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12. A THOUSAND MEDUSAS

The FBI was investigating itself. This is one reason it never really investigated the assassination of President Kennedy.

A frightening, post-midnight telephone call on April 4, 1967, got me out of bed wide awake because I had feared it. It reaffirmed what I had said in the introduction to Whitewash, that both the FBI and the Secret Service were investigating themselves. This has become the style in the early second half of the 20th century.

The federal police, who deny they are that, have grown in power and influence as they should not in a democratic society. These national police agencies are staffed by men who may be dedicated but whose backgrounds, experiences and training do not equip them to handle the awesome authority that has become theirs; who, thinking they preserve freedom, restrain, inhibit and deny it, presents a special threat to man's freedom.

What difference does dedication to principle make if it is to the wrong principle or to principles not understood? To what good is the dedication of the CIA if it frustrates the democratic process, immobilizes the President, and controls national policies outside the frame of government, outside the control of the electorate?

During his incomplete Presidency, John F. Kennedy suffered these usurpations and abridgements of his powers, as indicated above in The Bay of Pigs case. There were many others. He had more because of his policies and because the CIA assumption of control over the government was growing. In Laos, the CIA deliberately set about wrecking the accord that had been reached -- despite its efforts -- in Geneva; this is less known but perhaps in 1967 more important, for that was the beginning of the ghastly Southeast Asia

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situation, The CIA designed and controlled what happened, created the policies or manufactured circumstances in which the ensuing policies were inevitable. It has been the less invisible government of the government, the real creator of policy. And its policies have been wrong, ruinous.

In midwinter 1966-7, the scandals of the CIA penetration and control of youth and student groups was the then freshest of a succession of such scandals. Before quiet was restored, there were few associations untainted -- unions, scholars and their societies, liberal politicians and dozens of tax-exempt foundations. The clamor was great, the headlines black, and the solution, the placebo, unoriginal.

The CIA investigated itself. True, there were a couple of others, fronts; but it was CIA Chief Helms who ran the "investigation." Not surprisingly, the mild "reform" suggested had no meaning, did not reflect on the CIA, was without criticism of it, and in no way restrained its usurpation of powers greater than any previous intelligence agency had ever in history enjoyed, even under the most vicious dictatorships. This was not a 1967 invention; it is the repetition of 1961 history. Exactly the same thing happened after the Bay of Pigs, under Kennedy.

Kennedy differed from other Presidents in expressing something his determination to do something about it. He did not live to accomplish it.

If for no other reason than because Kennedy was slain while it was their responsibility to keep him alive, the national police should never have been assigned to investigate his assassination. No man sits in judgment on himself. Yet this is what the President's Commission assigned to the national police. Perhaps it was no more than a mistake in judgment. Perhaps it was, as the secret files of the Commission indicate is possible, an economy move. Incredible as it seems, with millions of dollars incinerating daily in Vietnam,

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those who were in administrative control of the investigation of this foul murder worried about spending pennies on it!

In New Orleans and elsewhere, the FBI was investigating itself. Naturally, it did not. Naturally, it eventually involved everyone of importance over it in the bureaucratic structure in lies designed to protect it. The integrity of the new Attorney General was compromised by his first official act -- his statement on Shaw after the pro forma hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee, as I have documented in this book.

The integrity of the President was earlier compromised.

Somebody beat the living daylights out of Orest Pena on the dark streets of New Orleans the night of Monday, April 3,1967, but did not prevent him from reporting his own personal knowledge of some of this to me. It was his telephone call that awakened me, the scheduled call that delayed my retiring and filled me with apprehension when I went to bed; but the call was made from Touro Hospital, New Orleans; he had been X-rayed. His first report was interrupted by the arrival of his doctor.

After reading Whitewash he wrote me on March 25, 1967. Of what I had written about which he had personal knowledge, he said, "It is true." His letter asked if I would "be interested to know something that I know about the truth about which you have written." In response to my letter, he had phoned earlier on Monday when I was not home. He and my wife arranged for him to call back 9 P.M. our time. When he did not, I worried. Too many things had happened to too many people, whether by accident or coincidence, whether or not innocently, and had befallen those who in some way represented jeopardy to the official "solution" to the crime of the assassination.

