FTR#288—Update
on the JFK Assassination—(One 30-minute segment) (Sources are noted in parentheses.) (Recorded
on 4/8/2001.)
1. Bringing up to date the
investigation into President Kennedy’s assassination, this program begins with
discussion of a recent British forensic scientific study that proves what
serious investigators have long known—that there was a fourth (and fatal shot)
from the grassy knoll. “The House Assassinations Committee may have been right
after all: There was a shot from the grassy knoll. That was the key finding of
the congressional investigation that concluded 22 years ago that President
‘John F. Kennedy’s murder in Dallas
in 1963 was ‘probably the result of a conspiracy.’ A shot from the grassy knoll
meant that two gunmen must have fired at the president within a split-second
sequence. Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of firing three shots at Kennedy from a
perch at the Texas School Book Depository, could not have been in two places at
once. . . . A new, peer-reviewed article in Science
and Justice, a quarterly publication of Britain’s
Forensic Science Society. . . . said it
was more than 96 percent certain that there was a shot from the grassy knoll to
the right of the president’s limousine, in addition to the three shots from a
book depository window above and behind the president’s limousine.”
(“Study backs Theory of ‘grassy knoll’” by George Lardner Jr.; The Washington Post; 3/26/2001.)
For more on the assassination of President Kennedy, see also: G#’s 1-4, RFA#’s 5, 6, 8, 9, 11-13, 15, 37,
Miscellaneous Archive Shows M3, M4, M29,
M37, M20, M30, M38, M59, as well as FTR#’s 8, 19, 21, 46, 47, 54, 62, 63, 76, 104, 115, 116, 133, 142, 158,
168, 188, 190, 191, 228, 236, 244, 246, 253.)
2. Much of the rest of the program consists of discussion of aspects of
the House Select Committee’s investigation that are unlikely to be analyzed in
the Washington Post. In 1999,
investigator Bill Davy published a remarkable book about New Orleans District
Attorney Jim Garrison’s investigation into the JFK assassination. (Let Justice Be Done; by William Davy;
Copyright 1999 [SC]; Jordan Publishing; ISBN 0-9669716-0-4.) Relying largely on
documents declassified in the wake of the Oliver Stone film JFK, Davy’s extraordinary book validates
much of what Garrison had to say. (Davy is interviewed in FTR#190.)
3. FTR#288 highlights parts of the HSCA’s investigation that support Garrison’s
thesis. “HSCA
Chief Counsel, G. Robert Blakey, once referred to the Committee’s work as ‘the
last investigation.’ As such, it is only proper that the HSCA have the last word
on Clay Shaw. On September 1, 1977, staff counsel Jonathan Blackmer, authored a
15-page memorandum addressed to Blakey, as well as staff members, Gary
Cornwell, Ken Klein, and Cliff Fenton. Blackmer was the lead counsel for team
3, the HSCA team responsible for the New Orleans
and Cuban angles of the investigation. After an investigative trip to New
Orleans, Blackmer concluded in his memo: ‘We
have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the anti-Castro efforts in
New Orleans in the 1960’s and [was] possibly one of the high level planners or
‘cut out’ to the planners of the assassination.’” (Let Justice Be Done; p. 202.)
4. Clay Shaw was, of course,
the individual tried by Garrison for Kennedy’s assassination. The first suspect
investigated by Garrison was David Ferrie. In its final report, the House
Select Committee also recommended that the Department of Justice investigate
Ferrie and his anti-Castro Cuban associates in the New
Orleans area. Ferrie had operated as an investigator for
Guy Banister’s detective agency in New Orleans.
The Banister operation, in turn, had served as an apparent intelligence front
for covert operations against Cuba.
Ferrie was instrumental in running a training facility at Lake
Ponchartrain (Louisiana),
at which Cuban exiles received guerilla training for operations against Castro.
