Blakey did the same thing, except in an inverse sense, with information that pointed in a direction he did not want to follow. He either eliminated it, or abridged it to soften its impact. For instance, in the discussion of Oswald at 544 Camp Street, the Committee briefly discusses Kerry Thornley. These statements are included: “Thornley firmly denied contact with Oswald at 544 Camp Street in New Orleans or at any time since his Marine Corps days. His statements have been corroborated and no evidence has been found to contradict him.”100 As we have seen, this is simply false. And the original New Orleans team knew that. If one can believe it, this report actually uses the Secret Service interview with James Arthus in a way to neutralize the fact that Oswald was at Banister’s office.101 Yet the Committee had information in its files which said that Arthus used to kid Banister about Oswald by laying his FPCC literature on his desk.102 (As we have also seen Arthus wanted to send a dead pigeon to the White House.) This report also quotes the original FBI interview of Sam Newman saying that he denied ever renting space to Oswald, which of course, did not mean Oswald was not at 544 Camp Street. In an interview with the HSCA, Newman denied seeing Oswald at the building.103 But the staffers considered Newman to be an untruthful witness with a lot to hide.104
This report then quotes Delphine Roberts and Jack Martin as saying they had seen Oswald at Banister’s. But it does not quote them fully, and then says more corroboration would be necessary, since, at first, neither disclosed Oswald was at 544 Camp Street. But they both had good reasons for doing that. Martin feared Banister because of the pistol whipping, which is likely why he shifted the focus to Ferrie in his later talks with the DA’s office. And Banister had sworn Roberts to secrecy. He had told her that she should not talk to anyone about Oswald or any of the anti-Castro activities she had seen. Another thing that frightened the woman was that she felt that both Banister and Ferrie had been murdered.105 But before he died, Banister correctly predicted to her that the Warren Report would not tell the truth about what happened.106 For the Oswald scheme to hold, it was important for Roberts to be quiet for, as mentioned previously, she actually saw the second floor room that Oswald used to assemble his pro-Castro literature. And, showing that the HSCA staff was right about Sam Newman’s dissembling, she told Bob Buras that Newman brought these things to Banister’s office to “get rid of them after Oswald left New Orleans.”107 She also said that she thought that Martin was actually trying to get at Banister’s Oswald file on the day of the assassination. And this is why Banister erupted at him.108 Like others who worked for Banister, she said he had frequent visits by men from the CIA and FBI. She said something else that was fascinating: Ferrie had shown her and Banister photos of Shaw in full drag. Banister then took the photos from him and placed them in the file he had on Shaw.109 One last point of interest: She had seen Regis Kennedy in Banister’s office. As had former Banister partner Joe Oster.110
One can see why Blakey would not want to reveal the full contents of this interview. So he kept it classified for over fifteen years. But as far as not having enough corroboration for a Banister/Oswald relationship, in the HSCA Report itself, CIA agent William Gaudet states that he had seen Banister speaking to Oswald on a street corner.111 Later, in an interview with Tony Summers, Gaudet stated that “I did see Oswald discussing various things with Banister at this time and I think Banister knew a whole lot of what was going on.”112 In addition we have seen others like Dan Campbell who also place Oswald inside Banister’s office. For Blakey to say there was not enough corroboration for this is simply disingenuous. As we have seen, there was plentiful corroboration for it.113
According to New Orleans investigators Delsa and Buras, Blakey placed severe restrictions on the re-investigation of the Clinton-Jackson incident. They were only allowed to speak to the witnesses already interviewed by Garrison’s team. Buras and Delsa were not allowed to go to the area together. And they were not given the previous witness statements for comparison purposes. When Patricia Orr, a favorite of Blakey, arrived in town, she had the list of witnesses Buras was supposed to interview. And it was Orr who made the journey north with Buras, not Delsa or Blackmer.114
