LEE HARVEY OSWALD and GUY BANISTER - Rethinking the Past

 It was fall 1955 and I was beginning my senior year at Warren Easton Sen. High School in New Orleans.  A new movie was to play at the huge Saenger Theater on Canal and North Basin Sts.  I would be double dating with Tex Sanders, a tall, friendly guy, and someone with whom I bowled now and then.  My date was someone I'd dated before, and was talking some to Mary Jane, a gal I did  not know.  The theater was packed, and when it ended, it seemed the vast audience let out a collective sigh of relief.  Unlike the tv families, where each week the problems of the family were solved within a half hour, not counting the commercials.  Perhaps the problems portrayed were not too serious, and the family is happy with the dad's solution.  Yet, in this film, 3 families are portrayed, and none are anything like the tv's version of Father Know's Best, Ozzie and Harriet,  et al.  Sal Mineo's parents send him a check for his birthday, Natalie Wood's dad slaps her and calls her a whore; and James Dean's dad is hen-pecked, dominated by his wife while he wears the apron.  The 3 try to form their alternate family for a night or 2.  A rare critique of the family of the 50s.

As we all attended the same school, we saw each other after.  Mary Jane was a pleasant your gal, and she was worried about me.  She had heard I was pushing race-mixing, for example.  She explained, that is communism, and I should talk to her dad who knew about the topic.  He could set me aright.  I did not realize, but her dad was Guy Banister.  She elaborated, he had been a leader of the FBI in Chicago, and knew about the Communist ways of causing trouble.  She wanted me to meet her father.  After Chicago, Guy Banister had served as temporary Supt. of the New Orleans Police Dept.  He then opened a detective agency.

It was possible her dad had already heard of me.  During the summer of 1955 I had attended Pelican Boys State, sponsored by the American Legion.  I had been elected to the Senate, and we were supposed to debate a proposed law in the Louisiana Legislature on our last day.  The Legion was hoping the topic would be required ROTC in all public schools.  I thought a more pressing issue was at hand and should be debated; I proposed the integration of the public schools of Louisiana.  A fellow senator was aghast, and said my proposal should NOT be debated as I was the only person in favor of it.   Suddenly, many other senators stood up and disagreed with my opponent.  We decided to debate integration on the last day.  How would the vote go?  I had no idea.  Nor did the pro-segregationist Legion, but they must have been sufficiently worried, so that they demanded we close the meeting before a vote could be held.

To satisfy Mary Jane, I went to her hope.  Mr. Banister was sorting mail.  I went to him, introduced myself, he grunted.  There was no real dialog, but we both went through the motions to satisfy Mary Jane, who was a sweet, concerned you gal.  

One forgets the turmoil stirred in the South following the 1954 Supreme Court decision overturning a precedent of over half a century, that separate and equal was the proper way to manage racial affairs.  Segregation was actually older than that, but the Plessy decision had made it national policy.  However, in 1954 syddebkt segregatuib was deemed unConstitutional.  The new decision was seen as a threat to our way of life in the South; part of a Communist plot to cause trouble at home.  In May 1955, to commemorate the Black Monday decision of 1954, most Easton students left the school to march downtown to show how they felt about Earl Warren's horrible decision.  The state got time on  the radio to educate the public on this major issue.  Thus, the State Sovereignty Commission had expert witnesses expose the origins of the American Civil Liberties Union.  Founded by a Communist during the era of WWI, it continued to this day as a trouble-making Commie front.  At least 3-hours of radio time were devoted to this expose.

Some leaders of the American Legion were also leaders of LUAC, the Louisiana Un-American Activies Committee.  In 1963, along with the newly elected DA of NO, Jim Garrison, they would raid the offices of the Southern Conference Education Fund, a pro-race mixing group.  Strangely, LUAC did not go after an open Marxist who was then handing out pro-Castro panphlets, and even given an-hour-long interview on WDSU radio.  Strange that LUAC was not interested in Lee Oswald!  Oh, and the pro-Communist Oswald was getting the leaflets from the office of the staunch anti-Communist, Guy Banister.  How strange!    

MORE TO COME,   HUGH MURRAY

Meanwhile, you might find related material that will explain the Oswald-Guy Banister alliance in New Orleans in summer 1963, and much else in an article recommended by Texan Robert Morrow - The latest exposition on this important topic by Jeremy Kuzmarov of Covert Action Magazine: Should Lee Harvey Oswald Be Exonerated? - CovertAction Magazine

In high school, I found the Unitarian Church and joined it.  My first visit, a Black couple sat beside me.  I thought, should I leave?  Isn't this against the law?  I could feel the blood rush to my face.  I decided to stay, and returned, knowing the church was for integration.  I attended Tulane U. on a scholarship.  Met 2 professors at church, one taught at Dillard (HBCU) and his wife taught at Xavier U. a RC HBCU.  They were both of Jewish heritage, refugees from Nazi Europe.  I asked if I could sit in Dr. Iggers history class at Dillard.  A Black who tried to enter Tulane would have been arrested.  I had no trouble at Dillard, sat in the class for a year and made friends.  No arrest.  In spring 1960 I picketed with the new Consumers' League, don't buy where you can't work group.  Sit-ins begin in North Carolina, and spread south.  But nothing happens in New Orleans.  The local NAACP  opposes such actions.  In the Negro Y on Dryages St. in NO, a local chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality CORE is formed.  CORE would sponsor a major training camp for August 1960; 7 members from NO will attend.

One day our teacher/speaker was Jackie Robinson, the baseball player who integrated the major leagues.  It was an election year, and he was openly for Nixon and the Republicans, as were many if not most Blacks in the South who experienced the Democrats as white supremists.  A few days later, to a far smaller audience, Martin Luther King spoke to our CORE group, about his experience in changing the rules with the Montgomery bus boycott.  The reason for the small audience - half of our  CORE folks were in jail.  We had sought to integrate a restaurant inside Shell's City super market.  Most of our goup sat at integrated tables, and they were arrested.  New Orleans Ruth Dispenza and I sat at a table; she was a light-skinned Black, and the waitress thought we were a white couple.  So, no arrest.  King told us he was quietly for Kennedy and the Democrats, though his dad, minister of a major church in Atlanta, favored Nixon and the Republicans.  One reason, Kennedy was a Roman Catholic, and that proved a big drawback even when Al Smith ran against Hoover in 1928.

We returned to NO, and within a week conducted the first sit-in in modern NO history, despite the NAACP's opposition.  The NAACP Youth Chapter quicky supported us with picketing, and the adult organization quietly ended its opposition.  The Mayor and Chief of Police remained hostile, denouncing the violation of state law, and asserted such lawlessness would not be tolerated.  We were arrested, but at night released on bail.  We had missed all meals in jail.  Archie Allen, Black from Dillard, one of the 7 arrested, Carlos Zervigon, Hispanic sympathetic supporter, and I went to a Black place to eat.  We entered and sat at a table.  The waiter approached, "I can serve you (to Archie), but not you two.  He looked again, Wait, I can serve you (Archie) and you (to Carlos), but not you (to me).  Are we going to have a 2nd sit-in the same day.  No.  We just left without eating.

Tulane's policy - students arrested are suspended until proven innocent.  I hhad a weekend job at a Tulane library and was a grad student, but now all was up in the air.  I could not stay home, so went from one friend to another that week.  My dad let me keep the car.  Tulane's Board relented - the old rule for usual crimes would remain, but these were political crimes, so the punishment would not occur.  Meanwhile the local judge had other ideas.  When the 7 of us sat together in his court room, when he entered, he began shouting at us for integrating his court in violation of state laws, and he would hold us in contempt if we did not sit properly.  The 2 whites moved to the side.  We were all found guilty and became convicted felons, years before Donald Trump would be given the same title.

