placed in intimate association and in anti-Castro activity is Sergio Arcacha Smith, the man of whom Liebeler wanted to hear nothing, the man whose name was omitted from the index, the man never called as a witness, though "the boss of the organization"; Arcacha -- about whom the thousands of pages of printed documents in 11 very large books also say nothing, save for an early-dated and rather provocative reference in a lengthy Secret Service report that would have been just too conspicuous if only the 15 of its 24 pages had been left out. That is one of the less legible of the largely illegible pages further reduced in legibility by being reproduced side by side on a page that is smaller than the original size to begin with (26H769). Although one of the very earliest reports, in the printed evidence it is one of the very last and is buried, without logical means of locating or even discovering it, in the back end of the very last volume.

There is enormous significance in the elimination of Arcacha from the investigation and in thus avoiding all the leads that fan out from him.

There is also enormous significance in what Pena did get past Liebeler's guard in one of his long answers. Had he not begun with his mother's opinion of Castro and abruptly switched to his participation in the public activities of the Cuban Revolutionary Council ("collecting money at my place of business and giving my own money"), I really believe Liebeler would have stopped him before, in that very paragraph and in the very next sentence, Pena managed to say, Then deBrueys (sic) came to the organization. Maybe -- I don't know if sent by the government or how, but he went to the organization" (11H361). Here, apparently, the nimble-witted Liebeler decided to control what Pena got to say about deBrueys, for by the end of the few seconds it took Pena to utter these words, Liebeler interrupted to ask, "He joined it?" A good question, to which Pena responded that deBrueys

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was not a member "but he was sticking with the organization, very very close." Liebeler asked if the members knew that deBrueys was an FBI agent and Pena said it was known. (I know of two other FBI agents said to have had a similar relationship with Cuban groups. Because I cannot now reveal my source, I cannot name them.) He then explained how this was the beginning of his reporting to the FBI on those who said things he believed were pro-Castro. It is also when deBrueys started haunting Pena and the Habana Bar and Lounge.

A small part of what Pena told me that Liebeler did succeed in avoiding in the record is that the meetings of the council he attended also had Ferrie and deBrueys present. He thus put the FBI agent of mystery in personal association with the mystery-man Ferrie -- the figure who was so protected by the FBI when it could not avoid questioning him (because on November 25, 1963, Jim Garrison forced the FBI's hand by arresting Ferrie) that it suppressed most of the reports and even allowed Ferrie to write at least one for it.

(The day the New Orleans States-Item printed the first story on the Garrison investigation, February 17, 1967, Ferrie phoned and spoke to reporter David Snyder. Thereafter, until he died, Ferrie stayed in touch with Snyder. Ferrie said that as indicated earlier in this book, at the very time of the assassination, on November 22, 1963, he was "batting the breeze" with "federal agents' at the New Orleans courthouse, where the Carlos Marcello trial was in progress. "Federal agents" were the investigators for the government in its Marcello prosecution. Ferrie was the Mafia boss's lawyer's investigator. The jury did not return until 3:20 p.m. Thus, from his own mouth if not from the "thorough" FBI investigation, we know Ferrie knew "federal agents" before they went through the fakery of "investigating" him. It seems appropriate to ask

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which these agents were. If they are shy and do not come forward, perhaps the assignment of those to the Marcello trial will tell us.)

For a moment let us8 consider what this means -- and from what is in the newspapers only: An FBI agent was in close association with a man publicly charged with being in a conspiracy to kill the President. That is the charge pending in New Orleans at the time of this writing.

This is the same FBI agent who moved from his home base as Oswald moved, and returned to his regular FBI duties after Oswald was murdered. (It is also germane in this context considering the charge made in Whitewash that Oswald was killed only because the police made it possible.)

This is the same FBI agent who badgered Pena -- the man who, had he been compelled to testify under oath as he should have been, could be under the threat of a perjury indictment if it could be proved that not he, but Pena, was truthful. Mr. Hoover can accept this as another of the numerous challenges he has steadfastly ignored. Others can accept it as I do, as a measure of the government's integrity, now and during the "investigation."

