Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case

by DiEugenio, James

  But there is even more proof that Banister, Arcacha Smith, and Ferrie were involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion. In his deposition, Novel states that when he was in Banister’s office there was always ordnance of some type there, and he specifically named “Daisy Cutters,” fuses for aerial bombs.31 Also, Arcacha Smith sent him, in a clandestine manner, looking for ingredients to conduct chemical warfare. Further, Novel said that Arcacha Smith was always in contact with Miami. And he was always talking about the “new government” that would be constructed in Cuba after Castro was ousted. In fact, the famous Houma raid—the trip to obtain heavy explosives from a bunker on the giant French Schlumberger Company lot in Houma, Louisiana—was for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Banister arranged for a key to the bunker to be mailed to Novel. Later, Novel met with Arcacha Smith and Ferrie at a hotel. Arcacha Smith told Novel to go to Ferrie’s in a couple of days. When Novel arrived at Ferrie’s, he saw a huge map of Cuba on the wall, more incendiary fuses, and white mice. Novel showed Ferrie the key, and Ferrie said to return in a couple of nights dressed in black. The night Novel returned, about eight of them, including friends of Ferrie’s like Layton Martens, and drove a laundry truck due east to Houma. They were outfitted with state-of-the-art walkie-talkies, which Novel said were so powerful they had to be of government issue.32 When they got to the bunker, it was full of explosives like grenades, mortar shells, bazooka shells, and .30 caliber machine gun shells. The container crates were marked “Interarmco,” an arms company with proven ties to the CIA. The Agency had lent these explosive devices to Schlumberger since that company had backed the OAS rebels versus Charles de Gaulle during the Algerian struggle, which was now coming to a close.33 Jim Garrison discovered these arms were transferred to both Ferrie’s apartment and Banister’s office for later use in the Bay of Pigs invasion. And there was testimony that Banister’s office contained dozens of crates of grenades, land mines, and “unique little missiles” in April of 1961.34 Some of the ordnance might have been also stored in rented warehouses. For Banister also asked Novel to find him large empty buildings. Retroactively, Novel became sure about their involvement in the Bay of Pigs. Because the day after the invasion failed, Arcacha Smith called on him to perform another mission: he asked him to find some blood.35

  Banister was also associated with another outlet to the OAS rebel group, local attorney Maurice Gatlin. Gatlin was an attorney who, from the 1940s, was an obsessive anti-Communist. In fact, he appeared to know about the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala a year before it happened. He even offered to brief Assistant Secretary of State John M. Cabot about it.36 Gatlin had helped organize a group of communist “pushback” organizations throughout the world. The one in New Orleans was called the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean. Banister was a member of the group. And after Arbenz was overthrown, Banister employee Allen Campbell told the author that both Ferrie and Banister were instrumental in training the new regime’s army and security forces.37 In fact, Banister had sent Campbell to Guatemala under the cover of conducting an air show to check on their proficiency. And like Banister—with Allen and his brother Dan Campbell—Gatlin was active in recruiting young men to become informants on the left. One of Gatlin’s recruits was Tulane student William Martin, a man who Banister also knew, and who will figure in our story later.38 Gatlin also likely knew Howard Hunt since he attended an anti-Communist conference in Guatemala in 1958 arranged by him.39 On October 5, 1960, Gatlin wrote a letter to the New Orleans Times Picayune in which he praised Banister for the seizure of a supply of Jeeps being sent into Cuba. Gatlin liked to boast about his undercover work for the CIA. He once stated to a friend that he was going to Paris to give a large amount of money to the OAS to finance an assassination attempt against de Gaulle.40

  Banister’s intelligence work for Sergio Arcacha Smith and the CRC also included the tracking of Castro loyalists in the New Orleans area. Somehow Arcacha had gotten hold of what he called a “code book” from the local Cuban consulate before the USA had broken relations with Castro. He gave it to Banister in hopes that one of his intelligence agency contacts could decipher it.41 He had also prepared a list of Cuban students that he thought were loyal to Castro who attended colleges in the New Orleans area. The list went to Banister and Gatlin to track in case they were counterintelligence agents for the revolutionary regime.42 Arcacha understood how important Banister was in this regard, since Banister was involved in both the exfiltration and infiltration of anti-Castro Cubans into and out of the island.43 This was done because, outside of Miami, New Orleans had the highest number of Cuban refugees in the USA.