Eventually, even this ended up being too much for Blakey. Since he and his newly hired colleague Dick Billings, had already been part of the anti-Garrison crusade for Life, they were not going to risk being part of any developments that showed they had been wrong. When Delsa, Buras, and Blackmer found a New Orleans witness who said he knew something about a New Orleans based conspiracy along the lines outlined by the DA, they decided to polygraph him using their own money. When the session was over, the technician said that he had passed the test.115 When word of this got back to Washington, Blakey, Billings, and Deputy Counsel Gary Cornwell decided the New Orleans team was going to be put out to pasture. Delsa and Buras were placed on informal suspension. Blackmer was shipped out to other areas. According to researcher Wallace Milam, Blackmer ended up working on aspects of the medical evidence.116 And in fact, according to writers who have tried to contact him, Blackmer will not talk about his HSCA experience today.117 Young people, like Orr, were now placed in New Orleans from Washington, people that Blakey could control. Amazingly, Blakey even assigned investigators from the Martin Luther King side of the HSCA to interview witnesses in New Orleans.118
This was really all part of a plan. For when Blakey first replaced Sprague in the late summer of 1977, he called in some of the veteran Kennedy researchers who had been working with Tanenbaum and Sprague. He told them, “You guys are thinking too big. You’ve got to get your conspiracy smaller.” When asked how small it should be, the new Chief Counsel said, “Five or six people.”119 By severely curtailing the New Orleans investigation, by focusing an incredible amount of work and effort on Oswald’s gossamer thin ties to the mob, and by never calling in Ruth or Michael Paine for a deposition, Blakey’s team managed to achieve this small conspiracy.120
The other way they achieved this was by accepting the quite dubious ballistics evidence at the so-called “Oswald sniper’s nest” on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building. Namely the Warren Commission’s three shells at the sixth floor window.121 Work by authors Allan Eaglesham and Michael Kurtz has shown this three shell scenario to be filled with the gravest doubt. Eaglesham interviewed WFAA-TV newsreel cameraman Tom Alyea, perhaps the first non-police witness on the sixth floor.122 According to Alyea, who was there to photograph the scene, the boxes in the so-called “sniper’s nest” were not arranged in the Dallas Police “three sided shield” manner as shown in the Warren Commission.123 It was more of an L shaped configuration. But even worse, the Dallas Police rearranged the configuration of the three shells found there. According to Alyea, when they were first discovered, the three shells were lying within the diameter of a hand towel, a distance of no more than two feet. The shells were then picked up by Captain Will Fritz and placed in his pocket. The circumstantial evidence indicates that either Fritz, or police photographer Robert L. Studebaker, then rearranged the shells in a much more dispersed pattern for the photos included in the Warren Commission.124 A man experienced with weapons, as Fritz was, would know that the Mannlicher Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor would simply not eject shells in that orderly a pattern. When FBI technician Robert Frazier tested this manual bolt action rifle for an ejection pattern, he found that the shells first landed in a 47 inch circle, at right angles to the ejection port. The distance they flew in the air was 80 inches. But once they bounced off the floor they flew anywhere from 8 inches to 15 feet.125 As Fritz likely anticipated, the idea that they would all be neatly arranged near each other was not borne out by the FBI’s experiments. And further, one of the shells, labeled Commission Exhibit CE 543, was almost certainly not fired that day. Because it “lacks the characteristic indentation on the side made by the firing chamber of Oswald’s rifle.” One forensic pathologist has stated that CE 543 was probably “dry loaded.” This is revealed through the deeper and more concave indent
ation made at its base when being struck by the firing pin. Only empty shells show that characteristic.126
Ignoring all these problems with this warmed over evidence, Blakey then strongly relied upon the Neutron Activation Analysis testing of Vincent Guinn to state that the Magic Bullet, Commission Exhibit 399, actually inflicted all the damage to Governor Connally and President Kennedy.127 This test, and Guinn’s qualifications to conduct it, have since been shown to be without foundation. Two peer-reviewed studies by two teams of scientists, each made up of a metallurgist and statistician, have invalidated the NAA test to the point where the FBI will not use it anymore in court.128 Blakey’s other method of endorsing the Magic Bullet, the backward tracing of the bullet’s trajectory by NASA scientist Thomas Canning has also been shown to be nothing more than “junk science.”129 But this shows how determined Blakey was to go with the Single Bullet Theory. Which is what he told Andy Purdy behind closed doors once Tanenbaum and Lewis were gone and he was in control.130 This then was step number one in shrinking the conspiracy.
