False Witness (19 page)

Sciambra backed off right away. He had been busy with a lot of other things and maybe, he said, “I forgot to put it in. But, Jim, you remember when I came down from Baton Rouge, I said, ‘Boy, when I tell you what I got you're gonna kiss me.' That's what Sciambra said. And Garrison didn't back him up. Garrison didn't say anything,” Phelan recalled. “He just sat there and listened to the whole thing.” Sciambra and Phelan continued to argue with escalating ferocity until the meeting broke up. When Phelan departed, the hostility was unresolved, and so was the issue that had brought him to Garrison's home.
²³

Phelan had taken a cab out, so Gurvich drove him back to his hotel. Gurvich had sat silently in the corner of Garrison's den listening and saying nothing. But on the drive into town, he revealed how terribly upset he was. “Russo's the whole case,” he told Phelan. “And you just shot him out of the water. I sat there and listened to [Sciambra] telling you he had so many things to do. That memo was the most important thing [he did]. He wrote it, rewrote it, polished it. For him to say that he forgot to put the plot to kill Kennedy in it just won't wash . . . I've had some doubts about this case but it's over [for me] now.”
²⁴

Garrison himself had said little that night and his reaction to Phelan's bombshell was unclear. The next day he clarified it. He called Phelan, invited him to lunch at Broussard's, and spent the time trying to convince Phelan that Russo was “okay.” But Phelan knew what he knew. “You've got a suggestible witness,” he said. “Well, that's no problem,” Garrison said. “We don't make suggestions to witnesses.”
²⁵

Phelan was determined to cover all bases. So after lunch he hunted down Sciambra at Tulane and Broad and asked to see his original notes from the first interview. If the notes contained the information missing from his memorandum, then, Phelan said, he would agree that Sciambra had merely forgotten to include it. Sciambra said that, after typing his report, he had “burned” them. Phelan then asked to talk to Russo. Sciambra arranged it. Phelan drove straight to Baton Rouge, taking with him photographer Matt Herron.

At Russo's apartment, after some conversation, Phelan handed Russo Sciambra's memorandum and told him what it was. Then he said, “I'm gonna use it in the
Post
. Tell me if there's anything wrong [with it].” Russo read it through, made four minor corrections and said nothing about anything being omitted. “Then you first related the assassination plot when?” Phelan asked. “Down in New Orleans,” Russo replied. After they left, Phelan said to Herron, “Did you hear that?” “Yeah,” Herron said. “Burn it in your head, kid,” Phelan told him, because someday “I'm going to have to tell this story and you're my witness.”
²⁶

Phelan flew back to New York on March 23, taking with him the full documentary record of Russo's interrogations prior to the preliminary hearing.
*
He told his story to Don McKinney and Otto Friedrich, showing them copies of the documents, and related it to others in a series of meetings with staffers and lawyers. It was not the story they wanted but there was never any doubt about their publishing it. “Rush to Judgment in New Orleans” was featured on the May 6, 1967, cover of the magazine, with the caption, “A P
LOT TO
K
ILL
K
ENNEDY
? The story behind the New Orleans investigation.” Garrison finally had his national cover story, though it was a far cry from what he had in mind.

The article recapped Phelan's experiences with Garrison in New Orleans and Las Vegas, detailed the peculiar course of Garrison's probe and the odd assortment of characters involved, and noted the fertile field Garrison was working. In the latest poll only 36 percent of the public believed that Oswald acted alone. But the centerpiece was Perry Russo's evolving testimony, Moo Moo Sciambra's memorandum, and the conspiracy party he “forgot” to include. Using Garrison's own material, Phelan had exposed the empty foundation of Garrison's case against Clay Shaw. Garrison made no public comment about the article, but expressed his outrage in private. “Garrison said Phelan fucked him,” Russo later stated. “He was real pissed about [Phelan] turning on him.” Garrison said they had been friends for years and Phelan was now complaining about “technical points.”
²⁷
Ever Garrison's point man, Andrew Sciambra blasted Phelan in a televised statement that was published in the newspapers. Calling the article “incomplete and distorted,” Sciambra challenged Phelan to repeat his charges in front of the New Orleans grand jury.

Phelan's article should have felled Garrison's case but it didn't. “I knew that if Garrison were honest and responsible, that he'd have to withdraw the case, he'd have to kill it,” Phelan said.
²⁸
It was reasonable to think so. It seems unlikely that any district attorney in any other major city in the United States would have gone forward under the circumstances. If nothing else, public opinion, the local news media, or prevailing political forces would have intervened. But in New Orleans, where the two newspapers spoke in unison, where Garrison's power surpassed even the governor's, and where unethical, irrational behavior by elected officials was rooted in the region's historical DNA, the hole Phelan had exposed was first denied and then ignored. No editorials demanded an explanation. The citizenry didn't complain. No civic leaders called for an investigation. Many simply believed Garrison could do no wrong. For those who knew better, his past victories over the judges and others had demonstrated what could happen to those who criticized him. No one wanted to lose their job.

As for his supporters outside New Orleans, some were disillusioned but probably not many. For Garrison's appeal had never been to logic but to the passions vested in the assassination of President Kennedy. That
was the source of his strength and the reason he was, and still is, held to a lower standard. It is also why many were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt where Russo was concerned,
to wait and see
what additional evidence he presented at the trial. Garrison had tapped into a national wellspring of emotion that protected him like a Teflon shield.

Garrison himself reacted to Phelan's article the way he had to Phelan's visit after the preliminary hearing. It was another problem to be
dealt with
. Garrison kept his head down, sent Sciambra out to dissemble, and pretended nothing had happened. It worked.

