JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (117 page)

[
111
]. Author’s interview of Matthew Smith, January 3, 2007.

[
112
]. Matthew Smith has reproduced the report of Wayne January’s November 29, 1963, FBI interview on pp. 272-73 of
JFK: The Second Plot
. A separate FBI memorandum which conveys the same misrepresentation of January’s interview is reproduced by John Armstrong on his CD-Rom for
Harvey and Lee
, “1963 November 1-21,” image 19.

[
113
]. Smith,
JFK: The Second Plot
, p. 273.

[
114
]. Smith interview.

[
115
]. Ibid.

[
116
]. Interview with Francis Louis Fruge, April 7, 1978, pp. 1-2; House Select Committee on Assassinations; JFK Record Number 180-10106-10014.

[
117
]. Ibid., p. 3.

[
118
]. Testimony of Francis Fruge, April 18, 1978, p. 9; House Select Committee on Assassinations; JFK Record Number 180-10105-10330.

[
119
]. “Rose Cheramie,” Staff Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations;
Appendix to Hearings before the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives
(HSCA) (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), vol. 10, p. 200. Memorandum from Frank Meloche to Louis Ivon, Chief Investigator, New Orleans District Attorney’s Office, May 22, 1967. JFK Record Number 180-10112-10310.

[
120
]. Fruge interview, p. 3.

[
121
]. Ibid.

[
122
]. Report by Frederick U. Turner, Customs Agent, to Chief Agent Customs, Port Arthur, Texas, December 10, 1963, p. 1. JFK Record Number 180-10105-10003.

[
123
]. Ibid., p. 2.

[
124
]. Fruge interview, pp. 4-5. Fruge testimony, pp. 20, 22-23.

[
125
]. Fruge testimony, p. 20. Fruge interview, p. 4.

[
126
]. Fruge interview, p. 5.

[
127
]. Ibid., p. 5. Fruge testimony, p. 19.

[
128
]. Interview of Officer J. A. Andrews, Texas Highway Patrol, by Lt. F. L. Fruge, April 4, 1967, p. 1. JFK Record Number 180-10112-10057. James DiEugenio, “Rose Cheramie: How She Predicted the JFK Assassination,” in
The Assassinations
, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease (Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003), p. 229.

[
129
]. DiEugenio,
Assassinations,
p. 229.

[
130
]. Andrews interview, p. 1.

[
131
]. Charles A. Crenshaw, with Jens Hansen and J. Gary Shaw,
JFK: Conspiracy of Silence
(New York: Signet, 1992), p. 44. Besides swearing that he didn’t hit Rose Cheramie with his car, Jerry Don Moore “also stated that upon stopping to render aid and to transport the victim to medical facilities, he saw a late-model red Chevrolet parked nearby. Cheramie’s sister confirms the red Chevy story. She was told by investigating authorities that they too had seen the automobile at the scene shortly before the accident as they made their usual patrol of the area.” Ibid., pp. 44-45. Cheramie’s family, however, was reluctant to pursue any questions in a follow-up probe. Andrews interview, p. 1.

[
132
]. Andrews interview, p. 1. Interviewer Fruge raised other questions concerning Cheramie’s “accidental” death: “It should be noted that Hwy. #155 is a Farm to Market Road, running parallel to US Hwys. #271 and #80. It is our opinion, from experience, that if a subject was hitch-hiking, as this report wants to indicate, that this
does not
run true to form” (emphasis in original).

Fruge also “found it unusual that a person would be hit by an auto and only have a fracture of the skull without breaking any other bones in the body.” Fruge interview, p. 7.

[
133
]. Crenshaw,
JFK: Conspiracy of Silence,
p. 44.

[
134
]. Ibid.

[
135
]. DiEugenio,
Assassinations,
p. 229.

[
136
]. Fruge testimony, p. 28.

[
137
]. Ibid., pp. 27-28.

[
138
]. In his deposition for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Francis Fruge identified the same photographs that Mac Manual had said to him were of the two men who were with Rose Cheramie. The photos were of Sergio Arcacha Smith and Emilio Santana. Fruge testimony, pp. 28-30; together with S. Jonathan Blackmer’s “Summary of Deposition of Francis Louis Fruge Taken on April 18, 1978, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana,” p. 1. JFK Record Number 180-10089-10046.

Fruge also stated that Mac Manual “was shot to death in 1974-1975 in Villeplatte, Louisiana.” Fruge interview, p. 6.

[
139
]. September 1, 1967, Memorandum to District Attorney Jim Garrison from Assistant D. A. William R. Martin on August 25, 1967, Interview with Emilio Santana; p. 2. I am grateful to researcher Bill Davy for sharing with me this Emilio Santana interview and the Santana interviews cited in the next three notes, all of which he obtained from the Assassination Archives and Research Center, Washington, D.C.

