INTEREST MOUNTS IN KENNEDY ASSASSINATION PROBE
By Arthur Maglin
New Orleans District Attorney James Garrison's reinvestigation of the Kennedy assassination did not swiftly collapse as some sectors of the bourgeois press predicted it would. Instead new clues have been uncovered. Public interest has therefore mounted and even the most skeptical papers have felt compelled to give rather wide coverage to the facts. As presented in various journals, the most recent developments are as follows:
"The Dallas district attorney and police department have been coldly uncooperative," according to the March 12 Sunday Ramparts. "When Garrison sought to question a Cuban exile now in Dallas the exile rebuffed him with the comment that any talk could only be in the presence of D.A. Bill Alexander and the Dallas police.
"The FBI also has remained aloof, apparently hoping Garrison will fall flat on his face," continues the Sunday Ramparts. "The bureau refused for example to turn over to Garrison a lengthy investigative report on David Ferrie, the pilot who was to be arrested by Garrison but was recently found dead in bed. The FBI report which covers Ferrie's enigmatic trip to Texas at the time of the assassination, has also been withheld from the national archives."
Further on the article reports: "In addition to Ferrie and Shaw, Garrison's trail seems to lead in the direction of anti-Castro emigres. His office has been in close touch with Mrs. Sylvia Odio, a former Dallas resident now living in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Warren Report had discounted Mrs. Odio's testimony that two Latins and Lee Harvey Oswald who was introduced as Leon Oswald visited her in late September 1963. She felt she was being sounded out for financial assistance in helping a paramilitary effort against Castro and was recontacted on the telephone the day after the visit by one of the Latins. She failed to encourage him and has heard nothing further. Recently she emphatically declared that Oswald was the man using the name Leon Oswald and that the Warren Report is wrong in rejecting her testimony: she complains that she has been ‘hounded and harassed' by the FBI."
On a March 12 television interview program Attorney General Ramsey Clark said that he was disturbed that Garrison had persisted in his investigation of the assassination without turning any new evidence over to the federal government. Clark expressed concern over the publicity that Garrison's investigation was receiving. He said, "I am disturbed and saddened that so much publicity, so much doubt is created. I think that is unfortunate for this country because this is a matter that affects us all, so that the assassination of President Kennedy has left a deep mark on the lives of all of us and is something we should be highly sensitive about, and we should seek the truth in the most circumspect and cautious methods."
On March 14, Perry Raymond Russo, a life-insurance agent, testified at a pretrial hearing that prior to the assassination of Kennedy he had heard Lee Harvey Oswald, Clay Shaw and David Ferrie plot to kill the president. Russo said he saw Shaw and Oswald together at Ferrie's apartment on three occasions in September 196%. On one occasion he said that they carried on a detailed discussion of plans and alternate plans for assassinating President Kennedy.
The March 18 National Guardian reports:
"The Guardian has received reports from Rome linking Shaw with various rightwing organizations and individuals, and possibly with the CIA. The Guardian's Rome correspondent, Phyllis Rosner, quoting the Rome daily Paesa Serra, reported that from 1961 till 1965 Shaw was on the board of directors of the Centro Mondiale Commerciale, which the paper said was engaged in obscure dealings in Rome.
"Among the directors on the CMC board, said Paesa Serra, were several Swiss businessmen and bankers, the ex-Hungarian Peasant Party leader Ferenc Nagy, now living in the U.S.; Prince Guitere de Spadaforo, large Italian landowner and industrialist who is related by marriage to Hitler's ‘financial wizard' Hjalmar Schacht; and Dr. Enrico Mantello, who represented himself and six other shareholders, the most important being former U.S. Army Major L.M. Bloomfield, now reportedly a banker in Montreal.
"Bloomfield is reported to have served in the OSS (which was the predecessor of the CIA) during World War II. French newspapers have charged, the Rome daily said, that he was a generous contributor to neo-fascist groups in France, Italy and throughout Europe.
"Paesa Serra said it is believed that the CMC was set up by the CIA as a cover for channeling funds into Italy."
On March 16, an Orleans Parish grand jury indicted Dean A. Andrews Jr., an attorney, on charges that he had perjured himself during the grand jury's investigation into the assassination events. . ’
Also on March 16, Russo, in ending three days of testimony, was asked what part he had played in "this assassination plot" by one of the defense attorneys, Irving Dymond. He replied, "I had no part. I never said I wanted to see President Kennedy killed."
On March 17, a panel of three judges ruled that there was sufficient evidence to try Clay Shaw on charges of conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. The decision of the Orleans Parish Criminal Court came after a four-day pretrial hearing.
The New York Times reported on March 19: "Whatever the hearing might have established about the presence or absence of a conspiracy, it did seem to indicate firmly that there are widespread doubts about the conclusions of the Warren Commission.
"Although no exact count was possible, it appeared that more than 150 newsmen, photographers and television cameramen from throughout the world were in New Orleans to cover the hearing. And more often than not the stories and pictures they sent home were given prominent display.
