Though no evidence supported it, Garrison theorized that Ferrie had deliberately overdosed on his thyroid medication, Proloid, a medical improbability due to the slow-acting nature of the drug. One doctor recently said that Ferrie could have swallowed an entire bottle of it without an immediate effect. Garrison persisted in his contention, however, and pressured the coroner to return a suicide verdict. Dr. Chetta refused. The autopsy pathologist, Dr. Ronald Welsh, in a 1993 interview with me, said he had been outraged by Garrison’s campaign to make something out of nothing and corrupt the scientific process.33
But that was only part of it.
With David Ferrie dead, Garrison could do what he couldn’t do while Ferrie was alive: brand him a conspirator in the president’s murder without fear of legal repercussions.
Garrison immediately announced that he and his aides had made the decision that very morning “to arrest” Ferrie “early next week.” That was not true. But for twenty-seven years, no one in the Garrison camp admitted it publicly. In 1994 James Alcock went on record with the truth. “To my knowledge,” he told me, speaking each word deliberately, “there was no intent to arrest David Ferrie.” Alcock should know. He was one of those Garrison said was present when the “decision” was made.34
Alive, Ferrie had required careful handling. As he told George Lardner that last night, Garrison realized he had “a tiger by the tail.”35 Ferrie had endured arrest by Garrison in 1963, knew it had been triggered by a hostile alcoholic who was at it again, and this second time around Ferrie was preparing to strike back with legal action. His death removed that threat. And the blinking neon conspirator’s sign that Jack Martin had hung around Ferrie’s neck would now glow brighter from the grave.
Had Ferrie lived, Garrison’s case against Clay Shaw might have died before its birth in Garrison’s imagination. Not only did Garrison have no evidence against Ferrie,* he had no witness linking Ferrie and Shaw. The loss of his principal suspect should have signaled the end to Garrison’s case. He had had nothing to begin with, and now he had a way out. Many expected him to take it. Instead, he elevated Ferrie into a key figure in the Kennedy assassination, which paved the way for the first of Garrison’s four miraculous recoveries. For it flushed out a former friend of Ferrie, a pliant and crucial witness who would soon provide a legal foundation for a case against Clay Shaw. At the time he proclaimed David Ferrie “one of history’s most important individuals,” Garrison was wholly unaware of this man. His name was Perry Raymond Russo.
* James Alcock, dispatched to Houston, was told to “bring Ident Kit” with “photos”; and “Minox camera with enlargement attachment and flashlight” (Jim Garrison, memorandum, “Investigative Assignments,” Jan. 7, 1967).
* On January 20, Lewis faked a drive-by shooting in which he was the “target” and anti-Castro Cuban Carlos Quiroga was the “gunman.” After doing poorly on a lie-detector test, Lewis admitted making the story up because he thought it would please Garrison.
† See note, page 206.
* Garrison himself told Richard Billings that Jack Martin invented stories and that he harbored intense hostility toward David Ferrie (Billings Personal Notes, Dec. 29, 1966, p. 4).
* The discovery in 1993 of a photograph taken at a Civil Air Patrol cookout with Ferrie and Oswald both in it, though not together, was heralded as a major breakthrough by Garrison advocates, who believe it established a definitive link. But it established only an overlap of association with that organization, which from the outset was a possibility David Ferrie never denied, but didn’t recall. (See note p. 28, and chapter 15, note 10). The owner of the picture, John Ciravolo, attributes no historical importance to it because, he said, it proves nothing. “I’m in the picture,” Ciravolo pointed out, “and I’m sure David Ferrie wouldn’t remember me either” (Ciravolo, telephone conversation with author, July 9, 1997).
† Ferrie also built a miniature “submarine” out of a B-25’s reserve gas tank, with the quixotic notion of attacking Cuban harbor installations with it. It ended up in a garbage dump.
* Twice during this interview Ferrie asked Asst. D.A. Andrew Sciambra to arrange for him to meet with Garrison personally. Sciambra countered by offering to relay to Garrison whatever Ferrie had to say. Ferrie replied that he wanted to talk to Garrison himself and “look him in the face” (Andrew Sciambra, memorandum dated Feb. 28, 1967, regarding David Ferrie interview with Sciambra and Louis Ivon on Feb. 18, 1967).