This deBrueys is the same FBI agent who, through his attendance at these meetings and associations with the people involved, is possessed of a wealth of material and names (my own list is a long one) that must now be made public. One of the immediate questions this raises is with whom else was deBrueys associated? It is not material whether his association was personal or official -- one accepts that it is worse if these associations were his assigned duties and the FBI remains, in spite of this, silent. (One of the other men in regular attendance at these meetings had as a close friend another man who, Pena charges, was deported from the United States because of the nature of his activities. I have that name and do not use it only because it might

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be unfair to the deported man to do so. Pena's recollection is that these political activities were of a Nazi nature.)

This is also the same FBI agent who haunted Pena's establishments -- and there were three, not the single one mentioned in the testimony -- which were also patronized by others, some of whom have already been identified in this book, others of whom I know. One of these is Ricardo Davis. As soon as I mentioned "Ricardo Davis," not Rudolph Richard Davis, Pena made immediate identification. "You mean that half-Cuban," and he gave a description he might have read from deBrueys' own report of October 2, 1964, winding up with "the insurance man."

Remember the deadpan report we quoted earlier, in which the FBI New Orleans office unquestioningly presented undisguised lies as the gospel according to Rudolph Richard Davis his "mahogany" interests in Guatemala, his innocence of the charge of appropriating the funds of the New Orleans training camp that he ran for the "Christian Democratic Movement," the supreme unction about those misguided Cubans so offended at the thought of work when they regarded

themselves as warriors, that saintly we-don't-know-anything-about the-camp-we-raided report? Well, it was signed by this same Warren C. deBrueys and by Steinmeyer, the same Steinmeyer of the December 6 report that Pena, with everything public 100 percent on his side, claims is an entire misrepresentation of what he told the FBI.

Under "employment" in deBrueys' description of Rudolph Richard Davis, on the third page of his report of his joint "investigation" with Steinmeyer, there is listed not Davis's alleged "mahogany" interests of the first page but "General Agent, Western Life Insurance Company, St. Paul, Minnesota, 2001 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana." Davis was a frequent Pena guest and, according to Orest, often in company with

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another man from a "prominent" Cuban family. Unaware of Davis's alleged Guatemalan "mahogany" interests, Pena, in giving me the name of this man, also offered his suspicion of a pro-Castro orientation and the definite statement that this man had mahogany interests in Guatemala. This man, whose real initials are W. M., met often with Davis at one of Pena's restaurants. The suggestion of CIA is unmistakable in this part of the story, and not from it alone.

There are two other names Pena has given me, either of which might be "NO T-1," of whom Pena knows nothing, or who might both have this special FBI variety of FBI "war name." I am going by his description of them and their employment, and on their access to him and to some of what they are quoted as having reported.

There is no end to the inquiry that roots in deBrueys and at some point will have to be conducted. As it branches out, there will be all sorts of associations and involvements. Just imagine what can grow from the Ferrie branch alone. Or from Arcacha, who branches back to Ferrie several ways, including through the heisting of explosives from Houma, Louisiana, that Garrison charges to them and another mysterious figure, the electronics (read bugging and counter-bugging) expert, Gordon Novel. Novel was also arrested after flight, as we shall see. He acknowledges a legal relationship with Dean Andrews and unspecified ones with Ferrie, and with Clay Shaw.

(In a separate operation, Ferrie also managed to arrange the theft of what one witness who, for the moment, must remain anonymous describes as "a rather substantial" quantity of assorted arms. These were doled out to representatives of the exile groups who carted them back to Miami. These were weapons, including such exclusively military items -- available only from military sources -- as grenades, not just explosives.)

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Thus we have(?)

