THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY: AN UNCOMMISSIONED REPORT ON THE JIM GARRISON INVESTIGATION BY PARIS FLAMMONDE

• Document Type: SPECIALCOLLECTION
• Collection: Records Related to the Assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 00457554
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• Document Creation Date: June 6, 2025
• Document Release Date: June 12, 2025

.4104-10115-1030* ' 7 , � .; � * s � 4�11111 1111111211111.11.111r CIA HIS1ORC.1-�,L OGRP RELEASE FAL ���� HE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY An Uncommissioned Report on the Jim Garrison Investigatiory BY PARIS FLAMMONDE � .�.. 4. � : MM. � - Appreciation is expressed to the New Orleans States-Item, and Chief ...- Photographer 0. J. Valeton and A. P. Vidocovich, Jr.; the Winnipeg Free Press and Gerry Cairns; Wide World Photos and William Edell; and Tom Bethel! of Mr. Garrison's staff. Copyright 1969 by PARIS FLAMMONDE All rights reserved: No part of this book in excess of five hundred words may be reproduced in any form without per- mission in writing from the publisher. First edition � Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-9531 MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA FOR MEREDITH PRESS 1 JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY 1917-1963 ROBERT FRANCIS KENNEDY 1925-1968. � Camelot and Avalon THE CUBANS � 7 ' In the early morning hours of July 31, 1963, FBI agents swooped down on a small summer cottage in the resort town of Lacombe, Louisi- ana, north of Lake Pontchartrein, attd seized a cache of arms including forty-eight cases of dynamite, twenty 100-pound bomb casings, napalm, blasting caps, and primer cord. According to an Associated Press account of the raid, "An informed source said the explosives were part of a cache to be used in an attack on Cuba." But FBI spokesmen would say only that the war material was "seized in connection with an investigation of an effort to carry out a Military operation from the United States against a country with which the United States is at peace." The FBI declined to reveal if any arrests had been made or name the owner of the single- - ,�-� storied cottage, who was subsequently identified as William Julius Mc- Laney of New Orleans. ::.1cLaney was inaccessible to the press, but his wife told reporters that the cottage had been "loaned" to a Cuban exile friend named Jose Juarez. Mrs. McLaney said that she and her husband.: had operated a tourist business in Havana but left Cuba in 1960 "be- cause Castro made things impossible down there." 2 In those days of feverish intrigue against the Castro regime by Cuban exiles in the southwestern United States the Lacombe raid received little attention. It has, however, assumed a' prominent role in Jim Garrison's investigation of the Kennedy assassination. Garrison believes that Cuban exiles were involved in the alleged conspiracy to kill Kennedy, and con- tends that a Cuban exile group training north of Lake Pontchartrain for an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro later "spun off' into the sue- CHAPTER SIX Washington Post. August I. 1963. 2 Ncw Orleans States-1ton, May 4, 1967. II0 Th e Cu bans 1 1 1 cessful attempt on Kennedy. Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Haynes Johnson, whose book The Buy of Pigs was written with the cooperation of top Cuban exile leaders, summarized Garrison's thesis in the Washington Sunday Star of February 26, 1967: The thread that winds through the story involves one of the central problems of John F: Kennedy's two years, ten months and two days in the White House�the problem of Cuba. It is Garrison's obvious con- tention that Cubans were somehow involved in the President's death. . . . His case appears to rest on one theory about the assassination: That Oswald was working with an anti-Castro right-wing organization and actually intended to kill Fidel; that Oswald's publicly pro-Com- munist activities in New Orleans and his attempt to enter Mexico and secure a Cuban visa were a ruse to enable him to carry out that Castro assassination objective; that when Oswald was denied entrance to Cuba, the plot shifted, and Kennedy, accused of letting down the anti- Castro Cubans at the Bay of Pigs, became the target. Garrison charges that David Ferrie, Jack Ruby, a-nd Lee Oswald were involved in training twe paramilitary groups of Cuban exiles and-Amer- ican "neo-Nazis" north of Lake Pontchartrain, in the immediate vicinity of the McLaney home. He believes that after Kennedy ordered a crack- down on such CIA-supported activities, the fanatic anti-Castroites turned their rifle sights on the President. In Garrison's scenario., the raid on the McLaney cottage in Lacombe may well have signed Kennedy's death warrant. The McLaneys thus de- serve closer scqatiny than the press afforded them in the aftermath of the incident. Garrison's investigators have discovered that Julius McLancy's brother, Mike McLaney, operated a plush gambling casino in Havana during the Batista regime. In an article entitled "How Castro Double- Crossed the Gambling Syndicate," in Parade on April 23, 1963, three months before the FBI raid, Jack Anderson reported that Mc- Laney's casino in the Hotel Nacional was nationalized by the Castro gov- ernment at an investment loss of over $7 million to its owners. McLaney and his associates were reimbursed in Cuban pesos�worthless outside Cuba, where the gamblers are persona non grata. Mike McLancy subse- quently ran a gambling club in Las Vegas, btit he never forgot that he had a score to settle with Castro. Jack Anderson reported in his column of May 4, 1963, that during the Bay of Pigs invasion American oil- men, still hoping to regain their nationalized installations in Cuba, had pressured the government to forestall planned firebomb raids on the Esso, r .1r.�:ANt.