by Gus Russo
33 Ramsey Clark to LBJ, phone conversation, 22 February 1967, LBJ Library; see also Beschloss, The Crisis Years, 564.
34 Layton Martens, interview by author, 10 September 1994.
35 Interview of Nicky Chetta, Jr., 10 January 1993 (FL).
36 CCR, bk. V, 106.
37 Richard Helms, Church Committee testimony, 29 June 1975.
38 DeLoach to Tolson, FBI Memorandum, 20 March 1967.
39 Richard Helms, Church Committee testimony, 28 June 1975.
40 Thomas Powers, 157-158.
41 The details of the operation are revealed in several documents of the Military District of Washington, including a Daily Staff Journal of Duty Officer’s Log, a list entitled “Military Personnel for the Military District of Washington That Will Be Present During the Re-interment of President John F. Kennedy,” and several memoranda and receipts. They were released by the Gerald Ford Library to the National Archives on August 25th, 1993.
42 According to one Lieutenant Colonel, a Washington Post reporter who appeared at 1:30 in the morning “was immediately escorted from the Cemetery” (Lieutenant Colonel James Mason, Memorandum for the Record, March 15, 1967).
43 Colonel J. B. Conmy, interview by author, 3 December 1993.
44 Frank Mankiewicz, interview by author, 19 January 1994. Mankiewicz said that he never got to give Kennedy his final opinion on Garrison, because Kennedy himself was assassinated halfway through the New Orleans investigation.
In a more bizarre take on RFK’s involvement with the Garrison proceedings, Gordon Novel, a self-professed CIA “contract operative,” once told John Lear (of “LearJet”), “Bobby Kennedy personally asked me to help him. Allen Dulles handed me a bagful of cash and then went off to Mexico on my advice to avoid a Garrison subpoena.” Novel explained that his job was to feed Garrison bogus information that would steer him away from the Castro-retaliation story. (Gordon Novel to John Lear, phone conversation transcript, undated).
45 Hougan, Spooks, 125-132.
In 1994, the Church Committee released its transcribed testimony from, and interviews of, witnesses regarding the Kennedy assassination. By far the most censored transcript is that of Walter Sheridan, with entire pages blackened out. In 1995, the presidentially-appointed JFK Review Board sought to obtain more details from Sheridan regarding his investigation of the Garrison case. Sources on the board told the author that Sheridan was “uncooperative,” refusing to turn over his notes. Sheridan passed away soon after, his obituary suggesting a donation to the Robert Kennedy Memorial Fund in lieu of flowers. As of this writing, the board remains very interested in the workings of the “Five Eyes.”
46 Sheridan, 426-427.
47 Phelan, 168-169.
48 Arthur Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 665.
49 Kirkwood, 540-541.
50 Flammonde, 317.
51 Frank Hernandez, interview by author, 29 June 1994.
52 Dallas Times-Herald, 4 April 1967.
53 Martens’ letter offering help to Arcacha was still in Arcacha’s possession at the time of the 1978 HSCA investigation. Arcacha handed it over to the investigators. A copy of it was located in the recently-released HSCA working files.
54 J.S. Martin to Louis Ivon, Subject: Investigation of Layton Martens, Memorandum from DA’s office, 4 April 1968.
55 FBI Memo, File 62-10960, 30 March 1967.
56 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 12 October 1994.
57 After much prodding, Arcacha, who considers his relationship with Bobby both private and personal, produced the tie-clip from his its hiding place and showed it to the author.
58 Sergio Arcacha Smith, interview by author, 24 April 1997.
59 The test was administered by John M. Spoonmore of Scientific Security Service, on March 8, 1967, and is in the author’s possession.
60 Two years after the assassination, Layton Martens, like so many other New Orleaneans, would meet the ubiquitous Clay Shaw. When it was later revealed that Martens’ college address appeared in Clay Shaw’s address book, more fuel was added to the theory that Shaw must have known Ferrie. “I first met Shaw during the 1965 Mardi Gras,” remembers Martens. “We were on Bourbon Street, when a mutual friend spotted Shaw in full regalia—a monk’s outfit—and introduced us.” Later, Shaw and Martens met again at the New Orleans Chess Club, where Shaw, as a member, was helping with the historic preservation of the club’s headquarters. “Shaw was a ‘B’ player,” says Martens. “We played often after that, a number of times in his home.” Martens is adamant that he never saw Shaw with Ferrie, and indeed Martens himself didn’t meet Shaw until 1965 (Layton Martens, interview by author, 6 April 1995).
