Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (48 page)

However, that was not to be the last contact between Oswald and the
Bureau. After arriving in New Orleans in the spring of 1963, Oswald
became the object of yet another security investigation by the FBI. This
time the special agent in charge of Oswald's file was Milton R. Kaack,
who prepared a detailed report dated October 31, 1963, on Oswald, his
background, and his New Orleans activities.

But the strangest contact between Oswald and the Bureau came on
August 10, 1963, the day after his arrest for disturbing the peace while
handing out Fair Play for Cuba Committee leaflets on a New Orleans street
corner.

It seems utterly outlandish that a man who had tried to defect to Russia
and was a self-confessed pro-Marxist should request to see an FBI agent
after being arrested in connection with pro-Castro activities-but that is
exactly what Oswald did. This contact with the FBI, initiated by Oswald,
has caused many people-not the least of whom were Warren Commission
members-to speculate on whether Oswald might indeed have been acting
as an informant for the FBI.

Traces of intelligence work appear in the activities of Lee Harvey
Oswald while in the Marines and in Russia.

If Oswald indeed participated in spy work, particularly for the United
States, it was most likely known to the FBI. And what better prospect to
recruit as an informant than an experienced American agent with a
procommunist background or "cover"?

The day after Oswald's arrest in New Orleans for disturbing the peace
was a Saturday, hardly a time for a quick FBI response to the request of a
police prisoner jailed for a minor infraction. Yet Special Agent John Quigley soon arrived at the New Orleans police station and met with
Oswald for an hour and a half.

The five-page report of that meeting written by Quigley reads like a
comprehensive report on the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Oswald gave
the agent background information on himself, then detailed his activities
since coming to New Orleans, including his attempt to form a Fair Play for
Cuba Committee chapter and the squabble between Oswald and anti-Castro
Cubans.

Quigley, who told the Warren Commission had had never heard of
Oswald until that Saturday, had a faulty memory. He later admitted that on
April 18, 1961, he had reviewed Oswald's Navy file at the nearby U.S.
Naval Air Station in Algiers, Louisiana, at the request of the Dallas FBI
office.

Quigley could give the commission no reason why Oswald had wanted
to see an FBI agent in 1963, but an FBI document released in 1977 may
give a clue. There Quigley reports being contacted by a New Orleans
police intelligence officer who "said that Oswald was desirous of seeing
an agent and supplying to him information with regard to his activities
with the FPCC in New Orleans." Again this statement, along with the
detailed description Oswald gave of his activities, seems to indicate that
Oswald was trying to make some sort of report. In this "report," Oswald
continually mentions the fictitious head of the New Orleans FPCC, A. J.
Hidell, saying that he had talked with him several times by telephone but
had never met him. Asked for Hidell's number, Oswald said he couldn't
remember it.

In all, at least ten FBI agents filed affidavits with the Warren Commission stating unequivocally that Lee Harvey Oswald was never an informant
for the Bureau. Could they have said the same for "Harvey Lee Oswald,"
or "A. J. Hidell"? During his Warren Commission testimony, Quigley
made an odd slip of the tongue, referring to Oswald as "Harvey Lee
Oswald" until corrected by Assistant Counsel Samuel Stern. It is well
known that FBI informants, and even agents themselves, often use code,
or cover names.

It is interesting to note that J. Gordon Shanklin and Kyle G. Clark, the
FBI supervisors in the Dallas office, only mentioned the fact that no
payment was made to Oswald for information in their affidavits. They did
not specifically deny knowledge of Oswald as an informant, as had the
other agents in their affidavits.

Other circumstances of Oswald's New Orleans stay also indicate the
possibility of a relationship with the FBI. In 1975, a New Orleans bar
owner, Orest Pena, claimed to have seen Oswald in his Habana Bar in the
company of both Cubans and FBI Agent Warren De Brueys.

Pena, himself an FBI informant and a Cuban exile associated with the
CIA-backed Cuban Revolutionary Council, said he remembered Oswald as
a man who came into his bar with a Cuban and ordered a lemonade, then vomited it up. He said he saw Oswald together with De Brueys and other
"government agents" on several occasions.

