For many years, he was the cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times . This cartoon was from the December 26, 1967 issue: You can read more about Paul Conrad here.

At the New Orleans conference in September 1968, Jim Garrison and his investigators and some Warren Commission critics discussed the two Oswalds . Here is their discussion: (page 153+) F = Bernard Fensterwald G = Jim Garrison T = William Turner Box = Bill Boxley S = Richard E. Sprague Even amongst themselves, they seem to have a hard time explaining their theories. At one point, Bernard Fensterwald says, "Wait a minute, You all are losing me somewhere here now." There's the tall Oswald, and the short Oswald. Which one went to the Soviet Union? These are the questions that flummoxed Garrison and his investigators! Here's an excerpt from a Garrison interview in which he mentions the second Oswald . The author of The Second Oswald was Richard Popkin. Other Posts About the Second Oswald Here is a wacky memo written to Jim Garrison about the Heights of the Oswalds. Was Kerry Thornley the Second Oswald? Did Harvey Wade see the Second Oswald? Was Kerry Thornley the Second Oswald? Yes, Again Did Valentine Ashworth Meet the Second Oswald?

Warren Hinckle was the editor of Ramparts Magazine, a fairly popular left-wing magazine from 1962 to 1969. He wrote a really fun book about the 1960s, called If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade. He devotes one chapter, "Give Us This Day Our Daily Paranoia," to the conspiracy theorists of the JFK assassination. His book is worth buying just for that chapter. Here is an excerpt about Jim Garrison: My last communication with Garrison was on November 5, 1968. It was not untypical. I was interrupted in mid-explanation to an unhappy investor (Keating's stormy departure had not helped the money-raising situation). The investor was turning a tinge yellow at my suggestion that the only way to insure the return of the $20,000 he had previously loaned Ramparts was to cover his bet with an additional $50,000. The interruption was an emergency long-distance telephone call from New Orleans. The caller was in no mood to inquire about the weather. "This is urgent," Jim Garrison said. "Can you take this in your mailroom? They'd never think to tap the mailroom extension." I excused myself to go to the mailroom for a moment on a matter of high priority and left the investor, sputtering like a referee without a whistle, alone with the latest negative balance sheets. In the mailroom, two bearded Berkeleyite mail boys were running the postage machine under the influence of marijuana. I told them to take a walk around the block and get high on company time, and locked the door behind them. Garrison began talking when I picked up the mailroom extension: "This is risky, but I have little choice. It is imperative that I get this information to you now. Important new evidence has surfaced. Those Texas oilmen do not appear to be involved in President Kennedy's murder in the way we first thought. It was the Military-Industrial Complex that put up the money for the assassination -- but as far as we can tell, the conspiracy was limited to the aerospace wing. I've got the names of three companies and their employees who were involved in setting up the President's murder. Do you have a pencil?" I wrote down the names of the three defense contractors -- Garrison identified them as Lockheed, Boeing, and General Dynamics -- and the names of those executives in their employ whom the District Attorney said had been instrumental in the murder of Jack Kennedy. I also logged a good deal of information about a mysterious minister who was supposed to have crossed the border into Mexico with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the assassination; the man wasn't a minister at all, Garrison said, but an executive with a major defense supplier, in clerical disguise. I knew little about ministers crossing the Rio Grande with Oswald -- but after several years of fielding the dizzying details of the Kennedy assassination, I had learned to leave closed Pandora's boxes lie; I didn't ask. I said that I had everything down, and Garrison said a hurried goodbye: "It's poor security procedure to use the phone, but the situation warrants the risk. Get this information to Bill Turner. He'll know what to do about the minister. I wanted you to have this, in case something happens . . . ." I unlocked the mailroom door, and returned to my office. The investor was gone. I typed up a brief memorandum of the facts as Garrison had relayed them and burned my notes in an oversized ashtray I used for such purposes. I Xeroxed one copy of the memo, which I mailed to myself in care of a post office box in the name of Walter Snelling, a friendly, non-political bartender in the far-removed country town of Cotati, California, where I routinely sent copies of all supersecret Ramparts documents. That night I hand delivered the original to Bill Turner, the former FBI agent in charge of the magazine's investigation of the Warren Commission. Turner had drilled me in a little G-Man security lingo. According to our code, I called him at home and said something about a new vacuum cleaner. He replied that he would be right over, and said he would meet me at Trader Vic's, which meant I was to actually meet him at Blanco's, a dimly lit Filipino bar on the fringe of Chinatown, where we often held secret meetings. That was the way we did things in those days. "Those days" encompassed several years of sniffing, as Sam Goldwyn might say, along the greenhorn trail of red herrings in the 26 volumes of the Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. We began asking rude questions in 1965, and by 1968, with paranoia in full bloom, we had divided almost everyone, by some sort of conspiracy litmus test, into "them" and "us." Even "us" was subdivided into good guys, no-so-good-guys, dangerous fanatics and fiffth columnists. We ended up seeing "them" lurking behind every potted plant rented by the CIA; and occasionally, we found a real spook in the shadows. Garrison really went overboard about the aerospace industry. Fred