by Gus Russo
According to sources developed by veteran investigative reporter Jim Hougan, the Five Eyes also received subcontracts to perform investigations and place wiretaps (of dubious legality) for such agencies as the Justice Department and the CIA. Otto Otepka, a former State Department Security Chief, told Hougan, “There’s no question that they [Five Eyes] carried out wiretaps—not only against Hoffa and organized crime, but here in Washington, against government employees.” Hougan’s sources describe Sheridan as “the chief contact” between RFK and the Five Eyes, adding that Sheridan had presided “over the personnel and currency of whole units of the Central Intelligence Agency” while working out of the White House.45
In 1967, NBC News sent Sheridan to New Orleans to produce a TV special on the Garrison case, and thus Bobby Kennedy and the Five Eyes were provided an excellent earpiece in New Orleans. However, “Big Jim” Garrison did not take kindly to Bobby Kennedy’s intrusion into an investigation of his own brother’s death. When Sheridan tried to interview one of Garrison’s “star” witnesses, Garrison promptly charged Sheridan with bribery. Bobby Kennedy immediately came to his friend’s aid, issuing the following statement:
I have been fortunate to know and work with Walter Sheridan for many years. Like all those who have known him and his work, I have the utmost confidence in his integrity, both personal and professional. This view was shared by President Kennedy himself, with whom Mr. Sheridan was associated for many years in a relationship of utmost trust, confidence, and affection.
His personal ties to President Kennedy, as well as his own integrity, insure that he would want as much as, or more than, any other man to ascertain the truth about the events of November, 1963. It is not possible that Mr. Sheridan would do anything which would in the slightest degree compromise the truth in regard to the investigation in New Orleans.46
Like most of Garrison’s “charges,” this one against Sheridan was eventually dropped. But RFK’s efforts could mean only one thing in the mind of “The Jolly Green Giant:” the conspiracy was even bigger than he thought. Garrison told a United Press International (UPI) reporter that Bobby Kennedy had made “very positive efforts” to obstruct his investigation. An incredulous ABC News reporter asked Garrison, “What you are saying, then, is that Senator Kennedy, by not cooperating, is, in effect, letting the murderers of his brother walk the streets!?” To which Garrison responded, “Well, yes, that’s a fair statement.”47
Within days, the FBI picked up word from New Orleans media sources that Garrison would soon issue a subpoena to Senator Kennedy himself. It never occurred. Kennedy later told Arthur Schlesinger, “Walter Sheridan is satisfied that Garrison is a fraud.”48
In addition to getting the insights of Mankiewicz and Sheridan, Kennedy also sought out the opinions of a Garrison investigator, William Gurvich, who had had the good sense to bail out when he realized that the D.A. was on a witch hunt. He was brought to New York to meet with Kennedy. “Through one of his [Bobby’s] emissaries, I was asked if I would see the Senator,” Gurvich later recalled. “Basically, what I told him was, the exact words were, ‘Senator, Mr. Garrison will never shed any light on your brother’s death.’ What he wanted to know most was, and I’ll quote him, ‘Then why is he doing this?’ . . .I just simply said, ‘I don’t know. I wish I did.’”49 Garrison promptly accused Gurvich of being a “double agent.”50
For Jim Garrison, 544 Camp Street retained one last lead, one final opportunity to ruin a life (Guy Banister was already dead by this time). Sergio Arcacha Smith had followed the Kennedy flag since the early days of 1961, when he did his bit to further the Cuba Project from a dusty office at 544 Camp Street. Now his ties to RFK would suffer a trial by fire, as the Camp Street connection made him the next unfortunate person caught in Garrison’s net.
The Loyalty of Sergio Arcacha
With the death of David Ferrie, Garrison’s next target became Ferrie’s boss at the 544 Camp Street—Sergio Arcacha Smith of the Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC). Arcacha, Garrison now concluded, had worked with the assassination “ringleader,” David Ferrie, and together they “set up” the innocent Lee Oswald, who must have worked for them. This would conveniently explain Oswald’s use of their address on his leaflets. What Garrison never learned, or chose to ignore, was that Sergio Arcacha (and by extension, David Ferrie) were working in concert with the President’s brother, Bobby.
