Garrison Group

The Garrison Group was an ad hoc committee of "six of CIA's highest officials" that Director Richard Helms formed in 1967 "to formulate a strategy" toward the investigation of the Kennedy assassination by the New Orleans district attorney, Jim Garrison. Its first meeting is recorded in a memorandum of September 20, 1967.¹

The first paper in the series was Rocca's draft of May 12, 1967, for Houston on Garrison's claim about the Mexico City photograph in the Warren Commission report, which set out the dates of the photographs of the unidentified man at the Soviet and Cuban embassies, the cropping by the FBI and the commission "for the protection of sources and methods," and the conclusion that "CIA did not acquire, receive or hold a photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald taken in Mexico City before the assassination." Rocca sent it to Thomas Karamessines on May 15 as "a first draft based on a file review as well as my recollections of the event," and to a colleague who wrote back: "This checks completely with my recollection."²

The Meetings

The minutes were kept by Wistar Janney. Present on September 20, 1967, were the executive director, the general counsel, the inspector general, the deputy directors for plans and for support, Rocca of the counterintelligence staff, the director of security, and Mr. Goodwin, assistant to the director. "Executive Director said that the Director had asked him to convene a group to consider the possible implications for the Agency emanating from New Orleans before, during, and after the trial of Clay Shaw." The general counsel "discussed his dealings with Justice and the desire of Shaw's lawyers to make contact with the Agency." "Rocca felt that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy." The group was to settle "what kind of action, if any, is available to the Agency, and what actions should be taken inside the Agency to reassure the Director that we have the problem in focus." The general counsel's office and Rocca would "make a detailed study of all the facts and consult with Justice."³

On September 26, with Donovan Pratt of the counterintelligence staff added, the general counsel reported that Nathaniel Kossack, first assistant in the criminal division of the Justice Department, "had met with Shaw's lawyers. They gave him a list of questions and names of individuals that they believed might be implicated in the trial. Justice did not want the Agency to contact Shaw's lawyers, but rather to maintain the safety of our executive privilege." The executive director asked how complete the agency's records were of contacts with Cubans; the deputy director for plans "explained that they are adequate where contacts were with individuals but not when they were with Cuban groups." The executive director "remarked on the impressive number of contacts we seem to have had who might now be implicated by Garrison" and asked "what our course of action should be in the event our position on executive privilege becomes unstuck." Rocca "felt that McCone should be briefed, and perhaps also Hoover and Clifford," and had prepared "a hypothetical scenario." The director "complained of the lack of explanation as to where and how he is liable to get into trouble" and "also wanted to know how he could fight back"; Goodwin suggested he needed "conversational" material. Pratt "called attention to that part of Garrison's story which was based on alleged CIA involvement in a plot to kill Castro," and Rocca was to "work up a graphic of the organization as conceived by Garrison." Goodwin noted the Life article linking Garrison to the Cosa Nostra in New Orleans.⁴

Shaw and the Agency

Garrison's defendant, Clay Shaw, had been a source of the CIA's Domestic Contact Service. His first report, of December 1948, concerned trade with Czechoslovakia, and he reported "on 33 separate occasions" through 1956 on economic matters in Latin America and Europe, unpaid. The contact division closed the case on June 4, 1956. Two days after Shaw's arrest the chief of the service's New Orleans office, Lloyd Ray, cabled headquarters recommending that the general counsel be briefed "to be on the safe side."¹

Rocca and Houston

Helms assigned the matter to Raymond Rocca, chief of research and analysis on the Counterintelligence Staff. Rocca wrote on April 26, 1967, that it would be "unwise to dismiss as trivial any attempts by Garrison to link the Agency to his plot," whose effect "will not depend principally upon their veracity" but on "their timeliness and extent of press coverage." On May 1 the former assistant attorney general Jack Miller telephoned the general counsel, Lawrence Houston, with information "from within Garrison's office" supplied by the NBC reporter Walter Sheridan. In September Shaw's lawyers asked the Justice Department for guidance on Garrison's claims about the agency and were refused. Rocca wrote on March 1, 1968, that Garrison's new charge of a plot by the agency and the military-industrial complex "is by and large the Moscow line."¹

The Rocca Survey

Rocca's "hypothetical scenario" was a memorandum of September 26, "a survey of possible courses of action," distributed to the deputy director for plans, to Houston, and to the Garrison file. Toward the attorney general it proposed a "bill of particulars on all aspects of the Garrison investigation that have become public" and action "to bring charges of unlawful impersonation against Gordon NOVEL and Donald P. NORTON." Toward Congress: John Warner, the legislative counsel, "should be fully briefed"; "certainly an effort should be made to block or head off any attempts to put the Playboy article into the Congressional Record"; "who in the Senate or House would have the influence to induce Senator Long, who has endorsed Garrison, to consider the facts rather than the fanciful theories?"; and the agency might seek legislation against impersonation of its officers "in situations not involving financial gain," since "CIA does not have the same protection for its people in the U.S. as the FBI and certain other agencies have for their operations."⁵