Meanwhile, Oliver, the other white from NO who had gone to Miami, and was arrested there, was tired of living in a distant burb and wanted to live in the city of NO, and I needed a place,  We decided to look for a place together.  Found one, furnished, $45 a month, living room, bed room, kitchen, bath.  2 blocks from the St. Charles street car line.  I barely knew Oliver.  In Miami we were assigned rooms to integrate the conference, so I roomed with 2 Black students and was surprised when they did not shave in the morning but used a depilatory cream to dissolve the hair.  I learned more about Oliver when we moved together.  First, his annoying habit of never looking at you directly when speaking to you, I found the reason - he was legally blind.  He probably did not know precisely where my eyes were.  I learned he had a rough time growing up, was on the path to becoming a juvenile delinquent, quitting school, etc.  There were 2 people who would set him on the proper path, one a relative, who taught him the basics so he could be an electrician.  If all else failed, he would have a job.  Second, he joined the Civil Air Patrol, and its leader David Ferrie, a pilot who seemed to know so much, pushed Oliver to return to school and go on despite his disability.  David Ferrie was gay, but Oliver, I found out as his roommate, was strictly straight.  Ferrie pushed Oliver to go on, and he did so at Loyola U. (next door to Tulane U).  In time, I was paid to read some of Oliver's sociology text books to him.  Father Fichter at Loyola was pushing him too.  Oliver was a year or 2 older than I was but seemed much more self assured of himself.

One night I returned, and Oliver said, "*i want you to learn how to use this," as  he handed me a box.  I opened it, and surprise, it was a pistol.  A Ruger, like the famous German Luger.  But I had applied for a draft status as a conscientious objector.  Our efforts in CORE were using non-violence to change society.  How can I now start to use a gun?  My parents were getting threating calls on the phone all the time, but no one was after them - it was me they wanted.  We never got such calls, but the reason: we had no telephone.  Maybe the enemy was outside just outside, but we would not know until too late..  Am I supposed to let the blind guy defend us?  While I do nothing?  No, I could not throw this burden on a legally blind man.  I would have to learn how to use the pistol.  And a few weeks later, I wrote my draft board, I was no longer claiming a CO status.  

Around 1952 or53 I graduated from 8th grade at Benjamin Elementary, a co-ed public school.  Next year I planned to attend S J Peters Boys High, for 4 years of high school.  But the entire school system changed, no more boys and girls separate highs, all public highs would be co-ed.  And junior highs were introduced, So K-6, followed by 7-9 for jun. high, and then 10-12 for sen. high.  All co-ed.  So instead of boys high, I went to 9th grade at Beauregard Jun. High, for one year.  That same year in the 8th grade classes was Lee Harvey Oswald.  It is possible we spoke, perhaps in a lunch line, "How much is that?"  In reality we never met, nor did we converse.  Oswald attended Beauregard for 2 years.  At the same time he became a member of the Civil Air Patrol, headed by David Ferrie.  If Ferrie could help other troubled youths, why not Oswald?  Some say while in NYC Oswald had become a juvenile delinquent and was influenced by communists.  Ferrie was strongly anti-Communist, working with refugees from Castro's Cuba, working for Carlos Marcello's mafia, and with Guy Banister and other anti-coms.    When Oswald finished junior high, he could go on to Easton - my high school.  Instead he wanted to join the marines.  How many 17-y-o American communists want to join the marine corps?  I suspect, far more probable, the patriotic Ferrie pushed Oswald in the patriotic direction.  Oswald's mom said a man in a uniform urged her to sign papers so he could join up younger than the usual age.  She did so.  And Oswald joined up.  A patriot!

What did Oliver do after graduation from Loyola, - he signed up with the US Aide for International Development, and he would go to Laos (next to Vietnam) in 1962+.  When he returned, he married, had children and led in improving computers and other devices for the blind and other handicapped.  There is a building named for him on the UNO campus.

Was Oswald following a similar path?  What went wrong?

One more thing re the Oswald-Banister connection.  In summer of 1963 I finally finished my MA Thesis and would be able to graduate in August with a Master's degree.  My thesis was long, some 260 pages on the Scottsboro, Ala. rape cases of the 1930s, in which I discussed the conflict between the NAACP and a Communist front group, the International Labor Defense, for control of the case and contrast in tactics. Summer in NO is hot and humic, but I was going to the Tulane Library, which like most air-conditioned buildings of that era, was cold, so I had to carry a sweater on entering.  Summer break, and few were in the library.  I opened the door and no one.  Near the stairs was a small table, and today there was a stack of leafets on it.  As I passed it, I read, "Hands off Cuba, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee."  I only knew one person who had been involved with Fair Play in another city, a Tulane U. grad student in philosophy.  I took a leaflet, and went to look for him in the library's closed area except for grad students.  He was at his desk.  I raised the leaflet so he could see it, and asked, "What are you putting out?"  "Iet me see that."  He knew nothing about it, nor did I.  Should we send our names to the PO address on the leaflet?  I joked, well, it might be the FBI.  We decided to do nothing till we knew more.  He took the leaflet and taped it to the door to his dorm room.  Where it remained until November. 1963.

On Tuesday, 26 November I was back from my new teaching job, and my mom told me 2 men at the front door wanted to speak with me.  They wanted to know about the leaflet.  I explained, I had thought it was published by a friend, Harold Alderman, a philosophy student at Tulane, but he knew nothing about it.  Nor did I.  I did not follow up with an letter to the address on the leaflet.  They asked of my views on Kennedy, and I said, look at the back of my car, I retained the Kennedy sticker for the 1960 election.  They left.  Soon after, the phone rang.  It was Alderman telling me he had given my name to the FBI.  Neither of us knew about the origin of the leaflets.  The irony, had we written to the address, it would have gone to the office of Guy Banister, anti-com so he could have added our names to his list of local commies.  The first book that mentions me is a volume of the Warren Report, perhaps v. 26, that describes this incident.  I suspect I was already on Banister's enemies list.

One ajent asked me if I had heard of anyone having connections to Oswald.  I had gone out Friday night to a bar looking for friends.  "Who the hell is Oswald?" was my question.  One person told me they had heard Bob Heller, a Tulane student had seen Oswald distributing leaflets in NO and had spoken to him.  The agent took notes, and later interviewed Heller.  Heller had seen Oswald leafletting and wondered if he might need legal help, but did not talk to Oswald.  Sineibe called me a fink every time he saw me on campus.  I have no regrets about cooperating to find what happened in Dallas.  Would I have a right to criticize the Warren Commission if I had not cooperated with its inquiry? 

When the FBI agents came to see me, I basically said I knew nothing, because that is what I thourht at that time.  In the summer of 1963 I had no idea the Fair Play leaflets were stsored at the office of Guy Banister.  I had no idea that Oswald was working out of Banister's office, and the 2 appeared together in various locals.  Had I known that the week after the assassination, I would have brought that up with the FBI.  But I would not learn of the Oswald-Banister connection until the Garrison probe of the later 1960s.  How could the vehiment anti-com Banister work with the self proclaimed Marxist Oswald.  It is the subject the government sought to avoid.  Another reason they hated Garrison, the only elected official in the US to openly challenge the lies of the Warren Report.

THE JFK ASSASSINATION - WHITEWASHING AS EASY AS ABC-TV

I watched the 2-hour special Monday night (24 Nov 2025) and was shocked. This was a rehash of the type of special one would have seen in 1964 to bolster the Warren Commission, and repeated every decade or so with Dan Rather and other big names in the news to reassure us that the Warren Commission was correct, the magic bullet went through Kennedy's back/shoulder and out of his throat, thence to wound Texas Gov. Connally in various places, and emerge almost like new. Well, here they go again. Perhaps they are counting on many young viewers have no real knowledge of the events of 1963, so they cannot question the "information provided' on the program. 

