False Witness

by Patricia Lambert

  But this was not the last threat to his investigation that would have to be dealt with.

  * The assistant district attorneys of record were: Alvin V. Oser, James L. Alcock and Michael L. Karmazin.

  † A New Orleans police detective said that on August 9, 1963, he arrested Lee Harvey Oswald and three “Spanish individuals” who were engaged in “an altercation” on Canal Street; a police forensic specialist and the coroner’s photographer testified about David Ferrie’s death.

  * An audio recording of this February 24, 1967, interview was played in open court. A New Orleans television station also broadcast the interview the night before Dymond began his cross-examination, providing Russo and the prosecution time to devise answers to Dymond’s inevitable questions about it.

  † To establish the date of Oswald’s departure, Dymond attempted to introduce the Warren Report as evidence, but the court, referring to the Report as “hearsay evidence,” forcefully denied the motion: “You are not serious, are you?” asked Judge Bagert (preliminary hearing transcript, p. 198).

  * Dr. Weinstein recently recalled an instance where a soldier under the drug “told a dramatic story” about “searching for his brother among the dead and wounded [on a WWII battlefield].” They discovered this soldier “did indeed have a brother” but he had “never left the States” (Edwin A. Weinstein, M.D., letter to author, March 13, 1995). Dr. Weinstein’s experiences “are recorded in the official U.S. Army medical history of the war.”

  * Garrison and his men were worried about the defense planting stories to embarrass them.

  * In the statement he gave in prison, Bundy said he heard Shaw call the other man “Pete” (Vernon Bundy, Jr., interview at Orleans Parish Prison, with William Gurvich, Charlie Jonau, and Cliency Navarre, March 16, 1967). On the witness stand this obviously incorrect feature had vanished.

  * Shaw’s attorneys thought “it quite likely” his home “might be bombed or burned” (his insurance company thought so, too—they canceled his homeowners policy); this is one reason Shaw stayed away from his home the entire month of March (Shaw Narrative, p. 3).

  † Reportedly, Judge O’Hara initially was “not inclined” to hold Shaw for trial, but was persuaded to go along with the other two judges (Shaw Journal, p. 68).

  * Five days later Garrison would take Russo before the grand jury and obtain an indictment against Shaw, which specified that the plotting occurred between September 1 and October 10, 1963. Neither this hearing nor the grand jury indictment were necessary to take Shaw to trial.

  † When Judge Bagert, an old high school friend of Shaw, had entered the courtroom that morning, he had “very merrily wished [Shaw] a happy birthday.” Bagert apparently had learned of it from a news account (Shaw Journal, p. 67).

  ‡ Bundy was paroled “within a month” (Shaw Narrative, p. 10).

  § Garrison’s evidence was “water thin” and his case “a joke,” Judge O’Hara told this writer. The panel voted as it did, he said, “because the defense didn’t put on any defense” (telephone interview, Nov. 20, 1993). But it was the court that denied Shaw’s team the information it needed to mount a more effective defense.

  * In addition to what Garrison gave him in Las Vegas, Phelan had obtained the third hypnosis transcript and Sciambra’s report on the sodium Pentothal interview.

  CHAPTER NINE

  HOW GARRISON NEUTRALIZED

  THE OPPOSITION

  . . . [Garrison] is a dangerous man. And I keep asking myself how many other Garrisons can there be. If it can happen here, it can happen anywhere else in the country.1

  —Clay Shaw, 1969

  About ten o’clock in the evening on March 9, 1967, twenty-one-year-old Alvin Beaubouef, at home with his wife and child, answered a knock at his front door. He found two of Garrison’s police investigators standing there. Lynn Loisel and Louis Ivon asked Beaubouef to step outside and he did. In the conversation that followed, Garrison’s men offered Beaubouef a substantial sum of money, reportedly as much as 15,000, a job with an airline (Beaubouef’s dream), and a hero’s role in the case. In return they wanted him to fill in “the missing links” in David Ferrie’s story.

