Kennedy as new developments unfold in New Orleans. The most significant recent events were the death of David: Ferrie on February 22 and the arrest of Clay Shaw on March 1.
William Turner reports on the death of Ferrie in the February 26 issue of The Sunday Ramparts, which is published in San Francisco:
"The un-opportune death of the New Orleans commercial pilot, David William Ferrie, and the simultaneous disclosure by Orleans Parish District Attorney Jim Garrison that he
was going to arrest Ferrie this week in connection with the Kennedy assassination has raised the curtain higher on this new and third act of the affair.
"Ferrie was found dead in bed on February 22, some 31 hours after being exhaustively interviewed by Garrison. The coroner ascribed death to a ruptured blood vessel at the base of the brain. Because of pills at the bedside, Garrison termed it a suicide.
"It might also be pointed out that a competently administered karate chop to the neck, such as possibly killed another assassination figure, Jim Koethe of the Dallas Times-Herald, could cause a fatal embolism in the brain vessels."
On March 1, Garrison arrested Clay Shaw, the retired director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart, and accused him of having taken part "in a conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy."
The March 4 New York Times reported:
"Tn an application for a warrant to search Mr. Shaw's home, the District Attorney's office said that a ‘confidential informant' had disclosed that he had attended a meeting in which Mr. Shaw, Mr. Ferrie, Oswald and ‘other persons' agreed to kill the President.
"According to the warrant application, the informant was administered sodium pentothol, commonly called truth serum, and 'corroborated and reaffirmed' his story while under the influence of the drug."
Meanwhile, the New York World Journal Tribune for March 4 reported:
"In Washington yesterday [March 2], President Johnson said he saw no reason to change his previous statements accepting the conclusions of the Warren Commission report, which conéluded that Oswald acted alone in the assassination."
The March 4 issue of the National Guardian, a progressive news weekly published in New York, reported what Mark Lane, the most widely known critic of the Warren Commission, had to say about the new developments in New Orleans. Lane, speaking at a press conference in Rome, Italy, said, "What impressed me is that Garrison has initiated his investigations on the basis of his studies of the Warren Report and the investigations seem to flow from evidence in this Report. If the matter is reopened it will be reopened in New Orleans. If Garrison indicts people for complicity in the assassination, it seems unlikely to me that President Johnson could hold off the appointment of a new commission of inquiry until after the 1968 elections."
Lane supported Garrison's refusal to turn his evidence over to the Warren Commission and commented that, "He is quite justified in not wishing to share the evidence with those who have falsified the facts." And when asked about the role of Senator Robert Kennedy in the inquiry, Lane said, "He is in a delicate political position. If he were to say that the Report (which he says he has not read) were false, it would split the Democratic Party. Robert Kennedy believes that to become President is the most important thing. I think it is more important to find out the truth about the death of his brother." ;
On a different aspect of the New Orleans developments, the Louisiana branch of the American Civil Liberties Union criticized Garrison on March 6 for turning his investigation into a "Roman circus" and for attempting to convict people in the press rather than in the courtroom.
A very ominous note was struck in a column by Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson which appeared in the March 7 issue of the New York Post:
"The publicity over New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of a 'Kennedy assassination plot' has focused attention in Washington on a reported CIA plan in 1963 to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro, which, according to some sources, may have resulted in a counter-plot by Castro to assassinate President Kennedy.
"Senator Russell Long (Democrat of Louisiana) has told us that Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused Kennedy assassin, trained with Castro revolutionaries in Minsk during his Soviet stay. This information, which Long swore is reliable, was never revealed by the Warren Commission.
"Other highly placed sources have confirmed that an anti-Castro plot was cooked up within the CIA.
"Our sources agree that a plot against Castro definitely was taken up inside the CIA at the time Senator Robert Kennedy (Democrat of New York) was riding herd on the agency for his brother. The report is that Castro got wind of the plot and threatened to find someone to assassinate President Kennedy.
"Shortly after the tragedy, the FBI submitted a memo to President Johnson reporting that Cuban leaders had wanted to kill Kennedy. The information was not sufficiently specific, however, to be accepted as certain."
What do these reports from “highly placed sources" portend? Are there people in Washington who hope to divert attention away from themselves by making accusations about others? Will an attempt be made to frame-up the international radical movement for the Kennedy assassination?