Tommy Baumler would be interviewed by Harold Weisberg for Garrison. But later on, in 1981, he was interviewed by controversial attorney Bernard Fensterwald. At that time he told him that Banister and Shaw were quite close and that “Clay Shaw, Banister, and Guy Johnson made up the intelligence apparatus in New Orleans.”173 Johnson was a former Naval officer in World War II. By 1950 he had a Top Secret clearance granted by the Office of Naval Intelligence while working for the Chief of Naval Operations.174 He was part of the effort to get Sergio Arcacha Smith flown out of Castro’s Cuba and into New Orleans. And he was originally part of Shaw’s defense team. Further certifying a Banister-Shaw nexus is information given by local New Orleans reporter Jack Dempsey to Bill Davy and the author. Dempsey had a deceased acquaintance named Jules Fontana, a lawyer from Metaire. Fontana knew Shaw and had seen Banister in Shaw’s office more than once.175
Another witness who clearly connected Shaw and Banister was Joe Newbrough. Newbrough was one of the men in the office who Banister would use to do any of the private eye work that popped in. He told author William Davy that he recalled an instance with Ferrie being in Banister’s office. Banister then called out to Newbrough and asked him to get Clay Shaw on the phone for him. So he called the Trade Mart and got through to Shaw. When he did, Banister told him to give the phone to Ferrie.176
The Search for Clay Bertrand
Garrison also became convinced that Clay Shaw was the mysterious Clay Bertrand who had first sent some young homosexual clients to Dean Andrews, and then called him to go to Dallas to defend Oswald. In his book, Garrison notes a number of witnesses in the French Quarter who stepped forward on this, but only after he himself stopped going on missions there seeking confirmation on the issue.177 Once Garrison left it up to his lower profile staffers, they began to get results. The first place that gave them a positive ID on Shaw as Bertrand was a bartender at Cosimo’s. Which makes sense since, in his Warren Commission testimony, Andrews described this as a “freaky little joint,” which was the last place at which he saw Bertrand.178 When pressed, the bartender there said that Bertrand was Shaw and he had seen him on local TV with some important people. Garrison then got two more confirmations on this in French Quarter bars. Finally, a man named William Morris signed an affidavit saying he knew Shaw as Clay Bertrand. And the underlying message was that this was common knowledge.179
Which it was. Something Garrison does not reveal in his book is a specific reason his staff did not want him to go into the Quarter with them in search of Bertrand. As detailed in the previous chapter, Garrison had done irreparable damage to the tourist business in New Orleans and forced many bar owners out of business during his raids on the B girl drinking rackets. Therefore, out of spite, many of these people who worked there did not want to cooperate with him. When Joan Mellen did the research on her biography of Garrison, she found two witnesses, Ricky Planche and Barbara Bennett, who admitted this to her. Namely, that they knew Shaw was Bertrand, but they would not tell Garrison because of the economic damage he had inflicted on the French Quarter.180 The idea that this knowledge was widespread is also confirmed by a source from outside the area. When Edgar Tatro went down to New Orleans to attend the Shaw trial, he was a twenty-two-year-old first-year English teacher. He went out one night in the Quarter. Since Tatro was from Boston and spoke with a distinctive Boston accent, a native New Orleans resident asked him what he was in town for. He said he was there for the Clay Shaw trial. The man started to giggle. Tatro asked: What was so funny? The man replied, “Look, everyone down here knows that Shaw is Bertrand. But that poor devil Garrison can’t prove it to save his soul.”181
There were two other instances of Shaw using the Bertrand alias that were different in kind. In one case he wrote it himself, and in the other, he spoke it to a police officer. Since Shaw did much receiving of guests for his trade missions, he knew a place called the VIP room at the Moisant Airport. This was a lounge for customers who used Eastern Air Lines frequently. When Garrison’s office heard that a customer had signed the name “Clay Bertrand” on the register, the DA sent his investigators there to locate and photograph the book—it was dated December 14, 1966—and Garrison later subpoenaed it for Shaw’s trial. The VIP hostess, one Jessie Parker, also recalled a man who fit Shaw’s description as being the one who signed as Bertrand.182 Like many of Garrison’s witnesses, Parker came under intense pressure to recant. This went as far as threats of losing custody of her little son. To her credit, she did not.183
When Shaw was booked after being arrested, the booking officer was a fifteen-year veteran of the force named Aloysius Habighorst. When the officer routinely asked if Shaw had ever used an alias Shaw, apparently disheveled, replied with the words “Clay Bertrand.” Habighorst, without looking at any other documents, typed this on the booking card, which Shaw then signed. The alias also appeared on the arrest record.184 As we shall see, this episode and this evidence ended up being a controversial turning point at Shaw’s trial.