Crisman, one of his favorite suspects, worked briefly for Boeing and Edgar Eugene Bradley, who he actually charged with conspiracy to assassinate JFK, once worked for Lockheed. We have blogged about this once before. You can see more of this thinking in the conference he held in New Orleans in September 1968 with some of his staff and a few Warren Commission Critics. Here's one excerpt where they start talking about Nancy Perrin Rich - she testified before the Warren Commission that Ruby was involved in smuggling arms to Cuba. But her testimony was extremely fuzzy on the details, and she had a history of telling stories. Her husband committed suicide in 1962 and Jim Garrison suspected that had been faked and that he was a grassy knoll gunman. I tell the entire story in Chapter 16, "Arsenic and Old Perrin," of my book, On The Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser. You can read the testimony of Nancy Perrin Rich here. The discussion quickly turns from Perrin to the aerospace industry: (page 129) Turner: I don't understand Nancy Rich's antagonism towards your office if she told all the to the Warren Commission. She told Mark Lane the thing... Garrison: Aren't you glad, though. She told us more than she told the Warren Commission, in a way. Boxley: She's afraid we'll ask her how it is that J. D. Tippit sent for her to come to Dallas. Garrison: Let's see. That's another thing. We've been going through her testimony again and it's become apparent that what happened - here's what happened and here's what -- Crisman knows Tippit. When - her husband leaves her (Bob Perrin); and she can't find him so she things he may be in Dallas so she calls the Police Dept. and she calls Tippit. Why does she call Tippit? It's not spelled out but I think the possibility is because Tippit is a friend of her husband. Her husband is previously at an ONI base. Tippit used to work with Ling Temco. Fred Lee Crisman knows Tippit. Fred Lee Crisman is with Boeing. You see the whole structure is ... In another excerpt, they talk about Warren Reynolds, a witness who saw Oswald running away after killing police officer J. D. Tippit: (page 168) Fensterwald: What about Warren Reynolds? Garrison: Warren Reynolds in my judgment was part of a convoy. At least one of the men who shot Tippit merely ran around the block and back into the church and car 223 covers him. That's kind of involved to get into but that's one area we dug into a lot. As a matter of fact, the jacket which he dropped - he dropped just before he went into the church - and he's probably protected by Captain Westbrook there. Wasn't a patrol car there? He's convoyed all the way around. He's safe. But the jacket he dropped, leads straight to Los Angeles. Which is where Lockheed is and they never really checked out the jacket. Turner: The jacket leads to Lockheed? Garrison: Yeah. It's in Los Angeles. Turner: What? Laundry mark? Boxley: No. It was manufactured in Los Angeles, plus it's got a laundry mark on it that's identical to one from Toro Marine Base. Turner: Well, we think. We don't know. This guy sent in the letter but nobody's checked that though. Here is another section of that conference: (page 34) Sprague: There's a guy from Lockheed who showed up in Paris with a story - he contacted Jeff Paley's office over there. Turner: Why don't you take over Dick? We've been offering you your opportunity and then we keep monopolizing the ... Garrison: I wanted to just underline that point. That that is the common denominator that I have found, at least in the JFK killing, of virtually anybody who has any role of significance. If they did not work for - it's not just a defense operation but it is one of the elements of the defense operations which got the major bite of the billions. I think we'll find ultimately that the reason for that is because they're are almost one with the CIA and vice-versa. Garrison: I think we'll find that Allen Dulles constructed the CIA in as close coordination with certain corporations which were essential in the defense operations. And that's why these people keep showing up. Garrison: I don't want to get into it now but every potential witness associated with Oswald at the Reily Coffee Company - almost everybody - now works for Aerospace, NASA - I made a list of them on the theory that while the structure itself may have been invisible on the 22nd of November that if you go back far enough with individuals or come later far enough you can see a structure. And you do. The structure is Aerospace. Not that the Sprague mentioned above is Richard E. Sprague, the photographic expert who was a Warren Commission critic, not the Richard A. Sprague who was the first Chief Counsel of the HSCA. There is a simple explanation why many people at Reily Coffee went to work in the Aerospace Industry. Here is a map from the Garrison files: We will end this blog post with one additional quote from Warren Hinckle's book: "Much of the beating Garrison took from the media was his own fault. When his investigation became bogged down in the intelligence swamp which was the real milieu of the assassination, Garrison adopted the practice, inadvisable for a swamp guide, of grabbing some slimy green thing out of the water and holding it up for the press to see, as if that showed how the ecology of the swamp worked. The denouement of the Garrison story belongs to the tradition of Waiting for Godot, except that we are still waiting. The more viperous among the sleuths now maintain that the CIA "got" to the DA, but I think not. The truth is considerably more commonplace. The blue meanies got to Jim. Angered by his Faustian sparring matches with the press, distraught from defections within his own staff of investigators, frustrated by the refusal of other states to extradite his suspects, physically run down from a recurrent bad back, yet propelled forward by the high octane of paranoia, Garrison eschewed the probably hopeless alternative of amassing sufficient evidence of the government's cover-up of its intelligence agencies' involvement to get Washington to reopen formally the assassination investigation." You can read more about Warren Hinckle here.

