TIANANMEN, LEIPZIG, and SUNO in NEW ORLEANS

In the fall of 1968 there was a poetry contest at Southern U. in New Orleans.  This was a branch of the much larger Southern U. in Baton Rouge, which around this time was the largest Black university in the world.  Baton Rouge also was home to Louisianad State U., the traditional white state university, which had been built up in the 1920a and 30 by Gov. and then Senator Huey Long.  The Long family had flirted with the Socialist Party decades earlier, but generally, there was only one political party in Louisiana, the Democratic Party.  

    In the early days of FDR;s New Deal, he won wide support, from the the radio priest Father Coughlin to the young Sen. Huey Long from Louisiana, who as governor had provided free text books for kids in public schools and improved roads, building a nes state capitol, and setting a new record for a filibuster in the national Senate.  Of course, he was a Democrat (like everyone else in the South who wanted to win an election, and he did not question segregation a white supremacy, the pillars of the Democratic Parties throughout the South.  The common phrase "the solid South" meant solidly Democratic, and solidly for segregation and white supremacy.

     Like other states after WWII, with expansion of universities, many in New Orleans did not want the added expense of going off to Baton Rough for public education, so there was pressure for a public institution in New Orleans.  The Crescent City actually had a number of universities - Tulane (and Newcomb), a private univ. with a high reputation, and like prestigious universities of the North, with a separate college for women.  It was a whites only institution.  There was Loyola U. of the South, a Roman Catholic institution, which in the 1950s permitted a few Blacks to attend its law school, and perhaps other departments for some colored priests.  There 0was Dillard U. a private, Protestant univ. for both young Black men and women (in the 1950s there was at least one white student, and in the 60s a few Northern whites did their "junior year abroad" at Dillard.  And there was Xavier U., a Roman Catholic univ. for Blacks, and it had a dental school.

     In the 1950s, to make a state univ. more affordable, LSUNO, a branch of Baton Rouge's LSU, was established in New Orleans.  Originally, all white, but judicial decisions re school integration in the city, leading to the school crisis of November 1960 when two elementary schools were integrated amid such great hostility it became an international incident.  Some Blacks began to enroll at LSUNO.   There was one thing forbidden to the new campus - it could not have a football team to compete with LSU's nationally recognized team.  Probably to prevent too much integration at LSUNO, SUNO was founded in New Orleans in a rather new middle-class Black subdivision of the city, Pontchartrain Park.  It was a commuter college with no dorms.  Most students were graduates of the segregated schools of NO, and some chose SUNO because they assumed it would be harder to get a good grade and a degree at the mainly white LSUNO.

    At SUNO, all the students were Blacks.  At first, all the faculty was Black too,  but around 1965 it hired a Korean, and for 1968-69, I was hired to teach History, Vera Krieger in English, and George Haggar, born in Lebanon, to teach Political Science.  He had published in a major PS journal.

     Back to the poetry contest of Fall 1968, both Vera and I were among the judges.  In high school, my debate partner had often partaken in dramatic readings, so I was familiar with that.  Our debate team of 4 guys had won state championship, so I was aware of oral readings.  I don't recall most of the contestants and their readings.  They were conventional.  They could have read Wordsworth or Poe or Whitman, or Keats.  The title of Val Ferdinand's poem, I can recall, but cannot place it on the blog without trouble - his title was "Nig***s In the Streets," and it was delivered with body motion, emotion, action.  After a decade of protests that grew steadily angrier and more violent, his poem and delivery struck a chord  of "relevant" a popular word of the era.  I don't recall the 3rd judge, but all 3 of us voted for Ferdinand who received the prize.

     New Orleans became the center of international news reporters when DA Jim Garrison opened the trial of Clay Shaw for conspiring to murder John Kennedy.  Haggar and I could not attend all sessions, but I drove from SUNO to the court when we had off periods, and we saw some significant testimony, like Dr. Finck from the autopsy who was ordered not to complete his probe of the entrance wound in Kennedy's back.  His testimony showed that military leaders, NOT DOCTORS, were in charge of Kennedy's autopsy.  Both Haggar and I were politically incorrect, and this added to our skepticism of the media.  Haggar informed me that the assassin of Robert Kennedy was a Palestinian, and if ever released, he would be a hero in the Middle East.  Haggar seemed to be close to Lynn French (a male), Ferdinand, and other students who tended toward activism.

     Haggar told me to be at the flag pole around 8am on the first of a month (April? 1969).

I was there when some students pulled the ropes to bring down the American flag, which they replaced with the black, red, and green of Black Nationalism, and they hoisted the new colors for the university.  They were not anti-American, but they wanted more from SUNO than a second-rate LSUNO.  Just as Du Bois who had studied at Harvard and Berlin, suddenly felt at home when he went to teach at Fisk, so the students now sought to infuse some Black culture into the new school.  To achieve this, a boycott of classes began. This n a student strike, demanding better facilities, a Black agenda, and facilities more akin to the "white" LSUNO campus.  The student boycott of classes began and lasted weeks, then into the next month.  A few students brought their rifles to the uni.  Class rooms were empty.  At one point the state police (or city police, I forget) were ordered to come on campus with loaded weapons and bring order to the university.  Perhaps 40 police with loaded weapons formed a line and began to move slowly from the grass to the buildings.  Then a line of say 60 students, perhaps 30 feet directly across  from the police line formed. 2 lines, with the Black students were Vera, me, and Haggar, and a Black Muslim young teacher.  The police moving slowly closer toward us.  The Black line beginning to grow.  Then no movement by either side.  Both sides staring at each other.  I thought then, if someone throws a rock and hits a cop, there will be blood from bullets.  Neither side is moving.  Glaring at the other.  What is going to happen?

     The police are armed, but they are in a Black university in a Black residential neighborhood.  Armed, they may be nervous. What might a thrown rock do?  After a few long minutes, the student line begins to disperse, then disappears.  The police go slowly to take over the campus.  After several more weeks, the strike was broken.  The Governor came to SUNO for the first time and promised some reforms.  (According to Haggar, the governor promised him anything he wanted if he would break the strike.  Haggar maintained, he did not lead the strike and lacked such power even if he had wanted a deal, which he did not.  But in summer 1969, one strike leader suddenly was editing a new Black newspaper, but it did not mean the governor was paying him off.  