     I am 87, a year older than Lee Oswald. My memory is not as sharp as before. But I sat fuming at the program. For example, on Oswald's background, it points out that he attended 20 different schools growing up, showing an unstable youth. However, when the young Oswald, who was born in New Orleans, returned, he attended P T G Beauregard Junion High 1952-1954. If he had problems adjusting, so did everyone else, as the School Board that year decided to integrate both junion and senior highs. I am not speaking of racial integration, that was clearly illegal in Louisiana and throughout the Solid South, but mixing boys and girls in the same schools, including high schools and the newly established junior highs. The previous system K-8, and the sexually divided high schools 9-12th grades ceased; replaced by K-6, 7-9, 10-12, all co-ed. Oswald did well enough to graduate from Beauregard in 2 years in 1954. Also important to his development, he joined the Civil Air Patrol, headed by a charismatic man, David Ferrie.

    I never met Ferrie, but I had a roommate who had had problems as a youth. Although I attended Tulane U., and he was a student at Loyola U. of the South, we met in the late 1950s at an intercollegiate interracial gathering at Loyola. I barely knew him, and he never looked me in the eye when conversing, so I assumed he was not interested in what I was saying. We both attended a CORE training institute in Miami in August 1960, where one day our teacher was Jackie Robinson, another day, Martin Luther King. It was only when we roomed together back in New Orleans did I discover that he was legally blind. No wonder he did not look people in the eyes, he probably was lucky to see the who person.  He told me he was on the path to becoming a juvenile delinquent, but the CAP and David Ferrie saved him, pushed him to return to school, gave him hope, etc. If Ferry could perform miracles with my roommate, perhaps he could do the same with Oswald. Ferry was gay, but my roommate was strictly straight. I suspect he may have done the same for Oswald. At any rate, Oswald did not want to continue to Warren Easton Senior High, but would continue his education elsewhere; he got his mom to sign papers so he could enlist in the Marines at 17. Some talk about Oswald as pro-communist as a youth. Are Communists anxious to enlist in the Marines at 17? By the way, Beauregard was the officer honored to give the command to CSA troops to fire on Fort Sumpter and start the American Civil War. After graduation from Loyola, my former roommate went off to Laos in the early 1960s with the US AID. He returned to NO, married and had 2 children, and led in many ways to improve the opportunities for the blind and handicapped. A university building is now named for him.  Meanwhile, Oswald ended in Japan working around the secret U2 flights. Ferrie was a very conservative patriot, and would clearly influence the youths in the CAP. Ferrie was a good pilot, and somehow involved in the Bay of Pigs invasion. He was furious when Pres. Kennedy failed to come to the rescue of the invaders, and later, in a speech, I think at Springhill college on the Mississippi coast, declared that Pres. Kennedy "should be shot." He lost is job as an airline pilot on a morals charge, but Car;ps Marcello and the Mafia also called upon Ferrie. Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy's crusade against crime, led him to deport important New Orleans Mafia leader Carlos Marcello, and apparently left him in Guatemala in a jungle, wearing his expensive shoes. Some allege that Rob Kennedy hoped that Marcello would die.  Marcello survived however, reached civilization, and got Ferrie to come and fly him back into the US. 

     When Oswald defected to the Soviet Union, was it real? Or was he still a Marine, doing secret work? After a few years, he wanted out of the USSR, and had no troubles with American authorities in returning.. True, he had a dishonorable discharge from the Marines, but if the Marines were to send other undercovers to the Soviets, perhaps that was a way to keep the pretense going. 

     When Oswald returns to the US, and then to NO in 1963, who does he hang out with? The super anti-communist Guy Banister. Banister's office is where the pro-Castro leaflets, handed out by Oswald on the streets of NO, are stored; the address of the building is used on the Hand Off Cuba leaflets. Some say Oswald was seen at the CIA training center north of Lake Pontchartrain, where the Cuban refugees were preparing for a new and hopefully successful Bay of Pigs invasion to liberate Cuba. Pres. Kennedy was inching toward a rapprochement with the Communists and did not want another Bay of Pigs. But could he count on his head of CIA to close the camp? No! JFK needed someone he trusted to shutter the CIA camp; his brother Robert, Atty. Gen., was also in charge of the FBI. He got the FBI to close the CIA training camp in July 1963.  Some said, this act by the President sealed his fate.  It meant he was not interested in liberating Cuba, or standing up against the communists elsewhere, or so it seemed to many conservatives.

       Why was anti-com Banister working with Oswald to print and distribute Fair Play for Cuba leaflets and that pro-Castro organization? Perhaps Oswald was being prepared to appear as a communist, or surely a Marxist.  And with this new appearance, perhaps he was to assassinate someone, maybe like Fidel or another prominent figure! In September 1963 Oswald is in Mexico City trying to get into Cuba, making anti-Kennedy statements. But, it did not work; they did not let him in. MORE LATER

     If the now identified "Marxist" Lee Oswald could not get into Cuba or back into the USSR, what could he do for the cause? On 9 November 1963 anti-com Joseph Milteer was recorded on a wire by FBI undercover Willie Somersett, a childhood friend of Milteer.  Milteer assured his friend that it was all set up, someone from a tall building would shoot the President, and they had a stooge who would quickly be arrested and blamed, while the real assassins could get away.  Milteer added that people in Miami, New Orleans, and California were in on the action.  One can hear this recoded conversation on YouTube.  Was Oswald's new mission to be unbeknownst to him, a patsy?

       More on the ABC program; basically they declare what others call the magic bullet to be what really happened - Oswald shoots Kennedy's upper back, the bullet exits his neck, and then goes on to wound Gov. Connally in many places, and emerges almost like new. 

    In the late 1960s I was teaching at a university and had time between classes, time which I used to attend sessions of the DA Garrison trial against NO businessman Clay Shaw.  One day a doctor from the Bethesda Naval Hospital, one of the doctors who performed the autopsy on Pres. Kennedy.  He was questioned under oath.  Dr. Pierre Finck asserted he was beginning to probe the path of the bullet that entered the President's back, and which according to the official line must exit his throat and the go on to do damage to Connally, - this is a crucial probe.  Dr. Finck began, but then he related he was ordered to stop.  Who ordered that.  I don't know as there were many Admirals and Generals in the room.  Thus, with that answer of Dr. Finck, two important facts emerge.  One - the entire picture of the media, and the government, and the Warren Commission of one gunman shooting from behind the President WAS NOT CONFIRMED in the autopsy.  Recall, the physician in Dallas thought the neck wound was an entry wound, not an exit wound.  Two - Finck's reply  makes clear who was in charge of the proceedings, not the doctors but the military.  Moreover, some photos show a large part of the back of Kennedy's head being broken off, indicating a shot from the front.  Some allege there were fake photos showing a smaller back head wound.

    Garrison failed to convict Shaw, and had I been on the jury, I too would have voted not guilty.  But New Orleans Dist. Atty. Jim Garrison did expose how the government united to destroy his expose of the fraudulent conclusions of the Warren Report.  Governors refused to let subpoenaed witnesses come to NO for trial.  National magazines carried many stories belittling his case.  Only in the 1990s with Oliver Stone's provocative film "JFK" did the opponents of the official conclusion get a fair hearing, and viewing.  I don't recall enough of the ABC program to add more criticism to my post.  The ABC Special sought to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, but too much has been exposed for that to be successful at this late date. 

   I hope the Trump Administration will finally open all the files so we can see if the government told the truth to the American people, or simply lied, and lied, and lied.

