the grand jury. “If there were any [organized crime] here, I think I would know about it,” Pershing said. Gordon Novel joined this latest campaign to discredit Jim Garrison by informing to the FBI of an old May 1963 charge: that Marcello had supposedly offered Pershing $3,000 a week so that Garrison would not appeal a slot machine case Marcello had already lost. In June 1962, as Garrison was taking office, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that electronic devices constituted slot machines; Jim Garrison had no say in the matter either way. The whole “bribe” story had been another “Gervais,” a public relations ploy. Pershing admitted he had lied. “I said it was good public relations to always tell the truth,” an irritated Garrison told him.
On the day before Christmas 1967, Garrison wrote a memo for his archives, “Organized Crime Aspects of the Assassination.” There had been indications of organized crime in Ruby’s involvement, he wrote, but “they had never quite flowered into any kind of evidence.” (Later he would call Ruby “a member of the Mafia branch of the Agency.”) Given that the mob had “a special interest in Cuba,” there was “some involvement of individuals who seem to have organized crime connections.”
He had considered that Ferrie worked for Marcello’s lawyer. But it was “beyond the bounds of reason” to suppose that the mob could “accomplish the long-range preliminary nurturing of a scapegoat, thereafter break through the defense net protecting the president, and then follow this up by having the government help cover it up for you.” It did not make sense that the FBI would help conceal “assassination participation by representatives of the Genovese, Gambino, Bonanno, Columbo and Luchese families.” His own involvements, he was to say, were “the same connections with organized crime as Mother Theresa and Pope Paul.”
In April 1968, Garrison considered suing Life, which stood ready with G. Robert Blakey—like Novel, ubiquitous in his efforts to undermine Jim Garrison—on its legal team. He contacted Donald V. Organ, who had represented him against the judges, producing his Las Vegas records. “Apparently I am not very highly regarded by the Mafia if they won’t even pick up my phone bill,” Garrison wrote Organ. He supported Life’s First Amendment rights, but these stories represented “a form of reality for millions of people.” Did he have a case for malice, a “specific exception” to New York Times v. Sullivan? Garrison wanted to know. Organ discouraged him. He would be a public figure suing a news establishment with no way really to prove malice, Organ thought.
“I made it up,” Chandler revealed later of his charge that Garrison was connected to organized crime. “It was like throwing a pebble into a pool. . . .”
Discouraged by his experience with Life, Garrison met with editors of Look magazine, whose managing editor, William Attwood, had been Kennedy’s emissary with Castro. Garrison outlined his investigation through lunch, dinner and into the night. According to Associate Editor Chandler Broussard, Attwood was so impressed that he telephoned Bobby Kennedy at one in the morning. Bobby’s reply was, reportedly, “We know a good deal of this.” Press Secretary Pierre Salinger, according to Richard Billings, attributes to Bobby a similar statement: “We know who the bastards are and we’re going to get them.” Simultaneous contradictory policies were, of course, the modus operandi of the Kennedys. The fact remains that Bobby Kennedy did everything he could to stop Jim Garrison as
he waited for the presidency that would never come.
At four that morning, Attwood suffered a heart attack. Broussard was soon fired. No positive story was ever to appear in Look.
Yet another witness made his way to Tulane and Broad. Dago Garner’s file jacket reads “Jack Armstrong,” reflecting Jim Garrison’s sardonic irony. Darrell Wayne Garner was a pimp and an alcoholic, a car thief and gun runner, with thirty arrests to his credit between 1957 and 1964. In Dallas, Garner was a Ruby hanger-on. He decided to come forward when his girlfriend, Ruby dancer Nancy Mooney, in jail for disturbing the peace, died by hanging herself with her toreador pants.
Fearing for his life and seeing accidents befall people he knew, including members of his own car-jacking gang, Garner went to his lawyer, who sent him to Hugh Aynesworth. In New Orleans, Aynesworth attempted to prevent Garner from talking to Jim Garrison. “You better get out of New Orleans because Jim Garrison will hang you by your balls,” he said. Ignoring Aynesworth, Garner found a lawyer named Jim McPherson. Irvin Dymond’s office was right down the hall. McPherson sent Garner to Jim Garrison instead.
On July 18, 1967, Garner told Garrison he had known Officer Tippit, as a part-time gun runner. He knew Warren Reynolds, a witness to the Tippit murder, who was killed two days after talking to the FBI. Shown a photograph of Clay Shaw, Garner was cautious. He had seen a man resembling Shaw with Jack Ruby. Shown a photograph of Emilio Santana, he had no doubt that this was the man who shot Warren Reynolds. “This guy was with Jack Ruby a lot,” Garner said. He had heard Reynolds say the name “Shaw” many times. Garner also identified Santana’s friend Miguel Torres. He knew, too, that instead of driving toward the assassination scene when John F. Kennedy was shot, Tippit had driven away from it. Hugh Aynesworth had told him, Garner added, that he was representing Clay Shaw.