Pena knew the threats could be more than menacing words. During our second conversation, I asked him to

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get some information from his bartender at the Habana Bar and Lounge, Evaristo Rodriguez. Rodriguez, who speaks no English, had testified before Liebeler (11H33946). There were two Mexicans in whom the FBI had expressed interest. He saw them pass the Habana in a car and in haste noted its license number but not its state of origin. In Orest's absence, Rodriguez asked Carlos Bringuier to telephone the FBI. Everybody remembered the incident. Everybody told the FBI about it and testified to it. Yet nobody was ever asked the obvious question: What was the license number? It is, typically, not in the reports and not in Liebeler's questioning. The FBI, of course, had it. Now, among others who might have been these "Mexicans," are the characters of The False Oswald.

Pena told me he would ask Rodriguez but to expect no response. The bartender had received a number of warnings to keep his mouth closed. Whether or not he did and whether or not connected, he was shot at and his assailant is still running loose. So Pena knew the possible consequences of seeking me out and telling me what the government did not want to know.

Much of what he told me was not new; but almost all of it jibed with what I already knew. Some confirmed my already held suspicions. The evasions of the federal police are again conspicuous and amateurish.

Pena had known Dave Ferrie for six years Ferrie had sought him out 12 hours before death found Ferrie. One of the two men whose addresses Ferrie sought is Sergio Arcacha Smith. My interest in Arcacha antedated the Garrison investigation. It comes originally from Secret Service files.

Pena had attended Cuban-exile group meetings with Ferrie and Arcacha. He almost begged Liebeler to go into this in his testimony. Liebeler declined, edging up to it and then away. When Pena started up again, Liebeler deterred him, saying, "Very well, let's go into

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that later" (11H354) . By the time "later" arrived many other subjects had been covered, many other things were on Pena's mind, and some of what he had in mind left it. Not his anger, which is visible through the language problem and the cold type.

Liebeler never mentioned Ferrie. He never mentioned Arcacha. Pena did, unsolicitedly. Liebeler asked,

. . . Was there an anti-Castro organization that you worked with called the Cuban Revolutionary Council?

Mr. Pena: Yes.

Mr. Liebeler: That was the name of it?

Mr. Pena: And the delegate here was Sergio Arcacha. He was the boss of the organization (11H357-8).

Liebeler wanted nothing of Arcacha and changed the subject immediately, first to a question about the appearance of Pena's picture in the paper, then to when Pena had traveled to the Caribbean on vacation.

Liebeler's aversion to hearing about Sergio Arcacha Smith will have more significance when all the testimony to be adduced in the New Orleans investigations is analyzed. There is less in the files than there should be, but there is enough to have made Arcacha a subject of active interest -- not just because his associates in the Cuban Revolutionary Council and other groups accused him of misappropriating funds (Exhibit 1414). Pena would have enjoyed expounding on this because he had put his correspondence course in detective work to good use and had investigated. Arcacha, he found, did not forward the funds to the Miami headquarters, including those Pena contributed and collected. There is much more about Arcacha and his associates. It is not in the record, not in the testimony, but it is in the Commission files which were Liebeler's job to know.

The reluctance to mention Arcacha's name extended to the indexer. All those extraneous names used as figures of speeches, all the names in no way relating

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the assassination, are dutifully and redundantly tabulated in Volume 16. But not Arcacha. It would be easier to ascribe this to "sloppiness," the bizarre defense of the government's apologists, if the "sloppiness" were not so lopsided. He missed, too, the Cuban Revolutionary Council. Not Xavier Cugat, though, the item following the place the Cuban Revolutionary Council should have been. Cugat's connection, if any, is not mentioned in the Report. Nor is the Council's, but not for the same reason. It is just more important that Cugat be in the index than Arcacha. This is a selective, editorial index, befitting a selective inquiry. Liebeler's interrogation of Pena and others was similarly selective. Arcacha, the Cuban groups, all reference to anti-Castro -- not allegedly pro-Castro, only anti-Castro -- activity was selected out of the questioning.

For example:

Mr. Liebeler: Do you have any information or knowledge that Oswald was involved with pro-Castro people in connection with the assassination?

Mr. Pena: No; I can't tell you that.

Mr. Liebeler: Do you have any information that this was a pro-Castro or a Castro plot to assassinate President Kennedy?

Mr. Pena: No: I can't say that.