Here in one of the reasons Hoover regards his agents as hothouse plants, and shelters them from publicity as much as possible. Need we wonder why so few of those who were responsible for the more than 25,000 interviews totaling 25,400 pages in 2,300 reports, the statistical glory of the Bureau and the Commission, ever surfaced, even in complete secrecy but on the record and under oath were asked not a single question?

The government dared not. Had deBrueys given testimony, there could be an immediate demand for a grand jury determination of whether perjury was committed. Actually, the FBI was so delicate, so sensitive and tactful, that not one of those very few exercises in futility and deception -- the reports on the "investigation" of Dave Ferrie -- is signed by deBrueys. But if the FBI really had wanted to investigate Ferrie, who was better qualified than the man who knew him, the man who from personal experience knew of some of his activities, interests and connections? Unless, of course, Ferrie could also tango, and knew of the activities, interests and connections of deBrueys.

No, Hoover cannot afford for deBrueys to become a witness, nor, judging from Pena's information, could he dare question Ferrie too closely. Those reports that are now available do not disclose the connection between Ferrie and the FBI, Ferrie and Arcacha and all the others at these meetings, the homosexuals and bitter Cubans and their various fractioned organizations and their mentors (abbreviation, "CIA"). There is nothing in these flimsies on bond paper to indicate Ferrie's connections with the Cuban groups, yet the FBI knew of them.

How can the FBI justify this suppression? Are there innocent people whose reputations might be damaged, like deBrueys and Hoover? Is it sources of information it seeks to shelter -- stool pigeons? Like, perhaps, Ferrie or others of his political constituencies or male har-

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ems?

Only the truth and the solution of the crime of assassination -- the national honor suffers for it.

Can we now better understand the character of the Pena interrogations? If there is any question about this, I have a 1965 letter from Hoover -- elicited by someone else working in this field saying just this, that the reports would not be available to public examination. So these FBI reports, secret by intent and expectation, could be axe-jobs on Pena. Can we better understand:

Why there vas no show-down on the number of FBI questionings of Pena?

Why the FBI assured Liebeler there were only two reports?

Why Liebeler had no report confirming Pena's reiterated complaint to deBrueys' superiors in the New Orleans FBI office?

Why Liebeler sought none?

Why he did not put the two he had into evidence?

Why Ferrie was never called as a witness?

Why there is so little reference to him and that aborted?

Why there were no witnesses called from any of these Cuban exile groups save the unavoidable Bringuier who so fortuitously provided Oswald with an intelligence cover but who was never confronted with Pena's open accusation of his secret hatred of the United States?

Why their many names are not mentioned?

Why there is nothing in the testimony save again what little, too little, Bringuier blurted nut about that invasion training camp -- not even the newspaper accounts of the FBI raid the very same FBI office that is involved, out of which deBrueys and Steinmeyer and the others work?

Why the FBI and Secret Service were so hot after anyone who mentioned Ferrie's name and permitted Ferrie to direct what is insultingly described as an "investigation" of him?

Why there had to be a "clean bill of health?"

Why there are all those daring big gaps in all the reports of both the FBI and the Secret Service (more of which we have yet to examine)?

Why the honor, public reputation and good faith of the new Attorney General and so many others of lesser rank were so immediately vested in the rally around Shaw, the FBI, the files and the Commission and its work?

Why every federal official who dared intrude himself into the Garrison/New Orleans investigation and in whatever ways he found expedient slurred its director and questioned its motive?

Why there was never any real Ferrie or Shaw-Bertrand investigation?

"Whys" without end because every question is a thousand Medusas?

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13. SEEK (NOTHING) AND YE SHALL	FIND (NOTHING)

Writhing and hissing amidst the New Orleans Medusas is a single snake no one dares slash. Through all its weaving and slithering, it remains shaped like a question mark, like a strike-ready cobra. The rising volume of the fearsome hisses doubles with every cut, as the address of one question produces not fewer than two new ones without killing the old; but that sibilance does not smother that shrillest of all: Oswald's pro-Castro literature with the return address of the building that housed the bitterly anti-Castro Cuban Revolutionary Council and the Banister detective agency.

