Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  Gonzalez ordered Sprague to take a “number of steps,” including giving written assurance that he would stay within the financial constraints of the committee’s funding and firing recently hired staff members. Sprague’s refusal to bow to Gonzalez’s demands prompted the hot-tempered Texas representative to order Sprague to return all Gonzalez letterhead material.

  Staff investigator Gaeton Fonzi noted, “Since all congressional committees use the postal franking privileges of its chairman, and every expense voucher, travel order, and most directives and requests are made under the chairman’s signature, what Gonzalez was doing, in effect, was virtually stopping the operation of the committee.”

  Next Gonzalez further blocked the committee’s work by asking the attorney general to deny staffers’ access to FBI files and by cutting off their long-distance phone calls. Sprague reportedly remarked to coworkers, “Gonzalez went berserk.”

  Finally, in a hand-delivered letter, Gonzalez charged Sprague with being “engaged in a course of conduct that is wholly intolerable for any employee of the House” and ordered him to vacate his office that same day. However, within a few hours the other eleven members of the committee had written their own letter, instructing Sprague to ignore Gonzalez. This infighting continued, with Gonzalez telling reporters that Sprague was a “rattlesnake.”

  It appears that both Gonzalez and Sprague may have been the objects of secret personal smear campaigns—with Sprague being told Gonzalez was trying to subvert the committee’s work while Gonzalez was being told that Sprague was a CIA plant on the committee.

  Early in March 1977, Gonzalez resigned from the Assassinations Committee claiming that Sprague had refused to cut costs and had tried to undermine his authority as chairman. Back home in San Antonio, Gonzalez told a reporter he had been forced out of the investigation by “vast and powerful forces, including the country’s most sophisticated criminal element.” Gonzalez told reporters, “I am like a guy who’s been slugged before he’s got a chance to fight. . . . It was an exercise in futility. The fix was in.”

  While the life of the committee had been extended for two more months in January, it was due to expire at the end of March 1977. Near that time, a new chairman was named—Representative Louis Stokes, a low-key black Democrat from Ohio. With the more acceptable Stokes in charge, the Assassinations Committee was revived by House Resolution 433, which passed on March 30, 1977, reconstituting the committee until January 3, 1979, and assigning it a pared-down budget of $2.5 million.

  Just before the House vote to continue the committee, Sprague was called to Stokes’s office. Despite having been promised support by Stokes and other committee members, Sprague could see the writing on the wall. He told them, “Gentlemen, it’s clear it’s in everyone’s best interest if I resign.” Sprague’s resignation prompted several committee members to state publicly that the chief counsel had been the victim of a McCarthy-like witch hunt and character assassination.

  Although the committee had existed for six months, the constant bickering and lack of funds prevented any meaningful work. Throughout its brief life, its focus so far had been not on assassinations, but on sheer survival.

  Earlier in March, Fonzi—still on the job—had tried to contact the last-known close friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, George DeMohrenschildt, who was staying in Manalapan, Florida. Soon after arriving home and learning of Fonzi’s visit, DeMohrenschildt was found fatally shot. His death was ruled a suicide. Fonzi later wrote, “The manner in which the Assassination Committee reacted to the death of George DeMohrenschildt revealed that the Committee—six months after it was formed—was still totally incapable of functioning as an investigative body. It reflected six months of political reality and how successful its opponents had been in keeping it distracted and off-balance.”

  Representative Gonzalez stated simply, “Strong organized forces have combined to stop the inquiry at any cost.”

  In June 1977, a new chief counsel was selected—G. Robert Blakey, a respected academician with impressive credentials but with no real desire to probe the assassinations.

  Blakey at the Helm

  No investigation can be better than its leadership, and with its new chief counsel and director, the House Select Committee on Assassinations was no exception.

  G. Robert Blakey, a professor of law and director of the Notre Dame Institute on Organized Crime, spent four years in the organized-crime and racketeering section of the Kennedy Justice Department; was chief counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures; was principal consultant to president Lyndon Johnson’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice; and was a consultant to the publications Time, Life, and Look.

  Upon becoming chief counsel and director for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Blakey firmly took control of the panel and its investigation. He oversaw every aspect of the committee’s work, selecting witnesses, deciding which leads to follow and which to ignore, picking the expert panels, hiring and firing staff members, and setting the committee’s agenda.

  It quickly became obvious that the Assassinations Committee was changing directions in key areas. Where Sprague had opted for openness in the committee’s inquiry, Blakey advocated secrecy. In fact, in his first statement to the news media, Blakey announced, “The purpose of this news conference is to announce there will be no more news conferences.”

  Blakey also announced that the committee would not look at any new evidence in the Kennedy and King assassinations, but would concentrate on evaluating the old evidence the federal government had accumulated.

  His turnaround prompted assassination researchers to take a closer look at the new chief counsel, with some disturbing results.