Mr. Liebeler: Do you know whether anybody else in New Orleans has any information like that?

Mr. Pena: No; I can't say that. (11H363)

One of the first things federal agents established is that Ferrie made threats, whether or not believed to be genuine against the life of the President. This was in the Commission's files. Liebeler knew about Ferrie. It is Liebeler who told the press of the "stack" of "Ferrie" reports. It is Liebeler who did not ask Pena about Ferrie, who steered Pena away from any mention of Ferrie, in diverting him also from Arcacha, once he got into the record the most indirect reference to the Cuban Revolutionary Council so could thus not be charged with entirely ignoring it. Pena was emotional.

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He testified, "You see, I did like very, very much Mr. Kennedy." (11H353)

In response, Pena demanded a truth confrontation with FBI Agent Warren C. deBrueys, who he knew had questioned him, including lie-detector and any other tests. We will return to the reference to deBrueys, not the only one Liebeler avoided. In avoiding Arcacha, now arrested and charged by Garrison with being part of a conspiracy, Liebeler was also avoiding deBrueys.

"We got to talk about something else before I tell about the FBI in New Orleans," Pena had told Liebeler (11H354).

What did Pena want Liebeler to understand, what did he consider essential to his complaint against the New Orleans FBI? Pena was not afraid to talk about it and is not. He had telephoned me from the hospital that night to tell me about it. He was assaulted, in another of those "coincidences," only after he had by phone set a time for telling me what he wanted me to know. And it did not happen a month, a week, a day, or even an hour before the time set for his call. It happened just as he was on his way to phone me.

In an earlier attempt to testify on this (11H352-3), Pena explained that what the FBI was doing to him impelled him to get a lawyer.

"I don't need a lawyer about this,' he told Liebeler, whom he began by trusting, "you are from Washington." But he did require a lawyer, ultimately, against the FBI.

As with Arnold Louis Rowland and others, the FBI pestered, needled, annoyed, plagued and sought to intimidate Pena. So Pena got "Mr. Tamberella," whose first name was not important to Liebeler (and neither of whose names was important to the indexer, who does not mention him at all), to represent him. At this time -- 1964 -- Liebeler's 1966 interest in seeing to

it that "both sides" are presented had apparently not

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yet possessed him: his interest in Tamberella was fore trying to use him against his client, as with the dates of Pena's travels or with what Pena told the FBI. Pena said he did not recall the exact date he went from Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic, and it was entirely without significance or relevance. But, he said, if you want to know, check with Delta Airlines, they have the records. Liebeler wanted not knowledge but a pretense that Pena's recollection was not dependable (hence, Pena was not). To pretend that Pena's own lawyer disputed the number of times Pena said the FBI interviewed him is particularly disreputable on Liebeler's part for several reasons. Liebeler said (11H353),

"I have a report before me, Mr. Pena, on an interview of you in the presence of your attorney . . . made by Mr. De Brueys (sic) and Mr Wall. That was in the FBI office on June 9, and on page 2 of this particular report, which is page 14 of the larger report, it says and I quote: Orest Pena specifically stated he had never to1d anyone, inc1uding Car1os Bringuier, that Oswald had been in the Habana Bar . . ."

Where the interview occurred, what the FBI agents said was said, along with the falsely implied approval of the contents by Pena's lawyer, have nothing to do with Liebeler's shabby device to make it seem that Pena's own lawyer endorsed the false versions and of this there is no question -- of what Pena is alleged to have said. The truth is that Pena told everyone after the assassination that Oswald had been in his place. He had no reason to lie to the FBI agents and there is no reason to believe he is a liar. What is possible, if the FBI agents made an honest mistake, is that they could have confused either of two other happenings, as the testimony and other reports show. One had to do with the two Mexicans in whom others at Pena's Bar believed the FBI had an interest; the other had to do with Orest's brother, Ruperto, who was not at the bar when ' Oswald" was.