* Ferrie spoke several languages, owned 3,000 books and many, including Garrison, considered him brilliant. To the CAP cadets he was “charismatic”: When he spoke about flying they forgot about his appearance. “It was like being children,” one said recently, “at the foot of Christ” (John Ciravolo, telephone conversation with author, July 9, 1997).
* Garrison staffer Tom Bethell was worried about the impression Ferrie’s innocuous file made on outsiders who read it. Bethell explained his concern to Mark Lane, who suggested Bethell tell people that all the significant data in it had been moved to a secret file (Bethell Diary, p. 17).
CHAPTER SIX
THE FRIEND
. . . it was like a big roller coaster. I couldn’t get off.1
—Perry Russo, 1971
The death of David Ferrie was heralded in banner headlines around the globe and new additions to the world’s press poured into New Orleans: two reporters from the Soviet Union; teams from Paris-Match, the BBC, and Canadian Broadcasting Company; journalists from the three television networks, the U.S. wire services, most major American newspapers, and a few minor ones. This media circus cluttered the halls of the courthouse, tracked Garrison’s every move, and encouraged his garrulousness.
Two days after Ferrie died, Garrison attended a luncheon at the Petroleum Club with fifty local businessmen who pledged to privately finance his investigation.* The idea was Garrison’s own. After the press revealed his expenditures, he vowed to maintain secrecy by using donated or borrowed money that wouldn’t require a public accounting. The founding members of this group, which named itself “Truth and Consequences, Inc.,” were three prominent, wealthy New Orleanians. Membership was meant to be secret but a writer for a local magazine soon identified some of them.2
Both before and after the luncheon, Garrison held impromptu press conferences for a horde of newsmen. In the one after, he dropped a bombshell. “My staff and I solved the case weeks ago,” Garrison declared. “I wouldn’t say this if we didn’t have evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt. We know the key individuals, the cities involved, and how it was done.” Arrests, though not imminent, would be made; and other suicides were to be expected. “The only way they are going to get away from us, is to kill themselves,” he said. “We are going to be able to arrest every person involved—at least every person who is still living. I’m sure that there will be convictions”; “we’re now building a case,” he said, and “it’s a case we will not lose.”3 Garrison had no evidence to support his new allegations. But his timing (on the heels of Ferrie’s seemingly mysterious death) was exquisite. Many assumed he must have some mighty trump up his sleeve. Some on his staff, who already believed they were engaged in a righteous endeavor, now exhibited an alarming hubris. Anything that advanced Garrison’s cause seemed justified.
It was at this moment, in this overwrought atmosphere, that Perry Russo, a twenty-five-year-old insurance trainee living in Baton Rouge, stepped from obscurity to center stage. He had once known David Ferrie and read with interest the newspaper articles about his death, in particular Garrison’s labeling him one of history’s most important individuals.
That morning Russo called a Baton Rouge newspaper and told reporter Bill Bankston that he had once been a friend of David Ferrie.4 Bankston questioned him on the telephone and then in person at the newspaper for about an hour. Russo said he called to “get the whole story down with somebody.” In view of the remarkable ballooning of his tale the following week, Russo’s first account of the “whole story” is revealing. Bankston f
ound it simple, believable, and innocuous.
Russo said he met Ferrie in New Orleans around April 1962 through a friend in the Civil Air Patrol. He described Ferrie as “screwy but sharp.” He and Ferrie had a number of general political discussions, initiated by Russo (who was majoring in political science). Ferrie talked frequently about how easy it would be to assassinate a president but had not initially mentioned Kennedy. About a month before the assassination, however, Ferrie had said, “We will get him, and it won’t be long.” Russo didn’t take Ferrie seriously. He knew the South teemed with people who detested Kennedy, and had heard others make similar remarks. “I imagine a lot of people would say, I’d like to get the president, or something to that effect,” Bankston later said, and since Ferrie was “a strange individual,” he might be more likely to say it than most.5
Russo made no mention to Bankston of a plot to kill the president, no mention of knowing or encountering Oswald, no mention of Ferrie knowing Oswald, and nothing about Clay Shaw, by name, alias, or description. Yet Russo’s rapidly escalating recollections would shortly precipitate Shaw’s arrest. In a brief five days, the essentially innocent tale Russo told at the newspaper burgeoned into the plot that killed the president. It began that afternoon when Bankston’s piece recounting Russo’s experiences with Ferrie appeared on the front page of the Baton Rouge State-Times, bringing Russo to Garrison’s attention.*
“Has anyone talked to Russo yet?” Garrison asked Asst. D.A. Andrew Sciambra. It was eight o’clock the next morning, a Saturday, and Garrison had telephoned him at home. Practically the forgotten man in this case, despite his prominent role, Sciambra, known by his childhood nickname Moo Moo, was a handsome thirty-one-year-old recent law school graduate who “had had a hard life” and gone to law school later than most. He was surely grateful to Garrison for taking him on board, and the sentiment flowed both ways. Garrison treated Sciambra like the fair-haired boy. Yet when Garrison called that morning, he had no way of knowing how important this assignment would turn out to be.
