Wickliffe Draper funded the MissSovComm, Sen. James Eastland, American Mercury and the IAAEE

[John Bevilaqua]

I am looking into this further. Linking Guy Banister through Robert Morris to James O. Eastland and the Miss Sov Comm files, just might be some big time late breaking news. Banister headed up the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean and his own detective agency in New Orleans from the same building where both United Fruit was headquartered and where Brig. Gen. Bonner Fellers ran his "For America" publishing operations. Maurice B. Gatlin and Guy Banister incorporated the ACL using the address of the United Fruit building. Both Robert Morris, James Eastland and Bonner Fellers were discussed in the novel by Richard Condon, The Manchurian Candidate, written in 1958-59 and have long been at the top of the list in Condon's so called Dirty Dozen (my naming convention)

Many people seem to forget that Edwin A. Walker was named directly by Jack Ruby in his Warren Commission testimony as being one of the Dallas leaders of the plot to kill JFK. They also might not know that Walker visited Byron De La Beckwith quite often in prision after he killed Medgar Evers, Jr. Or that Walker led the Ole Miss Riots in Oxford, Mississippi probably at the behest of good old boy, Senator James O. Eastland. Walker is SO IMPORTANT to the case, you just can not imagine how important. He also started the rumor that it was Oswald who tried to shoot him in order to make him out to be a frequent assassin. Walker, Walker, Walker. Morris, Morris, Morris. Willoughby, Willoughby, Willoughby. All probably run and controlled by Draper and Eastland. Sorry to tell you, but none of these guys were in the CIA, either. Army Intel, ONI and the John Birch Society. Army Intel, ONI and the John Birch Society. Army Intel, ONI and the John Birch Society. Army Intel, ONI and the John Birch Society. Repeat after me:

Army Intel, ONI and the John Birch Society.
Army Intel, ONI and the John Birch Society.
Army Intel, ONI and the John Birch Society.
Army Intel, ONI and the John Birch Society.

And all of them were pegged and fingered by Richard Condon.

Note: The name should have been Robert Morris and not Robert Morrison regarding the meeting among Guy Bannister, Robert Morris and James Eastland in the 1950's.

And who the heck is that John McLoughlin person referenced herein? (LOL) And why did she change the name from Robert Morris into Robert Morrison anyway? Did she think that I GOT IT WRONG SOMEHOW?

Trying to get the full newspaper article now about this Banister, Morris and Eastland meeting about 1956.

45 Years Ago JFK Assassinated; Were There Mississippi Roots?


Few structures remain in Doddsville, Miss., plantation home of Sen. James O. Eastland.

On Friday November 22, 1963, news bulletins hit the airwaves as rifle shots interrupted President John F. Kennedy's Dallas motorcade. The resulting three-day news marathon concluded only after the young president was buried.

Reporters moved on to the investigative phase of JFK's assassination but finally left the topic for fresh news. Yet conspiracy theorists and others have kept the debate alive over what happened forty-two years ago, who was involved, and why.

Interestingly, there are numerous asides to Mississippi's civil rights story but perhaps none quite so compelling (and less known) as this: Seven years before JFK was assassinated, the magnolia state's Sen. James O. Eastland met for the first time with Guy Banister, a controversial CIA operative and retired FBI agent in charge of the Chicago bureau.

Banister -- remember him as the man who "pistol-whipped" David Ferrie in Oliver Stone's film "JFK" -- was later linked to Lee Harvey Oswald and Mississippi's senator through Eastland's Senate Internal Security Subcommittee or SISS (sometimes called "SISSY").

The New Orleans Times-Picayune on March 23, 1956, reported that Robert Morrison (sic) should be Robert Morris not Morrison, a former chief counsel for Sen. Joseph McCarthy's House Unamerican Activities Committee or HUAC, and Banister traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi, to confer personally with Senator Eastland for more than three hours. Describing the conference as "completely satisfactory," Morrison told the reporter that "Mr. Banister has complete liaison with the committee's staff which was the main object of our trip."

