Live by the Sword

by Gus Russo

  50 Michael Paine, testimony, WC vol. II, 403, also in Posner, 112.

  51 Marina Oswald, testimony, WC vol. 1, 17, also in Posner, 116.

  52 McMillan, 279-281.

  53 Marina Oswald, testimony, WC vol. I, 17, also in Posner, 116.

  54 Interview of Priscilla McMillan, 19 August 1993 (FL).

  55 Interview of Case Coleman, 15 June 1993 (FL).

  56 Interview of Owen Dejanovich, 29 April 1993 (FL).

  57 Interview of Dovid Ofstein, 16 June 1993 (FL).

  58 McMillan, 239.

  59 McMillan, 262-263.

  60 Ibid, 281.

  61 Dallas Chief of Police Jesse Curry, Memorandum, 15 May 1964, CE 1409; also in Dallas Times Herald, 9 Dec 1963, 18.

  Chapter Six (Washington, New Orleans, and Cuba)

  1 Interview of Stephen Tyler, 12 February 1993 (FL).

  2 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 30 June 1994.

  3 Layton Martens, interview by author, 26 July 1994.

  4 Davis, Mafia Kingfish, 22.

  5 For more on Louisiana and the Napoleonic Code, see Jefferson’s Louisiana, by George Dargo (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1975).

  6 While “codified law” makes Louisiana unique in the U.S., it puts it very much in step with the rest of the world.

  7 “New Orleans in the Early 1960s,” Win Magazine, February 1969, 5.

  8 Arthur Carpenter, “Social Origins of Anticommunism,” Louisiana History, 119.

  9 Layton Martens, interview by author, 12 May 1993.

  10 “New Orleans in the Early 1960s,” Win Magazine, February 1969, 5.

  11 William Dalzell, interview by author, 5 February, 1994.

  12 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 30 June, 1994.

  13 Julian Buznedo, interview by author, 13 July, 1994.

  14 CIA Internal Memo, “CIA Involvement with Cubans and Cuban Groups,” 8 May 1967.

  15 “New Orleans in the Early 1960s,” Win Magazine, February 1969, 9.

  16 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 30 June, 1994.

  17 Warren C. DeBrueys, HSCA testimony, 13 May 1978, 7.

  18 Morrison, 33.

  19 Locals claim that Morrison was never actually a reform candidate, and that, in fact, he was only able to defeat the powerful R.D.O. (Regular Democratic Organization) machine with the help of local Mafia don Carlos Marcello.

  20 Morrison had served in the state legislature with Ross Banister, who recommended his brother Guy to the mayor as a possible facilitator for the “reforms.”

  21 Allen Campbell, interview by author, 8 February 1994.

  Campbell would later work for Banister in New Orleans.

  22 Joe Newbrough, interview by author, 8 February 1994.

  For more on the Morrison controversy, see Haas (in Bibliography). Banister intended to record his methods in what would become a textbook for use throughout the country. But the work did not end well. When Banister’s investigations started to hit close to home, Morrison attempted to divert Banister by assigning him to root out the Communists of New Orleans. Knowing that this was Banister’s passion, the Mayor hoped he would back away from the graft investigations. It didn’t work. By this time, Banister had the audacity to align himself with a chief gadfly of the administration, Aaron Kohn of the Metropolitan Commission. Together, Banister and Kohn relentlessly pursued corruption, pitting themselves against prominent administrators, regardless of who had appointed them. The inevitable soon followed. (Interview of Joe Newbrough, 6 April 1993 [FL]).

  23 The actual circumstances behind Banister’s eviction from the police department were clouded by an episode that took place during Mardi Gras in 1957. Banister reportedly pulled a gun on a waiter. Some insisted that he had been provoked or even set up by enemies. Banister employees, such as Joe Newbrough, were convinced that the entire episode was a setup. Letters among Morrison’s papers reflect a mayor under pressure to dismiss Banister. At one point, however, Morrison interceded with the Police Commissioner to lift Banister’s suspension.

  24 Interview with Joe Newbrough, 6 April 1993 (FL).

  25 “Louisiana Intelligence Digest,” vol. 1, number 1, 1961.