Somebody in the FBI had an obvious interest in

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loading their files with prejudicial information against Pena. Whether Orest is an angel or a bum has nothing to do with what was done. For example, there is File 984, which is crammed with such material. One of the item in it is the April 30,1964, report of "Confidential Informant T-1" that Pena was about to go to Europe, including Moscow. That this was false and on the very next page proved so did not preclude its use in the report or by Liebeler. From the American Express Company the FBI had Pena's entire itinerary. It did not include Moscow and did not get him any closer to the Soviet Union than Germany. In this same report is a reference to an earlier one quoting Hector Jose Garcia, of Dallas, as saying he once had heard Pena say of something he did not recall that "Castro should have been notified about that as soon as it happened." With Pena's violent and public anti-Castro beliefs and activities, this is one of the more improbable rumors presented as fact.

Knowing that the FBI's favorite New Orleans informant, "NO T-1," was wrong in saying Pena was going to Moscow (and by the time of Pena's testimony, if the government did not have a complete record of everywhere he did go, it could only have been because it was not wanted), Liebeler, nonetheless, went over part of the itinerary with Pena and slipped in a little legal twist that, on the record, is poisonous: on the trip had Pena had "contact with any agents of any foreign governments?" The denial serves no purpose. The purpose was to plant the suspicion with which the denial never catches up (11H350). Halfway through the testimony, Liebeler abruptly asked Pena if he knew this Garcia. Pena said he did not recall him. Whereupon Liebeler quoted this report, getting the exact words on record and then not giving Pena a chance to deny it. He merely asked, "Have you had anything to do with Castro?" to which Pena replied, "No; not ever."

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Now, it was well known to Liebeler that Pena had a long history of reporting to the FBI everyone and everything he even suspected might be pro-Castro including improbabilities; to be sure he erred in the right direction. Liebeler's motive here is transparent.

It is consistent and significant that Liebeler offered not a single one of the FBI reports for the record. We have earlier discussed the suppression from the record of parts of File 984. These pages I have just quoted are part of what was suppressed; it is the final page of this report on Pena that had the bottom of it blocked off in Xeroxing with a blank piece of paper. The blank paper and the scotch tape holding it in place are visible. The original could and should have been used, but it was not. Surely what is required for the lowest criminal in the country is not too good as evidence when the murder of a President is concerned. Had this file been introduced into evidence, had Pena been properly questioned -- indeed, had he just been encouraged to talk -- there would have been important revelations. The file that Liebeler used to poison the Commission used against Pena is the file on the invasion camp. Thus, we do not have to presume, we know that Liebeler had this file. He asked no one a single question about it. He avoided it. He allowed false testimony into the record about it when he was examining Bringuier and said nothing.

Not one of the FBI reports of interviews with Pena did Liebeler put in evidence. Yet on these he disputed with Pena, whose complaint against the FBI was specific and repeated: That the FBI assisted him perhaps 15 times about the same things. It was this plaguing that caused him to get a lawyer and go to the FBI office with his complaint. To reflect all of this, Liebeler said he had but two FBI reports on interrogations of Pena.

I have only two reports," he told Pena (11H364)

It is this that prompted Pena to say, "We got to talk about the FBI," which was followed by Liebeler's

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evasion, "Let's get to that later."

Again, toward the end of the deposition, Liebeler said (11H361):

"Now I have been provided with what are supposed to be all of the FBI reports about their conversations relating to the Oswald case, and as far as I can tell the only time the FBI has spoken to you about that was back in December 1963 shortly after the assassination and then again in June 1964. Just a short time ago; when they came to question you again at my request after I had -- "

In disbelief, Pena interrupted to ask, "Just those two times?"

"Yes; just twice," Liebeler replied.

Pena insisted there were many, many such questionings. These were the basis of the complaint he carried to the FBI New Orleans headquarters.

In his effort to discredit Pena, which led him into another snare, Liebeler also disclosed that it is he who directed the June 9 interrogation. If the right questions were not asked of Pena, it is because Liebeler did not tell the FBI to ask the right questions or they did not despite his instruction. In either case, Liebeler had Pena on the stand and under oath, and the possibility of any other responsibility here ceases. It is Liebeler's alone.

The December interrogation was on the fifth. It was by those agents we have already quoted, Steinmeyer and Logan. Logan is fluent in Spanish and acted as Liebeler's translator in New Orleans.

Here there is a fundamental conflict. Liebeler insists the FBI has given him every report, not only of interrogations, but of every "conversation" and Pena insists this is false. When asked if he recalled the date of the Steinmeyer-Logan interview, he said, "I have been interviewed by the FBI so many times I don't remember" (11H350).