     My promised job that summer was cancelled, and I was told I was now blacklisted.  I have no idea if it is true that I was on a blacklist, I only know I have never held another teaching post in the US since SUNO.  The talented Val Ferdinand soon headed the Free Southern Theater, changed his name to Kalamu Ya Salaam and then edited a most influential magazine, Black Collegiate for 13 years.  Haggar was deported to Canada, wrote a book praising a woman hi-jacker, changed the spelling of his name to Hajjar, and became more involved in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.  Hajjar is still academic, but defending the cause of Palestinians.   To clarify, I am pro-Israeli.  I could find no info on Vera, and as she was rather young, attractive woman, she probably married and has a new name.  I forgot the name of the young Black Muslim teacher.  We all lost our jobs with SUNO, and Ferdinand and other student activists were expelled.  In 1977 Salaam and Tom Dent, son of the former Pres. of Dillard U. in NO were on a trip to Beijing.  overnight google changed its AI, and I had trouble finding who sponsored (paid for) the the Chinese govt., or the US State Dept. or whom?) Afro poets has this about the trip: " In 1977, he was part of the first African American activist delegation to the People's Republic of China.."   I finally found the answer, the trip of some 20 Black American educators was paid for by the Chinese government.  Interestingly, on some sites, Salaam mentions 2 other universities he attended, but does not mention SUNO.  True, he was expelled, but he was a leader of a major student strike there,.  The SUNO strike never gained the national publicity as the one at Cornell U. in New York, which occurred at the same time, but the SUNO strike was certainly a major strike among Black universities.

      My main point, for a few minutes on SUNO campus, if someone had thrown a rock and hit a policeman, there could have been students wounded, then trouble for the police as they tried to leave the area, and then trouble in New Orleans  with battles between the races.  In NO, there was no shooting, no deaths.  In Leipzig and Berlin, tense situations relaxed with no killings.  In Beijing, things went differently.  But I contend, in each case, things could have turned out differently.   Hugh Murray

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 TULANE U. MURDER CASE

         by Hugh Murray

I was a freshman at TU in Sept. 1956, and took a US History class with Mr. Soule in the old barracks on Freret across from the Bursar's Office. About 80 of us jammed in the class room, built I think in WWII, and since demolished. Soule was a tough grader, only 4 of us got A's the first term. One, Tom Cramer was a member of the Unitarian Church, as was I, and he had a friend from Central America, Al Calvo. Tom, a handsome blond from Texas would run for class president, against Steve Andry?(sp) a local commuter student, as was I. Tom was in the Beta frat, but I was GDI(God damned independent), and Al was non-committal. We were not close, but they were really among the few dorm students whom I knew. I drove them around the city a little, and we went swimming in the pool in City Park – it was supposed to be closed the following year to be converted into a pool for seals to avoid racial integration (and I do not mean Navy seals).

 In May 1957 we had our final exam with Mr. Soule; I had finished early and was chatting with another student on the tiny porch of the barracks when a 3rd early finisher came out the door. He said he had just gone to see Mr. Soule in his office, but FBI agents were interviewing him. My demeanor changed, as I suspected what that was about. For the draft, I had registered as a conscientious objector, and the FBI was then investigating me. In those years, one was generally exempt for the 4 years of undergraduate school if you maintained a B average, so it was unlikely I'd be drafted for some time. Eventually I withdrew that CO registration after graduation. 

 In Sept, 1957 when fall term resumed, I received a phone call from Calvo, who had just returned to NO. He had spent part of the summer at Cramer's home in Belle Aire, a well off suburb of Houston. I was surprised and pleased by the call from Calvo. "What's up?" "I don't want to say on the phone." With those words, I knew, the FBI had been to Texas to speak with him and Tom. We saw each other for a short uneasy meeting. By then I had a policy, if they wanted to continue friendships, they would call again. I was not going to bug them and beg them. Neither Al nor Tom called me again, and I heard Al had joined the Pike (Pi Kappa Alpha) frat.

 I t was probably Monday, Sept. 29, 1958, when walking on campus I saw Calvo. Had not seen him in a year. Perhaps, I was wrong to break off a friendship when he had been kind to tell me about his Houston visitors. I decided to be super friendly as we walked. Where are you going? To my dorm. I'll go with you and catch up. I was bubly, happy to see him. He seemed distant. I kept the conversation going for about 2 blocks. He was in Zemurray or one of the dorms. We get there, and almost immediately, a frat boy who lived across, their shared bathroom, entered. Al went to him. And they held a whispered conversation in the corner. I found that rude, and could hear nothing. Then Al looked at me and said, "Would you mind leaving?" I was shocked. Well, I had tried to renew a friendship, and failed. I left. 

 A day or 2 later, all over the newspapers, 3 Tulanians were arrested on murder charges. In the dorm room, they were discussing how to dispose of the dead man's wallet. The 3 frat boys had gone to the French Quarter to “roll a queer.” One, John Farrell, had entered a gay bar, Lafitte's in Exile, and chatted up Fernando Rios, a 26-year-old tour guide from Mexico. (The daughter of an owner of that bar, had been a member of the Unitarian youth group with me for a time. She was straight and married a young man and left our group for her family.) Al and another Pike, David Drennan, waited outside that bar. Farrell guided Rios to a narrow alley between the Cabildo and St. Louis Cathedral. The other two threw a few punches against Rios, but Calvo, with powerful arms, really bashed the Mexican's face and head. Calvo also took his Wallet. When they returned to Tulane, leaving Rios lying in the alley, Calvo went to some student friends boasting that he had rolled a queer, while waving the man's wallet.

 Next day, Rios died in hospital. Tulane's Dean Stibbs and others urged the 3 to turn themselves in. Dist. Atty. Richard Dowling (the same who had come in person to Woolworth's to read us the law before arresting us in the city's first lunch-counter sit-in, soon charged the 3 with murder. Many seemed to dislike that decision, afterall, it was alleged Rios made a play for Fearrell, and the 3 were just defending their honor. One doctor reported the victim had an unusually thin skull, so why blame the 3 students for his femenin cranium? The jury took a little over 2 hours to render its verdict, NOT GUILTY. Next day's Times Picayune described the applause and cheering that greeted the decision in the courtroom that 23 January 1959. 