[
140
]. Ibid. Also February 15, 1967, Memorandum to District Attorney Jim Garrison from Assistant D.A. James L. Alcock on February 14, 1967, Interview with Emilio Santana, p. 1.

[
141
]. February 14, 1967, Santana Interview, p. 1.

[
142
]. February 17, 1967, Memorandum to District Attorney Jim Garrison from Investigator Lynn Loisell on February 16, 1967, Interview of Emilio Santana, pp. 4-5.

[
143
]. David C. Martin,
Wilderness of Mirrors
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1980), p. 144. Robert Kennedy demanded that the CIA’s William Harvey tell him on whose authority Harvey had sent sixty commandos “into Cuba at a time when the slightest provocation might unleash a nuclear holocaust.” Kennedy described Harvey’s response: “[Harvey] said we planned it because the military wanted it done, and I asked the military and they never heard of it.” When RFK demanded a better explanation and Harvey floundered, Kennedy walked out on him while he was still talking. Ibid.

[
144
]. CIA Memorandum on “Garrison Investigation; Emilio SANTANA Galindo,” July 9, 1967. JFK Record Number 104-10170-10146.

[
145
]. “Resume of Sergio Arcacha,” JFK Record Number 180-10085-10408.

[
146
]. Ibid.

[
147
]. “File Review of Sergio Arcacha Smith,” Immigration and Naturalization Service, May 5, 1978; p. 3. JFK Record Number 180-10078-10412. “File Review of Sergio Arcacha Smith and Frank Sturgis,” Department of Defense, May 26, 1978; p. 1. JFK Record Number 180-10091-10175.

[
148
]. DOD “File Review of Sergio Arcacha Smith and Frank Sturgis,” p. 1.

[
149
]. INS “File Review of Sergio Arcacha Smith,” p. 3.

[
150
]. CIA Reference Memorandum on Sergio Vicente Arcacha Smith. JFK Record Number 104-10130-10011.

[
151
]. Ibid.

[
152
]. From the notes of reporter Dick Billings, 2/21/67. Cited by DiEugenio,
Assassinations,
p. 232.

[
153
]. “Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC): New Orleans Chapter,”
Appendix to HSCA Hearings,
vol. 10, p. 61.

[
154
]. E. Howard Hunt,
Give Us This Day
(New York: Popular Library, 1973), pp. 182-89.

[
155
]. “David Ferrie,”
Appendix to HSCA Hearings,
vol. 10, p. 110; “544 Camp Street and Related Events,” pp. 126-27.

[
156
]. Ibid., p. 110.

[
157
]. Ibid. It was Guy Banister who “talked [building-owner] Sam Newman into leasing 544 Camp Street to the Cuban Revolutionary Council” office of Sergio Arcacha Smith. Ibid., p. 127.

[
158
]. Ibid., p. 123.

[
159
]. Gary Sanders Interview of Richard Rolfe, Memorandum to Louis Ivon, January 13, 1968; p. 1. From the National Archives, Garrison Investigative Papers, Folder: Sanders, Gary; Box 10. By 1963 Sergio Arcacha Smith had moved to Texas, first to Houston, then Dallas, where he was reportedly living at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. DiEugenio,
Assassinations,
p. 233. Also INS “File Review of Sergio Arcacha Smith,” p. 3.

[
160
]. Statement of David F. Lewis, Jr., December 15, 1966, New Orleans District Attorney’s Office, p. 1. JFK Record Number 180-10070-10356. In a Secret Service interview in December 1963, Arnesto M. Rodriguez, Sr., a seventy-two-year-old Cuban exile living in New Orleans, said that Carlos Quiroga “knew Arcacha well and was with him frequently (very close connection) at 544 Camp Street.” December 1, 1963, Interview of Arnesto M. Rodriguez, Sr., United States Secret Service, Treasury Department. JFK Record Number 180-10078-10417. Quiroga acknowledged his friendship and financial help to Arcacha in his interview by Jim Garrison on January 21, 1967. JFK Record Number 180-10078-10418. Carlos Quiroga visited Lee Harvey Oswald at Oswald’s apartment in New Orleans in August 1963. The stack of pamphlets, about 5 or 6 inches high (according to Oswald’s landlady), that Quiroga brought to Oswald indicates Quiroga was an intelligence asset delivering pamphlets to his fellow agent, Oswald.
WCH,
vol. 10, p. 269. Ray and Mary La Fontaine,
Oswald Talked: The New Evidence in the JFK Assassination
(Gretna, La.: Pelican, 1996), p. 162.