FBI took over. What, if anything, they found out is secret, for there is no such FBI report unsuppressed. If there could possibly be anything in it justifying suppression under the regulations, I cannot think of it. From the available FBI reports, the agents sought to learn nothing. What they might have discovered that had to be suppressed is entirely inconsistent with what available.

Did Ferrie , perhaps, confess an official or unofficial CIA connection, the nature of his own involvements with the exile Cubans who were the creatures of the CIA? Whatever he said, he was, from what is not suppressed, thereafter treated with kid gloves. There are a number of reasonable conjectures that should have suggested themselves to skilled, on-their-toes agents like those of the Secret Service and the FBI.

The FBI beat the Secret Service to Martin, whom they interviewed on or by November 26. There is no FBI report of it and the Secret Service report does not say:

On 11/26/63 it was learned the FBI Agents had talked with Jack S. Martin, who admitted that he had been the informant with regard to David William Ferrie; that Martin had admitted to FBI Agents that the information which he had furnished Assistant District Attorney Kohlman was a figment of his imagination and that he had made up the story after reading the newspapers and watching television that he remembered that Kohlman, former newspaper reporter, had written an article or story about Ferrie a couple of years ago and that he pieced the whole thing together in his mind and had given it to Kohlman as facts.

On the night of 11/29/63 SAIC Rice and reporting agent interviewed Jack S. Martin at length in his small run-down apartment located at 1311 N. Prieur Street, New Orleans, which he shares with his wife and 6-year old son. Martin admitted during the interview that he suffers from "telephonitis" when drinking and that it was during one of his drinking sprees that he telephoned Assistant District Attorney Herman S. Kohlman and told him this fantastic story about William David Ferrie being involved with Lee Harvey Oswald. He said he had heard on television that Oswald had at one time been active in the Civil Air Patrol and had later heard that Ferrie had been his Squadron Commander. Martin stated that Ferrie was well known to him; that he recalled having seen rifles in Ferrie's home and also recalled that Kohlman had written an article on Ferrie and that Ferrie had been a Marine and had been with the Civil Air Patrol. Martin stated that after turning all these thoughts over

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in his mind he had telephoned Herman S. Kohlman and told his story as though it was based on facts rather than on his imagination.

Important as what Martin said should be when the murder of a President is involved, there is not a single direct quotation from Martin. This is less than exceptional, for there is none from Ferrie's interview with Gerrets and Rice and the Secret Service, which got to Martin several days later, also apparently found his precise words unworthy or inconvenient.

The interesting thing here is that everything the Secret Service says Martin knew from personal knowledge is correct. He also knew that Ferrie had been a CAP commander. To justify the use of the word "fantastic" to describe what Martin said, whether he used it or the Secret Service deemed it appropriate, there remains but the paraphrased language following it, the "story about William David Ferrie being involved with Lee Harvey Oswald." Whatever can be said of it, and there is reason to believe it, there is nothing "fantastic" about it. This is Secret Service propaganda that has nothing to do with what they say they were told, nothing to do with what they attribute to anyone other than Ferrie, and nothing to do with Martin's reliability or lack of it. It may have served a purpose at the time it was written, to condition Washington minds. It certainly was useful when it was fed to the press in New Orleans in 1967 and helped convince the reporters Martin was not a dependable observer.

Two sentences only remain in this report. The last one, under "Details of Investigation," reads:

In view of the above, this phase of the investigation involving William David Ferrie will be considered closed.

And under "Undeveloped Leads":

Case remains open at New Orleans pending submission of several

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additional reports covering investigation thus far conducted, after which the case will be closed here and investigation discontinued in accordance Chief's instructions.

Thus we learn that there were also additional Secret Service reports that were suppressed and that the Ferrie case was "closed," as ordered by Chief Rowley.

But first of all the report begins with and contains false statements. Gerrets and Rice did not conduct what is normally conceived as an investigation. The synopsis is both misleading and untrue, part of the poison. What is "without foundation" came from others. The only accusation of his training "Oswald in the use of a rifle with a telescopic lense " (sic) and things of that sort came from Ferrie and not Martin. Those in Washington who went past the synopsis got the same poison in the body of the report, in less concentrated but more generous doses.