5. The House Select Committee
appears to have obtained a film of this facility, which connects some very
interesting people. “It is possible that a film once existed of this training
camp. The former Deputy Chief Counsel of the House Select Committee on
Assassinations, Robert Tannenbaum, recalled that the committee viewed the film
and to Tannenbaum it was a shock to the system. ‘The movie was shocking to me
because it demonstrated the notion that the CIA was training, in America,
a separate army,’ he said. ‘It was shocking to me because I’m a true believer
in the system and yet there are notorious characters in the system, who are
funded by the system, who are absolutely un-American! And who knows what they
would do, eventually. What if we send people to Washington who they can’t deal
with? Out comes their secret army? So, I find that to be as contrary to the
Constitution as you can get.’ What is even more shocking is what the film
reveals. According to Tannenbaum,
depicted in the film among the Cuban exiles were Guy Banister, David Atlee
Philips and Lee Harvey Oswald. Inexplicably, the film would later disappear
from the Committee’s files.” (Ibid.; p. 30.) The Banister
“detective agency” was also involved with collecting intelligence on the
American civil rights movement, and was deeply involved with white supremacist
organizations. (For more on this subject, see also: L#3, RFA#12, FTR#188.)
6. The House Select Committee
also developed information linking Banister employee Ferrie, Oswald and Clay
Shaw. Credible eyewitness testimony places these individuals at a Clinton
(Louisiana) voter registration
drive in August of 1963. “The chairman of the Clinton
chapter of CORE [Congress Of Racial Equality], Corrie Collins, was monitoring
the drive outside the Registrar’s office, when at approximately 10:00a.m.
he noticed the arrival of the car. Thinking they might be FBI, Collins studied
the car and its occupants closely. As the car came to a stop, he observed a
young white male exit the rear of the car and enter the registration line,
while the driver and the other passenger remained in the car. Later, under oath, at the trial of Clay Shaw
in 1969 and in his testimony to the House Select Committee on Assassinations
(HSCA) in 1978, Collins would identify the driver of the car as Clay Shaw, the
passenger as David Ferrie, and the person in the registration line as Lee
Harvey Oswald.” (Ibid.; pp. 103-104.)
7. “A mere four years later, Congress would conclude that
‘[the HSCA] was inclined to believe that Oswald was in Clinton La., in late
August, early September 1963, and that he was in the company of David Ferrie,
if not Clay Shaw. . . [the Clinton
witnesses] established an association of an undetermined nature between Ferrie,
Shaw, and Oswald less than 3 months before the assassination.’ The committee
added that they ‘also found that there was at least a possibility that Oswald
and Guy ‘Banister were acquainted.’ They
further concluded that the ‘CIA-Mafia-Cuban plots had all the elements
necessary for a successful assassination conspiracy.’ It is probably the
ultimate irony that the U.S.
government’s conclusions echoed those of Jim Garrison a decade earlier.” (Ibid.; p. 189.)
8. Banister’s New
Orleans office also served as the headquarters of the
Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, part of what
would formally coalesce as the World Anti-Communist League in 1967. (For more
on WACL, see also: RFA#’s 14, 15, 18,
19, 21, 27, 29, 30, 36, 37.)
9. While investigating Eladio
del Valle, Ferrie’s associate in covert operations against Cuba,
Garrison’s investigating team was infiltrated by an anti-Castro Cuban with
strong ties to the intelligence community. This operative, Bernardo de Torres,
may well have been involved with the assassination itself. His name later
cropped up in connection with the assassination of Orlando Letelier. (For more
on the assassination of Letelier, see also: RFA#’s 4, 19, 20, 22, 30, 37,
as well as FTR#’s 259, 268, 284.)
10.
“On the day
Ferrie died, del Valle was found brutally murdered in his car in the parking
lot of a Miami shopping center.