Whether or not it makes sense, it happened. Whether or not it was malicious, it could have but one result: To expose anyone who responded to the opposing and, as Andrews so eloquently described it, violent side. Any such mail, after the exiles left the building (and they kept returning to use the unpaid-for office, and had other connections as well) could reach only the exiles. Theirs is not tender mercy. How sincerely pro-Castro was the Lee Harvey Oswald who would expose those he solicited to the "enemy"?

The Secret Service and the FBI asked themselves why Oswald would do a thing like this. The Commission did not. Those consulted, those who arranged it, and those who rented the office, were not called as witnesses. The FBI and the Secret Service found no answers or, if they did, were silent. But they did not really look.

The investigation by Secret Service Agents Anthony E. Gerrets and Roger D. Counts for the first five days of December 1963 is summarized:

Extensive investigation conducted thus far has failed to establish that the "FAIR PLAY FOR CUBA COMMITTEE" had offices at 544

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Camp Street, New Orleans. It has likewise been impossible to find anyone who recalls ever seeing Lee Harvey Oswald at this address.

Gerrets and Counts did not try hard. Had they, as anyone knowledgeable in police or Cuban-refugee affairs could have told them, they would not have had to look further than other tenants, the Guy Banister detective agency. Fact is, they had already interviewed witnesses who would have so told them had the Secret Service but asked, and may have told them, unasked. The Jack S. Martin so violently assaulted in the earlier quoted reports and David W. Lewis were both Banister employees. Both have since said in public what the Secret Service did not even ask them about in private.

There was nothing secret about Banister's interests and activities. There is no dispute about his connections with the exile groups. He was too old for the jolly anti-Castro buccaneer role in which he cast himself, but he tried to play the part. Ferrie and many of the other characters in this story were often seen in his quarters. (Only because there was no investigation did the government fail to uncover what was known to be there -- and known to every kind of federal police, who were themselves involved.) Not only did they keep an eye on such CIA directed and financed operations, but Banister was a former G-man.

His FBI career included participation in some of the more sensational cases, the Dillinger and Touhey spectaculars, in particular. After his retirement, he joined the New Orleans police from which, in 1957, when he was No. 3 man, he was heaved into a second and involuntary retirement because of charges he was "openly defiant" of his superiors following a gun throwing incident in a Bourbon Street bar. He died of a heart attack in June 1964.

The wily Banister was a professional anti-Communist. He saw Reds everywhere and in everything. He was available to speak on the subject, armed with the

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dubious proceedings of the various federal and state legislative committees. He was especially fond of citing the opinions of the House Un-American Activities Committee, whose first chairman, Martin Dies, is a current darling of the John Birch "American Opinion" and whose successor, J. Parnell Thomas, went to jail from Congress.

Banister served as "special adviser" to the Louisiana American Legion's so called "Committee on Un-American Activities," where his virulent racism was no disqualification. At that time the chairman of this committee was Festus Brown. Banister rendered similar "services" to other organizations.

Numerous witnesses are still alive who will testify in Garrison's investigation that Banister was CIA, that he was involved in clandestine U.S. operation in Latin America during the time he ran his "detective" agency, and that his was an extreme position on the race question, should that be pertinent in the testimony. Banister helps to place the CIA in perspective.

His own intimates of the radical right considered him fanatical on these two subjects which in his mind were identified with each other, race and what he called "Communism."

One of Banister's men bluntly told the Associated Press on February 19, 1967, that he had not been asked about Oswald and these activities. Not the least significant is his admission that he did know Oswald in 1963. But neither he nor Jack Martin was called to testify, nor is there a single substantive interrogation report on them -- merely the slanders on Martin, already quoted. The government chose to clobber Martin to save Ferrie and could not thereafter -- had it so desired -- use him as a credited source. It did not want to tie Oswald to these groups, anyway.