Some of the things not believed and coming from other people, like Ferrie's having flown to Cuba, are not without corroboration, whether or not true. This came out in one of the morals cases against Ferrie. It is not without interest that there is no denial of the third-hand report that the FBI had been investigating Ferrie "several weeks before 11-24 63," as the second page of the report says.

There are other indications Ferrie was under investigation before the assassination, but by whom is not known. Within a week after it had made Garrison's investigation public knowledge, the New Orleans States-Item learned ". . . a private detective had been posing as a Civil Air Patrol official at the airport in 1963 . . . with the task of checking on Ferrie's activities." There is no reference to this, not even to deny it in the Report or any of the Commission's published or unpublished files of which I am aware.

The wonder would be if it was not an investigator from the CAP. It should have become disturbed at its conversion by Ferrie into a recruiting ground for his

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harem of young men.

But these questions should not be without answer. Had the CAP (or another agency posing as the CAP) investigated Ferrie in 1963? Was the FBI investigating Ferrie just before the assassination and, if so, why? The "supplies" Ferrie allegedly flew to Cuba, it may be presumed, were not for the Cuban government. How Ferrie "knew" Martin was the source of the information against him is a question that apparently did not interest the Secret Service. Ferrie had been traveling, hiding or in jail. He had not seen Martin, and there is nothing in the report to show he saw anyone in New Orleans other than his lawyer.

There is no inquiry about the suspect, Ferrie, shown in this report. There was no such interest. All the Secret Service wanted to do was say Ferrie was "clean."

Ferrie said he worked for G. Wray Gill, who is also his personal lawyer; that Gill told him to hide out overnight (the Secret Service did not care to ask why), and that on the day of the assassination "he had been in court in connection with a trial involving Carlos Marcello." Other accounts, possibly less delicate, say Marcello was on trial. Carlos Marcello is not a stranger to the news columns.

Only two interviews with Ferrie are not suppressed. Ferrie drafted the second. It is not less informative than the first. Neither begins to say what each shows it could have.

On November 27, less than 48 hours after the FBI jail interview, Ferrie was visited by Agents Ernest C. Wall, Jr., and Theodore R. Viater. It cannot be said they interrogated, interviewed or questioned him, for the content of their report does not justify association with the norms of police work. What Ferrie said is embodied in eight short paragraphs. Most of these are simple denials, of which only two are unequivocal: He never loaned his library card to Oswald and he never

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taught anyone how to use a telescopic sight. He does not deny having known Oswald "in the Civil Air Patrol or in any business or social capacity." It is probable that Ferrie did not then know what the various police knew of him. Instead, he is quoted as having said "he has no recollection of knowing or having met" Oswald.

The first two paragraphs, which bear very much on what the FBI knew (and the reports do not say) and on what was subsequently learned, read:

FERRIE stated that at the time of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba he was very embarrassed and concerned over the lack of air cover provided the Cubans who were engaged in the invasion and that he severely criticized President JOHN F. KENNEDY both in public and in private. He stated that he does not recall specifically what he said in making these criticisms and might have used an off-hand or colloquial expression "He ought to be shot" to express his feelings concerning the Cuban situation. He stated that he has never made any statement that President KENNEDY should be killed with the intention that this be done and has never at any time outlined or formulated any plans or made any statement as to how this could be done or who should do it.

FERRIE stated that when it came to serious discussions, when the question of impeachment of President KENNEDY arose he opposed any impeachment proceeding. FERRIE said that within one year prior to the first Russian Sputnik he recalls being quite critical of the U.S. Space Project and the Defense Program. He said he had also been critical of any president riding in an open car and had made the statement that anyone could hide in the bushes and shoot a president. FERRIE also advised that he has been accused of being a worshiper of President KENNEDY because he is a liberal and strongly believes in President KENNEDY's civil Rights Program and Fiscal Program.

