A TRAIL WORTH TAKING

ON THE TRAIL OF THE ASSASSINS: ONE MAN’S QUEST TO SOLVE THE MURDER OF

PRESIDENT KENNEDY (New York, Skyhorse Publishing ed,, 2012; d. 1988)

By JIM GARRISON

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            Why review a book published in 1988?  Because it is pertinent today.  Today in America we witness most of the major media engaged in an attempt to discredit President Trump: CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc., with news anchors and journalists determined to “expose” the exaggerations, distortions, bigotry, hatreds, ignorance, bullying, his hostility to women, to minorities, etc.  Trump is the deplorable President elected by the Deplorables of America.  Will the media succeed in taking Trump down?  Recall what they did to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison when he challenged the Establishment by charging businessman Clay Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President John Kennedy.

            Garrison had to contend with hostile reports from NBC, CBS, the Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek, the New York Times, and the other major media of that day.  While Garrison once appeared on NBC’s The Tonight Show with host Johnny Carson (in a most unfunny and hostile interview), Trump was essentially called a c*** sucker by Stephen Colbert on CBS’s The Late Show, and comedienne Kathy Griffin posed with a severed head with the bloodied face of Trump.  (Does Griffin laugh when she watches footage of the shooting of Kennedy in Dallas?)  In late May 2017 CNN telecast a 2-hour special on the John Kennedy assassination.  About the last half hour was devoted to the Garrison case against Clay Shaw, and though Warren Commission critic Mark Lane and DA Garrison made brief appearances, the thrust was that Garrison had no real evidence of conspiracy.  When Shaw was found not guilty by the jury, the program used the verdict to vindicate the findings of the Warren Commission that Oswald had alone killed Kennedy.  While Garrison was merely the DA of a major city, Trump is President, and therefore has more powers to defend himself.  Or does he?  Think JFK.

            Jim Garrison has written an excellent book concerning his attempt to expose the conspiracy that led to John Kennedy’s killing.  Garrison does make some strange omissions, however, but overall, his is a persuasive work.

            In late November 1963 I noticed a short article in a local newspaper, probably the States-Item, stating that David Ferrie had been arrested in connection with the recent Kennedy assassination in Dallas.  Could it be the same Ferrie?  Surely, there could not be two people in New Orleans with that weird name.  I clipped the article and sent it to my old roommate, Oliver St Pe.  In the summer of 1960 we were the two white New Orleanians (along with 6 Blacks) who attended a CORE training institute in Miami.  Among those teaching us the methods of non-violence for racial change were Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (who that August was off-the-record supporting Kennedy and the Democrats in that presidential election year); baseball legend Jackie Robinson (then openly endorsing Richard Nixon and the Republicans against the Democrats), and others who had experience in civil rights activism.  As part of our training, we tested various facilities, and in one test Oliver was arrested for sitting at a table with Blacks at Shell’s City Super Market.  He was released in a day or two, and appeared on a national television news program about CORE.  A few weeks later, we all returned home,-  and a week after that, with 5 Blacks and another white, I was arrested in the first lunch-counter sit-in in New Orleans.  The new census figures were not out yet, so New Orleans was still listed as the largest city in the South, more populous than Miami, Atlanta, Memphis, Dallas, and Houston.  Because of the arrest, I had to move from my parents’ home, and Oliver, living in a suburb, wanted to reside closer to his university.  I was a graduate student in history at Tulane; he was a senior majoring in sociology at Loyola U. (which was just next door to Tulane).  We found an inexpensive apartment, and roomed together for the school year 1960-61.

            Not until we roomed together did I become aware that Oliver was legally blind.  Although I had graduated and he was a senior, he was about 2 years older than I.  He had dropped out of school for a time as a youth, and had had troubles adjusting.  He was probably on the path to what was then called delinquency, but was saved with the help of others.  A cousin taught him the trade of an electrician, and much later, at Loyola, Father Fichte gave Oliver academic direction in perceiving, analyzing, and changing society.  But long before Loyola, and most important, to get Oliver back on track, back in school, so he might even consider university, Oliver joined the Civil Air Patrol, where he was greatly impressed by and influenced by David Ferrie.

            I worked at the Tulane U. Library on weekends, so Oliver and I did not share a social life.  Sundays he attended Roman Catholic Mass, and on other occasions volunteered to instruct in Catholic doctrine; I taught Sunday school at the Unitarian Church (Plato’s Republic, Job, Dostoevsky, etc.).  In the week I might earn extra small sums by reading to Oliver some of his text-book assignments.  One day he said that the forthcoming weekend he was going to a party at his old friend’s home.  He noted that he had not seen David Ferrie in awhile, and looked forward to seeing him again.  After that weekend, when I saw Oliver again, I asked, how was the party?  “Oh, Dave was playing soldier.”  Oliver added that there were many military types were at the gathering.  This would have been in spring 1961, about the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion.  I never met Ferrie, but Oliver stressed that he was very intelligent, even involved in cancer research.  I never met him, but with such a name, I did not forget David Ferrie.  At the end of May 1961 our lease ended, Oliver graduated from Loyola, and we went our separate ways.

            When I clipped the small article in November 1963 that mentioned the arrest of Ferrie in connection to the assassination, I sent it to Oliver who no longer resided in New Orleans.  Oliver was working for the Agency for International Development in Laos, a new nation sharing a long border with North Vietnam.  Garrison quotes John Gilligan, Dir. Of AID under Pres. Jimmy Carter, stating that the organization was infiltrated by the CIA from top to bottom.(pp. 62. 315)  Oliver later told me he knew of some CIA people in Laos, but he never said he himself was one.  I knew Oliver as a good Roman Catholic, kind, straight (hetero), almost a saintly man.  In later years he became active in the disability movement, and a building is named for him on a university campus in New Orleans.

            David Ferrie and the Civil Air Patrol were performing their function – training young people into capable, patriotic citizens in the 1950s.  Did Ferrie perform the same function for Lee Oswald?  Historian Larry Haapanen found that if Oswald had had a boy, he would have named him David Lee Oswald.(Joan Mellen, Farewell to Justice, pp. 43, 397)  Oswald had only daughters.  But one of Oliver’s sons was named David.

            Garrison ignores all links between Oswald and Ferrie in the CAP.  Garrison writes: “…the real Lee Harvey Oswald?  It seemed to me that the best way to find out was to go back and study Oswald’s short but varied career.”(44)  But the next page Garrison is researching Oswald in the marines.  Yet, some allege that the man who may be most responsible for pushing Oswald toward enlisting in the marines was David Ferrie.

            There are other strange omissions.  After being elected District Attorney in late 1961, and sworn in in 1962, Garrison’s office became known for its anti-vice activities.  He writes how his investigations struck at “strip joints, gambling operations, and other racketeer activities… B-drinking joints… closed down the last house of prostitution in New Orleans [and] ended the lottery operation.”(128)  What Garrison fails to write is that his office engaged in anti-gay round-ups of single men who might simply be walking on the street in the wrong part of the French Quarter, or too near one of “those” bars.  Long before the arrest of Clay Shaw, Garrison had earned the enmity of many gay New Orleanians.  Indeed, American Grotesque, a large, very hostile book about the Garrison probe was written by Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner, James Kirkwood, best known for writing the book for The Chorus Line.  Kirkwood simply viewed the Shaw trial as a show trial, an anti-gay witch hunt.