61 Layton Martens, interview by author, 6 February 1994.
62 Brener, 164-171.
63 Layton Martens, interview by author, 1 September 1995.
64 Brener, 138.
Perry Russo may have accidentally stumbled onto a kernel of truth with this one. According to Martens, it was known to those in Arcacha’s office, including Ferrie, that the administration was trying to kill Castro. “Ferrie talked about it. We all talked about it,” recalls Martens. In addition, Banister’s assistant, Joe Newbrough, told Frontline in 1993 that he had seen Banister and Ferrie discussing the possibility of Castro being assassinated.
65 Sal Panzeca, interview by author, 24 February 1994.
66 Kirkwood, 25.
67 Brener, 226.
68 Michael Dorman, interview by author, 19 November 1993.
69 Dorman, Payoff, 174-175.
70 That evidence included correspondence between Johnson and Halfen that Halfen’s lawyer removed from his safe to show Dorman. (When contacted by the author in 1993, Halfen’s widow expressed no interest in opening up her safe.) Other Big Fix papers were in the safekeeping of a Louisiana racketeer known as Bill “Nitro,” who wasn’t one for fantasizing: his sobriquet developed from his signature car bombs used against his enemies. He spoke of “all Lyndon did for us.”
In addition to written exhibits, Halfen would claim to have photographs and films of himself with Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson on hunting trips. He also claimed that Johnson’s protege John Connally was among “his” prominent politicians, telling an investigator for the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, popularly known as the rackets committee, that some of his transactions with Connally—who was elected Governor of Texas in 1962—took place in a Bahamas bank.
Halfen supported his assertions about bribe recipients with enough detailed evidence and names of corroborating witnesses to convince the most skilled, skeptical interrogators. His disclosures were bi-partisan (Dorman, Vesco, 62).
Although no official explanation was made of the Senate subcommittee’s failure to pursue Halfen’s allegations, observers believe that members and aides feared the consequences of investigating the powerful, prestigious likes of Connally and Bush. While Halfen’s motive was to reduce his sentence, a close Connally associate was reported to have threatened Halfen with a life in prison for fingering the former Governor.
71 Apparently, Halfen (who was given a copy of Dorman’s manuscript) had showed a copy of the manuscript to his civil lawyer, Moise Simon, who showed it to his friend and Johnson aide, Jim Novy. Both were members of Austin’s tight-knit Jewish community. Interestingly, Moise Simon was also on Marcello’s staff briefly in 1972, when the Mafioso was re-tried for assaulting an FBI agent (Michael Dorman, interview by author, 10 August and 16 August 1992).
72 Rostow to McNamara, Memorandum, 24 April 1961, FRUS vol. X, 327-330.
73 The document was discovered by researcher G.R. Dodge in the handwriting file at the LBJ Library in Austin, TX. Dodge provided the author with a copy.
Chapter Nineteen (The Myth Unravels)
1 Michael Scott, interview in Russell, 462.
2 “Mexico City Report,” CIA, 98-99.
3 Robert Krandle, HSCA interview, 27 March 1978.
4 HSCA Final Report, 323.
5 The officers were: Phillip Agee, Daniel Stanley Watson, Joseph Piccolo, Joseph B. Smith, and Daniel Niescuir.
6 Unnamed by Summers, the official was most assuredly Allen P. White.
7 Anthony Summers, interview by author, 26 January 1995.
8 In 1994, the Summers also interviewed Homer Bono, who told them that he met Oswald at Sanborn’s Restaurant outside Mexico City in 1963. Oswald left in the company of a Quaker from Philadelphia named Steve Kennan [sic?]. Oswald was a passenger on Kennan’s motorbike as the two drove off to the Cuban Embassy to try to secure a visa for Oswald. Kennan has never been found or interviewed.
9 “Mexico City Report,” HSCA, 22, 91, and 114, respectively.
10 Russell, 461.
11 Win Scott, Foul Foe, 187.
12 Ibid, 190.
13 Ibid, 192.
14 Nixon’s knowledge of anti-Castro activities was firsthand. As Vice President, he was the primary mover in a secret Cuban project known as “Operation 40.” He also held intense conversations in the summer of 1960 about “delicate” Cuban matters with the very people who were later found to be the chief go-betweens in the first (pre-Kennedy) phase of the Castro assassination plots. For more details, see Beschloss, The Crisis Years, 135-137.
