Sunshine in Dark Corners:
Covert Intelligence Operatives and Lee Oswald
Part Four of a Series
by Martin Shackelford (mshack@juno.com)
Special to Review Magazine

         In Part One, we learned how public pressure resulted in a law
requiring Kennedy Assassination records to be opened much more fully than
ever before, and creating the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB)
to administer it.. Parts Two and Three summarized what we've learned
about the real Lee Harvey Oswald. (Previous parts of this series can be
found on the JFK Place web site on the Internet). 
           Released records have covered such topics as the last of the
Warren Commission documents, Secret Service protective division
documents, the Garrison investigation in New Orleans and its suspects,
associates of Oswald, CIA personnel, interviews of medical witnesses, FBI
surveillance of Warren Report critics, and organized crime meetings in
Miami.
           This time, we'll take a look at a few of the other secrets
liberated from the covert files, including some unusual friends of Lee
Harvey Oswald. 
THREE MYSTERY MEN-AND A WOMAN
           George deMohrenschildt: This Dallas oil geologist had a
history of intelligence involvement.  His acquaintances included
right-wing billionaire H.L. Hunt, oilman George Bush, Jackie Kennedy's
father, and members of Lyndon Johnson's inner circle.  Dallas CIA man J.
Walton Moore first mentioned  Lee Oswald to deMohrenschildt in 1961,
before Oswald returned to the U.S. In 1962, an associate of Moore gave
deMohrenschildt Oswald's address, and suggested contact. After
double-checking with Moore and sources in the FBI, deMohrenschildt
approached Oswald. His contacts, which resulted in a series of debriefing
reports to the CIA, covered a period when the government had no official
contact with Oswald. He encouraged Oswald "to write a detailed memoir,"
received the manuscript in October 1962, and allowed Moore to copy it.
After Oswald left Dallas in April 1963, the CIA requested an "expedite
check" on deMohrenschildt. He went to Washington in May, where he
discussed Oswald with the branch chief of the CIA Soviet Russia division,
to which his debriefing reports had gone. In late 1963, after the
assassination, an unexplained sum of over $200,000 was deposited into his
bank in Haiti from a Bahamian bank. 
           Guy Banister: Another person whose contacts with Oswald began
during a period when the government was officially out of touch was
Banister, a former Naval Intelligence man and FBI field office chief who
ran a detective agency, belonged to the right-wing Minutemen, and worked
with the CIA. Oswald worked for him in New Orleans, as increasing numbers
of former Banister employees have attested. Also, Oswald told local
attorney Dean Andrews he was being paid $25 a day to leaflet (he told his
friend Ron Lewis, another Banister employee, that the money was coming
from Clay Shaw). This supports the statement of Banister's secretary,
Delphine Roberts, that when asked about Oswald's pro-Castro activity,
Banister had said not to worry, "He's with us." Other witnesses saw them
together around New Orleans. The FBI and Warren Commission suppressed
evidence of this connection, along with another: Lewis reports Jack Ruby
was involved in Banister's gun-running operations. Evidence of Ruby's
involvement with gun-running comes from a variety of other sources.
Another anti-Castro operative and sometime CIA asset, Gerry Patrick
Hemming, said Banister offered him a CIA contract to kill JFK in
September 1962, about the time Mob bosses Carlos Marcello and Santos
Trafficante were talking about a hit on JFK. A corrupt union controlled
by Marcello owned 544 Camp St., the building in which Banister's offices
were located. 
           David Atlee Phillips: As we've seen, CIA propaganda expert
Dave Phillips, a veteran of the CIA overthrow of Guatemala's government
in 1954, was involved in both the Castro assassination plots and the CIA
counterintelligence operation against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee,
working under Watergate's James McCord. By the Fall of 1963, he was in
charge of anti-Cuban operations in Mexico City at the time of Oswald's
visit, but was out of town and didn't return until about a week after
Oswald left; a cable from Mexico City suggests the CIA station there held
materials about Oswald's visit for Phillips to pick up. Every key source
who tried to tie Oswald to Castro after the assassination had links to
Phillips. 