 Though Al had been a friend, I decided not to visit him during his case. I did not want to get involved; and was horrified by what they did. The cheering was not simply in the courtroom. By chance I was walking across the very wide Canal St. on that day. I was perhaps 9 blocks from the Mississippi. Suddenly, behind me from the river, I hear a racket. I turned to see cars exiting the French Quarter (where the courtroom was),and now discerning what they were yelling: “open season on queers,” “kill the queers.” It was an unofficial Tulane motorcade, undoubtedly headed for the university. I never saw Calvo again, and thought he returned to Panama. Others writing about the case state that all three returned to Tulane and finished their education. 

 Sometime during this era, one or 2 Tulanians took a dog to the top of a new multi-story dorm, and dropped the animal. The dog did not die, but had 4 broken legs. The dog was taken to a vet, and lived. The students who did this, were told to leave Tulane, and they did. Hurting and hurling a dog was a greater crime than killing a fruit. (I don't recall faggot ever being used in NO at that time, fruit or queer were the common terms.) And Tulane was one of the more liberal institutions in NO. 

 In 1961 Dowling was up for re-election as NO Dist. Atty. It was still a one-party town, so he had to win the Democratic Party primary. In a 5-man race, Dowling lost by 6,000 to Jim Garrison. Dowling had been criticized for charging 3 upstanding Tulane students with murder. Manslaughter perhaps, but charging murder against 3 fraternity boys for whipping a sexual deviant! Dowling seemed to be too out of touch with reality to be DA again.

Lmust add that Tulane was a liberal institution in NO in that era. 

DONALD TRUMP - CONVICTED FELON

A Democrat prosecutor in heavily Dem territory succeeded in winning a case - getting former President Trump to become a convicted felon. Using Democratic Party enacted laws, Democrat prosecutors got Martin Luther King to become a convicted felon, also. Using Democratic Party enacted segregation laws, Democrat prosecutors got many civil rights activists to become convicted felons too. This says far more about the dictatorial nature of the Democratic Party than about its victim "felons." 

By the way, I am one of the former convicted felons, arrested in the first modern sit-in in New Orleans at the large Woolworths on Canal and North Rampart Streets.  7 of us, 5 Negroes, 2 whites, from Tulane, Dillard, Xavier, and what was then called LSUNO sat in' requesting cups of coffee. We sat for hours without being served until the then DA for the city, Richard Dowling arrived, read us the law, and had us arrested.  Sit-ins had begun in February 1960 in North Carolina and spread, but none occurred in what had been the largest city of the South for a century, New Orleans  until we did it in September 1960.  We were part of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, while the adult NAACP organization in the city opposed the sit-in.  Woolworth's was across the street from the large Saenger Theater.  Years later the five aand dime store was demolished to be replaced by a Hard Rock Cafe on that property, but a fallen crane accident and death in construction led to delays.  I do not know what is on that block now.   DA Dowling lost in the next Democratic primary and was replaced by a new DA, Jim Garrison, but his first efforts were against "vice," and so there was a raid on the racially mixed Quorum Club even in 1963.  Garrison is a hero in my eyes for his daring probe into the John Kennedy assassination, but his early years were hardly liberal.

When we went to court on our sit-in case, each of us facing up to $500 in fines and a year in jail, we sat together.  When the judge arrived, he screamed at us he might hold us in contempt of clurt with additional fines) for desegregating his court room, so we 2 whites moved away from our fellow defendants and our attorneys.  With his first words, we suspected we would be found guilty.  We were.  It took some years, but eventually the 2nd New Orleans sit in, a week after ours, made it to the US Supreme Court, and the city lost its case against all of us.  I have no regrets about having been a convicted felon.---Hugh Murray

ON THE RETURN OF DAN RATHER TO CBS TELEVISION

 Newser reports that after a 2 decade hiatus, former CBS anchor of its nightly newscast, Dan Rather, will return to the network on a Sunday morning program.  He had been caught in using questionable documents to challenge the accuracy of George Bush's service in the National Guard.  I know little of that controversy, and say nothing about that.  However, what about Rather's other reportage?  Below is the comment which I just left on the Newser comment site.  Hugh Murray

Dan reported what the govt wanted. He was one of the first to meet with Zapruder and watch the film of the assassination, and Rather assured his TV audience that JFK's head went forward due to the shot to his head coming from behind. A new book by Mantik and Corsi confirms that the head shots came from the front, and that is why Jackie had to pick up a piece of her husband's brains from the back of the limo. It took the brave NO DA, Jim Garrison,  to show the by then hidden Zapruder film to a court room in New Orleans to show JFK's head moves backward, confirming the Parkland Hospital accounts that the throat wound and perhaps other wounds came from the front.

Rather reported what the govt wanted, and would readily lie to achieve its ends. US agencies worked with many reporters during the Cold War. Was Rather one, too? Rather, like the other major anchors, all promoted the Lee Oswald, lone assassin, fantasy.

And to bring that story up-to-date, during this past week at one  of the trials of former President Trump, we learn that the editor of the National Enquirer, a friend of Mr. Trump, paid some women for their stories of sex with Trump, paid big figures by the way, and then the stories were not published at all, killed, so few would hear about the claims (whether true of false).  Some probably see this as proof of Trump's guilt of something.  Or not?

Back to Dan Rather - he was one of the first to contact Zapruder, the only person in Dealy Plaza filming the motorcade when the shots rang out.  Rather reported Kennedy's head went forward during the fatal shot(s).  As I recall, the film was purchased by Time Corp. and printed in its sister picture magazine, Life.  If I recall correctly, some of the pictures were printed out of order.  This was not detected immediately, but only after people began to question the official version of the assassination.  But after that, the Zapruder film was not shown, not on the CBS, NBC, or ABC news programs.  It was like one of the stories of the women who wanted $ from Trump.  Their stories had been killed; and so had the Zapruder film.  A few illicit copies seem to have gotten out.  The first showing of the Zapruder film, real or illicit, was that shown in court by DA Jim Garrison in New Orleans during the trial of Clay Shaw.  News reporters from all over the world were covering the trial and could see the film that had been killed so the American people could not see it.  And what did they see?  Kennedy's head may have moved slightly forward, but for the fatal shot(s), Kennedy's head was thrust backward.  This is why Jackie Kennedy had to crawl atop the back trunk to scoop up some of her husband's brain - rather than her going forward to find remnants of JFK.  Did Rather lie to the American people about the film?  Because the Zapruder film showed Kennedy's head thrusting backwards, is this why it disappeared from tv until the Garrison trial?  I suspect that many of the people who decry the suppression of the stories of the women who accuse Trump, are also those who would support the govt suppression of the Zapruder film, achieved indirectly through Time, as later done indirectly through Mr Pecker at National Enquirer.