15 Earlier in 1971, Nixon told aide John Ehrlichman to order the CIA to turn over “the full file” on the Cuban project, “or else.” Ehrlichman’s notes make it clear that the President “must have the file.” He had been “deeply involved.” This may have been a partial motivation for the Watergate break-in, as the man whose office was broken into, Democratic National Committee Chairman Larry O’Brien, had been working recently with the very people Richard Nixon had been consulting in the first phase of the Castro assassination projects. (See fn. 14 and previous text references to Nixon.)
16 Just the day before, an incident occurred that may have inspired the Nixon gambit. On 19 June 1972, Hunt’s White House safe was drilled open by FBI agents investigating the Watergate affair. L. Patrick Gray, Acting Director of the FBI, proceeded to burn the politically sensitive documents in Hunt’s possession. One of the documents concerned the Kennedy assassination.
Reportedly, both Hunt and Cuban exile activist/Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, at various times, had privately voiced suspicion over whether elements of the Castro government could have been involved in the Kennedy assassination. Based on a Frank Sturgis tip, Hunt, along with other Watergaters (Sturgis, Barker and Martinez) wrote a report in June 1971 of an interview they conducted of a Cuban woman in Miami with Fidel Castro when he heard of Kennedy’s death. One copy of the report went to CIA Director Richard Helms and one copy was kept in Hunt’s safe. This may have been among the documents burned on 19 June. The question remained: Who ordered Hunt to investigate the Kennedy assassination?
Also taken from Hunt’s safe at that time was a document based on another “plumber’s” probe that has gotten little attention. The Nixon White House had maintained an interest in damaging the possible presidential bid of Ted Kennedy. Hunt felt it would be possible to link the Kennedy family to the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem three weeks before John Kennedy’s own murder. Hunt reported to Nixon aide Chuck Colson that secret State Department cables made it obvious that JFK had complicity in Diem’s death—but no single cable proved it. Hunt used a razor blade and a photocopying machine to produce a bogus single cable, which he gave to Life Magazine (see Lukas, 83-85). This document on the Diem murder was contained in Hunt’s safe, and it too was taken.
Ted Kennedy was not the only Democratic contender whom Nixon intended to link to an assassination (albeit via his brother). In the December 14, 1993 issue of the New Yorker Magazine, investigator Seymour Hersh detailed an interview with Nixon aide Chuck Colson. Colson admitted to Hersh that Nixon proposed planting George McGovern’s campaign literature in the apartment of Arthur Bremer, the convicted assailant of another presidential hopeful, Alabama governor George Wallace. Hersh wrote that Nixon was “energized and excited by what seems to be the ultimate political dirty trick” against the Democrats’ presidential nominee, George McGovern.
(Sources: Mike Ewing to HSCA, “Hunt” memo, released in August 1993. Also, E. Howard Hunt, interview in Providence Journal, November 1975; and Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, 14 December 1993.)
17 Haldeman with DiMona, 52-70.
18 Brent Scowroft, Memo of conversation, 4 January 1975; Ford Library file of the JFK Collection, National Archives.
19 Schorr, 143-144.
20 Tom Wicker, The New York Times, 7 January 1975.
21 Belin, Final Disclosure, 93.
22 Colby and Dennett, 736, quoting from Rockefeller’s oral history.
23 Belin, Final Disclosure, 117.
24 Ibid, 121.
25 Ibid, 124.
26 Robert McNamara, testimony before Church Committee, 11 July 1975, cited in CCIR, 158.
27 Ibid, 118-119.
28 FitzGerald died at the age of 56 while playing tennis at his Virginia home. Bobby Kennedy attended his funeral. FitzGerald was posthumously awarded the National Security Medal by President Johnson. (Thomas, The Very Best Men, 333.)
29 Beschloss, The Crisis Years, 138-139.
30 Richard Helms, testimony before the Church Committee, 96.
31 David Martin, The Morning News (of Wilmington, Delaware), 31 May 1975.
32 CCIR, 167-169.
33 Quoted in Belin, Final Disclosure, 119.
34 Belin, Final Disclosure, 118.
35 Richard Goodwin, interview by author, 20 January 1994.
36 David and David, 228.
37 Human Events, 24 July 1976, 13-15.
38 CCIR, 1.
39 Maheu, 112, 130.
40 Richard Helms, “Reflections on a ‘Gentleman Spy,’” World Intelligence Review, vol. 13, no. 3, 1994.
41 Johnson, A Season of Inquiry, 270.
42 Thomas Powers, quoted in Beschloss, The Crisis Years, 138, fn.
43 Thomas Powers, 156.
44 Ibid, 7.
45 Quoted in Thomas Powers, 304.
46 Phillips, 290.
47 Johnson, A Season of Inquiry, 60.
48 Cited in Merle Miller, Plain Speaking, 420 n.
49 Hunt, Give Us This Day, 213-214.
50 Mosely, 473.
51 “The CIA: America’s Secret Warriors,” The Discovery Channel, 1997.
52 Senator Richard Schweiker, interview by author, 23 June 1994.
53 L. Fletcher Prouty, Church Committee testimony, 16 July 1975. This testimony was not released until 1994. The JFK Records Act forced Congress and other agencies to release all their JFK records.
54 Richard Helms to William K. Harvey, Memo (Subject: “Authorization of ZRRIFLE Agent Activities”), 19 February 1962. Author’s files.
55 Schorr, 149
56 These documents are retained by a Harvey family member, and represent the only physical record of Harvey’s work. It had been rumored that Harvey brought sensitive operational documents home, which were destroyed upon his death by his widow. This was not the case. The author was assured by someone in a position to know that “Bill never brought paperwork home!”
57 Frank King, interview by author, 30 April 1998.
58 Martin, 220.
59 Dulles, 177.
60 Wise and Ross, 157.
61 Ibid, 174-175.
62 CIA officer, confidential interview by author, 8 February 1995.
63 William Safire, “The President’s Friend,” New York Times, 15 December 1975.
64 Loch Johnson, A Season of Inquiry, 7.
65 Ibid, 6.
66 Ibid, 8.
67 Tower, 135.
68 Bolstering this Bobby Kennedy link (as if more bolstering were needed), the committee obtained testimony from a CIA employee who stated that “a very high level source in the CIA had once told him that Bobby Kennedy had, in fact, been active in pursuing the idea of an assassination attempt against Castro, and that Bobby Kennedy had not been in the positio
n of simply receiving such a proposal from the Agency.” (Confidential CIA source, interview by David Aaron, cited in Aaron to William Miller, Memo, 1 April 1975.)
69 Andy Postal to Church Committee, Memo for the Record, 15 January 1976.
70 Andy Postal, interview by author, 1 August 1997.
71 CCIR, 150, fn. 2.
72 Heather Gordon, interview by author, 9 September 1994.
73 Church, 57.
74 Ibid, 57.
75 Interview of Senator Richard Schweiker, 26 July 1993 (FL).
76 David Bushong, interview by author, 1 August 1997.
77 Jim Flannery, interview by author, 23 December 1993.
78 Johnson, A Season of Inquiry, 176.
79 Andy Postal, interview by author, 1 August 1997.
80 Richard Schweiker, quoted in Johnson, A Season of Inquiry, 57.
81 Johnson, A Season of Inquiry, 70.
82 Ibid, 187.
83 Letter on file in Dulles Collection at the Mudd Library, Princeton, NJ.
84 Reeves, 265-266.
85 CCR, vol. VII, 182.
86 Jim Johnston, interview by author, 27 December 1993.
87 Quoted in Max Holland, “After Thirty Years: Making Sense of the Assassination,” Reviews in American History #22, June 1994, 205.
88 Church Report, vol. III, 59.
89 Harvey family member, interview by author; also David Martin, 222.
90 The author counts himself among those teenagers impressed by the arguments raised by a number of these books. However, after over thirty years of following the twists and turns in the evidence, and having the opportunity to conduct thousands of interviews, including many with members of the scientific community, the author has come to the realization that approximately 90% of the books and witnesses are, in fact, worthless.
91 Gaeton Fonzi, interview by author, 4 April 1993.
92 Congressman Louis Stokes, interview by author, 6 April 1992.
93 Robert Tanenbaum, interview by author, 3 April 1993.
94 Interview of L.J. Delsa, 10 January 1993 (FL).
95 Fonzi, 210-211.
96 Gaeton Fonzi, interview by author, 4 April 1993.
97 Leslie Wizelman, interview by author, 4 April 1993.
98 Sergio Arcacha Smith, HSCA testimony, 7 July 1978; National Archives, College Park, MD.