Liebeler asked, with reference to what on the evidence must be regarded as an entirely false FBI report, that Pena said he had never seen Oswald in his

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bar, "When you talked to the FBI two weeks ago, did they ask you about this again?"

"Yes," Pena told him, "they asked me about this more than a dozen times."

"They asked you more than a dozen times about this?" Liebeler asked.

"Yes," Pena insisted.

Every time the question came up, Pena insisted the FBI questionings were numerous to the point of harassment.

There is the existing record that he got and went to the FBI office to protest the bedeviling (11H358).

This, it would seem, is a material point, because the entire story of Oswald is material as is that of The False Oswald. If Pena lied about this, it would seem to be perjury, punishable and of the greatest import in an investigation of the assassination of a President, particularly with the question of conspiracy so important. If the FBI agents lied, is the offense not still more serious? Why should they lie? Someone did, about what Pena said and about the number of interrogations.

But if it is the FBI Agents who lied and this is not an ephemeral thing -- are they guilty of perjury? No; they are not: They were never placed under oath. Thus the reason or the consequences of not calling them becomes clear as does consideration of their ex parte and dubious reports as the equivalent of sworn testimony.

But determination of fact and truth here is not difficult. Pena is a man in public business. The number of people with whom he spoke immediately after the assassination and to whom, as he claimed, he mentioned the earlier presence of Oswald in his establishment, must be great. There is, in fact, available corroborative testimony. In the June 9 interview, his lawyer was present. There are never the original FBI notes

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These are always burned, especially in the investigation of the murder of a President, and even though, as we have seen, notes were typed belatedly. But it was not only possible, it was in this case and on both points simple to establish fact. The visits of the FBI to Pena's place after the assassination were not by stealth. It is a public place and there were witnesses. The Commission has no interest in proving the FBI lied. Instead, the FBI loaded its files with, and Liebeler subtly inserted into the record, prejudicial misinformation about Pena, whose record is as public and vocal as one would expect, with his Latin heritage.

The date of the first report in which the FBI claims Pena said Oswald was never in his bar is important. It is December 5, 1963. This is almost two weeks before the interrogation of Sylvia Odio quoted earlier, the Sylvia Odio who gave the first solid evidence on The False Oswald so meagerly indicated in this brief, two-paragraph report of it. Taken together, these are an other of the too many evidences that the FBI, like the rest of the government, did not want to interfere with its preconceptions. In turn, this is what makes more significant first the contradiction between the FBI and Pena and second, Liebeler's failure to resolve it.

By the time of Liebeler's July 21 interrogation of Pena, the day before he questioned Mrs. Odio, there was an abundance of complaint against the FBI, the already quoted one by Mrs. Odio, through the head of the Secret Service, being one that bears directly on this case.

There is no doubt in my mind that the false information is the FB1's. There is likewise no doubt that what Liebeler kept out of the record by use of the lawyer's skills and the exercise of his control over what was testified to is also very much in point.

In the excerpt from has questioning of Pena about the two reports quoted earlier, what led Pena to begin his answer with "We got to talk about something else

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before I tell about the FBI in New Orleans," Liebeler concluded what for him was a rather long question, taking up eight printed line, with this partisan statement: "You have a great deal of hostility toward the FBI, do you not?" (11H354)

Pena is a man who was an FBI informant. He did not have to be, but he was He did not tell the FBI to get lost when it harassed him. He tried to cooperate, getting a lawyer to tell the FBI he would cooperate when they sought information of him but not to bother him with "silly" repetitious questionings, the standard FBI technique cited by Dean Andrews either to get a witness to change his statements or to discredit him. With Pena it did not work. He held fast. But Liebeler still could not honestly state his case by pitting Pena against the entire FBI. This was contrary to what he allowed to get on the record and even more so with what kept out,

Pena's problem was Warren C. DeBrueys, not the entire FBI.

Pena has no reluctance in talking about it. He is a brave man. He told me his story voluntarily, even after a long series of threats that he would be hurt if he did not keep his mouth closed was made good. After that first call from the hospital late on the night of April 3, 1967, he reaffirmed what he said in a longer conversation on the night of April 4 and again thereafter. He tried to tell Liebeler. As the transcript indicates, Liebeler did not want to know.