This is self-serving language. Ferrie's public record on Kennedy and Cuba is really violent and is in no way described by the words "embarrassed and concerned," as we shall see. Saying the President of the United States "ought to be shot" is not just a "colloquial expression." The "Cuban situation" need not be a reference to the Bay of Pigs in either the time of the threat or the year in which it was made, which the FBI does not note. And to imply that possibly the threat was but a bad joke is the least one could expect of the man who made it. Without a complete rundown on

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him, the explanation is not acceptable, although it satisfied the FBI and the Commission. When and where the threat was made, how the FBI knew about it, who reported it and what he or they thought of it we do not know. Ferrie says it is but a "colloquial expression" or a bad joke, and who is the FBI, investigating the murder of a President, to question Dave Ferrie?

Ferrie's story about his reaction to the murder of the man "he almost worshiped" is that, instead of being glued to his TV, as were most Americans, he went off goose-hunting with two of the lads, leaving New Orleans late November 22.

On November 28, Lee Fletcher, the porter at the Alamotel, "made available the registration card" for Ferrie, Alvin Beauboeuf and Melvin Coffey, who checked in at 4:30 A.M. November 23 and out "around 8:00 or 9:00 P.M." November 24.

The November 23, 1963, date on the Alamotel Registration Card was written over a November 22, 1963, date. Mr. FLETCHER explained that this occurred because of the early morning time which the subjects checked in the motel, but he is quite sure the right date was the 23rd.

More mystery, more "thoroughness." The address of this motel is not given, not even the city, the FBI was that thorough. Presumably it was Houston, 364 miles from New Orleans. Ferrie or his companions made four calls to New Orleans and a local one. All five numbers are given. If there was any investigation of this, the evidence is barren. Thoroughly barren. But it should not be. The two unidentified numbers are those of the Town and Country Motel -- Carlos Marcello's -- and the one at which Beauboeuf's mother worked the switchboard. This way a collect call.

Also on November 28, Chuck Rolland of the Winterland Skating Rink, whose address is given without the city (but there is indication elsewhere it is in Houston), told the FBI that Ferrie phoned him November

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22 to ask for the schedule and to announce he "was coming in from out of town and desired to do some skating while he was in Houston." On the 23rd, between 3:30 and 6:30 P.N., Ferrie and his two friends arrived "but at no time did they discuss the cost of equipping or operating an ice skating rink." Is this a clue to some of what is in the suppressed documents? There is nothing in evidence on it.

FERRIE stated to Mr. ROLLAND that he and his companions would he in and out of the skating rink during the weekend. This is the last time Mr. ROLLAND saw FERRIE or his companions.

In Galveston on November 28, Mrs. Mary Doveri of the Driftwood Motor Hotel gave the FBI a registration card that indicated the same three checked in there 11 p.m. the 23rd and left at a time not recorded the next day. One phone call was made, to Alexandria, Louisiana. Quite obviously the Ferrie party could not have traveled 60 miles from Houston to Galveston and arrived the day before they started. But these FBI reports show departure from the Alamotel Motel in Houston between 8 and 9 p.m. the night of the 24th and arrival at the Driftwood in Galveston about 11 p.m. the 23rd.

There is an additional report from Port Arthur that may or may not relate, of three unnamed and partly described men who stopped at a gas station in the early afternoon.

If any of the people from whom identities were sought was shown a picture of any of the three men, the documents do not reveal it. If any registration cards were taken for handwriting comparisons, there is no statement so showing, nor is there any report on the handwriting analysis. If Coffey or Beauboeuf were interviewed, there is no record. There is no reference to either of the young men in any of the testimony or in any of the unindexed exhibits that I recall.

