The Hidden History of the JFK Assassination (53 page)

Leake’s description of the Oswald files as “voluminous” makes sense, given the information from our independent source about the “tight surveillance” of Oswald, something not known to Kurtz at the time of his interview with Leake. (Professor Kurtz asked Helms
about Leake’s story, but Helms declined to confirm or deny Leake’s account.) Buttressing Leake’s credibility is the fact that no routine reports from the CIA’s New Orleans office have ever surfaced about former defector Oswald’s several well-publicized pro-Castro activities in New Orleans during August 1963, despite the CIA’s interest in both former defectors and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

A SOMBER ROBERT Kennedy took time out from his family and official duties for a private meeting with Harry Williams, who told us the meeting occurred within two days of JFK’s death. Almeida was still in Cuba, and his family was still outside of Cuba under US surveillance, but any plans for a coup were now on hold. Williams said that RFK “didn’t say much,” but told Williams that “things are going to change,” now that RFK no longer essentially ran Cuban operations and policy for the United States. Williams said he already knew that RFK and “Johnson . . . hate[d] each other’s guts,” so RFK’s role and the plans would no doubt be very different, if they continued at all.

IN A PHONE call recorded at 10:01 a.m. on November 23, J. Edgar Hoover admitted to Lyndon Johnson that “the case, as it stands now, isn’t strong enough to be able to get a conviction.” Yet the Saturday-morning newspapers were conveying just the opposite impression by establishing the basic “lone assassin” scenario that some people still believe today. In hindsight, it seems absurd to think that all the relevant information about the shooting, and an unusual former defector like Oswald, could be uncovered less than twelve hours after the shooting—and that clearly wasn’t the case. However, investigations that touched on covert matters would have to be conducted in secret, so as not to alarm the public or back President
Johnson into a corner regarding possible retaliation against Cuba or the Soviet Union.

Journalists asked to withhold information from the public didn’t have to be made aware of the JFK–Almeida coup plan, or the Cuba Contingency Plans to protect it. In those pre-Watergate times, they could simply be told that certain information was too sensitive, could compromise US operations, or might force a confrontation with the Soviets—and just a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, this last explanation might be all that was required, since Oswald’s Soviet and Cuba connections had been so widely reported.

As mentioned in
Chapter One
, when information linking Oswald to David Ferrie first started to surface during the weekend after JFK’s murder, an NBC cameraman related that “an FBI agent said that I should never discuss what we discovered for the good of the country.” That same phrase, “for the good of the country,” would be used to stop Dave Powers and Kenneth O’Donnell from revealing they had seen shots from the grassy knoll, and it was probably used to silence others as well. Longtime television journalist Peter Noyes was told by several “members of NBC News who covered the events in Dallas [that] they were convinced their superiors wanted certain evidence suppressed at the request of someone in Washington.”

It’s unclear if Ferrie’s name was surfacing because Oswald apparently had his library card, or because of the Jack Martin allegations, or for some other reason. But the “for the good of the country” comment helps to confirm CIA officer Leake’s statements that Ferrie (and Guy Banister) was working for the CIA in 1963. Now, as a result of the Martin allegations, Ferrie was a wanted man. With Ferrie on the run, and Oswald still alive, Carlos Marcello would have known that his carefully orchestrated plan could still unravel.

Not all of the pressure on journalists in Dallas came from Washington; it also came from conditions on the scene. The intense competition among journalists and networks in Dallas for “scoops” also contributed to coverage that was often shallow or wrong, and stories that avoided the lengthy in-depth investigations that might have uncovered what had really happened in Dallas. However, just being involved in reporting on the assassination gave a huge boost to the careers of broadcasters. Texan Dan Rather’s career-making scoop was his role as the first journalist to view and report on the Zapruder film, though so firmly entrenched by the weekend was the “official” story of the lone-assassin-shooting-from-behind that Rather claimed the home movie showed JFK’s “head went forward with considerable violence” after he was shot. The public wouldn’t get to see the film for themselves—and learn that JFK was pitched backward, not forward—for another twelve years.

Other later prominent newsmen covering—and at times involved in—the story include future PBS broadcasters Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil (as Oswald calmly left the Texas School Book Depository, MacNeil apparently asked him where he could find a phone), Bob Schieffer (who gave Oswald’s mother a ride to Dallas), and Peter Jennings. While covering the assassination helped their careers, it sometimes impeded any questioning of the “official” version of the lone assassin, both at the time and for years to come.