  This leads us to Banister’s legendary filing system, which he boasted about as being the best and most extensive in the state. One of the things that helped Jim Garrison find out what Banister was really doing in New Orleans in the late fifties and early sixties, and how Oswald was actually associated with him, was the DA’s discovery of an index to this system. The topics were things like Ammunition and Arms, Anti-Soviet Underground, Civil Rights Program of JFK, and Dismantling of Ballistic Missile System.44 But the location of at least some of the actual files would also have revealed that Banister was part of a local intelligence network. For in the eighties, New Orleans advertising representative Ed Haslam was asked to do some work for a new radio program that seemed to be sprouting up in support of the Reagan administration’s war against the Contras in Nicaragua. One of the leaders of this group, which was being supported by the local rightwing financial oligarchy, off-handedly showed him boxes of files that he said had belonged to Banister.45 In the nineties, Haslam ventured down to New Orleans again on a research trip with a correspondent for PBS, which was doing a special about Oswald. Haslam and the correspondent walked into an office for a taped interview about Oswald and his fateful summer of 1963 with Ed Butler, a man who participated in a debate with Oswald that summer. Haslam now recognized Butler as the man who—a decade previous—was starting up the new radio channel and had shown him Banister’s files.46 As we have seen, Butler had worked for the local anti-communist propaganda shop INCA in the sixties. He was also the man who originally referred Novel to Sergio Arcacha Smith.47 From this piece of evidence, plus all we have previously outlined, it is clear that Banister was really not interested in doing private-eye work in New Orleans. He hired men like Oster, and later people like David Lewis and Jack Martin, to perform the occasional gumshoe work which came into the office. And this provided the cover apparatus for him to do the things he was actually interested in at that time, which were an extension of his previous communist surveillance work he had done in New York with his mentor, George Starr. Except that, as we have seen, Banister was now not hampered by being a domestic FBI agent. He was now free to perform actual offensive operations outside the boundaries of the law, knowing that he would be protected since his former colleagues at the FBI were told not to interfere with CIA operations against Cuba.48

  But there would likely not be much to worry about from local FBI agents Warren DeBrueys and Regis Kennedy. Since they both spoke fluent Spanish, these two men were Hoover’s trusted agents on the anti-Castro, Cuban scene in New Orleans. Garrison had learned from an informant that DeBrueys was so involved with Banister, Ferrie, and men like Sergio Arcacha Smith, that he operated out of a special office at the Customs House near Canal Street.49 Regis Kennedy was the FBI representative to the Friends of Democratic Cuba, a peculiar organization we will discuss soon, which appears created by Banister and Sergio Arcacha Smith.50 Orestes Pena told the House Select Committee on Assassinations that he saw Oswald with both DeBrueys and Customs agents leave the restaurant he worked at and go to the Customs House.51 The Bureau felt this information concerning DeBrueys and Oswald was so sensitive that, on the eve of the HSCA being formed, they had Pena’s files destroyed.52 For, as we shall see, there is evidence that Oswald was an informant for the FBI, and his handler was DeBrueys.

  Obviously, Banister was well known to just about every aspect of the intelligence communi
ty in New Orleans. In fact, there is evidence that Banister had heard of Oswald before he even arrived in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. This is the famous Bolton Ford incident, which occurred on January 20, 1961, the day President Kennedy took the oath of office. Two men, one a powerfully built Latino, the other a thin Caucasian man, encountered employees Oscar Deslatte and Fred Sewall at the Bolton Ford lot in New Orleans. They wanted to buy ten Ford pickup trucks for an organization called Friends of Democratic Cuba. (The reader should note, this is about three months before the Bay of Pigs invasion.) The Latin man called himself Joseph Moore, but he said the bid had to be in the name of “Oswald.” The Caucasian man said that Oswald was his name and he was the one with the cash. They both told Deslatte that there should be little profit made on the transaction since it was for a patriotic cause.53 Deslatte then printed the name “Oswald” and Friends of Democratic Cuba on the bid form.54 When Kennedy was assassinated, Deslatte called the FBI, and they came by and picked up the form. This piece of information was included in the FBI documents handed to the Warren Commission. But it was not fully declassfied until many years later as part of a much longer FBI report by DeBrueys. And when it was declassified, the actual order form with Oswald’s name and Friends of Democratic Cuba was not included in the report.55 DeBrueys, who wrote a long summary report on Oswald in which this episode was included, had to have known the significance of the Banister/Oswald connection far in advance of the assassination.