  26 Delphine Roberts, interview by author, 8 February 1994.

  Testimony by Mary Brengel, Banister’s one-time secretary, illustrates the uncountable number of circumstances that can be considered suspicious by people with that inclination. Brengel could not remember Roberts bringing a radio to the office at any time before the fateful day, November 22, 1963. She does remember that someone telephoned Roberts in mid-morning “and she turned on the radio real quickly. . . and we listened until the President was dead.” No one can stop people from interpreting such slim evidence as indication that Roberts had advance knowledge of the event in Dealey Plaza. In any case, she seems to confirm both Roberts’ elation at the news and Banister’s quite different reaction. “Then [after hearing the news on the radio], she jumped up from her desk, twirled around the office, and said, ‘Oh, he’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead!’ And that was strange to me because although I was not a follower of President Kennedy, I respected his office, and I think most conservatives did. We wouldn’t get out and want him assassinated” (Mary Brengel, interview by author, 6 June 1993).

  27 New Orleans Times-Picayune, 18 April 1961, 9.

  28 HSCA, vol X, 127.

  29 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 14 May 1994.

  30 HSCA, vol. X, 57.

  31 Ibid; see also CIA Internal Memo, “CIA Involvement with Cubans and Cuban Groups,” 8 May 1967.

  32 Lou Ivon, Memorandum, based on an interview with Richard Rolfe, 13 January 1968.

  33 CIA document 1363-501, 26 October 1967.

  CIA documents also state that one of Arcacha’s regular FBI contacts was Banister—which supports the evidence of Banister’s files that he never stopped working for J. Edgar Hoover.

  34 Dick Billings’ Internal Memo, Life Magazine, April 1967.

  The memo conduded that Arcacha was “doing all sorts of things to help start a revolution to help free his native land, and was considered by United States agendes as an ally of the U.S.”

  35 There are a host of conceivable ways for the introduction to have occurred: first, through any one of a number of exile leaders who were mutual acquaintances of both RFK and Arcacha, such as Artime and Ray. Secondly, the papers of Mayor Morrison, also Bobby’s good friend, reflect a friendship with the mayor and Arcacha. Arcacha once gave Morrison a certificate of appreciation from the local CRC chapter for his help with the exiles. Finally, the local FBI agents Warren DeBrueys and Ernest Wall acted as liaisons between the Cubans and Washington, and could have facilitated the introductions.

  36 New York Times, “Anti-Castro Units Trained. . .” 7 April 1961.

  37 Ronnie Caire, New Orleans District Attorney’s office, interview by author, January 23, 1967.

  38 New Orleans Times-Picayune, 11 April 1961, sec. 3, 4.

  39 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 24 April 1997.

  40 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 14 May 1994.

  41 Martin Underwood, interview by author, 9 September 1997.

  42 Corn, 76.

  43 Kirkpatrick, 189.

  44 New Orleans Times-Picayune, 5 January 1961, 2.

  45 New Orleans Times-Picayune, 11 April 1961, sec. 3, 4.

  46 New Orleans Times-Picayune, 8 April 1961, 9.

  47 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 14 May 1994.

  48 HSCA, vol. X, 107.

  Ferrie was not in the minority in expressing his outrage. As we have seen, even JFK’s advisors criticized him severely after the 1961 event. JFK was even harsh on himself.

  49 Nick Caridas, owner of a concession at Lakefront Airport where Ferrie regularly ate. Interview by author, 7 February 1994.

  50 Interview of Layton Martens, 12 May 1993 (EL).

  51 Al Beauboeuf, interview by author, 26 January 1994.

  52 Morris Brownlee, interview by
author, 29 November 1993.

  53 Morris Brownlee, interview by author, 29 November 1993.

  54 Layton Martens, interview by W. Scott Malone, 25 February 1993 (FL).

  55 Gerry Hemming, interview by author, 15 February 1994.

  The story that blew the operation was written by Bill Stuckey of the New Orleans States Item on July 21, 1962.

  56 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 14 May 1994.

  57 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 14 May 1994.

  58 Layton Martens, interview by author, 5 July 1994.

  59 Sergio Arcacha Smith to Eddie Rickenbacker, letter, 18 July 1961, cited in Fensterwald and Ewing, 496.

  60 To this day, everywhere one goes in New Orleans one hears tales of David Ferrie’s inspirational prowess.

  61 Morris Brownlee, interview by author, 7 July 1994.

  62 Interview of Layton Martens, 12 May 1993 (FL).

  Another possibility for RFK contact with Ferrie involves Ferrie’s piloting abilities. Testimony was given to D.A. Jim Garrison that Ferrie had flown a high official of Freeport Sulphur Company, located near New Orleans, to Cuba along with local businessman Clay Shaw (whom Garrison later indicted for conspiring with Ferrie to kill Kennedy). The New York sales manager for Freeport Sulphur, former Senator Paul Douglas, was a close friend of Bobby Kennedy (James Cogswell, interview, HSCA Outside Contact Report, 6 July 1978).