Thus, two weeks after the death of his chief suspect, David Ferrie, Garrison had his staff serve an arrest warrant on Ferrie’s former boss, Sergio Arcacha Smith, then a manager for an air conditioning firm in Dallas.
“Garrison’s warrant contained two counts,” recalls Arcacha’s Dallas attorney, Frank Hernandez. “The first count stated that he was involved in a burglary at the Houma munitions depot, and the second count was concealing information on the conspiracy to kill Kennedy.”51 Garrison had been told by local Cubans of the weapons transfer, and, true to his style, determined that he could arrest Arcacha by referring to the transfer as a burglary.
On Monday, April 3, 1967, Arcacha was arrested at home, in front of his family. He wisely refused to speak with Garrison’s officers, who insisted that Arcacha speak with them alone, without his attorney present. After posting $1,500 bail, Arcacha was released.52 This touched off a five-month battle in which Garrison sought to extradite Arcacha from Texas to Louisiana. The other Kennedy assassination victim, Governor John Connally, befriended Arcacha and refused to sign extradition papers within the required 90 days.
Meanwhile, Garrison called a press conference to announce that he had identified the men involved in the conspiracy. Clearly implying that Arcacha was one of them, Garrison told the UPI that most of the participants “are in Texas and Dallas particularly where they are protected—one, by the Dallas law enforcement establishment and two, by the federal government.”
With Garrison making so much noise about the 544 Camp street “assassins,” Sergio Arcacha worried that the real truth of that operation might surface, forever making him and Robert Kennedy’s secret war—in the public’s mind at least—the reason Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated John Kennedy. In late March, Arcacha wrote U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, asking for support in his fight against Garrison. On April 6, 1967, Assistant Attorney General Fred Vinson, Jr. replied, writing that “it would not be proper for us to comment in a case pending before a state court.” However, Bobby Kennedy, as was his wont, would soon take things into his hands in his own way, showing his personal solidarity with Sergio Arcacha Smith.
Layton Martens, Arcacha’s former volunteer, had the same worries as Arcacha. Now a high school teacher, Martens remembered something that he hoped would help his friend. He wrote Arcacha on June 20, 1967, informing him that he was searching for a copy of the letter Bobby Kennedy wrote sanctioning their operation (see photo spread). In his letter to Arcacha, Martens expressed regret that someone had stolen the original of the letter from David Ferrie’s apartment.53 (A year later, Martens was interviewed by a Garrison investigator. Garrison’s recently-released files show that Martens readily admitted his possession of the Robert Kennedy letter and that it was stolen from Ferrie’s apartment. Martens has given the same account consistently for thirty years.)54
On March 28, 1967, Martens had visited the FBI in a last-ditch attempt to get Garrison off Arcacha’s back. Bureau records show that Martens told them the same story he had repeated for four years. According to the FBI memo, “Martens stated that Senator Robert Kennedy had approved this activity and he feels Garrison may bring Senator Kennedy’s name into the case.”55
Just when things were their most bleak for Arcacha, he received a telephone call from Bobby Kennedy’s secretary, Angela Novello. The Senator had made arrangements for Arcacha to fly to Washington and put his story on film. Walter Sheridan would make him part of his NBC News special, but agreed not to air Arcacha’s segment without his permission.
Arcacha and Hernandez were met at the airport by Sheridan. “As we drove throu
gh the city,” recalls Arcacha, “Sheridan pointed out the places where he had bugged Jimmy Hoffa for Senator Kennedy. When we did the film, I told them everything about my work in New Orleans, but I never gave them permission to use it.” Not long afterward, Arcacha placed a call to Kennedy in Washington. After all these years of communicating only by phone, it was time to meet face-to-face.
Arcacha is still very protective of the most private aspects of his friendship with the man he refers to simply as “Bobby.” When pressed for more details, Arcacha would often say, “I’ve already said too much. . . Maybe someday.” Years earlier, Arcacha had incurred the wrath of the New Orleans Cuban exile community when he refused to go public about his relationship with RFK. In order to recruit more donations and volunteers, exiles wanted him to divulge the extent of the Kennedy commitment. “They wanted me to talk, but I wouldn’t do it,” recalls Arcacha. “Castro already knew too much about our plans. He knew about [our training bases in] Guatemala—everything. Cubans talk too much.”56 Again in 1967, Bobby’s trusted friend and ally remained silent about their relationship even though its revelation most assuredly would have taken the heat off the exile leader, transferring it directly to Robert Kennedy.