Apparently cozying up to Eastland and "SISSY" was Banister's goal. And it worked.

Known as a notorious political extremist who was later described as the impetus for James Garrison’s 1967-1970 Kennedy assassination probe, Banister earlier became a brief focus of Mississippi's secret spy agency, the Sovereignty Commission, when it was suggested Banister should be hired to set up an "even tighter" domestic spying system throughout the state.

A second Eastland operative, private investigator John D. Sullivan of Vicksburg, made this suggestion to the commission just months after the JFK assasination, according to released Sovereignty Commission records.

Former FBI agent Sullivan had worked under Banister (both inside the FBI and privately) and as a private self-employed investigator who often did work for hire for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission; the private white Citizens Councils, of which he was an active member; and for SISS, as had Banister and Lee Harvey Oswald.

When Sullivan reportedly committed suicide following the assassination, Sovereignty Commission investigators tried to acquire his library and files, but most of his confidential files were either reportedly burned by his widow or they had been lent out, and she "could not remember" who had them, Sovereignty Commission files disclose.

Then some twenty-nine years later, in testimony before the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board during a Dallas hearing on November 18, 1994, the late Senator Eastland was directly implicated in the president’s assassination by one of the author/theorists invited to testify.

“Lee Harvey Oswald was quite possibly an agent of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and he was doing the bidding of [Sen. Thomas J.] Dodd and Eastland and Morrison,” author John McLaughlin swore.

Documentation that could support or even discredit such assertions could perhaps be present in the Eastland archives at the University of Mississippi, but no objective scholar has been allowed to search these archives since the day they arrived on campus. Instead, Eastland's records were managed for years by a former associate and devoté who followed the papers from Washington, D.C. to Oxford.

Finally in 2005, after an unsuccessful Freedom of Information Act or FOIA request by this author, a historian was hired to organize the archives based in the James O. Eastland School of Law at Ole Miss. But there would still be a waiting period before any of the files could be viewed, according to the school's dean.

The plan was to release first all press releases, according to the historian who also confirmed that"many important files" were probably missing -- that the files looked “cleaned out.”

(The Dean of the law school, when presented a FOIA for access to Eastland archives, asked while laughing if he could “just show the rejection letter written to the last person who asked for this information." Later it came back to this author that “people at Ole Miss were really angry” over the FOIA request.)


Notes

[1] “Banister, FBI Chief Since February, to Leave Post Nov. 30,” Chicago Daily Tribune, Nov 19, 1954, Part 2, Page 12.

[2] Citation for this newspaper article (“NOTP, March 23, 1956, p. 1”) comes from the online Jerry P. Shinley Archive “Re: Jim Garrison and the SCEF Raids.”

[3] William Davy, “Let Justice Be Done,” (Jordan Publication, May 12, 1999), 1. On the weekend of the assassination, Banister pistol-whipped his employee Jack Martin, after Martin accused him of killing Kennedy. Martin eventually spoke to authorities.

[4] Sovereignty Commission documents SCR ID # 7-0-8-89-1-1-1 and SCR ID # 2-56-1-20-1-1-1.

[5] Sovereignty Commission documents SCR ID # 99-36-0-2-1-1-1 SCR ID # 1-16-1-21-1-1-1, SCR ID # 1-26-0-5-2-1-1, SCR ID # 2-2-0-19-1-1-1, SCR ID # 1-24-0-11-1-1-1

[6] After the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, A. J. Weberman, a “Dylanologist,” “garbologist” and Kennedy conspiracist wrote that he received this communication from Sullivan's grandson, Jeremy Sullivan: "I was told that he commited suicide but my dad didn't think so. He told me there was an investigation and the FBI was involved. They deemed it suicide. The story I heard had changed depending on who told it, I believe that they had been out fishing all day and John Daniel had been drinking. After they got home, he was alone in his room and there was a gunshot and he was found dead." Also, Weberman stated that Jim Garrison had an undisclosed case against Sullivan in 1961. Per a “Memo for the Director” by Betsy Palmer on April 19, 1978, regarding the “HSCA.” From A.J. ajweberman and Michael Canfield, “Coup D'Etat in America, The CIA and the Assassination of John Kennedy,” (New York City, The Third Press, 1975) Nodule II.