"It was clear, too, that New Orleans took the hearing seriously indeed. Dozens of sheriff's deputies hovered about the courtroom to inspect and frisk each person as he entered. They seemed especially concerned that an F.B.I. agent or some other representative of the Federal Government might try to 'infiltrate' the proceeding. Once, they ordered a newsman from the courtroom and double-checked his credentials on the suspicion that he might have been an F.B.I. agent."
Clay Shaw was indicted on March 22 by a New Orleans grand jury. No date was set for his arraignment. On March 23, the New York Times said, "The F.B.I. reports of the investigation of Mr. Shaw, which were furnished to the Warren Commission, have been sealed and have not been opened to the public, as have other reports." And on March 24 the Times reported, "A New Orleans judge ordered today the arrest of Gordon Novel, a 29-year-old former bar owner in New Orleans French Quarter, as a material witness in the investigation by District Attorney Jim Garrison into the assassination of President Kennedy.
"In an affidavit filed with the judge, Mr. Garrison said he had ‘good reason to believe' that Mr. Novel was a ‘most important' witness who was material to the grand jury's investigation.
"Criminal Court Judge Matthew S. Braniff issued a warrant for Mr. Novel's arrest and set bail at $50,000.
"Mr. Novel, who told reporters in New Orleans last week that the District Attorney wanted to question him about a Cuban refugee organization that operated in New Orleans in 1964, was scheduled to appear before the grand jury yesterday [March 22] but he did not show up." The article states further on: "In another development today (March 23], Mr. Garrison subpoenaeda former roommate of David W. Ferrie to appear before the grand jury next Wednesday [March 29.]
"He is Layton Martens, 23 years old, who was identified by the District Attorney's office as Patrick L. Martens, who accompanied Mr. Ferrie and another man to Texas on the afternoon that President Kennedy was murdered in Dallas."
According to a report from New Orleans by Bern Rotman which appeared in the March 24 issue of the Long Island Newsday, "Martens said [in a television interview two weeks before he was subpoenaed] he and Ferrie were active in the Cuban Revolutionary Front, an anti-Castro Cuban organization composed mainly of refugees from Cuba. Garrison is believed to be trying to establish a link between anti-Castro Cubans, Shaw, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the assassination of Kennedy."
The March 28 issue of the New York Times reported: "District Attorney Jim Garrison's office issued a warrant today [March 27] for the arrest of Mrs. Lilly Mae McMaines of Omaha, connected to Mr. Garrison's assassination investigation by Perry R. Russo.
"Mr. Russo, a 25-year-old Baton Rouge insurance salesman, said Mrs. McMaines --
the former Sandra Moffet of New Orleans -- was one of several persons who attended a party in David W. Ferrie's apartment after which, he says, he heard Mr. Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald and Clay L. Shaw conspire to kill President Kennedy."
The following day's Times reported that Mrs. McMaines was taken into custody in Omaha on March 28.
The March 28 Times reported another intriguing development:
"Bismarck, North Dakota, March 27 (UPI)--A lawyer on trial in a $3-million insurance fraud case tcld a Federal judge he was forced off a highway at gunpoint today as he drove here with documents that 'prove' President Kennedy was assassinated by persons other than Lee Harvey Oswald."
The dispatch adds sensational details: "The 43-year-old lawyer was found partly conscious -- a loaded shotgun across his knees -- in a locked car on the shoulder of a highway about 30 miles east of Bismarck at 4 A.M. today.
"He told Judge Devitt that he had been forced off the highway at pistol point by pursuers as he drove here with documents that 'tend to prove or in some cases do prove' that persons other than Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy.
"Mr. Kroman said he was convinced the highway incident was connected with his investigation of the assassination and not with his trial in the alleged insurance fraud conspiracy....
"He said a North Dakota highway patrolman ‘thankfully salvaged' the documents after patrolmen found him in the car.
"Mr. Kroman's testimony before Judge Devitt was on a prosecution motion to revoke his $5,000 bond ‘because of this and other incidents.' Mr. Kroman, a onetime lawyer for the Minnesota Insurance Department, said the Government move was ‘an attempt to shut me up.'
"Mr. Kroman told the court he did not know the names of the men who pursued him but knew 'who they represented.' Asked why, in his opinion, they had not killed him, he indicated he thought they believed they had achieved their ain.
"'Tf I am completely ruined as far as my name is concerned, and if I am torn apart physically, then I wouldn't be of any use any more,' he said.
"In a hospital room news conference before the court hearing, he told newsmen that 'the assassination is solved' and that he would reveal the name of Mr. Kennedy's killer within the next few days.
"Mr. Kroman said he had been in-touch with District Attorney Jim Garrison of New Orleans, who says he has ‘solved' the assassination.
"'Jim Garrison has most of it correct but not the whole story,' Mr. Kroman said.
The final paragraph of the story states that, "Mr. Kroman said he began his investigation of the assassination in December, 1963, when he heard ‘a drunken Cuban blabbing' in a Miami bar."
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