Sciambra was soon on his way to Baton Rouge with a briefcase full of photographs, including one of Clay Shaw. After tracking Russo down at an LSU practice baseball game, Sciambra spent much of that day with him. It was several hours later when they returned to Russo’s apartment and Sciambra commenced the interview, reportedly making sketchy notes on a legal-size pad. Russo, an articulate young man with dark hair and a trim physique, did most of the talking. During this three-hour session, the first tentative but important changes occurred in Russo’s story.
He haltingly identified a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald as David Ferrie’s roommate shortly before the president’s assassination. But the roommate Russo described was “a typical beatnik, extremely dirty, with his hair all messed up,” a “bushy” beard and “dirty blond hair.” Oswald was clean-shaven and almost compulsively neat about his personal grooming. As Milton Brener first pointed out, Russo’s description seems to fit Ferrie’s known roommate, James Lewallen, a thirty-eight-year-old former Air Force pilot who worked as a mechanic at the nearby NASA space facility and lived with David Ferrie in September 1963. Lewallen was often unshaven and because of his work his clothes were often dirty. A picture of him published at the time shows a narrow face and bone structure not unlike Oswald’s. Russo didn’t identify the roommate as “Oswald” but said “the name Leon really rings a bell.” Lewallen was sometimes known as “Lou” or “Lee.”6
When shown a picture of Clay Shaw, Russo thought he had glimpsed him twice in New Orleans, once with David Ferrie at a service station he owned, and once at a Kennedy rally at the Nashville Street Wharf. But that man wore “tight pants” and ogled young boys, while Clay Shaw dressed conservatively and behaved in a dignified manner. Here, again, Russo did not identify him by name.
If Russo was trying to accommodate his dedicated interrogator, he surely succeeded where Ferrie was concerned. He described him talking about the slow speed of the presidential car, the need for “availability of exit,” and how he “could jump into any plane under the sun and fly it out of the country to a place that would not extradite, such as Cuba or Brazil.”7 Russo had mentioned none of this to Bill Bankston the day before.
Russo’s information was tentative and questionable but it fit Garrison’s theory about David Ferrie’s involvement in the assassination. And by placing Clay Shaw in Ferrie’s circle, Russo had provided Garrison with a live suspect to pursue. Garrison instructed Sciambra to get Russo to New Orleans. Early Monday morning, Sciambra telephoned Russo and he agreed to come, unaware that he was embarking on a sort of Twilight Zone journey and that his life would never again be the same. He was about to undergo a series of procedures called “objectifying” by Garrison, who touted them as the ultimate truth-seeking tools. First, he was questioned after being injected with sodium Pentothal. Two days later, he submitted to the first of several interviews under hypnosis.
Russo arrived at Tulane and Broad about 11:00 that morning and quickly agreed to take the sodium Pentothal.8 Before it was administered, though, he and Sciambra worked several hours (perhaps as many as six) with an artist on a sketch of the roommate. The difficulty arose, Sciambra later claimed, because the figure wasn’t “dirty and disheveled” enough to suit Russo. Russo told it differently. All day, he later said, Sciambra kept asking him about the roommate. “You sure this is not the same guy?” Sciambra said, referring to a picture. “Well, I don’t know,” Russo replied, “it looks a lot like him . . . but I know that’s Oswald. Lee Oswald.” Sciambra then asked the artist to “touch up the photograph” to make it fit Russo’s dirty beatnik.9 So the sketch that resembled Oswald actually began with a picture that Russo knew to be him, which was altered to fit Russo’s recollections. Once they finally finished with that, they moved to Mercy Hospital for the first “objectifying” step.