Here is further proof that Jack Martin was insane, and totally lacking in credibility. He actually told the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) that Jim Garrison was framed by John Dean, of Watergate fame. Here is the first outside contact report from a meeting between the HSCA and Jack Martin: There were at least two more discussions with Jack Martin. I am not sure why they bothered. We'll be posting them in future posts. Other Posts about Jack Martin Jack Martin and David Lewis Talk to the Press Did David Ferrie Introduce Jack Martin to Lee Harvey Oswald in Banister's Office?

More Garrison craziness. Here is a good article about recent disclosures about Earle Cabell's (General Cabell's brother) ties to the CIA.

Yes, Jim Garrison suspected that Larry Crafard, a handyman who cleaned up Jack Ruby's nightclub every morning, was a grassy knoll gunman, and perhaps that Crafard also killed J. D. Tippit. Just who was Larry Crafard? Larry Crafard Crafard was a drifter and worked many jobs, usually for a few days or slightly more, before meeting Jack Ruby at a carnival in Dallas. Even though he was in his early 20s, he had so many jobs that he could barely keep track of where he had worked when he testified before the Warren Commission. He did odd jobs for Ruby and cleaned the club every morning to get ready for the next night. He actually slept in the office. At about noon on November 23, 1963, Crafard hitchhiked to Michigan to stay with his sister. You can read Crafard's Warren Commission testimony here and here . It's long and tedious with details on his hitchhiking trip, questions about Jack Ruby, and a thorough examination of his notebook in which he kept phone messages at the Carousel Club. Mark Lane wrote in Rush to Judgment that Crafard "neither told Ruby nor any other employee of the Carousel of his decision to leave and began to hitchhike to Michigan with only seven dollars in his pocket." (page 270) But, Crafard had already given notice to Jack Ruby a few days earlier. Here is an excerpt from Crafard Exhibit 5226 : Leaving abruptly was completely in character. Jim Garrison also read Crafard's testimony and he marked it up with comments. Volume XIII, page 404-405. Garrison is interested in Crafard's stint in the U.S. Army. He was only in for thirteen months and was then discharged for medical reasons. Volume XIII, page 408-409. Garrison makes a note about Crafard's "remarkable memory" and then wondered about Crafard's work at the carnival - "as what? A sharpshooter?" Then Garrison marveled at his memory once again, "Did you ever see a memory like this Every week in order." All Crafard was doing was just going over all of his places of employment. Volume XIII, Page 414-415. Garrison notes that "Crafard seems to travel unusually." Volume XIII, page 448-449. Garrison notes that "Crafard actually is unaccounted for during the shooting." Crafard was up late the night before - actually talking to a woman who had called about dancing at the club. Crafard was interested in a date and they spoke for hours. He slept in on Friday morning, and was woken up by Andy Armstrong, the manager of the club, right after the assassination. On page 449, Garrison believe he has caught Crafard in a slip. He is asked why Anderson had not woken him up earlier since he knew Crafard wanted to go to the parade. His answer; "He knew I said something about it. I don't know, I think maybe he had been down and saw us - down to see some of it or something and then come back to the club or something." And then Garrison's notes, "Hubert [of the Warren Commission] nails it down as not unusual." Volume XII, page 454 - 455. Jack Ruby invites Crafard to go over to his sister's house on the late afternoon of November 22. Garrison finds this very suspicious and notes "what does he almost say here?" Volume XIII, page 486 - 487. For some reason, Garrison is extremely interested in Union Drilling. Volume XIII, page 488 - 489. Pure propinquity. Garrison says "Note: Nancy Perrin went to Dallas to find her husband." Nancy Perrin Rich had nothing to do with Larry Crafard - she claimed to have worked for Jack Ruby as a waitress for a short time. She had been living in New Orleans, and her husband left her - she eventually found him in Dallas. By the way, Garrison ended up believing that her husband was a grassy knoll gunman. See my book, On The Trail of Delusion , chapter 16: "Arsenic and Old Perrin." Volume XIII, page 506. Unfortunately "they never got back to Union Drilling." Volum XIV, page 3. Boeing Insurance was very suspicious - was it involved in the military industrial complex? Check our earlier blog post about the military industrial complex . Volume XIV, page 4. There appeared to be some pages missing in Crafard's notebook, although he wasn't at all certain. But Garrison writes "who took out? Dal PD [Dallas Police Department] or FBI?" I'm surprised he didn't consider the CIA. We've previously blogged about Jim Garrison, the Cryptologist . Well, he put his cryptographic skills to use in examining the notebooks of Crafard and Oswald. Here is an entry from the Tom Bethell diary: "Garrison has been doing a great deal of research into the various Ruby or Crafard notebooks published in the 26 vols, and the Oswald address book. He's quite proud of this research, and reckons he's probably the world expert in this sub-topic. (He probably is.) He says the annotation "Midland 2550" occurs in the Crafard book and "Newton 2550" in the Oswald book. Garrison suggest these are "Callsigns" on some radio frequency. (I'm not sure that G is right that both these annotations do occur, but he might be. I checked and could only find one, the Oswald one I think.)" Newton 2550 does occur in Crafard's notebook , and he was asked about it. He said someone else wrote it down. I don't see a notation for Midland 2550 in Oswald's notebook. Not that it matters - since the suggestion that these are "callsigns" is insane. William Boxley also examined Crafard's testimony in a memo to Garrison. I don't know which came first - the Boxley memo or the annotated testimony above. This is an insane memo. Right at the start Boxley writes that Crafard's testimony is "textbook quality for any intelligence service's course in 'Resistance to Interrogation.'" Crafard is "travelling in the off-beat church league, perhaps as a courier or better." And that phone call with that girl he was trying to get a date with, well, "Could this have been cover to have accounted for the telephone having been busy that length of time in case reporters or others may have tried to call RUBY and learned it was busy, while RUBY was supposed to be out of the club?" You can see the Garrison notation at the bottom: "Q: Where is Crafard now? Doing what?" Suspicions about Crafard went into overdrive with this Penn Jones article from 1972, in which he accuses Crafard of killing J.D. Tippit: Where did Penn Jones get this from? Well, either from Garrison or vice-versa. After the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the perjury proceedings against Garrison in November 1972, journalist Ron Rosenbaum called Garrison. Here is his entire article from the Village Voice from January 18. 1973. The man referred to with blanks is Crafard. Garrison blamed the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the assassination, but Rosenbaum probed further: "I confessed to Garrison that I was less interested in the global motivations of the four Joint Chiefs than I was in the worldly ambitions of the four hired killers he mentioned in his statement. Who were they and what had become of them? "Well actually there were more than four," he told me. "You had four gunmen, but each one had an assistant gunman, and you had to have a man in charge, and you had to have a communications man, and - I didn't bother to go into it, but you had two people who created a diversion just as the parade rounded from Main." Well, what about the man who fired the fatal shot? What was his name and what became of him? "Well I have no way of hunting any of them down now. If I gave you, off the record, the name of one of the two who was firing from the grassy knoll, which is where the fatal shot came from maybe you could track him down all right?" "Okay," said I. "All right?" said Garrison "Uh huh." "I don't want it surfacing." "Okay" "All right. One of the men on the grassy knoll was named _________" "Uh hum." "________ is a nickname. His full name is __________." Later in the article, Garrison is quoted as saying "...we came across - just to give you a rough idea - such things that seemed to be mysterious like the Tippit slaying, cease to be mysterious. That was _________ again." Here is a letter that Harold Weisberg sent someone regarding the Rosenbaum article. In July of 1977, Jim Garrison wrote Jonathan Blackmer of the HSCA with some information on a variety of topics . He touched upon Larry Crafard: "The full meaning of what Julia Ann Mercer said (+ of its concealment by authorities) will grow upon you, I am sure. For one thing, it puts into the proper perspective the real Jack Ruby (and his anti-Castro activities, as a member of the Mafia branch of the Agency in the late '50's and early '30's). For another, it clarifies how - by the time Sunday came - Ruby had been maneuvered into a posture, from which he could not extricate himself, when he was told to eliminate Oswald. And finally, it provides a lead for one of the men on the grassy knoll who is, as well, an excellent candidate as the man who killed Tippit (with an automatic, needless to say, and not a revolver). You might want to photostat the Mercer statements and cross-file the copies under Laverne Crafard - wherever he is now." In 1986, Jim Garrison contacted researchers Fred Newcomb and Larry Haapanen asking for more information on Fred Crisman for his book. On 9/24/1986, Haapanen talked to Garrison on the phone, and here is his transcription of his notes from the call: "Beckham admitted he was in Banister's operation Crafard -- from Dallas, OR -- 15 mi. from Crisman Julia Ann Mercer -- Crafard was man w/rifle? Tippitt shooting -- Crafard? Reilly's -- LHO's 'nesting place' ... 