The Ferrie-Banister relationship, according to Haynes Johnson of the Washington Star -- a competent reporter and a Pulitzer Prize winner -- was "close":

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is sources confirm to him that Dave Ferrie and anti-Castro Cubans met with Banister in his offices. And Johnson's refugee sources, which helped him with his book, The Bay of Pigs, are the best.

Banister's name appears nowhere in the Report or the testimony. But this is not because the federal police did not know or did not speak to Banister. I have three related reports by FBI Agent Ernest C. Wall, Jr., -- deBrueys' companion in his Pena interview, -- all dated November 25, 1963. They are models, were exceedingly helpful to the FBI and the Commission, and, I think, will be helpful to me. They are quite revealing.

If this enterprising agent does not have a nickname, I recommend "On-the-Ball Wall." It is apparent to me that this unsung hero 'way down in sinful New Orleans early set the pattern, style and philosophy of the investigation.

"On-the-Ball Wall" is the soul of brevity. He is a real whiz bang at conducting whirlwind investigations. I wish there were some way of knowing how many he initiated and completed that single Monday in November. I have only these three.

Two of them are folios 682 and 683 of the second part of File 75. I am a slow reader. Counting the time required to turn the pages, I can read both reports in 26 seconds. The first of these reports is less than six short typewritten lines long. It contains exactly 47 words. The second is nine lines, 85 words.

And what there is -- says nothing.

Because neither report is really about Banister, let us here take them both in its entirety, the first quotes the then head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, Frank Bartes, as confirming that his is an anti-Castro organization once headed by Sergio Arcacha Smith. Wall's style can be improved upon, thus his output, a reading the whole report shows:

FRANK BARTES, 1608 Mason Smith Avenue, Metairie, Louisiana,

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delegate to the Cuban Revolutionary Council in New, Orleans, Louisiana, advised that SERGIO ARCACHA SMITH was formerly the delegate for the Cuban Revolutionary Council in New Orleans, Louisiana. BARTES stated that the Cuban Revolutionary Council is an anti-Castro organization.

The second one quotes Guy Banister in the same sense about Arcacha with these additions: It gives the address of Arcacha's office and says that from time to time Banister saw a young Cuban with him. Banister was a little less direct. He did not say whether or not he knew all this of his own knowledge, but he did say that Arcacha (Smith to Wall) "some time ago, had told him on one occasion that he, SMITH, had an office in the building located at 544 Camp Street."

This entire report reads:

GUY BANNISTER, Guy Banister Associates, Inc., 531 Lafayette Street, New Orleans, was telephonically contacted on November 25, 1963 and advised that SERGIO ARCACHA SMITH of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, who was the head of that organization in New Orleans, Louisiana, some time ago, had told him on one occasion that he, SMITH, had an office in the building located at 544 Camp Street. Mr. BANISTER stated that he had seen a young Cuban man with SMITH on a number of occasions in the vicinity of 544 Camp Street, but could not recall the name of this young man.

We will examine the excess of Banister's self-effacement.

There is a subtlety here that is a credit to the FBI when its real objectives in the investigation of the murder of the President are properly weighed. The "Banister" report gives his address: 631 Lafayette Street. This is a special FBI code. Without doubt, its use was and for years in the future will, to a degree, be successful. When you unscramble the code, and it takes thousands of painful, unpleasant hours before you can hope to begin, and you translate from that special FBI language, this report can be rewritten with a considerable increase in efficiency and informativeness:

Guy Banister says that "Sergio Arcacha Smith, formerly head of the

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Cuban Revolutionary Council and who on a number of occasions I saw young Cuban, has his office on the other side of the same building in which mine is.