  63 Herbert Wagner, deposition to the New Orleans District Attorney Office, 6 December 1967.

  64 David Ferrie to Eastern Airlines, letter, 30 October 1961, FAA copy on file in HSCA JFK Collection, box 284, file 014904.

  65 Morris Brownlee, interview by author, 5 February 1994.

  66 Interview of Layton Martens, 7 July 1993 (FL).

  67 Martens believes that Ferrie and Arcacha took the materials, believing that Martens was too young to hold on to them, and because he would have no use for them after he returned to school.

  68 HSCA Memo of interview with Ross Crozier, submitted by Gaeton Fonzi to Robert Blakey, 16 January 1978.

  69 Fonzi, 360.

  Gerry Hemming, an anti-Castro activist, has said that the Cuban underground furnished him with the missile information at least six months prior to the crisis (Gerry Hemming, interview by author, 3 November 1993). Hemming’s group, Interpen, passed this information along to Republican Senator Kenneth Keating, who then went on the Senate floor on August 31, 1962 to reveal what he knew. (See Keating’s article in Look Magazine, “My Advance View of the Cuban Crisis,” November 3, 1964.) CIA executive Sam Halpern says, “We were aware that Keating had sources on the missiles, but we were never able to determine who they were.” (Sam Halpern, interview by author, 15 October 1993).

  70 Fursenko and Naftali, 193.

  71 Morris Brownlee, interview by author, 29 November 1993.

  72 New Orleans Times-Picayune, 29 December 1961.

  73 Joe Newbrough, interview by author, 8 February 1994.

  George Faraldo, a Cuban exile with extensive knowledge of aerial photography and espionage techniques, may have been the original source of the Ferrie/Arcacha photos. He told HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi that he had “taken shots of the Russian missiles in Cuba long before Kennedy announced that they existed.” Faraldo said, “I was told I was working for the U.S. Information Agency,” but all along he believed he was working for the CIA (Fonzi, 65).

  74 Louis Rabel Nuñez, interview by author, 6 February 1994.

  75 Phillips, 124-125.

  Allegedly, the British also had advance knowledge of the missiles. According to British Royal Air Force (RAF) squadron leader Anthony M. Eaton, British overflights in October 1960 took reconnaissance photos that “clearly indicated IRBM emplacements being set up in several locations.” Eaton says the information was passed on to the U. S. State Department (Affidavit of Eaton to Robert Morrow, 3 June 1976).

  CIA contract agent Robert Morrow has long insisted that the underground apparatus of Cuban “president-in-exile” Mario Garcia Kohly also had learned of the missiles in 1961 and had reported it to President Kennedy. The exiles were infuriated when Kennedy did nothing (See Morrow, Betrayal and Morrow, First Hand Knowledge).

  76 Ed Dolan, interview by author, 17 October 1997.

  77 Rafael Nuñez, interview by author, 12 April 1995.

  78 Layton Martens, interview by author, 3 February 1994.

  The members of Arcacha ‘s CRC were not the only New Orleans exiles receiving the missile reports. Carlos Bringuier, leader of the Cuban Student Directorate in New Orleans, recently stated, “The leaders of the Student Directorate had a list of all the sites where Castro had deployed the missiles long before the crisis” (Carlos Bringuier, interview by author, 28 February 1994). Kent Courtney, Banister associate and publisher, corroborates him, saying, “Carlos Bringuier told me about the missiles very early on.” (Kent Courtney, interview by author, 7 February 1994). Layton Martens believes this early knowledge of the missiles helps explain the Kennedy obsession with killing Castro. “It was known in our office that the Kennedys wanted Castro dead,” says Martens. “We were told that the CIA was ‘under the presidential hammer’ to get the job done.”

  79 Of this similar trouble spot, Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote that Kennedy “had never really given it [Vietnam] his full attention.” Kennedy had once remarked that one of his favorite books was David Cecil’s Melbourne, a biography of the British Parliamentarian, Lord Melbourne. One of Melbourne’s most famous precepts was “When in doubt, do nothing.”