            According to Kirkwood and others, Garrison was simply using general antipathy to gays to convict Shaw.  But it was not only negative stereotypes.  A friend assured me Shaw could not possibly be involved in the murderous conspiracy because he was a homosexual!  I assume she meant gays were too flighty, too superficial, too weak, too incompetent, to partake in a murderous conspiracy.  Of course, Shaw was capable enough to lead the International Trade Mart in New Orleans, quite an accomplishment in itself.  He served in the army in WWII, and ended as a major, and he won medals from three nations for his service.  Today, there is no doubt he had some connections to the CIA.

            When Garrison discusses New Orleans Atty. Dean Andrews, he begins with the testimony from the Warren Commission in which Andrews related that shortly after the assassination of Kennedy in Dallas, Andrews received a phone call from Clay Bertrand asking Andrews to defend Oswald.  Garrison neglects to mention that Oswald, while in New Orleans, had gone to the office of Andrews to ask for help in changing his dishonorable discharge from the marines; at the time Oswald was accompanied by several gay Latinos.  Through much of his book, Garrison avoids use of the phrase “gay bars,” preferring euphemisms such as “some bars deep in the French Quarter, or ”raffish bars.”(83, 117)  He writes of the Golden Lantern, Dixie’s, and the Galley House without mentioning that these were gay bars.(117, 119)  Only later in the book does Garrison specifically speak of gays and homosexuals.

            There is no doubt that the Establishment strongly opposed the Garrison probe.  The day after Garrison arrested Shaw for conspiracy in the murder of Kennedy, the US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark, almost immediately spoke before the news cameras and declared that the Federal government had already investigated and exonerated Shaw.  A newsman then “asked Clark directly if Shaw was checked out and found clear?  ‘Yes, that’s right.’”(149)  Suddenly, many people were wondering why and when the federals had investigated Shaw concerning Dallas.  Clark’s comments only added to the speculation surrounding Shaw.  On 4 September 1967 Chief Justice Earl Warren spoke asserting that Garrison had “produced absolutely nothing” to overturn the findings of the Warren Commission.(160)  Of course, at that time, the trial had not yet begun.  The national media mocked Garrison’s efforts more.

            Garrison alleges that 1) an oilman sought to bribe Garrison to drop the investigation of the Kennedy murder; 2) that Ferrie and Shaw tried to hire a hitman to kill Garrison; and 3) on a trip there was an attempt to entrap Garrison in an airport toilet with a gay man – aiming to discredit Garrison and his probe.  The evidence on all 3 of these seems flimsy, and may be paranoid fantasy.  Or not.  Garrison also maintains that several years after the loss of the Shaw case, the federals brought a trumped up charge of corruption against him in the midst of his campaign for re-election in 1973.  There is no mention in this book of an allegation that occurred in summer of 1969, after the Shaw trial defeat.  A male teenager claimed that Garrison fondled him at the NOAC, but despite articles about the alleged incident by national columnist Jack Anderson, the boy’s family never pressed the issue to court and Garrison was never convicted on such a charge.

            This Garrison book makes clear – it is not easy to take on the federal government.  Some of the episodes he includes may have been stories of crazy people (like Spiesel, who seemed good enough to place on the witness stand, and then under cross-examination, appeared like a total lunatic.  (I was in the courtroom, and like most spectators, found it difficult to hold back laughter at the man the more he spoke about people getting his eye and making him impotent, and fingerprinting his daughter when she returned from college to make sure it was really her, the less credence he had.  The Garrison effort suffered greatly by placing Spiesel under oath as a witness for the prosecution.)  So too in this book, one may read some of the episodes with a grain of salt; there were crazies who went to Garrison; there were infiltrators from the feds inside his camp, and some of his suspicions may have seeped into paranoia.  Recall the cliché: even paranoids have enemies, especially when one takes on the feds.  However, there is no doubt that Garrison’s expose of some of the background of Oswald in New Orleans, and of events in Dallas, did much to demolish the myth propounded by the Warren Commission.

            Because of the Garrison probe, we learned – from the sworn testimony by one of the doctors who performed the autopsy on Pres. Kennedy at Bethesda hospital, that the doctors performing the autopsy were not in charge of the autopsy.  They were not permitted to give Kennedy a proper examination.  Under oath!  Under cross examination, Lt. Col. Pierre Finck was asked if he had probed the neck wound of Pres. Kennedy all the way through.  No, he did not.  Why not?  He was ordered not to.  Who ordered that?  There were many generals and admirals in the room, and he was only a lt. col., so he followed orders.  Those with higher ranks were not physicians.  Dr. Finck had been a defense witness.  Finck’s testimony revealed what a sham the Kennedy autopsy was.  Also at the trial, Americans got to view the Zapruder film for the first time in years so one could judge for oneself which way the President moved when hit by the head shot.  We learned from CORE workers on the Left and white townspeople on the Right in Clinton, Louisiana, that Oswald was in town in 1963 most likely in the company of David Ferrie and Clay Shaw.  That Oswald in New Orleans that summer hung out at the office of Guy Banister, former FBI, and staunch anti-communist and anti-Castro activist.  According to Garrison, Oswald was merely pretending to be a Marxist, but was really involved with the right-wing, anti-Castro groups who circulated with Ferrie and Banister.

            Though the federal government had its major media minions to bolster the Warren Report, lone gunman theory, there was more freedom in the local New Orleans media.  I recall watching on the local news channel Atty. Dean Andrews being interviewed.  I don’t recall the exact question, but something like, “Was Clay Shaw the same as Bertrand?”  “I can’t answer that,” Andrews replied in his jivey manner.  In different words, the same question was again put to Andrews.  Now he snapped, “If they can kill the President, they can squash me like a roach.”  Also on local TV we could see the FBI man (probably William Walter) who revealed that a telex came into the local FBI office warning of an attempt to kill Kennedy in Dallas, just a few days before the assassination.  He said the same telex was sent to FBI offices round the country, but nothing was done.(Garrison writes the telex came in 17 November 1963, pp. xiii, 222)  But outside New Orleans, Walter probably was not invited on local TV, and certainly not on the national networks.  In NO, on talk radio one could hear callers discuss the weapons they had seen stored in Banister’s office, his anti-Castro activities, etc.

            When the NO jury acquitted Shaw of conspiracy, the national media celebrated and relaxed.  The emphasis was that there was nothing to the charges against Shaw to begin with.  With the jury’s verdict, the witch hunt was over!  All could now understand now how Garrison was thoroughly discredited.  Warren Commission critic Mark Lane interviewed all of those jurors after the verdict.  They assured him, there was simply not enough evidence to convict Shaw.  Yet, all of them were also convinced that a conspiracy had resulted in the murder of Kennedy in Dallas.(251)  Most New Orleanians and about 2/3s of the nation continue to reject the Establishment theory that Oswald did it alone, despite all the TV programs propping up the official line.