'never seriously worked there.' --- LHO visited anti-Castro group n. of Lake w/TV station cameraman one day. Boeing confirmed FC worked there --but that's all they'd say." Notice the propinquity - Crafard once lived in Dallas, Oregon, some 15 minutes from Fred Crisman, and thus they might be connected. In 1992, Ron Rosenbaum wrote an article for Time Magazine about the film JFK and conspiracy theories. And he concluded his Larry Crafard story: Rosenbaum writes, in the last section: "And then in the early '80s, just when his life seemed to have settled down, renewed interest in the J.F.K. case made his name an object of speculation again: it appeared in a book on the organized-crime connections to Ruby and the assassination. His new wife read the book and began to get a little paranoid. She wondered about the serious car accident they had had: Was it really an accident? Eventually, things began to go awry: his marriage broke up, he lost his job." The book that Rosenbaum referred to was Contract on America by David Scheim. Here are two paragraphs from his book - first from page 133: And a paragraph from page 148: "The fleeing Larry Crafard...." Researcher Peter Whitmey tracked down Crafard and spoke to him in 2001 . Like other witnesses in the case (Kerry Thornley comes to mind), Crafard started to become a little paranoid: "I also learned from Curtis that in 1980 he and his wife, along with two of their four children, were involved in a serious car accident, caused by faulty steering, even though the vehicle was quite new. Curtis was convinced that someone had tampered with the steering, which has made him fearful for his safety ever since. After his wife read Contract on America, by David Scheim, which I had recommended, she too seemed suspicious of the accident. I also recall when I was speaking to Craford in the late 1990s on the phone, apparently my voice was fading in and out, which caused Curtis to believe that the line was tapped." Crafard told Whitmey he had been a hit man in San Francisco; had been selected for covert operations as a demolitons expert; and involved in intelligence work. Few people would believe any of this (except for people like Joan Mellen), but it gets worse. Mort Sahl even managed to mention Larry Crafard in his act: During the course of my research, I had been notified by another researcher in the late 1990s that Craford was referred to by the veteran stand-up comedian and former Garrison supporter, Mort Sahl, in an off-Broadway play entitled “Mort Sahl’s America”, which had been reviewed in the April 25, 1994 issue of The New Yorker by the senior drama critic John Lahr. Sahl gave the impression during his off-Broadway performance that he was reading from the Warren Report (he had all 26 volumes as part of the set). Obviously he wasn’t, as some of the details related to the Warren Commission’s interview with Craford were not correct. According to Sahl, Earl Warren and Gerald Ford had conducted the interview, when, in fact, it was lawyers Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin; Craford was described as having been a bartender at Ruby’s club, when he was a handyman, who occasionally worked behind the bar; also, Craford claimed to have been a “master sniper while in the Marine Corps”, when apparently he received only basic weapons training while serving in the U.S. Army (from which he was released after only fourteen months service); he had supposedly been “seized” by the FBI while “hightailing it” out of Dallas, suggesting he was arrested at some point, when, actually, he was contacted by agents in northern Michigan a week later and brought to the local office for questioning, as well as being photographed; and he allegedly stated to someone before being “seized” that the authorities were not going to “pin this on me.” After obtaining a copy of the review, along with a speech based on it made by former HSCA researcher Gaeton Fonzi (given at a Dallas JFK conference and later published in the JFK magazine “Lancer” and website), I wrote to Debra Conway at “JFK Lancer”, Craford, Fonzi, Sahl (through his website) and The New Yorker. As a result of my e-mail to Ms. Conway, the section about Craford in Fonzi’s speech was initially deleted in the on-line version of Fonzi’s speech, but later was reinserted with a footnote quoting from my e-mail with Ms. Conway’s response. Amazingly, Craford was more amused than upset by the reference to him and the numerous factual errors. Even though there was a strong suggestion made that he might have been involved in the assassination, he had no desire to speak to a lawyer in regard to a possible defamation suit, prefering to remain out of the media spotlight. Fonzi was somewhat defensive, but clearly had been under the impression that Sahl’s reading of the Warren Commission’s interview with Craford was accurate, and not a humorous means by which Sahl could make his point. No one at Sahl’s website got back to me. Note that Whitmey refers to Crafard as Craford; at one point he changed his last name. Whitmey discusses more of the nonsense about Crafard in his article - so have a read if you want to learn more.. Curtis Laverne Craford died in 2011. May he rest in peace .