-..214.E4t401* 3041523Zil 1 1 2 THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY Texaco, and Shell refineries in Cuba. According to Anderson, "Destrg- tion of the three big facilities would have paralyzed the Castro war ma- chine within weeks. But the CIA command post ordered the plane to ignore the refineries and look for gun emplauements to bomb. Later, Mike Mc- Laney, an American gambler . . . sent the CIA a detailed plan for knocking out the three refineries. But instead of getting his plan ap- proved, McLaney got an urgent phone call warning him not to attempt such a thing under any circumstances." McLaney subsequently was one of the organizers of a multimillion-dollar effort to take over gambling. casinos in the Bahamas on behalf of a Las Vegas gambling syndicate with' close, Mafia connections. The syndicate's bribery of public officials in Nassau i was exposed by local political reformers and led to the fall ofothe Bahamian government and a scandal that had serious political repeows- sions in London. On November 20, .1967, the Bahamian conunis- sioner of police issued a report declaring that "Mr. McLaney was an un- scrupulous individual. . . . We regard Mr. McLaney as a thoroughly dangerous person who is likely to do nothing but harm to the Baha- mas." 3 J � Garrison suspects that in 1963 both Mike and Julius McLaney were serving the interests of the CIA by providing Cuban exiles with a training site and arms cache for a prospective raid on Cuba. He says there were two anti-Castro groups training north of Lake Pontcliartrain, one "overt," the other "covert." The covert group, according to Garrison, was loci by David Ferrie, who drilled five-man commando teams in guerrilla warfare practice and infiltration techniques on a site adjacent to the Mc- Laney cottage. But, according to the New Orleans States-Itetn,4 "Imme- . diatcly after the Lacombe raid, the so-called 'overt' Cuban group disap- peared." An organizer of both groups, Loran Eugene Hall, was shortly afterward arrested near Key Largo, Florida, and a cache of arms and drugs in his possession was confiscated. � Hall, a shadowy character, is one of the many z links tying Lee Havey Oswald to anti-Castro Cuban exiles in New Orleans and Dallas. Hall's involvement in the events leading to President Kennedy's death first came to light through the Iestimony of Mrs. Sylvia Odio, a twenty-six- year-old Cuban exile living in Dallas, who in 1963 was active in Manolo Ray's JURE (Junta Revolucionaria), the most liberal of the anti- Castro exile groups. Mrs. Oclio testified before the Warren Commission that on September 26, 1963, three men visited her Dallas apart- ment, said they had just come from New Orleans and were "leaving for a :he New York Times. November 21, 1963. ' 'NIew Orleans Stases-Bon, My 5,- 1967. ' The Cubans 113 trip."-They delivered intimate information about Mrs. Odio's father, then imprisoned by Castro on the Isle of Pines, that could have come only from underground or CIA sources, and requested her aid in clandestine anti-Castro activities. Two of the men appeared to be Latins, possibly Mexican, and they called themselves by their "war names" of "Leo- poldo" and "Angelo." The third man was an American, whom "Leo- poldo" introduced as "Leon Oswald," and later identified as an ex- Marine and crack shot. Leopoldo told Mrs. Odio, "You know our idea is to introduce him to the underground in Cuba, because he is great, he is kind of nuts. He has told us we don't have any guts . . . because Presi- dent Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs, and, some Cuban should have done that, because he was the one that was holding the freedom of Cuba . . . and he said, 'It is so easy to do it.' He has told us. . . ." 5 When Mrs. Odio saw Lee Harvey Oswald on television the day after the assassination both she and her sister Annie, who had been present during the September 26 meeting, recognized him as "Leon Oswald." Mrs. Odio was so traumatized that she collapsed. But she didn't notify the FBI or Secret Service about her information, probably because she "feared that the Cuban exiles might be accused of the President's death." 6 A friend who had heard of the encounter informed the authorities on November 29, 1963. When Mrs. Odio was finally called before the Warren Commission on July 22, '1964, ten months after she had met "Leon Oswald," Commission Counsel Wesley Liebeler inquired: ". . . You had made the connection in your mind between these three men that came to your apartment and the assassination?" Mrs. Odio replied: "Yes." 7 Shown photographs of Oswald she was asked if she had "any doubts" in her mind "after looking at these pictures that the man that was in your apart- ment was Lee Harvey Oswald." Mrs. Odio replied: "I don't have any doubts." The Commission, however, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been the man Mrs. Odio encountered in Dallas on September 26 because it was established that between 6 A.M. and 2 P.M. on that day he had crossed the Mexican border. Nor could the meeting have oc- curred the preceding day�Mrs. Odio was not certain whether it was the twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth �because the record of Oswald's movements proved that he had been in New Orleans on-the twenty-fifth. As Sylvia 5 Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 11, p. 372. 6 Warren Commission Exhibit No. 3147. 7 Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 11, p. 382. 114 THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY � Meagher writes in her exhaustive analysis of the Warren Commission's evidence: 8 The Commission acknowledges ahat there is no firm evidence of the means by which Oswald traveled to Houston on the first leg of his trip from New Orleans to Mexico but claims that his only time which is unaccounted for was between the morning of Wednesday the 25th . . . and 2:35 A.M. on Thursday the 26th, when he boarded a bus in Houston headed for Laredo. The only way Oswald could have gone to Dallas, visited Mrs. Odio, and still arrived in Houston in time to .catch the 2:35 bus to Laredo on Thursday the 26th was to fly, and'investigation,disclosed no indication that Oswald had traveled"eS tween those points by air. But if Lee Harvey Oswald was not the "Leon Oswald" Mrs. Odio met in Dallas, who was? Could there have been a "second Oswald," deliber- ately impersonating the real Oswald in order to implicate him in advance , of the assassination? Garrison believe* there was, and his first leads in the direction of the so-called second Oswald were provided by the .FBI. According to the Warren Report, "The Commission specifically re- quested the FBI to attempt to locate and identify the two men who Mrs. Odio stated were with the inan she thought was Oswald. On September 16, 1964, the FBI located Loran Eugene Hall in Johnsandale, Cal- ifornia." It goes on: "He told the FBI that in September, 1963, he was in Dallas, soliciting aid in connection with anti-Castro activities. He said he had visited Mrs. Odio. He was accompanied by Lawrence Howard, a Mexican-American from East Los Angeles, and one William Seymour from Arizona. He stated that Seymour is similar