Assume that these rudimentary inquiries show Fer-

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rie and the other two were in Texas those two days. This is not proof of it, and this raises more questions than it answers, about the hunting of geese, or whatever else Ferrie hunted and called it goose, or of the times, which do not work out. This is anything but a diligent investigation of Ferrie's trip. It is contradicted by an account of an interview with Ferrie in the New Orleans Times-Picayune of February 23. This interview was granted after the Garrison investigation was pubic and long after Ferrie knew about it. He gave this brief and inadequate description of his trip:

"We went that night to Vinton, La., then to Houston, Galveston Tex., where we did some goose hunting, and finally back to Alexandria, La. It was there I discovered Garrison and his assistant Frank Klein had broken into my apartment and carted off a lot of things."

Here is 100 percent of what can be gleaned from the Commission's file, 100 percent of what the FBI has not suppressed.

With the death of Jack Ruby there are three grounds for withholding any of this material. The copy given me by the able and conscientious Director of the National Archives, Dr. Robert Bahmer, is headed, "Justice Department Revision of Guidelines." These categories are (aside from that vague sheet under which so many ghosts stalk, "national security"): What "would be detrimental to the administration and enforcement of laws and regulations . . ."; what "might reveal the identity of confidential sources of information" (Hoover's stool pigeons that to him are more important than public knowledge of the full story of the assassination and who was involved and how the government -- he -- performed); and what "would be a source of embarrassment to innocent persons . . ."

Could the revelation of any of this material, before or after Ferrie's death, "have damaged his reputation had they been made public," the explanation quoted by the San Francisco Examiner of February 23,1967?

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Ferrie's record as a homosexual was court and public record. It was well known. How well known and how public we shall soon see as we look into what was available, not of interest to the government, not included in the Report or the evidence. Is it conceivable that after he died it "would be a source of embarrassment to innocent persons," none of whom among the living wanted his body (only two people attended his funeral)?

So much for this "exhaustive" investigation that "washed out" the charges; so much for the "very substantial" investigation that Liebeler praised while pretending he had no responsibility; for the "double checking." This is how the FBI "picked" Ferrie "clean," part of the untold story of Oswald in New Orleans.

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8. FERRIE PRIVATE, FERRIE PUBLIC

How much do the available FBI and Secret Service reports add to public knowledge about David William Ferrie? What values does Congressman Ford's "proper analysis" by the "proper authorities" add to what appeared in the press? Certainly the Secret Service and the FBI, during the days of the investigation, were "proper authorities." Until he signed the Report of the President's Commission, Congressman Ford was a very proper authority. But very proper, very authoritative.

Did he know as much about David William Ferrie after reading these FBI and Secret Service reports (had he the time) as he would, for example, if he had written Mrs. Shirley Martin, of Owasso, Oklahoma?

Mrs. Martin loved President Kennedy. Like other Americans, she was stunned by his assassination. Like very few others of those many dissatisfied with the Report, she determined to do something. Ever since, she has been conducting her own research and investigation, while caring for her five children, husband and home. For this she has been ridiculed by quick-buck artists capitalizing on the unwillingness of the press to believe and acknowledge the government could be so wrong in the official assassination accounting and its willingness to pay for slanders.

As I was finishing Whitewash ll: The FBI Secret Service Cover-Up I received an anonymous tip that checked out 100 percent accurately about an unnecessarily mysterious retired Army colonel about whom we shall be reading. Later I learned my modest, remarkably intuitive and eminently correct informant was Shirley Martin. Some of the newspapers from which I shall quote are from her available files. Without doubt, she would lend them to Congressman Ford and his associates.

Closer to home, in Washington, there is Mrs. Vivian

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Gardner, a former newspaperwoman and widow of a newspaperman, who similarly would have helped him as she helped me.

Despite contrary contentions once the Garrison investigation embarrassed the federal government, the Commission made no Ferrie investigation. Had it inquired into his character, his capacities, it might have determined, on the basis of only the gossamer threads in these FBI and Secret Service reports and public knowledge so little enhanced by them, that Ferrie could have been looked into. Once this decision was made, all of subsequent history could have been different.