There now, isn't that more efficient and much more informative? Not as much as it could be, but more so than in Wall's prose. Is it not worth knowing that these two jolly gents were not nearly so formal and distant as that cold Wall made them seem? They had their offices in a single building that is on a corner, Lafayette and Camp Streets, New Orleans. Banister, let me assure you, need not have been told that Arcacha's office was in the same building. He got it for Arcacha, modest man! They were really quite close and spent considerable time visiting back and forth. Had Wall not carried his passion for statistics and brevity to an otherwise commendable bureaucratic extreme, he might have listed a few names and events of interest. And he could have said so much more about Banister, Arcacha and their associates and mutuality of interests.

Nonetheless, aside from this subtle revelation of the grimness and determination of the FBI -- how it decided right off the bat it was going to solve the crime of the century as no other comparable crime had ever been solved (if, indeed, approached) -- Wall is wonderfully informative, negatively and positively, especially negatively. What he does not say tells so much about the FBI and its "investigation."

He opens with "GUY BANISTER, Guy Banister Associates, Inc." Now, this tells us that the FBI, former employer of Banister, does not want those who read their report to know that: a) Banister is a former FBI man who, b), has a detective agency that, c), was in the same building as the Cuban Revolutionary Council which, d), was still in existence November 25, 1963, and with which, e), Banister had and has the closest and most cordial relations and, f) a great bond of sympathy and, g), mutuality of aims. It also shows

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that Banister was sensitive and did not forget old friends, for by November 1963 Arcacha was what in a different culture would be considered "under a cloud." In blunt language, he could have told Wall that, after being thought dishonest by his associates and canned for it, Arcacha was no longer in New Orleans.

There is a revelation of FBI tact and delicacy in Wall's specification that he "telephonically contacted" Banister. From this all those were reassured who might otherwise have been apprehensive upon reading his report (NO 89-69). If Banister had not ditched that cache of arms rumored to be stored in his offices en route to anti-Castro hands in Cuba, well, Wall did not just blunder in on them, did he? And there would be no future embarrassment from knowing who, three days after the assassination and a single one after the murder of that former New Orleans boy, Oswald, was in Banister's office.

These are the more obvious things. Now let us think about some less obvious: (a) Wall associated Sergio Arcacha Smith with the assassination 1) either in Arcacha's own right or 2) because of a link with Oswald or 3) with others (here a little less brevity would have guided us further); so (b) he immediately thought of getting in touch with two men he knew or knew of, 1) Frank Bartes, then head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council and 2) Guy Banister, who knew as much about these matters as anyone, being so deeply involved in them himself.

There are, however, a number of prominent omissions: We have to guess why Wall was interested in Arcacha and the Cuban Revolutionary Council in the first place, and why he neglected to get Arcacha's address (which from other sources we know was not in New Orleans). And is it because Wall's interest was in Arcacha that his reports say nothing except the

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requisite about the Cuban Revolutionary Council, that it was anti-Castro -- "safely" anti-Castro?

Wall was otherwise busy that day. He and Lawrence F. Folse filed a two-page report of their interview with Sam Mike Newman. They describe him as "owner of the office building located at 544 Camp Street." For some reason, perhaps so Wall can be consistent, the agents fail to give is Lafayette Street address. And just as there were intriguing mysteries about the shorter reports, such as why Banister made a point of the fact that a young Cuban often accompanied Arcacha without giving the slightest description of him other than sex (presumably), so from Newman, as purveyed by Wall and Folse, we find excitement.

Eight to nine months earlier, which would be just before Oswald moved to New Orleans, Newman rented an office to "several Cubans, name unknown, who were with the Cuban Revolutionary Association." We next have an interesting clue to the fidelity of the Banister report, also written by Wall: "Mr. NEWMAN said he had seen these Cubans previously around the office of Guy Banister Associates, but he did not know their names." (Didn't Banister?) "Mr. NEWMAN stated he believes one of these individuals was SERGIO ARCACHA SMITH who at that time appeared to be the head of the organization . . ."

Three reports on Arcacha in a single day by a single agent (and we do not know what else he and other agents did and sought that single day!). And no reason given!