Ken Brooten was an attorney for the HSCA while Sprague was in command. He resigned in March of 1977. He wrote to Harold Weisberg that the committee “had compromised itself to such an extent that their final product has already been discredited. I simply refused to compromise my personal and professional integrity for a group of politicians and accordingly have returned to the practice of law here in Florida.”131 As Buras later wrote, the “HSCA report did not settle anything.” He then added that it “did not get the autopsy and crime scene straightened out and it accepted the magic bullet theory.”132 Tanenbaum came to believe that the House of Representatives was not the place to find out who killed President Kennedy.133 It was not, in any sense, the place to conduct a homicide investigation. And that is what the Kennedy assassination is really about. If Downing had not retired, and Sprague had managed to stay on, would things have been different? Perhaps. But probably not. After years of studying what happened to Jim Garrison and then the House Select Committee, this author has concluded that the Kennedy assassination is simply a bête noir of the entire American establishment, including the mass media and the political establishment, both then and now. It is simply a national Bermuda Triangle, where the laws of science and logic are suddenly ripped loose from their moorings. And therefore the subject cannot be dealt with in any rational, objective way in the mode of public discourse. And the proof is that both the Warren Commission and the HSCA signed onto the ludicrous Single Bullet Theory. A theory that has been rendered even more risible today than it was in the sixties and seventies. For researcher John Hunt has proven with declassified documents that the so-called Magic Bullet was at the FBI lab in Washington at 7:30 p.m. on the night of the twenty-second. But how could this be if that bullet was not turned over by the Secret Service to FBI agent Elmer Lee Todd until 8:50 p.m.? In other words, lab technician Robert Frazier had booked CE 399 into his records one hour and twenty minutes before it was given to him by agent Todd.134 But further, Todd’s initials were said by the FBI to be on this bullet he dropped off with Frazier that night. Hunt saw the blow up photos of the entire circumference of CE 399 at the National Archives. The FBI lied on this key issue. For Todd’s initials are not on the bullet.135
All one needs to know about the efficacy of the HSCA is that it never took the time to do what John Hunt did. It never sent someone over to the National Archives to look at Frazier’s work product, or to inspect the markings on CE 399. This is surprising, because most researchers consider CE 399 the single most important piece of evidence in the Kennedy case. Of course, if Blakey had done this, it would have blown apart his attempt to revive the Magic Bullet. The public had to wait for John Hunt and his 2006 milestone essays for the final burial of that pernicious myth.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mexico City and Langley
“All information re LHO in Mexico City is clouded with a mist, as if it were something that happened about the time of the Druids. This place is the thing wherein we’ll catch the conscience of the Queen Bee.”
—Jim Garrison to Lou Ivon, January 19, 1968
Garrison, who always harbored literary aspirations, was borrowing from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet for the above literary allusion.1 In that play, Prince Hamlet suspects that his stepfather, King Claudius, has killed his real father. He alters a play to be performed at court. In his version, he includes matters related to him by the ghost of his father as to how Claudius had killed him and then attained the throne. Upon seeing these matters visualized in the play, Claudius becomes visibly upset and stomps out. Hamlet is now convinced that Claudius killed his father.
To my knowledge, no critic or commentator before Garrison ever seriously questioned the Warren Commission’s version of Oswald’s alleged journey to Mexico City. And no one before him ever attached the above kind of weight to that event. Today, with the declassified documents secured by the ARRB, it appears that Garrison was correct about both the importance of and deliberate mystery surrounding Mexico City. The declassified record suggests that, seven weeks before the assassination, certain individuals in the CIA were manipulating either Oswald or an imposter in Mexico City. And it appears to have been done for a diabolically clever purpose that was planned out and prepared for in advance.
