JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (118 page)

[
161
]. Lewis statement, pp.1-2.

[
162
]. William R. Martin Memorandum to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, April 18, 1967, p. 10. Richard Case Nagell identified one of the other participants in the late August 1963 assassination meeting he attended as simply “Q.” Ibid. “Q” may have again meant Sergio Arcacha Smith’s and Lee Harvey Oswald’s mutual friend, Carlos Quiroga. If that is the case, then the same three men Nagell plotted with were seen meeting together around the same time in New Orleans by David Lewis: Sergio Arcacha Smith, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Carlos Quiroga.

[
163
]. Sergio Arcacha Smith died on July 5, 2000, in Miami. “Passages,”
Kennedy Assassination Chronicles,
vol. 6, no. 2 (Summer 2000), p. 8.

[
164
]. Memorandum from William Attwood to Gordon Chase of the National Security Council staff, November 8, 1963, citing Castro’s righthand man, Rene Vallejo, speaking on behalf of the premier.
FRUS
,
1961-1963,
vol. XI, p. 882.

[
165
]. Ibid., pp. 882-83.

[
166
]. Ibid., p. 882.

[
167
]. Conversation between President John F. Kennedy and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy. Oval Office audio tape, November 5, 1963. From the National Security Archive www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv.

[
168
]. Ibid.

[
169
]. General Fabian Escalante, director of Cuba’s investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy, his assistant Arturo Rodriguez, and former Cuban ambassador Carlos Lechuga met with a group of JFK historians on December 7-9, 1995, in Nassau, Bahamas. Escalante told the group that the original source of the CIA’s information that Kennedy had “a plan to dialogue with Cuba” was none other than Henry Cabot Lodge, who learned of JFK’s consideration of a détente with Cuba as early as December 1962, half a year before Lodge became Kennedy’s ambassador to Vietnam. When CIA operative Felipe Vidal Santiago informed the Miami exile community of Kennedy’s plan, Escalante said, “it was almost like a bomb in those meetings,” infuriating the exiles against a president they already hated because of what they regarded as his betrayal of their cause at the Bay of Pigs. “Transcript of Proceedings between Cuban Officials and JFK Historians: Nassau Beach Hotel, December 7-9, 1995,” (published by JFK Lancer, 332 NE 5th Street, Grand Prairie, TX 75050), p. 33.

[
170
]. William Attwood,
The Twilight Struggle: Tales of the Cold War
(New York: Harper & Row, 1987), p. 262.

[
171
].
Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1963
, p. 875.

[
172
]. Ibid., p. 876.

[
173
]. Castro told Attwood years later that he had been listening in on the Vallejo–Attwood phone conversation about setting an agenda for his secret meeting with Attwood. Atwood,
Twilight Struggle
, p. 262.

[
174
]. Ibid.

[
175
]. Evan Thomas,
The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA
(New York: Touchstone, 1995), p. 299.

[
176
]. “Interview of Fidel Castro Ruz,”
Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy:
Hearings Before the HSCA
, vol. 3 (1978), p. 240.

[
177
]. Anthony Summers,
Conspiracy
(New York: Paragon House, 1989), p. 323.

[
178
]. United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities (Church Committee),
Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders: An Interim Report; November 20, 1975
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 87; based on
Inspector General’s Report
, p. 89 (p. 39 of Prevailing Winds Research text; see above, chapter 2, n. 26).

[
179
].
Inspector General’s Report
, pp. 88-89 (p. 39 of Prevailing Winds Research text), cited by Church Committee,
Alleged Assassination Plots,
p. 174.

[
180
]. Church Committee,
Alleged Assassination Plots,
p. 88; Thomas,
Very Best Men
, p. 303.

[
181
].
Inspector General’s Report
, p. 94 (p. 41 of Prevailing Winds Research text); cited by the Church Committee,
Alleged Assassination Plots
, p. 89.

[
182
]. Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times,
p. 598; citing the Church Committee,
The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976), p. 20.

[
183
]. Schlesinger,
Robert Kennedy and His Times,
p. 598. In addition to President Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen, five of the president’s advisers were involved in discussions about the purpose and content of his November 18 speech in Miami: Schlesinger, Richard Goodwin, McGeorge Bundy, Gordon Chase, and Ralph Dungan. From both Schlesinger’s direct knowledge of the speech-writing process and a search of the JFK Papers, “no evidence was uncovered of any contribution from Fitzgerald and the CIA.” Ibid.