Here is what Arcacha would say later about his meeting with Robert Kennedy in Washington. “We met in Senator Kennedy’s office. Bobby had put me up in a penthouse for a week. He said to me, ‘Sergio, I know none of your people killed my brother. Why is Garrison doing this [i.e., pursuing Cuban exiles]? You know that there is nobody in the world who wants to find out who killed Jack more than I.’” With that, Bobby Kennedy produced from his desk one of the coveted PT-109 tie-clips, bestowed only upon close friends. “Here, Sergio, this is for being a friend of the Kennedy family,” said Bobby. Arcacha retains the clip to this day.57
But Arcacha was clearly disappointed. He had expected more than a tie-clip from the man with whom he believed he shared an important bond. A word to the public from RFK would have eased Arcacha’s suffering, but it was not to be. “It would appear like I was covering up Garrison’s investigation. I can’t do that,” said Bobby. Disillusioned and saddened, Arcacha left the meeting thinking, “He’s just another politician after all.”58
During his legal battle with Garrison, Arcacha took a polygraph test in which he admitted his friendship with David Ferrie, and his work with the Cuban Revolutionary Council. He, of course, denied any knowledge of a conspiracy to kill John Kennedy. He was not asked about his relationship with Bobby Kennedy. His responses were determined by the examiner to be one hundred percent truthful.59 Layton Martens also took and passed a polygraph test during this period.
As with so many others who had been frivolously charged during Garrison’s tenure, Sergio Arcacha suffered lasting harm. He lost his job at the air-conditioning company in Dallas. Both he and his attorney Frank Hernandez received numerous death threats. “It was horrible,” says Arcacha. “It was very rough on our families.” Hernandez recalls, “We met our kids’ principals and teachers in order to work out special arrangements for their safety. Cops patrolled our neighborhood every 15 minutes.” But compared to Ferrie, and to Garrison’s next victim, Arcacha got off easy.
Over the next two years, Garrison, relying on the largest collection of impeachable witnesses ever assembled, built his “case” against another Dave Ferrie “accomplice,” New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw. Garrison charged that Shaw and Ferrie had entered into a conspiracy with Lee Oswald to kill Kennedy. According to Garrison’s case, the conspiracy was hatched at Ferrie’s apartment.
Garrison’s star witness, who had “observed” the assassination planning, was a cab driver named Perry Russo (no relation to the author of this book), whom Garrison paid $3,000 for “expenses,” as Russo himself confessed. Russo may be one of the only star witnesses ever to openly admit that he “did not know the difference between fantasy and reality.” Garrison considered neither the payoff incentive nor Russo’s derangement to be material to his case.
In fact, it is questionable whether Clay Shaw even knew Dave Ferrie. “Between Morris [Brownlee], Al [Beauboeuf], and Alan [Campbell], one or more of us were at Dave’s apartment practically every night that year [1963],” says Layton Martens. “And none of us heard any talk of killing Kennedy, none of us ever saw Clay Shaw, and none of us remember a Perry Russo.” When interviewed by the author, Brownlee, Campbell, and Beaubeouf heartily concurred. Typically, Garrison wouldn’t let a detail like that stop his persecution of Clay Shaw. He tried to bribe all three into railroading both Shaw and their deceased friend, Dave Ferrie.60 The indictment Garrison needed to take Shaw to trial was handed down by a grand jury stacked with Garrison’s friends and fellow members of the New Orleans Athletic Club.
“I know that he [Garrison] actually paid Russo $5,000,” says Layton Martens. “He offered $10,000 to Al [Beaubeouf]. One day, Garrison called me at the school where I was teaching. He had me driven to his home, where he greeted me in a flowing silk robe. ‘Here’s what I want you to say,’ he told me. ‘You saw Ferrie and Oswald. If you play along, you can have money, a good job, cars. . .”61 Like the others (except Russo), Martens refused the offer. Unbeknownst to Garrison, Beaubeouf’s attorney secretly taped the bribe by one of Garrison’s staff.62 Beaubeouf retains a copy of the taped conversation to this day.