  Garrison sent his men to make this offer because he knew David Ferrie was involved in the assassination. Alvin Beaubouef had accompanied Ferrie on his trip to Houston the night of the assassination; therefore, he must know something. Ivon and Loisel said just that that night: we know you know something. The D.A.’s office had already interviewed Beaubouef twice. Both times he denied knowing anything about the assassination or Ferrie’s alleged involvement. The last time, Beaubouef had said he was willing to take a polygraph test.2 Still, here they were back again. Beaubouef later said he thought they wanted information about Ferrie’s private life. He told them he would do anything he could to help but he wanted to speak to his wife and attorney about it first. That was fine. Loisel said they would put the offer in writing in any form Beaubouef wished.

  The next day Beaubouef called his attorney, Hugh Exnicios, and described what had occurred, saying he knew nothing about the assassination. Exnicios represented David Ferrie’s estate and felt strongly that Ferrie was an intelligent, moral person, who would not have been involved in such a crime.3 To him it sounded as though Garrison’s men were trying to purchase false information. Exnicios called the district attorney’s office and arranged for Loisel to come to his office that afternoon for a meeting that would include Beaubouef. Then Exnicios set up a concealed tape recorder that he activated (exactly when is unclear) after Loisel entered the office.4

  In the secretly recorded conversation that followed, Loisel repeated the offer made the night before, with one revision. The airline job and the hero’s role were the same but the amount of money was now 3,000. Loisel said he was only interested in information about the assassination and he wanted only the truth. He also said Jim Garrison had authorized the three items offered. Loisel assured them that Beaubouef did not have to worry about being an accessory for withholding until now the information he supplied. “There’s ninety-nine thousand ways we could skin that cat,” Loisel said. Nor would there be any danger of Beaubouef incriminating himself because they could “change the story around,” Loisel explained, to eliminate him from “any type of conspiracy or what have you.”5

  Exnicios asked what would happen if it turned out Beaubouef didn’t know anything. The deal was only good, Loisel said, if Beaubouef could provide “the missing links.” Otherwise, the deal was off. Loisel then left the room so Beaubouef and Exnicios could confer in private. Beaubouef repeated that he knew nothing about the assassination. Exnicios warned him that saying no to Loisel would result in a subpoena. They decided Beaubouef would agree to take the three tests that Loisel had said might be required—truth serum, hypnosis and a polygraph.* Loisel left that day with the understanding that Beaubouef would be available that weekend, but the tests were never administered.

  Thirty-four-year-old Exnicios believed the tape recording he now possessed was evidence that Loisel, acting on Garrison’s express authority, had tried to bribe Beaubouef (who was out of work and needed money) to supply false testimony. In the period that followed, Exnicios offered the tape for 5,000 to the news media, without success, and to Shaw’s defense team. Irvin Dymond and William Wegmann listened to the recording in Exnicios’s office. “There is no question that a bribe was offered,” Wegmann said recently. “But there was no way my brother [Edward Wegmann] was going to buy that tape.”6 Wegmann and Dymond did arrange to have it transcribed.

  Exnicios distributed the transcript to various agencies.* He also played the tape for Frank Langridge, the district attorney of Jefferson Parish, where Exnicios’s office was located and the jurisdiction of the alleged bribe. He was hoping Langridge would file criminal charges against Garrison, Ivon and Loisel. Langridge took no official action. He did, however, contact his friend Jim Garrison and tell him about the tape.7 Garrison informed his men.

  On the evening of April 11, Iv
on and Loisel again visited Beaubouef at his home. He would later tell a police investigator that they had threatened to circulate embarrassing pictures of him (confiscated in 1963 from Ferrie’s apartment), and threatened him with physical harm. “I don’t want to get into any shit,” Beaubouef claimed Loisel said, “and before I do I’ll put a hot load of lead up your ass.”8 Both men, Beaubouef recently recalled, had their hands on him. “One of them’s got one hand wound in my clothing holding me and his other hand has his gun in my face and he shoved it in my mouth.”† While he no longer recalls the exact words that were spoken, Beaubouef does remember the message. “They were saying, ‘If you don’t retract this, we’re going to kill you.’ ” Beaubouef believed them. He appeared the next day at Tulane and Broad and signed a sworn statement saying that no one in the district attorney’s office offered him a bribe.