Pena also said about ten days before he was to testify before the Warren
Commission, De Brueys threatened him, saying: "If you ever talk anything about me, I will get rid-I'll get rid of your ass."

Pena added that Commission staff counsel Wesley J. Liebeler did not let
him speak freely, so he decided to keep his mouth shut.

Agent De Brueys denied both allegations and the House Select Committee on Assassinations chose to believe him.

Then there is the strange story of William S. Walter, who served as a
security clerk for the New Orleans FBI office in 1963. Like CIA paymaster James Wilcott, Walter was a minor functionary who claims to have
seen the wrong things. When he tried to tell what he knew, he found
himself facing an official stone wall. Testifying to the House Select
Committee on Assassinations, Walter said he was on duty the day that
Quigley interviewed Oswald in the New Orleans Police Station. He said,
in response to Quigley's request for a file check on Oswald that day, he
found that the New Orleans FBI office maintained both a security and an
informant file on Oswald. However, Quigley told the Committee that there
was no informant file on Oswald, only the security file.

Walter's story apparently was echoed by Dallas FBI agent Will Hayden
Griffin. According to a 1964 FBI memorandum, Griffin reportedly told
people that Oswald was definitely an FBI informant and that files in
Washington would prove it. Griffin later denied making any such comment.

But Walter had other information for the committee. He claimed that
while serving night duty in the FBI office on November 17, 1963, the New
Orleans FBI office received a teletype from FBI headquarters warning
against a possible assassination attempt on Kennedy during the coming trip
to Dallas on November 22. Walter said he was alone in the New Orleans
FBI office in the early morning hours when the teletype came through. He
said it was headed "urgent," marked to the attention of all special agents,
and signed "Director."

The thrust of the teletype was that the Bureau had received information
that a "militant revolutionary group" might attempt to assassinate Kennedy on his proposed trip to Dallas. It went on to say that all receiving
offices should "immediately contact all CI's [Criminal Informants], PCI's
[Potential Criminal Informants], local racial and hate-group informants and
determine if any basis for threat. Bureau should be kept advised of all
developments by teletype."

Walter said he telephoned the special-agent-in-charge, Harry Maynard,
who ordered Walter to call special agents with CIs and PCIs. Walter said
he did this, writing the names of five agents contacted on the face of the
teletype. By 8 A.M., Maynard had arrived for work and Walter went home.

Five days later, on November 22, 1963, Walter said he was in a barber
shop when he heard about Kennedy's assassination. Rushing back to the FBI office, he showed the teletype to various agents and asked, "How
could this have happened? We had five days notice!" Later that day,
Walter said he typed a copy of the teletype and wrote the five agents'
names on the copy, which he took home.

Walter said soon after the assassination, Director Hoover ordered all
agents in the New Orleans office who had written reports dealing with the
case to review those reports. The object was to make sure there was
nothing in them that might "embarrass the Bureau." Originals of the
reports were to be destroyed.

Checking the relevant file later, Walter discovered the teletype was
missing. In 1975, Walter told his story and showed his copy of the teletype
to Senator Richard Schweiker. Later the House Select Committee on
Assassinations looked into the matter. The Committee checked with New
Orleans agents, supervisor Maynard and even Walter's ex-wife, who also
worked for the FBI. All claimed to know nothing about a teletype. The
Committee, declaring that it "declined to believe that that many employees of the FBI would have remained silent for such a long time," concluded that Walter's story was "unfounded."

Unfounded or not, there were other stories in New Orleans that were
even harder to dismiss-take, for example, Adrian Thomas Alba, operator
of the Crescent City Garage. The Crescent City Garage was located next
door to the William Reilly Coffee Company, Oswald's employer while in
New Orleans. Alba, a quiet man who has not sought publicity, was both
operator and part owner of the garage. Alba said the garage had a contract
to maintain a number of cars for the nearby Secret Service and FBI offices.