     Hugh Murray

 

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.        

A FERRIE TALE?

DAVID FERRIE: MAFIA PILOT, PARTICIPANT IN ANTI-CASTRO

BIO-WEAPON PLOT, FRIEND OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD AND

KEY TO THE JFK ASSASSINATION

by Judyth Vary Baker

Foreword by Jesse Ventura

review by Hugh Murray

            Why read a 500-page biography of David Ferrie? Was he involved in a conspiracy to kill President John Kennedy?  He clearly made statements in the early 1960s expressing his hatred of the President who he believed betrayed the anti-Communist cause by failing to provide air and other support to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Castro’s Cuba in spring 1961;  Kennedy betrayed the cause again when he closed the missile crisis of 1962 with compromise rather than crushing Castro; and finally, the Kennedy Administration raided and closed training camps in 1963 where men were preparing for another invasion of the island.  So did Ferrie join a conspiracy?

            The author, Judyth Vary Baker, claims to have been a friend of Ferrie, beginning in spring 1963.  She also claims to have been Lee Oswald’s secret lover beginning in April 1963 when they met in New Orleans.  Moreover, she claims that she, along with Oswald, Ferrie, and Dr. Mary Sherman were all engaged in secret research to hasten the growth of cancer in mice, then in monkeys, and finally in humans – to be used as a bio-weapon that could be used to kill Fidel Castro.  Her view is that Oswald and Ferrie only pretended to be Kennedy haters.  She also maintains they were both pro-integration (in a city where integration was often conflated with communism).  Both Ferrie and Oswald liked JFK, but they had to pretend to despise him to learn about the mechanisms of those who really hated the President.  After all, Oswald had pretended to be a Soviet sympathizer, a “defector,” who had lived in Minsk and married a Soviet woman there.  In New Orleans, Oswald had pretended to be pro-Communist, distributing leaflets on behalf of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee that he created, an organization with no members, and whose office was in that of Guy Banister, who was vehemently anti-Communist and who had greeted George Lincoln Rockwell when he arrived in New Orleans to picket the pro-Israeli film “Exodus” with Rockwell’s Nazi followers.

            Yet, Baker is honest enough to include material in her book that contradicts her position (for example, her exposition of the sightings of David Ferrie at the Winnipeg airport in Canada).  Indeed, there is an air of honesty about this book – she does include a number of disputes between her and more establishment academics, including citations, so one can always refer to their works and websites to assess their arguments.  On a personal note, she quotes me fairly (and I still fume about the way one “historian,” not Joan Mellen, interviewed me for hours by phone about civil rights in New Orleans, but when I indicated I now opposed the politically correct crowd, she deleted all mention of me.)  Judyth Baker provides a breadth of fresh air sometimes needed to stir the dust of accepted academic accretions.

            My view of Baker’s book is influenced by my personal history.  Born in New Orleans, I attended public schools when Oswald was also a pupil.  By high school, I had joined the Unitarian Church and had become an integrationist.  In September 1956 I enrolled at Tulane University on a scholarship; in 1958 I sat-in some classes at Dillard U. (an historically Black university) and befriended some students on the Black campus.  By 1958-59, there were small interracial Bible study groups between Dillard and the Tulane Wesley (Methodist) organizations, which I also attended.  By 1959 the ICIC was formed, the Intercollegiate Conference for Interracial Cooperation, which met at Loyola U. of the South and included members from Xavier U. (the Black Catholic college), Dillard, and Tulane.

            In February 1960 national television news showed the early lunch-counter sit-ins of the modern era in North Carolina.  Television favorably portrayed the movement as it spread to various areas of the South.  In the spring a white Tulanian, Lanny Goldfinch, told me there would be a meeting on Dillard’s campus to organize a sit-in in New Orleans.  This would be important symbolically for New Orleans was still, as it had been for over a century, the largest city in the South (ahead of Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami).  In the student cafeteria of Dillard, a mass meeting was underway when I arrived.  It appeared as if most of the student body was in attendance, and they were excited and determined to act, enthusiastically applauding the speakers who called for action.  Of course, everyone was aware, that to sit-in, to violate the laws of segregation, would probably result in arrest and possible physical harm.  Then the very popular Dean of Chapel, Dean Gandy rose to the rostrum.  All awaited his words.  “We want to act.  We have to act.  We have to do something to oppose segregation.”  Massive applause.  But we don’t want to just imitate others.  Sit-ins have been occurring for weeks, for months now.  They are good, but they are old hat.  We should do something new.  Something that is unique to Dillard.  More applause.  And then he announced that they should have a march for civil rights on campus and on the sidewalks in front of campus that would be seen by all on the major thoroughfare, Gentilly Blvd.  I had gone to the meeting intending to volunteer for a sit-in, but saw no purpose in joining a Dillard U. march on its campus.  I left both disappointed, and relieved, at the same time.

            Soon after, Lanny told me there was a boycott of stores in the Dryades St. area, a neighborhood that had a large Black clientele.  He was going to volunteer as a picketer, and I decided to do so also.  Because our Tulane class schedules differed, we went to picket on different days.  At that time in New Orleans, only two picketers were legally allowed in front of a store, and when my co-picketer, a Black man realized he was to picket with me, he became quite nervous.  He said his shoes hurt, and left me holding 2 picket signs.  I was suddenly harassed by two young whites with a can of black paint and a brush seeking to paint me black.  Then a new, second picketer arrived, a large Black longshoreman, and the kids quickly ran away.  The picketing was organized by the Consumers’ League, a Black organization.  Some of its members would soon be involved in the organization of NO CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, which hoped to train for and organize many of the new, non-violent protests against segregation, like the sit-ins.  CORE was preparing a 3-week training institute to be held in August 1960 in Miami, and I desperately wanted to go.  I was living with my parents, who were unenthusiastic.  They argued, I would be the only white, or the only white from New Orleans, it would be dangerous, etc.  I argued that it would be a national gathering, people from all over the nation, perhaps thousands, Blacks and whites.  So, who else was going from New Orleans?  Any other whites?  I was so happy when I discovered that a Loyola student, Oliver St. Pe would indeed be going.  I would not be the only white, and used this to finally win approval of my parents.

            I was truly shocked upon our arrival in Miami to find that there were only about 50 participants, eight from New Orleans.  We stayed in a Black Motel, the Prince ?George?, and held training sessions during the day in the motel’s cocktail lounge.  One day, we had a talk by Jackie Robinson, who had been the first Black to integrate major league baseball at the Brooklyn Dodgers.  Another day, our teacher was Martin Luther King, who had led the successful bus boycott movement in Montgomery, Alabama.  Other days, it was learning about Gandhi, non-violence, and acting as protestors or as hostile segregationists.  One day we tested an eatery inside Shell’s City supermarket.  We generally sat in mixed groups at numerous tables.  The police were called and arrested all our attendees who were seated at integrated tables.  Or almost.  I was seated at a table with a young Black woman, Ruth Dispenza; we were not arrested because Ruth was light-skinned, and the officials assumed we were a white couple.  Oliver was among those arrested.

            When we returned to New Orleans, rumors floated that we were planning a sit-in for the Crescent City.  The Dean of Tulane sent some students to speak with me and a few others, warning us of university policy: if arrested we would be expelled from the university until proven not guilty.  Moreover, because we were consciously violating the state’s segregation laws, we would certainly be found guilty on the local and state levels.  So we might not be found innocent until our case had been appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which might take several years, assuming the high court would consider our case and rule in our favor.  Even if it so ruled, we could not expect to re-enroll at Tulane until after years of litigation.