  Having worked for both President Johnson and President Nixon, Blakey had close contact with other ranking government officials involved in the Kennedy assassination case, among them:

  Nicholas Katzenbach: the deputy attorney general who in 1964 put strong pressure on the Warren Commission to quickly endorse the premise that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

  Leon Jaworski: the Watergate special prosecutor who served as a special counsel to the Warren Commission charged with determining whether Oswald had any ties to US intelligence. (Jaworski found none, but some years later it was discovered that a foundation of which Jaworski was a trustee secretly used CIA funds.)

  Lewis F. Powell: the attorney named by the American Bar Association as an observer to the Warren Commission to protect Oswald’s rights, but who spent much of his time trying to have Commission critic Mark Lane disbarred.

  Although considered an expert in the “war against crime,” Blakey apparently had a strange connection with a reputed big-time gambler. In 1975, when Penthouse magazine was sued for referring to California’s La Costa Resort and Spa as a playground for gangsters, it was Blakey who sold his expertise and provided an affidavit condemning the magazine’s charges of mob ownership while conceding ignorance of the truth of the charges. Any questions concerning this odd support of a resort built by Teamster pension-fund money were referred to Blakey’s own attorney, Louis Nizer.

  Furthermore, Blakey was recommended as chief counsel by Committee member representative Christopher Dodd, the former law partner of former FBI director L. Patrick Gray, who was indicted during the Watergate scandals.

  While these connections don’t prove compromise on Blakey’s part, they do cast a shadow over his credentials as an uncompromising crime-buster. They also raised concerns in many minds about Blakey’s motives.

  But is there any evidence that the Assassinations Committee’s findings were undermined?

  Apparently so. The main weapon Blakey used to stop a meaningful investigation was a nondisclosure agreement. Signing this agreement, which was instituted within one week of Blakey’s arrival, was mandatory for continued employment with the committee. Even independent researchers who attempted to share assassination information with the panel were made to sign it.

  The
agreement bound the signer not to reveal that he or she even worked for the committee or to reveal anything learned while serving with the committee; gave the committee the power to take legal action against the signer in the event of disclosures, even long after the committee ended; and made the signer agree that all legal fees would be paid should the signer lose such a court suit.

  Many persons who have seen this agreement, including attorneys, claim it violates the US Constitution and therefore is illegal. However, it stopped most of the committee’s personnel and hired consultants from discussing the workings of the HSCA.

  Evidence of the weak legal standing of this agreement may be found in that Gaeton Fonzi has written scathing articles against the committee and its operation, in apparent violation of this agreement, yet there has been no prosecution.

  The agreement also effectively muzzled many of the assassination researchers. Blakey invited ten prominent critics of the Warren Commission to Washington to exchange assassination information. All were required to sign the nondisclosure agreement, and all presented their information. Blakey reciprocated with nothing of value. After their departure, Blakey instructed the committee staff to have no further contact with these researchers without his personal and specific authorization. He explained such secrecy was necessary to protect the reputations of people involved in the investigation—the “innocent associates”—and that he wanted the committee to “remain immune from the fever of assassination demonology.”

  Even more disquieting to researchers was Blakey’s accommodating attitude toward the FBI and the CIA—the two agencies that over the years have become suspects themselves in many people’s minds. Earlier, Sprague had put both agencies on notice that subpoenas might be issued for access to assassination material withheld from previous investigations, such as pre-assassination CIA activity in Mexico City and the connections between Ruby and Oswald and the FBI.

  Under Blakey, committee investigators had to sign a CIA secrecy oath before examining any classified files, thus giving the agency the authority to “clear” any information, including investigators’ notes.

  A January 25, 1978, committee report stated:

  All staff members on the Committee have received or are in the process of receiving “Top Secret” security clearances. The FBI, as an accommodation to the Committee, conducts the background investigations for these security clearances. The CIA then reviews the background investigations done by the FBI. After consultation with the FBI and CIA, the full Committee makes the determination regarding an individual’s security clearance.

  In other words, both intelligence agencies had direct control over who participated in the committee’s investigation. This situation did nothing to ease the minds of researchers who already were convinced of intelligence involvement in the Kennedy assassination.

  Several people were fired from the committee staff for failing to receive a security clearance, including one person whom Blakey reportedly told, “The CIA would be more comfortable if you were gone.” It has never been explained how this clearance review was made to conform with the CIA charter prohibition against domestic activities.

  In a TV interview, original counsel Sprague stated he had refused to yield to CIA and FBI demands for security clearances, as such agreements would have given these agencies authority to decide what the committee could disclose. Sprague argued, “What’s the point of getting material in the first place, if they are going to control who sees it and what we can do with it?”

  Blakey showed no such insight. In fact, in an article by writer Jerry Policoff, Blakey is quoted as saying, “I’ve worked with the CIA for twenty years. Would they lie to me?”