The reason Shaw would pick this particular name is very likely because it derives from Pope Clement V, whose surname was Bertrand D’Agout. (It would also explain why in some instances, he used the first name Clem.) This pope had sheltered homosexuals in the fourteenth century. His legacy lived on in the cloistered homosexual community. So much so that there developed a Clement Bertrand Society which helped homosexuals with legal problems. That Shaw/Bertrand sent the gay Latins to Dean Andrews suggests Shaw was aware of this bit of history.185
Jack Ruby and the Mob
Contrary to popular belief, Garrison never actually ruled out the Mafia as a suspect in the assassination. In fact, he distributed a summary of organized crime leads to his staff after talking to crime writer Ed Reid. In the summary Garrison wrote:
It cannot be denied, for example, that there is evidence which appears to indicate some involvement of individuals who seem to have organized crime connections. Furthermore, we cannot arbitrarily assume that, even if the militant right wing factor continues to develop effectively, involvement of organized crime elements may not be an additional factor as a product of joint interest.186
So the idea that Garrison never entertained any kind of Mafia involvement is one of the many canards passed around from book to book by authors who were all too eager to criticize the DA without even looking at his files. In that same year of 1967, there was a story in Newsday which stated that “Garrison is trying to learn whether the Cosa Nostra and anti-Castro Cubans may have been linked by mob-controlled gambling operations in pre-Castro Cuba … Garrison is trying to determine if there is a thread which binds the Cosa Nostra, anti-Castro groups, the late Dave Ferrie, Oswald, and Jack Ruby.”187 During his deposition for his unsuccessful libel suit against Garrison, Gordon Novel revealed that at one time Garrison was considering involvement by local don Carlos Marcello in the assassination.188 The FBI also picked up information that Garrison was examining the Mafia angle when, in June of 1967, a Bureau source said that “Garrison believed that organized crime, specifically, ‘La Cosa Nostra’ is responsible along with other anti-Castroites for the assassination.”189
In fact, in no less than Harper’s Weekly of September 6, 1976, Garrison expounded on this concept in an interview with Dick Russell. He started off by saying, “It’s really not all that complicated. Elements of the CIA utilizing anti-Castro adventurers and elements of the Lanksy Mob. It all revolved around Cuba, getting Cuba back.” As Russell commented, very few people back in 1967 had knowledge of the long association between the CIA and the Mafia. Garrison discovered this by his own digging. But Garrison always felt that the CIA was the lead locomotive driving the train ahead of the Cubans and the organized crime elements. Clearly, through the work done on Rose Cheramie, Garrison understood that Jack Ruby knew Oswald. Further, that Ruby was also likely involved in a drug and prostitution chain stretching from Miami to Dallas. And this episode in and of itself implied a nexus of CIA associated Cuban exiles, with Mafia contraband. It also conta
ins one other element of protection that Garrison was likely unawares. As author Douglas Valentine has noted, the CIA had infiltrated some offices of the Customs Department in order to protect anti-Castro drug smuggling groups in the USA. This is very likely because, as we have seen, Kennedy was cutting off the stipends for these groups. Valentine specifically mentions as being compromised the Galveston and Houston Customs offices. This would make the route followed by Cheramie, Santana, and Arcacha Smith quite informed and convenient.190 Another very interesting record which indicated a Ruby-Oswald connection happened to be lost. On a job application form, Oswald listed the name Jack Ruby as one of three references.191 We know this because the information was given to an FBI agent by a mutual acquaintance who Garrison had shown this document to. This document does not exist today. And the author would be willing to wager that once the FBI found out about it, they alerted one of their plants in Garrison’s office, through the likes of an intelligence asset like Hugh Aynesworth, to steal it. (This large aspect of any study of the Shaw prosecution—the deliberate destruction of the DA’s case—will be addressed in the next two chapters.)