            Garrison had convicted Dean Andrews of perjury, and planned to get Shaw on the same charge, because under oath Shaw had denied ever meeting Ferrie.  But with the loss of the main case against Shaw, the local press demanded that Garrison resign his office, and publicity against Garrison grew.  1969 was another election year, and a teen was now alleging that Garrison had molested him.  A Federal judge enjoined Garrison from prosecuting Shaw for perjury.  Despite all the bad publicity, despite losing the big case against Shaw, Garrison was re-elected to a 3^rd term as DA – 81,000 to 61,000.(253)

            In 1973 when Garrison prepared to run for his 4^th term, the Nixon Administration’s Justice Dept. filed charges of corruption against Garrison.  His Republican opponent was considered Mr. Clean.  Garrison was in court defending himself and was unable to campaign.  The press contrasted Mr. Clean with Mr. Corrupt.  The jury found Garrison not guilty, but he felt he had little time left to campaign.  Garrison lost his bid for re-election by 2,000 votes.  Garrison does not mention the name of his victorious opponent in 1973, but today people throughout the world might recognize the name – Harry Connick, Sr., father of the singer, musician, actor, and TV host, HC, Jr.  While at it, Youtube has a number of videos that seem to indicate one of the Latinos distributing pro-Castro, Fair Play for Cuba Comm. leaflets along with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963 was the father of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.  (Reinforcing the notion that the NO FPCC was not a left-wing, but an anti-Castro operation.)

            Garrison’s book is not a catalog of all the discrepancies that can be found in the Warren Commission’s theory.  It is the story of Garrison’s own initial acceptance of the Warren version of events.  However, the more he studied Oswald’s actions in New Orleans, the more he read and heard witnesses from Dallas, the more Garrison was convinced a conspiracy had killed Kennedy.  When Garrison sought to probe further, the federals, the media, the Establishment, obstructed, smeared, used the resources of the major media, the esteem of the Chief Justice, the prestige of the Attorney General, and all the lesser lights to dismiss, to mock, to infiltrate his investigation, to use hostile judges, to refuse to extradite important witnesses, generally to derail and destroy his case against Shaw.

            Through all this, Garrison stands out as a very brave and intelligent man.  Sometimes he was guilty of hubris, “Oh, I certainly solved the case,” and other overblown statements.  Like the tweets of Trump, Garrison’s “certainty” caused some to view him as bombastic and without substance.  A more modest beginning might have helped him, part of the way.  But once he took on the feds – and not just the CIA; once he took on the Establishment (CIA, FBI, Warren, and the lesser stars), it was inevitable there would be the Establishment’s revenge, aimed at destroying him.

            All Americans should rejoice that we have patriotic, truth-seeking individuals, willing to risk all, like the late Jim Garrison, New Orleans DA.        

NEW ORLEANS: LAFITTE'S IN EXILE - LAFITTE'S SUCCESS

IN EXILE: The History and Lore Surrounding New Orleans Gay Culture

 and Its Oldest Gay Bar (Hurlford, Scotland: LL-Publications, 2012)

By FRANK PEREZ and JEFFREY PALMQUIST

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            This book helped me learn of events in gay New Orleans that followed my departure. In the late 1960s I was teaching at a Black university in New Orleans as news blared the latest information about District Attorney Jim Garrison’s prosecution of local businessman Clay Shaw for partaking in a conspiracy that resulted in the assassination of Pres. John Kennedy.  A colleague, Annette, dismissed the entire investigation, “How could Shaw be involved?  He’s a homosexual!”  I was shocked that someone could be judged innocent of murder simply because he was gay.  The implication was that a gay was too frilly, too frivolous to be involved in anything serious like an assassination.  As the legal maneuvering continued over months, Annette, who would later marry a psychiatrist, added that she had heard the reason for the prosecution was that Shaw would not let Garrison into Shaw’s gay circle.

            One of the big issues nationally in the late 60s was the case of Garrison against Shaw.  And it was not merely Shaw in the spotlight.  Local attorney Dean Andrews claimed that Lee Oswald had come to his office in the early 1960s accompanied with a bunch of gay Latinos.  Others suspected of being involved in the plot included David Ferrie, a pilot fired from Eastern Airlines after being convicted of sex with a male teen.  Suddenly, there was so much gay gossip and allegations in the national news – news stemming from New Orleans.  And this at a time even before the Stonewall riots in New York.  Yet, all the attention to gay New Orleans barely makes a ripple in the Perez/Palmquist book.

            Their view is one heard in the 60s – Garrison, a closeted gay, persecuted the innocent Shaw for a variety of reasons, mostly which a psychiatrist might have to unravel.  The anti-Garrison position was presented in the huge volume by James Kirkwood published in 1970, American Grotesque, a book quite sympathetic to homosexuals.  Partisan, one-sided, the point was that Shaw was prosecuted for this crime only because he was gay, a one-sided view boiled down to some 3 pages In Exile.  Of course, one would not expect the Kennedy assassination and the case against Shaw to consume a book on gays in New Orleans, but the authors downplay how New Orleans gay circles became the center of national attention.  Worse, the authors assume that Shaw was innocent because the jury did not convict him.  But the authors say nothing of the attempts by the Federal Government to obstruct the entire proceedings and derail the trial against Shaw.  Indeed, shortly after Garrison announced his charges against Shaw, the US Attorney General, Ramsey Clark responded to the national TV reporters stating that the federal government had already investigated Shaw and he was not involved in any conspiracy.  The feds cooperated with the media and friendly reporters to undermine the Garrison case, his witnesses, the use of hypnotism, and when witnesses fled Louisiana, other governors like California’s Ronald Reagan, refused to extradite them back to New Orleans.

            I am a native New Orleanian and attempted to be as closeted as possible.  Rather than a sexual deviant, I was a political deviant.  My first year at Tulane, 1956-57, I excelled in my American History class.  Some 80 students packed the classroom in the old barracks, and 2^nd semester, I befriended two non-natives.  Tom C., another A student in the class (there were only 4 of us), was from a posh Houston suburb, a fellow Unitarian, and a member of the Beta fraternity.  The other non-native was Al C., who was not a A student, but the 3 of us began to hang out some.  My parents had given me a car, and I took them like a tour guide to some places beyond the campus.  Once we went to a public swimming pool in the spring of 1957, and I suddenly realized how scrawny my body was compared to Tom’s big chest, muscular arms, blond hair, and blue eyes.  Al had black hair but he too had a barrel chest and strong arms.  Al was a native of Central America, and knew Spanish.  I did not see them at all during the summer of 1957.

            In September with the beginning of the new university year, I received a call from Al, who was back in town.  “I would like to talk to you about something.”  “Go ahead.”  “Not on the phone.”  With that phrase, I guessed something, as it had happened before.  I met Al and he told me in the summer he had stayed at Tom’s home in Houston.  They were visited by agents of the FBI to talk about me.  By then I had a policy when this arose: if people wanted to break off from me, I would not try to stop them.  They would have to call me again.  Neither Tom nor Al did, so the friendships ended.  I did hear that Al had found a new group, he had joined the Pikes fraternity.