  And there is evidence that Blakey’s trust in the agency went beyond simple naïveté. After it was discovered that the CIA held a 201 file on Lee Harvey Oswald—evidence that he worked for the agency, according to several former CIA agents—Blakey retrieved the file from CIA headquarters. According to the House committee, the folder was virtually empty. Agency officials explained that the file was actually just a “personality” file that had contained a few news clippings on Oswald after being opened on December 9, 1960.

  Yet researchers today have a copy of a CIA “Memorandum for the Record” dated April 27, 1979, which states:

  On 27 April, 1979, Mr. G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel and staff director of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), visited CIA Headquarters. . . . Mr. Blakey examined only that material held [Blanked out]. He apparently did not go elsewhere within the Agency, [Blanked out] to examine their holdings. . . . Comment: Files reviewed by HSCA staff members fill nine four-drawer safes. The files include the Lee Harvey Oswald 201, which fills two four-drawer safes. Oswald’s 201 file was not completely reviewed by HSCA staff members.

  Despite not reviewing all of the CIA’s held material—including Oswald’s 201 file—the House committee confidently concluded, “The Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Central Intelligence Agency were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.”

  In 1978, the CIA agent assigned as liaison to the HSCA reportedly was fired from the agency after rifling the safe containing the Kennedy autopsy photos and X-rays. The agent claimed he had an innocent explanation but would not give it to the press. “There’s other things that are involved,” he told the Washington Post’s George Lardner, “that are detrimental to other things.”

  Such activities forced some investigators to resign from the committee, citing control by intelligence agencies and their feeling that the investigation had become too narrow in focus.

  Other staff members—including twenty-four investigators—were discharged on grounds that the committee had no money. Yet in February 1978, Blakey returned $425,000 to Congress, saying the funds were not needed.

  Whether or not the charges that Blakey sidetracked any meaningful investigation are true, the seeds of doubt were sown. This is reflected in a magazine article by Jerry Policoff and William Scott Malone, who wrote in 1978, “So poisoned has the atmosphere become from months of bitterness that whatever conclusions the Committee comes up with will be suspect.”

  According to assassination researchers who followed the HSCA closely, Blakey forced out or fired some of the most able investigators, severely restricted areas of investigation, handpicked scientific experts who mostly denied any hint of conspiracy, and then locked committee investigative material away for fifty years.

  Although there has been no definitive evidence to demonstrate that this was his agenda, if Blakey had wanted to restrict and misdirect the investigations of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, he could not have done a better job.

  With Blakey’s arrival, aspects of the HSCA investigation changed dramatically. Under Sprague, committee investigators had been running down promising leads in Dallas, Miami, New Orleans, and Memphis. Under Blakey, these field investigations—far from the oversight of Washington power—were severely restricted. The focus of the Kennedy probe moved away from looking at intelligence and anti-Castro Cuban involvement and began scrutinizing the organized-crime aspects.

  Somewhere along the way, the committee dropped any investigation into the Robert F. Kennedy assassination and the shooting of Alabama governor Wallace, despite the abundance of evidence raising serious questions about the official versions of both those events.

  By October 1977, a Scripps-Howard article stated, “The Committee’s investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been scaled down and the panel’s professional staff apparently has been spending virtually all its time exploring new leads in the King case.”

  On March 13, 1978, the HSCA received House approval for $2.5 million in funding to last until January 3, 1979. The final vote of 204 to 175 was achieved despite objections from some Republican representatives who claimed the committee had accomplished little in its year and a half of existence.

  Scaled down and with a restricted agenda, the committee nevertheless went
to work. According to Blakey, the committee spent a total of $5.5 million during its thirty-month investigation. In an introduction to the committee’s report, Blakey wrote, “[This] may sound like a lot, but it should be contrasted with the fact that the Warren Commission spent the equivalent in 1977 dollars of over $10 million in ten months.”

  Blakey admitted that early on the HSCA experienced “some rough sailing” and that the period of “rigorous fact-finding” lasted only six months—from January to July 1978. However, this fact-finding was “intense and wide ranging,” wrote Blakey. He claimed that committee members and staffers made trips to Mexico, Canada, Portugal, England, and Cuba. There were a total of 562 trips to 1,463 points for more than 4,758 days of field investigation. More than 4,924 interviews were conducted and 335 witnesses heard, some in public hearings and some in executive session.

  Beginning in late July 1978, the HSCA conducted a series of public hearings that lasted until September 28, 1978. There was a parade of technical and scientific experts, but no one cross-examined them. No one asked the obvious follow-up or embarrassing question. And the testimony of each witness seemed designed to further cement the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of Kennedy.

  Some witnesses, such as Louie Steven Witt—who claimed to have been the “umbrella man” in Dealey Plaza—gave an implausible story that went unchallenged.

  Dr. James Humes, the leader of the Kennedy autopsy team, was never asked why he waited fifteen years to become convinced that a bullet entered near the top of Kennedy’s head well above where the other two autopsy doctors still placed it. Humes also could have given more details about the military authorities present at the autopsy who directed the doctors in their inadequate work, but he was never asked in public. Humes later quipped, “They had their chance and they blew it.”