Alba said Oswald made frequent visits to his garage during the summer
of 1963 and he got to know the ex-Marine quite well. They talked about
firearms and Alba would loan Oswald his gun magazines. He claimed to
have helped Oswald fix a sling on his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.

But Alba's best story concerns a visit in early summer 1963. He said a
man he believed to be an "FBI agent visiting New Orleans from Washington" came to his garage and took a green Studebaker from the car pool,
after showing his credentials. The next day Alba said he saw the same car
parked by Oswald's work place about thirty yards away. According to
Alba:

Lee Oswald went across the sidewalk. He bent down as if to look in
the window and was handed what appeared to be a good-sized white
envelope. He turned and bent as if to hold the envelope to his abdomen,
and I think he put it under his shirt. Oswald went back into the building
and the car drove off.

Years later, Alba said he saw the same thing happen the next day, but
was farther away and could not see what was passed to Oswald. He said he
did not tell the Warren Commission about these incidents because he did not recall them until 1970 when he was reminded of them by a TV
commercial depicting a man running to and from a taxi.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations checked garage records
and found that two Studebakers had been signed out during that time in
1963, but by Secret Service agents.

Alba recalled seeing Oswald after he was fired from the coffee company
allegedly for malingering. Alba said Oswald seemed pleased with the turn
of events and said he expected to soon be working at the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plant near New Orleans.
Alba quoted Oswald as saying: "I have found my pot of gold at the end of
the rainbow." Of course, this was not to be. Oswald's destiny lay in
Dallas.

But oddly enough, five Reilly Coffee employees, all of whom were in
contact with Oswald, did join the NASA facility shortly after Oswald's
departure. Former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison came across
these intriguing employment shifts during his ill-fated JFK assassination
probe. Oswald left the coffee company on July 19, 1963, just a few weeks
before he began his public show of handing out FPCC material. According
to Garrison, Alfred Claude, the man who hired Oswald at Reilly, went to
work for Chrysler Aerospace Division located at NASA's New Orleans
facility. Emmett Barbee, Oswald's immediate superior at Reilly, followed
Claude to the NASA center in a few days. And within a few weeks they
were joined by John D. Branyon and Dante Marachini, both of whom
worked with Oswald. Branyon and Marachini also began aerospace careers
at the New Orleans NASA center. Marachini, who had gone to work for
Reilly the same day as Oswald, also was a friend of CIA-Mafia agent
David Ferrie.

To compound these oddities, Garrison found that two of Ferrie's friends
also went to work for the NASA center about this same time. James
Lewallen, a friend of Ferrie who lived in the same apartment house as
Marachini, went to work for Boeing, located in the NASA complex.
Melvin Coffee, who had accompanied Ferrie on his strange Texas odyssey
the night of the assassination, was hired by NASA at Cape Kennedy.

Was all this coincidence or was there some connecting link between
these occurrences? Garrison claimed these men were lured into governmentconnected jobs so as to make them unavailable during the subsequent
assassination investigation. And in fact, none of these men were called to
testify before the Warren Commission. Garrison wrote in Heritage of
Stone:

The fact that these transfers were being made not in direct support of
the assassination, but looking far beyond that, in order to complicate
further investigations which might afterward occur, serves to give some
idea of the scope and professional nature of the entire operation.

Other Dallas FBI agents swore under oath that Oswald was never an FBI
informant. However, the truthfulness of their statements has come under
severe question in light of the saga of FBI agent James P. Hosty, Jr.
Hosty, who worked in the Dallas FBI office, was assigned to check on
Oswald prior to the assassination. Although Hosty claims to never have
met Oswald in person, his name, address, telephone number, and car
license number appeared in Oswald's personal notebook-a fact omitted
from a December 23, 1963, FBI report to the Warren Commission.

In testimony to the Commission, Director Hoover explained that the
omission was due to the fact that the report was not originally intended for
the Commission. He said that the information on Hosty in Oswald's
notebook was presented to the Commission in a February 11, 1964, report.
Of course, by that time, the Commission was already very much aware of
the connection between Hosty and Oswald.