            Months passed.  In the spring of 1958 I chanced upon Al on campus.  It was a Monday.  I suddenly felt I had been wrong, that I should have made an effort to continue our friendship – after all, he had phoned me to tell me of the agency’s investigation.  I suddenly tried to make up for my mistake.  “Oh Al, where are you going?”  “To my dorm,” he replied unenthusiastically.  I was effusive, trying to be as friendly as possible.  I kept chatting as we walked cross campus to his dorm.  He was rather sullen.

            We arrived at his room and conversed only slightly when another student arrived, another Pike I assumed.  Suddenly, I was left out of the conversation as Al and the frat brother went to a corner of his room to speak in whispers.  I found this rude.  After a short time, Al walked toward me and said, “Would you mind leaving?”  Well, I thought, I had made an effort.  Our friendship was over.

            I think it was the next day when I read of Al’s arrest.  He and other Pikes had gone to the French Quarter to “roll a queer.”  They went to Lafittes in Exile and other gay spots, enticed a 26-year-old Mexican to go with them, and then they beat, robbed, and killed him in Pirates Alley, near St. Louis Cathedral.  Reading newspaper accounts, they met the next day in Al’s room to discuss how to dispose of the victim’s wallet.  They were charged with murder.  Months later, I was walking on Canal Street in January 1959 and heard a loud ruckus behind me in the distance.  “Open season on queers!”  “Kill all the queers!”  In Exile notes that there was celebration inside the courtroom when the defendants were found not guilty.  The celebration continued in a cavalcade of cars riding from the Quarter across Canal St. and thence probably to Tulane and the Pikes place.  The book is good at describing this murder of Fernando Rios by Al Calvo and his fraternity buddies.  It said something about the atmosphere of intolerance.

            I was living at home with my parents, and it was about this time that they became aware that the two ladies on the other side of the duplex house were “bull dykes.”  The women, Leah and Kitty, must have had some thoughts about me, too, for one suggested that I go to a bar in the Quarter, The Fencing Masters, and “I think you will like it.”  They never said explicitly what kind of bar, but I could guess.  I might well have liked it, but I was too scared to go.  In 1960 after I was arrested in the first lunch-counter sit-in in New Orleans (then, the largest city in the South), my name was plastered on page. 1 of the local papers.  I moved out from my parents for their safety.  But they were receiving threatening and nasty phone calls all through the night.  My dad told me much later that my parents were relieved that the two women did not complain to the landlord about the phone’s ringing because he might have evicted my parents.

            There is another weakness in this book – the authors center their volume on Lafittes in Exile because it was the oldest, and the most prominent gay bar in New Orleans.  I think this can be challenged, depending on your definition of gay bar.  I think the best known homosexual outlet in the 1940s and 50s (and perhaps into the 60s and early 70s) was the Club My-O-My.  Although it began in the French Quarter, there were so many hassles with police that the club moved out of New Orleans, to West End.  Perez/Palmquist write that it was built on pilings above Lake Pontchartrain waters separating Orleans and Jefferson Parishes (counties).  But the entrance was in Jefferson.  The club’s entertainment usually included burlesque, a comedian, a novelty act, but the main attractions were the beautiful women who performed, singing with their own voices (no lip sinking).  There was a 4-piece band which on occasion included Al Hirt.  Of course, all these beauties were men in drag.  The club attracted natives and tourists, and in the audience there might be actors like Alec Guinness, Carmen Miranda, Robert Cummings, aviator Howard Hughes, northern Mafia figures like Frank Costello and the brother of Al Capone, or other celebrities visiting the Crescent City.  Because the local newspapers refused ads from the club, news of attractions spread through word of mouth.  Grayline busses transported loads of tourists.  The club was so well known that in the touristy post-card racks at drug stores like Walgreens and K & B, one could purchase cards with pictures of about 6 beauties in drag advertising My-O-My.  The club burnt in 1972 and was not rebuilt.  (Of course, if the main image of homosexuals in New Orleans in the 1950s was men in drag, it made many less reluctant to be known as gay.) 

            At the other end of the parish border between Orleans and Jefferson Parishes, quite near the Mississippi River, but on the Jefferson side of the line, stood the Beverly Country Club.  In an era when gambling was illegal, the Beverly was considered the place to go.  It was not far from the world-famous Ochsner Clinic.  The word was that the Beverly was run by NO Mafia boss Carlos Marcello.  Did he also run the Club My-O-My?  And what about bars, straight and gay in the French Quarter?  I don’t think Perez/Palmquist sufficiently describe the Mafia’s role – for good or evil – in protecting “vice” in its various forms from the authorities.

            It was Mardi Gras 1963 and as a native I was showing 2 friends from North Dakota the varied ways to celebrate America’s most unique holiday.  They were a married couple; he was a graduate student of history as was I, and she had recently had a baby.  I led them first to uptown St. Charles Avenue where families lined the neutral ground, and then to Jackson and Dryades to see some Mardi Gras Indians in full regalia.  Next down town and Canal Street to view the Krewe of Rex and the unending floats that followed.  Then over to Bourbon Street in the Quarter.  After many blocks, we were engulfed in a crowd surrounding a stage on the street.  I had never seen anything like this before, and wanted to move on, but Ramona preferred to stay and see what would happen.  Suddenly on stage, it seemed like a Mardi Gras costume contest, with contestants competing in elaborate attire.  I recall a handsome young man dressed as a Renaissance gentleman, reminiscent of a famous picture I had seen.  These were not the simple costumes of the children of uptown St. Charles.  Then there was a beauty contest for women.  Ramona nudged me, “Look at the legs on that one.”  Then I became aware – those were the legs of a football player.  Those were not women in the contest.  In 1963 in the open street on a stage, before hundreds of spectators, gay men were showing their wares.  Where else in America could such a contest be held in 1963?  Perez/Palmquist mention the beginnings of the Bourbon Street Awards program (I assume this is what we saw then) but they do not elaborate or emphasize how unique this openness was.  In the summer of that year my Dakota friends told me they heard the strangest radio program  - a guy from New Orleans who was a Marxist and had lived in Russia was interviewed.  I often listened to that current affairs program, but had missed the WDSU broadcast the night the guest was Lee Oswald.

            E.K. was a graduate student at Tulane in the business department who had been arrested when the new District Attorney, Jim Garrison, began his crusade against vice.  Even the “naughty” pictures of scantily clad strippers at the straight clubs had to be covered.  The clubs found an ingenious way to circumvent the anti-vice police; the nearly nude girlie pictures remained outside the clubs facing the sidewalk, but parts of the women’s bodies were covered with a curtain of beads.  Any passerby could see the full picture by using his hand to open the bead curtain.