  But that was not the end of it. Beaubouef was soon telling media representatives about the offer and the threats. Newsweek published a lengthy account by Hugh Aynesworth of the episode. Both local newspapers ran articles about it and the story was picked up by other newspapers nationwide. Beaubouef’s new attorney* took the matter to the New Orleans Police Department, which conducted a month-long investigation. Ivon and Loisel admitted making the offer but insisted they were only after the truth and denied threatening Beaubouef.9 The police investigator concluded that Loisel and Ivon had not violated any of the rules of the department’s Code of Conduct.†

  That let everyone off the hook without resolving the basic controversy. But because the police report on its investigation was withheld from the public until recently, the matter simply faded away at the time. Yet it has remained a hotly contested issue over the years. Although Beaubouef was willing, neither Garrison nor anyone in the police department challenged him with a polygraph test. A media representative working on a story about Garrison’s investigation did. Beaubouef passed.10

  Unlike most who did battle with Garrison in this period, Alvin Beaubouef survived relatively unscathed. James Phelan was another. His second New Orleans experience began the latter part of May with a telephone call from the renowned producer, Fred Freed. Freed was preparing a documentary for NBC, a White Paper on Garrison to be broadcast in June, and he hired Phelan to assist in the research. Despite advice from two attorneys to stay out of Garrison’s reach, Phelan was soon on his way. His assignment was to persuade the mercurial Perry Russo to go before a camera and tell the truth.

  On his first day back in town, through an intermediary, Phelan let Garrison know he was there and did not intend to hide. He then waited for the grand jury subpoena he assumed would be forthcoming. He was wrong. Garrison passed word to Phelan that he would not be subpoenaed unless he publicly embarrassed the district attorney’s office. As Phelan later said, he had sense enough to avoid doing that. So despite Andrew Sciambra’s bluster about putting Phelan together with the grand jury, when the opportunity arose, Garrison didn’t want Phelan telling those twelve men his story.

  Over the next six days, Phelan met six times with Perry Russo at his New Orleans apartment. Russo was friendly and quite willing to talk but Phelan quickly realized that the record player Russo was always turning on and off was a bugging device. The red light stayed on even when the machine was off.11 So their real conversations took place elsewhere. Phelan talked “about justice, the truth,” and “what [Russo] was doing to Shaw, if his story was phony.” Russo was coy; he wouldn’t say yes or no to appearing on the NBC program. He was stringing Phelan along. But he also confided in him. He let Phelan know that he was afraid he had identified the wrong man, and that he was angry about being the primary witness when he had been told he was just helping to support an airtight case. Russo readily admitted he no longer knew “the difference between reality and fantasy” and repeatedly expressed his concern that Garrison would retaliate against him if he should back away from his story.12 * Phelan left New Orleans uncertain whether or not Russo was going to appear on the program.

  Back in New York, Phelan soon learned that Garrison was scheduled to address a convention of New York district attorneys at the Laurel Country Club in the Catskills. Still hopeful that Garrison would see the light if he just had the facts about Russo, Phelan decided to attend the convention and confront Garrison with Russo’s latest statements. The night of Garrison’s appearance, Phelan approached him as he entered the banquet room. Both men were friendly and they arranged to meet after dinner.13

  They spent about ninety minutes talking in a little bar at the Club. Garrison finally had an answer for the question Phelan had asked him in Las Vegas—why did the masterminds of this plot discuss their plans in front of Russo, a casual bystander? “He’s in the plot, too,” Garrison said. Phelan found this absurd and stomped on it so hard Garrison dropped it. Garrison also recalled Sciambra’s claim that he had briefed him orally about the plot party. “I don’t really know what I actually remember,” Garrison said, “and what I ‘remember’ because Sciambra wants me to remember.” Phelan then described Russo’s latest statements to him. Russo, Garrison said, “was talking out of both sides of his mouth.”14

  Garrison seemed swayed by what Phelan told him. He suggested a meeting with Russo, Phelan, and himself, where Phelan would confront Russo with his statements. “If he cops out to half of it,” Garrison said, “I’ll drop the case against Clay Shaw.” Phelan was enormously pleased and relieved. Garrison at last was going to do the right thing. The meeting, Garrison said, would take place within the next ten days. Phelan agreed to fly to New Orleans on a moment’s notice. But the meeting never occurred. Phelan waited for weeks. He called Garrison and wrote him two letters. Garrison replied in a letter dated July 12, confirming the agreement but accusing Phelan of “pecking away at a peripheral point.” At last Phelan realized that Garrison had conned him. “He was so convincing [that night in the Catskills],” Phelan later recalled. “He said, ‘I don’t want to go in a ditch by charging the wrong man.’ ”15 But that was just part of the con. Phelan had posed a new threat that night and Garrison was handling it.