in appearance to Lee Harvey Oswald; he speaks bnly a few words of Spanish, as Mrs. Odio had testified one of the men who visited her did." Although the FBI "had nit- yet completed its investigation into this matter at the limp the report went� to press," the Commission concluded "that Lee Harvey Oswald was not at Mrs. Odio's apartment in September, 1963." II The FBI's studied disinterest in Mrs. Odio's enigmatic visitors is re- flected elsewhere in its investigation of,the Kennedy assassination. For- mer Life reporter Richard Billings reveals in his five-part examination of the Garrison case in the Chicago Daily News: "An FBI report dated No- vember 23, 1963, . . . tells of an informant who advised that in September Loran Hall had redeemed a .30-06 rifle from a pawn shop in 8 Accessories After the Fort (New York, Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), p. 377. � Warren Commission Report, p. 324. The Cubans 115 Los Angeles. . . . What the FBI concluded . . . is astounding. The closing paragraph of the report reads: 'No further investigation was con- ducted,-as it is obvious that the rifle mentioned above was not used in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy.'" Concludes Billings aridly: "The day after the assassination was a trifle early for the FBI to be making decisions like that.' Sylvia Meagher comments: "If any aspect of the investigation was more crucial in its implications, it is not readily apparent. . . . The Commission's failure to get to the bottom of this affair, with its inescap- able implications, is inexcusable. If the Commission could leave such business unfinished, we are entitled to ask whether its members were ever determined to uncover the truth." 10 While the Commission evidence is far from conclusive, Jim Garrison believes that it is not improbable that William Seymour, deliberately im- personating Oswald in order to implicate him in the President's assassit nation, was the "Leon Oswald" Mrs. Odio met in Dallas. According to Garrison, Howard, Hall, and Seymour are all elements of a human weapon pieced together by anti-Castro Cuban exiles, American neo- Fascists and lower echelon CIA.operatives�a weapon that on November . 22, 1963, fatally struck clown John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Garrison has revealed countless contacts between Lee Oswald and the anti-Castro underground in New Orleans and Dallas. One connection centers about the elusive careers of the late Guy Bannister and Hugh Ward, who operated a private detective agency in New Orleans while Os- � wald was residing in the city. (Bannister died of a heart attack in 1964 and Ward was killed when a plane he was piloting for former New Orleans Mayor Delesseps Morrison crashed mysteriously in Mexico on May 23, 1965. Morrison had previously introduced Clay Shaw to President Kennedy on an airplane flight in 1963.) According to Garrison, "Guy Bannister was one of the most militant right-wing anti- Communists in New Orleans. He was a former FBI agent and his head- quarters at 544 Camp Street was a clearing-house for Cuban exile and paramilitary right-wing activities. . . . Bannister also published a newsletter for his clients that included virulent anti-Kennedy polem- ics." " The New Orleans States-hem 12 reported that "Bannister . . . is believed to have worked in cooperation with a U.S. military intel- ligence office here," "and Garrison's office has developed evidence that Bannister had close ties with both the CIA and the office of Naval Intelli- 10 Accessories After the Fact, p. 379. Playboy, Octobcr, 1967. 12 May 5,1967. 116 � THE IS-ENNEDY CONSPIRACY gence. According to the New Orleans Stales-hem," "A close friend and adviser of Bannister's told the States-Item- the veteran FBI agent i'v'as a key liaison man for U.S. Government-sponsored anti-Communist ac- tivities in Latin Amerier.." The ne)vspaper quotes this source as saying that "Guy participated in every important anti-Communist South and Central American revolution which came along." Ex-FBI agent William Turner reports that while researching an article on the Minutemen . . . I learned from a defector�a Minuteman aide who had access to their headquarters' files�about an allied group in New Orleans known as the Anti-Corn- inunism League of the Caribbean. The League was said by the aide to have been used by the CIA in its engineering of the 1954.4aver- throw of the leftist Arbenz regime in Guatemala. The Minutemaa.de- fector said the names of both Bannister and Ward appeared in the se- cret Minutemen files as members of the Minutemen and as operatives of the Anti-Cominunism League of the Carribbean. 4$ Bannister was also one orthe incorporators in early 1961 of_a mili- tant right-wing anti-Castro group called Citizens for a Free Cuba, along with Grady C. Durham, William Dalzell, and William Klein. The latter is the brother of Burton C. Klein, a lawyer for Alvin Beauboeuf, one of the figures in the Garrison case and a former roommate of Ferrie who ac- companied him on his mysterious trip to Texas or; the day of the assassi- nation. Garrison charges that Burton Klein's fees are being paid directly by the CIA. Dalzell is an international petroleum engineer and adviser to the Ethiopian government. On June 30, 1967, Garrison issued a subpoena for Dalzell to appear for questioning in his probe of the Ken- nedy assassination, but the subpoena was subsequently withdrawn after Dalzell volunteered to testify in secret. Bannister and Ward appear to be the last men in the world having any- thing in common with that self-confessed Marxist and defector to- the USSR, Lee Harvey Oswald. And yet Oswald tied 'the Bannister and Ward address-544 Camp Street�for his one-man "Fair Play for Cuba Committee." When Oswald was arrested in tile summer of 1963 after a street- corner altercation with right-wing anti-Castro Cuban exile leader Carlos Bringuier, he was searched by the police and a record made of his posses- sions. Taken from Oswald at the time, according to the testimony of Se- "Ibid. 4 Ramparts. June, 1967. The Cubans 117 cret Service agent Anthony E. Gerrets, was a "booklet, 'The Crime Against Cuba', . . . with a rubber-stamp impression, `FPCC, 544 Camp Street, New Orleans'. . . ." The building at 544 Camp is a weather-beaten gray granite struc- ture on the corner of Lafayette Street. Sam Newman, the building's owner, told Sgt. Horace J. Austin, Jr. and Det. Robert M. Frey of the New Orleans police force on November 27, 1963, that he had never had either Oswald or the Fair Play for Cuba Committee as tenants. He had, however, rented,a second-floor office to the Cuban Revolution- ary Council. According to Newman, "Guy Bannister was well acquainted with this organization." 