Among others, the President's board of consultants "or Clark Clifford as Chairman, could be briefed in detail." John McCone "could be fully briefed along the lines already discussed above. He is in a position to exert extensive influence in Catholic and Republican Party circles. The events under discussion took place during his Directorship." "Mr. J. Edgar Hoover is probably the single most important person to be considered in reacting to Garrison's false charges. Garrison has obviously made a play in the past four months to detach the FBI from CIA." "We have in the past months kept the FBI liaison fully informed of all aspects of our findings." Under "Mass Media Approaches," "careful thought should be given to the extent to which Mr. Goodwin or the Director can assure that the newspaper outlets receive a coherent picture of Garrison's 'facts' and motives. In anticipation of a trial, it would be prudent to have carefully selected channels of communication lined up in advance." The director "could take up directly with John Daly, who has recently succeeded to the direction of USIA and is the son-in-law of the Chief Justice, the facts of our position." "There is a spectrum that could be covered in preparing materials for covert exploitation": the first attribution of the assassination to the agency had been made in Britain by R. Palme Dutt in January 1964, "the Communist Bloc exploitation of Garrison's investigation since March 1967 would by itself constitute a theme to be surfaced and exploited," and "there is enough known about Oswald's contacts with the Soviets in the USSR and in Mexico City to warrant the suggestion that Garrison's investigation is wittingly or unwittingly designed to cover, exonerate or exculpate the Soviets in the Oswald case." Mark Lane, Weisberg, Epstein "and other 'assassination buffs' have deliberately turned the Warren Commission Report inside out. The precise status, background, and motivation of each of these individuals ought to be subjected to careful public scrutiny."⁵

The Houston Paper

Houston's paper of September 29, 1967, went to the director on October 2 with the note: "It also takes the position that there is nothing we can do at the moment. The Department of Justice has seen and agrees. We are following the situation very closely with them." A routing slip asked whether "the PFIAB or possibly Mr. Clifford personally" would be interested. The paper reasoned that Garrison "will have to prove at least one overt act in pursuance of the conspiracy, and with Oswald and Ferrie both dead, we do not at the moment know of such an act which he could prove," and that he would therefore "try to involve others and bring out testimony that they were involved in such things as the movement of arms and money." "Despite the fact that Garrison's theories are basically and preposterously false, therefore, he may well be able to involve CIA in the Shaw trial."⁶

It then listed what witnesses might say and what the agency knew. Carlos Quiroga might testify that David Ferrie was a friend of Sergio Arcacha Smith of the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, and "the CDRF was funded by CIA in Miami, and Arcacha Smith was with the New Orleans branch." Rudolph Ricardo Davis might testify to a training camp at Lacombe connected with Victor Paneque and Fernando Fernandez; the Miami station had sought a provisional clearance for Paneque in August 1964 and dropped him in October 1965, and Fernandez "was a contact of the Miami Station from December 1960 through January 1966." Emilio Santana, whom Garrison placed in Dealey Plaza, "was recruited by the Miami Station in October 1962 as a guide for an infiltration operation in Cuba which was carried out in May 1963," was dropped on October 15, 1963, and "knew some CIA staff members and agents by their true names." Carlos Bringuier "had some contact with the Domestic Contact Service's New Orleans office and was formerly the New Orleans leader of the Student Revolutionary Directorate, which was an anti-Castro organization conceived, created, and funded by CIA." Gordon Novel and his lawyer had "never at any time had any association with the Agency." Of Donald P. Norton's claim to have carried 50,000 dollars from Shaw to Oswald: "There is no truth in Norton's story in any respect."⁶

"The Government, and particularly CIA, is placed in a quandary. If it were to deny the Norton and Novel stories, which are wholly untrue, it would have to make some partial admissions at least in connection with Laborde, Santana, and possibly Paneque, Bringuier, and others. Shaw himself was a contact of the Domestic Contact Service's New Orleans office from 1948 to 1956 and introduced General Cabell, then Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, when he addressed the New Orleans Foreign Policy Association in May 1961." Justice would claim executive privilege if either side tried to bring the agency into the trial, and "this, too, can be turned by Garrison into a claim that it is part of the whole cover up by the establishment and particularly by CIA." "At the present time, therefore, there is no action we can recommend for the Director or the Agency to take. If during the trial it appears that Shaw may be convicted on information that could be refuted by CIA, we may be in for some difficult decisions." Outside Louisiana, "press and public opinion appear to be extremely skeptical if not scornful of Garrison's allegations."⁶

Afterward

After a federal court enjoined Garrison's last prosecution of Shaw in 1971 the director of the Domestic Contact Service wrote to his Dallas office: "Looks like Mr. Garrison is on the ropes and will have all he can do to keep the hornets away."¹

The House Select Committee on Assassinations asked the agency in January 1978 for its files on "Jim Garrison aka Wackenhut Corp." and on the "Garrison 1967 investigation."⁷