  Obviously, this could not have been the real Oswald since he was in Russia at the time. When Garrison found out about who was involved with Friends of Democratic Cuba, a clue began to emerge about how his name was involved from such a distance. It turns out that the FDC was an organization largely created by Ferrie’s friends and colleagues Sergio Arcacha Smith and Banister. Its ostensible purpose was to raise funds for the anti-Castro cause. But no significant funds were ever raised. Therefore the organization appeared to be some kind of dummy front. Martin McAuliffe was a member. He owned a publicity agency that did work for the CRC. Bill Dalzell, who was a CIA contact and knew Clay Shaw, was also part of it. And as we mentioned, Regis Kennedy was also an FBI representative for the group.56 Garrison had information that the FDC was really an undercover operation done in conjunction with the CIA and FBI to ship equipment and persons in and out of Cuba.57 Considering the incident was three months before the Bay of Pigs, that makes sense. To this day, no one knows for sure why Oswald’s name was used, or how it was obtained. But a distinct possibility is that it likely came from Ferrie. For in 1961, in his letter to Eastern Air Lines requesting paid leave for Ferrie, Arcacha Smith had nothing but effusive praise for the intricate work Ferrie had done with his group of Cuban exiles.58

  After Banister and Arcacha left the Balter Building, they went to 544 Camp Street, sometimes called the Newman Building after its owner Sam Newman. By the time that Banister moved there, his secretary was a woman named Delphine Roberts. Roberts was of a piece with Banister when it came to rightwing politics. On April 16, 1962, the New Orleans Times Picayune carried a story describing a Catholic Church being picketed by three women. One of them was Roberts. The picketing was over the desegregation of Catholic schools. She had met Banister in 1962 when she was protesting from a booth on Canal Street that the American flag was not getting enough respect.59 Off of this meeting, Banister hired her as his secretary. In her interviews with Jim Garrison, the diminutive Roberts was very tight lipped about her experience with Banister. For Banister had sworn her to secrecy in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. And he kept her out of the office until it blew over.60

  Years later, with Banister dead, and with no threat of criminal prosecution, she started to reveal what really went on that summer at 544 Camp Street. She began this process with the HSCA, which suppressed most of her information. But field investigator Bob Buras did two interviews with Roberts in the late summer of 1978. In the first one, Roberts stated that Banister was very angry when he heard that Oswald was arrested with the 544 Camp Street address on his pro-Castro material. And he complained about this to both Sam Newman and building custodian James Arthus. She quoted Banister as saying, “How is it going to look for him to have the same address as me?”61 She also said that Banister definitely had a file on Oswald. (In fact, one police officer who saw a remnant of Banister’s files said they contained basic information on Oswald’s activities in New Orleans.62) But in this first Buras interview she did not admit to seeing Oswald in person at the office.

  The next month, Buras tried again, hoping he could get more information from her. This time, Roberts admitted to Oswald coming into Banister’s office. She also thought she saw Marina there with him once. She told Buras that Oswald had a few private meetings with Banister where she could not hear what was being said. In this interview, she said that Arthus and Newman had let Oswald use a second floor room as his own office. Left unsupervised, this is probably how Oswald carelessly placed the 544 Camp street address on his Corliss Lamont authored pamphlets. And this is why Banister was angry with those two men. Later, investigator Scott Malone found a corroborating witness for Roberts. The aforementioned Mary Brengel told Malone that about two weeks after the assassination, Roberts told her that Oswald had been in Banister’s office.63