            Ruth Dispenza would be the spokesperson for the sit-in, the first in New Orleans, held at the large Woolworths at the corner of Canal and North Rampart Streets (I stress this because the politically correct often cite the 2^nd sit-in, which occurred a week later at McCrory’s, as the first.)  We arrived in the morning around 9 or 10 am and sat for several hours; the then New Orleans District Attorney, Richard Dowling came into the lunch counter area and literally read us the law on segregation.  When we refused to leave, we were arrested.

            That night we were released on bail, and because we had been shifted between different jails, we had not eaten since before our protest.  We were hungry.  Archie Allen (a Black student at Dillard, and one of the 7 arrested at Woolworth’s), Carlos Zervigon (a fellow Tulane student, member of CORE, whose parents were of Mexican and Cuban heritage) and I went to Whitey’s on near St, Charles Ave. to get a late bite.  Whitey’s was a Black restaurant.  We took seats at a small, round table, and the waiter approached us and announced, “I can serve you (to Archie), but I can’t serve you two.”  For a moment, we sat in disbelief.  Then he revised, “Well, I can serve you two, but not you (to me).”  Archie and I had just been released from jail for trying to integrate the white counter at Woolworths; we had no desire to be arrested twice in the same day, now at a Black restaurant.  I was so stunned; I do not now recall how we finally ate that night.

            I could not return home, as this would endanger my parents.  Even with my absence, my parents had troubles with threats following each telephone ring throughout that night.  My father would soon borrow a pistol and bullets to protect the home.  Meanwhile, I was staying with different friends each night after the arrest.

            Tulane backed down, changing its policy regarding student arrests.  Our sit-in was now judged by the board of the university to be a political rather than a criminal offense, so neither Bill Harrell (a white grad student in sociology) nor I was expelled.  Tulane was then a segregated institution, but the board was beginning its shift away from supporting the laws of segregation.  And not being expelled was of crucial importance to me because now I could retain my part-time job working weekends at the Tulane U. library and thus maintain a small income.

            But where would I live?  Oliver, the Loyola student in CORE, had been arrested in Miami, and so was not a notorious as I was.  He was still living with his parents in a suburb an hour away from Loyola.  We decided to look for an apartment together and found one near Touro Infirmary, where I had been born.  Oliver was two years older than I, but only a senior in sociology at Loyola.  He had a slightly annoying habit when speaking to you – he rarely looked you in the eye, his gaze was off-center.  Only after rooming with him did I discover the cause: Oliver was legally blind.  To read, he would insert the old-fashioned, hard contact lenses and then put on extremely thick eyeglasses (Normally, he wore none, so people were unaware of his disability.).  Even with the props, he probably could not see an entire word.  The government sent him recordings of books, and he would arrange to have people read  his text books to him, for which they were paid.  I suddenly acquired a supplemental job reading sociology texts to him.

            Oliver was a year or two behind because he had dropped out of school when he was younger.  He was on the path to becoming a juvenile delinquent and permanent drop-out.  But his life took a different course when he joined the Civil Air Patrol and was influenced, - for the better - by David Ferrie.  Oliver was Roman Catholic and got on well with Rudy Lombard, the NO CORE Coordinator who studied at Xavier U. in NO (a Black Catholic college).  Oliver supported President Kennedy.  He taught catechism at a nearby Catholic church, and was a staunch heterosexual.  He was skeptical of socialism and was not at all pro-Communist.  A slightly older woman also read to him, and when I met her, I was surprised to hear her stories of the Soviet Union.  She must have worked for the American government, and I think she had met Oliver at the VA Hospital, where he went occasionally.  I was shocked when she told that women who came from the countryside to the big cities of Moscow and Leningrad in the big train stations, were so unfamiliar with modern devises, that when they went to the rest rooms, often did their business on the floor.

            Other than CORE meetings, Oliver and I tended to maintain separate social lives.  I worked in the library from Friday night through late Sunday, we were too poor for luxuries like a telephone, so I met only one or two of his old friends.  He would speak of one, David Ferrie, who had helped change his life.  He also spoke of Father Fichter at Loyola and a few others, but Ferrie seemed to have been the catalyst in changing him.  On several occasions Larry Anderson, a CAP chum came by the flat to pick up Oliver to go somewhere.  I remember after we had roomed together about six months, Oliver spoke of how his old mentor, Ferrie, was going to have a party one weekend.  He looked forward to it, as he had not seen David for awhile.  When I next saw Oliver, I asked, “How was the big party?”  Oliver seemed disappointed, “Oh, David was playing soldier.”  I did not understand, and he added many were dressed in military-type fatigues.  That would have been in spring 1961.  It was not until much later that I realized that this was about the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

            At the end of May 1961 our lease on the apartment ended, Oliver graduated from Loyola with his BA, but after a year, I still did not receive my MA from Tulane in history.  Oliver and I now saw each other rarely, and soon he would be working with the International Voluntary Service in Laos, a new country since the French withdrawal from Indo-China following their defeat at Dien Bien Phu.  Oliver must have been in Laos for some time because I recall reading in one of the local newspapers a tiny article in November 1963 reporting that David Ferrie had been arrested or questioned in connection with the assassination of President Kennedy.  How many David Ferries could there be?  It must have been the man who had helped Oliver.  I clipped the item and sent it to Oliver in Laos.  The article was only a few sentences, but must have revealed more than that Ferrie had been questioned, because in the days following the assassination, many New Orleanians were questioned.  Indeed, I too was questioned by the FBI on Tuesday 26 November.

            After rooming with Oliver for the school year 1960-61, I had lost enthusiasm for grad school.  I moved back in with my parents (who very kindly took me back), and got my first full-time job – teaching at a high school.  I must concede my liberal notions of letting the students express themselves proved impractical.  I was teaching outside my field, but my real problem was that I failed to establish and maintain discipline.  It was the only time I failed as a teacher.  Other issues arose too.  I was a pacifist, and one reason I was so drawn to the civil rights movement was its emphasis on non-violent protest and the attempt to change society for the better through non-violence.  But there were already chinks in my non-violent armor.  Beginning with the day of my arrest, 9 September 1960, my parents began to receive threatening telephone calls.  My dad borrowed a weapon and bullets to protect the place.  The threats subsided in November 1960 as court-ordered integration of two schools in New Orleans swerved the spotlight from CORE sit-ins to trying to keep the schools open, protecting the few Black students and the white family that defied the boycott (the white family that broke the boycott soon had to flee to the North).  As the schools took the heat, threats to my parents ceased.  When my dad returned the pistol to his co-worker, the man remarked, “Why did you borrow so many bullets?  Only one would have done the job!”  I was not popular in NO at that time.  Oliver and I were then sharing a flat, and we received no threatening calls because we had no phone.  Oliver brought me his Ruger (like the German Luger), and he wanted me to learn how to use it.  I was a pacifist, but how could I ask a legally blind guy to defend us if we came under attack.  So I let him teach me how to use the Ruger.   Reality was ruining my faith in non-violence.

            So, after I decided not to pursue my MA, probably in the summer of 1961, I volunteered for the navy.  I recall only one test – I was naked and had to walk down a long dark, narrow hall until I could read what was on a screen at the other end.  I must have traversed 2/3s of the hall before I could recognize a large letter E.  I was surprised at how poor my eyesight seemed to be.  Yet, that proved not to be the problem.  The hitch was the sit-in – I had been convicted of a felony, and felons could be drafted but were not allowed to volunteer for service, I was informed.

            After teaching for about half the school year, I received my draft notice, probably in early 1962.  I quit the teaching job and waited to be inducted.  I went to the old Customs House on Canal St. near the Mississippi River, and a large number of us took seats and awaited our fate.  I was nervous, as I suspect was true of most.  There seemed to be no loud chatter, but one person stood and moved about addressing the young Blacks scattered among those seated.  He was urging them not to go in, not to be inducted , that America was racist, and they should follow the example of the Black Muslims and reject the draft.  The officer must have ordered him to stop, but he continued preaching and urging others to join him.  Then the officers ordered all the rest of us to move to an adjacent, large room.  The Black Muslim was barred from entering this room.