On November 20, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Jim Garrison's petition to overturn the permanent injunction against trying Clay Shaw for perjury. New Orleans Times-Picayune , November 21, 1972 Jim Garrison then issued this press release: Is this the product of a sane man? The assassination was a "professionally executed guerilla ambush," with four gunmen - two in front, and two in back. Oswald was "planted" in the Texas School Book Depository. Jack Ruby was a "professional operative for government intelligence." Even the control of night clubs, near military bases, was "standard operating procedure for the domestic espionage operation." There was very little coverage of Garrison's press release but both the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the New Orleans States-Item ran editorials in support of Clay Shaw: New Orleans States-Item , November 22, 1972 New Orleans Times-Picayune , November 21, 1972 Tomorrow: Jim Garrison identifies one of the gunmen.

Thomas Beckham was a con man who had lived in New Orleans in the early 1960s. He tried his hand in the music business with Jack Martin as his short-lived manager. He liked costumes and regularly wore a priest's collar. Here are some of our other blog posts on Thomas Beckham: Why Did Jim Garrison Want to Speak with Thomas Beckham? The above post looks at Beckham's con. Did Thomas Beckham Know Lee Harvey Oswald? Thomas Beckham's Book, Remnants of Truth, Part One The above two blog posts have excerpts from Beckham's deposition to the HSCA - if you want a laugh, check them out. Jim Garrison's Memo to the HSCA on Fred Crisman and Thomas Beckham The above post is the first memo Garrison wrote to the HSCA about Beckham and Crisman. Here is another memo that Garrison wrote to Jonathan Blackmer, along with questions for Beckham. It's quite the memo! This is insane. Garrison writes "I do believe it would be a productive working hypothesis (until and unless further inquiry should require its abandonment) to regard Crisman as, as [sic] the very least, a cut-out or go-between at a very high level. The geographical remoteness of his base of operation is a standard operating procedure of a major cut-out in a professional, highly organized clandestine operation." Had Garrison been watching too many spy movies? Here are some prior blog posts on Fred Crisman: Was Fred Crisman Behind the JFK Assassination? Was Fred Crisman One of JFK's Assassins? Here is Garrison's list of questions for Thomas Beckham: The questions reflected Garrison's view of the assassination. He wanted the HSCA to ask Beckham about his cast of characters (Clay Shaw, Kerry Thornley, Guy Banister, etc), and he continued to take an inordinate interest in Crisman's and Beckham's sex life. He even wanted to know if Crisman and Beckham knew Larry Crafard (who worked for Jack Ruby for several weeks in 1963 cleaning the Carousel Club). Don't forget both Thomas Beckham and Fred Crisman testified before Garrison's grand jury. Didn't he know the answer to these questions? Garrison didn't even show up for Crisman's appearance, and it only lasted about twenty minutes. Not surprisingly, the HSCA did not ask a lot of these questions when Beckham testified. Upcoming blog posts will be looking at additional excerpts from his deposition before the HSCA.