Next, Newman disclosed his and the Cuban Revolutionary Council's business methods: he rented them the space without money; they would pay him with the possible income from a planned fund-raising drive. Let's liberate Cuba with an office! They kept the office "for approximately three or four months," which would mean until after Oswald got to New Orleans, and paid nothing. Newman never put them out; if he has records

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they are not quoted (he is not sure which office they had), and he really does not know when they moved out but he also does, in a way, because "approximately 1½ months after they moved from the premises he received a check for $100 from a Mr. Grimaldi" (who is really Carlos Grimader).

Again, excitement: "A photograph of LEE HARVEY OSWALD was exhibited to Mr. NEWMAN at which time he advised that to the best of his knowledge he had no recollection of seeing OSWALD in or around the building . . ."

Now, if that cat Oswald was all pro-Castro heart, why should the FBI the day after his murder and three days after the assassination be asking the owner of the building that housed the Cuban Revolutionary Council (which you can be sure was au anti-Castro) if he had seen Oswald?

Too bad Wall did not think of asking Banister to look at an Oswald picture. But he couldn't over the phone, could he? Too bad. We can't make up for that now; Banister is dead.

Newman did not rent space to any "Fair Play for Cuba Committee."

There is still provocative intelligence that just pours from Newman:

. . . not more than two or three months ago a man telephonically contacted him wanting to rent an office in the building and at the time furnished his name and the name of the organization he represented but Mr. NEWMAN was unable to recall either name.

Now, why should Newman think the FBI was interested in a no-name and a no-organization, especially when "he is certain the name of the organization had nothing to do with Cuba"? This man wanted the office for night meetings and all he wanted for furniture "was a desk and about 15 chairs." (If there had been any connection, they need not again expect chairs from Orest Pena. He has taken his six back for keeps, he

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told me.) Mr. Newman is next quoted as saying "he had no further contact with this unknown individual."

Newman or the FBI fell down here, because by this time Newman had learned his lesson. He had the deposit of a month's rent. Eventually Wall solved the problem of a receipt for a rent deposit but no name We will save that for the end, as he did.

Between remembering and forgetting, according to the report, Newman told of "a tall thin man, about 38 years of age, with dark hair," who had, "about nine or ten months ago" approached Newman and "arranged for the rental of office space" in this building. Now, by the Newman calendar this solicitation of office space was a month earlier than his rental to the Cuban Revolutionary Council. "This man told him that he worked as an electrician by day and desired to teach Spanish at night." A week later this man returned to tell Newman to keep the deposit, "he had been unable to get enough students to enroll" to justify it. Again, that strange way of doing business, in this case paying for office space you do not need. But just suppose this man had a temporary office in the building that bore Oswald's false address, 544 Camp Street, at the time Oswald gave out literature and got replies? Suppose Newman or Wall's reporting of Newman had the wrong time?

Wall winds this one up by saying that Newman would endeavor to locate a record of this individual's name and if successful he would furnish the name of this individual to the FBI" It is a pretty safe guess that if the inquiry had been from Internal Revenue rather than the FBI, Newman would have had a set of books to consult.

Unless we assume that Newman was just running off at the mouth and the FBI did not know what it was doing, there must be some meaning to this, perhaps one that taxes my facility in their special language.

But if we were to rearrange what Wall and Folse say

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Newman said and if we assume that he responded to their questions, they asked him if he could connect Oswald with the Cuban Revolutionary Council or Arcacha. Newman did not know Oswald but he did know there was a connection between these Cubans and Banister, a connection that by inference had something to do with his unbusinesslike arrangement with them, with his failure to bounce them when they did not pay the first cent of rent, and that prompted his vagueness or that of the FBI reporters.

With a rental agreement and a set of books to keep, Newman could have supplied the exact time of rental, if nothing else. If the FBI did not have it, the presumption is they did not want it.

No matter how closely and carefully you study the federal reports or the alleged "investigation" of Oswald's use of a return address that would automatically direct responses to the virulently anti-Castro side, you will not learn -- not even have reason to suspect

that Newman turned his records over to federal agents, who never returned them!