[
184
]. Michael R. Beschloss, citing Theodore Sorensen’s Oral History, Columbia Oral History Project; in
The
Crisis Years: Kennedy and Khrushchev, 1960-1963
(New York: Edward Burlingame Books, 1991), p. 659.

[
185
]. Ibid. Cf. Theodore C. Sorensen,
Kennedy
(New York: Konecky & Konecky, 1965), p. 723.

[
186
]. See
Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1963
, p. 876.

[
187
]. Fidel Castro, “Concerning the Facts and Consequences of the Tragic Death of President John F. Kennedy, November 23rd, 1963,” in E. Martin Schotz,
History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy
(Brookline, Mass.: Kurtz, Ulmer & DeLucia, 1996), pp. 74-75.

[
188
]. Ibid., pp. 75-79.

[
189
]. Ibid., p. 81.

[
190
]. Ibid.

[
191
]. Frank Mankiewicz and Kirby Jones,
With Fidel: A Portrait of Castro and Cuba
(Chicago: Playboy Press, 1975), p. 173.

[
192
]. Ibid., p. 174.

[
193
]. Ibid., pp. 163-64.

[
194
]. “Interview of Fidel Castro Ruz,” pp. 221, 227-28.

[
195
]. Statement of Julia Ann Mercer, New Orleans, Louisiana; January 16, 1968. From the Files of Jim Garrison at the Assassination Archives and Research Center, Washington, D.C. Cf. Decker Exhibit No. 5323,
WCH
, vol. 19, p. 483.

Julia Ann Mercer was not the only person who saw a man carrying a gun in Dealey Plaza the morning of the assassination. Between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. on November 22, Julius Hardie was driving his electrical equipment company truck east on Commerce Street when he saw three men on the railroad overpass bridge. Two of the men, he told a reporter, were “carrying guns, long guns.” Hardie looked at the men twice, “because even in Texas it’s unusual to see people carrying long guns. Now I can’t tell you whether it was rifles, shotguns, or what. But two of them had long guns.” Earl Golz, “SS ‘Imposters’ Spotted by JFK Witnesses,”
Dallas Morning News
(August 27, 1978), p. 4A.

The men with the long guns were dressed conservatively, like most of the men who posed as Secret Service agents in Dealey Plaza that day. Hardie said two of them had on dark business suits and the third an overcoat. After the assassination, Hardie reported his sighting of the men with the long guns to authorities. Two FBI agents visited him a week or two later to take down his story, but he said he “never heard from them after that.” Ibid.

[
196
]. Jim Garrison,
On the Trail of the Assassins
(New York: Warner Books, 1991), p. 252.

[
197
]. Henry Hurt interview with Julia Ann Mercer, 1983. Cited in Henry Hurt,
Reasonable Doubt: An Investigation into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy
(New York: Henry Holt, 1985), p. 115.

[
198
]. Ibid.

[
199
]. Garrison,
On the Trail of the Assassins
, p. 252. Years after first reading Garrison’s description of Julia Ann Mercer and her husband, I discovered that he had slightly changed details in their background for the sake of Mercer’s anonymity and security.

[
200
]. Ibid.

[
201
]. Julia Ann Mercer’s written comment to Jim Garrison on the bottom of 11/28/63 FBI Report by Louis M. Kelley. From the National Archives, Garrison Papers, Special Collection, Box 9, Folder: Mercer, J.A. Why would the FBI show Mercer photos of Jack Ruby? As J. Edgar Hoover became aware, the CIA was laying down a trail—for the FBI to document—of Oswald as a Cuban-and-Soviet-connected assassin. Jack Ruby is known today for his Mafia connections. However, as we shall see, he had also been a gunrunner to Fidel Castro in the 1950s. The young man whom Julia Ann Mercer saw carrying a gun case up the grassy knoll could have been the second Oswald, designed to link Lee Harvey Oswald via Ruby to either Castro or the Mafia, as the need arose. Author Henry Hurt claimed that, when he interviewed Mercer in 1983, she said Oswald was the man with the rifle. Hurt,
Reasonable Doubt
, p. 115. In a CIA scenario that initially involved multiple story lines implicating Oswald, the FBI may have already been put on Ruby’s trail as a possible Cuban-and-Mafia-related accomplice to the assassination. However, once Lyndon Johnson settled on a lone assassin story, Julia Ann Mercer’s testimony implicating Ruby before he murdered Oswald had to be totally suppressed.