GRIST FOR THE MUELLER PROBE?

SILENT NO MORE: HOW I BECAME

A POLITICAL PRISONER OF MUELLER'S “WITCH HUNT”

(New York: Post Hill Press, 2019)

BY JEROME R. CORSI, Ph. D.

Review by Hugh Murray

Dr. Corsi's book is an account of his connection to the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller into possible Russian collusion with the Trump campaign to “steal” the election away for Democratic candidate for President, Hillary Clinton in 2016. Corsi had published various books and worked for right-wing media. One of his books contended that President Barack Obama had been born in Kenya, and was thus ineligible to be President of the United States. Clearly, Democrats were not the biggest fans of Dr. Corsi's writings.

In this book Corsi relates that the three attorneys who would interrogate him were donors to Democrats, but he does not stress that almost all of the attorneys hired by Special Counsel Mueller were Democrats and Democratic activists or contributors. Their case was that Russians hacked into the computers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the personal files of DNC Chair John Podesta, that the Russians were working with and presented the stolen material to Wikileaks spokesman Julian Assange. Assange then prepared to release these secret documents in a manner to most damage the Democrats and influence the election against Clinton. To accomplish this, a connection with the Trump campaign was established through Trump friend and supporter Roger Stone. However, the direct connection between Stone and Assange was Dr. Corsi. Corsi, thus became a pivotal player in the case for collusion alleged by the Mueller prosecution attorneys.

Corsi notes the double standards and bias of the Mueller inquiry: never probing “the millions of dollars John Podesta and Hillary Clinton had made selling U. S. military technology to Russia” (p. 83, more on 101). Corsi reminds readers that “Podesta for awhile chaired the Clinton Foundation - [which was]. . . not a charity, but instead a massive international crime syndicate that specialized in laundering third world money.”(120) But the Mueller crowd was uninterested in any crimes by the Hillary crowd. Indeed, that crowd had been given immunity.(178)

Part of this book is a technical discussion concerning which parts of the DNC computers were hacked and what information might have been gleaned from them. Unfortunately, I am no techie and am unqualified to evaluate this section of the work. However, Corsi maintains that with his background, he was able to surmise what emails Assange had, and aware of the previous escapades of the Wikileaks group, Corsi was able to deduce what emails Assange had, and that he would release them just before the election in a drip by drip manner for maximum effect upon the voters. By contrast, Mueller's team of attorneys argued that Corsi must have had direct word from Assange to know these things.

Furthermore, Corsi maintains that EVEN IF he had contact with Assange, it was no crime because he was a journalist working for WND (World Net Daily) and he cites the famous 1971 Supreme Court case maintaining that the New York Times could publish the Pentagon Papers (stolen documents) without penalty because it had not stolen them.(75, 107, 158)

The Mueller team was convinced that Corsi was lying and was the essential bridge between Assange and Roger Stone (and Trump). Lying to the FBI could result in years in prison. The Mueller attorneys offered Corsi a plea deal to avoid jail, whereby Corsi would plead guilty to one count of lying, (in effect, saying he was the intermediary between Assange and Stone) and the judge would not sentence him to prison. However, when Corsi considered the deal and its ramifications with his own attorney, he realized it would prevent him from continuing work in real estate, and in the media, and worse, it would silence him. The sentencing of him in this case might be delayed indefinitely, and if he said anything to the press that the prosecution found objectionable, then the Mueller team could thereby scrap the plea bargain and send him to prison despite the deal. Corsi decided that no deal and prison would be preferable to such a plea bargain whereby he would have to lie and declare that he was the link between Assange and Stone when this was not true and the lie would thus make matters more difficult for Stone. And Corsi would be silenced as part of the agreement, so he could not inform the media that he had not been a link between the other two principals. With the plea agreement, Corsi would lie in order that the Mueller team could then press the links between Russian hackers to Assange to Corsi to Stone to Trump and thence to impeachment. The Democrats could finally cheer – proof of collusion, Trump is an imposter President, impeach him!

Today, Paul Manafort sits in prison for doing what many other lobbyists and wheelers and dealers in Washington do. Manafort was never in the sights of the Federals until he worked for the Trump campaign. Then the partisan Mueller attorneys, and their Democratic colleagues in New York State, colluded to prosecute Manafort, while Hillary and her crowd and the Clinton Foundation fraudsters remain free.

Lying to the FBI can bring severe penalties. But with the Mueller probe, only one side is prosecuted; the other side is granted immunity, or possible charges against them ignored. By the time of the 2016 campaign, the FBI and other agencies of government were determined to prevent the election of Donald Trump. When, despite the efforts of the Deep State, Trump was elected in the traditional American way (by the Electoral College), the Deep State used the firing of FBI Director James Comey as an excuse for Deputys Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint Mueller as Special Counsel, without proper authorization or indication of a crime to be investigated. Corsi sees the results as a partisan attempt to annul the election and prepare for the impeachment of President Trump, threatening men like him with ruin unless they lie to promote the theory of Trump-Russian collusion. Corsi rejected the Mueller probe bargain, and continues to speak out. Dr. Corsi's book is an act of defiance. He will not lie to try to save himself or to satisfy his “persecutors” of the Mueller probe. We can all admire the courage of Dr. Corsi.

A personal note. Lying to the FBI can bring severe penalties. I recall being in the New Orleans Customs House Building on Canal Street around 1962 with many other young men called for induction by our draft board. A Black guy was going up to other Blacks in the large room pleading with them not to go in, not to join. An officer told him to stop, but the Black continued his arguments that the army and the US government were racist and Blacks should not serve. The officer, politely, ordered him to go to an adjoining room. He refused. The officer then ordered all the rest of us to go to another large room. We obeyed; the Black was left behind in the room with no one to appeal to.

We were told to fill out forms. One was a list of subversive organizations – had we ever been members of the Communist Party, the Ku Klux Klan and a rather list of lesser known groups. The question was not merely membership, but any connection to such organizations. I glanced down the list – whoops – I recognized one: the Jewish Culture Society. How to explain this? In August 1960 I had attended a training institute of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in Miami, with about 50 participants from throughout the nation, but most of us were Southerners. We were being trained in non-violent direct action and other procedures to use as we were expected to push to end of segregation in our home towns. Our conference was centered in a Black hotel, the Prince George. During the day, out classes and discussions occurred in the hotel's cocktail lounge, which was closed to customers until night. One day our teacher was baseball legend Jackie Robinson. 1960 was an election year and he proudly informed us he was for Richard Nixon and the Republicans. A few days later our instructor was Rev. Martin Luther King, and he told us, off-the-record, that he favored Democrat candidate John Kennedy for President. Fewer people heard King speak, because shortly before about half our group had been arrested after we held a sit-in in Shell's City's supermarket restaurant.

 Another day, we went to integrate one of the beaches. CORE must have booked a picnic table, and to try to avert trouble, a group sympathetic to integration had the table next to ours, the Jewish Culture club. It was hot, sunny, and we were on the beach and in the Atlantic (my first time). There was no trouble. Whereas most of our group were folks in the young 20s, the Jewish organization was mainly retirees, and most of them were in their 60s. I did speak to one of them about the 1948 election and the campaign of the Progressive Party, which favored integration. The Henry Wallace Progressive Party caused quite a stir in the South with Paul Robeson as his campaign chair. Bottom line, we had no trouble at the beach that day; we peacefully integrated it.

One night, we were to have a dance, but where? The hotel lounge would have been expensive, and alcohol may have been required. I don't recall, but it is possible alcohol may have been banned from the CORE conclave. I don't recall any alcohol among the CORE people during the 3-week sessions. It may have been a way to remain focused, to avoid any fights within or especially outside our group. Meanwhile, the Jewish Culture group offered us their premises and we had our dance. The elderly host group sat at tables and watched us dance, and I learned to do the “twist” for the first time. It was simply a dance, an integrated dance, with no trouble.

Back to the army form on my lap concerning the list of subversive organizations. If I lie, I faced a fine of $2,000, a huge amount at the time, and prison time. I thought about skipping the question and leaving it blank. It was only a dance. Then I remembered, many photos were taken. So I wrote on the form that I attended a dance at the Jewish Culture Club. When called before an officer to explain, he said in amazement, “But you're not even Jewish?!” Next problem on the form to explain – when the New Orleans CORE contingent departed Miami after our training and returned to the Crescent City, we began planning. About a week later I was among the seven, 5 Blacks and 2 whites, arrested in the first lunch-counter sit-in in what was still the largest city in the South in early September 1960. We were charged with a crime, and possibly more, for the judge was outraged when the 7 of us all sat together, integrating his court room. He demanded we sit according to the law or be cited with contempt of court. We obeyed, and separated by race. He also found us guilty of a felony, and we knew would remain “guilty” until our case reached the US Supreme Court, if ever did.

Earlier in 1962 I had “volunteered” for the navy. I passed several exams, but when the recruiter discovered I was guilty of a felony, he informed me that although I could be drafted, I could not volunteer for service. (Of course, in the 1960s, “volunteer” was a misnomer, for it was a way to choose the time and service one preferred, rather than wait to be drafted.)

Back to the draft into the army in the Customs House. Now, when the Army officer discovered I had been found guilty of a felony, he told me a different story. This officer said I would have to speak to the FBI man before I could be inducted, but I would have to wait because he was then talking to the Black Muslim in the other room. When I got to speak to the FBI agent, I was told that because of the seriousness of the charge, he would have to speak with the District Attorney, and request that he drop the charges first in order that I could be inducted. Because that might take weeks, I was told to go home and await word. Although I did not travel from the Customs House in New Orleans to Fort Chaffee in Arkansas that day, I was allowed to keep the boxed chicken. Weeks went by. Apparently, the newly elected DA, Jim Garrison, refused to drop the sit-in felony charges. I was not inducted. But I would be interviewed again by the FBI on 26 November 1963.

A TRAIL WORTH TAKING

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

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

By JIM GARRISON

Rev. by Hugh Murray

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By FRANK PEREZ and JEFFREY PALMQUIST

Rev. by Hugh Murray

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mafia-CIA assassination plots -- MAFCIA

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF THE JFK ASSASSINATION…

(Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2013) by LAMAR WALDRON

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            The main objection to the theory that the Mafia planned the assassination of President Kennedy has always been that it would not have had the power to cover-up its role in the murder.  Nor would it have had the ability to control, curtail, and compromise the autopsy, to bamboozle all the media, to intimidate witnesses speaking to FBI agents, and to appoint a blue-ribbon commission that would issue a report with 26 volumes of documentary support, purporting to prove that the assassin was a lone-nut, never once mentioning the Mafia!

Because the Mafia clearly lacked such power, either the Warren Commission was correct in attributing the assassination to Oswald, or the cover-up and murder, were conducted by higher-ups in the US Government – like Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, the FBI, etc.    Or, it was the work of Fidel Castro and/or the Soviets.  Were that the case, the demand by the American public for retaliation would press our leaders to launch a large-scale invasion of Cuba, which could unleash World War III.  To prevent nuclear war, American leaders chose to cover up the evidence of Communist conspiracy that culminated in Dallas.  The American leaders chose cover-ups and deception in preference to the truth and nuclear war.

Waldron’s purpose is to remove the chief obstacles to the view that the Mafia conspiracy resulted in the assassination of Jack Kennedy.  Waldron notes that in the last days of the Eisenhower Administration, CIA and Mafia links were forged in plots to overthrow and assassinate the radical Fidel Castro in Cuba.  With the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion in spring 1961, however, the newly inaugurated President Kennedy believed he had been misled by the CIA and proceeded to fire its leader, Allen Dulles.  Many Cuban exiles blamed Kennedy for the failure of that mission because Kennedy had refused to support the landing with major air, and if necessary, American land support.

The Missile Crisis of the fall of 1962 nudged the world to the edge of nuclear war.  Though some assumed there had been a “no invasion” pledge as part of the settlement, Waldron asserts that because Castro rejected inspection on Cuban soil, the no-invasion pledge  was inoperative.  Moreover, Kennedy ordered a halt to any American CIA collaboration with the Mafia, in part because his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy was leading the prosecution of organized crime, and had even used some extra-legal tactics to deport New Orleans Mafia leader, Carlos Marcello.  Nevertheless, Pres. Kennedy still authorized clandestine plots to kill Castro, while simultaneously allowing top secret negotiations with the Castro regime to come to some accommodation.  But if no progress in those negotiations were evident by the end of November 1963, Pres. Kennedy decided to aid a coup in Cuba staged by Gen. Juan Almeida, the head of the Cuban army and the number three official under Castro.  In this coup, Fidel would be assassinated, and Almeida’s new government would request military intervention from the US to complete the counter-revolution.  The working date for that operation was 1 December 1963.

Unbeknownst to Kennedy and his new CIA leader, John McCone, however, the CIA’s Director of Planning Operations, Richard Helms, now held the highest operational post in the agency.  Helms knew of the previous CIA-Mafia collaboration toward eliminating Castro, and he ignored Kennedy’s demand to cut ties with the Mafia.  Instead, those earlier ties were retained and solidified between some CIA operatives and Mafia organizations in Florida (led by Santo Trafficante), Chicago (represented by Johnny Rosselli), and New Orleans (led by Marcello once he made it back to the US, probably flown in by pilot David Ferrie).

By linking the government approved assassination plots to kill Castro, with its own plots to kill Kennedy, the Mafia would make it impossible to unravel the truth without exposing the US government’s own deadly secrets to the American people, AND exposing General Almeida in Cuba to the wrath of Fidel.  Moreover, if the Mafia plot were successful, it could then plant false information implicating Castro as the culprit.  This might lead to calls for invasion of Cuba, Soviet retaliation, and WWIII.  The US government would then find it necessary to avoid war by covering up what really occurred in Dallas.  Thus, the cover-up was not conducted by the Mafia, but by innocent American leaders bent upon avoiding atomic war: President Lyndon Johnson, Chief Justice Earl Warren, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, et al.

Waldron uses information garnered from tapes recorded for the FBI when Mafia chief Marcello was imprisoned; he confessed his role in the Kennedy assassination to a fellow inmate who was wearing a wire.  The information was not released when originally recorded, nor in 1986 when the FBI operation concluded, nor in 1992 when the Congress passed the JFK Assassination Records Act.  In 1998, the FBI released the information, but it was buried in a flood of less important documents released at the same time.  Waldron’s own research found the confessions in 2006 and in this book he makes an impressive case.  Waldron asserts that the Mafia planned the assassination with plots in at least three cities that Kennedy would visit in the fall of 1963, and in each, a Lee Oswald-type patsy had been selected to deflect suspicion from the real killers.  Chicago, Tampa-Miami, and Dallas were the three sites that Kennedy would visit where Mafia hit men were imported to crush Camelot.  Waldron also refers to confessions by other Mafia leaders, including Trafficante, and Rosselli.  Waldron is good at reminding readers of how, when Congress reinvestigated the Kennedy murder, several Mafioso leaders were killed in most brutal fashions the day before they were to testify.  In addition, the wealthy white Russian who befriended the poor, “Marxist” Oswald in Dallas, George de Mohrenschildt, commited suicide the day before his scheduled testimony.  Waldron reminds readers of the number of “coincidental” deaths when Congress reinvestigated the events in Dallas.

Waldron provided an excellent time-line studded with provocative tidbits of information.  Thus, we learn that during the height of the Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962, Oswald, the “defector” to the USSR married to a Russian, gets a job in Dallas with a corporation performing sensitive photographic work for the US government, such as interpreting pictures of Cuban missile movements. (154)  Furthermore, despite his “defection”  and his later distribution of Fair Play for Cuba leaflets, Oswald was never placed on the FBI’s Security Index.(250, 258)  Another item to ponder: Waldron reveals that both Jack Ruby and Gen. Edwin Walker (the right-wing general whom Oswald allegedly shot at) were closeted homosexuals.(174)  Of course, one could argue that in the 1960s almost all gays were closeted.  In that era, if a man were openly homosexual, “out,” he was either “in” prison or “in” a mental institution.  Waldron also mentions the story of J. Edgar’s alleged arrest for homosexuality.(231)  Yet, Clay Shaw is barely mentioned in the book.

Before engaging in a general critique of the book, I shall point out some minor errors.  Louisiana Congressman Hale Boggs, father of ABC and NPR commentator Cokie Roberts, was a US Representative, not a Senator.(31)  Boggs WAS a member of the Warren Commission, but Louisiana Sen. Russell Long was NOT.(146)  Also, Waldron asserts that “there were only two time periods when Oswald could have worked for Marcello as a runner: one in late April or early May 1963…and the other in late July, August, and …September 1963,…”(181-82)  But Oswald might have worked for Marcello much earlier, when he was a teenager living in New Orleans.

I disagree with Waldron’s assessment that the investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison hindered the investigation by mainstream media of the Kennedy assassination.(15)  Though the jury quickly found Clay Shaw not guilty of conspiring to kill JFK, they told local reporters that they were convinced that JFK was a victim of a conspiracy.  Garrison’s prosecution showed the Zapruder film in the courtroom, eventually unwrapping it for all to see how Kennedy’s head moved to the back and left when struck by the fatal shot.  Under oath Dr. Pierre Finck described how doctors in Bethesda followed military orders at the expense of providing Kennedy a thorough autopsy.  If the national media were hostile to Garrison, not all of the local outlets were so biased.  Thus, when local news reporters pressed Atty. Dean Andrews (a Marcello atty., according to Waldron) after he was indicted by Garrison for perjury, Andrews initially sought to evade the reporter’s questions.  Finally he blurted out, “If they can kill the President, they can squash me like a roach.”  These are but a few of the revelations that were a consequence of Garrison’s courage in challenging the Federal Government’s narrative about the assassination.

At the outset of Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw, the Federal Government openly intervened to obstruct.  US Attorney General Ramsey Clark announced that the Feds had already investigated Shaw and concluded he had nothing to do with the assassination!  When was this investigation?  Who investigated?  Why did they investigate Shaw?  The Feds did everything possible to obstruct the Garrison prosecution, so that crucial witnesses could flee Louisiana, and governors like Ronald Reagan of California and James Rhodes of Ohio, after consulting with federal officials, simply refused to extradite important witnesses like Gordon Novel.  How could any DA win a case under such circumstances?

Even Waldron concedes, “Recently released FBI files show that in the late spring of 1967, Garrison twice privately considered indicting Marcello for the assassination of JFK but decided not to.”(458)  Waldron’s thesis is that Marcello was guilty of the murder, and yet he claims that the only official who contemplated charging Marcello with that crime, simply hindered mainstream media investigations!  Were those recently released FBI files that Waldron refers to intended to facilitate DA Garrison probe?  Or to sabotage it?  And had Garrison charged Marcello with killing Kennedy, would the mass media have been any more sympathetic to Garrison?

Waldron includes a most salient paragraph: “…declassified files now show that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and CIA Director Richard Helms immediately began a significant public relation counteroffensive, issuing detailed instruction on how to smear critics of the Warren Report.  For example, in a January 4, 1967, CIA memo in which the Agency gives 53-pages of specific instructions on how to counter the growing tide of books and articles questioning the ‘lone-nut’ conclusion…In many ways, those PR counteroffensives by the FBI and CIA would last for decades, and some writers make the case that they continue even today.”(14-15)

Garrison failed to convict Clay Shaw.  I would contend because of the hostility of the Feds, there is no way Garrison could have convicted Marcello either.  The national, main-stream media followed the marching orders of the federal government – orders issued softly through their agency operatives and friends.

Important in the “get Garrison” media campaign was journalist Walter Sheridan.  Waldron maintains Sheridan was sent to New Orleans by Robert Kennedy.  Why would Robert Kennedy seek to destroy a DA who at least considered charging Carlos Marcello, arch-nemesis of the Kennedys?  And was Robert really the dominant figure in the autopsy of his brother at Bethesda, as maintained by Waldron?(399-401)

Because the thrust of Waldron’s book is assassination by the Mafia, he mentions the murder of Guatemalan leader Castillo Armas in July 1957 by a “lone Communist” assassin, who then killed himself with the same weapon used to kill Armas.  But there were rumors at the time that Armas had run afoul of the Mafia, and Rosselli was then in Guatemala.(94)  Shortly after the Bay of Pigs, the strong man of the Dominican Republic, Rafael Trujillo was assassinated in what Waldron calls a gangland-type murder.(145)  And since Waldron explicated MafCia assassinations, he might have expanded his all-to-brief accounts of two other assassination, even if the Mafia had nothing to do with them:  – 1) the assassination of the Prime Minister in the newly independent Congo, Patrice Lumumba on 17 January 1961 (p. 136, though his name is misspelt in Waldron’s index); and  - 2) the assassination of South Viet Nam’s Ngo Dinh Diem on 2 November 1963.(303)  With Waldron’s slight treatment of the latter, he evades speculation on the CIA’s role in that murder and its effect on future American policy in Vietnam and any connection between Diem’s demise may have had on events in Dallas.  Because Waldron’s thesis is that the Mafia had to blur the lines between two plots, an anti-Castro one in league with the CIA, and the one targeting JFK, he might have elaborated more on the CIA practices.

There are anomalies in Waldron’s work.  On the one hand, we read that: “The [New Orleans police lieutenant who talked to Oswald after his arrest with the FPCC in NO] also said that Oswald ‘liked the President,’ a sentiment shared by most people who ever heard Oswald mention JFK;”(251) and :”…It’s important to keep in mind that others such as  Anthony Summers have documented that ‘nobody has ever made the flimsiest allegation that the authentic Lee Oswald had anything but good to say about John Kennedy’  This is true of Oswald’s interrogations, his media appearances, and his private talks.”(338)

On the other hand, Waldron also reports that:  “The head of the Ku Klux Klan told veteran newspaper report and editor Patsy Sims that he had met with Oswald in Atlanta.  In her definitive history of the Klan, Sims writes that ‘one of her sources told her that Oswald, in the summer of 1963, had called on [Klan] Imperial Wizard James Venable in his office in Atlanta seeking the names of right-wing associates.  Venable confirmed [to Sims] that he was fairly sure that Oswald had been there for that purpose.’  Oswald indicated to Venable that he was on his way to Chicago.  Klan leader Venable made his statement to Sims in the 1980s and it is difficult to see why Venable would make up an Oswald encounter since it tended to link Oswald with ‘right-wing associates,’ thus potentially giving the FBI reason to interview or investigate them.”

“In the 1960s, Klan leader Venable was close to an associate of Guy Banister, white supremacist Joseph Milteer, who lived in Georgia…”(286)

If this meeting did occur, it may have had more to do with the Banister-, Milteer-, far-right plot than about Oswald’s personal opinion of Kennedy.  Oswald may have simply been following Banister’s instructions, as he had done when pretending to be a Castro-sympathizer handing out FPCC leaflets.

A related question: what was the connection between the Mafia and the racist, far-right?  Clearly, some Cubans who had fled Castro’s far-left oppression in Cuba, may have felt more comfortable with right end of the political spectrum.  The KKK certainly inhabits that end.  Milteer, who was taped predicting the assassination prior to events in Dallas, and then gloating about them, was clearly far-right.  So did Milteer, who prediction of, and later gloating over, the assassination was tape-recorded.  Moreover, Milteer declared that the conspiracy to kill Kennedy originated in New Orleans, backed by considerable sums, not all donated by right-wingers.  Milteer mentioned only one Louisiana politician (311), but Waldron does not reveal that name.  I will go on a limb to say that I suspect the politician was the leader of Louisiana’s Plaquemines Parish (county), Judge Leander Perez.

In 1952 when Judge Perez decided to endorse the Republican ticket of Eisenhower and Nixon for President, Plaquemines Parish voted over 93% for the Republicans – the highest percentage of any county in the entire nation.(Glen Jeansonne, Leander Perez: Boss of the Delta, p. 194)  In November 1960 when courts ordered desegregation of two New Orleans schools, Perez urged defiance, and allowed whites to escape their integrated school by attending schools in neighboring St. Bernard Parish (also Perez=dominated).  In 1961 CORE began its Freedom Rides, where CORE members on buses attempted to integrate bus stations from Washington, DC, to New Orleans.  Most were stopped by brutal mobs or arresting police, and one bus was burnt.  This made national and international headlines.  It was rumored (not Jeansonne’s biography, but my memory is the source for the rest of this paragraph – HM) that Perez then induced George Lincoln Rockwell to travel from his base in Virginia through the same route as the Greyhound buses to New Orleans on his “hate bus.”  Rockwell was leader of the American Nazi Party.  Before entering New Orleans, local police demanded that he cover some of the signs that decorated his van – “Kill Commies, Queers, and Jews!”  When in May 1961 Rockwell and some of his uniformed crew were arrested for picketing the film “Exodus,” there were rumors that Guy Banister, a one-time Acting Superintendent of the NO Police, paid his bail.  When Judge Perez went to the Hotel Roosevelt’s Blue Room (possibly the premier NO night spot at that time), Ted Lewis was performing.  One of his signature acts was to sing “Me and My Shadow,” while a Black dancer in black clothing danced as his shadow.  The judge was not happy with this integrated entertainment.  Perhaps he was aware that Ted Lewis had been born, Theodore Friedman.  To express his displeasure, the judge purposely broke glasses where the shadow was to step, causing the Black to cut his foot.  In the spring of 1969 Judge Perez passed on.  In Plaquemines Parish, two young Black men entered a store and announced they wanted to purchase liquor to celebrate the death of the Judge.  They were quickly arrested and sentenced to 6 month’s hard labor.  After serving only a few months, the NAACP succeeded in curtailing the sentence.

Why would Marcello have a low-level racial extremist like Milteer aware of the plot to kill Kennedy if this were merely a Mafia operation?  Does this make sense?

Let me describe several incidents related to the question I just posed.  It is truly amazing how different our relatives can be from each other and from ourselves.  By the late 1950s I had become an integrationist in my native New Orleans.  This amounted to little more than speaking in favor of the idea in high school and then college.  That changed in September 1960 when I was among the seven arrested in the first lunch-counter sit-in in New Orleans.  It occurred at the large Woolworth’s on Canal and Rampart Streets.  When my father heard of the sit-in in progress, he left work to try to get me away.  Police had cordoned off the counter area, and would not allow anyone to pass.  With our arrests, and our names on p. 1 of the local paper and on national TV (we did not see it as we were still in jail), it was now clear to all that I was a nlover.  Although I moved from my parents’ home so as not to endanger them, it did not matter.  They received phone calls in the middle of the night, threatening to bomb the home.  Thank God we had no restrictive gun control laws back then.  My father easily borrowed a gun and bullets from a co-worker.  After a few months, the spotlight of hatred moved to the other end of the city, for in November Perez and others were instigating resistance to the court-ordered desegregation of two public schools.  I was suddenly old news.  My dad felt safe enough to return the gun.  Upon getting it back, his co-worker asked my father, “Why did you borrow so many bullets?  Only one would have done the job.”  I was not very popular.

But one relative sought to help, - my crazy uncle.  Of course, he probably thought of me as his crazy nephew.  After my arrest with CORE for integration, my uncle sought to restore honor to the family, by sending money to George Lincoln Rockwell’s organization.  As a young child I once overheard him moaning over some beers, “Oh, if only Hitler had won.”  My uncle had been in the merchant marine and had risked his life during WWII to get supplies to the nations fighting against the Axis.  But he did not agree with FDR’s foreign policy.  Meanwhile, I had been convicted of a felony (the sit-in), and was trying to survive.  I certainly was not seeking another arrest, but I did continue to participate in various demos throughout the 1960s, any one of which might result in an arrest.  Finally, in 1969 my car was followed by a police helicopter, and when I let a passenger out of the auto, he was immediately arrested.  I decided then it was time to leave my native city.

I would occasionally see that uncle when he visited my parents.  He had a special greeting for me, “How are the burr heads doing?”  This would rile me a little, but I knew him well enough just to roll my eyes.  Sometimes he would speak with my dad, but sometimes he would address me, “Oh, that Bobby!  They’re gonna get that Bobby!”  He was referring to Atty. Gen Robert Kennedy who seemed to be pushing integration.  I just tried to ignore him.

After a few years, I moved back with my parents and got a job teaching 5^th grade in a new, private school.  Around lunch one day, Mrs. Flagg, another 5^th grade teacher called me to her class room across the hall.  Hers was enjoying a free period for lunch, and one of her pupils had brought in a new item, a transistor radio.  She told me to listen.  Most of her class was playing, making lots of noise, while she and I craned our necks above the 10-year-old and his radio.  I heard the main points, but could not leave my class unattended for long.

When I returned to my class, I informed them that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.  The class cheered.  I was stunned.  One girl placed her head on the table and cried.  She was the exception.  That was November 1963.  Sometime after that, probably early 1964, I again encountered my uncle.  “What did I tell you, huh?  What did I tell you?”  Honestly, I had no idea what he was talking about.  Then he became more explicit, “Didn’t I tell you they were going to get him?”  Suddenly, shocked, I realized what he was referring to.  Now, I tried a counter.  “But you said they were going to get Bobby!”  “Well, they got the other one instead.”  This time, exasperated, I finally asked, “Who is this ‘they’ you keep talking about?”  He quickly responded, “The mob out in the parish.”  By the mob, he meant Marcello; by “out in the parish,” he meant Jefferson Parish.  When he said this, my parents resided one block from the Airline Highway and the Church with the Neon Bible.  We were only a few blocks from Jefferson Parish and Marcello’s office in the Town and Country Motel.  My uncle’s response simply confirmed my view that my uncle was crazy.  Who in early 1964 was linking Carlos Marcello to the Kennedy assassination?  This sounded ever more absurd.  When he said this, I had already earned a BA and an MA from Tulane University.  My uncle had finished 5^rd grade.  I was a scholar.  He drove a taxi.  It was easy to dismiss his ravings.  But years later I could only wonder, were they really ravings?  Or was I too arrogant to accept information when it was handed to me?

Despite the occasional repetition and lack of footnotes, and a few minor errors, Waldron has written a book that will be difficult to ignore.