It is deBrueys who bugged Pena, not J. Edgar Hoover, not the entire FBI, and there was a reason. Here are some of the cases from the transcript, showing just how Pena tried to testify about this:

On page 352, Volume 11, referring to his reports to the FBI, "I used to call deBrueys." When he then told Liebeler, "I am going to talk to you about deBrueys," Liebeler diverted him.

On page 358, in testifying about his anger at the

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ceaseless harassment and his effort to stop it while still cooperating with the FBI, he said he told his lawyer, "I want to see if I can't stop this." Instead of asking for details or allowing them to flow, as words do from Pena on this subject, Liebeler changed the subject, abruptly, to when Pena was in Puerto Rico.

In what can fairly be interpreted as an effort to protect the FBI from its failure to have records of its many, too numerous, interrogations of Pena, or its suppression of them, Liebeler asked (11H361), "Have any other Federal agencies besides the FBI interviewed you?" Pena's response was that except where he knew the agents personally he did not know, that when they said they were from the FBI he assumed it was true. "We are from the Federal Bureau," he quoted them as saying. It was later he asked for names, not "until later my lawyer told me, 'Every time you talk to one of these men, get their name, where they come from.' " On the same page he repeated this instruction. Liebeler never asked him if he had a list of names. Nor did he ask what he seemed to imply, that the CIA and the Secret Service questioned Pena.

Once, apparently, Pena went to protest without his lawyer. Liebeler did not establish a clear record. Pena spoke to "deBrueys' boss -- I didn't ask them who it was. They was FBI. They was in the FBI office -- I told the agency there I don't talk to deBrueys. I don't trust him as an American" (11H362).

And on next to the last page of his testimony, where his anger boiled out and he dared Liebeler to arrange a lie detector test to see if he or Bringuier was truthful and to see whether or not, as he charged, Bringuier "don't like the United States," an understatement for what Pena said elsewhere, he said of his lie detector test challenge, "I invited deBrueys, too, to ask deBrueys if that's true or not true he went to my place and tried to intimidate me" (11H363).

Obviously, a Presidential Commission cannot go

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around arranging predawn duels at 20 paces with lie detectors. But it has the obligation of not allowing perjury to remain on the record, and it certainly has the obligation of determining whether the sworn accusation that the FBI tried to intimidate a witness in the investigation is or is not true. With Warren C. deBrueys, this is a more important determination than with run-of-the-mill FBI agents, for deBrueys' movements alone, as I espoused them in Whitewash, require explanation. When Oswald was in New Orleans, deBrueys was at his regular station in New Orleans. When Oswald left New Orleans and was in Dallas, there also was deBrueys. And when Oswald was murdered -- deBrueys went back to New Orleans. Coincidence? Then let it be proven. It can be, either way.

Perhaps it is also a coincidence that the motion-picture film taken by a teen-age boy -- Doyle (on vacation with his family) and in the Commission File 6, was not wanted by the government. This film shows the Oswald August 9 handbill operation that established his "cover" was known to deBrueys: it was he who had assembled the file. That day on which I took Garrison's man to the Archives, I picked up the Commission's sixth file. I had never examined it before. It had been secret and was then declassified. This -- one of the larger files -- consists of a long series of FBI reports. It was filed on December 8, 1963, from Dallas, by Warren C. deBrueys under the entirely meaningless title, "Oswald." The report of the two Portland, Oregon, agents is in it, folio 444. If no one else -- not the . . . knew of this report and the motion pictures of Oswald and those with him on this operation, Warren C. deBrueys did.

One thing is certain: Warren C. deBrueys cannot remain the anonymous, faceless FBI man of mystery. The public record demands specific, definitive answers to such questions as why his assignments coincided . Oswald's movements. The suppressed record I

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will now reveal for the first time. This is only part of what Liebeler kept out of the record, what he kept Pena from testifying to, what he did not want to hear or to be known.

Pena knew Dave Ferrie very well. He still calls him "Captain." He knew him from the meetings of the exile groups. This started to come out in his testimony several times (11H357, 361-2). In the testimony, reflecting his own knowledge, Liebeler asked if Pena was in the Cuban Revolutionary Council and Pena responded in the affirmative. In conversation with me, he also named the Cuban Revolutionary Front. This is how he knew Ferrie. Ferrie was always at the meetings.