Contrary to popular belief, sodium Pentothal does not elicit “the truth.” It only “suppresses inhibitions,” including those against fantasizing. If a person is trying to hide something, he may be more likely to reveal it because he is more relaxed. But if a person is inclined toward fantasizing, the drug may encourage that. As Dr. Donald Gallant, a professor of psychiatry at Tulane University Medical School, stated at the time, the drug is “quite unreliable” in establishing a person’s truthfulness. A person can still lie, Dr. Gallant pointed out, while under the drug’s influence. Moreover, as with hypnosis, suggestibility is a problem, meaning great caution and professionalism must be employed in the questioning, which was not the case here.10
The procedure took place in the emergency ward operating room. Coroner Nicholas Chetta administered the drug, while Asst. D.A. Alvin Oser reportedly took notes. Moo Moo Sciambra conducted the interview. Dr. Chetta first injected a dose of glucose into Perry Russo’s arm. Then, at 3:28 P.M., he began the sodium Pentothal and continued for about forty minutes, ending the session at 4:10 P.M. Russo was semiconscious during the entire time and remembered none of the questioning that occurred. The only record is the memorandum prepared by Sciambra the following day.11
According to it, Russo again described the roommate as “very dirty.” Though this was still wildly off the mark, Russo added a smattering of details that fit Oswald.* He did not know Clay Shaw, Russo said. But when Sciambra asked if he knew “Clay Bertrand,” Russo replied he did, that “he is a queer” and described him, providing some facts that fit Shaw. (“A tall man with white kinky hair, sort of slender.”) But Russo had not recalled the name “Clay Bertrand” independently. Sciambra brought it up. Nor was this the first time Russo had heard it. Sciambra “first voiced” the name Bertrand, Russo later said, sometime prior to the sodium Pentothal interview, when Sciambra told him Bertrand was “the name [Shaw] went as.”12
In addition to the other two sightings, Russo now said he met “Bertrand” at Ferrie’s apartment. This paved the way for Russo’s crucial recollections about the assassination plotting session.* Sciambra put that on the last page of his report and described
it in a single, strangely hollow paragraph. David Ferrie is in his apartment talking. Present and presumably listening are Russo, Ferrie’s “roommate,” and “Clay Bertrand.” Ferrie’s first words are almost straight from the Bankston article: “We are going to kill John F. Kennedy . . . it won’t be long.” Ferrie said he could plan the perfect presidential assassination and repeated his earlier comments about his flying skills providing “availability of exit out of the country.”13 This borrowed and skimpy David Ferrie monologue is the sum total of the plot that killed the president at this point. At dinner that evening, Russo denied that he ever met anyone named “Bertrand.”14 Garrison dismissed this as a by-product of the drug.
Sciambra wrote a fairly cut-and-dried account of the sodium Pentothal interview. But Russo later described the experience in dramatically different terms. He recalled lying on a table, the needle inserted into his right arm, as “a clear substance” was administered, which he thought took about ten minutes, and he felt nothing out of the ordinary. Then the Pentothal bottle was attached and Russo reacted instantly. “My head started spinning round and round—things started closing in on me and tightening up and I started getting violent and upset.” “I knew I was upset,” he said. “I recall being bothered—I didn’t want to be bothered, didn’t want anybody to touch me and I didn’t want anybody close to me.” At first “the doctors were holding me down.” Then “I felt like I was kicking at them.” He became violent and had to be physically restrained. “It seemed like they strapped my whole body, they strapped the right arm down and they held the left arm . . . and they strapped me around the waist and around the legs.” “I just kept swinging and twisting and squirming away” and “the needle came out once, at least, maybe more.” “That’s when they strapped me down.” “Oser . . . was holding me down right at the waist. He’s big!” “He just physically got on top of me and I kept saying, I remember saying ‘Get away you mother fuckers, get away,’ and I kicked at them and I was swinging at them.” After the session was over, Russo was unstrapped. But when he tried to stand up, he couldn’t. “I started to fall down,” he said. He was “dizzy”; “had to hold on to something” and was “sick” for “a couple of hours.” He also felt abandoned by Sciambra and the others. “Everybody was interested in going,” Russo said. “They all left.” “I felt like I was dropped like a coot.”15
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