            Years later, after I finally came out, I chanced upon E.K. in the Tulane cafeteria and we chatted.  I asked about his arrest.  He stated that any single male could be picked up in the French Quarter during Garrison’s crusade.  (I doubt this, because in the straight area of the Quarter, many men going to the strip joints would have been single men, and arresting them would have caused an outcry.  But E.K. may have been walking in another part of the Quarter or near a gay bar.)  E.K. told me what a disappointment that arrest was, because he had come to New Orleans in 1960 because he thought it was such a tolerant place for gays.  I asked where he was coming from.  He answered, San Francisco!  Was New Orleans, as late as 1960, the premier city for gay freedom?  (I do not use the word gay liberation because that has more political connotations.)

            From the mid-1950s on, I was active in the Unitarian Church.  A teenage girl joined our youth group, and I have forgotten the details, but there was some kind of family troubles – perhaps her father had died.  Her father had owned a bar in the Quarter, Lafittes something.  And though I did not go, I did suggest it to others.  A friend later commented that I had been outing myself without knowing it.  It was not until the murder of Rios by Al Calvo and the Pikes that I learned that her dad’s bar was gay, and it was Lafitte’s in Exile.  The daughter then told some other stories about residing in the Quarter.  She was straight, married quite young, and stopped coming to the church.  Reading this book, a straight man with the same last name as hers, is listed among the owners of Lafittes in Exile.

            When Katrina struck near New Orleans in 2005 and the levees broke, the city sank below the waters.  I recall listening in the North to a radio call-in program as a listener explained that the storm was God’s punishment for all the homosexual activity and other vice.  He compared it to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.  I called.  I informed the listeners that the area least flooded, least devastated by Katrina was the French Quarter, the gayest part of New Orleans.  Since the least gay areas of the city had been most devastates, perhaps God had changed his mind about gays since the days of Sodom, and was now saving the gayest part of the New Orleans.

            Most of those interviewed for this book were not native New Orleanians.(p. 141, 175)  I think that that skews the book toward more recent residents and more recent times.  Those were important times too, like the 1973 fire at the UpStairs Lounge in the Quarter in which over 30 people were burned to death, the development of gay Mardi Gras groups, and the acquisition of political rights.  My review stresses the earlier periods.  I left New Orleans in 1969 when a police helicopter followed my car and arrested the passenger when I stopped to let him out.  He was to be deported.  I decided it was time to go – into my own exile.        

GARRISON CASE SABOTAGED BY FEDS TO PREVENT EXPOSURE OF KILLERS OF PRES. JOHN KENNEDY

Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case (2^nd ed.)

(New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 1992, 2012)

By James DiEugenio…

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            The JFK assassination has been of interest to me since I first heard the news while teaching 5^th grade in my native New Orleans.  (When I informed my class that the President had been shot in Dallas, one pupil burst into tears, all the others into cheers.)  But my fascination with the case has been intermittent.  I read, even write about it; and then I burn out.  I am delighted that DiEugenio’s (hereafter, JDE) book has updated me about so much.

            Absent from all I have read, including this fine book, is an example of the role of the media in US-Cuban relations.  During the Bay of Pigs (BoP) invasion, the local CBS affiliate, WWL, the 50,000 watt, clear-channel station owned by the Jesuit university, Loyola U. of the South, reported the news as it was happening – the massive uprising on the island, reports that the anti-Castro rebels had killed Fidel’s brother Raul, the popularity of the rebel insurgency against Castro, etc.  Soon after, with the failure of the invasion, we learned that all the reported news was a lie.  The CIA-sponsored invasion induced the most reliable radio source in New Orleans to simply lie to its listeners.  I am unsure just when it began, but sometime after the BoP defeat, WWL suspended its regular programming at 9pm each night and instead broadcast in Spanish beaming its powerful signal toward Cuba.  All too transparent were the connections between the government, the CIA, and the best news networks and the major radio station in the largest city of the South (at least, until publication of the 1960 census, New Orleans was as it had been since before the Civil War, the largest city of the South, larger than Houston, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta, Memphis).

            Much of JDE’s book centers on New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and his investigation of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy – one which included David Ferrie and Clay Shaw.  What makes this book so valuable is that JDE includes newly declassified material demonstrating the collusion between the attorneys defending Shaw and the Federal Government – the FBI, the CIA, and their assets in the media.  At the time, one knew that Garrison had his critics in the local press, but not until I read this did I discover that the Feds pressured a local newspaper (both were owned by the Newhouse chain) into reassigning two reporters whose stories reinforced the Garrison position; thereafter, they were required to cover other events.

            JDE documents the role of NBC and its local affiliate, WDSU, in using “assets” and CIA friendly reporters to defend Shaw and smear Garrison.  Of course, it was on WDSU’s call-in program that the left-wing, pro-Castro, Lee Oswald appeared as a guest.  He was “ambushed” by the anti-Communist Ed Butler, who informed the listening audience that Oswald was not merely pro-Castro, but that he had resided in the USSR, in effect conflating pro-Castroism with Communism.  Do not misunderstand me: - in a radio debate, each side ought to use whatever arguments that can best make their case, so long as they are truthful.  The vehemently anti-Communist had every right to make the best case against his pro-Castro opponent.  The question is not so much about Butler the anti-Communist; but how much of a leftist was Oswald?  Or was he a guest on WDSU to establish the impression that he was a left-winger and Marxist?

            While I heartily recommend this book, I do wish to add some background that may shed light on why some in New Orleans may have been skeptical of Garrison’s investigation into Pres. Kennedy’s murder.

            It was probably late spring or summer of 1961 when I reported to the NO Customs House Building.  The draft was the law, and I was called.  We were given some forms to fill out, and a boxed chicken lunch, which we might eat on the way north to Ft. Chafee, Arkansas.  I had some uneasiness about the forms, for this included a list of subversive organizations, and we had to describe any type of association we might have had with any of the organizations listed.  I thought, should I, or not?  Then I remembered, photos of the event had been taken, and there was a heavy penalty for lying, so I mentioned it.  In 1960 at a Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) training institute in Miami, at which our teachers included baseball legend Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther King – one weekend a dance was held for our integrated group.  The organization that allowed our mixed crowd to dance in their hall was the Jewish Culture Club (JCC).  The JCC was on the Attorney General’s list of subversive groups.  We had our dance there (where I first did the twist), and JCC members mostly sat at tables and watched us.  Most of the CORE people were in our 20s; the youngest of the JCC crew was about 60.  There was not much contact, though, of course, we were very happy to have a place to dance.  Also, on the form I had to complete, was a question of had we ever been arrested.  I had, and had been convicted of a felony.  I had been arrested in the very first lunch-counter sit-in in New Orleans, charged with criminal mischief, and convicted for this felony.  By this time, I had already learned that with a felony I could not volunteer for the service, but the Navy had told me I could be drafted.  Now, however, when I returned my form to the army officer, he was surprised.  “But you’re not even Jewish!”  He then related that I would have to speak with an agent of the FBI, and that would be a few minutes because he was then interviewing a Black Muslim.  When the FBI man got to me, he did not even mention the dance or the JCC.  But he did state that I could not be drafted because of the felony.  He would speak to the District Attorney, and request that the sit-in charge be dropped, and then I could be inducted.  Meanwhile, he would get back to me.  Richard Dowling, the NO DA who had personally come to our sit-in at Woolworths to literally read us the law and then have us arrested, apparently refused to drop the charges.  But in March 1962 Garrison defeated Dowling in the Democratic primary for district attorney (which then meant election).  Garrison, like Dowling, did NOT drop the felony sit-in charges.  Not until 1963 did the US Supreme Court rule on the New Orleans sit-in cases, and some resolution was made.  My point is that JDE seems to be making Garrison into a civil rights/libertarian on various issues, and I dispute that interpretation.