[7] Online minutes of testimony before the Assassination Records Review Board, November 18, 1994. Dallas, Texas. Testimony of John McLaughlin aka John Bevilaqua, Harvard University graduate and systems analyst, also a Kennedy assassination theorist. McLaughlin was testifying why he needed to see documents from HUAC and SISS. He had also requested military records of Wycliff P. Draper, head of the Draper Committees and Pioneer Fund. Mississippi had been the benefactor of Draper money in its fight against the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and in funding of private white academies per Sovereignty Commission reports.

[8] Eastland’s name has also been associated with the murder of civil rights leaders Medgar Evers, Dr. Martin Luther King, U. S. Senator Robert Kennedy and with the mass murder at a U. S. Army base located in Mississippi of potentially 1,000 black soldiers during World War II.

[9] The former Eastland aid has since retired.
Posted by Susan at 8:53 AM
Labels: Banister, Bannister, Eastland, JFK, Mississippi


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From the Jerry Shinley Archives.... Re: Garrison and the
SCEF Raids...

Subject: Re: Jim Garrison and the SCEF Raids
From: jpshinley@my-dejanews.com
Date: Fri, Dec 4, 1998 15:48 EST
Message-id: <749hro$qua$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com> In article <19981204051812.23426.00002086@ng98.aol.com>,
dreitzes@aol.com (Dreitzes) wrote:
> Take care,
>
[...]
> Dave
>
Thanks for the kind words. Here is some additional info about the SCEF.
-
New Orleans Times-Picayune January 31, 1964 S1-P7
Two Attorneys' Blast Charges
Act Unconstitutional, Say Smith, Waltzer
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[Benjamin Smith's statement on Jim Garrison's indictments:]
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These are simply indictments, or accusations, of course - not convictions. But they are particularly sinister accusations since they constitute a deliberate attempt to destroy the reutations of two civil rights attorneys and civil rights organizations. [SCEF and the National Lawyer's Guild]
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Neither my partner nor I nor SCEF is, or has ever been subversive, and I cannot believe that our community will swallow so phony an effort to link integration with communism.
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The statute under which we have been indicted is obviously unconstitutional. We are preparing to attack it -- in fact, it is already being appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
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When it is finally found unconstitutional, the state's entire case will collapse. And the state knows it - thus these hasty and premature indictments. I am ashamed for our entire state that such things can happen here.
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[Bruce Waltzer's statement:]
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I think that this indictment is going to shock the entire legal community of our country.
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But perhaps it is good that Louisiana's irresponsible and unconstitutional so-called "subversion law" will now have to endure the scrutiny of our nation and its courts.
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I am confident that this assault on a perfectly respectable bar association [National Lawyer's Guild] will be struck down by the courts.
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The Martin Luther King, Jr., FBI File
edited by David J. Garrow
Univerity Publications of America, Frederick MD, c1984-c1987.
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Reel 3, Frame 400
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Memorandum dated 5/26/64, file 100-106610
F. J. Baumgardner to W. C. Sullivan
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[A 5/18/64 article in the Jackson, Mississippi Daily News reproduced a check from the SCEF made out to Martin Luther King. Baumgardner stated the th 11/19/63 report of the Lousiana Joint Legislative Committee on Un-American Activities was the probable source of this information. He goes on to say ...]
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The above mentioned report sets forth the results of the hearings of the State of Louisiana Committee and for the most part is unspecific as to dates of Communist Party membership on the part of the SCEF director, also contains many conclusions, inferences and hearsay evidence which nevertheless lead to specific factual conclusions by the Committee. These hearings resulted in [sic] a raid on the SCEF on 10/4/63 by Louisiana State Police and New Orleans Police. As a result of the raids, leaders of the SCEF were arrested for violation of the Louisiana Subversive Activties and Communist Control Law, the constitutionality of which is being tested in the courts. We have stayed out of this entire matter in view of the considerable legal and political implications involved.