In Garrison’s Playboy interview, he stated that Ruby was clearly involved in these kinds of anti-Castro exile activities through the Agency. But Garrison made a clear distinction in his discussion of Ruby and the Agency. He did not mean at all to say that Ruby was a CIA agent. In other words, he was not answering to a formal chain of command at Langley. He would do certain jobs under their auspices. In this interview, Garrison was saying that, in addition to the involvement with the drugs and prostitution ring noted above, Ruby was also smuggling arms for Cuban exile groups. This is an angle that has positively mushroomed in the Kennedy literature since Garrison first mentioned it in 1967. But what is remarkable today is that through the declassification process we now know that the Warren Commission was thinking the same thing. Warren Commission attorneys Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin ran the investigation of Ruby for the Commission. They wrote up an investigative plan in memorandum form in March of 1964. The memo reads in part, “The most promising links between Jack Ruby and the assassination of President Kennedy are established through underworld figures and anti-Castro Cubans and extreme right-wing Americans.”192 This was a prescient insight for that time. For there was evidence adduced early that Ruby, in addition to being involved with the Dallas Police, was also involved with this underworld aspect of extremist figures related to Cuba. Hubert and Griffin did not give up. Two months later they wrote another memo on the subject: “We believe that a reasonable possibility exists that Ruby has maintained a close interest in Cuban affairs to the extent necessary to participate in gun sales and smuggling …” This was clearly true and the Warren Commission had evidence of this in the memorable testimony of Nancy Perrin Rich.193 But there was much more of it to be found in the future since it was laying around waiting to be discovered. And, in fact, Hubert and Griffin alluded to this next in their memo: “Neither Oswald’s Cuban interests in Dallas nor Ruby’s Cuban activities have been adequately explored …” There was an intriguing lead that the authors may be referring to here concerning Oswald and Cubans in Dallas. Manuel Rodriguez Orcarberro was a man who Garrison was very interested in. In November of 1963, he was reportedly the head of the Dallas enclave of Alpha 66, the Cuban exile terrorist group that intrigued Garrison the most.194 After Kennedy’s death, Deputy Sherriff Buddy Walthers learned from one of his informants that a group of Cubans had been meeting at a safe house at 3128 Harlendale on each weekend for months. About one week before the murder of JFK, the Cubans deserted that house. Finally, his information was that Oswald had been seen at this house.195 The obvious question for Hubert and Griffin was this: Why would a communist be in the same safe house with some anti-Castro Cuban exiles shortly before Kennedy was to be killed?
The second Hubert-Griffin memorandum concludes with: “We believe the possibility exists, based on evidence already available, that Ruby was involved in illegal dealings with Cuban elements that might have had contact with Oswald. The existence of such dealings can only be surmised since the present investigation has not focused on that area.” The authors then said that these questions should not be left “hanging in the air.” Clearly, they were overruled since these areas were left hanging. But the point to be made is that even some of the investigators for the Commission understood that the most promising trail to a connection between Ruby and Oswald was through their common ties in the underworld surrounding Cuban-American relations. And, let us not forget, the CIA contact officer with Alpha 66 was David Phillips. Again, it appears that Garrison was one step away from the next level of the plot.