IN DALLAS, JOE Campisi Sr. continued to hide the two European gunmen in his restaurant. Once it was deemed safe, Carlos Marcello told Jack Van Laningham that the two were whisked out of Dallas and taken back to Canada, using the same path that had originally brought them into the US. That presumably involved their going
to Michigan to cross the border into Canada. In 1985, after hearing Marcello’s remarks about the two on the FBI’s undercover audio tapes, the FBI apparently took action. Van Laningham said that his FBI contact agent later told him that the FBI and “turned the matter over to the CIA, since it involved foreign countries.” The CIA checked airline records and was able to confirm that “the two men had come into Canada, from Italy, on their regular passports.”

Those two shooters were not the only Europeans involved in JFK’s assassination. As noted earlier, a CIA memo said that French Connection heroin kingpin and assassin Michel Victor Mertz was in Dallas on November 22, the day of the shooting. The memo says he was “expelled from the US at Fort Worth or Dallas 48 hours after the assassination . . . to either Mexico or Canada.” The CIA memo also indicated that Mertz had been using the alias of “Jean Souetre,” a wanted French assassin. It also stated that “Souetre” had exchanged mail with a dentist in Houston, who had met the real Souetre on a trip to Europe.

The dentist later told investigators that he was interviewed by FBI agents who “told me that Souetre was in Dallas that day [of JFK’s murder] and was flown out . . . as far as they were concerned, in a government plane. But there was no record whatsoever of the plane being there.” The FBI couldn’t find any record of Souetre’s being “flown out” on a government plane, because the person in question was actually Mertz, who’d been posing as Souetre.

When Mertz was picked up by US authorities in Dallas, he had apparently switched to yet another cover identity, one guaranteed to get him deported back to familiar territory. Virgil Bailey, an INS investigator in Dallas in 1963, told researcher Gary Shaw years later about “picking up a Frenchman in Dallas shortly after the assassination of
President Kennedy.” The man’s description was very close to Mertz’s, and he looked just a few years older than a cover identity Mertz often used. Based on age and description, the man Investigator Bailey remembered could not have been the real Souetre. Bailey also recalled that “the Frenchman . . . had been tried in absentia in France and was under a death sentence for collaboration with the Nazis during World War II.” Mertz could have picked up that alias from either of two of his heroin associates, Joseph Orsini and Antoine D’Agostino, who had both earned “a death sentence in absentia” for Nazi collaboration. Bailey thought the man they arrested was “a chef or maitre d’ in an unknown Dallas restaurant.” It’s possible the restaurant in question was Campisi’s.

Bailey’s supervisor at INS at the time, Hal Norwood, recalled other aspects of the story. Norwood described the arrest of an “individual who might have been French which occurred shortly after the killing of the President. The Dallas Police called INS and requested that they come to city jail to investigate a foreigner that they had in custody.” Norwood thought Bailey “was one of the men he sent” to pick up the foreigner. “The man in question was a wanted criminal and shortly after INS took him into custody, the head of Washington INS investigations called requesting a pickup on the man. They were surprised that he was already a prisoner. . . . The Washington INS office was VERY interested in the man and called twice regarding him,” according to INS supervisor Norwood.

Mertz could have used his intelligence connections to make sure the official paperwork was later suppressed. Something similar had been done in the recent Senate narcotics hearings, where Mertz’s heroin associates had all been identified, but Mertz’s name was completely missing from the hearings. The fact that the CIA discovered
later that someone had been using the name of Souetre would also allow an official like Helms (or Angleton or Harvey) to ask INS officials to remove the information about the deportation from their files, on national security grounds.

Mertz likely used the name of one of his wanted associates to get picked up by the INS, but once in custody he could have used his intelligence connections to ensure he was deported to Canada, instead of to France, where his associate was wanted. It must have been deliciously ironic for Carlos Marcello to see the same INS that had once deported him, on the orders of Robert Kennedy, now fly his heroin partner and assassin Mertz out of Dallas shortly after JFK’s assassination.