Garrison survived disaster again.

But this was not the last threat to his investigation that would have to be
dealt with
.

*
The assistant district attorneys of record were: Alvin V. Oser, James L. Alcock and Michael L. Karmazin.

†
A New Orleans police detective said that on August 9, 1963, he arrested Lee Harvey Oswald and three “Spanish individuals” who were engaged in “an altercation” on Canal Street; a police forensic specialist and the coroner's photographer testified about David Ferrie's death.

*
An audio recording of this February 24, 1967, interview was played in open court. A New Orleans television station also broadcast the interview the night before Dymond began his cross-examination, providing Russo and the prosecution time to devise answers to Dymond's inevitable questions about it.

†
To establish the date of Oswald's departure, Dymond attempted to introduce the Warren Report as evidence, but the court, referring to the Report as “hearsay evidence,” forcefully denied the motion: “You are not serious, are you?” asked Judge Bagert (preliminary hearing transcript, p. 198).

*
Dr. Weinstein recently recalled an instance where a soldier under the drug “told a dramatic story” about “searching for his brother among the dead and wounded [on a WWII battlefield].” They discovered this soldier “did indeed have a brother” but he had “never left the States” (Edwin A. Weinstein, M.D., letter to author, March 13, 1995). Dr. Weinstein's experiences “are recorded in the official U.S. Army medical history of the war.”

*
Garrison and his men were worried about the defense planting stories to embarrass them.

*
In the statement he gave in prison, Bundy said he heard Shaw call the other man “Pete” (Vernon Bundy, Jr., interview at Orleans Parish Prison, with William Gurvich, Charlie Jonau, and Cliency Navarre, March 16, 1967). On the witness stand this obviously incorrect feature had vanished.

*
Shaw's attorneys thought “it quite likely” his home “might be bombed or burned” (his insurance company thought so, too—they canceled his homeowners policy); this is one reason Shaw stayed away from his home the entire month of March (Shaw Narrative, p. 3).

†
Reportedly, Judge O'Hara initially was “not inclined” to hold Shaw for trial, but was persuaded to go along with the other two judges (Shaw Journal, p. 68).

*
Five days later Garrison would take Russo before the grand jury and obtain an indictment against Shaw, which specified that the plotting occurred between September 1 and October 10, 1963. Neither this hearing nor the grand jury indictment were necessary to take Shaw to trial.

†
When Judge Bagert, an old high school friend of Shaw, had entered the courtroom that morning, he had “very merrily wished [Shaw] a happy birthday.” Bagert apparently had learned of it from a news account (Shaw Journal, p. 67).

‡
Bundy was paroled “within a month” (Shaw Narrative, p. 10).

§
Garrison's evidence was “water thin” and his case “a joke,” Judge O'Hara told this writer. The panel voted as it did, he said, “because the defense didn't put on any defense” (telephone interview, Nov. 20, 1993). But it was the court that denied Shaw's team the information it needed to mount a more effective defense.

*
In addition to what Garrison gave him in Las Vegas, Phelan had obtained the third hypnosis transcript and Sciambra's report on the sodium Pentothal interview.

About ten o'clock in the evening on March 9, 1967, twenty-one-year-old Alvin Beaubouef, at home with his wife and child, answered a knock at his front door. He found two of Garrison's police investigators standing there. Lynn Loisel and Louis Ivon asked Beaubouef to step outside and he did. In the conversation that followed, Garrison's men offered Beaubouef a substantial sum of money, reportedly as much as
15,000, a job with an airline (Beaubouef's dream), and a hero's role in the case. In return they wanted him to fill in “the missing links” in David Ferrie's story.

Garrison sent his men to make this offer because he
knew
David Ferrie was involved in the assassination. Alvin Beaubouef had accompanied Ferrie on his trip to Houston the night of the assassination; therefore, he must know something. Ivon and Loisel said just that that night: we know you know something. The D.A.'s office had already interviewed Beaubouef twice. Both times he denied knowing anything about the assassination or Ferrie's alleged involvement. The last time, Beaubouef had said he was willing to take a polygraph test.
²
Still, here they were back again. Beaubouef later said he thought they wanted information about Ferrie's private life. He told them he would do anything he could to help but he wanted to speak to his wife and attorney about it first. That was fine. Loisel
said they would put the offer in writing in any form Beaubouef wished.

The next day Beaubouef called his attorney, Hugh Exnicios, and described what had occurred, saying he knew nothing about the assassination. Exnicios represented David Ferrie's estate and felt strongly that Ferrie was an intelligent, moral person, who would not have been involved in such a crime.
³
To him it sounded as though Garrison's men were trying to purchase false information. Exnicios called the district attorney's office and arranged for Loisel to come to his office that afternoon for a meeting that would include Beaubouef. Then Exnicios set up a concealed tape recorder that he activated (exactly when is unclear) after Loisel entered the office.
⁴

In the secretly recorded conversation that followed, Loisel repeated the offer made the night before, with one revision. The airline job and the hero's role were the same but the amount of money was now
3,000. Loisel said he was only interested in information about the assassination and he wanted only the truth. He also said Jim Garrison had authorized the three items offered. Loisel assured them that Beaubouef did not have to worry about being an accessory for withholding until now the information he supplied. “There's ninety-nine thousand ways we could skin that cat,” Loisel said. Nor would there be any danger of Beaubouef incriminating himself because they could “change the story around,” Loisel explained, to eliminate him from “any type of conspiracy or what have you.”
⁵