15 The Cuban Revolutionary Council was. cre- ated by the CIA on March 18, 1961, as a prelude to the Bay of Pigs invasion. It constituted a "popular front" of the warring Cuban exile fac- tions, bringing together under one leadership the two major exile organi- zations, the MRP (Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo) led' by Manolo Ray and the Frente Revolucionario Democratico of Tony Var- na. The CIA envisioned the front as a provisional government of Cuba once Castro was toppled, but after the Bay of Pigs fiasco the organization gradually disintegrated. � Also housed at 544 Camp Street were two other militantly right- wing anti-Castro organizations, the Crusade to Free Cuba and the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, founded by Sergio Arcacha Smith. Arcacha Smith had a finger in all the organizations housed at 544 Camp Street; he was the New Orleans delegate of the Cuban Revolution- ary Council in 1961 .and 1962, he was active in the Crusade to Free Cuba, and 'he was leader of the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front. Arcacha Smith, forty-four, a diplomat under the Batista regime, fled to the United States after Castro. took power. A father of five, Arcacha set- tled first in Miami and. then moved to New Orleans, where he set up the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front in December, 1960. (Ac- cording to the Washington Post, New Orleans police intelligence records reveal that the front was "legitimate in nature and presumably had the unofficial sanction of the CIA.") Shortly before the Kennedy assassina- tion Arcacha moved to Houston, and the day after it he took up residence in Dallas, becoming an export consultant for an air-conditioning firm. A New Orleans States-Item story said that Arcacha "was training men here to participate in an invasion of Cuba' in 1961. The Dallas Morning News 1G further identified him as "chief of Cuban revolutionary activities 15 Warren Report Hearings, Vol. 22, p. 826. 16 April 4, 1967. 1 I S THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY in the New Orleans area before the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. He col- lected money and coordinazd the training of Cuban refugees preparing to take part in the invasion. New Orleans newspapers have said Fefrie was in the same work." � Arcacha had close links to both Bannister and Ward and to David Fer- rie, who worked as an investigator for Bannister's private detective agency. According to Garrison, "Ferrie was a paid investigator for Ban- nister, and the two men knew each other very well. During 1962 and 1963, Ferrie spent a good deal of time at 544 Camp Street and he made a series of mysterious long-distance phone calls to Central Amer- ica. We have a record of those calls." 17 Feffie was active in Arcacha's Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front and was considered by some as its co-leader. Ex-FBI�agent William Turner reports that "Ferrie was frequently noticed by the New Orrans Cuban colony in the company of Sergio Arcacha Smith. . . . Therake Pontchartrain waterfront near Arcacha's home seems to have become a locus for mysteriouvrneetings. Various Garrison witnesses claim to have seen Ferrie,there, as well as an exchange of money between Oswald and Shaw." The New Orleans Times Picayune reported that "Ferrie re- portedly attended meetings of the group and at least one witness in the Warren Commission hearings said that Federal Bureau of Investigation agent Warren C. De Brueys attended meetings. . . ." Garrison subpoenaed D. Brueys to appear before the New Orleans grand jury in the spring of 1963, but on the instructions of the Justice Department he pleaded executive privilege and refused to testify. Ac- cording to Garrison, "De Brueys was involved with anti-Castro exile ac- tivities in New Orleans. . . . I'd like to find out the exact nature of De Brueys' relationship with Lee Oswald. As long as Oswald was in New Orleans, so was De Brueys. When Oswald moved to Dallas, De Brueys followed him. After the assassination De Brueys returned to New Or- leans. This may all be coincidence, but I find it interesting that De Brueys refuses to cooperate with our office�significant and frustrating, bee�use I feel he could shed considerable light on Oswald's' ties to anti-Cagtro groups." Is Arcacha Smith, Ferrie, his roommate Layton Martens, and Gordon Novel, an admitted CIA agent, were all involved in the burglary of an arms bunker in Houma, Louisiana, leased by the Schlumberger Wells Ser- vices. Company of Houston. The looting of the arms bunker was orga- nized by the CIA to procure -weapons for the anti-Castro underground in 17 Playboy, October, 1967. 16 Thid. The Cubans 1 I 9 Cuba. (Some of the war material taken from the Houma bunker on Au- gust 1, 1961, showed up almost three years to the day later when the FBI raided the Cuban exile arrns cache at the McLaney cottage in La- combe;7Louisiana.) Garrison has tried unsuccessfully to extradite Novel and Arcacha to New Orleans on the burglary charge stemming from their raid on the Houma bunker�and, far more important, to grill them about their role in the assassination of President Kennedy. The States-Item revealed on April 25, 1967, that a friend of the ubiquitous Bannister, "a rn,an whose word is considered reliable," saw fifty to one hundred crates of ammunition in Bannister's storeroom about this time, all labeled "Schlumberger." "Five or six of the boxes were open," the States-Item continued. "In- side, he says, were rifle grenades, land mines and some 'little missiles' of a kind he had never seen before. The friend said he remonstrated with Bannister because 'fooling with this kind of stuff could get .you in trouble.' He added: 'Bannister said no, it was. all right, that he had ap- proval from somebody. He said the stuff would just be there overnight, that somebody was supposed to pick it up. He said a bunt') of fellows connected with the Cuban deal asked to leave it there-overnight.'" The States-Item quotes Novel as saying that the munitions were subse- quently consolidated and used in an exile raid on the Cuban town of Varacoa. When the States-Item story broke, Sergio Arcacha Smith, who had previously denied any involvement in the Houma burglary and said he had never heard