For Ferrie had both physical and mental capacities that made others fear him. In the preliminary hearing on the "Clay Bertrand" case in New Orleans ending March 17, 1967, one of defense counsel, in his appeal to the judges, assailed the main witness, Perry Raymond Russo . According to the Associated Press quotation of his remarks, Defense Attorney William Wegmann said, ". . . the only worthy thing of Russo 's testimony is that he knew David Ferrie and feared his

intelligence . . ."

Ferrie was known as a homosexual and did not fear exposure as would some of his mates. His grip on young men rendered parents powerless over their sons. February 26, 1967, New Orleans States-Item reported testimony that the parents of one of Ferrie's young partners contacted Russo in an effort to break ''Ferrie's hold on her son."

Before he lost his job as an Eastern Airlines pilot cause of his homosexuality, Ferrie was welcomed as a speaker by respectable organizations. For example, according to the States-Item, he spoke before the New Orleans Junior Chamber of Commerce on December 9, 1955, that airplane instrument panels would be simplified, requiring fewer instruments, perhaps fewer

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than a dozen. Even after his disgrace, he addressed the Exchange Club and others.

To some of them he spoke with great violence. Because military groups are not notoriously moderate, this comment by George Lardner in the Washington Post of February 26, 1967, is an indication of Ferrie's intemperance and judgement:

In July, 1961 . . . he spoke to the New Orleans chapter of the Military Order of the World Wars on "Cuba -- April, 1961 Present and Future," but he was cut off by a chapter official who found his remarks offensive. Just what Ferrie said is unclear, but one man present is reported to have said Ferrie complained sharply about "The President of the United States and the Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, apparently for the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

After the District Attorney's great interest in him was known, Dave Ferrie was able to con the press as he had the FBI (which, quite possibly, was more willing to be). As he had directed the attention and conceptions of the FBI, so he did with the usually perceptive, tough-minded and suspicious reporters. His public relations were excellent, He refused TV exposure, knowing he would not come across sympathetically. Concentrating on the press, he wholesaled his twisted thinking all around the world.

First, he earned their confidence by speaking to the States-Item when the story broke. This is the "I've got nothing to hide" technique. It makes one wonder if, in a manner unknown, he could have been their original tipster. The publicity hurt the investigation and intimidated witnesses. The wire services had picked it up for the big play -- but Ferrie had been there coloring it his way, in the beginning; attention-getting and mind-fixing part of the news story.

However, in speaking to the New Orleans States-Item, Ferrie did not attribute official interest in him to Martin. Having either forgotten his successful ploy of three years earlier with the federal police or having changed his approach, he said that it was Edward

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Voebel's appearance on television that resulted in official interest. Although stories originating in New Orleans continued to attribute Ferrie's troubles to Martin, who at the same time was being maligned in the press, the New Orleans paper used this item first on February 18 and repeated it four days later, without reported protest or complaint by Ferrie.

AP began the second-day story of February 18 with him and gave him most of the space and all the "breaks." They quote him as saying "that the District Attorney's office" had "told him that it had 'positively' uncovered a plot in New Orleans to assassinate Kennedy." Although he had "undergone questioning," he is sympathetically quoted as saying, "I couldn't figure out what it was all about."

It then picks up and plays his deception, that there was something irregular in his questioning, and makes it seem as though there were something in the FBI reports (he acted as if he knew their contents) that the District Attorney's office could not face, something that further made him seem innocent, the victim of a persecution, a "patriot."

Ferrie "asked the District Attorney's office if he could obtain a copy of the statement (as though there were just one -- the one he typed and should have had a copy of) he gave the FBI (as though this, too, were a voluntary act on his part) immediately after the assassination. Ferrie said that was the last he heard of the matter until 'friends and acquaintances began calling me saying that they had been questioned and among other things, questioned about me."' Evil District Attorney. Cannot face the unsullied evidence of the FBI, First In Peace, First In War!

By the end of the story, the AP was quoting Ferrie as an expert on the entire investigation. In ringing reaffirmation of the acceptable federal government line, he said, "I believe it would be fruitless to look for an accomplice." Instant expert, Dave Ferrie.