Here is a letter that Jim Garrison wrote Jonathan Blackmer of the HSCA in July of 1977: Here is my transcription of Garrison's letter: "Dear Jonathan: Enclosed herewith are the random Morgan City and Lafayette materials I mentioned. You will at once perceive an absence of depth of inquiry and a lack of follow-up, with regard to these two statements which I am now marking "A" + "B") but that was because we didn't know what to do with these, except put them on a shelf off to the side, while we headed down the little road we had stumbled across. Perhaps your people will be able to do more with these two random statements than we were able to do. With regard to Mrs. Villard's references to Ruby, they appear to be true enough inasmuch as she seems to have been acquainted with him for some years. On the other hand, it is of course unlikely that Oswald was in Louisiana on November 14th (unless he took off from the Book Depository that Thursday). It seems more likely that we are [remitted], rather, to the possibility of it being the alternate Oswald, who might usefully have been brought from Dallas along about November 14th for obvious reasons. The last part of the statement, about the foreign lady in the old car in late September (or early October) may be useful to you. A check of the map reveals that Morgan City is indeed, to my surprise, on the southern route from New Orleans to Dallas (Irving). (It was the same route taken by Dave Ferrrie on November 22nd when he drove to Houston, through the thunderstorm, to get to the payphone at the skating rink - after which he drove down to Galveston where, by that time, Ruby's friend Breck Wall had arrived for the evening). Also, with regard to the foreign lady + the old car, Patterson turns out to be just west of Morgan City. I have no idea what, if anything, the Lafayette statement (B) means, but I send it along on the possibility that it might tie in somewhere. More than likely, it will simply remain a loose end. I also enclose the statement of Julia Ann Mercer (c). These were dictated to me by her, written by me on the falsified Bureau and Sheriff's Office statements and signed by her. I cannot emphasize the patent integrity of her as a witness, a highly intelligent ... one sufficiently intelligent to know the danger of her position from what she saw. I probably made a mistake not calling her as witness (to confirm the existence of a conspiracy) at the Shaw trial but I thought we could make it without exposing her. The full meaning of what Julia Ann Mercer said (+ of its concealment by authorities) will grow upon you, I am sure. For one thing, it puts into the proper perspective the real Jack Ruby (and his anti-Castro activities, as a member of the Mafia branch of the Agency in the late '50's and early '30's). For another, it clarifies how - by the time Sunday came - Ruby had been maneuvered into a posture, from which he could not extricate himself, when he was told to eliminate Oswald. And finally, it provides a lead for one of the men on the grassy knoll who is, as well, an excellent candidate as the man who killed Tippit (with an automatic, needless to say, and not a revolver). You might want to photostat the Mercer statements and cross-file the copies under Laverne Crafard - wherever he is now. I finally have located my copy of the long-distance calls of David Ferrie for 1963 + am sending them to GT so that he can check out his calls to his city for that period. Since I had it at hand + was already sending you some scattered material, I thought I'd rather send you the Ferrie call - referred to on page 124 of H of S [A Heritage of Stone] - which connects him to Lawrence Meyers, Ruby's friend and advisor during his trying days. I trust someone has been assigned a deeper inquiry of Meyers than was made by the Warren Commission. Quite apparently he is at a lofty level - at least, an active supervisor - of the Chicago-Las Vegas wing of our nether government. I do not think he would have had trouble getting a good table for Breck Wall's show at the Thunderbird. If Trafficante ever gets over his shyness, I'm sure he could fill you in about Meyers. A key man. Without the assurance that Ruby would dispose of the scapegoat (an assurance assigned to Meyers), then the assassination could not have been attempted. For this scapegoat was no dazed Sirhan or benighted Ray. This scape-goat was a bright, deeply experienced, if low level - intelligence employee whose elimination had to be as complete as the President's. Otherwise, he'd still be talking. Regards JG" In future blog posts I will be examining the Lawrence Meyers phone call, the rumors about Larry Crafard, and the allegations of Julia Ann Mercer. This blog post will just look at Lafayette and Morgan City. I don't have the actual Lafayette statement that Garrison is referring to, However, I believe he is talking about the two memos below from Meloche and Sciambra about Oswald being in Lafayette. Here is transcription of a phone call between Louisiana State police officer Francis Fruge, and Frank Meloche, a Garrison investigator. The homosexual angle clearly interests Garrison greatly. And, if Layton Martens, a friend of David Ferrie's, is part of it, so much the better. Did Garrison have plans to blackmail Martens? Here is a follow-up memo written by Andrew Sciambra: Was this all part of the work of a second Oswald? Check out my blog post on the Rollestons. The first page of the Fruge-Meloche phone call indicates that Garrison was very interested in Oswald being in Lafayette. There were other sightings of Lee Harvey Oswald in the area, and all of this might have been a precursor to the Clinton stories. Here are a couple of additional memos about Oswald being in the area: It's interesting that Magee had talked with Ned Touchstone - he was the editor of The Councilor , a racist and antisemitic newspaper based in Shreveport, and she had also talked with John Towers, an attorney from Clinton. And, of course, Lee Harvey Oswald was then living in Dallas. Here is the original memo about the deaf person: Now, here is the statement about Morgan City that Garrison referred to in his letter. Mrs. Villard also spoke to the FBI: The FBI was also investigating Peter Guarisco and his cousin for gambling: Mrs. Villard (then Corinne Burgess) did speak to the FBI in 1963, but she said nothing about Lee Harvey Oswald: And, they also spoke to Pete Guarisco: The Oswald sightings around Lafayette/Baton Rouge didn't pan out. But Garrison found the right formula in Clinton. UPDATE: Mrs. Villard died in 1989. Here is her obituary.