of Gordon Novel, refused to comment on Novel's re- marks, tellin& newsmen he wouldn't have "anything to say about any- thing." Jim Garrison wonders how deeply involved in these New Orleans mys- teries Novel and Arcacha smith are. However, he has been unable to bring either man before a. court of law to pursue his inquiries. Novel fled New Orleans after learning Garrison sought him and Areacha Smith re- mains in Dallas, outside Garrison's legal jurisdiction. Garrison initially dispatched two of his investigators, Louis Ivon and William Gurvich, to Dallas in an effort to persuade Arcacha to return voluntarily to New Orleans, but the Cuban exile leader said he would talk to them only if Dallas policemen were present, a condition Garrison re- jected. (Gurvich, -who in June "defected" from Garrison's staff, had earlier asked the district attorney to allow -him to make the arrest if Arcacha ever returned to New Orleans, because he wanted to say, "I've gotch a, Arcacha.") Arcacha's lawyer, William Colvin, subsequently indicated his client might be willing to talk to the New Orleans district attorney "so long as 120 THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY he doesn't have to go into the lair of Mr. Garrison." Colvin claim-id that "Garrison is a man who is power mad" and uses "the law like a damn club." Arcacha, he said, feared for his life if he returned to New Orleans to testify�whether at the hands,of the club-wielding Garrison or his fellow Cuban_exiles, Colvin did not specify. On April 1 Garrison telegraphed an arrest warrant to Dallas for Arcacha, accusing him of conspiring with David Ferrie and Gordon Novel to burglarize the Houma munitions bunker. Houma District At- torney WiImore Broussard simultaneously dispatched arrest warrants-for Novel and Arcacha on simple burglary charges. Arcacha was arrested by Dallas authorities on April 3 and released on a $1,500 bond after ar- raignment. .For the next several months Garrison fought without success tes have Arcacha and Novel extradited to Louisiana. Governor James Rhodes of Ohio and Texas Governor John Connally refused to extradite either man unless Garrison first assured them that the fugitives would be guaranteed immunity from civil and criminal action�an almost unheard-of condi- tion in eyxtradition proceedings. Gagison suspects that CIA pressure is at the root of the governors' refusal to extradite Arcacha and Novel. The reason we arc unable to extradite anyone connected with this case is that there are powerful forces in Washington who fifid it imperative to conceal from the American public the truth about the assassination. And as a result, terrific pressure has been brought to bear on the gov- ernors of the states involved to prevent them from signing the extradi- tion papers and returning the defendants to stand trial. I'm sorry to say that in every case, these Jell-0-spined governors have caved in and "played the game" Washington's way.19 Whatever the motivations of Governors Rhodes and ConnaltyrGor- don Novel and Sergio Arcacha Smith have found sanctuary in their states. On July 5, 1967, Arcacha was officially released from extradition proceedings initiated by Garrison because "Texas Governor John Con- nally refused to sign the xecutive warrant of extradition within the spec- ified ninety days." Arcacha was released from $1,500 in bonds he had posted during the proceedings. On July 3 all extradition proceedings against Gordon Novel were also dropped. But Garrison is not discouraged by his inability to bring Novel and Arcacha to trial. He claims to know their role in the conspiracy and is al Ibid. : The Cubans 121 confident of someday proving it in a court of law. He has also developed startling information about other members of the Cuban exile under- ground linked to Arcacha, Novel, Ferrie�and Lee Harvey Oswald. One Cuban exile leader, Carlos Quiroga, a close associate of Arcacha in the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, has attracted Garrison's special attention. According to the district attorney, Quiroga "failed a lie- detector test when he denied knowing in-advance that Kennedy was going to be killed, or having seen the weapons to be used in the assassination." Quiroga is a friend and collaborator of Carlos Bringuier, an anti-Castro exile leader and Bay of Pigs veteran--and an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald. Bringuier, a fanatic right-winger, is tied to Oswald by many threads of evidence. On August 5, 1963, Oswald approached Bringuier, a thirty-three- year-old native of Havana, in his dry-goods-store in downtown Nev Or- leans. Holding a Marine training handbook, Oswald offered his services to Bringuier, then leader of the Cuban Student Directorate (DRE), a right-wing exile group. Philip Gerici, who was in Bringuier's storeat the - time, states that Oswald indicated he was cuiTently involved in anti- Castro underground activity, and "he said the thing he liked best of all was learning about how to blow up the Huey P. Long Bridge." (The bridge, which spans the Mississippi outside New Orleans, may have been used by Cuban exiles as a training run for actual sabotage within Cuba.) Bringuicr said later that "he told me that he had been in the Marine Corps and was willing to train Cubans to fight Castro. He also said that he was willing to go himself to fight Castro." 20 Oswald also offered money but Bringuier, suspecting he was an agent provocateur attempting to infiltrate the exile group, refused. Four days later Bringuier and two Cuban exile companions encoun- tered Oswald distributing pro-Castro leaflets on Canal Street, in the heart of the downtown business section. Bringuier was angered, and a scuffle ensued. He described the incident in his testimony before the Warren Commission: Bringuier: . . . I went near Oswald to hit him. . . . When he sensed my intentions, he put his arm down as an X, like this here (demonstrating). Liebeler: He closed his arms in front of him? Bringuier: That is right . . . and told me, "O.K., Carlos, if you want to hit me, hit me." 21 2� Thomas Buchanan, Who Killed Kennedy? (New York, Macfadden-Bartell Sons. 1965), p. 127. � 21 Warren Commission Hearings, Vol. 10, p. 38. 