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Five days later, Ferrie was the AP's psychological expert. In a story that appeared February 23, they embellished this "expert" opinion from the "psychologist" (then dead) and wrote of him as though he really had been sane and an acknowledged authority.

Ferrie said it was fruitless to search for an accomplice for Oswald because "my assessment of Oswald is that he would be incapable of any interpersonal relationship, especially anything as delicate as a conspiracy to kill."

This same AP story revealed the basis for Ferrie's "science": Ferrie repeatedly denied," the story says, "that he ever knew Oswald."

How is that for both science and news impartiality? Ferrie did not know Oswald and thus became an expert to be quoted internationally and on so many front pages. He had made an "assessment." What difference did it make that he insisted he did not know and had never studied or even seen the man he "assessed"?

This logic, science and evidence must have been very appealing. It appeared in exactly the same words, attributed to AP, again on February 24.

In the second-day story in the States-Item, on February 18, to Ferrie's revelation of the District Attorney's uncovering of the ridiculed "plot" was added this direct quotation: "Supposedly I have been tagged as the getaway pilot under an elaborate plot to kill Kennedy." Here again Ferrie lied, knowing full well this was not and could not have been the truth, knowing that Garrison had told him no such thing. This lie, too, spread all over the earth, smeared by the uncritical press. Thus did Ferrie direct the focus of the press, knowing that he could show he had been in New Orleans at the time of the assassination, could account for the immediately following days, and that Garrison knew it.

Henry Wade, Dallas District Attorney, helped Ferrie keep things out of focus. He told UPI, which prepared a

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lengthy story in advance for release February 25, "Rumors were flying around that he (Oswald) was supposed to go to an airport and somebody was supposed to fly him away after the assassination, but as far as I know there was nothing but rumors."

Wade can qualify as a rumor expert. The Commission devoted part of its Report to some of those he launched (R2344ff).

This line Ferrie had successfully foisted off on the federal investigators worked so well with the press that by February 25 the normally suspicious George Lardner was writing in the Washington Post that "before Ferrie died early Wednesday morning . . . he told me of his fears that Garrison's investigation would prove no more than a 'witch hunt.' The 49-year-old Ferrie had been interrogated after the assassination about reports that he might have been the pilot of a 'getaway plane' for the assassin and that he knew Oswald. He denied it."

This uncritical reportage of Ferrie's lies is in accord with the undeviating editorial policy of the Washington Post, which regards every criticism of the Report or the Commission as malicious; it has refused to review books unfavorable to the Commission.

So the Post, without quotation marks, on its own authority, as others did with and without quotes, palmed off as fact Ferrie's own fed-back propaganda line. Nicholas C. Chriss, writing in the Los Angeles Times of the same day, used the same words, coming from Ferrie: "Supposedly I have been pegged as the getaway pilot." Chriss helped Ferrie's successful ploy even more by following it with these words, ". . . the FBI cleared Ferrie of any involvement . . ."

Even after his death, Ferrie's accepted "public relations" was working for him. For example, in this same Chriss story:

Ferrie also told Lardner that when Garrison's men summoned him for questioning last November, they said they wanted to go over ground

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he had covered with them in 1963 because their office had lost its copy of what he said then. Ferrie told Lardner he volunteered to obtain a copy of his statement from the FBI, but was told by Garrison's men, "No, don't do that, Don't say we sent you."

The portrait of Ferrie is of a man with nothing to hide, friend and collaborator of the hallowed FBI and more than willing to speak and speak freely. On the same day the Oakland (California) Tribune quoted Lardner thus: "Once you get him talking it is hard to shut him off."

Ferrie's last and continuingly successful effort did him no good personally because he died. It may benefit others. It involved Lardner again. In the Post of February 23, he added a Ferrie note of intrigue, a suggestion that it is Ferrie who was on the side of right, and quite possibly a threat to Garrison:

Ferrie said he was especially worried that what he said might trigger a "premature arrest" by Garrison's men. The District Attorney "knows he's got a tiger by the tail," Ferrie said, referring to himself.