Clay Shaw was, in fact, anything but an assassination conspirator. As the president of the International Trade Mart, he mixed comfortably with the city’s elite liberal class. Considered a pillar of the New Orleans community as well as a gifted playwright and poet, Shaw was in the forefront of a group of local businessmen spearheading the restoration of the historic French Quarter. What put him at risk was the fact that he was also a homosexual at a time when that lifestyle, if known, could obliterate all his other accomplishments. Those who knew Shaw’s secret (which included Garrison) worried that the out-of-control D.A. would threaten Shaw with public exposure.
When first questioned by Garrison’s assistants, the bemused Shaw had no inkling of what lay ahead for him. Thinking he was merely being asked whether he had seen Oswald leafleting in front of his office at the Trade Mart, Shaw told the investigator he hadn’t, and in fact had no memory of ever seeing Oswald in New Orleans, or elsewhere. After the interrogation, Shaw innocently wrote in his diary, “It was perhaps unfortunate that I did not [know Oswald], because then I might possibly have been a tiny footnote in history.”
On the witness stand, Russo identified Shaw as the “white-haired, distinguished-looking” man he had seen at Ferrie’s apartment with “Oswald.” Off the stand, however, Russo admitted the possibility that the man who resembled Shaw could have been Guy Banister. If Perry Russo indeed crashed one of Dave Ferrie’s parties, there exists the possibility that through his own peculiar haze, he confused Shaw with Banister, who looked little like Shaw except that they were both “distinguished” and had white-gray hair.
Layton Martens admits to the potential for such confusion. “I saw Banister at Ferrie’s apartment every year at Dave’s annual Civil Air Patrol (CAP) party,” recalls Martens. “Guy was one of Dave’s best friends.”63 At other times, Russo admitted that “Oswald” could have really been Ferrie’s roommate, James Lewallen. When he finally met Layton Martens on the evening of August 15, 1967, Russo said that, come to think of it, he was not even sure whether “the assassination talk” was about killing Kennedy or Castro.64 If this weren’t bad enough, Garrison’s other witnesses made Perry Russo seem like Albert Einstein.
One of Shaw’s attorneys, Sal Panzeca, concluded that “Garrison picked Shaw because he had to give the press something. He felt that Shaw wouldn’t defend himself, that he might commit suicide.”65
The obvious contradictions implicit in the indictment of Shaw left Garrison undeterred:
Clay Shaw, a well-known philanthropic liberal, had never associated with the kind of right-wing extremists Garrison had placed at the core of the “assassination conspiracy.” Shaw’s best friend was Edith Stern,
known for her tireless work in the cause of civil rights—a cause for which the Kennedys had been in the forefront
Not only was Shaw a good friend of Bobby Kennedy’s friend, Mayor “Chep” Morrison, but Shaw greatly admired John Kennedy. A close friend said, “Clay voted for Kennedy, he adored him. Kennedy was a builder, just like Clay was. Why would he want to harm him?”66
Over a two-year period, Garrison held press briefings wherein he made statements like: “We solved the case weeks ago,” or, “We know the names of the shooters.” When all the briefings were taken into account, this was Garrison’s bottom line: the President was murdered by a conspiracy whose members included oil moguls, members of the military-industrial complex, the Dallas police, Jack Ruby, anti-Castro Cubans, homosexual thrill-seekers, CIA and FBI agents, Nazis, White Russians, and Lyndon Johnson. It was all coordinated by ardent Kennedy admirer Clay Shaw, with meetings held at the modest Louisiana Parkway apartment of Arcacha’s Cuba Project assistant, David Ferrie. (Possibly Perry Russo supplied the hors d’oeuvres.) Accessories-after-the-fact included virtually all the broadcast and print media, the FBI, the CIA, and, incredible as it may seem, Robert Kennedy. The right-wing plot was made possible by the coverup engineered by John Kennedy’s close personal friends: Earl Warren, one of the most left-wing Supreme Court Justices in history; and CIA Director Allen Dulles, another close friend of the Kennedy family.
Writer Milton Brener summarized the feelings of many locals:
“Certainly,” said many in New Orleans, “Garrison must have something.” A man in his position would be stupid, indeed, to make such statements without some solid evidence—and Garrison certainly was not stupid. Overlooked by many who so reasoned was the clear possibility that the man was stark, raving mad.67