            JDE notes that when police arrested a book seller for peddling obscene material, James Baldwin’s Another Country, Garrison refused to prosecute.   But I do not recall Garrison as a civil libertarian.  In the French Quarter, outside the strip clubs, there were photos of the women wearing g-stings and pasties.  Suddenly, with Garrison’s anti-vice crusade, the pictures had to be covered.  The French Quarter came up with an ingenious method of doing so.  The pictures would remain, however parts of the women’s bodies would be covered by a curtain of beads, and with a flick of the hand, a passerby could readily ogle the forbidden picture.  Of course, if you walked by the door, the bouncer would open it so you could see the women live as they performed.  Indeed, one stripper would sit on a swing that would go from inside the club through a window to the sidewalk (though I am unsure if that was pre-Garrison or not).

            As I was a graduate student at Tulane in the early 1960s, I was acquainted with many others in various fields of study.  Years later, probably in the 1980s on a visit to my home city, I saw one of these acquaintances, and we chatted in the Tulane cafeteria.  Only then did I learn of why he had come to Tulane.  In 1960 he left San Francisco for New Orleans because he was gay, and he believed at the time that NO was a freer place for gay people that SF.  It seems incredible to hear that today, and yet… I remember one Mardi Gras, of the early 1960s, going to the Quarter with a married couple from North Dakota.  The streets were packed.  On Bourbon, there was a stage, and a beauty contest.  We were watching in the tightly massed crowd.  Then Ramona said to me, “Look at the legs on that one.”  Those were the legs of a football player I thought.  And then I realized, these beauties were not women.  There were no arrests.  Hundreds were watching a beauty contest of transvestites, on a public street.  I do not know, but could that have occurred in 1961 in SF?  Or NY?  Perhaps NO in 1960 was more tolerant to gays than other tolerant cities.

            The grad student from SF told me in the 1980s about his experience with Garrison’s  anti-vice efforts.  This grad student was gay, and he was walking alone in the Quarter, when he said the police arrested him and all other single males they could find.  I cannot attest to how accurate this was – for surely many tourists, and locals, entering the strip clubs might be single, or without their wives.  I doubt if they were arrested.  But perhaps Garrison did try to arrest single men in other parts of the quarter, simply because they were there and single.  And there was the case of the Quorum Club, a place on Esplanade Ave., officially across the street from the Quarter proper.  It was probably in 1963, when Garrison was DA that there was a raid on the club, and the 35 or so arrested had their names and addresses published on page one of the Picayune and States-Item.  The newspaper informed the public that the Quorum was a center of drug use, integration, and homosexuality.  I remember because someone I knew from Tulane as an undergrad was among those listed.  Next weekend, I purposely went to the Quorum Club for my first time.

            Only about 5 years ago did I meet Kenneth Owen, a librarian at Tulane, one who had retired from the University of NO.  Owen told me he had gone in 1962 or 1963 to a club on Rampart St., one that was the predecessor of the Quorum Club.  There he spoke with Oswald.  From that conversation, he believed Oswald was gay.  Yet, Ruth Ann Kloepfer, who went with her mom and sister to visit the Oswalds at their Magazine St. apartment at the request of fellow Quakeress from Texas, Ruth Paine.  Ruth Ann Kloepfer told me in a phone interview in the 1990s how angry she was with Lee Oswald.  They had gone there to help Marina and children, and while her mother and sister were helping the Russian woman in one room, Ruth Ann was convinced that Lee was coming on to her in the other.  Ruth Ann was a beauty.  Her anger resonated after 30 years.  The point here is that Garrison may not have been the greatest defender of civil liberties.  (Moreover, I have no idea if Oswald was totally hetero or not.  I do  not think it crucial to the assassination.  Michael Snyder, in a fascinating piece analyzing the writings of Clay Shaw, claims that Gove Vidal stated that the young Oswald was hustling as a teen and Shaw had seen him in the bars.  Snyder includes some interesting paragraphs on the subject of Oswald’s sexuality.  Interesting, but speculation none the less.  Some may stress the influence of David Ferrie on Oswald.  Ferrie was clearly queer.  Yet, I had a very hetero room mate who was greatly influenced by David Ferrie.  Ferrie’s homosexuality did not rub off on him.)

            One more incident, but I cannot affirm that this occurred under Garrison or before.  But it was on the first page of either the first of 2^nd sections of the local paper – a detective was so determined to get proof of a man having sex with another, he pushed some device through the man’s apartment keyhole.  Because the bed was located beyond the range of the device’s sightline, the detective was unable to prove the perversion of the apartment’s inhabitants.  That was major reading in the newspaper of that era.

            When Garrison raided the home of Clay Shaw, taking many personal items, and when these items were listed on the pages of the newspapers, Shaw’s whips, his ropes, his veil, etc., some naturally assumed that Garrison was simply indulging in another anti-gay crusade.  Because Garrison had a history of antagonism, even persecution , of gays, his pronouncement of a homosexual plot to kill Pres. Kennedy roused skepticism, and anger and fear, among gays.  And it roused skepticism among open-minded straights who decried gay oppression.  Was Garrison conducting an anti-gay witch hunt?

            As Garrison got his prosecution of Shaw underway, and began to allege Shaw was somehow connected with the CIA, Garrison’s charges seemed even more preposterous.  Everyone knew what Western operatives were like.  007 was a macho man who drank the finest wines and bedded the most beautiful women.  Sean Connery was no limp-wristed queer.  As a friend told me at the time, “Shaw could not possibly be involved in an assassination plot; he’s a homosexual.”  (There were queers who were spies, but those were the spies for the Communists, like the Cambridge crew who served the Soviets).  Those in HM Secret Service or the CIA were men who loved women.  Shaw could not possibly be CIA.  The entire project – government agents involved in a plot to kill the President, a funny looking man like Ferrie involved, plus a “respectable” queer who knew Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal involved with a 25-year-old defector who had brought his wife back from the USSR – just too bizarre.  And the Federal Government covering up such a crime!  Absurd.

            And yet?...

            Garrison’s interest had begun in November 1963 when he had David Ferrie arrested in connection with the case.  (See “My New Orleans Story” on my blog, esp. part 3 re Ferrie).  After his arrest, Ferrie was handed over to the FBI for questioning, and the FBI then released him.  That seemed to end the matter in 1963.