7. : THE KENNEDY ,CONSPIRACY Bringuier didn't, perhaps nonplussed by the turn-the-other-cheek atti- tude of the man who three months later would be portrayed as a violent criminal psychopath. But although there had been no actual fightljpolice spontaneously materialized and arrested Oswald, who spent the next twenty-four hours in the tank of the First District Police Station. On Au- gust 12 he was fined ten dollars on a charge of disturbing the peace. Jim Garrison suspects that the incident with Bringuier was pre- arranged as part of the cover of procommunism that Oswald was estab- lishing to disguise his real ties to the CIA. Garrison's thesis is supported by Marina Oswald, who told the Warren Commission that Oswald set up his New Orleans Fair Play for Cuba Committee "primarily for purposes of self-Alvertising. He wanted to be arrested. I think he wanted to get into the nel,vvapers, so that he would be known." The-Commission itself con- cluded that "according to Marina Oswald, he thought that would- help him when he got to Cuba." Police Lt. Francis Martell reporte,d.azat Os- wald wa's "a very cool speaker. . . . He displayed little emotion and was completely aloof. He seemed to have them set up to create an inci- dent. When she incident oceurrecl, he iremained peaceful and gentle . . ." (italics added). In June, 1964, Bringuier went on a lecture tour sponsored by Billy James Hargis' ultraright-wing Christian Crusade. Bringuier told his audiences that after he and Oswald were taken to the First District Police Station they were met by two FBI agents who re- quested Oswald to name pro-Castro individuals in the New Orleans area. The Cuban recalled that Oswald replied: "I'll tell you, but not in front of Bringuier." The FBI men then asked Bringuier to withdraw, and con- tinued their conversation in private.22 Oswald, the alleged fanatic Marx- ist, was certainly in a cooperative mood that day. Oswald was not cowed by his run-in with the police. On August 16 he was passing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets again, this time in front of the International Trade Mart at 124 Camp Street. Trade Mart Direc- tor Clay Shaw denies having seen Oswald in front of his building that day. Bringuier, whether deliberately or by coincidence, was of prime im- portance in Oswald's efforts tp create a public image of himself as pro- Communist before his trip to Mexico to obtain visas for Cuba and Russia. On August 21, 1963, two weeks after their street-corner alterca- tion, Bringuier debated Oswald on a New Orleans radio show, allowing Oswald to further strengthen his credentials as a pro-Castro left-wing ex- tremist. (Right-wing groups subsequently made an LP record of the de- bate, "with a dynamic commentary by Dr. [Billy James] Hargis.") :12 Buchanan, op. cit., p. 129. The Cubans 123 After Oswald was murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police headquarters, Bringuier drove a few more red nails into his coffin. On November 27, 1963, Bringuier was quoted in The New York Times as saying that "Lee H. Oswald had boasted that if the United States attempted an invasion of Cuba, he would defend Fidel Castro. . . ." Bringuier told the newspaper that a week after his initial contact with Oswald he dispatched an unnamed "intelligence agent" to Oswald's apartment. The agent told Oswald he was a Cuban but not anti-Castro, and inquired about the activities of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Bringuier quoted Oswald as telling his "intelligence agent" that "because of the imperialist propaganda Fidel Castro is being blamed as a criminal. But that is not true, because in Cuba all the people are for Fidel Castro. There is only a minority group that doesn't adjust�agree�to the social- ist and Marxist regime. . . . That is the reason why we have here these groups of exiles�because they are criminals." If nothing else, Bringuier's postmortem absolved Oswald of any con- nection or sympathy with anti-Castro exile group�and Jack Ruby had made sure three days earlier that Lee Oswald would never say otherwise. In the aftermath of the assassination, Bringuier revealed some inter- esting information about Oswald's ties to Cubans and "Latins" in New Or- leans. He forwarded to the FBI a letter he had written to a friend identi- fied only as "Jose Antonio." According to the FBI commentary, "Mr. Bringuier related that he made available contents of the above-translated letter with the provisions that sections of the letter referring to individ- uals . . . would not be divulged to any public sources and . . . be limited for the use of the Warren Commission and the FBI only." Some of Bringuier's information, according to the FBI statement, appears to have come from "Orlando Piedra, who was formerly head of the Federal Po- lice in Cuba under the regime of Fulgencio Batista." According to Brin- guier's letter: The police here were looking for a certain "Clay Bertrand" who is a pervert. They say Ruby also is a pervert. One of these individuals that was distributing handbills with Oswald has a face that appears to me to indicate that he is also a pervert. . . . I advised Secret Service that one of those who was distributing handbills with Oswald was working in Pap's Supermarket located on Mirabeau Avenue and who, last year, had attended Delgado Trade School. He mentioned that his name might possibly be Charles and that he regularly got out of the bus at Paris Avenue and Filmore Street. I am given to understand that this was correct but I have learned nothing more. I have given them other information, for example, that Oswald was on one occasion after his �-�-�.0- o' =',1-;,�:, . � - 124 THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY difficulty with me, in the Habana Bar, which is just two doors from my store. Oswald asked for a lemonade and when they collected for it he said that surely the owner had to be a Cuban capitalist. On that occa- sion Oswald was accompanied bysa Mexican. After that the Mexican returned with another Mexican to the Habana Bar. The FBI was making inquiries for them and left word that if they saw them again, to call there. A few days later the brother of the owner of the Habana Bar appeared and asked me to call the FBI because he had seen two Mex- icans in an automobile and he had noted the license number but not the state. I called the FBI on that occasion and gave them the information by telephone. This occurred between August fifteenth and August thir- titih, 1963, approximately. Whithe FBI was looking for these "Mexicans" three months beferthe assassination was never explained. From the inception of Jim Garrison's probe of the assassination, Brin- guier and his shadowy activities have been under close scrutiny, and Bringuier has been subjected to relentless interrogation. Bringuier has maintained his