If Lardner did not ask, might not others wonder if Ferrie saw himself as a "tiger" because of his connections? What short of highest associations and inferred protection or rampant insanity could make this sick man think and say he was a "tiger"? Was he suggesting "CIA"?

He pulled off his propaganda for himself and his propaganda against Garrison and his investigation, but Ferrie's brave front began to crumble just before his death. The day he died the Associated Press reported from New Orleans that "because Ferrie had expressed fears for his life, Garrison said he provided him a temporary hideout in a motor hotel here." "At Ferrie's request," Lardner added.

What, it may be wondered, did the innocent Ferrie have to fear; what could make an innocent man not part of a conspiracy believe someone wanted to kill him? What could worry him so he went to his enemy,

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the District Attorney, for help?

That Ferrie got away with it, with his malodorous public record, in New Orleans where the newspaper filed held his record, is astounding. Here it some of what one of the papers, the States-Item, had printed about him:

On August 26, 1961, Ferrie was booked in Jefferson Parish with committing a crime against nature on a 15-year-old boy and indecent behavior with three juvenile boys. Jefferson and New Orleans authorities claim he used alcohol, hypnotism and the enticement of flying to lure the youngsters into committing indecent acts.

The same day:

A search of Ferrie's home turned up numerous maps of Cuba and seven or eight World War I rifles with a quantity of ammunition. A juvenile told officers he had flown to Cuba with Ferrie on several occasions. Ferrie asked another teenager to drive a Cuban citizen to Miami, police said.

On August 29, 1961, Orleans Parish district attorney charged Ferrie with intimidating a witness in connection with the crime against nature cases pending against him. Officers said a youth told them Ferrie threatened that "a Cuban friend (of Ferrie's) would take care of him if he didn't sign a paper saying he would not prefer charges." (This charge was dismissed January 7,1962.)

Bearing on this is an Associated Press dispatch of March 4, 1967, quoting a copyrighted story in the Houston Chronicle of that day, saying:

Martin told the Chronicle he asked Ferrie for a photograph of the young complainant in a morals case against Ferrie, explaining, "Ferrie had pictures of all these young kids that hung round him. He liked to dress them up in helmet liners, fatigues, and give them rifles like they were playing soldiers!"

This is Ferrie's friend and fellow detective, Jack S. Martin. The inference is unmistakably the threat reported by public authorities. This is the charge that was dismissed January 7,1962.

February 17, 1962, Ferrie was arrested booked with extortion Police said they received information that the former pilot allegedly threatened

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an unidentified person in an attempt to have him influence a witness in the crime against nature cases against Ferrie.

February 28 1962, Jefferson Parish Judge Leo W. McCune found Ferrie not guilty on one of the five charges of indecent behavior with a juvenile.

November 26, 1963, Ferrie was arrested by the New Orleans District Attorney's office and booked with being a fugitive from Texas. Investigators denied reports that two other men arrested at Ferrie's apartment the same day were picked up at the request of the FBI and Secret Service. The men were identified as Patrick L. Martons (sic) and Alvin Beaubeouf (all three were released November 27 "after having been booked with vagrancy and held for investigation by the FBI and Secret Service").

This sordid record was more than publicly available. It did not have to be dug out. It was in the papers.

For example, on February 22, 1967, the States-Item said:

In 1961 Ferrie was booked in Jefferson Parish with committing a crime against nature and indecent behavior with juveniles. New Orleans police reported Ferrie had attempted to intimidate one witness, a 16 year-old boy who told officers he signed a paper promising not to prefer charges against Ferrie. Other youths told police Ferrie took them on airplane flights to Houston and Corpus Christie, Texas, on different occasions. One boy told officers he had flown to Cuba with Ferrie and another reported to police that Ferrie had asked him to drive a Cuban citizen to Miami.