           Ann Goodpasture: Dave Phillips described her  as "the case
officer who was responsible for the identification of Lee Harvey Oswald
in his dealings with the Cuban Embassy in Mexico." She worked for Staff
D, William Harvey's  highly classified CIA division which handled
communications intercepts, and also housed the ZR/RIFLE assassination
project (It provided the poison pen weapon, intended to kill Castro,
handed to an agent the day of the JFK assassination). She lied to the
House Assassinations Committee about what the Mexico City station had
told CIA headquarters. She denied any photographs were taken of Oswald,
then said they were probably among records destroyed by a colleague; the
colleague denied any record destruction. She was recently re-interviewed
by the ARRB. 
NEW ORLEANS SUSPECTS
         When New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison linked several
figures in his investigation to the CIA, the Agency issued a flat denial,
which its own documents now show was false.
         Clay Shaw, whom Garrison prosecuted, worked during World War Two
for an Army Counterintelligence group called the Special Operations
Section; his military record remains classified; he told reporters he was
in the Medical Corps. Shaw was affiliated with the Centro Mondiale
Commerciale (CMC), a CIA front organization located in Rome, and served
as a CIA informant. Between 1948 and 1956, he filed reports with the
CIA's Domestic Contact Division, and provided documents to the Foreign
Documents Division. In 1955, the CIA paid for one of his trips, and the
following year he actively solicited information for them. His documented
connection to the CIA suddenly ended in 1956, odd for someone a CIA
internal report called a valuable informant. 
         The House Committee learned, but didn't report, that Shaw was
heavily involved in anti-Castro activities; he allowed one group
rent-free space in the International Trade Mart, also providing cover for
CIA operations. Some of the new evidence indicates a working relationship
between Shaw and Guy Banister. 
          Shaw was definitely with Oswald and David Ferrie on an August
1963 trip to Jackson and Clinton, Louisiana. Witnesses also reported
other connections to Ferrie, who Shaw's former secretary said had
"privileged access" to Shaw's office. Shaw's close associates owned the
media outlets which publicized Oswald's pro-Castro activities; others
sponsored Latin American Reports, whose editor William Gaudet was in
front of Oswald in the line to get Mexican visas. Despite later denials,
documents show the FBI did investigate Shaw prior to his arrest by
Garrison, and confirmed his alias of Clay Bertrand. 
          As late as 1967, Shaw had a "covert security" classification
for a program called QKENCHANT, so highly classified that we are still
unable to learn what kind of program it was. Former CIA official Victor
Marchetti said it was most likely run out of the Domestic Operations
Division, headed by Tracy Barnes. Also involved with QKENCHANT was
Barnes' assistant, E. Howard Hunt, one of the few Americans unable to
account for his whereabouts at the time of the Kennedy assassination (he
has given three different stories). 
          During the Garrison investigation, Shaw was sure that he would
be protected, as high-ranking government officials were involved.
Inquiries about Shaw by 1976 were coordinated by J. Walton Moore, George
deMohrenschildt's former CIA contact in Dallas. 
         Suspect David Ferrie, who died early in the investigation,
became a CIA operative in the late 1950s. He was a pilot in anti-Castro
activities, paid by a CIA front organization, Double-Chek Corp. of Miami,
paymaster for pilots in the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation. In the Fall of
1963, he flew Clay Shaw on CIA business to a CMC gathering in Montreal,
and to another meeting related to business interests in Cuba. One House
Assassinations Committee document released in 1993 was a flight plan
dated April 8, 1963: pilot Ferrie, passengers Hidell (an Oswald alias),
Lambert (an alleged  Shaw alias) and Diaz, flying from New Orleans to
Garland, Texas. 
         Gordon Novel was an important witness who evaded Garrison's
attempts to extradite him. Novel was under contract to the CIA in 1962
and 1963 to aid anti-Castro groups, including supplying weapons. 
         In Part Five, we'll take a look at sealed records from the early
investigations.