composure and 'has refused to cooperate with the district attorney's office. Garrison is particularly interested in the volatile Cuban exile leader's relationship with David Ferrie. On February 20, 1967, two days before his mysterious death, Ferrie had a long meeting with Bringuier. Washington Post reporter George Laidner, pre- sumably the last man to see Ferrie alive, reveals that after their confer- ence Bringuier immediately left New Orleans and "went on the speaking circuit." Bringuier is clearly worried about Garrison's investigation and its im- plications. At the probe's inception he wrote to the House Un-American Activities Committee urging it to "investigate Mr. Garrison's investiga- tion." Bringuier charged on February 25, 1967, that Garrison "has hurt all the Cuban community": since his probe will cause the public to have "suspicion about Cubans." Bringuier has also sued one of Clori- son's supporters, Harold Weisberg, author of the Irhitewash series on the Warren Report, and the publishers of Saga magazine for one million dollars' damages. Bringuicir's suit alleys that both in Weisberg's book Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report, and in an article in Saga, he defamed Bringuier by charging he had been an official under Castro until his defection in 1960, had disguised his prior ties to Castro when he appeared before the Commission, and was a bitter enemy of the United States, despising this country more than Russia because of Wash- ington's "betrayal" of anti-Castro exiles. There is some evidence that Bringuier's contacts with ultraright-wing The Cubans 125 American individuals and organizations is not limited to Billy James Hargis and his "Christian Crusade." Gen. Edwin Walker, the fiery scourge of "com-symps," who was forced out of the Army by the Kennedy admin- istration for indoctrinating his troops with ultraright-wing propaganda, has been linked to Brin.guier's DRE organization. Walker, who worked closely with right-wing Cuban exile groups, was reported to have at- tended at least one meeting of the DRE in Dallas. And Lee Harvey Os- wald may have been in the audience with him. (When Oswald was ar- rested after the assassination, a slip of paper was found in his possession with the word "Walker" and a telephone number that proved to be the general's private home number.) When General Walker appeared before the Warren Commission, cdunsel Wesley Liebeler asked him about the DRE, a meeting of which the officer conceded attending. Liebeler obviously knew a great deal about the DRE meeting, ifs- cluding the precise amount of Walker's contribution, but he did not pursue a question regarding Oswald's attendance beyond the general's denial, although the Commission had in its possession reports from FBI agent James Hosty on all the people who attended the meeting. One of Hosty's notes is of particular significance: EDWIN L. STEIG, 713 Winifred Street, Garland, Texas, advised he attended a meeting of the Student Directorate of Cuba held on a Sunday evening at 8:00 P:m. some time during the month of October, 1963. There were about seventy-five persons present at this meeting which was held at the First Federal Savings and Loan Associ- ation Conference Room in the North Lake Shopping Village in Dallas, Texas. [Explaining that he] .sat in the back of the room and listened to several speakers who talked about the situation in Cuba, STEIG stated that another individual sat in the back of this room who he believes is identical with LEE HARVEY OSWALD. This individual spoke to no one but merely listened and then left.23 One of General Walker's closest friends and associates in Dallas was Col. L. Robert Castorr, who, after the assassination, moved to Arlington, Virginia. Mrs. C. L. Connell of Dallas, who worked as a volunteer in a Cuban Roman Catholic welfare committee, that assisted Cuban exiles, told the FBI on November 29, 1963, that: 23 Harold Weisberg, Oswald in New Orleans (New York, Canyon Books, 1967), pp. 47-48. 126 THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY General EDWIN A. WALKER and Colonel (FNU) CASTOR [sk1'. a close acquaintance of WALKER, have been trying to arouse the feel- ings of the Cuban refugees in Dallas against the KENNEDY adminis- tration. She based this statement upon information furnished her by various Cubans to the effect that WALKER and CASTOR [sic] made speeches before Cuban groups in recent months in the Dallas area in opposition to the KENNEDY administration policies." Colonel Castorr confirmed to Eric Norden that "I knew Walker as well as I've ever known anybody," but refused to discuss his relations with Cuban exile organizations. colonel Castorr's activities are particularly intriguing in light.afrth- e testimony before the Warren Commission of Nancy Perrin Rich...Mrs. Rich, who had once worked as a bartender at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club, attended a secret mgeting in 1963 between her husband, Robert Per- rin, a gunrunner and former narcotics smuggler, and a group of Cuban exiles. The meeting was presided over by a retired American Army colo- nel who qid not give his name. Accoiding to Mrs. Rich, "We were going to bring Cuban refugees out�but we were going to run military sypplies and Enfield rifles in." The conspirators had a cache of arms stolen from the military on the premises which they displayed to Mrs. Rich and her husband. Perrin demanded a cash retainer for his services and the colonel made a telephone call. Shortly afterward, Mrs. Rich reports, "I had the shock of my life . . . A knock comes on the door and who walks in but my little friend Jack Rub). . . . You could have knocked me over with a feather . . . And everybody looks like . . . here comes the Savior." Jim Garrison maintains that -Ruby was the CIA bagman�or pay- master�for the operation and he left immediately after handing over a large sum in cash to the colonel. . . . Ruby appears to have been the CIA's bagman for a wide variety of anti-Castro adventures. . . Mrs. Rich and her husband subsequently bowed. out of the gun- smuggling deal, because, in her words, 'I smelled-an element that I did not want to have any part of.' Afraid of retaliation, she and Perrin fled from Dallas and hid out in several different cities, winding up finally in New Orleans. A year liter, he was, found dead of arsenic poisoning. Though it would be difficult to pick a slower and more excruciating way to kill yourself, it was officially declared a suicide." 25 The mysterious Color cl Castorr may or may not have been the un- named Army colonel presiding over the meeting, but it is surprising that 24 Ibid.. p. 291. 25 Phryboy, October, 1967. A The Cubans 127 the Warren Commission never thoroughly investigated Mrs. Rich's testi- mony or Colonel Castorr's activities in Dallas. There are indications that Jack Ruby also knew Colonel Castores good friend, General Walker, whom Oswald is alleged to have shot at in April, 1963. William McEwan Duff, an Englishman of shadowy background who served for some time as General Walker's personal sec- retary, told FBI agents that Ruby had visited the general's Dallas home.26 The Warren Commission did not appear interested in Duff's statement, and never bothered to call him as a witness. Garrison believes Lee Oswald's contacts with Cuban exiles in New Or- leans carried over to Dallas, where General Walker and Colonel Castorr were busily whipping up virulent anti-Kennedy sentiment within the Cuban community. In the "Supplementary Investigation Report" filed by Dallas policeman Buddy Walthers, an aide to Sheriff Bill Decker, yVal- thers reveals: "I talked to Sorrels, the head of the Dallas Secret Service. 1 was advised that for the past few months at a .house at 3128 Harlar.- dale, some Cubans had been having meetings on the weekends and were probably connected with the Freedom for Cuba Party [sic] of which Os- wald was a member." Walthers' report was ignoied, and on November 26 he reported: "I don't know what action the Secret Service has taken. but I learned today that some time between seven days before the Presi- dent was shot and the day after he was shot, these Cubans moved from this house. My informant stated that subject Oswald had been to this house before." No effort was made to investigate Walthers' reports, and the identity and activities of the mysterious Cubans at 3128 Harlan- dale remain unknown. Oswald may also have had Cuban traveling companions during his trip to Mexico from September .26 to October 3. Raul Lubeano, inspector in charge of the Mexican immigration station at Nueva Laredo, said that one of the inspectors remembers checking Oswald through on September 26. Lubeano said further: "Our inspector said that his best recollec- tion was that Oswald was traveling with two women and a man in an au- tomobile. Oswald was dressed in a sailor's uniform and said he was a pho- tographer. The inspector said . . . they were all in the office together and none spoke English." 27 Eugene Pugh, U.S. agent in charge of the customs office on the Ameri- can side of the bridge at Laredo, Texas, told reporters that Oswald had been checked by American immigration Officials on entering and leaving Mexico. Pugh admitted that this was "not the usual procedure," since 26 Warren Commission Exhibit No. 2981. 22 New York Herald Tribune, November 26, 1963. 'SFr - 128 THE KENNEDY CONSPIRACY American citizens were allowed to cross the Mexican border without im- migration clearance, "but U.S. Immigration has a folder on Oswald's trip." 28 The New York Post reported on November 25 that William Kline, chief of U.S. Customs in Laredo, revealed that Oswald had been watched on the orders of a "Federal agency at Washington." 29 When Oswald reached Mexico City he checked into an obscure little pension well off the tourist track, the Hotel Commercio. According to N. S. Finney, Washington bureau chief of the Buffalo Evening News, the Commercio is known to be "substantially used by Cuban exiles." Jim Garrison contends that throughout his trip to Mexico, Oswald was accompanied by a Cuban exile CIA agent, and even asserts that there is a ph6tograph of this man published in the Warren Commission Report. In the. words of the district attorney: Om. Commission Exhibit number . . . 237 . . . is a photograph of a stocky, balding middle-aged man published without explanation or identification in the 26 volumes of the Warren Report. There's a significant story behind Bxhibiti number 237. Throughout the late summer and fall of 1963, Lee Oswald was shepherded in-Dallas and New Orleans by a CIA "baby-sitter" who watched over Oswald's activities and stayed with him. . . . When Oswald went to Mexico City in an effort to obtain a visa for travel to Cuba, this CIA agent accompanied him. Now, at this particular time, Mexico was the only Latin-American nation maintaining diplomatic ties with Cuba, and leftists and Communists from all over the hemisphere traveled to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City for visas to Cuba. The CIA, quite properly, had placed a hidden movie camera in a building across the street from the embassy and filmed everyone coming and going. The Warren Commission, knowing this, had an assistant legal counsel ask the FBI for a picture of Oswald and his companion on the steps of the embassy, and the FBI, in turn, filed an affidavit saying they had-ob- tained the photo in question from the CIA. The only trouble is that the CIA supplied the Warren Commission with a phony photograph. The photograph of an unidentified man published in the 26 volumes is not the man who was filmed with Oswald on the steps of the Cuban Em- bassy, as alleged by the CIA. It's perfectly clear that the actual picture of Oswald and his companion was suppressed and a fake photo substi- tuted because the second man in the picture was working for the CIA in 1963, and his identification as a CIA agent would have opened up a 28 Ibid. 22 New York Post, November 25, 1963. The Cubans 129 whole can of worms about Oswald's ties with the Agency. To prevent this, the CIA presented the Warren Commission with fraudulent evi- _dence �a pattern that repeats itself whenever the CIA submits evi- dence relating to Oswald's possible connection with any U.S. intelli- gence agency. The CIA lied to the Commission right down the line.30 Jim Garrison will have to prove his charge that Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferric, Clay Shaw, and others conspired with fanatic right-wing revanchist Cubans in Miami, Dallas, and New Orleans to assassinate the President. But one thing is clear, once the tangled skein of evidence is even partially unraveled: Lee Oswald's relationship with Cuban exiles, individuals, and organizations in New Orleans and Dallas is worthy of intensive scrutiny. It received barely a glance from the Warren Commis- sion. If the full truth is ever discovered, it will be due in no small measure to the investigation of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison!' 3� Playboy, October, 1967. 444