Prior to that, Garrison had sent a part-time investigator named Bernardo de
Torres to question del Valle. De Torres was a military coordinator for the
Brigade 2506 part of the exile landing force during the Bay of Pigs
invasion. He was captured by Castro’s forces and detained until Christmas Eve
of 1962. He eventually found his way to New Orleans
where, according to de Torres, he was approached by Sergeant Duffy of the NOPD
and asked to join Garrison's staff. As with many other investigators and
volunteers at Tulane and Broad, de Torres’ bona fides are suspect. First of
all, it was de Torres who showed up at the D.A.’s office in New
Orleans very early in Garrison’s investigation claiming
he had important information. He said he was a private detective who wanted to
help and dropped the name of Miami
D.A. Richard Gerstein as an entrée. Shortly after de Torres was given the assignment
to question del Valle, del
Valle’s brutalized body was discovered in the vicinity of de Torres’ Miami
apartment. It was later determined that de Torres was filing reports on
Garrison to the Miami CIA station,
JM/WAVE. Not long after he left Garrison’s staff, de Torres went to work for
Mitch Werbell’s Military Armament Corporation, a large supplier of weaponry to
the CIA. The HSCA developed evidence that de Torres was
actually a CIA officer with links to Military Intelligence. A well connected
anti-Castro Cuban, Arturo Cobos told the FBI that de Torres was ‘the man to
call with contacts on a high level with the CIA in Washington, D.C.’ The HSCA
also came into possession of investigative information, which indicated that de
Torres may have been in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination, and
further, that he may have been involved in an assassination conspiracy, charges
which de Torres denies. As for Garrison he later came to believe that de Torres
was one of his earliest sources of misinformation and recalled that whatever
information de Torres provided never went anywhere. In the late 1970’s, de
Torres would be linked to the bombing assassination of Chilean leader Orlando
Letelier in Washington, D.C.”
(Ibid.; pp.
148-149.)
11.
In RFA#30 and FTR#268 (among other broadcasts), we
examined connecting links between the Iran-Contra scandal and the Letelier
assassination.
12.
FTR#288 concludes with discussion of
connections between Iran-Contra drug smuggler Barry Seal, Ferrie and Lee Harvey
Oswald. “On July
16, 1955, his 16th birthday, Seal got his pilot’s
license. The information will be contained in a forthcoming book, Barry and the Boys by Daniel Hopsicker.
Two weeks later, he boarded a U.S.
Air Force plane for a two-week summer camp with the Civil Air Patrol at
Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana.
There he came under the command of David
Ferrie, and met fellow cadet Lee Harvey Oswald, two principal figures in the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” (“Inside the
Octopus” by Preston Peet; The Best of High Times, #28;
p. 81.)
13.
Later in his career, Seal went to work for the 20th Special
Forces Group, elements of which were giving military training to the Ku Klux
Klan and were also present in Memphis, Tennessee
on the day Martin Luther King was assassinated. (See also: FTR#46.) “He [Seal] was assigned to the 21st Special
Forces Group and went to jump school in Ft. Benning,
Georgia. On May
1, 1963, Seal was assigned to Company D, Special Ops Detachment of
the 20th Special Forces Group—Spec Forces Group Airborne.” (Ibid.;
p. 82.)
14.
Some observers believe Seal may
have been connected to the assassination of JFK. “During this time, just before President
Kennedy was killed, an illuminating photograph was taken. A smiling 24-year-old
Seal is seated at a nightclub table in Mexico City
with [Watergate burglar] Frank Sturgis, [Iran-Contra operative] Felix
Rodriguez, and William Seymour, all members of the CIA’s assassination squad,
Operation 40. Louis Gaudin an air-traffic controller at Redbird Airport, located
south of Dallas, told the FBI he recalled observing three men in business suits
board a Comanche-type aircraft hours after the assassination. Seal owned such a
plane, and many believe he flew the plane that spirited the assassins to Canada.”
(Idem.) (For more on Seal, see also: RFA#’s
29, 33 and FTR#’s 181, 249. For
more on Rodriguez, see also: RFA#’s 29,
30, FTR#268. For more on Sturgis, see G#3.)
(Recorded on 4/8/2001.)