Thus, it was almost immediately known to the press corps that poured into New Orleans. Lardner again provides samples:

He had been charged in 1961 in Jefferson Parish with a crime against nature involving a 15-year-old boy and indecent behavior involving three juveniles. Police at the time said he apparently lured Juveniles with alcohol, hypnotism and the adventure of flying. Although Ferrie told me he "had never been to Cuba," one of the officers involved in the 1961 arrest said one juvenile told them he had flown to Cuba with Ferrie on different occasions. (February 24)

Ferrie had been both publicly and privately critical of President Kennedy for the lack of air cover in the Bay of Pigs Invasion by Cuban exiles. He had been quoted as saying that the President "ought to be shot." (February 25)

This is that same Ferrie version fed back from the federal investigative reports and represents the prettier

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face he was allowed to put on the ugly thing.

In a four hour interview with me shortly before he died, Ferrie alluded to the homosexual charges in his past by attempting to suggest that there was nothing improper in his relationship with young men. He said he made a "hobby" of taking "deserving youngsters from broken homes" and trying to give them a break in life (March 1)

Haynes Johnson, the Washington Star's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, made his own impressive investigation in New Orleans. It was printed, under a banner front-page headline February 27. He said about Ferrie that he was

militant . . . clearly an intelligent but disturbed person . . . regarded as something of a quick-buck artist anxious for money, but with little visible means of support . . . a singularly repelling figure . . . (with) a preoccupation with Socrates -- constant reaction to every problem was to walk up and down beating his forehead and saying, "Now what would Socrates have done?" . . .

Two days later, the same paper told how Ferrie's associations played a part of costing him employment. Interviewed at Lakefront Airport, "A. C. Crouch, owner of Saturn Aviation Service, said Ferrie had worked for him for about three months last year. 'I fired him in November,' said Crouch, 'because I didn't like those he associated with.' Crouch also claimed that Ferrie 'had been trying to take over my business."'

Perry Raymond Russo was working and studying at Loyola Law School when he testified in the Garrison investigation in mid-March. He had been a teen- ager when he first met Ferrie, whom he thereafter knew well. Russo testified that some years earlier he had understood Ferrie to be threatening to kill him but, looking back, he did not think so. Under cross-examination, here is his testimony as distributed by the Associated Press:

Q. How, did you meet him?

A. Through Al Landry.

Russo explained that Landry had left home. Russo said he talked

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to Landry's parents and told them that if there was "anyone who could alienate Dave and Al, I felt I could." (Other accounts of this testimony say Landry's parents appealed to Russo to extricate their son from Ferrie's grip.)

Russo was asked if it was true that Ferrie had once threatened his life, as a result of "intervening with a friend."

A. Ne wanted to talk to Al alone. I said no, Ferrie said, "I'm going to get you."

Q. How do you interpret that remark now?

A. Now I interpret it was not a threat on my life.

Two days later, United Press International quoted the lawyer's summation this way: "Mr. Wegmann said Mr. Russo was dominated by Ferrie." This evaluation is matched by a number of others. Ferrie controlled those who surrounded him by the force of his mind and by fear.

Unlike the Oswald case, where the government sought and had no qualified psychiatric appraisal to justify its unsupported predetermined conclusions about Oswald, with Ferrie there is a competent medical opinion. Dr. Nicholas Cheth is New Orleans Parish coroner. Before the three judges hearing the Shaw case he was accredited as an expert in forensic medicine and competent to testify on the sanity of witnesses.

It is Dr. Chetta who made the official determinations on Ferries death. George Lardner, in the Washington Post of March 1, reported:

The coroner said Ferrie was "definitely manic . . . he had paranoid tendencies, too." He apparently was a compulsive "saver" of papers, letters, pictures and other memorabilia. Police found several guns in his apartment, including even an ancient Springfield muzzle loader . . . Chetta called Ferrie a psychopath . . . a dangerous individual capable of almost anything.

To this the Times-Picayune on the same day added, "and a very dangerous psychopath."

Despite contrary pretenses, despite his alleged "worship" of President Kennedy, his political views were just as sick. Most papers ignored it, but in the text of

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