The SCEF is currently under investigation as a Communist Party front group...
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Congressional Record - Senate Feb 3, 1965 pp 1943-53
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Statement by Senator James Eastland
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Communist Forces Behind the Negro Revolution in this Country
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...
[Senator Eastland was worked up over the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. So he was attacking its supporters. Here is what he said about Benjamin Smith, of SCEF raid fame.]
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Along with [Arthur] Kinoy and [William] Kunstler, Benjamin E. Smith as named as one of the three who guide the legal affairs of the Freedom Party. Whether or not because of his position as legal counsel, this Benjamin Smith is indeed a very strong supporter of the Mississippi Freedom Party and its objectives. He was at one time, and may still be, one of two men in charge of the activities of a special task force sent into Mississippi by the National Lawyers Guild to aid in registration of Negroes to vote.
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Benjamin E. Smith is a member of the firm of Smith & Waltzer in New Orleans, La.
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Smith is a member of the National Lawyers Guild and has served on its executive board. He is a politically minded man, and was active in left-wing politics before he could vote. In 1948, at the age of 21, he was named a presidential elector on the Henry Wallace ticket.
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Benjamin Smith had an early association - more than 10 years ago with Hunter Pitts O'Dell, then a Communist Party District organizer, who subsequently, and much more recently, became an assistant to Martin Luther King.
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In October 1954, Benjamin E. Smith was one of 175 signers of a letter to President Eisenhower urging him to grant amnesty to "political prisoners convicted under the Smith Act."
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In 1956, in sworn testimony before the Internal Security Subcommittee at a hearing in New Orleans, La., Smith denied that he had ever been a member of the Communist Party.
[Smith was serving as an attorney for a witness at the hearings.]
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In Sping of 1958, Benjamin E. Smith was appointed assistant district attorney of the parish of New Orleans [sic]. This came about in an interesting way. The newly elected district attorney was one Richard A. Dowling, who had been identified in the July 1938 issue of _Equal Justice_ as an attorney for the Internation Labor Defense in New Orleans, who had been a member of the National Committee of the International Juridical Association in 1942, and who was listed in 1938 as a member of the Lawyers' Committee on American Relations with Spain. District Attorney Dowling appointed one J. David McNeil as his executive assistant. Mr McNeil had been a member of the International Labor Defense and had been identified with the National Lawyers' Guild and with the Southern Conference for Human Welfare. At the same time that he appointed McNeil as his executive assistant, Dowling named Benjamin E. Smith as assistant District Attorney.
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Benjamin E. Smith went to Cuba near the end of December, 1960, and stayed about 2 weeks, reportedly as a guest of the Mational Lawyers' College of Cuba, to attend events commemorating the second anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Smith reportedly has claimed that Fidel Castro has done a great deal to help the Cuban people and that the American press has given a distorted picture of the Castro Regime.
[Who "reported" this to Eastland? Guy Banister?]
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In October of 1961 or prior thereto, Smith was employed by the Republic of Cuba; and in 1964 both Benjamin E. Smith and his partner, Bruce C. Waltzer, were registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act as agents of the Republic of Cuba.
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Smith was elected a vice president of the National Lawyers Guild at its national convention in Detroit, Mich., in February of last year [1964].
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[End of Eastland's rant.]
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Since Eastland mentioned O'Dell and the 1956 N. O. SISS hearings, I might as well throw in the following:
