The building at 544 Camp Street, New Orleans, early 1960s
Day Two of the COPA Conference began with a panel called "Past Investigations." This panel included William Turner, William Davy, and Jim DiEugenio.
William Turner is the ten-year FBI veteran-turned-writer, who has written extensively on the JFK and RFK case.
Turner described flying into Dallas three days after the JFK assassination. He was on a magazine assignment, and originally planned to investigate the security breakdown that allowed the assassination to happen. "I talked to a uniformed police officer, and his name was Welcome Eugene Barnett. And he told me he had been stationed right in front of the Depository Building to prevent any kind of unruly conduct when the President came by.
"And his account was intriguing, in that it indicated shots from two locations, which meant at least two shooters. What he says --- he thought a couple of shots, based three seconds apart, came from the roof. But he also said the third shot, he wasn't sure where, and that a woman ran up to him and pointed over to the grassy knoll and said they came from there --- meaning the shots.
"So, that early on I had some doubts as to whether Oswald was the lone assassin. And it took a little time, because I don't arrive at conclusions in a kneejerk fashion, but at least right that early there was some indication that something was going on that was much bigger than Oswald."
As a former defector and as one who had engaged in leftist activities only months before the assassiantion, Turner said, the FBI should have had Oswald's name on a "risk list" and notified the Secret Service of his presence in the area. "But a Secret Service spokesman I talked to flatly denied that the FBI had sent over a 'skinny' on Oswald." Turner said he talked to a contact close to the FBI who said agents Harland Brown and James Hosty had interviewed Oswald ten days before the assassination, and that Oswald was an FBI informant.
When the Warren Commission published its report, Turner examined it closely from the viewpoint of a trained investigator. The Report stated, in its "Rumors and Speculation" appendix, that Oswald's last contact with the FBI was in the summer of 1963 in New Orleans --- "This, of course, dismissing my information about Oswald and his contact by Hosty and by Harland Brown. This was based solely on the word of J. Edgar Hoover, which bothered several of the Commission members.
"I turned from skeptic to critic. There was no evidence that Oswald had fired a shot. Dallas police had identified only a partial palmprint that wasn't new on the Carcano rifle as Oswald's, but it could only have been placed when the weapon was disassembled."
Turner said he found a vehicle for writing about the Kennedy case in Ramparts magazine in the 1960s. Among the articles he was associated with was Ramparts' publicizing Penn Jones' "mysterious deaths" articles from the Midlothian Mirror. "Probably, as far as the American people are concerned, [this was] the thing that convinced them most that there was a conspiracy ... people who would not be able to, or wouldn't have the time, maybe, to sit down and analyze the Warren Commission Report, but when they heard the Penn Jones story --- which, actually, Walter Cronkite broadcast over CBS --- then they were convinced."
In his conference abstract, Turner wrote: "It seemed to me that the key was right in the Warren Report. The day after the ambush Deputy Sheriff Buddy Walthers reported that an informant had divulged that some Cubans affiliated with the 'Freedom for Cuba Party' had been meeting at a house on Harlandale in the Oak Cliff area, decamping just before the assassination." Oswald was a member and had been to the house, which had been rented by a member of Alpha 66.
So it was no surprise, Turner said, when in early 1967 he got a call from Jim Garrison after his New Orleans investigation became public. Garrison was then focusing on the paramilitary right and Cuban exiles; Turner had just published a Ramparts article on the Minutemen, in which anti-Castro groups figured.
Turner said he began visiting New Orleans regularly, and helping the Garrison investigation as best he could. On his first trip, he said, he went to 531 Lafayette Place, an address given him for Guy Banister by a Minutemen defector. Turner said he remembered Banister, who once ran the Chicago FBI office, from his own FBI days. "And to make a long story short, I found that that particular address was a side entrance, and it's walk upstairs to the second floor. Then you cross, diagonally you cross that floor. And if you go down another walkup --- set of stairs, you come out at 544 Camp Street." The significance of this, of course, is that "544 Camp Street" was stamped on some of the pro-Castro literature Lee Oswald was handing out in New Orleans in the summer of 1963.
"So Banister, I think, is a key figure in this --- he's an accessory, at least. And of course he's dead. And the problem was that most of the people Garrison's investigation was going after, they died, too. The Penn Jones theory was holding up."
544 Camp Street was "an intelligence beehive" of considerable importance, Turner said, linking Oswald to an international ring containing elements of the CIA, the Mafia, Cuban exiles --- "And all these people had murder on their mind." They in turn were all linked to the Friends for a Democratic Cuba, a CIA-FBI front that was run by Banister.
Turner said Garrison had a good case, pointing out that Shaw was, after all, indicted by a grand jury. "It wasn't like Garrison was out to crucify him ... he felt that Shaw was involved."
In his conference abstract, Turner wrote that "it all goes back to the house on Harlandale, rented by Alpha-66 in the name of the Committee to Free Cuba. Connect the dots." He told his COPA listeners, "I don't feel at all that the Kennedy assassination will never be solved. I've heard talk about that; I disagree."