In Newman's mind, whatever the FBI asked him was connected with the inquiry a month and a half earlier, or roughly about the time Oswald left New Orleans, and with the Spanish-speaking electrician of a month before the rental to the Cuban Revolutionary Council, according to the FBI representation of what he said.

All of this whirlwind "investigation" by Wall alone and jointly with Folse shows that the FBI immediately connected Oswald, the Cuban Revolutionary Council and Guy Banister and or his detective agency that it never identified as a detective agency and run by a former FBI agent. How could people in Washington know that Banister had a detective agency, that its Lafayette Street address is identical with the Camp Street address of the Cuban Revolutionary Council? How could they understand the hints in what Newman

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said or, to be more precise, in the Wall representation of what Newman said, and why in connection with the assassination, were all these things and Sergio Arcacha Smith and Oswald linked? I do not think most people in Washington could. The Gerrets-Counts-Secret Service report of December 9 includes an account of Gerrets' December 2 interview with Newman. By this time Newman knew that the Cuban Revolutionary Council had rented Room 6 from October 1961 through February 1962, vastly different from what Wall reported. In it there is this interesting line reminiscent of Banister's reference to a young Cuban he had seen with Arcacha: "Newman stated that Sergio Arcacha Smith and Carlos Quiroga were connected with the 'C R C.'" Quiroga gets around. And Newman knew Cubans by name.

Gerrets, too, showed Newman a photograph of Oswald. Newman said he had no recollection of ever seeing Oswald.

A short while after the Cuban Revolutionary Council moved out, Newman "saw a young white man unlocking the door to the office formerly occupied by the 'CUBAN REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL.' He said he asked this fellow what he was doing and he remarked that he was taking over the office, whereupon Mr. Newman told him that the office had been closed and that the 'CUBAN REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL' no longer had office space in the Newman Building and that he would have to leave." The description Newman gave is "White; male; 22/24; 5-9½; 185 lbs.; fair complexion; light brown or blond hair; spoke with a Spanish accent."

(The Secret Service has another, earlier, version of this incident, also by Gerrets. It is included in the December 3 report he and Vial and Counts made jointly. In it Gerrets is disclosed to have been in touch with Newman November 23 and on that occasion to have been told that this stranger "had moved into the

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space in the building vacated by the Cubans without notifying him." The description of the man is roughly the same, including his Spanish accent. Newman is quoted as saying he told this man "he would have to vacate at once." From this report, on the first interview with Newman not mentioned in the report of the subsequent one, it would seem that this man had actually moved in and was using the office.)

There is a quotation from the 1962 New Orleans directory giving Arcacha's address as 4523 Deplessis Street which Gerrets points out is "a housing development known as 'Parkchester Apartments."' That is exactly the same apartment development in which Rudolph Richard Davis, the "mahogany" man with the training camp, lived.

In this report there is more on the connection of Arcacha and the Cuban Revolutionary Council with Banister. Newman told Gerrets that

"one Jack S. Martin, who lives at the corner of Esplanade Ave. and N. Prieur St, had brought Sergio Arcacha and Carlos Quiroga to him and recommended them to him as prospective tenants. He said that Martin had also brought them to Mayor Victor Schiro, New Orleans and had helped them to get a charter or permit to operate in New Orleans. He said that on one occasion Quiroga appeared to have a short wave radio transmitter which he was trying to repair,"

Martin, of course, was Banister's employee.

The truth, according to Newman, is that "Guy Banister talked me into letting them move in." (Banister personally was no blessing as a tenant. He died owing eight months' rent.)

Newman had no idea why the address of his building appeared on Oswald's literature. The Secret Service asked him, but they were asking the wrong man. The account of the two other prospects given by Gerrets is as much in dispute with Wall's as the date of the Cuban Revolutionary Council rental.

"Someone phoned him three or four months ago and wanted to rent

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