  Later on, Roberts reluctantly poured out even more of her story to author Anthony Summers. Summers also interviewed Roberts’ daughter. The daughter said that she used a room at 544 Camp Street for photographic work. She said that she and a friend also saw Oswald at the address: “I knew he had his pamphlets and books and everything in a room along from where we were …. I never saw him talking with Guy Banister, but I know he worked in his office …. I got the impression Oswald was doing something to make people believe he was something he wasn’t. I am sure Guy Banister knew what Oswald was doing.”64

  Like Mary Brengel, Consuela Martin did part-time work for Banister at Camp Street. She was fluent in both Spanish and English, therefore Banister used her as a translator of documents and pamphlets from English to Spanish and vice versa. Martin noted the large amount of Cuban exiles in the building, and also coming in and out of Banister’s office. Martin had a separate office, and she said Oswald came to see her more than once to drop off things to be translated. Since his documents were pro-Castro and Banister hated Fidel, she thought Oswald was trying to locate pro-Castro sympathizers for Banister. This probably relates to the list of students Arcacha Smith had given to Banister. In addition, since her room was right next to Banister’s office, she saw Oswald inside Banister’s more than once.65

  Dan Campbell was one of the young men who Banister used to infiltrate leftist student groups. Dan received 50 dollars per week for his services. Campbell told the author that “Banister was a bagman for the CIA and was running guns to Alpha 66 in Miami.”66 Since Campbell was an expert marksman, one of his other duties for Banister was to assist Cubans in small arms training. He described Banister as a “frighteningly violent person” and the group of men at his office as “the worst kind of fanatics.”67 He recalled one day when he was at Banister’s, a young man came in to use the phone: “I knew he was a Marine from his bearing and speech pattern the minute he walked into 544 Camp Street.” The next time he saw this young man was when his image was on TV and he was accused of being the killer of President Kennedy. Campbell immediately knew something weird was afloat: For how could a working acquaintance of Banister’s be a communist?

  Allen Campbell, like his brother, also worked for Banister. On one of the days Oswald was distributing his literature nearby, Allen recalled Delphine Roberts returning to the office and complaining to Banister about Oswald distributing pro-Castro leaflets on the street. Campbell remembered Banister trying to reassure Roberts by telling her not to worry because, “He’s with us, he’s associated with this office.”68

  Former Banister investigator Vernon Gerdes later worked for attorney Stephen Plotkin. He told Plotkin that he had seen Oswald and Ferrie together with Banister.
Plotkin later told one of Clay Shaw’s lawyers he considered Gerdes a reliable witness.69 Another former Banister gumshoe, Jack Martin, said he was introduced to Oswald by Ferrie in Banister’s office. With Ferrie at the time was Sergio Arcacha Smith. Echoing Delphine Roberts and her daughter, Martin said that Oswald had his own room to work out of at 544 Camp Street. Further echoing Roberts, he said that Arthus knew about Oswald and absconded with his paraphernalia after the assassination.70 Tommy Baumler was another former student who worked for Banister. He joined left wing college groups and reported back to the former G-man. Baumler was another Banister employee who was very reluctant about talking to Jim Garrison. But many years later, after being established as a New Orleans lawyer, he spoke to researcher Bud Fensterwald and told him that there was no doubt that Oswald had worked for Banister. Baumler also revealed how professional Banister’s operation was in regard to this kind of double agent operation. For Baumler added that Banister was able to give out letters of marque—that is, a license to clear one with law enforcement officers—so that “if you are caught as a communist, the letter will clear you of communist leanings.”71

  William Gaudet did work for the CIA for a number of years. He had a virtually rent-free office in Clay Shaw’s International Trade Mart where he published Latin American Report. He told the HSCA that “on one occasion he observed Oswald speaking to Guy Banister on a street corner.”72 Gaudet told Anthony Summers that he also saw Oswald with Ferrie. And that another important person was Sergio Arcacha Smith: “I know he knew Oswald and knows more about the Kennedy affair than he ever admitted.”73 David Lewis, a former investigator for Banister, stated that he once met Oswald in the summer of 1963 in a restaurant housed at the Camp Street building. With Oswald was Arcacha Smith.74 George Higgenbotham was still another of Banister’s young men who infiltrated student organizations as a double agent. When the young infiltrator kidded Banister about sharing an office with people papering the streets with leftist leaflets, Banister snapped, “Cool it, one of them is mine.”75