            We were handed forms to fill out.  Most completed them quickly.  I stumbled.  I had no trouble checking the box to indicate that I was not now nor had ever been a member of the Communist Part, the KuKluxKlan, etc.  But then there was a list of front groups, and the question was quite broad; had we ever even socialized with these groups.  Oh oh.  At the Miami CORE conclave we did more than hear lectures by Robinson and King.  Half our group had been arrested at the Shell’s City sit-in in August 1960, and we also went to the beach to integrate the sands.  CORE organizers had arranged that the picnic tables beside ours would be occupied by a friendly white group, the Jewish Culture Club in Miami.  There group was about as large as ours, but whereas most in our group were in their 20s, members of the JCC  were in their 60s and 70s.  I spoke to one about the famous 1948 election, in which Harry Truman won to the astonishment of the pollsters, the nation, and especially the Chicago Tribune.  The old gent on the bench told me he had voted for Henry Wallace and the Progressive Party that year.  They were on the Left, and they were for integration.

            The JCC also had a club house, and they allowed us to stage a dance on their premises.  I danced the one-step with Pat and Priscilla Stephens, Black twins who had been active in CORE in Tallahassee.  Also, for the first time I tried the new dance, the twist, with Ruth Dispenza, among others.  Those dancing were almost all young, from our group.  Members of the JCC sat around the periphery of the dance floor at small tables and nibbled, chatted, and generally watched us.  It was relaxing to have a place where we could dance in a large hall.  Pictures were taken of our fun gathering.  That was important.

            Seated at the Customs House I pondered how to fill out the form.  Should I mention the dance at the JCC?  It seemed so inconsequential.  But the penalties for lying were enormous (though I no longer remember the specifics).  Should I lie and not mention this event?  Then I remembered, pictures had been taken, so I mentioned it.

            Another question on the form concerned any previous arrests.  Not only had pictures been taken of the sit-in, we had been shown on national television nightly news programs, though we could not see these because we were still in jail at the time.  I mentioned the previous arrest.

            The officer collected the forms and then called me up.  “JCC?  But you aren’t even Jewish.”  I tried to explain.  Then he mentioned the arrest.  I told him I had been informed that I could not volunteer, but I could be drafted.  He told me I would first have to speak with the FBI agent, but I would have to wait as he was at that moment interviewing the Black Nationalist in the other room.  I returned to my seat.  We were all give a fried chicken lunch in a box like KFC, and told we would be going to Ft. Chafee in Arkansas for basic training.

            The FBI agent got to me and I told him of the arrest at the lunch counter.  He said that conviction was a felony, and he would have to speak with the NO District Attorney to ask if he would drop the charges before I could be drafted.  Meanwhile, I was told to keep the chicken lunch, go home, and await the decision.  I am unsure if the DA at that time was still Richard Dowling, or a newly elected Jim Garrison.  The charges were NOT dropped, but my draft classification remained 1-A.  This made it difficult to get a new job because employers were reluctant to hire someone who could be called up at any moment.  I found a low-pay job at another library to have some money while waiting.

            I could not wait forever.  In September 1962 I returned to Tulane to try to earn my MA.  I now changed my thesis topic – I would write about the Scottsboro rape cases of the 1930s in Alabama and the role of the Communist Party.  Nine young Blacks were accused of raping two white women on a train in Alabama, and defended by Communists.  Nothing controversial there!

            In October the world experienced “The Missile Crisis.”  This is featured in Baker’s book, as Pres. Kennedy’s failure to invade Castro’s Cuba would further incense anti-Castro elements in New Orleans and Miami.  Soon after the crisis, I wrote an article for the Tulane leftist alternative to the official university Hullaballoo.  The alternative was mimeographed and was published sporadically.   My article in The Reed was titled, “The Munich of the 60s,” in which I condemned Khrushchev for yielding to the demands of Kennedy to withdraw the missiles from Cuba.  The analogy was Khrushchev to Chamberlain, and Kennedy to a German leader.  To say that my article was unpopular is an understatement.  I walked into one classroom and copies of the Reed were not simply torn in half, or into quarter, or into…down to the size of a fingernail.  Interestingly, my article would be attacked early the next year in Political Affairs, a journal of the CPUSA.  Herbert Aptheker placed the Reed article along with various Trotskyist and Ultra Left analyses that failed to understand Khrushchev’s wisdom in compromise and in getting Kennedy to pledge not to invade Cuba.

            At that time, I was pro-Castro (not now).  I personally knew several members of the staff of The Reed, most especially my thesis advisor Prof. Robert Reinders, who had studied at Notre Dame and was a liberal Roman Catholic.  I was also acquainted with Bob Hoffman and others.  But I was also working hard to research and write my MA thesis, so I may have been less social than usual.  Vereen Alexander would allege that she had met Oswald at a party at Bob Hoffman’s and other Reed people in 1963.  She later changed her story thinking she was mistaken.  I was so busy, I could not even recall Vereen Alexander.

            Although I had attended Beauregard Jr. High and then Easton Sr. High in New Orleans about the same time as Oswald, I never met him.  And again, although I was pro-Castro in New Orleans in 1963 and indeed picked up one of Oswald’s FPCC leaflets that had been laid on a small table in the foyer of Tulane U. Library, there was no one in the entrance area with whom to inquire about the flyers to discuss the organization.  I took one of the leaflets and brought it to another grad student who had been active in FPCC in another city.  I had assumed he had produced the flyer.  But Harold Alderman knew nothing about it.  We wondered if we should write to the post office box on the leaflet, but we were cautious as it might be a trap (we didn’t write, and it was).  I was unable to complete my thesis for the May graduation, and had to keep working on it during the summer of 1963.  Finally, in August I received my MA.  My thesis, 270 pages, generally defended the Communist approach to defending the Blacks accused of rape, using both top-notch attorneys in court while simultaneously mobilizing mass support for the cause outside the courts.  Several chapters of my thesis were subsequently published in academic journals.  But defending the CP did not make me popular with the establishment historians at Tulane.  I was informed that the chair of the department did not want me to continue for a doctorate.  I now had to find a job.

            A new, private school had opened in NO, and I was offered a post teaching 5^th grade at a higher salary than I had earned in the public schools.  The school opened in a building formerly owned by the Dept. of Agriculture, and was in the process of being renovated.  I think it was k-12, or possibly 1-12.  Three of us taught 5^th grade, another young guy, and an older woman who had taught in public school for many years.  I quite enjoyed the teaching.  I was larger than my pupils, which helps with discipline.  Some were quite smart and around 10 years old; a few had had troubles in school and were up to 14, but they were caught up in the spirit of the younger pupils.  That spirit was most important – when I asked a question, all who knew the answer raised their hands and wanted to be called upon.  Often, when they are a few years older, the dreadful peer spirit warns all not answer, and condemns those who do.  I enjoyed teaching them, and I think they were learning and enjoyed me teach them.  It was fun.