            Then there were questions about Oswald’s stay in New Orleans after his return from Minsk.  When arrested by NO police during a scuffle where he was distributing Fair Play for Cuba leaflets, Oswald asked to speak with the FBI.  That interview from one to three hours, and though notes were taken, they were later destroyed.  Would a Communist, or a leftist, when arrested, ask to speak to the FBI?  The others who were distributing the leaflets with Oswald were allegedly paid to do so.  Who paid them?  Oswald also said he was paid to hand them out.  Was he lying?  Or was he paid, and by whom?  JDE has various people saying that Oswald was working on this project for Guy Banister.  (Might the others leafleting have been some of the gay “Mexicanos” Dean Andrews said accompanied Oswald when they came to his office?)  Finally, the address on some of the FPCC leaflets was indeed that of the same building that housed Guy Banister Associates and his anti-Castro organization.  JDE writes of several witnesses who saw Oswald working in Banister’s offices.  David Ferrie also did work for Banister.  There is a photo of the young Oswald at a barbeque when he was in Ferrie’s Civil Air Patrol.  And Oswald’s landlady said that after the assassination, Ferrie had come to Oswald’s old apartment looking for his, Ferrie’s, library card.  Ferrie, Oswald, Banister.  And Shaw?

            One possible link was the “jive-talking” attorney dean Andrews, who had defended the gay Latins when Oswald came with them.  The man who often paid for these cases was Clem Bertrand.  JDE stresses and incident that the judge would not permit to go before the jury of the Shaw trial.  When being booked, Shaw was asked if he had used any alias, and, according to the policeman booking him, he declared he used Clem Bertrand.  He also signed a card to that effect.  Moreover others, like the receptionist at the airport VIP lounge asserted that Shaw signed in as Bertrand.  JDE relates that even more have also maintained that Shaw was Bertrand.

            Andrews had stated and given testimony for the Warren Commission that he had received a telephone call in November 1963 asking him to defend the newly arrested Oswald in Dallas.  The person calling was Clem Bertrand.  But as time went on, Andrews backtracked, and became ever more evasive.  About the time Garrison was placing him on the stand under oath, Andrews was interviewed by local TV.  The reporters kept pressing him.  Finally, I recall this over the decades, Andrews replied, “If they can kill the President, they can squash me like a roach.”

            Even in the 1960s there were some strange news items about the Garrison case.  Shortly after Garrison included Clay Shaw among his conspirators, Pres. Lyndon Johnson’s Attorney General Ramsey Clark in March 1967 interceded in the process.  Clark announced on television that the government had investigated Shaw in 1963 and there had been nothing to connect him to the events in Dallas.  This comment by the highest law enforcer in the US led to other questions – just WHY was the Federal Government investigating Shaw at all in 1963 concerning the Kennedy killing?

            What JDE adds in this edition of his book is proof from newly released documents of how the Federal Government actively engaged in the defense of Shaw and obstructed the Garrison prosecution.  JDE shows how Shaw’s attorneys asked for and received help in their defense from the FBI (p. 265).  He details how the CIA obstructed the Garrisons case, infiltrating the prosecution team, gaining access to the prosecutions list of possible witnesses, their names and addresses, so that the pro-Fed, pro-Shaw attorneys or “journalists” might reach them first and suggest the “proper” story line. Or threaten them if they did not recant.  Sometimes the Fed infiltrators might spy, sometimes simply steal files accumulated by Garrison’s team.  JDE shows how, as everyone at the time could see, important witnesses might be encouraged to flee Louisiana, and in other states, governors, like Ronald Reagan refused to extradite the material witnesses.

            What is news to me is how JDE discovered that the Feds put pressure on the editors of the local newspapers in New Orleans.  From the first, the local papers ran some stories supportive of Garrison; others critical. Such even-handed reporting was not what the Feds desired.  The CIA pressured the States-Item, and suddenly two pro-Garrison reporters were reassigned.(p. 278)  They were to write no more about the Garrison case.

            Finally, the national media would be used to smear and mock Garrison’s efforts.  This time NBC and its local affiliate WDSU would be the main defenders of Shaw and the Warren Report’s official line.  They maintained that Garrison was persecuting Shaw.  Along with journalists who had ties to the CIA, and one who had attempted to join the CIA, Hugh Aynesworth, James Phelan, and others were able to place hostile stories about Garrison in prominent national magazines, and NBC devoted a whole hour of prime time to Garrison bashing.

            I disagree when JDE describes the trial of Clay Shaw as anti-climatic.  This trial afforded most Americans their first opportunity to view the Zapruder film.  Whereas CBS reporter Dan Rather, who viewed it in November 1963, reported how the film showed Kennedy being thrust forward by the bullet coming from behind, the film shows Kennedy being knocked backward by the force of the bullet.  The short film was shown many times at the trial, so many could see that the killing shot may well have come from the front, which would have meant more than one assassin, which would have meant conspiracy.

            I was teaching at a university and tried to attend as much of the trial as possible.  I recall listening to a New Yorker describe listening to plotters planning to kill the President.  He met David Ferrie in a bar, and accompanied him to what was probably Shaw’s home, and Shaw and Ferrie then discussed the assassination of Kennedy.  The prosecution’s witness, Mr. Spiesel, was articulate and to the point.  Then he was cross examined by Shaw’s defense.  Spiesel spoke of how he might walk into a room, and someone across the room might look at him, almost immediately hypnotize him, and make him impotent.  He admitted that when his daughter returned from LSU to her home in New York, he had her fingerprinted to insure that she was truly his daughter!  The more he spoke, the harder it was for me and most spectators in the courtroom to stifle our laughter.  Garrison’s prosecution suffered a heavy blow by placing what seemed to by a lunatic on the stand.

            But I was also in court when the Garrison staff placed one of the doctors from the Kennedy autopsy in Bethesda, Maryland on the stand.  Dr. Pierre Finck also began matter-of-factly about examining Pres. Kennedy’s body.  One area of dispute between the upholders of the official Warren Report story and its critics centers around the wound in the President’s neck.  Those who saw it as an entry wound, inevitably must conclude that a shot came from the front, which means conspiracy.  To avoid that, the official line is that the shot by Oswald from the 6^th floor of the School depository Building entered the upper back/neck area and exited the front of the neck, and then went on to wound Texas Gov. Connelly in several areas.  Finck was asked under oath if he had probed the path of the throat wound to make sure that it was the same path as the bullet that entered the back/neck.  No, Dr. Finck did not probe it.  Why not?  He was ordered not to do so.  Who ordered him not to do so?  Well, there were many generals and admirals in the room, and they all outranked him.  So he did not probe the wound.  With this testimony, Finck was admitting that the doctors were not in charge of the autopsy – the military was calling the shots.  JDE speculates that the man in charge was Curtis Le May, who in 1968 would run for VP on the American Independent Party ticket headed by Gov. George Wallace of Alabama.  I do not know which officer or officers were in charge.  What Garrison revealed in this trial was this – the doctors were NOT in charge of the autopsy of Pres. Kennedy.  And consequently, Kennedy did not receive a proper examination.