After reading her affidavit in the Warren Commission volumes, Jim Garrison had personally interviewed Julia Ann Mercer.196 Mercer said she had been traveling west on Elm when she felt traffic being slowed by a stalled pick up truck. The truck was a Ford and it contained “what appeared to be tool boxes” in the rear. A man went to the rear of the truck and took out what appeared to Mercer to be a gun case. She continued to watch him as he then carried it up the grass to the top of the grassy hill. While still in traffic, she observed three policemen “standing talking near a motorcycle on the bridge just west of me.” In an important difference with her November 22 affidavit, Mercer told Garrison that unlike what the affidavit implied, she got a good look at the man in the driver’s seat. She also told the DA that the signature on the affidavit was not hers.197 But further, when the FBI interviewed her the following day, they showed her a series of photos. She picked out the driver of the truck as Jack Ruby. When one of the agents turned the photo over, she saw the name of Jack Ruby on the back of the picture.198 In other words, if this is accurate, Ruby should have been brought in for questioning on that day. The day before he shot Oswald. But also, this provided Garrison the rationale for why Ruby did what he did on the 24th in the basement of the Dallas jail. Garrison now theorized that Ruby must have been asked to do this job since he had such close ties to the Dallas Police. But further, if he hesitated, he would be reminded that he had played an earlier role, and if he refused, that earlier role could easily be revealed.199 Garrison also speculated on the role of Eugene Hale Brading aka Jim Braden. Braden was a lower level courier for the Mafia, and he happened to be in Dallas on both the day before and day of the assassination, in close proximity to Ruby. Braden had a long criminal record for things like burglary, embezzlement, and illegal bookmaking. He was arrested and detained for acting suspiciously in Dealey Plaza after the assassination. He told the authorities he was there on oil business and he had ducked inside a building to make a phone call. He was released without being charged. Garrison thought that Braden was there as a diversion, that is to create a false sponsor: that is the Mob had actually been in charge.200
Did Ferrie and Shaw Plan a Murder?
As Garrison noted in his Playboy interview, one of the odd things that fascinated Ferrie was the ejection angle for cartridges from rifles. In a book on firearms found in his apartment was a section dealing with the distance and direction a shell travels after being ejected. In the margin Ferrie had scribbled the figures 50 degrees and 11 feet. In the newly declassified files produced by the Assassination Records Review Board, this detail gains a bit more prominence. Like many DA’s, Garrison employed both street informants and undercover agents. In the Kennedy case, two he used on Ferrie were Max Gonzalez and Jimmy Johnson. Johnson was a parole violator in a vulnerable position who Garrison and his Chief Investigator Lou Ivon used on Ferrie. To the author’s knowledge, not until the ARRB declassification process did anyone reveal Johnson’s special status in Garrison’s office. Johnson told Garrison that Ferrie kept a manila file folder he called “The Bomb.” He bragged that it would tear the city apart if it ever became known. Johnson one day had access to Ferrie’s files and found a notebook marked “Files, 1963.” This included a piece of loose-leaf paper with a diagram on it. The diagram seemed to be a plan for some kind of assassination attempt. Johnson desc
ribed it as a figure of a man with what looked like a bullet hole in the rear of his skull and one in his right shoulder. There was an accompanying diagram from the side with arrows pointing coming from the back and exiting the throat. There were two lines, one going up to a building, and one coming down from the top to form a triangle. The line going up had a marking of 60 feet high, the line coming down was marked 2,500 feet long. At the bottom of the diagram was an airplane. The line illustrated the plane coming down over the building. This would appear to be a diagram for a Castro plot, since it would be much too dangerous to use a plane in the USA for an assassination plot.201
To those eager to dismiss such illustrated evidence, there was another witness to Ferrie’s diagrams of a long range assassination plot. Clara Gay was an antiques dealer in New Orleans. She was a friend of conservative congressman Edward Hebert, a vehement opponent of Garrison and his assassination probe. G. Wray Gill was Clara’s lawyer. She was in Gill’s office on November 26, right after Ferrie had been interviewed by both Garrison and the FBI. Clara had known Ferrie through Gill’s office, and they had a friendship which had since cooled. When she heard about Ferrie being questioned by Garrison’s office, she called up Gill and noted the tumult on the other end of the phone. One secretary said words to the effect that Mr. Gill knew nothing about this. She then went over to his office. 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, reminiscient 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 two 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.202 It would appear that Ferrie’s illustrations seemed to follow the thought line of others in the Cuban exile/CIA associated community: If we cannot take out Castro, let us take out Kennedy.
Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case Page 32