  Another threat surfaced on May 23. The Garrison camp was electrified by the news that NBC’s Walter Sheridan had sniffed out lie detector technician Roy Jacob and learned about Russo’s disastrous polygraph. Faced with the prospect of an “expert” saying on network television that Russo had “failed” a lie-detector test, Garrison reluctantly ordered Russo to take another one.16 It was administered on June 19 by New Orleans Police Department polygraph technician Edward O’Donnell. But he was no more successful than Roy Jacob had been. After only three irrelevant questions, such as “Were you born in New Orleans?” Russo’s “erratic pneumograph tracing”* and “physical movements” caused O’Donnell to shut the machine off and remove the attachments. Russo then began talking and startled O’Donnell with a succession of disclosures, the most damaging being that Clay Shaw had not been at Ferrie’s assassination plot party.17

  After Russo left, O’Donnell made a beeline to Garrison’s office and in the presence of James Alcock told Garrison what had occurred. Garrison, O’Donnell later recounted, “went into a rage.” “Jesus Christ!” Garrison shouted, “that son of a bitch has sold out to the CIA! He has sold out to NBC!”

  Later that day, Lynn Loisel and Louis Ivon showed up at O’Donnell’s office. “They told me it would be better for everyone if I forgot what happened.” Garrison wanted O’Donnell to keep his mouth shut and he certainly wanted no official report. As soon as the two left, O’Donnell began dictating one. The next day he sent copies to several officials, including the superintendent of police. The original he personally delivered to Garrison.

  Some weeks later, Garrison called O’Donnell into a meeting in his office. Also there were Alcock, Sciambra, and Russo. Garrison handed O’Donnell’s report to Russo. Did you say this? Garrison asked. Russo “began to hem and haw” but when O’Donnell implied that their session had been recorded, Russo admitted the report was accurate. “After Russo recanted,” O’Don
nell later remarked, “I said no way is there going to be a trial. How can you go to court when your star witness says ‘what I’ve told you isn’t true’?” Garrison tried, unsuccessfully, to have O’Donnell fired.18

  Meanwhile, the bad news continued to filter into Garrison’s office about the NBC investigation. On May 17 Garrison became so angry at what he was hearing that he ordered two members of Fred Freed’s team, Richard Townley and Walter Sheridan, arrested and, Garrison said, he wanted them handcuffed and beaten. A worried William Gurvich went to James Alcock who interceded. Arrested for what? Alcock asked Garrison. “What do you mean, for what—just arrest [them],” he replied. When Alcock protested that there were “no grounds,” Garrison admonished him for being “so legalistic”; but neither Gurvich or Alcock carried out his order.19

  NBC’s much-anticipated White Paper, “The J.F.K. Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison” aired on June 19. It leveled the most serious public charges to date against Garrison and his aides. They knew what was coming because William Gurvich attended a 2:00 A.M. screening in New York. In the morning Gurvich called and described it to Asst. D.A. Charles Ward. That afternoon Gurvich told Garrison about it. The show began with James Phelan explaining that the assassination plot party was missing from Russo’s first interview. Phelan was not producer Freed’s first choice to open the show. Freed wanted Russo, but he had finally turned them down. “The hell with truth,” Russo had said to Sheridan. “The hell with justice. You’re asking me to sacrifice myself for Shaw [by telling the truth] and I won’t do it.”20 Freed’s second choice had been Garrison’s main investigator, but Gurvich, too, had refused.

  As Garrison feared, Freed spotlighted the results of Russo’s first polygraph.21 But that wasn’t all. Freed also showcased Vernon Bundy’s lie-detector test. It “indicated,” said Narrator Frank McGee, “that Bundy was lying.” The program reported as well the effort of Charles Ward to prevent Garrison from putting Bundy on the stand. And two burglars, Miguel Torres and John Cancler, prison-mates of Bundy, stated that he told them he had lied in order to get “cut loose” from Angola.22 McGee pointed out that Garrison, fully aware of the test results, put both Russo and Bundy on the stand and won his victory at the preliminary hearing based on their testimony.23