The next speaker was Bill Davy, author of Through the Looking Glass: The Mysterious World of Clay Shaw, published in 1995 by Citizens for Truth in the Kennedy Assassination.
Davy began by saying that Jim Garrison's office received a tip in 1967 that a "Clay Bertrand" had signed the guest log in the VIP lounge at an airport in New Orleans. Garrison investigators went there, found the signature, dated 12-14-66, and photographed it. A lounge employee identified, in a sworn affidavit, a photograph of Clay Shaw as being the "Bertrand" signee, adding that he had been accompanied by four persons from Caracas, Venezuela, and a fifth person.
"Another guest who signed the VIP register that day was a New Orleans resident named Alfred Moran," Davy said. (I'm guessing on the spelling of "Moran" -- JK) "On November 13, 1967, Garrison's office questioned Moran, and he adamently stated that Shaw was not at the VIP room on the date in question. Moran knew Shaw, he said, and clearly would have recalled his presence. However, newly discovered documents reveal a different story.
"The day after Moran's interview, he hosted a cocktail party at his suburban New Orleans home. In attendance was Moran's close friend, Hunter Leek (spelling?), of the New Orleans CIA office. During the course of the evening, Moran took his CIA friend aside and told him of his contact with Garrison's office. Moran recalled the occasion at the VIP room, and said he had identified Clay Shaw's presence there. He further expressed the opinion to Leek that Garrison had an ironclad case against Shaw."
CIA records show, Davy said, that Moran had become a DDP asset --- Deputy Directorate of Plans --- in 1962. "The CIA characterized Moran as someone who has always been most helpful and cooperative with the Agency," Davy continued, and urged Leek to make further contacts with Moran about the Garrison matter.
"And what was the Agency going to do with this information? 'We have means of getting this information on to Dymond' --- Shaw's lawyer ---' for use in preparing Shaw case without involving Hunter or Agency [sic].' This is an incredible statement. The CIA is admitting in this document that it is illegally feeding information to Shaw's attorneys through a cutout, in order to undermine the State's case, and subvert due process. It gets worse."
The CIA was so concerned about Moran's involvement with the DDP becoming known, it suggested altering his 201 file. "A subsequent CIA memo notes that since November 19, 1964, Moran's contacts with the DDP had been handled by the DCS [Domestic Contact Service]. This should serve as a bright red flag for researchers. This is direct evidence that the CIA can not only easily modify a 201 file, as William Harvey suggested doing as part of his ZR/Rifle program, but also make it look like someone had had innocuous DCS contacts, when in fact they were working for the Clandestine Services. Clay Shaw could be a perfect example."
The CIA later issued a memo, Davy said, stating that Moran had not seen Shaw in the VIP room after all. Garrison dropped Moran as a witness.
Davy wrapped up his presentation with remarks about the House Select Committee on Assassiantions, and what that Committee said about Clay Shaw. He quoted an HSCA memo on the New Orleans investigation said, "'We have reason to believe Shaw was heavily involved in the anti-Castro efforts in New Orleans in the 1960s, and was possibly one of the high-level planners, or cutout to, the planners of the assassination.' Hardly the portrait of a retired businessman."
The next speaker was Jim DiEugenio, publisher of CTKA's Probe magazine. He began with a discussion of the HSCA, the subject of the previous speaker's presentation, which is not reproduced here.
Several years ago, DiEugenio said, he was thinking about writing a book about the Committee, but after some preliminary work decided it simply was not worth the effort and expense such a project would require. He had enough material, however, to write a two-part article for Probe.
"I think that that particular committee, at its inception, probably had as good a chance as anybody of actually doing something to solve this case," DiEugenio said. "And I say that for two reasons. I say that, first of all, the stage was really set for a real investigation of the case by the Church Committee, which had really exposed a lot of the things that the CIA and FBI never really wanted to be known. Okay, and plus, what happened with Watergate.
"And this --- when Jim Garrison was doing this kind of stuff, he always used to say, in retrospect, 'What we were trying to do, in 1967, was trying to convince people that the Martians had landed.' You know? Because in 1967, nobody would really believe, and it was very easy to portray Garrison as an idiot and as a charlatan, and in some cases, as a fraud. Because in 1967 it was still, relatively, an innocent country. Although that was beginning to collapse.
"But by 1976, I think a lot of people were ready to accept the fact that what had happened to President Kennedy was something that took place at a very high level of government. And so that --- plus, I think the two guys who were running that committee at the very beginning, Dick Sprague and Bob Tanenbaum on the JFK side ... Dick Sprague was just an excellent, uncompromised lawyer. A first-class prosecutor. Okay? Who, when he honed in on a target, was not going to take any kind of guff, was not going to be compromised, and the guy he picked to run the JFK case, Robert Tanenbaum, was, if anything, just as uncompromising as he was."
But once the powers that be found out just what these two men were like, DiEugenio said, there was no way they would last for long. Their efforts were soon torpedoed by intelligence operatives within their own ranks, by and CIA assets in the media.
The balance of DiEugenio's discussion was anecdotal in nature and won't be reproduced here.
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