They were this close: Ferrie even started to give Pena flying lessons. Mrs. Pena, whose command of English is perfect, gave me additional detail, preceding it with the assurance that, while she has some apprehension about her husband's safety (they have not been married long), she does not doubt his courage or determination. (Because of the unending threats, she has started to carry a pistol. She went to the police, registered the pistol, and assures me she knows how to use it -- and would.) Her explanation of why Pena discontinued flying lessons with Ferrie is that her husband was uneasy with him. Her recollection is quite clear: she specifies the plane they used -- a Cessna.

Let us now refer back to two pertinent things: Liebeler's interrogation of Detective O'Sullivan (8H30) and the FAA report on Ferrie's plane.

O'Sullivan was allowed to volunteer that he had checked "Ferrie's airplane" and found it "had flat tires, instruments missing, needed a paint job" and in his opinion "was not in flyable condition." Planes have identifications. They are registered and of specific manufacture. Liebeler asked for no identification of the plane O'Sullivan said he inspected as Ferrie's or proof that Ferrie had no other plane. Instead, he allowed

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O'Sullivan to volunteer further the hearsay that "one company in particular said that they would not rent him an airplane." Aside from one unnamed company allegedly saying it would not rent Ferrie a plane for reasons unspecified and unsought, one company is not all companies or all sources of planes. First allowing this prejudicial hearsay in the record, Liebeler abruptly sought to change the subject ("You are a detective on the vice squad?") to Ferrie's legal problems over his homosexuality, and then to delete from the testimony what O'Sullivan told him (11H31).

The FBI report on the FAA records of Ferrie's plane is dated November 29,1963. This is prior to the first FBI interview with Pena and months before the O'Sullivan deposition, while Ferrie was being "interrogated." It says the registration in Ferrie's name is of a " Stinson 150 aircraft with serial number 108-1293." While there is no reason to believe that the plane about which O'Sullivan testified is not the plane registered to Ferrie, there is no reason to assume that there was no need to prove it when the irrefutable proof was at hand and should have at that moment, when O'Sullivan was testifying, been in Liebeler's own hand. It is the evasion of the obvious that again is suspect, particularly when it is bracketed with false and misleading information, that Ferrie could not get another plane if he wanted to. There is no reference to the identification of Ferrie's plane or planes in any of the FBI reports of their interrogations of him -- including the one he wrote himself -- that are not still suppressed This is not the kind of information that is properly subject to restriction. It is public information.

So, we now have indication that Ferrie had, or at least had available, an entirely different plane. Liebeler did not ask Pena anything about Ferrie. From the existing record, Pena and Ferrie were total strangers. This record is corrupt because Liebeler made it that way or, what is but little kinder, allowed

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it to develop that way. It is, of course, possible that Mrs. Pena's recollection is in error. It is not possible that the investigation of Ferrie, the one Liebeler touted as so thorough when it was a cover-up, did not have to include a thorough check on Ferrie, his plane or planes, and his acquaintances and associates.

There exists indication Ferrie had or had available still another plane. In one of his "suicide" notes, the one to "Al," he referred to "Flying Barragona in the Beech." "Beech" is a contraction of " Beechcraft ," one of the more popular makes.

Pena's contacts with Ferrie never ended. Both men were strongly anti-Castro. Ferrie visited Pena 12 hours before his death to learn the whereabouts of two men. One I have not finished checking out, so I will not mention his name; I will say that he is more than pertinent, from what Pena tells me about his business interests so identical with those of another important character in our revelations of the suppressed story of Oswald in New Orleans. The second is Sergio Arcacha Smith. Pena got Arcacha's name into the evidence for the only time, as we have seen, by volunteering it. And as soon as he said of Arcacha, "He was the boss of the organization," Liebeler had changed the subject. (11H358)

This group met at 544 Camp Street. (We will soon have further interest in this building, for Oswald used it as a return address on some of his literature, a passing strange thing for a pretendedly independent and professedly pro-Castro propagandist to do with his literature and solicitations for membership arrange it so they could get into the hands of anti-Castro people.)

So Pena is one of the many available links between Ferrie and the anti-Castro Cuban organizations. All of this was kept out of the testimony, the testimony handled by Liebeler personally. Among the many important people not the subject of the official investigation of the assassination with whom Ferrie is thus

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