            I could begin to relax after the pressure of Tulane, and occasionally played tennis after school with colleagues or old friends.  I was still residing with my parents after a very “poor” year.  In early October 1963, after school, after tennis, I returned home late one afternoon.  My mother greeted me at the front door, “Hmmph, why are you so late?  I thought they had rounded you up too?”  I had no idea what she was referring to, but rushed to the TV, as the news was about to come on.  The Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee (LUAC) along with DA Jim Garrison had staged raids on local Communists, using axes to break down their doors.  The offices of SCEF (the Southern Conference Education Fund), an integrationist organization were raided and files confiscated.  Its director, who was elderly and crippled, was arrested.  Also, attorneys Ben Smith and Bruce Walzer, who shared a law firm, were arrested in the raid.  Both lawyers defended dissidents.  During the raid of Walzer’s home, as the axes smashed in the front door, his wife hovered in fear with her baby.  She had been born in Germany, half-Jewish, and had survived by being taken in by a Roman Catholic organization.  The axe action terrorized her.  The raid on the home of Ben Smith was probably just as frightening, and his wife filed for divorce soon after.

            The Chair of the LUAC lived a few houses down the street from my parent’s home; his wife was my mother’s Avon lady.  This raid occurred 3 October 1963.  Later, I would wonder why they had not raided the home of a defector to the USSR, a self-professed Marxist who had expounded his radical views on WDSU radio, and a man who had been arrested for distributing FPCC leaflets?  (In Me & Lee, Baker provides information on why there was a delay in raiding the SCEF, Smith and Walzer, but why did the LUAC display no interest in Oswald?   

                Back to work.  One day around lunchtime, Mrs. Flagg, the older 5^th grade teacher whose class was directly across the hall from mine, came to my door, and asked me to come to her class for a few minutes.  Telling my class I would be right back, I left them for hers.  Because of the many renovations, we still had no cafeteria, so kids ate lunch in the class rooms, and her class was having free time during their lunch, so there was much talk, an occasional shout, etc.  Mrs. Flagg led me to the seat of a pupil who had brought a rather new invention to class, a small, transistor radio.  He was listening as Mrs. Flagg and I craned our necks over the youngster, trying to hear the news above the din of the class at play.  After a few minutes, I heard the main point, and had to return to my unattended class.

            I entered and closed the door behind me, and they quickly quieted down.  “I just heard on the radio that Pres. Kennedy was shot in Dallas.”  They cheered and applauded!  I was shocked by their response.  Then I noticed that one girl had placed her head on her table and was silently crying.  The others were elated.  Suddenly, the normal lessons seemed trite.  These kids, whom I normally liked, had angered me.  I began with an impromptu history lesson.  “You think that if Kennedy dies, that will mean the end of integration, that segregation will be saved.  Well, others had similar views.  At the end of the Civil War, some believed that the South would be restored, that slavery would continue, if only Lincoln could be eliminated.  John Wilkes Booth did kill Lincoln.  But that did not bring about the restoration of the Confederacy.  Nor did it bring back slavery.  Instead, it made the North even more determined to destroy slavery and the power of the South.  And if Kennedy dies, it will make the North of today even more determined to destroy segregation, more determined to force integration upon the South.”  I may have elaborated here or there, but the point of my lecture was clear, even to 10-year-olds.  Of course, all of us assumed that Kennedy had been shot by a segregationist.  The school dismissed classes early that Friday.

            I was  home when I received a phone call from Shelly Zervigon, wife of Carlos my old buddy in CORE.  “Did you hear the news?” she asked.  “Of course, Kennedy is dead.”  “Did you hear the guy who did it was a Communist, from New Orleans?”  I could hardly believe her words.  A shock wave followed by one of fear.  If they were rounding up Communists in New Orleans in October for being integrationists, what will they do now?  I knew the history of what had happened in Paris in 1938, when a young Jew entered the German Embassy there and shot and killed the Ambassador.  In retaliation, a few days later in Germany, many synagogues were burnt, many Jewish shop windows broken (so it was called Kristall Nacht because of the broken glass), thousands of Jews were rounded up, some sent to camps, and Jewish funds in banks confiscated.  It was the beginning of the end for Jews in Germany.  And that was for the murder of an ambassador.  What would happen with the murder of a President?  When would there be the next round-up of “Communists in New Orleans?  How much time would I have?  I decided to go out that Friday night and get drunk, as it might be my last chance to do so.

            I went out to the Blue Note, a bar on Rampart St., and perhaps some others.  I ran into a few liberals and asked the same question, who the hell is Lee Oswald?  No one seemed to have known him.

            Back to work.  At the end of November 1963 the school gave us checks as usual, but this time many bounced.  After some negotiations with the school administrators, by mid-month many teachers, myself included, filed a law-suit against the school, which made the newspapers.  Soon other creditors were also filing suits.  Some pupils suddenly dropped out, most teachers decided not to continue teaching until paid for past work, and the school was in a downward spiral.  To protect the school from the Commie agitator teachers, the school hired someone responsible to protect the institution, Guy Banister.  I was told by a teacher who remained that Banister would roam the halls with his pistol in his belt.  By the end of January 1964, that school had closed.

            I was suddenly unemployed, again.  About this time, my uncle was visiting my parents when I was there.  Uncle Jim liked to tease me.  Politically, we were opposites.  After he found out I had been arrested in the first sit-in, he had sent a small sum to George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party to restore honor to the family.  I did not see him often, but his usual greeting to me was, “How are the burr heads doing?”  This would rile me up and a few minutes later I would leave to visit friends.  When Pres. and Mrs. Kennedy lost a baby while they were in the White House, Uncle Jim explained to me what had happened, “They killed it because it was Black.”  I would roll my eyes and leave.  Sometimes he would say, “Oh, that Bobby.  They gonna get that Bobby!”  Attorney General Robert Kennedy was often sending representatives of the Justice Dept. to the South to try to promote integration.  “Oh, that Bobby,” he said many times in the early 1960s.  It was probably in January 1964 when I next saw Uncle Jim.  “What did I tell you, huh?  What did I tell you?  Didn’t I tell you they were gonna get him?”  It took me a few moments to figure out what he was referring to.  Then I realized in a horrified flash.  This time I responded – “But you said they were going to get Bobby.”  “Well, they got the other one instead.”  After a year of listening to him talking about getting Bobby, I finally asked him, “Who is this ‘they’ you keep talking about?”  He quickly responded, “The mob out in the Parish.”  To translate: “Out in the Parish” meant in Jefferson Parish, the county adjacent to New Orleans, and the leading mob official would be Carlos Marcello.  No one was talking about Marcello in connection with the Kennedy assassination in January 1964.  I rolled my eyes and chalked another one up to my crazy uncle, like the Kennedy’s killing their child because it was Black.  Furthermore, what would my uncle know?  He had not finished elementary school, and I had an MA from Tulane.  I was too arrogant to understand.  Now I regret that I did not listen to him more and question him further.  I might have learned a lot from him.

             According to researchers Alan Rogers and Larry Haapanen, Oswald said that if he and Marina had a boy, they would name him David.  Oliver and his wife had two boys, and according to researcher Bruce Baird, Oliver’s widow revealed that one son was indeed named David for David Ferrie.  And that would have been in the 1960s, after some of the scandals regarding Ferrie.  If David Ferrie could so influence the boys and young men of his CAP that they would consider naming their sons after him, even following the scandals, then Ferrie was an extremely impressive man.  Baker writes. Ferrie was “a man who taught countless people how to fly, who influenced dozens to become priests or to serve their country in the Armed Services, and whose acts of charity, patriotism and courage were overshadowed by his sexual misbehavior, is buried in near isolation.”(p432)  Did his sexual misbehavior “overshadow” all the rest?  Here I disagree with Baker.  But that is subordinate to the big questions – did Ferrie encourage Lee Harvey Oswald to join the marines when he was an underage teen?  Might his stories, along with TV programs like Herb Philbrick’s “I Led Three Lives,” have encouraged the young marine to explore less travelled paths, like defecting to the USSR?