The Warren Report deals with Oswald and Mexico City at three intervals within its 888 pages.2 Almost all the information the Commission received came from the CIA and the FBI. And it arrived in heavily censored form. For instance, the CIA decided as early as three weeks after the Commission was created that they would not mention any of the phone taps they had on either the Russian or Cuban consulate to the Commission.3 Further, it does not appear that the Commission even knew who did the translations for the Russian embassy intercepted phone calls. Since that married couple, Boris and Anna Tarasoff, were never even approached by the Commission or the FBI.4 So what information did the Commission use about Oswald being in Mexico City? It was not until August of 1996, thirty-four years later, that the ARRB declassified the Slawson-Coleman Report. This was the report written by Warren Commission lawyers David Slawson and William Coleman describing their journey to Mexico City to investigate what Oswald did there. The excursion was actually suggested to them by Deputy Director Richard Helms.5 Helms had advised the Commission that if they had any questions or problems while in Mexico, the best way to achieve their goals would be to rely on their CIA representative on the spot.6 Once in Mexico City, the two Commission representatives were guided around by Clarke Anderson, the FBI legal attaché there, who happened to be a close friend of David Phillips.7 The lawyers ended up taking Helms’s advice. They trusted everything their official envoys showed them. Part of the reason for this was that Slawson developed a personal affinity for the Agency representatives he worked with while on the Commission— Allen Dulles and James Angleton’s assistant Ray Rocca. For instance, he said about the former, “Allen Dulles and I became fairly close, I think … he was very smart and I liked him very much.”8 Slawson was so taken with his brief association with Dulles and Rocca that working for the CIA “was something I briefly considered myself.”9 This is important because, as we have seen in our study of Oswald, it was Angleton’s and Rocca’s counterintelligence unit that held the pre-assassination file on Oswald with all the attendant mysteries surrounding it. And in the entire 888 pages of the Warren Report, you will see not one reference to that file, or even the noting of James Angleton’s name.
One reason for the Commission’s ignorance about the Oswald file—and the subsequent importance of Mexico City—is that Helms actually appointed Angleton to be the main liaison to the Commission. Unlike his predecessor in that spot, John Whitten, Angleton tried to accent Oswald’s Russian period for the Commission. Whitten wanted to highlight the Cuban connection. It appears Helms did not wish that dangerous ground to be explored.10 He therefore brought in Angleton to be the CIA’s chief interface for the Commission.11 Since Angleton and Dulles were close colleagues f
rom the 1940s, Dulles tipped off his friend as to what queries they would get about Oswald from the Commission. Since there had been a rumor that Oswald was an FBI agent, Dulles informed Angleton in advance as to what the Commission queries would likely be about Oswald’s possible intelligence ties. Then Angleton and William Sullivan of the FBI rehearsed and unified their responses to deny any intelligence connection to the alleged assassin.12 This was an important part of the cover up since it curtailed any inquiry into the question of whether or not agent Oswald was completing a mission in Mexico that he began in New Orleans. That is, was he further discrediting the FPCC by associating with communist foreign consulates and trying to gain transport to Cuba? What made this even more crucial is the fact that there was an “operational interest” in Oswald held by a handful of officers in the Special Affairs Staff (SAS) of the CIA just weeks before the Kennedy assassination.13 This group was involved with what was left of the Kennedy campaign against Cuba, which was not very much. But as far as the Warren Commission inquiry into Mexico City goes, we have established two key points: 1.) Slawson was much too trusting of the Agency, and 2.) Angleton and Dulles were determined to keep clues about any preexisting relationship between Oswald and the CIA concealed.14
Before going any further, it is necessary to outline what Oswald was allegedly doing in Mexico City. The story assembled by the Commission was that he was there to get something called an “in transit” visa. This would get him to Russia by going through Cuba first. So Oswald was visiting both the Cuban and Soviet consulates in Mexico City to arrange for two visas. But neither consulate would immediately cooperate in getting him that type of visa. So he left on the morning of October 2. As John Newman notes, on the surface, the whole thing makes no sense. Because the State Department had approved his passport to Russia that summer. But they had stamped it with the warning that a person traveling to Cuba could be prosecuted.15 Therefore, if Oswald wanted to get back to Russia he could have traced the same route he had followed in 1959. But to go through Cuba risked legal action against him. Predictably, this problem is not addressed in the Warren Report.
Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, & the Garrison Case Page 51