            I was also in the courtroom for the summary by Jim Garrison himself.  He spoke of the CIA and an Alice-Through-The-Looking-Glass government.  I concluded years later that Kevin Costner did a much better job at summarizing the case in the film “JFK” than did Garrison in the New Orleans courtroom.

            I did not attend all of the trial, but had I been on the jury, I would have voted Shaw not guilty because I believe insufficient evidence had been presented by the prosecution to demonstrate that Shaw was a conspirator.  The jury also voted not guilty.  When interviewed by TV reporters after the verdict, most believed there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, but Garrison failed to prove his case against Shaw.  JDE reports that two alternate jurors left their votes.  Both of them voted Shaw guilty, but their votes did not count.

            I have written several articles about the New Orleans scene, contrasting it with that portrayed by the Warren Commission volumes (see the Third Decade and the Fourth Decade).  I also posted “My New Orleans Story” on my blog, and that includes additional material related to Guy Banister and David Ferrie, which I shall not repeat here.

            Reading JDE’s book, I found some chapters, like the one on Mexico, muddled and not well integrated into the rest of the work.  On the other hand, I found the author’s use of declassified material convincing in demonstrating that the Federal government exerted major pressure to silence witnesses, prevent extradition, sabotage the Garrison prosecution, and bolster the defense of accused Clay Shaw.  I may have suspected some of this when it was happening, but the extent of it is new to me.  To read how “journalists” would interview witnesses with the purpose of turning them against Garrison, sometimes even threatening them.  And JDE provides even more witnesses who linked Shaw, Banister, Ferrie, and Oswald.

            The other major contribution by the author is his discussion of foreign policy.  True, most other books on the assassination discuss Cuba; some discuss Vietnam, but JDE places great emphasis on conversations the young John Kennedy had in 1951 in Vietnam with American diplomat, Edmund Gullion.  Gullion insisted that there were differences between popular national and anti-colonial uprisings, and Communist revolutions.  He urged that the US should not oppose all such uprisings.  He told this to Kennedy while the French were in the midst of their war against Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh.  In 1954, the French lost.

            Whereas I had always viewed Jack Kennedy as a staunch anti-Communist, a Cold Warrior, a Catholic whose dad, while serving as US Ambassador to the UK, rejected FDR’s interventionist policies prior to WWII.  And as Senator, John Kennedy not vote to censure Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and his brother, Robert, worked for the McCarthy’s Senate committee.  JDE assembles items which challenge my earlier impression.  Thus, though the new Pres. Kennedy went along with the BoP invasion of Cuba, he refused to order air strikes or additional support, thereby dooming the anti-Castro raiders.  This decision alone made him powerful enemies.  Later in 1961 Kennedy fired Allen Dulles when he learned more about how the CIA had misled and lied to him.  The Cuban exiles had wanted Kennedy to invade and overthrow Castro with the BoP.  They were sorely disappointed.  Then during the Missile Crisis of 1962, many Kennedy advisors wanted to go beyond “quarantine” (blockade).  They wanted air strikes and possible military invasion.  Again, Kennedy disappointed them.  Kennedy used diplomacy, normal channels and secret, back-door maneuvers to avoid escalation.  According to JDE, Kennedy sought to protect Patrice Lumumba in the newly independent Congo, and he tried to foil the Belgian and British attempts to establish the break-away province of Katanga.  Kennedy pushed for the Peace Corps to spread American values to 3^rd world nations in a non-violent manner.  He and Khrushchev installed the red phones in their offices to prevent an accidental nuclear war.  And in his American U. speech of June 10, 1963 Kennedy pressed for a nuclear test ban treaty and suspended American atmospheric nuclear testing.  The address was titled, “A Strategy for Peace,”  enunciating a new era in American policy.  No longer the Cold War, but rapprochement with the Soviets, people to people bridges with the 3^rd world through the Peace Corps, and, and here is where JDE adds new material, through the use of back-door diplomacy, the possibility of again recognizing Fidel Castro’s Cuba.  Such a change in direction would have been anathema not only to the Cuban exiles, but to Dulles, and to many others who saw this not merely as weakness, but treason.

            The author also maintains that Kennedy had decided that 15,000 American military advisors would be the maximum in Vietnam, and that they were all to be removed by 1965.  I had read this “only if” scenario before.  Kennedy was just about to withdraw from Vietnam, when he was killed, and so we had the tragedy of Vietnam.  I have never accepted this.

            It was probably in 1962 when I visited New York City for the first time.  All my New York friends at Tulane had bragged about the wonderful newspaper, the New York Times.  Now, I could buy it at a news-stand.  In NY I also went to a lecture by an historian, and Communist, Herbert Aptheker.  His topic: he was going to analyze that day’s Bible of journalism, the New York Times.  I do not recall all of the hour’s talk, but I do remember when he pointed to a small item toward the bottom of page 1.  He read the headline of the story, but declared that that was not the real news of the story.  Indeed, he was dismissive of the headline and most of the story.  Aptheker said the real news in the article was that the number of American advisors in Vietnam was revealed to be 11,000.  He then stated that the previous acknowledged number of Americans involved was a mere 9,500.  He stressed that the real story was American escalation of the war in Vietnam.  The real story was hidden by the New York Times in the New York Times.  (I cannot attest to the specific numbers, Aptheker presented, but I certainly remembered his point, that Kennedy was escalating the war.)  But in this book JDE presents material that Kennedy was preparing to withdraw from Vietnam.  JDE presents declassified material that Kennedy was seeking better relations with Castro.  JDE makes a persuasive case.

            Yet, by omitting a major incident, he weakens that case.  On November 2, 1963, Ngo Dinh Diem was assassinated.  Why?  To promote a peace agreement with North Vietnam?  Or  to insure there would be no peace with the North.  Leaders of the coup had talks with the CIA prior to their putsch, to ask what the reaction of the US might be.  How does that assassination in Saigon relate to the one a few weeks later in Dallas?  Or is there no connection?  JDE should have discussed this as it clearly is relevant to his contention about the upcoming withdrawal of troops by Kennedy.

            It is evident from this book that the US government sought to suppress the truth about events in Dallas.  DA Garrison on New Orleans pressed to find answers.  The Feds applied the power of the national government to smear Garrison, infiltrate his team, intimidate witnesses, help others flee to different states, use national magazines, NBC, major “journalists,” to discredit Garrison.  The Feds won with the acquittal of Clay Shaw.  They won again when Garrison was defeated for re-election by Harry Connick, Sr.  Yet, Garrison showed great strength and courage.  His crusade led to further exposure of the weaknesses of the official story created in the Warren Report.  Garrison won in that he pulled more evidence from a government accustomed to projecting lies propped by power.  And the American people won also; we learned more about the Kennedy assassination; we learned more about government cover-ups; and we learned that there are heroes in America.  Some heroes can take on, not only City Hall, but they can take on the entire Washington Establishment when it lies to the American people.           

          So even before Obama shoved the US toward an oppressive totalitarian state, there were other examples of repression in the US.  Garrison fought for freedom and truth against the Establishment then.  One hopes we can do the same in the struggle against Obamoppression today.