            When Oswald returned to the US with American Embassy help, was he on the payroll of the FBI or other agencies?  Baker claims she was working with Ferrie, Oswald, and Dr. Mary Sherman on a bio-weapon to hasten growth of cancer so enemies like Fidel could be killed and their deaths attributed to natural causes.  Leading this project was the internationally famous Dr. Alton Ochsner, whose hospital moved to Jefferson Parish not far from the Beverly Country Club (Marcello’s gambling outlet).  Even if one totally rejects Baker’s contention that she was Oswald’s lover, and her assertions about the bio-weapon, are there still reasons to connect David Ferrie, Oswald, and alleged conspirators to kill Castro and or Kennedy?

            There were experiments that today we might deem unwarranted, inhumane, and worse.  Baker mentions a contract with the US Govt. and prominent Tulane U. Professor Robert Heath.(75)  Baker also writes that at times Ferrie was listed on the faculty of Tulane for a 2-hour credit course workshop in 1960.(102)  She has Ferrie looking for volunteers for some of the Tulane experiments among his CAP group, and on the other side, Ferrie rescuing some teens who had been victims of experiments at some of the Louisiana mental facilities trying to make the teens into heterosexuals.

            But there are more areas where the reader may not rely on Baker’s personal testimony.  Ferrie did work for attorney G. Wray Gill, a major lawyer for Marcello.  According to Marcello’s granddaughter Tricia, Ferrie had flown Marcello to Florida from his exile in Central America.(117)  Ferrie was also involved in the anti-Castro movement in New Orleans and was probably training some of the CIA sponsored elements for another invasion of Cuba.  Also involved in these activities was former FBI agent, former Acting Superintendent of the New Orleans Police, Guy Banister.  Banister also had an anti-Castro organization listed in his offices.  He was known to hire young people to infiltrate the Left on NO campuses.  Oswald distributed pro-Castro FPCC leaflets in NO in the summer of 1963, some of which had the address of the same building as Banister’s offices.  There was no FPCC located there, but if anyone had replied by mail to the flyer’s address, that letter would have wound up in the hands of Banister.  Furthermore, several witnesses asserted they had seen Oswald in Banister’s offices.

            After spending such time and effort to build his FPCC, Oswald suddenly dropped it.  Baker writes: “Until I spoke up in 1999, nobody had a logical explanation for Lee’s suddenly ‘giving up’ on the FPCC.  As soon as the prisoner died – …[a human guinea pig in the cancer research to create a bio-weapon] – Lee would have to travel immediately.  It was important that a sudden departure would not be noticed by the media.”(294)

            Baker also presents an explanation for Ferrie’s concern about the allegation that Oswald had Ferrie’s library card when arrested in Dallas.  Ferrie was disturbed enough by the charge that he went searching for that card in the apartment formerly rented to the Oswalds in NO.  Baker asserts, it was not a card from the public library that Ferrie was worried about, but a card from the Tulane Medical School that was used when they were engaged in cancer research for the bio-weapon.  When Ferrie telephoned Baker in Florida shortly after the assassination, Baker assured him that she had the card.  Ferrie told her to destroy it immediately.  Once assured that this possible connection of Oswald to Ferrie was removed, Ferrie then denied even knowing Oswald when interviewed by the FBI on 27 November 1963.(363-71)

            Baker’s books (this and her earlier Me & Lee) also provide an explanation for the events in Clinton, Louisiana and other towns north of New Orleans.  Various witnesses identified Oswald waiting in a long line to register to vote in summer 1963, a lone white amid a CORE voter registration drive.  Having emerged from a large, black auto, it occupants also aroused attention, and various people from opposite sides of the political spectrum identified Oswald, Ferrie, and Clay Shaw.  The role of the Louisiana mental hospitals in Mandeville and Jackson to provide patients for human experimentation also played a role, according to Baker.(290)  Baker may not provide the only possible explanation to these strange sightings, but hers seems to be the best explanation so far.

            Even where she was not a participant in events with Oswald, Baker provides provocative analysis, as in the case of journalist George Lardner, the last man to interview David Ferrie before his death.  Indeed, Ferrie’s time of death was revised to conform to Lardner’s claims of visiting Ferrie’s apartment that late night.  Baker provides reasons to question Lardner’s account.(430, 477)

            Baker portrays Oswald and Ferrie as pro-integration, pro-civil rights, pro-Kennedy, anti-Communists.  She believes that Oswald and Ferrie were working to assassinate Castro, but dealing with vehement Right-wingers who by 1963 had turned against the ‘pro-Communist’ Kennedy, and they were joined by others who hated the President like Mafia Carlos Marcello.  While Oswald and Ferrie pretended to be opponents of Kennedy, their objective was to infiltrate and halt any operation against the President.  She finds it significant that a plot to kill Kennedy in Chicago in autumn 1963 was foiled after the plot was disclosed to authorities by a “Lee.”(263, 319)  She thinks Oswald was in Dallas to spike another plot.  She implies that the note Oswald left with the FBI office on 12 November 1963 in Dallas was meant to expose and prevent such a new plot.  That note, of course, was destroyed upon orders of J. Edgar Hoover.  Its contents, as revealed by FBI Agent Hostie concerned Oswald threatening the FBI if it did not lay off of his wife Marina.(320)  Baker rejects Hostie’s version of the note that he himself destroyed.

            Baker includes material showing how the NO Dist. Atty. Garrison crew was willing to bribe a witness to join the anti-Clay Shaw team,(382, 430) but she concedes that both sides were using bribes during the Garrison investigation, which led to the later publicity about Ferrie and the trial of Clay Shaw.

            On the other side, perhaps Ferrie was not so innocent.  Instead of telling Baker the truth about how he was seeking to save Kennedy while lying to others when he announced that “Kennedy should be shot,” perhaps Ferrie’s speech about killing the President enunciated his real views, and instead he was lying to Baker.  In this book, Baker is honest enough to include reports of a witness at a Winnipeg airport who overheard Ferried complaining about using that ‘moron’ Oswald, and how clearly, Ferrie was involved in the murderous plot.(374, 445, 447, 450)  She also includes a supposed confession by Ferrie to a bishop of one of the tiny, splinter Catholic churches.(440)

            Not all of Ferrie’s life may be interesting to Kennedy assassination researchers.  But Ferrie was a man who influenced many, and probably saved many lives from cruel experimentation in mental institutions.  Yet, according to Baker herself, he too was willing to indulge in human experimentation to hasten a cancer causing bio-weapon.  Ferrie was a whiz of o pilot who flew to help overthrow Castro and aid rebels.

            There were problems with the execution of this book, such as repetition of text and footnotes.(45, 91, 478 & 184, 282, 283 #8 #11)  There were footnote errors (118, 129)(279, 281, #28, #20)  On the other hand, as one with poor eyesight, it was easier to read footnotes that were not shrunken to the conventional small size.

            Yet, referring to the book’s cover, Baker does show that David Ferrie was a Maria pilot, that he participated in Anti-Castro activities, that he knew Lee Oswald, and was deemed by many to be a key to the John Kennedy assassination.  She maintains that she, Oswald, and Ferrie were involved with Dr. Mary Sherman in research on a bio-weapon, under the direction of world-famous and anti-Communist Dr. Alton Ochsner.  There is little doubt that the weird looking Ferrie, who was a top-notch pilot, knew various languages, experimented with mice, hypnosis, taught military training, and debated theology, was a man who greatly influenced teens in his Civil Air Patrol units.  How much and in what manner did he influence Oswald?

            Baker provides conflicting evidence that Ferrie was pro-Kennedy and anti-Kennedy.  He was known and worked indirectly for Mafia leader Marcello and former NO police chief Guy Banister.  Some, in addition to Baker, saw him with Clay Shaw.  Did all this result in a plot that culminated in Dallas on November 22, 1963?