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Warren Commission Document 794 deals with certain statements made by a "citizen of American origin who is presently a member of the Communist Party [CP]." This person expressed concern about "press references to [Lee Harvey] OSWALD's activities in New Orleans, Louisiana, before he went to Russia" which would link Oswald to the Communist Party. The FBI's investigation focused on the brief time Oswald was in New Orleans in September of 1959, before sailing for Europe. However, I suspect it would have been more logical to examine the time between January, 1954, and July, 1956, when the teenaged Oswald and his mother lived in New Orleans. (Warren Commission Report, GPO Edition, pp 679-681)
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One New Orleans acquaintance of Oswald's, Palmer McBride, reported that "Oswald praised Khrushchev and suggested that he and McBride join the Communist Party 'to take advantage of their social functions.'" (WCR, p. 384) Viewed out of context, Oswald's interest in joining the CP may seem a juvenile fantasy, but, in the light of the intense public interest in Communist activity in New Orleans during the early part of 1956, Oswald's desire to contact the CP could have been realized through a number of avenues.
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The New Orleans Times-Picayune (NOTP) for January 11, 1956, featured a front-page story from Baton Rouge reporting that Baton Rouge District Attorney J. St. Clair Favrot and the FBI were "checking on Communist literature mailed here [Baton Rouge] attacking segregation in the South." The article included the address of the Southern Regional Committee of the Communist Party, "P. O. Box 464, St. Louis, Mo." A similar mailing in March, a leaflet urging support for the Montgomery bus boycott and signed by the Louisiana Communist party, was also reported. (NOTP, March 28, 1956, p. 2)
-
The next incident to draw attention to alleged Communist activities in New Orleans occurred in March of 1956. The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS), chaired by Mississippi Senator James Eastland, questioned Herman Liveright, the program director of New Orleans television station, WDSU, in Washington, D. C. Liveright, without invoking the fifth amendment, refused to answer a number of question dealing with his alleged involvement with the CP in New York and New Orleans. (NOTP, March 20, 1956, p. 1) WDSU promptly fired Liveright. (NOTP, March 21, 1956, p. 1)
-
The Liveright incident spurred New Orleans Mayor deLesseps Story "Chep" Morrison to order a probe of "subversive activities in New Orleans." Morrsion stated that he had contacted SISS chairman Eastland and asked for any information the subcommittee had. Morrison selected Assistant Police Superintendent Guy Banister to head the investigation. (NOTP, March 21, 1956, p. 1) Banister later was a figure of interest in the Garrison probe and has been alleged to have been personally acquainted with Oswald.
-
Morrison and Banister traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi, to confer personally with Senator Eastland for more than three hours. "Describing the conference as completely 'satisfactory,' Morrsion said, 'Mr. Banister has complete liason with the committee's staff which was the main object of our trip.'" (NOTP, March 23, 1956, p. 1) Less than a week later, plans to hold SISS hearings in New Orleans were announced. (NOTP, March 28, 1956, p. 1) The subcommittee issued subpenas for ten witnesses. Efforts to locate one witness, Hunter Pitts O'Dell, resulted in the seizure of books and documents from a rented room which O'Dell had vacated. Banister termed the library "the finest collection of Communist literature in the South that I have ever seen or heard of." (NOTP, March 23, 1956, p. 1; March 31, 1956, p. 1) Hunter Pitts O'Dell is a figure of some importance because of his later association with Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. O'Dell's alleged Communist ties were used to discredit Dr. King. (Garrow, David J. The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Penguin Books, 1981) Interestingly, Louisiana political boss and notorious segregationist Leander Perez publicly linked King and O'Dell in March of 1960. (NOTP, March 12, 1960, section 3, p. 2) -
The SISS held public hearings on April 5 and 6. The NOTP devoted extensive space to coverage of the hearings, including detailed summaries of the testimony of each of the witnessess. (NOTP, April 6, 1956; April 7, 1956). At follow-up hearings in Washington, three additional witnesses, including O'Dell were heard. (NOTP, April 12, 1956, p.1; April 13, 1956, p. 1) The Orleans Parish District Attorney's office announced it was considering prosecuting O'Dell and other SISS witnesses under Louisiana anti-subversion laws. Charges were finally filed in 1957. (NOTP, May 9, 1956, p. 1; March 26, 1957, p. 1; April 4, 1957, p. 8)
-
Jerry Shinley