EVEN AS EVIDENCE tying Oswald to Cuba and Russia caused concern among officials in Washington, and would soon break in the press, Marcello continued the pressure to have Oswald killed. With the authorities still seeking David Ferrie, the whole plot could unravel and point to people working for Marcello. The godfather could make only limited efforts to contain Oswald’s public statements and cooperation with police, which is why two attorneys linked to Marcello had been asked to represent the still lawyerless Oswald. (They were Clem Sehrt, an associate of Carlos Marcello who had known Oswald’s mother since the 1950s, and Dean Andrews, who knew David Ferrie.) But only killing Oswald could guarantee his silence.

ON NOVEMBER 23, Jack Ruby continued to relentlessly stalk Oswald. We noted earlier Ruby’s friendship with Dallas Police Sergeant Patrick Dean, Homicide Captain Will Fritz, and Police Chief Jesse Curry. At noon, Chief Curry called Captain Fritz to see if
Oswald could be transferred to the county jail—and the jurisdiction of the sheriff—at 4:00 p.m. Ruby was also at the police station at noon. At 1:30, Ruby placed a call from the Nichols Garage, next door to his Carousel Club, and told someone the whereabouts of Chief Curry, which must mean that Ruby was talking to or keeping tabs on Curry. At 3:00 p.m., Police Sergeant D. V. Harkness, expecting Oswald to be moved at 4:00 p.m., started clearing a crowd that was blocking a driveway entrance to the county jail. Harkness saw Ruby in the crowd. Sometime after 3:00, Ruby placed another call from the Nichols Garage, and when talking about the transfer of Oswald Ruby said, “You know I’ll be there.” An announcer for Dallas radio station KLIF said Ruby called him to offer to cover the transfer of Oswald for the station. Finally, at 4:00, Ruby was at the police station, expecting Oswald to be moved—but for some reason the transfer was called off and rescheduled.

However, at 7:30 p.m., Chief Curry inadvertently told two reporters wanting dinner—but not wanting to miss Oswald’s transfer—that if they were back by 10:00 a.m. Sunday morning, “they won’t miss anything.” About an hour later, Ruby called his friend and business associate Ralph Paul, and someone overheard Paul saying, “Are you crazy? A gun?” Finally, at 10:20 p.m., Chief Curry announced at a press conference that Oswald would be moved the next morning, in an armored truck, which meant Ruby would have to wait until Sunday to complete his assignment.

However, Ruby began laying important groundwork on Saturday for the rationale he would use to be near police headquarters at the time of Oswald’s transfer. Ruby’s story would be that he had to wire $25 to one of his dancers, Karen Carlin. To begin preparing this cover story, Ruby had Carlin and several others go to the Nichols
Garage. All those involved in this meeting later gave authorities different accounts of what happened there. Carlin was willing to agree to whatever Ruby said, because the previous day, a Ruby associate had ordered her to meet him and threatened, “If you’re not down here, you won’t be around too long.”

Karen Carlin arrived at the Nichols Garage before Ruby did; then Ruby called the parking attendant and told him to lend Carlin $5—and be sure to time-stamp the receipt—for which Ruby would reimburse him. When Ruby arrived at the garage, his cover story was that he was supposed to loan Carlin another $25. Ruby claimed he didn’t have the cash to lend and couldn’t get it, ignoring the fact that his club and its safe were next door. The plan was for Ruby to wire Carlin the money the next day, from a Western Union office only one block from the police station where Oswald would be moved. The following day, Ruby’s time-stamped Western Union receipt would be designed to “prove” that Ruby just happened to be near the police station when Oswald was being moved. It’s clear this was only a cover story, since there were two Western Union offices much closer to Ruby’s Oak Cliff apartment. There was no need for Ruby to go all the way downtown to use the Western Union office near the police station—except for the fact that Ruby had to silence Oswald.

ON NOVEMBER 24, 1963, at 10:00 a.m. (EST), CIA Director McCone met with President Johnson to tell him about “the Cuban situation,” including “our operational plans against Cuba,” according to McCone’s notes. LBJ and McCone no doubt also discussed the latest information from Mexico City that seemed to implicate Fidel Castro in JFK’s murder. Unaware that information would later be discredited, in another meeting that weekend, LBJ asked former JFK
aide Ted Sorensen, “What do you think of the possibility of a foreign government being involved [in JFK’s assassination]?”