  80 Cited in 2 August 1976 press conference by Congressman Thomas Downing, first chairman of the HSCA.

  81 In 1967, Martens would undergo a polygraph (lie detector) examination for the New Orleans D.A.’s office. Among other things, he would disclose his and Arcacha ‘s relationship with Bobby Kennedy. The test results indicated no evidence of deception. The test was administered by Richard O’Donnell for the New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison.

  82 Memorandum for Chief [deleted], 19 October 1967.

  83 Special Agent in Charge to J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Memorandum, New Orleans office, 20 April 1967.

  84 Guy Johnson, interview by Bernard Fensterwald, 24 August 1967, Assassination Archives and Research Center, Washington, D.C.

  85 Jack Martin and David Lewis, affidavit to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, 20 February 1968, 33.

  More on the Regis Kennedy/ Guy Banister relationship:

  The inference that Regis Kennedy sanctioned the arms transfer jibes with testimony regarding an incident six months later. In early 1962, Regis Kennedy visited Frank DeLabarre, nephew of Gus DeLabarre, who owned the property being used as one of the exile training camps. Kennedy offered DeLaBarre a chance to do some gun-running. DeLaBarre asked, “What the hell are you talking about?” Kennedy replied, “Well my old boss, Banister, he’s back doing something” (Frank DeLaBarre affidavit to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison; also Frank DeLaBarre, interview by author, 5 February 1994). Banister’s secretary in 1963, Mary Brengel, said that Banister formed a group of ex-FBI men, with Regis Kennedy given the task of guarding the Mississippi Test Site (Mary Brengel, interview by [FNU] Navarre, 1 June 1967).

  Banister assistant Jack Martin wrote, “We often met Regis Kennedy during this period in Banister’s office. Sometimes we’d run into him several times a day.” He claimed that daily reports on Cuban activities were written by Regis Kennedy, and forwarded to FBI Assistant Director Mohr. Regis Kennedy himself admitted going to Banister’s office and seeing Jack Martin there (Jack Martin and David Lewis, affidavit to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, 20 February 1968, 35; also Regis Kennedy, Memo to Special Agent in Charge, New Orleans, 18 May 1967).

  Betty Parrot, a friend of Bill Dalzell (a founder with Banister and Jack Martin of the Friends of Democratic Cuba), also said that Regis Kennedy was working with Dalzell and Friends of Democratic Cuba. Parrot said they were involved in shipments of men and supplies to Cuba. “He came by the ho
use many times to discuss it” (Betty Parrot, interview by New Orleans DA staff investigator Andrew Sciambra, 1 April 1967 and 18 September 1967).

  Former CIA agent Dalzell had numerous contacts with New Orleans CIA agent Lloyd Ray (Dalzell called him Logan), a fact which was confirmed by CIA personnel. Dalzell reportedly admitted to the New Orleans States-Item that he was “CIA” and that his advisors were Logan and Regis Kennedy. Dalzell recounted how he first met Kennedy: “The day after the Bay of Pigs, Regis Kennedy came to my door. I thought he wanted to bust me for my work with Cubans. I explained the situation to him and he said, ‘There is no Mr. Ray of the CIA.’ So I walked him across the street to the Masonic Building, where the CIA was headquartered, and introduced him to Mr. Ray.” Mr. Ray removed Dalzell from any trouble (William Dalzell, interview by author, 5 February 1994). (Lloyd Ray may also have been involved in an Oswald debriefing.)

  These interrelationships go a long way to explaining why any investigation of 544 Camp street after the assassination was relegated to a quick phone call to Banister. On June 1st, 1964, as the Warren Commission raced to meet its deadline, Banister ran into Jack Martin. He asked Martin, “You haven’t been circulating anything about me you shouldn’t, have you?” Martin responded, “Your old buddy Regis Kennedy has pretty well taken care of things” (Martin and Lewis, affidavit to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, 11). Regis was still an FBI agent—one of the men who did the investigating for the Warren Commission, through Hoover.

  86 Jack Martin and David Lewis, affidavit to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, 20 February 1968, 35.

  87 Frank Hernandez, Sergio Arcacha ‘s attorney, interview by author, 18 February 1994.

  88 Interview of Gordon Novel, 2 June 1993 (FL).

  89 Ronnie Caire, NODA interview, 23 January 1967.

  90 Carlos Quiroga, deposition to HSCA, 19 June 1978.

  Quiroga said he was introduced to Arcacha by the FBI’s Warren DeBrueys, who recommended that Quiroga work with them.

  91 Carlos Quiroga, statement to NODA, [undated].

  92 Luis Rabel Nunes, interview by author, 6 February 1994.