Merriman Smith was the UPI journalist in the press car in the motorcade who first reported that shots were fired at JFK. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for his coverage of the assassination. He also wrote about Jim Garrison. He interviewed Garrison in late February 1967, and before he wrote his article, he called the FBI to tell them what he had learned: This is a good early view of Garrison's thinking. You can see the homosexual angle played up where Garrison claims a "group of local perverts" infiltrated, and then took over, the anti-Castro training camp. Here is his article from March 5, 1967 - in this case from the Boston Record American - note this is a UPI article and it appeared in many newspapers across the country. Smith then wrote to the FBI with a copy of his wire story: After Merriman Smith's article appeared, a complaint was filed by David Lewis: You can read a more legible version here from an FBI Report. Here is a picture of David Lewis: I doubt this went anywhere. Here is David Lewis' statement from December 1966: David Lewis sure saw Lee Harvey Oswald a lot. At Mancuso' Restaurant, in Banister's office, and even at David Ferrie's apartment. He realized he had seen Oswald right after he was killed by Jack Ruby. But, he never came forward until the Jim Garrison investigation. Then in January 1967 he was back in Garrison's office, and David Chandler, a local reporter who was friendly with Garrison, was there: A couple of points, first, note that Lewis now claims he saw Oswald with Quiroga in 1962 - which is impossible because Oswald had just returned from the Soviet Union, and was living in Ft. Worth. Second, he now claims he was just shot at. A future blog post will examine the supposed shooting in more detail. But, they administered a lie detector test on Lewis and he failed. That was enough to finish him off as a potential witness. Here is what Tom Bethell wrote in his diary about David Lewis: From September 9, 1967: I asked Garrison what he thought about David Lewis as a witness; he didn't seem to have much of an opinion. I then pointed out that Lewis was one of the few linking Oswald and Ferrie. He didn't know this, or at least pretended not to realize it, and I then pointed out the trouble with the dates. (When David Lewis was originally interviewed in the DA's office, Dec14, 1966, he had been quite positive that the date he saw "Lee Harvey" at Mancuso's restaurant was in 1961, when Oswald was in Russia. I was in Ivon's office with Lewis on that day, the day I was hired.) Garrison then said something about Lewis later correcting the date. From October 2, 1967: Alcock discussed Ferrie and pointed out he saw no reason to believe Ferrie was involved. I asked him if we had any witnesses other than Jack Martin or David Lewis who linked Ferrie and Oswald. He said no, and then added that Lewis was "a liar", and that anyway Martin didn't ever claim seeing Oswald and Ferrie together. (Not so. At one point, Martin did make such a claim. He might have added that it was surely more than coincidence that Martin and Lewis both came into the DA's office with matching stories on the same day, Dec 14, 1966, incidentally the date in the guest book at the VIP Lounge. Also, later on Matin and Lewis were sharing an apartment together.) David Lewis met with the press in late February: Boston Traveler, February 23, 1967 Here is an FBI report on David Lewis: Not surprisingly, David Lewis is not mentioned in Jim Garrison's book, On The Trail of The Assassins. But, guess who actually believes Lewis is a credible witness? Yup, James DiEugenio, in his book Destiny Betrayed, writes: "David Lewis, a former investigator for Banister, stated that he once met Oswald in the summer of 1963 in a restaurant housed at the Camp Street building. With Oswald was Sergio Arcacha Smith." James DiEugenio doesn't even source primary documents - his source is Henry Hurt's book, Reasonable Doubt. And, besides the fact that Lewis has no credibility (and he was not an investigator for Banister) - DiEugenio should know that Sergio Arcacha Smith was not living in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. Smith wrote another article about Garrison in 1969:

Here is yet another insane memo from Steve Jaffe. There you go - Dudnick is "almost too neurotic to be credible," and yet there is some value in what he had to say. Harold Weisberg didn't think much of Jaffe and Dudnick. Here is a short Weisberg memo on Jaffe - second to last paragaraph is on Dudnick: Weisberg also thought the confidential stamp was amusing: