Authors: Lamar Waldron
His colleague Rolando Masferrer couldn’t help, since he was still in
legal hot water over his failed Haiti invasion. Their mutual partner in
smuggling and the drug trade, Santo Trafficante, would not tolerate del
Valle’s becoming the focus of the same type of publicity now plaguing
del Valle’s old friend David Ferrie. If the Cuban reports are true about
del Valle being involved in JFK’s assassination with Herminio Diaz, then
Trafficante couldn’t let del Valle be found, let alone interviewed.28
Chapter Thirty-two
President Johnson, Richard Helms, and Bobby Kennedy had very differ-
ent reactions to the news coming out of New Orleans about Garrison and
Ferrie. On February 18, the day after the news broke, LBJ called Acting
Attorney General Ramsey Clark to discuss Garrison and the story he’d
heard earlier from Drew Pearson. Clark had talked to one of Hoover’s
top aides about the Garrison story the previous day, but LBJ seemed
much more interested in talking about Drew Pearson’s story from Ed
Morgan, whom LBJ described as “Hoffa’s lawyer.” LBJ said the story
was about “a man brought into the CIA with a number of others and
instructed by the CIA and the Attorney General [Bobby Kennedy] to
assassinate Castro.” The news from New Orleans now made LBJ take
the story more seriously.1
At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the public identification of
Ferrie hit Richard Helms hard. A former executive assistant to the CIA’s
Deputy Director told Anthony Summers “he observed consternation on
the part of then CIA Director Richard Helms and other senior officials
when Ferrie’s name was first publicly linked with the assassination in
1967 . . . and was told ‘Ferrie had been a contract agent to the Agency
in the early sixties and had been involved in some of the Cuban activi-
ties.’”2 In an earlier interview, the former executive assistant allegedly
said, “Helms stated that David Ferrie was a CIA agent and that he was
still an agent at the time of the assassination.”3 Helms no doubt started
taking steps to contain the situation and spin the news coming out of
New Orleans, using the CIA’s extensive media assets as well as his per-
sonal high-level media connections.
Helms’s career was finished if the Garrison investigation, or the media
coverage of it, exposed his unauthorized attempts to eliminate Fidel, or
any ties between CIA operations and JFK’s murder. There were only a
few staff members in the CIA who knew those secrets, and to whom
Helms could turn for help and advice. In late February 1967, Desmond
FitzGerald was still the Deputy Director for Plans, though his health
and energy continued to decline. David Morales was on temporary
assignment in South America, before joining Ted Shackley in Laos. The
increasingly alcoholic William Harvey had recently been recalled from
Rome, due to his erratic behavior, and given a make-work project at
CIA headquarters.4 David Atlee Phillips was good with the press, but
was still the Station Chief in the Dominican Republic. One of the few
CIA insiders Helms could turn to for advice and spin control with the
press and publishers was E. Howard Hunt. Because of Hunt’s activities
such as forming the Cuban Revolutionary Council, whose New Orleans
branch had been involved with Ferrie, Hunt had just as much to lose as
Helms if Garrison’s investigation exposed Agency secrets.
While Bobby Kennedy shared some of Helms’s desire to make sure
the authorized 1963 plots to topple Fidel weren’t exposed, Bobby also
wanted to learn the full story behind his brother’s murder. In late Feb-
ruary and early March 1967, Bobby helped to launch two private inves-
tigations by his close associates, and monitored at least two more. One
investigation covered the assassination in general, while three focused
on Garrison, including one that would help to torpedo Garrison’s inves-
tigation in the eyes of the public.
Ed Guthman, Bobby’s former press aide at the Justice Department,
who had since become a top editor at the
Los Angeles Times
, conducted
one investigation. Guthman told author David Talbot he decided on his
own to cover the Garrison affair, and assigned five reporters to cover
the story. Guthman even traveled to New Orleans himself, but they all
“concluded there was nothing to it.” Guthman says Bobby “wanted to
know what we had found out and I told him . . . my feeling was that it
was possible [there was a conspiracy], but with Garrison, the evidence
wasn’t there.”5
In 1967, former JFK special envoy William Attwood was
editor-in-chief of
Look
magazine,
Life
’s chief rival. According to Talbot,
after a meeting with Garrison in New York, Attwood “intended to throw
the weight of
Look
. . . behind Garrison’s investigation. He strongly
encouraged [Bobby] Kennedy to commit himself to reopening the case.
In response, Bobby told Attwood that he agreed his brother had been
the victim of a conspiracy. ‘But I can’t do anything until we get control
of the White House,’ Kennedy told him.” However, Attwood had a heart
attack soon after talking to Bobby, and Garrison’s investigation had
already fallen into disarray when he returned to
Look
three months later.
It would be five years before Attwood began an investigation that would
finally expose Michel Victor Mertz in the American press, though as a
heroin kingpin, not as part of JFK’s assassination.6
In addition to monitoring Guthman’s and Attwood’s efforts, Bobby
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
launched two investigations of his own, apparently in hopes of using
the information once he became president. Bobby knew that coming
out publicly in favor of a conspiracy prematurely, before clear evidence
to substantiate it, could damage his reputation and possibly give Hoffa
the ammunition he needed to avoid prison. It could also ruin Bobby’s
chances of ever occupying the White House, which he considered cru-
cial for bringing any of JFK’s assassins to justice. That meant that any
investigation Bobby conducted before he was president would have to
be done secretly, in a deniable fashion.
One of the trusted people Bobby turned to was Frank Mankiewicz,
a journalist and attorney who in 1967 was Bobby’s press aide. Shortly
after the Garrison case became national news, Bobby told Mankiewicz,
“I want you to look into this, read everything you can, so if it gets to a
point where I can do something about this, you can tell me what I need
to know.”7
After reading all the books and articles he could get his hands on, and
meeting with JFK researchers, Mankiewicz came close to uncovering
the truth. He told David Talbot he “came to the conclusion that there
was some sort of conspiracy, probably involving the mob, anti-Castro
Cuban exiles, and maybe rogue CIA agents.” However, when he tried
to tell Bobby, “it was like he just couldn’t focus on it. He’d get this look
of pain, or more like numbness, on his face. It just tore him apart.”
What Mankiewicz probably didn’t realize was that Bobby himself had
come to a similar conclusion within days, even hours, of JFK’s murder.
Bobby withheld crucial information from Mankiewicz about his early
suspicions and how they were linked to the JFK-Almeida coup plan.
Also, as we’ll see shortly, by the time Mankiewicz tried to give Bobby
his conclusion, Bobby had new reasons to fear that too much about JFK’s
murder would come out too soon.8
Soon after Garrison’s claims became public, while Mankiewicz was
just beginning his investigation, another of Bobby’s most trusted and
experienced aides went to New Orleans to dig into the matter. It was
Walter Sheridan, former head of the Get Hoffa Squad that had sent the
Teamster leader to prison. What Sheridan did for Bobby in 1967 wasn’t
new. Sheridan’s widow told David Talbot that her husband had helped
Bobby look into JFK’s murder before, and that they “continued work-
ing on the case even after Bobby left the Justice Department. The two of
them would sometimes go back to the Justice Department to look over
evidence together.” However, Sheridan left the Justice Department in
1965 to work for NBC News as a producer and investigator. His widow
said “the only thing Walter wouldn’t do for NBC was to investigate
the assassination,” because that was something he and Bobby would
only do together. Once the news about Garrison and Ferrie broke, they
finally had the chance. Sheridan could go to New Orleans on behalf of
NBC News, without appearing to work directly for Bobby Kennedy.9
Talbot writes that Sheridan “began feeding [Bobby] information about
[NBC’s] investigation,” one of several developments that would soon
have a huge impact on Garrison’s efforts.10
Perhaps the biggest turning point in Garrison’s investigation came on
February 21, 1967, when David Ferrie was released from protective
custody. Ferrie had been at the Fontainebleau Hotel (where Trafficante
often stayed), while Garrison weighed whether or not to charge him.
Many have speculated about the reason for Ferrie’s release, with some
authors saying it was designed to scare Ferrie and prod him into turn-
ing on other conspirators. Even before the public learned of Garrison’s
investigation, the DA had told staff members that “Ferrie [was] talk-
ing about not having long to live.” Ferrie was quoted as telling one of
Garrison’s investigators, “I’m a dead man,” and his emotional condition
declined rapidly under the stress.11 It’s also possible that Garrison saw
releasing Ferrie from protection as the only way to get him to turn on
Marcello.
Garrison’s detractors point to problems with that scenario, since Ferrie
was not placed under round-the-clock surveillance after his release, as
he reportedly had been earlier. There were also reports that Garrison
no longer saw Ferrie as important, and that his investigation had hit a
dead end.
On the day of Ferrie’s release, the
New York Times
ran an article picked
up by other newspapers, in which Garrison said that because his inves-
tigation had been prematurely publicized, “arrests . . . are [now] most
certainly months away.” A Garrison staff member hinted at one New
Orleans suspect in particular to the
Times
, but wouldn’t name him.
According to the
Times
, “one of the lawyers who served on the staff of
the Warren Commission . . . said that the FBI had accumulated a ‘great
stack’ of data on the alleged New Orleans suspect, and that the infor-
mation indicated that the man had not seen Oswald in the months just
before the assassination and had not been a part of any conspiracy.” The
Times
also noted Garrison’s connection to
Life
magazine, and observed
that CBS News’ Mike Wallace had been talking to Garrison for about
“two weeks” regarding a CBS special on JFK’s assassination. That meant
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
Garrison had been holding discussions with CBS even before his inves-
tigation was made public.12
In some newspapers, the
Times
article was headlined “JFK Death Link
to Anti-Castro Plot Weighed,” since the story told of a theory held by
Garrison: “[that] President Kennedy’s assassination grew out of a plot
by anti-Communist forces to kill Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba. . . . The
conspirators planned to send Lee Harvey Oswald to Cuba to kill Castro,
and later decided to go after President Kennedy.” This theory actually
contained a few kernels of truth. Equally surprising, the Warren Com-
mission staff attorney whom the
Times
consulted indicated that “the
anti-Castro theory [was not] new,” though the Warren Report mentions
no theory describing Oswald as part of a plot to assassinate Castro.
Garrison’s theory, coupled with his focus on David Ferrie and Eladio
del Valle, would have allowed Garrison to make real progress if he had
been willing to investigate their bosses at the time of the assassination,
Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante.
But everything changed on the morning of February 22, 1967, when
David Ferrie’s dead body was found at his home at 11:40 AM. The
unusual circumstances surrounding Ferrie’s death created a new fire-
storm of publicity, which Garrison played to the hilt. Garrison wrote
that near Ferrie’s body were “two typed suicide notes,” and Ferrie’s
“signature on each note was also typed.” One said, “To leave this life is,
for me, a sweet prospect.” The New Orleans coroner first determined
that Ferrie’s death must have occurred the previous evening. However,
he had to change his finding after
Washington Post
reporter George Lard-
ner revealed that he had interviewed Ferrie from midnight to 4:00 AM.
The coroner determined the cause of death to be a brain aneurysm that
caused a fatal cerebral hemorrhage. Essentially, David Ferrie had died